Part 19

This first naval company, which did so much to arrest the progress of the Austro-Hungarians toward the Lagoon of St. Mark, now gives a veteran's greeting to every new group of marines that comes to add its strength to the ring around Venice.

Venice Under the Grim Shadow

The City's Wartime Aspects

[A Rotogravure Etching of Venice Appears in This Issue Opposite Page 269]

When the Austro-German armies swept down through the Venetian plain last October and November, leaving ruin in their wake, they were stopped at the Piave River, whose waters flow into the lagoon a few miles east of Venice. Though the Italian Army and Navy made a ring of steel around the City of the Doges, and have held the enemy at bay from that time to the present, the sounds of battle have been constantly in the ears of the inhabitants, and frequent air raids have left jagged scars on many buildings and even in the pavement of the Piazza San Marco.

Throughout the Winter of 1917-18 Venice remained a city without tourists, its population dwindling from 150,000 to about 40,000, its canals silent and almost empty of life, yet full of a new and wistful beauty. The first days of peril had brought the enemy within twelve or thirteen miles of Venice. From the Fondamento Nuovo, at the northern end of the city, the people could see the flash of guns and the bursting of shells. The roar of guns disturbed their work by day and their sleep by night.

EVACUATING THE CITY

The civilian population was a hindrance rather than a help to the defenders, so the Admiral in command (for Venice is under naval, not military authority) thought it well to arrange for the partial evacuation of the city. In conjunction with the Syndic, Count Erimani, he first asked all foreigners to remove themselves to places of safety. Then offices were opened in each of the thirty parishes, and the people were ordered to report within forty-eight hours. This census was taken, so that railway facilities for traveling might be provided for all, and that places of safety might be found for those who were too poor to go away at their own expense, and pay their way afterward.

In a few days nearly half the population, some 70,000, had gone, the majority to Florence, Rome, and other places in Central and Southern Italy, and the others to Genoa and the Riviera. Some were sent by sea to the Ancona coast. After this first rush the exodus went on more leisurely, some 3,000 leaving each day. Institutions of all kinds, offices, shops, restaurants, and cafés, closed their doors, even the Café Florian, which had been open day and night continuously for over 100 years. Banks and offices transferred their businesses to other towns.

There are no cellars in Venice, nor can the inhabitants have any dugouts in which to conceal valuables, for at a depth of two or three feet below the ground floors of all buildings water is reached. Accordingly the authorities at the Municipal Building, at St. Mark's Library, at the Ducal Palace, at the Archives, as well as at banks and insurance offices, had their documents and valuables conveyed to places of security by boat and rail.

When Italy first went into the war precautions had been taken to protect the public monuments of Venice against aerial bombardment. The Doges' Palace and the Church of St. Mark were protected by barricades of sandbags, as were all the more valuable statues throughout the city. St. Mark's gilded copper horses, beaten out by hand, the only example extant of a Roman Quadriga--

The four steeds divine, That strike the ground resounding with their feet, And from their nostrils snort ethereal flame--

were removed at that time from their pedestals above the main entrance to the church, and stabled under an archway on the ground floor of the Doges' Palace. When the new peril came with the invasion, however, they were conveyed by a battleship to a safer refuge in Rome. The precious equestrian statue of Colleoni, so much admired by Ruskin, with other treasures familiar to the tourist, also has been removed to a place of security. The bells of St. Mark's campanile and those of every church in the city have been taken away.

By the first weeks of 1918 the population had shrunk to less than 60,000, and at night one could walk through miles and miles of stilled and empty streets, darkened against the peril of air raids, or could travel by gondola along lonely canals rippled only by the Winter wind, with the cold moonlight silvering a deserted fairyland. Two months later the population was further reduced by sending away 20,000 women, children, and old men with a view to eliminating useless mouths to feed and preventing unnecessary slaughter. By that time Austro-German ingenuity had invented a new system of dropping bombs; instead of scattering them over the city the missiles were grouped in large numbers in a very limited space so that the destruction on that area was complete.

LIKE A DEAD CITY

An English war correspondent who visited Venice in the Winter drew this word picture:

"Shuttered palaces face each other across silent canals. A footstep ringing down those narrow alleys, which are like deep, dark slits in a close-crowded mass of many-storied houses, starts echoes that die undisturbed away. The black gondola glides through a dead city more beautiful in the silence and stillness of this war trance of hers than ever in the fullness of her vivacious life. At each corner of the narrow water lane the white-haired gondolier raises his mournful cry, but by long habit, for he knows that no answer will ring out from beyond the angle of the dark stone wall, and no tapering prow glide out to be avoided by a turn of his skillful oar.

"The Grand Canal is a green and gleaming vista of desertion. The scream of seagulls, beating its tranquil surface with their wings, is the only sound that disturbs the quiet of its reverie. A pleasing melancholy invests the deserted quays, and in remote corners of little lost canals you can almost hear the whispering of innumerable spirits of the Venice of long ago who have been drawn back to their old home by this strange peace that lies upon the city.

"Venice, without tourists, without guides, without postcard sellers and hotel touts, is a close preserve of beauty for the few who have the fortune to be here. The atmosphere and the dignity of the days when she was a ruling city are here as they have never been before in modern times, nor ever will be again."

THE WORST AIR RAID

The greatest air raid of all the forty-five which Venice had endured since the war's beginning was that of the night of Feb. 26-27, 1918. It lasted eight hours--from 10:20 to 6:15 A. M.--and there was not a single interval of more than half an hour during all that time of brilliant moonlight in which bombs were not falling on the city. There were 300 in all. Thirty-eight houses were smashed, the Royal Palace was struck, one wing of an old people's home was blown to pieces, and three churches were damaged, including that of St. Chrysostom, in which an altar with one of Cellini's last landscapes was wrecked. Fifteen bombs fell near the Doges' Palace, one barely missing the Bridge of Sighs and falling into the narrow canal which it spans. Ten bombs fell around the Rialto Bridge. About fifteen civilians were wounded seriously, including two women. Only one man was killed, thanks to the promptness with which the Venetians now take shelter.

According to the official account at least fifty airplanes took part in the raid, and some of these returned again and again, bringing fresh cargoes of bombs throughout the night. The Austrian lines are so near that the trip to the bomb bases and back again requires only twenty-five minutes, and this was the average length of the intervals between the bombardments. G. Ward Price, a war correspondent, in describing the experiences of that night, wrote:

"Suddenly another crash re-echoed throughout the city, and the din of the bombardment started once more. I followed the quickly vanishing throng through an archway, where a green light marked a place of shelter. For two hours I was part of a close-packed throng in the dark vaulted room. There were women and wide-eyed children there in plenty, tired out with the long standing, which for them lasted until dawn, but none showing alarm, though, in addition to the nerve trying din outside, a constant shower of pieces of shell and flying bits of masonry whirred and pelted and pattered down incessantly outside.

BRAVE WOMEN'S LAUGHTER

"Toward 2 o'clock I made another move toward the centre of the city. I heard the drone of an attacking airplane drawing nearer over the still lagoon, and a policeman beckoned me into the vestibule of a high palazzo in one of those narrow Venetian alleys between tall black rows of houses which are like a communication trench of masonry. All was cheerfulness in this marble anteroom, a family of young daughters laughing and chattering with their mother while the noisy night crept slowly on. Taking advantage of another lull, I reached my hotel, but not until 6 o'clock, when the dawn was well advanced, did the tumult of this eight-hour-long bombardment cease.

"And yet this morning, as one went about in the warm sunshine seeing the places which the bombs had destroyed, the people seemed untroubled enough. Troops of black-shawled girls went chattering by, and the boys were playing a sort of 'shove-halfpenny' game, using as counters the shell splinters they had found scattered about the city ways."

Since then there have been many other raids, but none so prolonged. The black-shawled women whose laughter defied the nightly peril have gone for the most part, taking with them the alert "bambini," who at that period still shouted at play in the streets. Only armed defenders are left, with those who are absolutely necessary to aid them. The muffled echo of distant guns is heard by day and the crash of bombs by night. Just outside the city is a little cemetery where are gathered the bodies of the Italian and French aviators who have died defending these shores. The marble pavement of the Piazza and Piazzetta is torn in places, and the swarming pigeons of other days have dwindled sadly, for no tourists come to feed them. In the sky over the lagoon, where the gulls once reigned supreme, airplanes now keep watch against the ceaseless threat in the direction of the Piave.

Taking Over the Dutch Ships

The United States Seizes for the War Period 500,000 Tons of Dutch Shipping

The April issue of CURRENT HISTORY MAGAZINE contained a brief reference to the intention of the United States and British Governments to seize the Dutch shipping in their ports on account of Holland's refusal to carry food cargoes for fear of offending Germany. The two Governments took action March 20, 1918, when all Dutch shipping in American and British harbors was seized by the naval authorities of the two countries. The total of shipping acquired is estimated at 750,000 tons, 500,000 being in American waters. The largest Dutch steamship, the Nieuw Amsterdam, which was in New York Harbor at the time, was not seized, but was permitted to return to Holland with a cargo of food, as it had been agreed when she made her outward voyage, during the pending of the negotiations, that, whatever the result, she would be immune; moreover, all Dutch shipping outward bound to American waters at the date of the seizure which had not yet reached port were also to be permitted to return to their home ports.

President Wilson's proclamation directing the seizure stated that "the law "and practice of nations accords to a "belligerent power the right in times of "military exigency and for purposes "essential to the prosecution of war, to take over and utilize neutral vessels lying within its jurisdiction." The President also made a formal statement in which he reviewed the negotiations with Holland for the restoration of her merchant marine lying idle in American ports to a normal condition of activity for the transportation of foodstuffs. He had sought to have these Dutch ships carry food for Switzerland, for Belgian relief, and for Holland as well. He stated that on Jan. 25, 1918, the Dutch Minister proposed that

one hundred and fifty thousand tons of Dutch shipping should at the discretion of the United States be employed partly in the service of Belgian relief and partly for Switzerland on safe conduct to Cette, France, and that for each ship sent to Holland in the service of Belgian relief a corresponding vessel should leave Holland for the United States. Two Dutch ships in the United States ports with cargoes of foodstuffs were to proceed to Holland, similar tonnage being sent in exchange from Holland to the United States for charter as in the case of other Dutch ships lying in the United States ports.

The President stated that shortly afterward Holland rejected her own proposals, presumably through fear of German submarines, every suggestion thereafter was postponed, and answers were delayed, until finally, on March 7, it became clear that Holland was prevented by German coercion from fulfilling any agreement to put her ships into service; it was then concluded to exercise the sovereign rights of a belligerent under the international law of "angary," and to place the Dutch ships under American jurisdiction. The President concluded as follows:

We have informed the Dutch Government that her colonial trade will be facilitated and that she may at once send ships from Holland to secure the bread cereals which her people require. These ships will be freely bunkered and will be immune from detention on our part. The liner Nieuw Amsterdam, which came within our jurisdiction under an agreement for her return, will, of course, be permitted at once to return to Holland. Not only so, but she will be authorized to carry back with her the two cargoes of foodstuffs which Holland would have secured under the temporary chartering agreement had not Germany prevented. Ample compensation will be paid to the Dutch owners of the ships which will be put into our service and suitable provision will be made to meet the possibility of ships being lost through enemy action.

It is our earnest desire to safeguard to the fullest extent the interests of Holland and of her nationals. By exercising in this crisis our admitted right to control all property within our territory we do no wrong to Holland. The manner in which we proposed to exercise this right and our proposals made to Holland concurrently therewith, cannot, I believe, fail to evidence to Holland the sincerity of our friendship toward her.

The seizure of the Dutch ships was accomplished without friction on March 20 by manning them with American naval officers, with the co-operation of the United States Shipping Board. The Dutch crews were released, and many of the officers and sailors returned to Holland a few days later.

The action of the American and British authorities produced much agitation in Holland; the Dutch newspapers bitterly denounced the action as unwarranted. A statement appeared in the Official Gazette of the Netherlands Government on March 30 in which the seizure was characterized as an act of violence. The statement asserted that the act was "indefensible from the viewpoint of international law and unjustifiable." Denial was made that an agreement failed through German pressure. The Dutch official statement ended as follows:

The powers in question, owing to the loss of ships, felt constrained to replace the tonnage by obtaining the disposal of a very large number of ships which belonged not to them but to the Netherlands. They became aware that the Netherlands Government could not permit the ships to sail in the interest of the associated Governments except on the conditions imposed by neutrality, but which were, in the judgment of the Governments, not sufficiently in accordance with their interests. Therefore, they decided to seize the Dutch merchant fleet in so far as it lay within their power.

The Netherlands Government deems it its duty, especially in serious times such as the present, to speak with complete candor. It voices the sentiments of the entire Dutch Nation, which sees in the seizure an act of violence which it will oppose with all the energy of its conviction and its wounded national feeling.

According to the Presidential statement, this procedure offers Holland ample opportunity to obtain bread grain. This is so only apparently; for would it not be an irresponsible act, after the experiences of Dutch ships in American and British ports, to permit other ships to sail to these ports without adequate guarantees that these experiences shall not occur?

The American Government has always appealed to right and justice, has always come forward as the champion of small nations. That it now co-operates in an act diametrically opposed to those principles is a proceeding which can find no counterweight in the manifestations of friendship or assurances of lenient application of the wrong committed.

The United States Government proceeded at once to put the commandeered ships into service. On April 12 Secretary Lansing issued a statement answering the Dutch protest in detail. After pointing out that the Netherlands Government had not questioned the legality of the action taken by the United States, Secretary Lansing showed that it had involved no element of unfriendliness and was justified by the evidence in the case. Events had proved that to have granted bunker coal and food cargoes on ordinary terms would have released foodstuffs in Holland for sale to Germany and "would in fact have been an act beneficial to the enemy and having no relation to our friendship to the Netherlands."

Air Raids on Paris and London

A Historical Summary

Paris experienced one of the most disastrous air raids of the war on the night of March 11, 1918, when nine squadrons of German airplanes, aggregating nearly sixty units, took part in an attack on the city and suburbs. Several buildings were demolished and set on fire. The number of persons killed was 34, and there were in addition 79 injured, 88 of these casualties being in Paris.

In addition to the bomb victims, 66 persons were suffocated through crowding in a panic into a Metropolitan (subway) Railway entrance to take refuge from the raiders. These were for the most part women and children.

A fog which had covered the city in the morning settled down again in the early evening. It was thick enough to cause the general belief that there was little chance that the Germans would attempt an air raid. This belief, however, was shattered at 9:10 o'clock, when the warning was sounded of the approach of hostile aircraft. The raid ended shortly after midnight, with a loss to the Germans of four machines, which were brought down by the French anti-aircraft defenses.

Mr. Baker, the United States Secretary of War, was in conference with General Tasker H. Bliss, the American Chief of Staff, in a hotel suite when the air alarm was sounded. Secretary Baker was not disturbed by the noise of the sirens or the barrage of the anti-aircraft guns, but the hotel management, fearing for the safety of himself and his party, persuaded the members to descend to the wine cellar, where later they were joined by Major Gen. William M. Black.

Mr. Baker, in the course of a statement the following day, said: "It was my first experience of the actualities of war and a revelation of the methods inaugurated by an enemy who wages the same war against women and children as against soldiers. If his object is to damage property, the results are trifling when compared with his efforts. If his object is to weaken the people's morale, the reply is given by the superb conduct of the people of Paris. Moreover, aerial raids on towns, which are counterpart of the pitiless submarine war and the attacks against American rights, are the very explanation of the reasons why America entered the war. We are sending our soldiers to Europe to fight until the world is delivered from these horrors."

THE ENEMY MACHINES

George Prade, a leading French authority on aircraft, told a newspaper correspondent that the German airplanes used in the attack on Paris were the result of a construction program decided on by the German Staff last Summer to meet in advance what is generally known in France as the American aviation program.

When it was announced that the Americans had decided to construct an enormous air fleet for service on the western front, the German War Staff developed plans for much more powerful machines. In June and July, 1917, they began the construction in series of more than 2,000 engines much higher powered than those in previous use. These consisted of Mercedes engines of 260 horse power with six cylinders and Maybach and Benz, both 250 horse power, and with six cylinders. These engines took the place of heavier but less powerful six and eight cylinder engines, ranging from 225 to 235 horse power. The Germans thus not only gained in power, but definitely adopted a plan for planes with two motors and two independent propellers. Each new machine was built with three chasses, a middle one carrying the crew, and two outside, each carrying an engine and a propeller. Three distinct types were developed, known, respectively, as Gothas, Friedrichshafens, and A. E. G.'s.

The length of wings ranges from 72½ to 86 feet. The propellers in earlier machines were placed at the rear, but now they are on the front of the cars. Machines of all three types carry either three or four men, and are fitted with three appliances for launching bombs. The projectiles vary enormously, ranging from aerial torpedoes, the smallest of which weighs two hundredweight, down to small shrapnel bombs. Each of these machines carries a minimum of 153 gallons of petrol and 15 gallons of oil, sufficient for at least a four hours' flight. Their average speed is between 80 and 90 miles an hour.

Referring to the question of hitting any given target, M. Prade said it was practically impossible to strike any particular objective when a plane was traveling at a rate of thirty-eight to forty yards a second. A bomb must be dropped more or less at random, which is the reason why such form of warfare is simply criminal. It is impossible to tell where the bomb will fall. Three men are generally sufficient to handle a machine, one for each engine and a third to drop bombs. The fourth man carried is generally a pilot, who is able from his knowledge of Paris districts to direct the airplane more or less accurately toward objectives.

Big raiding machines generally are accompanied by a large number of smaller two-seated, single-motor planes of 180 to 260 horse power, such as are generally used for reconnoissance purposes. These planes, of which the Hanover is the newest type, are usually of only thirty-eight to forty feet wing spread, but can get up to 20,000 feet carrying four small bombs.