In the Great War, as in everything else, comedy treads hard on the heels of tragedy, and all sorts of quaint and comical things happen. Here are some little stories, from a variety of reliable sources, which will serve to show that our fighting-men, both ashore and afloat, are still able to preserve a sense of humor. Narrated in the Wide World.
I—STORIES TOLD "ON THE SOLDIERS"
Human nature is whetted to a keep edge under the stress of warfare; that is why every war is rich in anecdote.
Character is the basis of all comedy, and the conditions of military life, whether on active service or not, are such that "character will out." In barracks, in camp, or in the field, soldiering applies a test which no man can evade. Ranker, non-com., or officer, he is bound soon or late (generally soon) to be "found out."
There is a pretty little comedy of character which concerns a young subaltern, fresh from an English public school, who found himself attached, through one of the unexpected chances of war, to a battalion of Colonial infantry. The subaltern was youthful—and looked it. His cheek was smooth and innocent of hair, the accents of his voice cultured and refined, his manner languid to the point of seeming boredom. He was slight of stature, and he wore a monocle permanently fixed in one eye. In short, he was a complete antithesis to the brawny brood of Anak which constituted his platoon, amongst whom his advent aroused no enthusiasm whatever. He was not popular.
There is little risk of offence at this time of day in observing that some of the Overseas troops are not remarkable for the strictness of their discipline. It is a little idiosyncrasy at which no one, with memories of Ypres and Anzac still fresh, will be disposed to cavil. This is not to say that they cannot be handled; on the contrary, there is ample evidence of their instant response to leadership of the sort which they understand. But one would hardly look for that particular sort from a beardless youth with an eye permanently glazed, and a refined taste in language and clothes. A manner which might be acceptable to the Guards is as little suited to Colonials as Colonial methods to the Household Brigade. There is a custom and usage in these matters.
So it came to pass that the platoon took counsel with itself and darkly determined to take its young subaltern down a peg or two. Is it necessary to observe that the prime offences of the latter, in the eyes of these critics, were his monocle and his accent—those traditional marks and insignia of the "dude"? It is strange that so often the dandy (whom history has shown to be invariably a man of spirit and courage) should be mistaken for the dude.
II—THE OFFICER WITH THE MONOCLE
On a certain morning, therefore, behold the platoon drawn up on parade, accoutred with meticulous care, aligned in the most precise formation—each man wearing his "identity disc" in his eye! For the benefit of any reader who has never seen an identity disc, it may be mentioned that the latter is the small plate of metal on which is stamped certain information concerning the wearer which enable his body, if necessary, to be identified. Being of the same shape, and about the same size, as an eyeglass, and, moreover, suspended from a cord worn round the neck, it can be made to form an admirable travesty of a monocle.
Not a twitch of a single muscle in the face of the young subaltern, not a flicker of his unmonocled eye, betrayed that he was aware of anything unusual in the appearance of his men. He took the situation in coolly, and when, in answer to routine questions, the sergeants answered smartly and respectfully but with a pointed imitation of his own "haw-haw" accent, he ignored the studied insult with equal nonchalance.
It was a good start, for an attempt at sarcasm when quietly ignored falls flatter even than when it is wholly unperceived. In the present case there was no possibility of an insult having been missed, and the platoon began to feel that things were not going quite as had been anticipated. Each man kept his identity disc firmly screwed in one eye, however, and stared fixedly out of the other in expectation of the officer's present discomfort. The latter could never afford to dismiss the parade without taking cognizance of what had occurred, and the platoon awaited the crux with interest.
But the moment of dismissal arrived and nothing had been said. Some of the men were covertly smiling.
As he gave the order, the subaltern let the monocle drop from his eye, and while the command was being obeyed, swung the glass round and round, with the cord between finger and thumb, in a rapid circle. Scanning the line narrowly and noting every glance upon him, he jerked the twirling glass suddenly into the air and with the neatness of a juggler caught it in his eye as it fell. Then he glared fiercely through it.
"See if you can do that!" he observed. "Dis-MISS!"
Thereafter no officer ever had men under him more ready to do whatever he asked them. And it was by a sure instinct that the latter "gave him best." As one of them remarked, "I've seen men take risks in my time, but that beat everything. Suppose he'd missed catchin' that glass?"
If wit is a Gallic prerogative, humor belongs to the British, and not a few comedies of the war pivot on that uniquely humorous character Thomas Atkins. Humor is an elusive and baffling quantity, as the wit discovered who mixed up all the boots in an hotel corridor one evening and learned the next morning that his friend (a humorist) had sorted them out again as soon as his back was turned. The humorist can sometimes understand the wit, but the compliment is seldom, if ever, returned; which is the reason why Mr. Atkins and his idiosyncrasies remain an inscrutable enigma to our French allies.
And if the British soldier appears incomprehensible to the nimble-minded French, one can readily perceive that to the slow and methodically-thinking German he must seem merely mad. The French marvel that he is never "serious"; the Boche is perplexed to find that Hymns of Hate and other laborious insults afford him the keenest possible enjoyment. The secret lies in Mr. Atkins's sense of humor, which is another way of saying his sense of proportion. He may be guilty of little aberrations such as dribbling a football in front of him as he advances with cold steel to the charge, but au fond he has a pretty just sense of values.
III—THE GERMANS WHO SANG "RULE BRITTANIA"
At all events, his humor has the dry quality which connotes an even mind and temper, as the following incident will show. In the earlier days of the war, before the opposing armies in the West had burrowed into the soil and some freedom of movement was still possible, a patrol of three British soldiers under a sergeant were prowling abroad one night. Within disputed territory they espied a lighted window in a lonely farmhouse which they knew had been deserted by its owners. They approached it stealthily. The house was surrounded without challenge, and having posted his men at points which commanded the exits the sergeant crept forward to reconnoitre. Music and sounds of revelry were audible within, and the sergeant had no difficulty in discovering the presence of four German soldiers in the farmer's best sitting-room. The cellar had been looted, the piano commandeered, and four Teutonic voices were upraised in melody.
The sergeant beckoned to the waiting figures outside, and four large but softly-treading men tiptoed delicately to the scene of the carousal. At a given signal the door was flung open and four rifles were levelled.
"Hands up!"
A chorus of "Deutschland, Deutschland, über Alles" was interrupted a shade abruptly, and four pairs of arms shot up into the air. The Boche does not shine in an emergency.
With a gesture the sergeant marshalled the captives against the wall, where they stood in a row, blinking and crestfallen. Their weapons having been collected and removed, they were allowed to put their hands down, and their captors regarded them quizzically.
"Any of you blokes speak English?" queried the sergeant, genially.
A smile of modest pride momentarily illumined one of the four wooden faces.
"Ja, I spik leedle English," ventured its owner.
"In-deed!" was the rejoinder; "and where did you learn it—in the Tottenham Court Road?"
The linguist simpered deprecatingly, with evident gratification over the good impression which he appeared to be making. It takes a lot to upset the complacence of the Boche.
"Been havin' a sing-song?" continued the sergeant, encouragingly.
The other nodded. "Der Shermans vas always der beoble of singing," he observed, in faintly patronizing tones.
"Ho, are they?" said the sergeant. "Then suppose you start in and sing us 'Rule Britannia' for a bit. Give us a tune, Bill."
Bill propped his rifle against the wall, and sat himself solemnly at the open piano. He was not a great performer, but rose to the occasion and produced a rendering of the familiar tune which was at least recognizable.
"Now, then," said the sergeant, warming to his work, "not bein' a blinkin' German I don't 'appen to be no singer, but just you listen, and if you don't know the words, say 'em after me. 'When Brit-ain fir-ir-ir-ir-irst at——'"
The musical evening was a great success, said the member of the party from whom the present writer had the story. "We kept 'em there for four hours, and by the time we'd finished with 'em they could sing it a fair treat. And we didn't spare 'em the encores neither. Course, they wasn't singin' all the time, 'cos we spent some of it in moppin' up the liquor and the food and the cigars they hadn't finished. But I reckon they did all the singin' they wanted. Then we fell 'em into line and drove 'em home as prisoners. They asked for it, you see!"
IV—STORY OF A FISHERMAN AND A MINE
The chief officer of a steamer under charter to the Admiralty tells a very amusing story concerning an encounter with a mine, though he candidly admits that he didn't see the humor of it until some time after the incident occurred.
His ship was lying alongside the quay at X——, taking in some hundreds of tons of explosives. He himself, having nothing particular to do at the moment, was leaning over the bridge-rails looking thoughtfully out to sea. All of a sudden he noticed an aged waterman rowing towards the ship, with some odd-looking object towing astern of his bluff-bowed craft. The old man seemed to have difficulty in getting along, and the officer watched him curiously, speculating as to what he was hauling. At first sight it looked like a mooring-buoy, but as the boat came nearer the watcher got the shock of his life. The fisherman was towing a German mine of the very largest type!
There flashed through the officer's mind the thought of the latent power stored away in that wicked-looking sphere, only needing a slight shock to set it free; he thought, too, of the vast store of explosives under his feet and on the quay. If that mine exploded against the steamer's side there would not be one stone of X—— left upon another!
"Hi, you!" he shouted to the oncoming rower. "Sheer off with that thing! We've got explosive aboard!"
By way of answer the old man—now scarce a dozen yards away—cupped his hand behind his ear.
"What d'yer say, sir?" he called back, mildly. "I found this 'ere in the tideway, an' I knew there was a bit of a reward offered, an' so——"
The big mine was now bobbing dangerously close to the steamer's side, and the officer, frantic with anxiety, literally bellowed orders for the man to remove himself and his prize. In his excitement he suggested regions where it is possible the temperature might have had a disastrous effect.
The fisherman looked up at him with a smile. "That's all right, sir," he replied. "He 'on't do no harm. I knocked the horns off he with a boat-hook."
And so it proved. The old man, in his ignorance, had taken a million to one chance, and it had come off. They say there is a special Providence that looks after fools, but it must be peculiarly irritating to the apostle of "frightfulness" to know that an aged waterman, encountering a drifting mine, can lightheartedly knock off the detonator-equipped "horns" or projections and live to bring his prize into port and receive a reward. The chief officer aforesaid, however is not anxious for another experience of the kind; he says they are too trying to the nerves.
V—THE COCKNEY AND HIS "SOOVENEER"
Comedy, it has been observed, turns upon character, and many little comedies of the war hinge upon the mere personality of Thomas Atkins himself, and the somewhat difficult adjustment of that uniquely stubborn thing to a new environment. The resulting incidents derive a great part of their humor from Mr. Atkins's manner of narrating them—especially if he chance to be from London. There is no wittier or more tersely vivid raconteur than the Cockney, and though one often hears the humor of the British soldier described as unconscious, it is really nothing of the kind. Spontaneous and unpremeditated it may be, but such penetrating acumen as his racy idiom reveals was never unconscious.
Half-a-dozen soldiers home from the Front on short leave found themselves in a railway carriage bound for Victoria. They were of different battalions, and fell naturally to the swapping of yarns. Soon the conversation drifted to "souvenirs," a topic of surpassing interest. Trophies were produced by each in turn, with the exception of one taciturn member of the party who sat in a corner seat morosely sucking at a short clay pipe.
"I ain't brought nothin' 'ome wiv me," was the curt response to a suggestion that the silent one should produce his little lot. There ensued a dialogue.
"Wot, nothin' at all?"
"No!"
"Well, I'm blowed! Fancy a bloke comin' 'ome on leave and not bringin' nothin' wiv 'im! Ain't you got no sooverneer?"
"Sooveneer! No, I ain't got no sooveneer—not unless you call this 'ere a sooverneer."
The morose one fumbled in his haversack and pulled forth a brass door-knob, which he displayed upon an extended palm. Its appearance excited derision.
"That's a perishin' fine sooveneer, I don't think! Why, it's only a ornery door-knob!"
"Well, wot abaht it? S'posin' it is only an ornery door-knob! Maybe you dunno 'ow I come by it!"
Pressed for the story, the owner of the unexpected article proceeded:—
"It was like this 'ere. I'd been two weeks on a stretch in the trenches, and never a drink—wot you might call a drink—the 'ole blinkin' time. Goin' back through the billets after we was relieved I seed a place where they had liquor for sale, and I goes up to the door to get a drink. Well, I 'adn't no more than took 'old o' the knob when a blinkin' Jack Johnson come over and blew the 'ole blinkin' 'ouse out of my 'and!"
And with an evident sense of personal grievance not yet allayed the speaker pouched his "sooveneer" and relapsed into gloomy taciturnity.
VI—THE COOK AND THE BOMB IN GREECE
Of comedies arising out of Mr. Atkins's imperturbable phlegm there is no end. One will suffice here—a little incident which occurred at Salonica. At the Greek port some of our troops, it seems, are encamped upon the hills above the town. One morning a covey of six enemy aeroplanes flew overhead and dropped three bombs in passing. The first exploded harmlessly, but the second fell plumb on a cook's tent, and blew it sky-high. Shirts, coats, and trousers went hurtling up into the air with a grim resemblance to mutilated bodies. Fortunately no one was inside the tent. The cook was only five yards away, however, busily marshalling an array of "dixies" (military camp-kettles) which had been newly filled at the distant water-supply below. The force of the explosion blew him off his feet, and likewise overturned the row of dixies.
Those near at hand feared their comrade had been hit by a fragment of the bomb and ran to his assistance. But as they approached a dishevelled figure rose from amidst the débris and wrathfully surveyed the wreckage of his "kitchen." At the spot where his tent had been two minutes previously he hardly glanced. "And now," was his indignant comment, "I serpose I'll 'ave to go down the —— 'ill and fill up the —— dixies again!"
VII—A SEA-TALE—THE LIEUTENANT'S STANCHIONS
By way of conclusion here is a little naval comedy. A minor unit of His Majesty's Navy was undergoing the process known as "fitting out." Her commander, one of the many good sportsmen who have placed their personal services and such seamanship as they have acquired as amateur yachtsmen and sailors at the disposal of the Admiralty, arrived one morning to find a score or two of dockyard workmen on board, all busy (in theory) with the multifarious tasks awaiting completion. In practice, something like half the number were, if not idle, at least less occupied than the immediate requirements of the vessel seemed to warrant.
The commander, being in private life a business man of considerable energy, with a habit of getting things done, regarded the scene with considerable disfavour, and set himself at once to remedy the state of affairs. But the dockyard workman is an individual with very definite ideas of his own as to how a job should be done, and a fixed determination to do it that way unless thwarted by an authority which he dare not evade.
Finding orders, though respectfully received, were inadequate to the occasion, the commander tried reason and persuasion. But though the latter was carried to the point of cajolery the result was the same. Baffled in the exercise of his own authority and a trifle nettled in consequence, the energetic lieutenant determined upon a desperate expedient. In his best sarcastic vein he wrote out a signal and requested its transmission to the flag-captain. The officer in whose discretion it lay to forward or suppress the message being likewise an amateur, not yet too deeply imbued with a respect for conventions, the signal was duly made. It was to the following effect:—
"Submitted: That as there are at present forty workmen on No. 001, of which number half are seated permanently on the ship's rail, a further working party be at once sent down to strengthen the stanchions, which will otherwise collapse under the strain."
Within half an hour a party of workmen reported themselves at No. 001 and gravely proceeded to strengthen the stanchions! Protests were unavailing: the men had their orders, and with bolts, rivets, rods, and who shall say what other contraptions, they proceeded to carry them out with a thoroughness almost menacing.
The commanding officer of No. 001 delights to tell this story to his friends as a shining example of the crass ineptitude of which the official mind, even in the Navy, is sometimes capable. It may be so; but his friends, observing those admirably buttressed stanchions, and noting the considerable inconvenience to which their immovable presence permanently condemns the maker of that rash signal, sometimes wonder whether the laugh is altogether on the latter's side.
Lieutenant X—— looks forward to some future day when he may meet the flag-captain in person, and there is no doubt he already has a very good notion of what he then intends to say. But suppose he should be greeted, before ever he can introduce the topic himself, with the genial inquiry, "And how are your stanchions lasting?"
They have a way of their own in the Navy.
The four war stories which follow—stories of adventure, suffering and daring—were heard by Karl K. Kitchen of the New York World during his sojourn in Germany. Two of the stories he had at first hand, and can vouch for. A third was related to him by His Excellency Baron von Bissing, the Military Governor of Belgium. The fourth—recounting the exploits of Capt. Peifer, perhaps the most remarkable story of the war—was related to the writer by a naval officer. Copyright, 1916, Press Publishing Company.
I—STORY OF A MOTHER'S TRAGEDY
One of my best friends in Vienna was Ernst Karczag. Shortly after the outbreak of the war I received a postal from him stating that he was about to rejoin his regiment—he was a lieutenant in a crack hussar regiment—and proceed to the Galician front. At Christmas I received a long letter from him and a photograph of himself in his hussar uniform. Then one morning in March I received a cablegram from a mutual friend in London, stating that Ernst had died of cholera in Poland.
Ernst was in his twenty-fifth year and was tenderly attached to his mother. Until the war broke out he had never been away from home except on a brief holiday, and his long absence at the front last winter brought his mother to the verge of a nervous collapse. It came to a point where it was absolutely necessary for her to see her son. Mr. Karczag, although a millionaire and a man of considerable influence, was unable to get a pass for his wife to visit the line near Lodz in Poland, where the son's regiment was stationed. She set out for Lodz alone.
After nearly a week of the hardest kind of travelling, much of it in troop trains, she reached Lodz, where she found every hotel occupied by German and Austrian officers. In desperation she decided to appeal to Gen. Mackensen, the famous German General, who was in supreme command.
"You shall see your son to-morrow morning," he told her when he learned that her boy was a lieutenant of a certain hussar regiment. "I am reviewing the Austrian troops at 6 o'clock to-morrow morning. If you will come to my headquarters at that time I shall permit you to witness the review."
The review of the Austrian troops lasted nearly five hours, and it was witnessed by Gen. Mackensen, his staff and the mother of my friend. Regiment after regiment passed by, but there was no sign of the young hussar officer. The anxious mother was almost ready to break down, when at the very end of the last regiment in the review she caught sight of her son. Forgetting her peculiar position she called to her boy. But he did not hear her, and a few moments later he galloped out of sight.
"I must have a few words with my boy," she pleaded with Gen. Mackensen; "I must talk with him."
Evidently she struck a sympathetic chord in his nature, for he told her he would send a motor car to the hotel to take her to her son's regiment. For two days she waited for the car, but as it did not arrive she again went to Gen. Mackensen's headquarters, only to learn that he had been called away to another position on the front. Apparently he had forgotten all about his promise. There was no one to help her, so she started out alone to reach the little Polish village where her son's regiment was stationed. No conveyance was obtainable for any sum, so for three days and three nights the poor mother walked the frozen roads to her son's side.
It was a wonderful meeting between mother and son, and when the Colonel of the regiment heard what she had gone through he placed his own quarters at her disposal. When the time came for her return he sent her back to Lodz in a military wagon. Three days later she was back in Vienna, rejoicing with her husband that their son was alive and well.
Imagine their great shock when two days after her return they received a telegram from the Colonel of the regiment stating that Ernst had died suddenly of cholera.
It is difficult to convey any idea of the grief of the parents of this young officer. The father has lost all interest in life—money means nothing to him. The mother is inconsolable and her mental condition is becoming critical.
II—HOW CAPT. PEIFER WON HIS "POUR LE MERITE"
Shortly after the outbreak of the war, Capt. Peifer, a German naval officer in command of the cruiser Yorke, ran his ship on a mine and the cruiser sank with nearly all on board, but Capt. Peifer was saved. He was court-martialled and sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment.
The Captain being an expert in high explosives, influential friends pleaded his cause with the Kaiser, who suspended the sentence. Capt. Peifer accordingly was released and offered his services to the commander of the German forces in Turkey. He was assigned to duties connected with the production of munitions when the Gallipoli campaign began. According to the story, the British forces might have succeeded in reaching Constantinople if it had not been for Major Peifer.
With characteristic energy and ingenuity he started several munition factories for the production of high explosive shells within a few miles of Constantinople. His knowledge, combined with German efficiency and tireless Turk labor, gave the defenders of the Dardanelles sufficient high explosive shells to check the invaders until munitions arrived from Germany.
Of course the Turkish and the German commanders-in-chief were highly pleased with Capt. Peifer's service, and the latter sent in his name to the Kaiser as an officer deserving the order of "Pour le Merite"—one of the most coveted honors of all Germany.
For once German thoroughness and efficiency were inoperative. Neither the Kaiser nor his closest advisers recognized in Major Peifer the former naval captain who had sent his ship on a mine in violation of proper warnings. The order of "Pour le Merite" was conferred on the new military officer, who naturally thought that his previous blunder had been forgiven.
Accordingly he applied to the naval ministry for permission to rejoin his old branch of the service. This let the cat out of the bag, and the entire matter was laid before the Kaiser. With true magnanimity he commuted the twenty years' sentence, but ordered the Major to remain in the army, promising him promotion in the very near future.
III—STORY OF AUTOMOBILE THAT CAPTURED AN AEROPLANE
The day Germany declared war on France, Gunther Hensel, the twenty-two-year-old son of Ernest Johannes Hensel, a wealthy real estate operator in Berlin, offered his services to his Fatherland. As he had been engaged in the automobile business in Berlin he was enlisted in a motor car battalion, where he became what is known in Germany as a "benzine lieutenant," with no immediate prospects of ever becoming anything else.
However, last October, after driving military motors at the front for more than a year, an opportunity presented itself which won Gunther Hensel his coveted promotion.
While driving behind the lines near Arras he caught sight of a French aeroplane which had landed because of motor trouble. Young Hensel's only companion at the time was an orderly, so it was a question of acting without orders.
Without hesitation he drove at full speed toward the aeroplane. The Frenchmen opened fire with their revolvers, but their shots went wild, and before they could prevent it the heavy motor car crossed the field and crashed into the flying machine, wrecking it beyond all hope of immediate repair.
Both Frenchmen were caught in the wreckage, and the orderly, who of course had a rifle, forced them to surrender. Thus in one fell swoop the young benzine lieutenant captured a valuable French aeroplane and two enemy soldiers. In all probability this was the first aeroplane ever captured by an automobile.
As a reward for this exploit he received an Iron Cross and was transferred to the officers' college, where he is now getting instruction in the duties of a full-fledged infantry officer.
IV—STORY OF THE "UNDERGROUND RAILROAD"
Ever since the Germans have been in Brussels there has existed an "underground railroad" to aid escaped French and Belgian prisoners of war in reaching the Holland border and thus regaining their lines. The German secret service tried in vain to discover how the prisoners got away, but without success—until last September. Then one of the "operatives," as Detective Burns would say, conceived the idea of donning part of a French uniform and appealing to Belgian farmers on the outskirts of Brussels to help him to get over the frontier.
When a train load of French prisoners was moved from Lille to Aix la Chapelle, this secret service man jumped from the train just before it reached Brussels, and, taking refuge in a barn until dusk, appealed to the farmer to let him remain there until he could obtain other clothes to effect his escape.
Impressed by the spy's French language and uniform, the unsuspecting farmer provided him with the desired garments. The spy then asked him for the name of some one in Brussels who would help him. The farmer directed him to a wealthy flour and feed dealer in the Belgian capital. This man in turn passed him on to another Belgian who was connected with the "underground railroad," and in less than two weeks the German spy found himself in Rotterdam.
Of course he had learned the identity of every Belgian who had befriended him, and on his return to Brussels he uncovered the entire "underground" system. The trail led right to the chief surgical hospital in the capital—the hospital in which Miss Edith Cavell was the head nurse.
No result of the war has been more pitiable than the suffering inflicted on the subject races caught in its grip. These submerged peoples have had to submit helplessly to the brutalities of both sets of combatants. The Poles, the Ruthenians, the Ukranians, the Slavs of Bohemia and Moravia, have fought with little heart for Russia, Austria or Prussia, as the case might be. But the Jews of the Polish Pale and of Galicia have had an even harder fate; for while the men of military age have followed the flags of their masters, the women, the children and the old men have been obliged to face at home all the evils which travel in the wake of war—disorder, violence, disease, spoliation and semi-starvation. The following story is by M. C. della Grazie, a well known Viennese writer. It makes a masterly use of a single, simple incident to bring home the meaning of one of the war's most hopeless and poignant tragedies. It was written at the time when the Russians still occupied the greater part of the Austrian province of Galicia. This translation, with editorial comment, is by William L. McPherson in the New York Tribune.
I—STORY OF GABRIEL GABRILOVITCH
The colonel sat on the edge of his rumpled-up peasant's bed and with an impatient movement knocked the ashes from his cigar. On the dirty table before him lay the last number of a Russian weekly, which had just arrived by field post in Galicia—a little crumpled, but otherwise fresh looking, and with pictures which made one's mouth water.
The devil! Was it still going so comfortably back in Petersburg (he stopped suddenly and substituted Petrograd) with those rascals of civilians and war cripples? Did such attractive girls still come in and sing and dance as those whose pictures stared at him out of the pages of the last number of the Nida? They must be damnably well off, those dogs, able to frequent the Varieties, where people sit in cozy warmth about the tables and worry about nothing more serious than the genuineness of the labels on the wine bottles.
And he, Gabriel Gabrilovitch! He had lain with his regiment for nearly two weeks in this miserable Galician hole and was forced to congratulate himself that a single windproof hut remained in which to stop for breath after all those futile attacks—that he was able at night to throw himself on a bundle of straw under this foul roof and drink punch brewed from whiskey stolen from the Jews.
For this time no headway was to be made against the devils opposite. Not even once as far as their barbed wire defences! So well was their artillery posted. To such a raking fire was every moving object exposed which came in sight within an area several hundred meters wide!
A tiresome game that—an accursedly tiresome game—and if Gabriel Gabrilovitch himself should be one of the victims! He sprang up and began to pace with heavy steps the uneven clay floor. He knew of better things than that!
Those Petrogradians—look, look!
The slender, willowy, singing girl there in the Nida, with that smile which was in itself a seduction! She evoked another image in his excited fancy. It was his last evening of pleasure in golden Petrograd. In a variety cabaret, too.
The stage is already empty, the programme finished. But in a room off the stage reserved for the performers and their guests he sees just such a piquant little creature take form in the thin smoke clouds of his cigarette. Exactly the same smile—acquired in Paris, and then carried triumphantly from stage to stage, from banquet to banquet.
The imitation diamonds glitter in the deep corsage of her dress. The coquettish curls hang like golden orchids over her ears. The atrophied stare of the wide pupils has the fascination of a serpent's eye. Before her stands a tall, narrow glass vase, out of which nod the blood-red, long-stemmed pinks which he had brought her. He, Gabriel Gabrilovitch!
It is a picture imprinted so vividly on his senses by the warm rush of recollection that he thinks he really sees it—not least of all the purplish red of the vase of flowers.
They take it easy, those Nevsky Prospekt loungers—they take it easy!
He reaches for the glass—already cold, curse it! Not very long now and it will be day again and a new assault, as vain as the others, will bring them face to face with death.
A cold draft strikes his neck. He turns around, half angry, to see who has entered.
II—THE COSSACK LIEUTENANT'S HATRED
"Ah, so!"
It is the sotnik (lieutenant) of a Cossack detachment which has received the order to drive the last Jews out of the surrounding villages, so that the army can have a free field. The snow, which has frozen finger thick on his green overcoat, begins to melt in the close, hot air of the room. The small, hard Asiatic eyes shine. The red, frosted fists are still clenched, as if they had just beaten somebody.
"One can't be really angry with these fellows," says the colonel to himself, with a feeling of soldierly satisfaction.
"They are such splendid beasts."
But he asks aloud:
"Finished?"
The Cossack's laugh is quick and harsh.
"All herded together, Colonel. Nothing is lacking but the Red Sea."
"How many?"
"Several hundred."
"And where are you going to drive them?"
The young lieutenant raises his shoulders slowly, so that the snow on them touches and cools his red cheeks.
"I'll have to get an order from you as to that!"
"An order!" cries the colonel. "An order! Now, by all three metropolitans! The devil take me if I know!"
The sotnik raises his shoulder again.
"While they're here they will be in our way."
"The vermin," growls the colonel, "always pestering us like——"
"Like others we are on intimate terms with," laughs the Cossack.
"Look there, if you please!" And half jokingly, half disgustedly, he points to a black swarm of roaches hurrying like a wagon train from behind the stove and making for a crack in the floor near the open door.
"They are emigrating, the vermin," exclaims the colonel; "upon my soul, they are."
"Because they are hungry," says the Cossack, with a grin.
"But the Jews. The Jews, those——" curses the colonel.
"Just as black and just as hungry—but good patriots."
The colonel lifts his head, gazes thoughtfully for a while into the flickering flame of the slowly melting candle. Then he begins to laugh.
"Why didn't I think of it before? Why didn't I think of it before? Ah, Little Brother, what asses we have been!"
The Cossack's eyes snap. He, too, has a plan which in all this orgy of bloodthirstiness appeals to him with an even bloodier zest.
"Do you know what we shall do with them—with all these patriots?"
"Drive them together somewhere and sabre them," suggests the sotnik.
"So that they can fill the newspapers again with their tale of martyrdom," laughs Gabriel Gabrilovitch, scornfully. "Beware, Little Brother, beware! We shall leave that to their countrymen this time."
The blank eyes of the Cossack follow the colonel questioningly—like the eyes of a hunting dog.
"So," laughs the latter, softly stroking his cheek. "We'll drive these patriots to the Austrian wire entanglements. What do you think? Will those people over there shoot down their own subjects?"
"But they are non-combatants, Gabriel Gabrilovitch——"
The young man suppressed the thought before he had put it into words. There was something in the voice of his superior which cowered him. And, like a hunting dog, he merely listened.
"Don't you see, Little Brother?" continues Gabriel Gabrilovitch, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. "And just because in that case they will not fire, we shall rush in on the enemy. We shall have cover and can excuse ourselves for using it."
"It would take the devil himself to think of that!" exclaims the sotnik, full of submissiveness and admiration.
"I am a good Christian," declares Gabriel Gabrilovitch with bitter humor. "And now I must have an intermediary; for, naturally, I must inform the enemy so that they will not shoot down so many patriots."
The young Cossack rocked his body as if already in the saddle.
"Won't you permit me to go?"
"Muttonhead! Shall I send one on whose face are the imprints of all the Devil's ten fingers? Pick out the youngest, the handsomest and the stupidist of the sotnia and send him over. The kind that believes anything anybody tells him. Then they over there will believe him. And what we are going to do nobody but you and I will know. Well, have you any such 'steed of God?'"
The sotnik strikes his body with both hands, smiles and nods. "There is a Raskolnik here."
"Is that so, Little Brother?"
Both burst into violent peals of laughter as if overcome by the humor of the situation.
III—THE PLOT THAT FAILED
They would send the Raskolnik—the sectarian who was prepared to die at any moment rather than sin in any particular against the teachings of Jesus, who even in war abhorred attacking the enemy and wanted only to defend himself—one of these religious enthusiasts who had to be driven into military service with a whip. What a joke for these two orthodox Slavs to load upon this "steed of God" the bloodguilt of their stratagem!
They laugh—laugh till their eyes fill with water.
Half an hour later a young cavalryman trots away into the murky dawn.
The fresh wind of the steppe whistles about his ears. Over his head flutters the little white flag, which they have fastened to the top of his lance.
"How is it that he has found so much favor in the eyes of his commander as to be sent as a parlamentaire to the enemy?"
But he puzzles little about that. He is glad that the poor creatures of God who have been driven like mice out of their holes will be allowed to go to-morrow over into the camp of their friends. He must be a real man, the colonel, even if so far the soldiers have found little good in him.
In the east it is getting lighter. Already a silvery wave spreads over the plain from the edge of the horizon. By the time he arrives at the first entrenchment it will be so light that the enemy can easily see the flag on his lance.
"It is cold," he muses. "But yet it is already spring, and where my horse steps the snow gives way. Soon the steppe will be green again, just as it will be back in Russia."
And in the midst of the deep silence which surrounds him, in sight of all the horrible traces which war and death have left upon his pathway, there blossoms out of his innocent soul a pure, sweet memory—of home. He recalls the straw-covered hut, the calm and mighty waves of the distant Don, the peace of the steppe purling like a breath from heaven through the tall grasses.
He was only a pious peasant's son—not a Cossack. But now they have put him as a supernumerary in a Cossack regiment, and he must go along, through all the blood, through all the horror.
With a slight shudder he puts his hand upon the crucifix beneath his soldier's coat and crosses himself.
"God grant me His grace!"
On the other side they had caught sight of him. A sentinel advanced to meet him. Soon he stands before the Austrian officer.
The latter is a handsome, sturdy man. Everything neat about him, although he has lain so long with his men in the trenches. Close up to him the soldier stands, so that he can feel the other's breath—but it doesn't smell of brandy. The gray eyes hold him fast while he speaks. Not a muscle moves. But suddenly he laughs in the messenger's face.
"Good. Now ride back. And say to your colonel that he has miscalculated if he believes that I shall not open fire if you try to sneak in behind those unfortunates. I know my duty, and should innocent blood be shed the blame will rest on you."
He speaks and turns upon his heel. The sentinel leads the dejected messenger back to his horse and calls scornfully after him: "Are you really so stupid or did you think that we were so stupid?"
The latter makes no answer. But a few steps further on he strips the white flag from his lance and throws it in the muck. Then that was the colonel's idea. And he will stick to it. At his command they are to hide like cowards behind the victims who are to be pushed—as a living wall—up to the enemy's trenches!
"They are, of course, only Jews," he says to himself. "But yet—but yet——"
Why does he feel that way about it?
Suddenly he realizes.
Like a picture it stands before him.
The sputtering fire about which the half-frozen Jews are huddled together—women, children, grizzled old men. Here and there a sentinel to guard them. He, too, one of the guards.
IV—IN HIS BREAST HIS OWN BULLET
Like shadows they crouch about the fire, rub the freezing hands of the children between their own, weep, groan, pray softly. One has prayer boxes bound on his brow and on his arms and nods and bows unceasingly, so that his shadow dances like a curious grotesque against the light of the fire. The Cossacks laugh. He, too, has laughed, carelessly, unconcerned.
Laughed until he has suddenly noticed the woman at the side of the bearded Jew—with the slumbering child at her breast. Something in that sight appealed to him strangely. But then they had summoned him before the sotnik. And he had thought of it no more.
How sharply that whole picture stands before him now—and among the other details especially these three: The man in prayer, the shivering mother bent toward the fire, her head cloth like a veil drawn deep over the unconscious, slumbering child.
"Bethlehem," he murmurs reverently, and crosses himself.
And he is going to take part to-day in this infamy—he, a Christian!
Then it must be true what they believe back home. That the Pravoslavine is Anti-Christ. And he fights with him—for him—is part of his army. Have they then altered the text of the Holy Books? So that some day God's word of love will no longer be found in it—the Holy Word spoken by Him who lay in the womb of a daughter of the House of David?
It must be so! It must be so! And if till to-day he has doubted it, now all is clear. Only Anti-Christ can give such orders.
Shall he return to the camp? Stain his hands, too, with the blood of these innocents?
"When the master speaks the servant must hearken," they say back home.
He must obey.
Something flashes in front of him like the flash of a gun.
"A bullet," he thinks.
"Would it were one!" he exclaims in the torment of his soul.
It is only a sun ray which suddenly shoots through the mist. But it has shown a poor mortal the right way.
They found the Raskolnik just outside the village—in his breast his own bullet, in his right hand the cross. On his lips the smile of peace that passeth understanding.