Chapter 5

And they answered: "Brother, we come!"

Thousands and thousands they pressed, shoulder to shoulder--men, women, and children, and the beasts lying down behind, till the living dike was formed. And that blackness came on, nearer, nearer, till, like the whites of glaring eyes, the wave crests glinted in the dark rushing flood. And the sound of the raging waters was as a roar from a million harsh mouths.

But the Voice called: "Hold, brothers! Hold!"

And from the living dike came answer: "Brother! We hold!"

Then the sky blackened to night. And the terrible dark water broke on that dike of life; and from all the thin living wall rose such cry of struggle as never was heard.

But above it ever the Voice called: "Hold! My brave ones, hold!"

And ever the answer came from those drowning mouths, of men and women, of little children and the very beasts: "Brother! We hold!" But the black flood rolled over and on. There, down in its dark tumult, beneath its cruel tumult, I saw men still with arms linked; women on their knees, clinging to earth; little children drifting--dead, all dead; and the beasts dead. And their eyes were still open facing that death. And above them the savage water roared. But clear and high I heard the Voice call: "Brothers! Hold! Death is not! We live!"

Can Germany Be Starved Out?

An Answer by Sixteen German Specialists[1]

[Footnote 1: Die Deutsche Volksernährung und der Englische Aushungerungsplan. Eine Denkschrift von Friedrich Aereboe, Karl Ballod, Franz Beyschlag, Wilhelm Caspari, Paul Eltzbacher, Hedwig Heyl, Paul Krusch, Robert Kuczynski, Kurt Lehmann, Otto Lemmermann, Karl Oppenheimer, Max Rubner, Kurt von Rümker, Bruno Tacke, Hermann Warmbold, und Nathan Zuntz. Herausgegeben von Paul Eltzbacher. (Friedr. Vieweg and Sohn. Braunschweig. 1914.)]

[From The Annalist of New York, March 1, 1915.]

BERLIN, Feb. 1, 1915.

Probably the most interesting economic problem in the world at this moment is whether England can succeed in starving out Germany. While the world at large is chiefly interested in the vast political issues involved, the question interests the Germans not only from that standpoint, but also--and how keenly!--from the mere bread-and-butter standpoint. For if Germany cannot feed its own population during the long war that its foes are predicting with so much assurance, her defeat is only a question of time.

That the German Government is keenly aware of the dangers of the situation is evident from the rigorous measures that it has taken to conserve and economize the food supply. After having fixed maximum prices for cereals soon after the war began, the Government last week decided to requisition and monopolize all the wheat and rye in the country, and allow the bakers to sell only a limited quantity of bread (2.2 pounds per capita a week) to each family. It had previously taken measures to restrict the consumption of cereals for other purposes than breadmaking; the feeding of rye was prohibited and its use in producing alcohol was restricted by 40 per cent.; a percentage of potato flour was ordered added to rye flour, and of the latter to wheat flour in making bread. These are but a few of the economic measures adopted by the Government since the outbreak of the war.

The general opinion of the people in Germany is that the country cannot be starved out, and this opinion is asserted with a great deal of patriotic fervor, particularly by newspaper editors. The leading scientists of the country, moreover, have taken up the question in a thoroughgoing way and investigated it in all its bearings. A little book ("Die Deutsche Volksernährung und der Englische Aushungerungsplan") has just been issued, giving the conclusions of sixteen specialists in various fields, which will be briefly summarized here. Economists, statisticians, physiologists, agricultural chemists, food specialists, and geologists have all taken part in producing a composite view of the whole subject; it is not a book of special contributions by individual specialists, but is written in one cast and represents the compared and boiled-down conclusions of the sixteen scholars.

The authors by no means regard the problem of feeding Germany without foreign assistance as an easy and simple one; on the contrary, they say it is a serious one, and calls for the supreme effort of the authorities and of every individual German; and only by energetic, systematic, and continued efforts of Government and people can they prevent a shortage of food from negativing the success of German arms. Yet they feel bound to grapple the problem as one calling for solution by the German people alone, for very small imports of food products can be expected from the neutral countries of Europe, and none at all from the United States and other oversea countries, and the small quantities that do come in will hardly be more than enough to make good the drain upon Germany's own available stocks in helping to feed the people of Belgium and Poland.

The simplest statistical elements of the problem are the following: Germany, with a population of 68,000,000, was consuming food products, when the war broke out, equivalent to an aggregate of 90,420 billion calories, including 2,307,000 tons of albumen; whereas the amount now available, under unchanged methods of living and feeding, is equal to only 67,870 billion calories, with 1,543,000 tons of albumen. Thus, there will be an apparent deficit of 22,590 billion calories and 764,000 tons of albumen. On the other hand, the authors hold that the minimum physiological requirements are only 56,750 billion calories, containing 1,605,000 tons of albumen, which would give a large surplus of calories and a small deficit of albumen, but they make certain recommendations which, if carried into effect, would bring the available supply up to 81,250 billion calories and 2,023,000 tons of albumen.

Germany raises (average for 1912-13) about 4,500,000 tons of wheat and imports nearly 2,000,000 tons, (about 73,000,000 bushels.) On the other hand, it exports about 530,000 tons net of the 11,900,000 tons of rye produced. It imports nearly 3,000,000 tons of low-grade barley and about 1,000,000 of maize, both chiefly for feeding stock. Its net imports of grain and legumes are 6,270,000 tons. Of its fruit consumption, about 30 per cent. has been imported. While Germany has been producing nearly its entire meat supply at home, this has been accomplished only by the very extensive use of foreign feedstuffs. The authors of this work estimate that the imports of meats and animals, together with the product from domestic animals fed with foreign feedstuffs, amount to not less than 33 per cent. of the total consumption. They also hold that about 58 per cent. of the milk consumed in Germany represents imports and the product of cows fed with foreign feedstuffs. Nearly 40 per cent. of the egg consumption was hitherto imported. The consumption of fish has averaged 576,000 tons, of which not less than 62 per cent. was imported; and the home fisheries are now confined, besides the internal waters, almost wholly to the Baltic Sea--which means the loss of the catch of 142,000 tons hitherto taken from the North Sea. Even the German's favorite beverage, beer, contains 13 per cent. of imported ingredients.

The authors assume, as already intimated, that nearly all of these imports will be lost to Germany during the full duration of the war, and they take up, under this big limitation, the problem of showing how Germany can live upon its own resources and go on fighting till it wins. They undertake to show how savings can be made in the use of the supplies on hand, and also how production can be increased or changed so as to keep the country supplied with food products.

In the first place, they insist that the prohibition of the export of grain be made absolute; in other words, the small exception made in favor of Switzerland, which has usually obtained most of its grain from Germany, must be canceled. Savings in the present supplies of grain and feedstuffs must be made by a considerable reduction in the live stock, inasmuch as the grain, potatoes, turnips, and other stuffs fed to animals will support a great many more men if consumed directly by them. From the stock of cattle the poorer milkers must be eliminated and converted into beef, 10 per cent. of the milch cows to be thus disposed, of. Then swine, in particular, must be slaughtered down to 65 per cent. of the present number, they being great consumers of material suitable for human food. In Germany much skim milk and buttermilk is fed to swine; the authors demand that this partial waste of very valuable albumens be stopped. The potato crop--of which Germany produces above 50,000,000 tons a year, or much more than any other land--must be more extensively drawn upon than hitherto for feeding the people. To this end potato-drying establishments must be multiplied; these will turn out a rough product for feeding animals, and a better sort for table use. It may be added here that the Prussian Government last Autumn decided to give financial aid to agricultural organizations for erecting drying plants; also, that the Imperial Government has decreed that potatoes up to a maximum of 30 per cent. may be used by the bakers in making bread--a measure which will undoubtedly make the grain supply suffice till the 1915 crop is harvested. It is further recommended that more vegetables be preserved, whether directly in cold storage or by canning or pickling. Moreover, the industrial use of fats suitable for human food (as in making soaps, lubricating oils, &c.) must be stopped, and people must eat less meat, less butter, and more vegetables. Grain must not be converted into starch. People must burn coke rather than coal, for the coking process yields the valuable by-product of sulphate of ammonia, one of the most valuable of fertilizers, and greatly needed by German farmers now owing to the stoppage of imports of nitrate of soda from Chile.

In considering how the German people may keep up their production of food, the authors find that various factors will work against such a result. In the first place, there is a shortage of labor, nearly all the able-bodied young and middle-aged men in the farming districts being in the war. There is also a scarcity of horses, some 500,000 head having already been requisitioned for army use, and the imports of about 140,000 head (chiefly from Russia) have almost wholly ceased. The people must therefore resort more extensively to the use of motor plows, and the State Governments must give financial assistance to insure this wherever necessary; and such plows on hand must be kept more steadily in use through company ownership or rental. It may be remarked here, again, that the Prussian Government is also assisting agricultural organizations to buy motor plows. The supply of fertilizers has also been cut down by the war. Nitrate has just been mentioned. The authors recommend that the Government solve this problem by having many of the existing electrical plants turn partly to recovering nitrogen from the atmosphere. This, they say, could be done without reducing the present production of electricity for ordinary purposes, since only 19 per cent. of the effective capacity of the 2,000,000 horse power producible by the electrical plants of Germany is actually used. The supply of phosphoric fertilizers is also endangered through the stoppage of imports of phosphate rock (nearly 1,000,000 tons a year) as well as the material from which to make sulphuric acid; also, through the reduction in the production of the iron furnaces of the country, from the slag of which over 2,000,000 tons of so-called Thomas phosphate flour was produced, will involve a big reduction in the make of that valuable fertilizer. Thus, there is a lack of horses, of fertilizers, and of the guiding hand of man. This last, however, can be partly supplied by utilizing for farm work such of the prisoners of war as come from the farm. As Germany now holds considerably more than 600,000 prisoners, it can draw many farm laborers from among them. Prisoners are already used in large numbers in recovering moorland for agricultural purposes.

This latter remark suggests one of the recommendations of the authors for increasing agricultural production--the increased recovery of moorlands. They show that Germany has at least 52,000 square miles (more than 33,000,000 acres) of moors convertible into good arable land, which, with proper fertilizing, can be made at once richly productive; they yield particularly large crops of grain and potatoes. Moreover, the State Governments must undertake the division of large landed estates among small proprietors wherever possible--and this is more possible just now than ever, owing to the fact that many large owners have been killed in battle. The reason for such a division is that the small holder gets more out of the acre than the large proprietor.

As Germany makes a large surplus of sugar, the authors advise that the area planted in beets be reduced and the land thus liberated be planted in grain, potatoes, and turnips; as a matter of fact, it is reported that the Government is now considering the question of reducing the beetroot acreage by one-fourth. The authors also recommend that sugar be used to some extent in feeding stock, sweeting low-grade hay and roots with it to make them more palatable and nutritious. It is also regarded as profitable to leave 20 per cent. of sugar in the beets, so as to secure a more valuable feed product in the remnants. Still another agricultural change is to increase the crops of beans, peas, and lentils--vegetables which contain when dried as much nutrition as meat. Germany will need to increase its home production of these crops to replace the 300,000 tons of them hitherto imported.

Such are the principal points covered by these experts. Their conclusion is that, if their recommendations be carried out fully, and various economies be practiced--they could not be touched on in the limits of this article--Germany can manage to feed its people. But they insist, in their earnest, concluding words, that this can only be done by carrying out thoroughly all the methods of producing and saving food products advised by them. It is a serious problem, indeed, but one which, all Germany is convinced, can and will be solved.

HOCH DER KAISER

BY GEORGE DAVIES

_HOCH DER KAISER! Amen! Amen! We of the pulpit and bar, We of the engine and car; Hail to the Caesar who's given us men, Our rightful heritage back again._

Who kicks the dancing shoes from our feet; Snatches our mouths from the hot forced meat; Drags us away from our warm padded stalls; From our ivory keys, our song books and balls; Orders man's hands from the children's go-carts; Closes our fool schools of "ethics" and "arts." Puts our ten fingers on triggers and swords, Marshals us into War's legions by hordes.

_Hoch der Kaiser! Amen! Amen! We of the sea and the land; We of the clerking band; Hail to the Caesar who's given us men Our rightful heritage back again._

_WHO SUMMONS:_

These women who write of loves that are loose, (Those little perversionist scribes of the Deuce!) Laughter of lies lilting lewd at their lips, Their souls and brains both in a maudlin eclipse; Their bosoms as bare as their stories and songs; These coaxers of dogs with their "rights" and their wrongs.

_WHO COMMANDS:_

Strike from their shoulders the transparent mesh; Mark the Red Cross on the cloth for their flesh.

_WHO ORDAINS:_

Ye, men who seem women in work and at play; Ye, who do blindly as women may say; Ye, who kill life in the smug cabarets; Ye, all, at the beck of the little tea-tray; Ye, all, of the measure of daughters of clay.

Waken to face me: be women no more; But fellow-men born, from top branch to the core; Men who must fight--who can kill, who can die, While women once more shall be covered and shy.

_Hoch der Kaiser! Amen! Amen! We of the hills and the homes; We of the plows and the tomes; Hail to the Caesar who's given us men Our rightful heritage back again._

The Submarine of 1578

[From The London Times, Jan. 16, 1915.]

The earliest description of a practical under-water boat is given by William Bourne in his book entitled "Inventions or Devices," published in 1578. Instructions for building such a boat are given in detail, and it has been conjectured that Cornelius van Drebbel, a Dutch physician, used this information for the construction of the vessel with which in the early part of the seventeenth century he carried out some experiments on the Thames. It is doubtful, however, whether van Drebbel's boat was ever entirely submerged, and the voyage with which he was credited, from Westminster to Greenwich, is supposed to have been made in an awash condition, with the head of the inventor above the surface. More than one writer at the time referred to van Drebbel's boat and endeavored to explain the apparatus by which his rowers were enabled to breathe under water.

Van Drebbel died in 1634, and no illustration of his boat has been discovered. Nineteen years later the vessel illustrated here was constructed at Rotterdam from the designs of a Frenchman named de Son. This is supposed to be the earliest illustration of any submarine, and the inscription under the drawing, which was printed at Amsterdam in the Calverstraat, (in the Three Crabs,) is in old Dutch, of which the following is a translation:

The inventor of this ship will undertake to destroy in a single day a hundred vessels, and such destruction could not be prevented by fire, storm, bad weather, or the force of the waves, saving only that the Almighty should otherwise will it.

Vain would it be for ships lying in harbor to be regarded as safe, for the inventor could reach anywhere unless prevented by betrayal. None but he could control the craft. Therefore it may truly be called the lightning of the sea.

Its power shall be proven by a trip to the East Indies in six weeks or to France and back in a day, for as fast as a bird flieth can one travel in this boat.

This boat was 72 feet in length, and her greatest height was 12 feet, while the greatest breadth was 8 feet, tapering off to points at the end. Capt. Murray Sueter in his book on submarines gives these and other particulars of the vessel. At either end the boat had a cabin, the air in which remained good for about three hours, and in the middle of the boat was a large paddlewheel rotated by clockwork mechanism, which, it was claimed, would run for eight hours when once wound up. The iron tips at the ends of the vessel were intended for ramming, and the inventor was confident he could sink the biggest English ship afloat by crushing in her hull under water. The boat was duly launched, but on trial of the machinery being made the paddlewheel, though it revolved in air, would not move in the water, the machinery being not powerful enough. This, says Capt. Sueter, was apparently the only reason for de Son's failure, for his principles were distinctly sound, and he was certainly the first inventor of the mechanically propelled semi-submarine boat. After her failure de Son exhibited her for a trifle to any casual passer-by.

THE TORPEDO.

By Katharine Drayton Mayrant Simons, Jr.

Death, our mother, gave us her three gray gifts from the sea-- (Cherish your birthright, Brothers!)--speed, cunning, and certainty. And mailèd Mars, he blest us--but his blessing was most to me!

For the swift gun sometimes falters, sparing the foe afar, And the hid mine wastes destruction on the drag's decoying spar, But I am the wrath of the Furies' path--of the war god's avatar!

Mine is the brain of thinking steel man made to match his own, To guard and guide the death disks packed in the war head's hammered cone, To drive the cask of the thin air flask as the gyroscope has shown.

My brother, the gun, shrieks o'er the sea his curse from the covered deck, My brother, the mine, lies sullen-dumb, agape for the dreadnought's wreck, I glide on the breath of my mother, Death, and my goal is my only check!

More strong than the strength of armored ships is the firing pin's frail spark, More sure than the helm of the mighty fleet are my rudders to their mark, The faint foam fades from the bright screw blades--and I strike from the under dark!

Death, our mother, gave us her three gray gifts from the sea-- (Cherish your birthright, Brothers!)--speed, cunning, and certainty. And mailèd Mars, he blest us--but his blessing was most to me!

"God Punish England, Brother"

A New Hymn of Germany's Gospel of Hatred

[From Public Opinion, London, Feb. 5, 1915.]

The amazing outburst of hatred against England in Germany is responsible for a new form of greeting which has displaced the conventional formulas of salutation and farewell: "God punish England!" ("Gott strafe England!") is the form of address, to which the reply is: "May God punish her!" ("Gott mög'es strafen!")

"This extraordinary formula," says The Mail, "which is now being used all over Germany, is celebrated in a set of verses by Herr Hochstetter in a recent number of the well-known German weekly, Lustige Blätter. In its way this poem is as remarkable as Herr Ernst Lissauer's famous 'Hymn of Hate.'"

Among the prayers at Bruges Cathedral on the Kaiser's birthday was this German chant of hate, "God Punish England!"

A HYMN OF HATE.

Translated by

G. VALENTINE WILLIAMS.

This is the German greeting When men their fellows meet, The merchants in the market-place, The beggars in the street. A pledge of bitter enmity, Thus runs the wingèd word: "God punish England, brother!-- Yea! Punish her, O Lord!"

With raucous voice, brass-throated, Our German shells shall bear This curse that is our greeting To the "cousin" in his lair. This be our German battle cry, The motto on our sword: "God punish England, brother!--Yea! Punish her, O Lord!"

By shell from sea, by bomb from air, Our greeting shall be sped, Making each English homestead A mansion of the dead. And even Grey will tremble As falls each iron word: "God punish England, brother!-- Yea! Punish her, O Lord!"

This is the German greeting When men their fellows meet, The merchants in the market-place, The beggars in the street. A pledge of bitter enmity, Thus runs the winged word: "God punish England, brother!-- Yea! Punish her, O Lord!"

"What German Lutheran pastors think of the gospel of hate that is at present being preached throughout the Fatherland may be judged from an article on the subject written for the Vossische Zeitung of Berlin, by Dr. Julius Schiller of Nürnberg, who describes himself as a royal Protestant pastor," says The Morning Post.

"Before the war, the pastor writes, it was considered immoral to hate; now, however, Germans know that they not only may, but they must hate. Herr Lissauer's 'Hymn of Hate' against England is, he declares, a faithful expression of the feelings cherished in the depths of the German soul.