Chapter 14

SUBMISSION

It was true. A dozen Uhlans rode into the village, trotting along on their big, rawboned horses, as coolly as if they had been on parade in Berlin. Only these men did not look like parade soldiers. Their uniforms were of the neutral gray that faded into the background at short distances, and they were dirty and travel worn, besides. Their horses, however, were still in fine condition, for it was a part of their training to see to it, wherever they were, that their mounts were properly cared for.

The soldiers ignored entirely the few people who still remained outside their houses. Most of the villagers, impressed by what Paul had said, or, like Raymond, the blustering butcher, more afraid of their wives than of the foreign enemy, had gone within, and the place was very quiet. But those who had not gone in greeted the Germans with sullen looks, which did not provoke so much as a smile.

One of the Uhlans, evidently detailed in advance for the duty, produced proclamations and orders, like the ones the refugees had described. These he affixed to posts and buildings in conspicuous places. Then he joined his fellows, and the little troop rode on, with a clattering of hoofs to the mairie, the official centre of Hannay. There stood the maire, a small, spectacled, frightened man, with the parish priest to support him, waiting for them. Paul and Arthur drew near to listen.

"Which is the burgomeister?" asked a young lieutenant with closely cropped head and a tiny blonde moustache, which he had tried in vain to cultivate so that it would resemble the moustache that the German Kaiser's pictures have made famous. Paul noticed that this young officer spoke excellent French, with hardly a trace of an accent. It impressed him as showing how well the Germans had prepared for this war that apparently only they had known was bound to come.

"It is I," said the little man very promptly.

"Say 'Sir!' when you speak to a German officer!" thundered the lieutenant. "And salute! Tell all your people to do so, also."

"Yes, sir," said the maire. "But how are we to know it is an officer we see? We poor people do not understand all about your uniforms."

"If you are in doubt, salute every German soldier," said the officer contemptuously. "They are worthy of your salutes in any case, and it will be better for your people to salute a thousand soldiers without the necessity of doing so than to fail to salute one officer who is entitled to the honor."

"Yes, sir," said the maire, meekly.

"Hannay is occupied by the German army," said the lieutenant, then, smiling a little at the maire's timidity. Was he wondering if a German burgomeister would submit as tamely were it a German village that had witnessed the arrival of invading troops? Probably not! Few German officers in those days thought it possible that an enemy's foot would ever tread the soil of the fatherland. No such fear had yet assailed them.

"You and your people," the lieutenant went on, "must observe exactly the rules that are posted in the proclamations, especially with regard to arms. We shall not remain here, but other troops will arrive before nightfall. When they come all arms must be piled here, waiting for them. Five hundred loaves of bread, a hundred hams, twenty-five barrels of flour, five steers and ten barrels of wine are requisitioned, and must be turned over to the commissary department upon its order."

The maire threw up his hands in horror.

"But, sir, we are poor people!" he cried. "We shall starve if all those things are required of us! We shall not have enough for our own needs."

"That is your concern," said the German officer indifferently. "The German army must be supplied; it is delayed in Belgium because of the unwarranted resistance of the Belgian government to its peaceable passage."

"But--"

"Silence! No argument! You will provide the supplies that are required. In addition all gasoline in the place is to be collected and turned over to the proper authorities. Payment will be made for all private property that may be taken."

He barked out a sharp order then, and the Uhlans rode on. Paul turned to Arthur, whose eyes were blazing.

"Did you hear that?" he cried. "He talks as if we were to be blamed for defending ourselves! Is that the way the Germans mean to talk?"

"I suppose so," said Paul. "I have heard before that they would do that. They say, you see, that all they wanted was permission to send their troops across Belgium to reach France. Perhaps they really believed that we should not resist. If we had not, they would not have damaged the country, and perhaps if they had won in the war, they would have paid for whatever injury was done. But how absurd! If we had allowed that, without making any further attempt to stop them, we should really have been just as badly off."

"I don't understand that, Paul. I would rather see the whole country ruined than have it act so, but if we had made no resistance they could not have done things like this, could they?"

"No, perhaps not. But think a minute, Arthur. The French, then, would have come over the border on their side. The French and German armies would have met in Belgium, and neither would have considered our poor country. They would have fought in our fields, and seized our forts. Each would have bombarded our cities, and neither would have been our friend. Now, as it is, we are suffering for France, and France and her ally, England, must take our part. Perhaps they will not be strong enough to save us at once, but they will be obliged to stand by us, for the sake of their own honor."

"Yes, that is true. We shall have friends, at least. Oh, Paul, I suppose it was right not to attack those Germans, but when that officer spoke so, I could have tried to kill him with my bare hands!"

"He is a bully, Arthur. I suppose there are officers like that in every army. But all the Germans are not like him. You must remember that there are some, at least, like Colonel Schmidt who gave us our freedom after we had been caught. He was kind to us, and he would have been courteous here, had he been in the place of this lieutenant."

Now, when the Uhlans had gone, the people began to come out of their houses again. News of the demand that had been made upon Hannay spread rapidly, and after a little while there was a great deal of bustle and confusion as efforts were made to obtain what was required. The maire came to Paul and asked him what the Germans would do if the things were not provided.

"I don't know," said Paul. "And I think it would be better not to find out, if you can possibly get them. Have them ready, and then when the new force comes, see if the commander is not more reasonable than the officer who was here. But it is better to take no chances. And he said that they would pay."

"Yes, that is so," said the distracted little man. "Eh? Well, I suppose we had better do as you say. Our lives and our homes are worth more than the food to us."

But there were sullen, angry looks among the villagers as they went about their preparations. There seemed to be a revulsion of feeling in favor of the plan of resistance of Raymond, the butcher, and there were scowls for Paul, who had spoiled that plan.

"I think there is nothing more that we can do here," said Paul to Arthur. "Let's go on. It's just as important as ever for us to get somewhere where the information we have can be of use. Everything I see makes me more and more certain that the principal German attack will be delivered in this direction. And I am not sure that that is generally known yet. I heard officers in Liege, when we were waiting to see General Leman, say that the French were planning a great movement from Belfort, that they thought the Germans were likely to make a powerful attack from Alsace and Lorraine. If so, their information is wrong."

"But they must know by this time that the Germans are coming through Belgium instead, in great force, I should think."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. They may think it is a feint. It might be, too. You see, they are throwing out their cavalry. We saw a dozen Uhlans, but there must be two or three thousand dozen of them. They are like a great human screen, thrown in front of the army. A screen with eyes. They hide what is going on behind them from the enemy, but they themselves can see plainly."

"But even if it is true, I should think it might work both ways, Paul. If the French advance from Belfort, and the main body of the Germans is in this quarter, won't the French in Alsace win very easily?"

"Perhaps, just at the beginning. But this is the great danger. If the Germans could advance on this line without meeting any great resistance, they would be able to swing around and get in the rear of a French army that had crossed the border into Alsace, but the French army could not come into a position to threaten the rear or the communications of the Germans. There might be a great disaster. And just because it was believed that Germany would find the road through Belgium the quickest and the easiest for an invasion of France, some French and Belgian officers believed that if war came, Germany would only make a threat through Belgium, and would start her real attack on some other line."

"Well, we ought to give the information, whether it will be of any great use or not. It isn't for us to think about that."

"You're right there, Arthur! Let's slip away quietly. We have done these people here a great service, but they don't quite understand, and I think that instead of being grateful they're almost ready to be suspicious. Perhaps they think we were really trying to help the Germans."

So they slipped out of the village. If any of the villagers of Hannay noticed, they said nothing. They had enough to keep them busy and to occupy their minds, as well. They were learning that this war, of which they knew so little, was affecting them almost as much as if they were actually fighting.

Outside of Hannay, as they moved along toward the north the ground rose gradually, and the road brought them, in less than a mile, to the top of a hill that gave them an excellent view of the surrounding countryside. From Liege there still came the thunder of the big guns, but from other directions they gathered evidence that the fortress was no longer guarding the country. It was still holding out, and was undoubtedly keeping a great many Germans busy. But more Germans had swept around it, and the evidences of their activities were plain.

On all sides smoke was rising, marking burned farmhouses, even whole villages that for one reason or another had been given to the flames. They could see now the smoking ruins of the village whence the refugees who had really caused them to stop in Hannay had come, a scene of desolation that looked all the worse for the bright sunlight in which it was bathed. That same sunlight, too was reflected ever and again on tiny points of steel.

"Uhlans--the sun shines on their lance heads," explained Paul. He looked gloomily at the scene. "Ah, they will have to pay! Perhaps an enemy will cross the Rhine and carry fire and sword into their lands, too. I hope so--for the sake of the poor, homeless ones."

"But you said it was wrong for them to defend themselves--that the Germans had the right to do like that!" said Arthur, wonderingly.

"I said it was wrong for them to give the Germans an excuse to destroy their homes and kill their men," said Paul. "Wrong only because it is useless."

The descending road turned just below the crest of the hill on which they stood. And suddenly a bugle sounded, startlingly near. The two scouts had been so occupied in watching the country for miles about that they had given no heed to what might be going on close by. And so now while they stood in amazement and dismay, German soldiers began to appear over the hilltop, and in a moment they were surrounded by hundreds of the men whose uniforms were so familiar. It was a battalion of German infantry, and in a minute more they had been seized, and were being escorted to the rear, where in a few moments a burly major, plainly a soldier of the old school, and the commander of the battalion, questioned them.

They told their story plainly and truthfully, though they omitted, of course, all the incidents of the adventurous period between their discovery of the spy Ridder and their first capture.

"We are only doing what Colonel Schmidt told us to do, sir," said Paul. "We explained to him that we would try to reach Brussels, and after we got to Huy, we were compelled to come this way."

The major nodded.

"Pfadfinder, hein?" he said. This, as both Paul and Arthur knew, was what the Boy Scouts were called in Germany, just as in France and Belgium they were called Eclaireurs Francais or Eclaireurs Belges, as the case might be. "You can go no further this way. We shall take you to Hannay, and there you will have to stay for a time. No civilians are allowed at this time to leave their own villages. The whole country beyond here is a battleground, for we shall soon be in touch with the enemy on the way to Brussels. Still, you shall be safe enough. I have a boy of my own, who is a Pfadfinder with a troop in Eisenach."