A Clog Dance On The Scheldt

When the German major at Aix-la-Cha-pelle stamped on our passports:— "Gesehen. Gut Zum Austritt Kommandant 2 Kompagnie, Landsturm Batl. Aachen," we were free, so we thought, to shake the dust of Germany from our feet. Hoisting our rucksacks, we gave up box cars in favor of a civilized passenger train, northward bound, and at noon crossed the Dutch border at Simplefeldt.

For three hours we talked English, consulted maps, took notes, and asked questions where and when we pleased. The holiday cost us dear. At the end of that time we were under lock and key in the town of Maastricht, the Province of Limburg, and the supposedly free and neutral Kingdom of the Netherlands. We suspected at the time, and in view of what I learned upon a later trip to Berlin I am quite certain, that the long arm of the German Secret Service had reached out for us across the border.

Having started from Antwerp during its investment, but prior to its siege by the German army, we were now on the third stage of a round trip which was to land one of us back in the Belgian temporary capital in time for the bombardment. During the previous two weeks we had been stopped, questioned, and sometimes examined, no less than one hundred and thirty times. Thirteen, we calculated, was our average number of hold-ups on our early "marching days"; that is to say, during those wanderings which led us by foot, train, ox cart, and automobile past the double sector of Antwerp's fortifications, through the Belgian fighting lines to Ghent and Termonde, and thence into the arms of the German pickets on the outskirts of Brussels.

And now, as the heavy door of the Maastricht police headquarters slammed in our faces, and the key rattled in the guardroom lock, my companion in crime threw down his hat and coat in rage. Between us we treated our fellow-prisoners to a quarter of an hour's tirade on the American citizen's right to freedom, swore that the Kingdom of the Netherlands would repent this outrage, and each of us politely assured the other it was all the other fellow's fault.

All of which, though true, had no effect on the sniffling young woman across the way, nor the sleeper on the hardwood bench next mine, nor the bald-headed, big-lipped police sergeant who bent over his desk in the corner, impervious to these usual outbursts of the newly arrested, as he laboriously scrawled in the police blotter the report of the day's round-up.

"Sit down!" he bellowed as I advanced toward the pen door, and tried to open it.

When he resumed his scratching I did my best to explain in a German-French-Dutch dialect of my own invention that we wished to see Mons. le Commissaire at once; that we had only come to inspect the concentration camp of German and Belgian prisoners, and that we were leaving town that day. I particularly emphasized this point. We were, in fact, I assured him in several different ways, leaving that very afternoon—as soon as the disagreeable mistake of our arrest was rectified. He may or may not have understood this: at all events, he wore an expression as blank and graven as Jack Rose upon the witness stand. His only answer was a vacant stare at the pit of my stomach, followed by a slow scratch-scratching on the police blotter.

In fact our arrest on that occasion was rather a Jack Rose affair; that is to say, it started by our being invited to headquarters, suspicious but not certain of our status until we finally landed behind the iron doors. Without doubt Maastricht authorities were waiting for us even as we stepped off the train, showing that we were doomed from the time we left the border. Our captor, an unctuous, pink-cheeked politzei, made his appearance not far from the internment camp. Where were we going, and why?

"To see the prisoners," we said.

"It is possible," said the spider to the fly, "zat I can get for you permission if you will come to ze guardhouse. Ze capitain is there."

The "guardhouse" proved a precinct police station, and the captain was not there: instead we found a mixed crowd of civilians and militaires who looked us over and shook their heads. Next we were taken to military headquarters \n the center of the town. For fifteen minutes we hunted the evasive captain while I ran through my head the various sets of credentials stuffed in different pockets; for, being in Dutch territory, although only a few miles from the Belgian frontier on one side and the German frontier on the other, I was not quite certain which to produce. Among my letters I carried one from the German Ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, to the Foreign Office in Berlin; one from Professor Hugo Munsterberg at Harvard, and a note from the secretary of the Belgian Legation at The Hague. Unfortunately I did not have with me at the time a very helpful letter from Colonel Roosevelt, ending with the statement that the bearer "is an American citizen, a non-combatant, and emphatically not a spy." I had promised the Colonel to use this, my trump card, only in case of necessity—and once, on a later occasion, I did so with immediate effect. On the whole, I now decided in favor of a United States passport decorated with my picture and enough vises to resemble the diplomatic history of the Continent.

"The captain is not here. We go to the commissaire at headquarters," said the polite politzei. It was then that we cut loose, told him to bring the commissaire or the burgomaster to us, and started to walk off. It was a bad move. So far he had handled us with a velvet grip, but at the first sign of insurrection he showed his teeth, locked arms with each of us, and, signaling another officer to follow, forthwith marched us off to police headquarters and our ultimate resting-place, the guardroom cell.

How long we stayed there I don't know—long enough, at all events, to get a glimpse of the Dutch police system and the third degree as practiced in the Lowlands. There swung open a great iron door leading to the street and the market-place, not so large but fully as busy as Washington Market the week before Thanksgiving. Through it, sobbing and screaming, their hats gone and their hair torn, came two women, roughly handled by gendarmes and followed by a mob escort. They were thrown weeping and expostulating into an adjoining cell. A gendarme came out with trickles of blood on his face. He mopped his brow and complained of feminine finger-nails. Close behind him followed a male friend of the imprisoned women. He pleaded with the sergeant at the desk, while the moans of the women, under pressure to confess their crime, came from their cell. But Jack Rose only scratched and scratched monotonously, and now and then gazed at the middle of the speaker's stomach.

In the mean time we fell back into our habit of talking for publication. With an intimacy that would have surprised those gentlemen we referred casually to Brand Whitlock, Dr. van Dyke, and the biggest Dutch and Belgian names we could think of. We suspected that Jack Rose and the man at our side understood more English than they pretended. At all events, it had its effect. In half an hour we were taken before the commissioner.

Two cigars lay on the edge of the table nearest us. I could see at a glance that we were free.

"Do you speak English?" I asked him.

"No," he answered in our native tongue; "only French, Flemish, German, and Italian—but not English." And with a grin he asked for our passports.

"You are for the American newspapers?"

"Yes," I answered—"one of us is a lawyer who writes occasionally. I am correspondent for a New York and a Boston paper, but I won't cable anything from here." For this reason, I explained, no movements of troops or news of military value could leak out.

"Ah, I see," said the commissioner who could not talk English. "An amateur correspondent and a slow correspondent. But correspondents are not at all tolerated in this province. It is five o'clock. You will board the train leaving this province at 5.16 P.M."

From Maastricht to the Dutch capital is, under usual conditions, a four-hour run to the north. During this trip we passed encampments and fortifications of the 400,000 well-drilled but poorly equipped troops which the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in the spirit of no negative neutrality, had mobilized along her borders. Whenever we crossed a bridge every window in the entire train was fastened down and there were strict orders against raising them. We discovered that under the boulders were carefully concealed large charges of dynamite ready for immediate use in case of invasion—so that Horatius need not be called upon while axe and crowbar were at work. The windows, it appears, were locked to prevent throwing out of lighted cigars or matches.

At one o'clock the next morning our train, delayed by war-time traffic, rolled into the Hague station, whence three days later, I was to start my lucky trip into Antwerp, the besieged.

Clog dancing and cognac helped to get me from The Hague back into Antwerp in time for its bombardment and capture by the German forces under General von Beseler. I happened to perform the clog dancing at a critical moment during a trip on a Scheldt River barge, thus diverting the attention of the river sentries from my lack of proper papers. While the pedal acrobatics were in progress my temporary friend, Mons. le Conducteur, reinforced the already genial pickets with many glasses of the warming fluid.

Willard Luther, my companion in and out of jail during the first part of the continental wanderings, was forced to leave for home the day after we got back to The Hague. He had five days to catch the Lusitania at Liverpool. Three of them he spent on a whirlwind trip trying to see action in northern Flanders, but, much to his disappointment, was called away before the final scrimmage at Antwerp. If he had succeeded in getting in, I rather fear the Massachusetts Bar would have lost a valuable member. He had an insatiable passion to be in the neighborhood of bullets and bombs— not, as I take it, that he really wanted to get hit—merely that he would like to see how close he could come.

On October 2d, strictest regulations were passed prohibiting entry within the fortifications of Antwerp without permit from the military governor, General de Guise. Three weeks earlier entry had been possible but difficult, and the feat was again easier after the German occupation. But during the city's days of trial the military lid was clamped and riveted. Except for those coming direct from England, the highest civil recommendations were valueless.

I had one of these,—a laissez-passer from Prince d'Eline, Secretary of the Belgian Legation at The Hague,—issued because of the fact that I was carrying a large packet of mail from the American Legation at The Hague to Henry W. Diederick, United States Consul-General at Antwerp. I had also been entrusted with three hundred marks to be delivered to a German prisoner, Lieutenant Ulrici, known to have been wounded and captured in the fighting around Termonde, and believed to be lying in a hospital ship in the river or in Antwerp itself. The fact of carrying such money was of course against me as indicating German sympathy.

Because a large part of the railroad line between Eschen, Cappelen, and Antwerp had been torn up, because there would be many hold-ups, and because I couldn't speak a word of Flemish, I decided against the overland route. Hearing, however, that L. Braakman & Company, a grain and freight shipping concern, were running down barges from Rotterdam, I got a Belgian friend to call them up on my behalf. The result was a flat throw-down: without General de Guise's sanction I might not even cross the gangplank.

Nevertheless, I went to Rotterdam, crossed the river basin to the island from which the Braakman boats ran, and there saw a director of the company, who, fortunately, could speak both English and Flemish. He took me to the captain of the river barge, a low craft that looked a cross between a tugboat and a Hudson River scow. In less than three minutes my case was disposed of. Verdict: "C'est absolument defendu." It was time for a little "bluff." An hour later I returned with a new proposition, having in the mean time telegraphed Mr. Diederick either to meet me at the pier at Antwerp or to send a military permit. Displaying a copy of this telegram I suggested that I be allowed to board. If there was any one at Antwerp to meet and vouch for me, well and good; if not, they were at liberty to ship me back. That was my proposition.

"He may go as far as the border patrol, fifteen miles east of Antwerp," the captain said to my interpreter. "If the river sentries permit it he may then go as far as the Antwerp pier, but he cannot land."

We cast off Sunday, October 4th, at 6 A.M. The little Telegraaf III poked her nose through the blue-gray haze of a chilly October morning while the muddy waters of the Meuse slapped coldly against her bow. I stamped the deck a few times, wondering if there was an English-speaking soul aboard, and leaned up against the engine room until the odor of coffee and bacon lured me to the fo'castle hatch. A purple-faced giant, with thick lips that met like the halves of an English muffin blocked the companion-way.

"'Jour," growled the face as though it hated to say it, then pointed to the food and cognac. This was Monsieur le Conducteur, ship's cook, barkeeper, and collector of fares.

In the center of a dark cabin, littered with charts, pails, and Flemish newspapers, was a kitchen table. Now and then a smoking oil lamp flared up to throw a light on the faces of my fellow-passengers, five of them in addition to the captain and Mons. le Conducteur. They were, as I discovered later, Mons. A. Albrecht, a leading alderman of Antwerp and a friend of Mons. Vos, the burgomaster; a light-haired Belgian piano salesman who could speak five languages; Mile. Blanche Ravinet, of looks beautiful and occupation unknown; and two others. From the suddenness with which the conversation stopped, I judged they had been discussing "ze American." They were welcome to say what they liked barring the word "spion."

For hours we chugged steadily along, catching a fair tide on the lower Meuse, and sliding past the neat little towns of Dordrecht, Papendrecht, and Willemstad, through the Hollandische Diep and the Krammer Volkerak. After that the Telegraaf III worried through the canals and systems of locks which virtually cut the neck of Tholen from the mainland, and, when the last of these had been accomplished, splashed into the great basin of the East Scheldt. A Dutch gunboat cut across our bows, signaling us to halt. An officer boarded us to study the freight invoices.

Farther upstream a launch came alongside, making fast fore and aft, while two Belgian river sentries, in long blue coats and faded drab trousers, poked their bearded heads above the rail. This, then, was what the captain meant by the border patrol.

Now, as luck would have it, the day was cold: we were the first boat to come through the locks for some hours, and apparently the river sentries had had no breakfast. So they dove into the fo'castle, where Mons. le Conducteur produced bread and cognac. I at once ordered Mons. le Conducteur to get a second round of liquid refreshment for our military guests. Conversation flowed. The soldiers drummed on the table to keep their hands warm and in a moment of inspiration I showed them how the darkies in our country warm their feet.

"Clog dance," I explained.

"Encore," shouted the piano salesman. "That is splendid."

"Pleaz again! Oh, pleaz!" echoed Mile. Blanche. "See, every one, ze grand American foot game."

The fat-faced conducteur, with whom I had suddenly grown in favor, repeated the cognac treatment on the sentries. Before I knew it, they had me alongside the table, one hand steadied against a thwart of the swaying cabin, my head in the smoke of the oil lamp, my feet pounding and kicking, as it seemed, at the very door of Antwerp. The piano salesman shouted rag-time, Mile. Blanche drummed time on the bench, and the river sentries pounded time with their rifle butts.

"Encore!" they shouted when I sat down with aching legs.

All at once the launch alongside gave an angry toot, for the officer wanted his men back: there were other boats to be examined. The sentries glanced quickly at our papers, not reading, I am sure, a word of mine, speedily cast off ropes, and disappeared guiltily and somewhat unsteadily over the larboard rail.

An hour later the Telegraaf III took the river's turn, swinging past Fort St. Philippe, until we could see the gray-blue spire of the Cathedral of Notre Dame with its intricate network of stone silhouetted against the autumn sunset. Mr. Diederick was not at the pier to meet me, nor was there a military passport from General de Guise.

"Stay by me," said Alderman Albrecht. As each of the pier sentries saluted him he said a whispered word, and apparently his word was good, for the American "foot game" artist was allowed to pass. Perhaps Alderman Albrecht had decided that German spies don't clog-dance.

Though not officially admitted to the besieged city, I went at once to my old stand, the Hotel St. Antoine, now converted into British Staff Headquarters. At sundown a mist crept up from the river, and through it we heard a roar of welcome and the rumble of heavy artillery. Charging down the Avenue de Keyser came a hundred London motor-busses, Piccadilly signs and all, some filled, some half-filled, with a wet-looking bunch of Tommies, followed by armored mitrailleuses, a few 6.7 naval guns, officers' machines, commissary and ammunition carriages—the first brigade of Winston Churchill's army of relief, which for five days was destined to make so valiant, but so short, a fight against the overwhelming German army.