CHAPTER XIV

PHILADELPHIA’S FIRST CITY TROOPS DIE IN DEFENCE OF THE LIBERTY BELL

I come now to the point in my narrative where I ceased to be merely a reporter of stirring events, and began to play a small part that Fate had reserved for me in this great international drama. Thank God, I was able to be of service to stricken America, my own country that I have loved so much, although, as correspondent of the London _Times_, it has been my lot to spend years in foreign lands.

Obeying instructions from my paper, I hastened back to the United States, where important events were pending. Von Hindenburg, after his Trenton victory, had strangely delayed his advance against Philadelphia--we were to learn the reason for this shortly--but, as we passed through Savannah, we had news that the invading army was moving southward against General Wood’s reconstructed line of defence that spread from Bristol on the Delaware to Jenkintown to a point three miles below Norristown on the Schuylkill.

The next morning we reached Richmond and here, I should explain, I said good-bye to the rescued lieutenant, an attractive young fellow, Randolph Ryerson, whose home was in Richmond, and whose sister, Miss Mary Ryerson, a strikingly beautiful girl, had met us at Charleston the night before in response to a telegram that her brother was coming and was ill. She nursed him through the night in an uncomfortable stateroom and came to me in the morning greatly disturbed about his condition. The young man had a high fever, she said, and had raved for hours calling out a name, a rather peculiar name--Widding--Widding--Lemuel A. Widding--over and over again in his delirium.

I tried to reassure her and said laughingly that, as long as it was not a woman’s name he was raving about, there was no ground for anxiety. She gave me her address in Richmond and thanked me very sweetly for what I had done. I must admit that for days I was haunted by that girl’s face and by the glorious beauty of her eyes.

When we reached Washington we found that city in a panic over news of another American defeat. Philadelphia had fallen and all communications were cut off. Furthermore, a third force of Germans had landed in Chesapeake Bay, which meant that the national capital was threatened by two German armies. We now understood von Hindenburg’s deliberation.

In this emergency, Marshall Reid, brother-in-law of Lieutenant Dustin, the crack aviator of the navy, who had been aboard the _Pennsylvania_, volunteered to carry messages from the President to Philadelphia and to bring back news. Reid himself was one of the best amateur flying men in the country and he did me the honour to choose me as his companion.

We started late in the afternoon of August 17 in Mr. Reid’s swift Burgess machine and made the distance in two hours. I shall never forget our feelings as we circled over the City of Brotherly Love and looked down upon wrecks of railroad bridges that lay across the Schuylkill. Shots were fired at us from the aerodrome of the League Island Navy Yard; so we flew on, searching for a safer landing place.

We tried to make the roof landing on the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, but the wind was too high and we finally chanced it among the maples of Rittenhouse Square, after narrowly missing the sharp steeple of St. Mark’s Church. Here, with a few bruises, we came to earth just in front of the Rittenhouse Club and were assisted by Dr. J. William White, who rushed out and did what he could to help us.

Five hours later, Reid started back to Washington with details of reverses sent by military and city authorities that decided the administration to move the seat of government to Chicago without delay. He also carried from me (I remained in Philadelphia) a hastily written despatch to be transmitted from Washington via Kingston to the London _Times_, in which I summed up the situation on the basis of facts given me by my friend, Richard J. Beamish, owner of the Philadelphia _Press_, my conclusion being that the American cause was lost. And I included other valuable information gleaned from reporter friends of mine on the _North American_ and the _Bulletin_. I even ventured a prophecy that the United States would sue for peace within ten days.

“What were General Wood’s losses in the battle of Philadelphia?” I asked Beamish.

“Terribly heavy--nearly half of his army in killed, wounded and prisoners. What could we do? Von Hindenburg outnumbered us from two to one and we were short of ammunition, artillery, horses, aeroplanes, everything.”

“Who blew up those railroad bridges and cut the wires?”

“German spies--there are a lot of them here. They sank a barge loaded with bricks in the Schuylkill just above its joining with the Delaware and blocked the channel so that ten battleships in the naval basin at League Island couldn’t get out.”

“What became of the battleships?”

“Commandant Price opened their valves and sank them in the basin.”

“And the American army, where is it now?” I asked.

“They’ve retreated south of the Brandywine--what’s left of them. Our new line is entrenching from Chester to Upland to Westchester with our right flank on the Delaware; but what’s the use?”

So crushing was the supremacy of the invaders that there was no further thought of resistance in Philadelphia. The German army was encamped in Fairmount Park and it was known that, at the first sign of revolt, German siege-guns on the historic heights of Wissahickon and Chestnut Hill would destroy the City Hall with its great tower bearing the statue of William Penn and the massive grey pile of Drexel and Company’s banking house at the corner of Fifth and Chestnut streets. Von Hindenburg had announced this, also that he did not consider it necessary to take hostages.

There was one act of resistance, however, when the enemy entered Philadelphia that must live among deeds of desperate heroism.

As the German hosts marched down Chestnut Street they came to Independence Hall and here, blocking the way on their sorrel horses with two white mounted trumpeters, was the First City Troop, sixty-five men under Captain J. Franklin McFadden, in their black coats and white doeskin riding-breeches, in the black helmets with raccoon skin plumes, in their odd-shaped riding boots high over the knee, all as in Revolutionary days--here they were drawn up before the statue of George Washington and the home of the Liberty Bell, resolved to die here, fighting as well as they could for these things that were sacred. And they did die, most of them, or fell wounded before a single one of the enemy set foot inside of Independence Hall.

Here is the list of heroes who offered their lives for the cause of liberty:

Captain J. Franklin McFadden, First Lieutenant George C. Thayer, Second Lieutenant John Conyngham Stevens, First Sergeant Thomas Cadwalader, Second Sergeant (Quartermaster) Benjamin West Frazier, Third Sergeant George Joyce Sewell, William B. Churchman, Richard M. Philler, F. Wilson Prichett, Clarence H. Clark, Joseph W. Lewis, Edward D. Page, Richard Tilghman, Edward D. Toland, Jr., McCall Keating, Robert P. Frazier, Alexander Cadwalader, Morris W. Stroud, George Brooke, 3d, Charles Poultney Davis, Saunders L. Meade, Cooper Howell, C. W. Henry, Edmund Thayer, Harry C. Yarrow, Jr., Alexander C. Yarnall, Louis Rodman Page, Jr., George Gordon Meade, Pierson Pierce, Andrew Porter, Richard H. R. Toland, John B. Thayer, West Frazier, John Frazer, P. P. Chrystie, Albert L. Smith, William W. Bodine, Henry D. Beylard, Effingham Buckley Morris, Austin G. Maury, John P. Hollingsworth, Rulon Miller, Harold M. Willcox, Charles Wharton, Howard York, Robert Gilpin Irvin, J. Keating Willcox, William Watkins, Jr., Harry Ingersoll, Russell Thayer, Fitz Eugene Dixon, Percy C. Madeira, Jr., Marmaduke Tilden, Jr., H. Harrison Smith, C. Howard Clark, Jr., Richard McCall Elliot, Jr., George Harrison Frazier, Jr., Oliver Eton Cromwell, Richard Harte, D. Reeves Henry, Henry H. Houston, Charles J. Ingersoll.

It grieved me when I visited the quaint little house on Arch Street with its gabled window and wooden blinds, where Betsey Ross made the first flag of the United States of America, to find a German banner in place of the accustomed thirteen white stars on their square of blue. And again, when I stood beside Benjamin Franklin’s grave in Christ Church Cemetery, I was shocked to see a German flag marking this honoured resting-place. “Benjamin and Deborah, 1790,” was the deeply graven words and, beside them under a kindly elm, the battered headstone of their little four-year-old son, “Francis F.--A delight to all who knew him.” Then a German flag!

I began to wonder why we had not learned a lesson from England’s lamentable showing in 1915. What good did all our wealth do us now? It would be taken from us--had not the Germans already levied an indemnity of four hundred millions upon Philadelphia? And seized the Baldwin locomotive works, the greatest in the world, employing 16,000 men? And the Cramp shipbuilding yards? And the terminus at Point Breeze down the river of the great Standard Oil Company’s pipe line with enormous oil supplies?

Philadelphians realised all this when it was too late. They knew that ten thousand American soldiers, killed in battle, were lying in fresh-made graves. They knew that the Philadelphia Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania Hospital and the commercial museum buildings nearby that had been changed into hospitals could scarcely provide beds and nurses for wounded American soldiers. And yet, “What can we do?” said Mayor George H. Earle, Jr., to me. “New York City resisted, and you know what happened. Boston rioted, and she had her lesson. No! Philadelphia will not resist. Besides, read this.”

He showed me a message just arrived from Washington saying that the United States was about to sue for peace.

The next day we had news that a truce had been declared and immediately negotiations began between Chicago and Berlin, regarding a peace conference, it being finally decided that this should take place at Mt. Vernon, in the historic home of George Washington, sessions to begin early in September, in order to allow time for the arrival of delegates from Germany.