Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D.

by Cleveland Moffett

  CHAPTER V

  GENERAL VON HINDENBURG TEACHES NEW YORK CITY A LESSON

  On May 24, 1921, the situation of New York City was seen to be desperate,and most of the newspapers, even those that had clamoured loudest forresistance and boasted of American valour and resourcefulness, nowadmitted that the metropolis must submit to a German occupation.

  Even the women among the public officials and political leaders wereinclined to a policy of nonresistance. General Wood was urged tosurrender the city and avoid the horrors of bombardment; but thecommander replied that his first duty was to defend the territory of theUnited States, and that every day he could keep the enemy isolated onLong Island was a day gained for the permanent defences that werefrantically organising all over the country.

  It was vital, too, that the immense stores of gold and specie in thevaults of the Federal Reserve and other great New York banks should besafely transported to Chicago.

  All day and all night, automobile trucks, operated under orders fromWilliam G. McAdoo, Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank, loaded withmillions and millions of gold, passed unprotected and almost unheededthrough the crowded section between Wall Street and the Grand CentralStation. The people stared at them dumbly. They knew what was going on.They knew they could have a fortune by reaching out their hands. But atthis moment, with their eternities in their eyes, they had no thought ofgold. Hour after hour the work went on. Finally, subway trains and streetcars were pressed into service as treasure-carriers.

  By night $800,000,000 had started West and the next morning Chicago wasthe financial capital of America.

  At midnight General Wood gave final orders for resistance to the last gunand the last man; and, when early the next morning the German generalagain sent officers with a flag of truce demanding the surrender ofManhattan Island, Wood's reply was a firm refusal. He tried, however, togain time in negotiations; and a few hours later I accompanied adelegation of American staff officers with counter-proposals across theEast River in a launch. I can see von Hindenburg now, in his high bootsand military coat, as he received the American officers at the foot ofthe shattered Brooklyn Bridge. A square massive head with close-croppedwhite hair, brushed straight back from a broad forehead. And sadsearching eyes--wonderful eyes.

  "Then you refuse to surrender? You think you can fight?" the FieldMarshal demanded.

  At which the ranking American officer, stung by his arrogance, declaredthat they certainly did think they could fight, and would prove it.

  "Ah! So!" said von Hindenburg, and he glanced at a gun crew who wereloading a half-ton projectile into an 11.1-inch siege-gun that stood onthe pavement. "Which is the Woolworth Building?" he asked, pointingacross the river.

  "The tallest one, Excellency--the one with the Gothic lines and gildedcornices," replied one of his officers.

  "Ah, yes, of course. I recognise it from the pictures. It's beautiful.Gentlemen,"--he addressed the American officers,--"I am offeringtwenty-dollar gold pieces to this gun crew if they bring downthat tower with a single shot. Now, then, careful!...

  "Ready!"

  We covered our ears as the shot crashed forth, and a moment later themost costly and graceful tower in the world seemed to stagger on itsbase. Then, as the thousand-pound shell, striking at the twenty-seventhstory, exploded deep inside, clouds of yellow smoke poured out throughthe crumbling walls, and the huge length of twenty-four stories above thejagged wound swayed slowly toward the east, and fell as one piece,flinging its thousands of tons of stone and steel straight across thewidth of Broadway, and down upon the grimy old Post Office Buildingopposite.

  _"Sehr gut!"_ nodded von Hindenburg. "It's amusing to see them fall.Suppose we try another? What's that one to the left?"

  "The Singer Building, Excellency," answered the officer.

  "Good! Are you ready?"

  Then the tragedy was repeated, and six hundred more were added to thedeath toll, as the great tower crumbled to earth.

  "Now, gentlemen,"--von Hindenburg turned again to the American officerswith a tiger gleam in his eyes,--"you see what we have done withtwo shots to two of your tallest and finest buildings. At this timeto-morrow, with God's help, we shall have a dozen guns along this bank ofthe river, ready for whatever may be necessary. And two of our_Parsevals_, each carrying a ton of dynamite, will float over New YorkCity. I give you until twelve o'clock to-morrow to decide whether youwill resist or capitulate. At twelve o'clock we begin firing."

  Our instructions were to return at once in the launch by the shortestroute to the Battery, where automobiles were waiting to take us toGeneral Wood's headquarters in the Metropolitan Tower. I can close myeyes to-day and see once more those pictures of terror and despair thatwere spread before us as we whirled through the crowded streets behindthe crashing hoofs of a cavalry escort. The people knew who we were,where we had been, and they feared what our message might be.

  Broadway, of course, was impassable where the mass of red brick from theSinger Building filled the great canyon as if a glacier had spread overthe region, or as if the lava from a man-made Aetna had choked this greatthoroughfare.

  Through the side streets we snatched hasty impressions of unforgetablescenes. Into the densely populated regions around Grand and HoustonStreets the evicted people of Brooklyn had poured. And into the homes ofthese miserably poor people, where you can walk for blocks withouthearing a word in the English tongue, Brooklyn's derelicts had beenabsorbed by tens of thousands.

  Here came men and women from all parts of Manhattan, the rich in theirautomobiles, the poor on foot, bearing bundles of food and eager to helpin the work of humanity. And some, alas, were busy with the sinisterbusiness of looting.

  Above Fourteenth Street we had glimpses of similar scenes and I learnedlater that almost every family in Manhattan received some Brooklynhomeless ones into their care. New York--for once--was hospitable.

  In Madison Square the people waited in silence as we approached the greatwhite tower from which the Commander of the Army of the East, unmindfulof the fate of the Woolworth and the Singer buildings, watched forfurther moves from the fortified shores of Brooklyn. Not a shout greetedour arrival at the marble entrance facing the square, not even thatmurmur of expectancy which sweeps over a tense gathering. The people knewthe answer of von Hindenburg. They had read it, as had all the world formiles around, in the cataclysm of the plunging towers.

  New York must surrender or perish!

  Scarcely three blocks away, the Committee of Public Safety, numbering onehundred, sat in agitated council at the Madison Square Garden, whileenormous crowds, shouting and murmuring, surged outside, where fivehundred armed policemen tried vainly to quell the spirit of riot that wasin the air. Far into the night the discussion lasted, while overhead inthe purple-black sky floated the two _Parsevals_, ominous visitors, theirsearch-lights playing over the helpless city that was to feel their wrathon the morrow unless it yielded.

  Meantime, on the square platform within the great Moorish building, ahundred leading citizens of Manhattan, including the ablest and therichest and a few of the most radical, spoke their minds, while thousandsof men and women, packed in the galleries and the aisles, listenedheart-sick for some gleam of comfort.

  And there was none.

  Among the Committee of Public Safety I recognised J. P. Morgan, Jacob H.Sehiff, John D. Rockefeller, Charles F. Murphy, Andrew Carnegie, VincentAstor, Cardinal Farley, Colonel Jacob Ruppert, Nicholas Murray Butler, S.Stanwood Menken, Paul M. Warburg, John Finley, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont,James E. Gaffney, Ida Tarbell, Norman Hapgood, William Randolph Hearst,Senator Whitman, Bernard Ridder, Frank A. Munsey, Henry Morgenthau, ElihuRoot, Henry L. Stimson, Franklin Q. Brown, John Mitchell, John Wanamaker,Dr. Parkhurst, Thomas A. Edison, Colonel George Harvey, Douglas Robinson,John Hays Hammond, Theodore Shonts, William Dean Howells, Alan R. Hawley,Samuel Gompers, August Belmont, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, the Rev. PercyStickney Grant, Judge E. H. Gary, Emerson McMillin, Cornelius Vanderbilt,and ex-Mayor Mitchel.
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  Former President Wilson motored over from Princeton, accompanied byProfessor McClellan, and was greeted with cheers. Ex-President Taft wasspeaking at the time, advocating a dignified appeal to the Hague Tribunalfor an adjudication of the matter according to international law. Nearlyall of the speakers favoured non-resistance, so far as New York City wasconcerned. With scarcely a dissenting voice, the great financial andbusiness interests represented here demanded that New York Citycapitulate immediately.

  Whereupon Theodore Roosevelt, who had just entered the Garden with hisuniform still smeared with Long Island mud, sprang to his feet and criedout that he would rather see Manhattan Island sunk in the Bay thandisgraced by so cowardly a surrender. There was still hope, he declared.The East River was impassable for the enemy. All shipping had beenwithdrawn from Brooklyn shores, and the German fleet dared not enter theAmbrose Channel and the lower bay so long as the Sandy Hook guns heldout.

  "We are a great nation," Roosevelt shouted, "full of courage andresourcefulness. Let us stand together against these invaders, as ourforefathers stood at Lexington and Bunker Hill!"

  During the cheers that followed this harangue, my attention was drawn toan agitated group on the platform, the central figure being BernardRidder, recognised leader of the large German-American population of NewYork City that had remained staunchly loyal in the crisis. Presently aclamour from the crowd outside, sharper and fiercer than any that hadpreceded it, announced some new and unexpected danger close at hand.

  White-faced, Mr. Ridder stepped to the edge of the platform and liftedhis hand impressively.

  "Let me speak," he said. "I must speak in justice to myself and to half amillion German-Americans of this city, who are placed in a terribleposition by news that I have just received. I wish to say that we areAmericans first, not Germans! We are loyal to the city, loyal to thiscountry, and whatever happens here tonight--"

  At this moment a tumult of shouts was heard at the Madison Avenueentrance, and above it a shrill purring sound that seemed to strikeconsternation into an army officer who sat beside me.

  "My God!" he cried. "The machine-guns! The Germans are in the streets!"