by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER VI. HOW WAR CAME TO NEW YORK
1
The City of New York was in the year of the German attack the largest,richest, in many respects the most splendid, and in some, the wickedestcity the world had ever seen. She was the supreme type of the City ofthe Scientific Commercial Age; she displayed its greatness, its power,its ruthless anarchic enterprise, and its social disorganisation moststrikingly and completely. She had long ousted London from her pride ofplace as the modern Babylon, she was the centre of the world's finance,the world's trade, and the world's pleasure; and men likened her tothe apocalyptic cities of the ancient prophets. She sat drinking up thewealth of a continent as Rome once drank the wealth of the Mediterraneanand Babylon the wealth of the east. In her streets one found theextremes of magnificence and misery, of civilisation and disorder. Inone quarter, palaces of marble, laced and, crowned with light and flameand flowers, towered up into her marvellous twilights beautiful, beyonddescription; in another, a black and sinister polyglot populationsweltered in indescribable congestion in warrens, and excavations beyondthe power and knowledge of government. Her vice, her crime, her lawalike were inspired by a fierce and terrible energy, and like the greatcities of mediaeval Italy, her ways were dark and adventurous withprivate war.
It was the peculiar shape of Manhattan Island, pressed in by arms of thesea on either side, and incapable of comfortable expansion, except alonga narrow northward belt, that first gave the New York architects theirbias for extreme vertical dimensions. Every need was lavishly suppliedthem--money, material, labour; only space was restricted. To begin,therefore, they built high perforce. But to do so was to discover awhole new world of architectural beauty, of exquisite ascendant lines,and long after the central congestion had been relieved by tunnelsunder the sea, four colossal bridges over the east river, and a dozenmono-rail cables east and west, the upward growth went on. In many waysNew York and her gorgeous plutocracy repeated Venice in the magnificenceof her architecture, painting, metal-work and sculpture, for example,in the grim intensity of her political method, in her maritime andcommercial ascendancy. But she repeated no previous state at all in thelax disorder of her internal administration, a laxity that made vastsections of her area lawless beyond precedent, so that it was possiblefor whole districts to be impassable, while civil war raged betweenstreet and street, and for Alsatias to exist in her midst in which theofficial police never set foot. She was an ethnic whirlpool. The flagsof all nations flew in her harbour, and at the climax, the yearlycoming and going overseas numbered together upwards of two million humanbeings. To Europe she was America, to America she was the gateway ofthe world. But to tell the story of New York would be to write a socialhistory of the world; saints and martyrs, dreamers and scoundrels, thetraditions of a thousand races and a thousand religions, went to hermaking and throbbed and jostled in her streets. And over all thattorrential confusion of men and purposes fluttered that strange flag,the stars and stripes, that meant at once the noblest thing in life,and the least noble, that is to say, Liberty on the one hand, and onthe other the base jealousy the individual self-seeker feels towards thecommon purpose of the State.
For many generations New York had taken no heed of war, save as a thingthat happened far away, that affected prices and supplied the newspaperswith exciting headlines and pictures. The New Yorkers felt perhaps evenmore certainly than the English had done that war in their own landwas an impossible thing. In that they shared the delusion of all NorthAmerica. They felt as secure as spectators at a bullfight; they riskedtheir money perhaps on the result, but that was all. And such ideas ofwar as the common Americans possessed were derived from the limited,picturesque, adventurous war of the past. They saw war as they sawhistory, through an iridescent mist, deodorised, scented indeed, withall its essential cruelties tactfully hidden away. They were inclined toregret it as something ennobling, to sigh that it could no longer comeinto their own private experience. They read with interest, if not withavidity, of their new guns, of their immense and still more immenseironclads, of their incredible and still more incredible explosives, butjust what these tremendous engines of destruction might mean for theirpersonal lives never entered their heads. They did not, so far as onecan judge from their contemporary literature, think that they meantanything to their personal lives at all. They thought America was safeamidst all this piling up of explosives. They cheered the flag by habitand tradition, they despised other nations, and whenever there was aninternational difficulty they were intensely patriotic, that is tosay, they were ardently against any native politician who did not say,threaten, and do harsh and uncompromising things to the antagonistpeople. They were spirited to Asia, spirited to Germany, so spirited toGreat Britain that the international attitude of the mother country toher great daughter was constantly compared in contemporary caricature tothat between a hen-pecked husband and a vicious young wife. And for therest, they all went about their business and pleasure as if war had diedout with the megatherium....
And then suddenly, into a world peacefully busied for the most part uponarmaments and the perfection of explosives, war came; came the shock ofrealising that the guns were going off, that the masses of inflammablematerial all over the world were at last ablaze.
2
The immediate effect upon New York of the sudden onset of war was merelyto intensify her normal vehemence.
The newspapers and magazines that fed the American mind--for books uponthis impatient continent had become simply material for the energyof collectors--were instantly a coruscation of war pictures and ofheadlines that rose like rockets and burst like shells. To the normalhigh-strung energy of New York streets was added a touch of war-fever.Great crowds assembled, more especially in the dinner hour, in MadisonSquare about the Farragut monument, to listen to and cheer patrioticspeeches, and a veritable epidemic of little flags and buttons sweptthrough these great torrents of swiftly moving young people, who pouredinto New York of a morning by car and mono-rail and subway and train,to toil, and ebb home again between the hours of five and seven. It wasdangerous not to wear a war button. The splendid music-halls of the timesank every topic in patriotism and evolved scenes of wild enthusiasm,strong men wept at the sight of the national banner sustained by thewhole strength of the ballet, and special searchlights and illuminationsamazed the watching angels. The churches re-echoed the nationalenthusiasm in graver key and slower measure, and the aerial and navalpreparations on the East River were greatly incommoded by the multitudeof excursion steamers which thronged, helpfully cheering, about them.The trade in small-arms was enormously stimulated, and many overwroughtcitizens found an immediate relief for their emotions in letting offfireworks of a more or less heroic, dangerous, and national characterin the public streets. Small children's air-balloons of the latest modelattached to string became a serious check to the pedestrian in CentralPark. And amidst scenes of indescribable emotion the Albany legislaturein permanent session, and with a generous suspension of rules andprecedents, passed through both Houses the long-disputed Bill foruniversal military service in New York State.
Critics of the American character are disposed to consider--that upto the actual impact of the German attack the people of New York dealtaltogether too much with the war as if it was a political demonstration.Little or no damage, they urge, was done to either the German orJapanese forces by the wearing of buttons, the waving of small flags,the fireworks, or the songs. They forgot that, under the conditions ofwarfare a century of science had brought about, the non-military sectionof the population could do no serious damage in any form to theirenemies, and that there was no reason, therefore, why they should not doas they did. The balance of military efficiency was shifting back fromthe many to the few, from the common to the specialised.
The days when the emotional infantryman decided battles had passed byfor ever. War had become a matter of apparatus of special trainingand skill of the most intricate kind. It had become undemocratic. Andwhatever the value of the popular exci
tement, there can be no denyingthat the small regular establishment of the United States Government,confronted by this totally unexpected emergency of an armed invasionfrom Europe, acted with vigour, science, and imagination. They weretaken by surprise so far as the diplomatic situation was concerned,and their equipment for building either navigables or aeroplanes wascontemptible in comparison with the huge German parks. Still they set towork at once to prove to the world that the spirit that had created theMonitor and the Southern submarines of 1864 was not dead. The chief ofthe aeronautic establishment near West Point was Cabot Sinclair, andhe allowed himself but one single moment of the posturing that was souniversal in that democratic time. "We have chosen our epitaphs,"he said to a reporter, "and we are going to have, 'They did all theycould.' Now run away!"
The curious thing is that they did all do all they could; there is noexception known. Their only defect indeed was a defect of style. One ofthe most striking facts historically about this war, and the one thatmakes the complete separation that had arisen between the methodsof warfare and the necessity of democratic support, is the effectualsecrecy of the Washington authorities about their airships. They didnot bother to confide a single fact of their preparations to the public.They did not even condescend to talk to Congress. They burked andsuppressed every inquiry. The war was fought by the President and theSecretaries of State in an entirely autocratic manner. Such publicity asthey sought was merely to anticipate and prevent inconvenient agitationto defend particular points. They realised that the chief danger inaerial warfare from an excitable and intelligent public would be aclamour for local airships and aeroplanes to defend local interests.This, with such resources as they possessed, might lead to a fataldivision and distribution of the national forces. Particularly theyfeared that they might be forced into a premature action to defendNew York. They realised with prophetic insight that this would be theparticular advantage the Germans would seek. So they took great painsto direct the popular mind towards defensive artillery, and to divert itfrom any thought of aerial battle. Their real preparations they maskedbeneath ostensible ones. There was at Washington a large reserve ofnaval guns, and these were distributed rapidly, conspicuously, and withmuch press attention, among the Eastern cities. They were mounted forthe most part upon hills and prominent crests around the threatenedcentres of population. They were mounted upon rough adaptations of theDoan swivel, which at that time gave the maximum vertical range to aheavy gun. Much of this artillery was still unmounted, and nearly all ofit was unprotected when the German air-fleet reached New York. And downin the crowded streets, when that occurred, the readers of the NewYork papers were regaling themselves with wonderful and wonderfullyillustrated accounts of such matters as:--
THE SECRET OF THE THUNDERBOLT
AGED SCIENTIST PERFECTS ELECTRIC GUN
TO ELECTROCUTE AIRSHIP CREWS BY UPWARD LIGHTNING
WASHINGTON ORDERS FIVE HUNDRED
WAR SECRETARY LODGE DELIGHTED
SAYS THEY WILL SUIT THE GERMANS DOWN TO THE GROUND
PRESIDENT PUBLICLY APPLAUDS THIS MERRY QUIP
3
The German fleet reached New York in advance of the news of the Americannaval disaster. It reached New York in the late afternoon and was firstseen by watchers at Ocean Grove and Long Branch coming swiftly out ofthe southward sea and going away to the northwest. The flagship passedalmost vertically over the Sandy Hook observation station, risingrapidly as it did so, and in a few minutes all New York was vibrating tothe Staten Island guns.
Several of these guns, and especially that at Giffords and the one onBeacon Hill above Matawan, were remarkably well handled. The former, ata distance of five miles, and with an elevation of six thousand feet,sent a shell to burst so close to the Vaterland that a pane of thePrince's forward window was smashed by a fragment. This sudden explosionmade Bert tuck in his head with the celerity of a startled tortoise. Thewhole air-fleet immediately went up steeply to a height of about twelvethousand feet and at that level passed unscathed over the ineffectualguns. The airships lined out as they moved forward into the form of aflattened V, with its apex towards the city, and with the flagship goinghighest at the apex. The two ends of the V passed over Plumfield andJamaica Bay, respectively, and the Prince directed his course a littleto the east of the Narrows, soared over Upper Bay, and came to restover Jersey City in a position that dominated lower New York. Therethe monsters hung, large and wonderful in the evening light, serenelyregardless of the occasional rocket explosions and flashing shell-burstsin the lower air.
It was a pause of mutual inspection. For a time naive humanity swampedthe conventions of warfare altogether; the interest of the millionsbelow and of the thousands above alike was spectacular. The evening wasunexpectedly fine--only a few thin level bands of clouds at seven oreight thousand feet broke its luminous clarity. The wind had dropped; itwas an evening infinitely peaceful and still. The heavy concussions ofthe distant guns and those incidental harmless pyrotechnics at the levelof the clouds seemed to have as little to do with killing and force,terror and submission, as a salute at a naval review. Below, everypoint of vantage bristled with spectators, the roofs of the toweringbuildings, the public squares, the active ferry boats, and everyfavourable street intersection had its crowds: all the river pierswere dense with people, the Battery Park was solid black with east-sidepopulation, and every position of advantage in Central Park and alongRiverside Drive had its peculiar and characteristic assembly from theadjacent streets. The footways of the great bridges over the East Riverwere also closely packed and blocked. Everywhere shopkeepers had lefttheir shops, men their work, and women and children their homes, to comeout and see the marvel.
"It beat," they declared, "the newspapers."
And from above, many of the occupants of the airships stared with anequal curiosity. No city in the world was ever so finely placed as NewYork, so magnificently cut up by sea and bluff and river, so admirablydisposed to display the tall effects of buildings, the compleximmensities of bridges and mono-railways and feats of engineering.London, Paris, Berlin, were shapeless, low agglomerations beside it. Itsport reached to its heart like Venice, and, like Venice, it was obvious,dramatic, and proud. Seen from above it was alive with crawlingtrains and cars, and at a thousand points it was already breaking intoquivering light. New York was altogether at its best that evening, itssplendid best.
"Gaw! What a place!" said Bert.
It was so great, and in its collective effect so pacificallymagnificent, that to make war upon it seemed incongruous beyond measure,like laying siege to the National Gallery or attacking respectablepeople in an hotel dining-room with battle-axe and mail. It was in itsentirety so large, so complex, so delicately immense, that to bring itto the issue of warfare was like driving a crowbar into the mechanismof a clock. And the fish-like shoal of great airships hovering lightand sunlit above, filling the sky, seemed equally remote from the uglyforcefulness of war. To Kurt, to Smallways, to I know not how many moreof the people in the air-fleet came the distinctest apprehension ofthese incompatibilities. But in the head of the Prince Karl Albert werethe vapours of romance: he was a conqueror, and this was the enemy'scity. The greater the city, the greater the triumph. No doubt he had atime of tremendous exultation and sensed beyond all precedent the senseof power that night.
There came an end at last to that pause. Some wireless communicationshad failed of a satisfactory ending, and fleet and city remembered theywere hostile powers. "Look!" cried the multitude; "look!"
"What are they doing?"
"What?"... Down through the twilight sank five attacking airships, oneto the Navy Yard on East River, one to City Hall, two over the greatbusiness buildings of Wall Street and Lower Broadway, one to theBrooklyn Bridge, dropping from among their fellows through the dangerzone from the distant guns smoothly and rapidly to a safe proximity tothe city masses. At that descent all the cars in the streets stoppedwith dramatic suddenness, and all the lights that had been coming on inthe streets and hou
ses went out again. For the City Hall had awakenedand was conferring by telephone with the Federal command and takingmeasures for defence. The City Hall was asking for airships, refusing tosurrender as Washington advised, and developing into a centre of intenseemotion, of hectic activity. Everywhere and hastily the police began toclear the assembled crowds. "Go to your homes," they said; and the wordwas passed from mouth to mouth, "There's going to be trouble." A chillof apprehension ran through the city, and men hurrying in the unwonteddarkness across City Hall Park and Union Square came upon the dim formsof soldiers and guns, and were challenged and sent back. In half anhour New York had passed from serene sunset and gaping admiration to atroubled and threatening twilight.
The first loss of life occurred in the panic rush from Brooklyn Bridgeas the airship approached it. With the cessation of the traffic anunusual stillness came upon New York, and the disturbing concussions ofthe futile defending guns on the hills about grew more and more audible.At last these ceased also. A pause of further negotiation followed.People sat in darkness, sought counsel from telephones that were dumb.Then into the expectant hush came a great crash and uproar, the breakingdown of the Brooklyn Bridge, the rifle fire from the Navy Yard, and thebursting of bombs in Wall Street and the City Hall. New York as a wholecould do nothing, could understand nothing. New York in the darknesspeered and listened to these distant sounds until presently they diedaway as suddenly as they had begun. "What could be happening?" Theyasked it in vain.
A long, vague period intervened, and people looking out of the windowsof upper rooms discovered the dark hulls of German airships, glidingslowly and noiselessly, quite close at hand. Then quietly the electriclights came on again, and an uproar of nocturnal newsvendors began inthe streets.
The units of that vast and varied population bought and learnt whathad happened; there had been a fight and New York had hoisted the whiteflag.
4
The lamentable incidents that followed the surrender of New York seemnow in the retrospect to be but the necessary and inevitable consequenceof the clash of modern appliances and social conditions produced bythe scientific century on the one hand, and the tradition of a crude,romantic patriotism on the other. At first people received the factwith an irresponsible detachment, much as they would have received theslowing down of the train in which they were travelling or the erectionof a public monument by the city to which they belonged.
"We have surrendered. Dear me! HAVE we?" was rather the manner in whichthe first news was met. They took it in the same spectacular spirit theyhad displayed at the first apparition of the air-fleet. Only slowly wasthis realisation of a capitulation suffused with the flush of passion,only with reflection did they make any personal application. "WE havesurrendered!" came later; "in us America is defeated." Then they beganto burn and tingle.
The newspapers, which were issued about one in the morning contained noparticulars of the terms upon which New York had yielded--nor didthey give any intimation of the quality of the brief conflict that hadpreceded the capitulation. The later issues remedied these deficiencies.There came the explicit statement of the agreement to victual theGerman airships, to supply the complement of explosives to replacethose employed in the fight and in the destruction of the North Atlanticfleet, to pay the enormous ransom of forty million dollars, and tosurrender the flotilla in the East River. There came, too, longer and longerdescriptions of the smashing up of the City Hall and the Navy Yard, andpeople began to realise faintly what those brief minutes of uproar hadmeant. They read the tale of men blown to bits, of futile soldiersin that localised battle fighting against hope amidst an indescribablewreckage, of flags hauled down by weeping men. And these strangenocturnal editions contained also the first brief cables from Europeof the fleet disaster, the North Atlantic fleet for which New York hadalways felt an especial pride and solicitude. Slowly, hour by hour, thecollective consciousness woke up, the tide of patriotic astonishment andhumiliation came floating in. America had come upon disaster; suddenlyNew York discovered herself with amazement giving place to wrathunspeakable, a conquered city under the hand of her conqueror.
As that fact shaped itself in the public mind, there sprang up, asflames spring up, an angry repudiation. "No!" cried New York, waking inthe dawn. "No! I am not defeated. This is a dream." Before day brokethe swift American anger was running through all the city, through everysoul in those contagious millions. Before it took action, before it tookshape, the men in the airships could feel the gigantic insurgence ofemotion, as cattle and natural creatures feel, it is said, the comingof an earthquake. The newspapers of the Knype group first gave the thingwords and a formula. "We do not agree," they said simply. "We have beenbetrayed!" Men took that up everywhere, it passed from mouth to mouth,at every street corner under the paling lights of dawn orators stoodunchecked, calling upon the spirit of America to arise, making theshame a personal reality to every one who heard. To Bert, listening fivehundred feet above, it seemed that the city, which had at first producedonly confused noises, was now humming like a hive of bees--of very angrybees.
After the smashing of the City Hall and Post-Office, the white flag hadbeen hoisted from a tower of the old Park Row building, and thither hadgone Mayor O'Hagen, urged thither indeed by the terror-stricken propertyowners of lower New York, to negotiate the capitulation with VonWinterfeld. The Vaterland, having dropped the secretary by a ropeladder, remained hovering, circling very slowly above the greatbuildings, old and new, that clustered round City Hall Park, while theHelmholz, which had done the fighting there, rose overhead to a heightof perhaps two thousand feet. So Bert had a near view of all thatoccurred in that central place. The City Hall and Court House, thePost-Office and a mass of buildings on the west side of Broadway, hadbeen badly damaged, and the three former were a heap of blackened ruins.In the case of the first two the loss of life had not been considerable,but a great multitude of workers, including many girls and women, hadbeen caught in the destruction of the Post-Office, and a little army ofvolunteers with white badges entered behind the firemen, bringing outthe often still living bodies, for the most part frightfully charred,and carrying them into the big Monson building close at hand. Everywherethe busy firemen were directing their bright streams of water upon thesmouldering masses: their hose lay about the square, and long cordons ofpolice held back the gathering black masses of people, chiefly from theeast side, from these central activities.
In violent and extraordinary contrast with this scene of destruction,close at hand were the huge newspaper establishments of Park Row. Theywere all alight and working; they had not been abandoned even whilethe actual bomb throwing was going on, and now staff and presses werevehemently active, getting out the story, the immense and dreadful storyof the night, developing comment and, in most cases, spreading the ideaof resistance under the very noses of the airships. For a long time Bertcould not imagine what these callously active offices could be, then hedetected the noise of the presses and emitted his "Gaw!"
Beyond these newspaper buildings again, and partially hidden by thearches of the old Elevated Railway of New York (long since convertedinto a mono-rail), there was another cordon of police and a sort ofencampment of ambulances and doctors, busy with the dead and wounded whohad been killed early in the night by the panic upon Brooklyn Bridge.All this he saw in the perspectives of a bird's-eye view, as thingshappening in a big, irregular-shaped pit below him, between cliffs ofhigh building. Northward he looked along the steep canon of Broadway,down whose length at intervals crowds were assembling about excitedspeakers; and when he lifted his eyes he saw the chimneys andcable-stacks and roof spaces of New York, and everywhere now over thesethe watching, debating people clustered, except where the fires ragedand the jets of water flew. Everywhere, too, were flagstaffs devoid offlags; one white sheet drooped and flapped and drooped again over thePark Row buildings. And upon the lurid lights, the festering movementand intense shadows of this strange scene, there was breaking now thecold, impartial dawn.
He had watched hour after hour since first New York had risen out of theblue indistinctness of the landfall. With the daylight he experienced anintolerable fatigue.
He lifted weary eyes to the pink flush in the sky, yawned immensely, andcrawled back whispering to himself across the cabin to the locker. Hedid not so much lie down upon that as fall upon it and instantly becomeasleep.
There, hours after, sprawling undignified and sleeping profoundly,Kurt found him, a very image of the democratic mind confronted with theproblems of a time too complex for its apprehension. His face waspale and indifferent, his mouth wide open, and he snored. He snoreddisagreeably.
Kurt regarded him for a moment with a mild distaste. Then he kicked hisankle.
"Wake up," he said to Smallways' stare, "and lie down decent."
Bert sat up and rubbed his eyes.
"Any more fightin' yet?" he asked.
"No," said Kurt, and sat down, a tired man.
"Gott!" he cried presently, rubbing his hands over his face, "butI'd like a cold bath! I've been looking for stray bullet holes in theair-chambers all night until now." He yawned. "I must sleep. You'dbetter clear out, Smallways. I can't stand you here this morning. You'reso infernally ugly and useless. Have you had your rations? No! Well, goin and get 'em, and don't come back. Stick in the gallery...."
5
So Bert, slightly refreshed by coffee and sleep, resumed his helplessco-operation in the War in the Air. He went down into the little galleryas the lieutenant had directed, and clung to the rail at the extreme endbeyond the look-out man, trying to seem as inconspicuous and harmless afragment of life as possible.
A wind was rising rather strongly from the south-east. It obliged theVaterland to come about in that direction, and made her roll agreat deal as she went to and fro over Manhattan Island. Away in thenorth-west clouds gathered. The throb-throb of her slow screw workingagainst the breeze was much more perceptible than when she was goingfull speed ahead; and the friction of the wind against the underside ofthe gas-chamber drove a series of shallow ripples along it and madea faint flapping sound like, but fainter than, the beating of ripplesunder the stem of a boat. She was stationed over the temporary City Hallin the Park Row building, and every now and then she would descendto resume communication with the mayor and with Washington. But therestlessness of the Prince would not suffer him to remain for long inany one place. Now he would circle over the Hudson and East River; nowhe would go up high, as if to peer away into the blue distances; once heascended so swiftly and so far that mountain sickness overtook him andthe crew and forced him down again; and Bert shared the dizziness andnausea.
The swaying view varied with these changes of altitude. Now they wouldbe low and close, and he would distinguish in that steep, unusualperspective, windows, doors, street and sky signs, people and theminutest details, and watch the enigmatical behaviour of crowds andclusters upon the roofs and in the streets; then as they soared thedetails would shrink, the sides of streets draw together, the viewwiden, the people cease to be significant. At the highest the effectwas that of a concave relief map; Bert saw the dark and crowded landeverywhere intersected by shining waters, saw the Hudson River like aspear of silver, and Lower Island Sound like a shield. Even to Bert'sunphilosophical mind the contrast of city below and fleet above pointedan opposition, the opposition of the adventurous American's traditionand character with German order and discipline. Below, the immensebuildings, tremendous and fine as they were, seemed like the giant treesof a jungle fighting for life; their picturesque magnificence was asplanless as the chances of crag and gorge, their casualty enhanced bythe smoke and confusion of still unsubdued and spreading conflagrations.In the sky soared the German airships like beings in a different,entirely more orderly world, all oriented to the same angle of thehorizon, uniform in build and appearance, moving accurately with onepurpose as a pack of wolves will move, distributed with the most preciseand effectual co-operation.
It dawned upon Bert that hardly a third of the fleet was visible. Theothers had gone upon errands he could not imagine, beyond the compass ofthat great circle of earth and sky. He wondered, but there was no one toask. As the day wore on, about a dozen reappeared in the east withtheir stores replenished from the flotilla and towing a number ofdrachenflieger. Towards afternoon the weather thickened, driving cloudsappeared in the south-west and ran together and seemed to engender moreclouds, and the wind came round into that quarter and blew stronger.Towards the evening the wind became a gale into which the now tossingairships had to beat.
All that day the Prince was negotiating with Washington, while hisdetached scouts sought far and wide over the Eastern States looking foranything resembling an aeronautic park. A squadron of twenty airshipsdetached overnight had dropped out of the air upon Niagara and washolding the town and power works.
Meanwhile the insurrectionary movement in the giant city grewuncontrollable. In spite of five great fires already involving manyacres, and spreading steadily, New York was still not satisfied that shewas beaten.
At first the rebellious spirit below found vent only in isolated shouts,street-crowd speeches, and newspaper suggestions; then it found muchmore definite expression in the appearance in the morning sunlight ofAmerican flags at point after point above the architectural cliffs ofthe city. It is quite possible that in many cases this spirited displayof bunting by a city already surrendered was the outcome of the innocentinformality of the American mind, but it is also undeniable that in manyit was a deliberate indication that the people "felt wicked."
The German sense of correctitude was deeply shocked by this outbreak.The Graf von Winterfeld immediately communicated with the mayor, andpointed out the irregularity, and the fire look-out stations wereinstructed in the matter. The New York police was speedily hard atwork, and a foolish contest in full swing between impassioned citizensresolved to keep the flag flying, and irritated and worried officersinstructed to pull it down.
The trouble became acute at last in the streets above ColumbiaUniversity. The captain of the airship watching this quarter seems tohave stooped to lasso and drag from its staff a flag hoisted upon MorganHall. As he did so a volley of rifle and revolver shots was fired fromthe upper windows of the huge apartment building that stands between theUniversity and Riverside Drive.
Most of these were ineffectual, but two or three perforatedgas-chambers, and one smashed the hand and arm of a man upon the forwardplatform; The sentinel on the lower gallery immediately replied, and themachine gun on the shield of the eagle let fly and promptly stoppedany further shots. The airship rose and signalled the flagship and CityHall, police and militiamen were directed at once to the spot, and thisparticular incident closed.
But hard upon that came the desperate attempt of a party of youngclubmen from New York, who, inspired by patriotic and adventurousimaginations, slipped off in half a dozen motor-cars to Beacon Hill, andset to work with remarkable vigour to improvise a fort about
the Doanswivel gun that had been placed there. They found it still in the handsof the disgusted gunners, who had been ordered to cease fire at thecapitulation, and it was easy to infect these men with their own spirit.They declared their gun hadn't had half a chance, and were burning toshow what it could do. Directed by the newcomers, they made a trenchand bank about the mounting of the piece, and constructed flimsyshelter-pits of corrugated iron.
They were actually loading the gun when they were observed by theairship Preussen and the shell they succeeded in firing before the bombsof the latter smashed them and their crude defences to fragments, burstover the middle gas-chambers of the Bingen, and brought her to earth,disabled, upon Staten Island. She was badly deflated, and dropped amongtrees, over which her empty central gas-bags spread in canopies andfestoons. Nothing, however, had caught fire, and her men were speedilyat work upon her repair. They behaved with a confidence that verged uponindiscretion. While most of them commenced patching the tears of themembrane, half a dozen of them started off for the nearest road insearch of a gas main, and presently found themselves prisoners inthe hands of a hostile crowd. Close at hand was a number of villaresidences, whose occupants speedily developed from an unfriendlycuriosity to aggression. At that time the police control of the largepolyglot population of Staten Island had become very lax, and scarcelya household but had its rifle or pistols and ammunition. These werepresently produced, and after two or three misses, one of the men atwork was hit in the foot. Thereupon the Germans left their sewing andmending, took cover among the trees, and replied.
The crackling of shots speedily brought the Preussen and Kiel on thescene, and with a few hand grenades they made short work of everyvilla within a mile. A number of non-combatant American men, women, andchildren were killed and the actual assailants driven off. For a timethe repairs went on in peace under the immediate protection of thesetwo airships. Then when they returned to their quarters, an intermittentsniping and fighting round the stranded Bingen was resumed, and wenton all the afternoon, and merged at last in the general combat of theevening....
About eight the Bingen was rushed by an armed mob, and all its defenderskilled after a fierce, disorderly struggle.
The difficulty of the Germans in both these cases came from theimpossibility of landing any efficient force or, indeed, any force atall from the air-fleet. The airships were quite unequal to the transportof any adequate landing parties; their complement of men was justsufficient to manoeuvre and fight them in the air. From above they couldinflict immense damage; they could reduce any organised Government to acapitulation in the briefest space, but they could not disarm, much lesscould they occupy, the surrendered areas below. They had to trust tothe pressure upon the authorities below of a threat to renew thebombardment. It was their sole resource. No doubt, with ahighly organised and undamaged Government and a homogeneous andwell-disciplined people that would have sufficed to keep the peace. Butthis was not the American case. Not only was the New York Government aweak one and insufficiently provided with police, but the destruction ofthe City Hall--and Post-Offide and other central ganglia had hopelesslydisorganised the co-operation of part with part. The street cars andrailways had ceased; the telephone service was out of gear and onlyworked intermittently. The Germans had struck at the head, and the headwas conquered and stunned--only to release the body from its rule. NewYork had become a headless monster, no longer capable of collectivesubmission. Everywhere it lifted itself rebelliously; everywhereauthorities and officials left to their own imitative were joining inthe arming and flag-hoisting and excitement of that afternoon.
6
The disintegrating truce gave place to a definite general breach withthe assassination of the Wetterhorn--for that is the only possible wordfor the act--above Union Square, and not a mile away from the exemplaryruins of City Hall. This occurred late in the afternoon, between fiveand six. By that time the weather had changed very much for the worse,and the operations of the airships were embarrassed by the necessitythey were under of keeping head on to the gusts. A series of squalls,with hail and thunder, followed one another from the south bysouth-east, and in order to avoid these as much as possible, theair-fleet came low over the houses, diminishing its range of observationand exposing itself to a rifle attack.
Overnight there had been a gun placed in Union Square. It had never beenmounted, much less fired, and in the darkness after the surrender it wastaken with its supplies and put out of the way under the arches of thegreat Dexter building. Here late in the morning it was remarked by anumber of patriotic spirits. They set to work to hoist and mount itinside the upper floors of the place. They made, in fact, a maskedbattery behind the decorous office blinds, and there lay in wait assimply excited as children until at last the stem of the lucklessWetterhorn appeared, beating and rolling at quarter speed over therecently reconstructed pinnacles of Tiffany's. Promptly that one-gunbattery unmasked. The airship's look-out man must have seen the wholeof the tenth story of the Dexter building crumble out and smash in thestreet below to discover the black muzzle looking out from the shadowsbehind. Then perhaps the shell hit him.
The gun fired two shells before the frame of the Dexter buildingcollapsed, and each shell raked the Wetterhorn from stem to stern.They smashed her exhaustively. She crumpled up like a can that has beenkicked by a heavy boot, her forepart came down in the square, and therest of her length, with a great snapping and twisting of shafts andstays, descended, collapsing athwart Tammany Hall and the streetstowards Second Avenue. Her gas escaped to mix with air, and the air ofher rent balloonette poured into her deflating gas-chambers. Then withan immense impact she exploded....
The Vaterland at that time was beating up to the south of City Hallfrom over the ruins of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the reports of the gun,followed by the first crashes of the collapsing Dexter building, broughtKurt and, Smallways to the cabin porthole. They were in time to see theflash of the exploding gun, and then they were first flattened againstthe window and then rolled head over heels across the floor of the cabinby the air wave of the explosion. The Vaterland bounded like a footballsome one has kicked and when they looked out again, Union Square wassmall and remote and shattered, as though some cosmically vast giant hadrolled over it. The buildings to the east of it were ablaze at a dozenpoints, under the flaming tatters and warping skeleton of the airship,and all the roofs and walls were ridiculously askew and crumbling as onelooked. "Gaw!" said Bert. "What's happened? Look at the people!"
But before Kurt could produce an explanation, the shrill bells of theairship were ringing to quarters, and he had to go. Bert hesitated andstepped thoughtfully into the passage, looking back at the window ashe did so. He was knocked off his feet at once by the Prince, who wasrushing headlong from his cabin to the central magazine.
Bert had a momentary impression of the great figure of the Prince, whitewith rage, bristling with gigantic anger, his huge fist swinging. "Blutund Eisen!" cried the Prince, as one who swears. "Oh! Blut und Eisen!"
Some one fell over Bert--something in the manner of falling suggestedVon Winterfeld--and some one else paused and kicked him spitefully andhard. Then he was sitting up in the passage, rubbing a freshly bruisedcheek and readjusting the bandage he still wore on his head. "Dem thatPrince," said Bert, indignant beyond measure. "'E 'asn't the menners ofa 'og!"
He stood up, collected his wits for a minute, and then went slowlytowards the gangway of the little gallery. As he did so he heard noisessuggestive of the return of the Prince. The lot of them were coming backagain. He shot into his cabin like a rabbit into its burrow, just intime to escape that shouting terror.
He shut the door, waited until the passage was still, then went acrossto the window and looked out. A drift of cloud made the prospect ofthe streets and squares hazy, and the rolling of the airship swung thepicture up and down. A few people were running to and fro, but for themost part the aspect of the district was desertion. The streets seemedto broaden out, they became clearer, and the little dots
that werepeople larger as the Vaterland came down again. Presently she wasswaying along above the lower end of Broadway. The dots below, Bert saw,were not running now, but standing and looking up. Then suddenly theywere all running again.
Something had dropped from the aeroplane, something that looked smalland flimsy. It hit the pavement near a big archway just underneath Bert.A little man was sprinting along the sidewalk within half a dozen yards,and two or three others and one woman were bolting across the roadway.They were odd little figures, so very small were they about the heads,so very active about the elbows and legs. It was really funny to seetheir legs going. Foreshortened, humanity has no dignity. The little manon the pavement jumped comically--no doubt with terror, as the bomb fellbeside him.
Then blinding flames squirted out in all directions from the point ofimpact, and the little man who had jumped became, for an instant, aflash of fire and vanished--vanished absolutely. The people running outinto the road took preposterous clumsy leaps, then flopped down and laystill, with their torn clothes smouldering into flame. Then pieces ofthe archway began to drop, and the lower masonry of the building to fallin with the rumbling sound of coals being shot into a cellar. A faintscreaming reached Bert, and then a crowd of people ran out into thestreet, one man limping and gesticulating awkwardly. He halted, and wentback towards the building. A falling mass of brick-work hit him and senthim sprawling to lie still and crumpled where he fell. Dust and blacksmoke came pouring into the street, and were presently shot with redflame....
In this manner the massacre of New York began. She was the first of thegreat cities of the Scientific Age to suffer by the enormous powersand grotesque limitations of aerial warfare. She was wrecked as in theprevious century endless barbaric cities had been bombarded, because shewas at once too strong to be occupied and too undisciplined and proud tosurrender in order to escape destruction. Given the circumstances, thething had to be done. It was impossible for the Prince to desist, andown himself defeated, and it was impossible to subdue the city exceptby largely destroying it. The catastrophe was the logical outcome ofthe situation, created by the application of science to warfare. Itwas unavoidable that great cities should be destroyed. In spite of hisintense exasperation with his dilemma, the Prince sought to be moderateeven in massacre. He tried to give a memorable lesson with the minimumwaste of life and the minimum expenditure of explosives. For that nighthe proposed only the wrecking of Broadway. He directed the air-fleet tomove in column over the route of this thoroughfare, dropping bombs, theVaterland leading. And so our Bert Smallways became a participant in oneof the most cold-blooded slaughters in the world's history, in whichmen who were neither excited nor, except for the remotest chance ofa bullet, in any danger, poured death and destruction upon homes andcrowds below.
He clung to the frame of the porthole as the airship tossed and swayed,and stared down through the light rain that now drove before the wind,into the twilight streets, watching people running out of the houses,watching buildings collapse and fires begin. As the airships sailedalong they smashed up the city as a child will shatter its cities ofbrick and card. Below, they left ruins and blazing conflagrations andheaped and scattered dead; men, women, and children mixed together asthough they had been no more than Moors, or Zulus, or Chinese. LowerNew York was soon a furnace of crimson flames, from which there was noescape. Cars, railways, ferries, all had ceased, and never a light litthe way of the distracted fugitives in that dusky confusion but thelight of burning. He had glimpses of what it must mean to be downthere--glimpses. And it came to him suddenly as an incredible discovery,that such disasters were not only possible now in this strange,gigantic, foreign New York, but also in London--in Bun Hill! that thelittle island in the silver seas was at the end of its immunity, thatnowhere in the world any more was there a place left where a Smallwaysmight lift his head proudly and vote for war and a spirited foreignpolicy, and go secure from such horrible things.