A Night On A Prison Floor

"Prisoners are to be taken over into the left wing for the night," said an orderly to the guards.

We had scarcely turned the corner, when an officer cried: "Not that way, Dummkopf!"

"Our orders are for the left wing, sir," said the orderly.

"Never saw such a set of damned blockheads!" yelled the officer in exasperation. "Can't you tell the difference between right and left? Right wing, right wing, and hurry up!"

A little emery had gotten into the perfect-running machine. The corridors fairly clanged with orders and counter orders. After much confusion the general mix-up of prisoners was straightened out and we were served black bread and coffee.

The strain of the day, along with the fever I had from exposure on the battlefields, made the rough food still more uninviting, especially as our only implements of attack were the greasy pocketknives of the peasants and canteen covers from the soldiers. The revolt of my stomach must have communicated itself to my soul. I determined for aggressive action on my own behalf. I resolved to stand unprotesting no longer while a solid case against me was being constructed. Not without a struggle was I to be railroaded off to prison or to Purgatory. Pushing up to the next officer appearing in the room, in firm but courteous tones I requested, as an American citizen, the right to communicate with the American authorities.

He replied very decently that that was quite within my privileges, and forthwith the opportunity would be accorded me. I was looking for paper, when there came the order for all of us to move out into the courtyard. With a line of soldiers on either side, we were marched through labyrinthine passages and up three flights of stairs. Here we were divided into two gangs, my gang being led off into a room already nearly filled. We were told that it was our temporary abode, and we were to make the best of it. It was an administrative office of the Belgian Government now turned into a prison. There were the usual fixtures, including a rug on the floor and shelves of books. Ours was only one of many cells for prisoners scattered through the building. The spy-hunters had swooped down upon every suspect in Belgium and all who had been caught in the dragnet were being dumped into these rooms.

We were thus informed by the officer whose wards we were. He was a fussy, quick-tempered, withal kind-hearted little fellow, and kept dashing in and out of the room, really perplexed over housing accommodations for the night. The spy-hunters had been successful in their work of rounding up their victims from all over the country and corralling them here until the place was filled to overflowing. Our official in charge was puffed up with pride in the prosperity of his institution, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, petulantly belectured us on adding ourselves to his already numerous burdens. This was highly humorous, yet we all feared to commit lese-majeste by expressing to him our collective and personal sorrow for so inconveniencing him, and our willingness to make amends for our thoughtlessness in getting arrested.

After more hesitation than I had hitherto observed, arrangements for the night were completed and we were ordered to draw out blankets from the pile in the corner. The new arrivals and the old inmates maneuvered for the softest spots on the floor, which was soon covered over with bodies and their sprawling limbs, while a host of guards, fully armed, were posted at the door and along the hall.

"I would give my right arm or my leg if I could get a flashlight of this," said Obels, the reporter, enthusiastically. This elation made him reckless as he went about, probing the experiences of each victim.

"Great stuff!" "Great stuff!" he kept exclaiming. "Won't this open up some eyes in Chicago, eh!"

He couldn't believe that the Providence which had led him to this Bonanza would now deny him the opportunity of getting out some of this wealth.

In the midst of these activities he was haled before the tribunal. He returned, the spring out of his step and his zest for stories quite gone. Javert had successively branded him an "Idiot" a "Liar" and a "Spy."

The information that several of the inmates had been imprisoned for a month or more spurred my drooping spirits and put me into action. I uncovered a pile of the office writing-paper and, with the aid of the Belgian who could speak English, I set to work preparing a letter to Ambassador Whitlock. Whether Javert was apprised of the doings of his charges or not I do not know, but in the midst of my writing he glided into the room, and, pouncing upon my manuscript, gathered it to himself, saying, "I'll take these." My Belgian friend protested that a superior officer had given me permission to do this. Javert handed back the paper, smiled, and disappeared. Knowing that every word would be closely scrutinized at the Staff Office, and that the least hint of anything derogatory to the German authorities would keep the letter in the building, I couched it in as pointed and telling terms as possible, having in mind the eyes of the Germans, quite as much as the Ambassador.

Brand Whitlock,
United States Ambassador,
Brussels.

DEAR SIR:

As a native American citizen, born in Ohio, and now imprisoned by the German authorities, I claim your intervention in my behalf. I am thirty years of age, resident of East Boston, Massachusetts, for six years. I am a graduate of Marietta College, Hartford Seminary, and studied in Cambridge University in England, and Marburg University in Germany.

Saturday Mr. Van Hee, the American consul at Ghent, brought me here by automobile with Mr. Fletcher. Obliged to take back in his car three ladies for whom he obtained permission from the German Government, I was necessarily left behind; Mr. Van Hee promising to return for me when diplomatic business brought him to Brussels in a few days. Meantime I took a room at the Hotel Metropole. From it I was taken by the German authorities this morning. I do not know exactly what the charge against me is. I am accused of offering money for information relative to the movement of the German troops. I think that the man who worked up the case against me is a Dutchman with whom I spoke upon a car. He volunteered the information that he had been everywhere by automobile; and I asked him if he was the one who carried passengers out of Brussels by way of Liege and Aix-la-Chapelle. Won't you look into my case at once? Mr. Fletcher, who called on you Saturday, lent me some fifty dollars, so I am all right that way; but this is not a comfortable situation to be in, though the officers are very decent. If you want proof of my identity, you can communicate with the following people in America; they are my personal friends, and will confirm my absence from home on an extended vacation.

His Excellency Governor Walsh, of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts; Dr. Charles Fleischer, Chief Rabbi in the
Rabbinate of New England.

(If there was any Jewish blood on the German Staff I was going to try to get the benefit of it.)

The Honorable George W. Coleman, of the Ford Hall Convocation
Meetings and President of the Pilgrim Amalgamated Associated
Advertising Clubs of America.

(Coleman being a cross between a Baptist deacon and an anarchist, I knew that he would not object to this bit of sabotage.)

The Right Honorable William W. Mills, Esquire, President of the
First National Bank of Marietta, Ohio, Treasurer of the University of
Marietta, and Member of the National Council of Congregational
Churches of America, etc., etc.

If you will cablegram any of these, you will get an immediate reply. While I have no money for this now, I feel certain Mr. Fletcher, who is associated with Mr. Lane, of the United States Cabinet, will back you up, and there will be unlimited funds in America.

Sincerely yours, ALBERT R. WILLIAMS.

My attention has been called to the omission of the Angel Gabriel, Mary Pickford and Ty Cobb from the list of my intimate friends in the above document. That was not meant as a slight—purely an oversight. At any rate, I felt that the long list of men whose names were written here would make the right response to any cablegram. To atone for dragging them into the affray I call attention to the highly deferential and decorative manner in which I referred to them. Be it remembered that this document was prepared quite as much for German eyes as for the Ambassador's, and nothing gives a man standing and respect in the Teutonic mind as much as a name fearfully and wonderfully adorned. I resolved that my importance was not to suffer from lack of glory in my friends. I bestowed more honorary degrees on them than the average small college does in ten commencements. So lavish was I that my friends hardly recognize their own titular selves. An officer designated the guard who would deliver the letter. I gave it to him along with a franc, which he protestingly accepted. He reported that it was delivered to Javert. That was the last I ever heard from that message. I imagine that it was by no means the last that the German authorities heard from it, for when I related the story to the Ambassador some time later I saw a characteristic Brand Whitlock letter a-brewing. My message to Vice-Consul Naesmith and to the Hotel Metropole shared a like fate—they were undelivered.

I simply offer the facts as they are. It may be that the courtesies of polite intercourse are not easy to observe in war. Certainly they were not obtrusive in Belgium. In extenuation it may be said that the Brussels postmen had struck about this time; but, on the other hand, through the forbidden shutters I saw fully fifty German Boy Scouts marshaled in the courtyard below.

I had noticed them before as messengers going down the most unguarded by-ways of the slums, quite as if they were agents of a welcomed instead of hated army. They rode along serenely as if totally unconscious of the shining targets that they made. I felt certain that no American gang would let slip this opportunity for the heaving of a brick. Were Brussels boys made of flabbier stuff? Not if Belgian sons were of the same stripe as Belgian fathers. The fact then that none of these German Scouts were massacred, as was to be expected by all the rules of the game, showed how the threat of reprisals operated to curb the strongest natural impulses of the spirit. I presumed that one of these Scouts was speeding posthaste to the Ambassador with my note, but he never did.

I am not berating the Germans. They were running their own war according to their own code. In this code reporters, onlookers, and uplifters of any brand were anathema.

We had no rights. Our only right was to the convictions within our minds, provided we kept them there. I believe that were it not for the surmises of the English lieutenant who took them to the Ambassador I would be in prison yet. On second thought, I wouldn't, either. I couldn't have endured the strain much longer. If I had been caged in there a few hours more than I was, in my nervous tension I probably would have vented my sense of outraged justice by assaulting one of the officers myself. I wouldn't have had a long time then to speculate upon the immortality of the soul. I would have possessed first-hand information. One can understand why, for their own protection, the Germans imposed their iron laws upon the Belgians with their terrible penalties. What is hard to understand is the long-suffering patience and self- restraint of the Belgians. Occasionally some high-spirited or high- strung fellow was no longer able to keep the lid on the volcano of hatred and rage seething within him. This blowup brought down, not only upon his own head, but upon the whole community, the most hideous reprisals.

By the time my writing was completed the men were pretty well settled down for the night. On the outside the roaring of the Austrian guns, which for days had been bombarding their way into Antwerp, now became less constant; less and less frequently the hoarse commands of the officers, mingled with the rumbling of the automobiles, came up from the courtyard below. At midnight the only sounds were the groans and moans of the twisting sleepers and the measured tread of the sentry as he paced up and down the hall, his silhouette darkening at regular intervals the glass door at the end of our little room.

I was placed in a. sort of adjoining closet with six others. A motley mixture indeed; a Russian, an American, four Belgians, and a German—all prisoners awaiting our sentences. As a last move, the German soldier guards sandwiched themselves into the open spaces on the floor, their long bayonets glistening in the electric light that blazed down upon us. The peasants had characteristically closed the windows to keep out the baneful night air. In the main room a drop-light with shade flung its radiance on a table and lit up the anxious faces of the few men gathered round it. It showed one poor fellow bolt upright, unspeaking, unmoving, his fixed white eyeballs staring into space, as though he would go stark mad. Those eyes have forever burned themselves into my brain, a pitiful protest against a mad, wild world at war.

Sleep was entirely out of the question with me. It wasn't the bad air or the hard floor or the snores of my comrades, but just plain cold fear. Now I possess an average amount of courage. Quite alone I walked in and out of Liege when the Germans were painting the skies red with the burning towns. My ribs were massaged all the way by ends of revolvers, whose owners demanded me to give forthwith my reasons for being there, they being sole arbiters of whether my reasons were good or bad. I got so used to a bayonet pointing into the pit of my stomach that it hardly looks natural in a vertical position.

But this was a thrust from a different quarter. In the open a man feels a sporting chance, at any rate, even if a bullet can beat him on the run; but cooped up within four walls he is paralyzed by his horrible helplessness. He feels that a military court reverses ordinary procedure, holding that it is better for nine innocent to suffer than for one guilty one to escape. He knows that his fate is in the hands of a tribunal from whose arbitrary decision there is no appeal, and that decision he knows may depend upon the whim of the commandant, to whom a poor breakfast or a bad night's sleep may give the wrong twist. The terrible uncertainty of it preys upon one's mind.

I certainly prayed that the commandant was getting a better night than mine, as I lay there staring up at the electric light with a hundred hates and fears pounding through my brain. "I'm a prisoner," was one thought. "Supposing the silence of the guns means that the Germans, beaten, are being pressed back into Brussels by the Allies. They may let us go. No, the Germans, maddened by defeat, might order us all to be shot," was one idea. "How does it feel to be blindfolded and stood up against a wall by a firing squad?" was another pleasant companion idea that kept vigil with me through the midnight hours. Then my fancies took a frenzied turn, "Suppose these be brutes of soldiers and they run us through, saying we were trying to escape."

"Escape!" The word no sooner leaped into my mind than an almost uncontrollable impulse to escape seized me, or at least I thought one had. I got upon my feet, observing that the two soldiers lying beside me on the floor were fast asleep and the guards at the outer door were nodding. I stepped over their sleeping forms arid made a reconnoiter of the hallway. There in the semi-darkness stood seven soldiers of the Kaiser with their seven guns and their seven glistening bayonets.

Cold steel is not supposed to act as a soothing syrup; but one glance at those bayonets and my uncontrollable impulse utterly vanished. You will observe that the bayonet is continually cropping up in my story. It does, indeed. A bayonet looks far different from what it did on dress parade. Meet one in war, and its true significance first dawns upon you. It is not simply a decoration at the end of a rifle, but it is made to stick in a man's stomach and then be turned round; and when you realize that this particular one is made to stick in your particular stomach, it takes on a still different aspect.

I crawled back into my lair, resolved to seek for deliverance by mental means, rather than by physical; and as the first rays of light stole through the window I composed the following document to His Excellency:

The Officer who has the case of the American, Albert B. Williams, under supervision: SIR:

As you seem willing to be fair in hearing my case, may I take the liberty this morning of addressing you upon my charge? I fear that I made but a feeble defense of myself yesterday; but when I was accused of offering much money for information relative to the movements of German troops, the accusation came so suddenly that I could only deny it. May I now offer a few observations upon this charge, the nature of which just begins to become clear to me?

In the first place, it was a sheer impossibility for me to offer "much money," because all I had was that which, as Mr. Van Hee knows, Mr. Fletcher gave me when I was left behind.

In the second place, were I a spy, I certainly would not be offering money in a voice loud enough to be heard by the several witnesses that you have ready to testify.

In the third place, while not attempting to impeach the character of my accuser, may I submit the fact that my own standing will be vouched for by His Excellency the Governor of Massachusetts, the President of the Pilgrim Amalgamated Associated Advertising Clubs of America, the chief Rabbi in the Rabbinate of New England, etc., etc.

These men will attest the utter absurdity of any such charge being made against me.

In the last place, may I suggest that the theory of an unintentional mistake throws the best light upon the case? For any conversation with my accuser was either in German or English. You know my German linguistic ability and the error that might be made there; and as for English, I challenge my accuser to understand three consecutive sentences in English.

I trust you will take these facts into account before sentence is passed upon me.

Respectfully yours,

ALBERT R. WILLIAMS.

By the time this was finished a stir in the courtyard below heralded the beginning of the day's activities. And what did this day hold in store for me?