Chapter 9

BOSTON OFFERS DESPERATE AND BLOODY RESISTANCE TO THE INVADERS

Our wing of the advancing German army remained in Hartford for four days, at the end of which all signs of disorder had ceased; in fact, there was little disorder at any time. The lesson of New Haven’s resistance had been taken to heart, and there was the discouraging knowledge that a row of German six-inch siege-guns were trained on the city from the heights of Elizabeth Park, their black muzzles commanding the grey towers and golden dome of State House, the J. Pierpont Morgan Memorial, the gleaming white new City Hall, the belching chimneys of the Underwood typewriter works, and the brown pile of Trinity College.

There was the further restraining fact that leading citizens of Hartford were held as hostages, their lives in peril, in James J. Goodwin’s palatial home, among these being ex-Governor Morgan G. Buckley, Mayor Joseph H. Lawler, Bishop Chauncey B. Brewster, Dr. Flavel S. Luther, Bishop John J. Nilan, Mrs. Richard M. Bissell, Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn, the Rev. Rockwell Harmon Potter, Charles Hopkins Clark, Rolland F. Andrews, the Rev. Francis Goodwin, Thomas J. Spellacy, and Sol Sontheimer.

So the invaders’ march through New England continued. It is a pitiful story. What could Connecticut and Massachusetts do? With all their wealth and intelligence, with all their mechanical ingenuity, with all their pride and patriotism, what could they do, totally unprepared, more helpless than Belgium, against the most efficient army in Europe?

Three times, between Hartford and Springfield, unorganised bands of Americans, armed with shotguns and rifles, lay in ambush for the advancing enemy and fired upon them. These men declared that they would die before they would stand by tamely and see the homes and fields of New England despoiled by the invader. Whereupon the Germans announced, by means of proclamations showered upon towns and villages from their advance-guard of aeroplanes, that for every German soldier thus killed by Americans in ambush a neighbouring town or village would be burned by fire bombs dropped from the sky. And they carried out this threat to the letter, so that for every act of resistance by the fathers and brothers and sons of New England there resulted only greater suffering and distress for the women and the children.

The average man, especially one with a wife and children, is easily cowed when he has no hope; and presently all resistance ceased. What feeble opposition there was in the first week dwindled to almost nothing in the second week and to less than nothing in the third week. Stamford paid two million dollars in gold, Bridgeport five million, New Haven five million, Hartford twenty million, Fall River three million, Springfield five million, Worcester two million, Providence ten million, Newport fifty million. The smaller cities got off with half a million each, and some of the towns paid as little as one hundred thousand dollars. But every community paid something, and the total amount taken from New England, including a hundred million from New Hampshire, a hundred million from Vermont, and a hundred million from Maine, was eight hundred million dollars, about a third of which was in gold.

With a battle-front fifty or seventy-five miles long, von Kluck’s forces strolled across this fertile and populous region, living off the land, leaving small holding forces with artillery at every important point, a few hundred or a few thousand, while the main army swept relentlessly and resistlessly on. It was a delightful four weeks’ picnic for von Kluck and his men; and at the end of four weeks everything in New England had fallen before them up to the city of Boston, which had been left for the last. _And the total German losses in killed and wounded were less than twenty!_

On July 2, General von Kluck’s army, sweeping forward unopposed, reached the western and southwestern suburbs of Boston, passing through Newton and Brookline, and making a detour to avoid ruining the beautiful golf links where Ouimet won his famous victory over Ray and Vardon. This sportsmanlike consideration was due to the fact that several of the German officers and the Crown Prince himself were enthusiastic golfers.

Meantime there was panic in the city. For days huge crowds had swarmed through Boston’s great railway stations, fleeing to Maine and Canada; and across the Charles River bridge there had passed an endless stream of automobiles bearing away rich families with their jewels and their silver. Among them were automobile trucks from the banks, laden with tons of gold. No boats left the harbour through fear of a grim German battleship that lay outside, plainly visible from the millionaire homes of Nahant and Manchester.

Even now there was talk of resistance, and German Taubes looked down upon a mass meeting of ten thousand frantic citizens gathered in Mechanics Hall on Huntington Avenue; but prudent counsels prevailed. How could Boston resist without soldiers or ammunition or field artillery? Brooklyn had resisted, and now lay in ruins. New Haven had tried to resist, and what had come of it?

At three o’clock on this day of sorrow, with banners flying and bands playing, the German forces--horse, foot, and artillery--entered the Massachusetts capital in two great columns, the one marching down Beacon Street, past the homes of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Julia Ward Howe, the other advancing along Commonwealth Avenue, past the white-columned Harvard Club, past the statues of Alexander Hamilton and William Lloyd Garrison, on under the shade of four rows of elms that give this noble thoroughfare a resemblance to the Avenue de la Grande Armée in Paris.

It was a perfect summer’s day. The sun flashed from the golden dome of the State House on the hill over Boston Common, and from the great white Custom House tower that rose impressively in the distance above the green of the Public Gardens. Boston looked on, dumb with shame and stifled rage, as the invaders took possession of the city and ran up their flags, red, white, and black, above the Old South Meeting House on Washington Street, where Benjamin Franklin was baptised, and above the sacred, now dishonoured, shaft of the Bunker Hill Monument.

Hostages were taken, as usual, these including Major Henry L. Higginson, President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University, Major James M. Curley, Edward A. Filene, Margaret Deland, William A. Paine, Ellery Sedgwick, Mrs. John L. Gardner, Charles W. Eliot, Louis D. Brandeis, Bishop William Lawrence, Amy Lowell, T. Jefferson Coolidge, Thomas W. Lawson, Guy Murchie, and Cardinal O’Connell.

A proclamation was made in the _Transcript_ (now forced to be the official German organ and the only newspaper that was allowed to appear in Boston) that these prominent persons would be held personally responsible for any public disorder or for any failure of the city to furnish the army of occupation with all necessary food and supplies.

On the night of occupation there were scenes of violence, with rioting and looting in various parts of Boston, notably in Washington Street and Tremont Street, where shops were wrecked by mobs from the South End, several thousand of the unruly foreign element, crazed with drink and carrying knives. Against this drunken rabble the American police, sullen and disorganised, could do nothing or would do nothing; and the situation was becoming desperate, when German troops advanced along Washington Street, firing into the crowd and driving back the looters, who surged through Winter Street, a frantic, terrified mass, and scattered over Boston Common.

Here, in front of the Park Street Church, another huge mob of citizens had gathered--five thousand wildly patriotic Irishmen. Armed with clubs, rifles, and pistols, and madly waving the Stars and Stripes, they cursed, cheered, and yelled out insults to the Germans. Suddenly a company of German soldiers with machine-guns appeared on the high ground in front of the State House. Three times a Prussian officer, standing near the St. Gaudens Shaw Memorial, shouted orders to the crowd to disperse; but the Irishmen only jeered at him.

“They want it; let them have it,” said the Prussian. “Fire!”

And three hundred fell before the blast of rifles and machine-guns.

At which the mob of Irish patriots went entirely mad, and, with yells of hatred and defiance, swarmed straight up the hill at the battery that was slaughtering them, shouting: “To hell with ‘em!” “Come on, boys!” charging so fiercely and valiantly, that the Germans were swept from their position, and for a short time a victorious American mob held the approaches to the State House.

Alas, it was for only a short time! The enemy quickly brought forward reinforcements in overwhelming strength, and an hour later there were only dead, wounded and prisoners to tell of this loyal but hopeless effort.

In other parts of the city during this night of terror there were similar scenes of bloodshed, the Germans inflicting terrible punishment upon the people, innocent and guilty suffering alike for every act of disobedience or resistance. There were a few cases of sniping from houses; and for these a score of men, seized indiscriminately in the crowds, were hanged from windows of the offending or suspected buildings. As a further lesson to the city, two of the hostages, chosen by lot, were led out into the Public Gardens the next morning at sunrise and shot near the statue of Edward Everett Hale.

Machine-guns were now placed on the high ground before the Soldiers’ Monument and at other strategic points, and ten thousand soldiers were encamped on Boston Common, the main part of the army being withdrawn, after this overwhelming show of force, to Franklin Park on the outskirts, where heavy siege-guns were set up.

The _Transcript_ appeared that day with a black-lettered proclamation, signed by General von Kluck, to the effect that at the next disorder five hostages would be shot, and six beautiful buildings--the State House, the Custom House, the Boston Public Library, the Opera House, the Boston Art Museum, and the main building of the Massachusetts School of Technology--would be wrecked by shells. This reduced the city to absolute submission.

Mrs. John L. Gardner’s fine Italian palace in the Fenway, with its wealth of art treasures, was turned into a staff headquarters and occupied by the Crown Prince, General von Kluck, and Count Zeppelin. The main body of officers established themselves in the best hotels and clubs, the Copley Plaza, the Touraine, the Parker House, the Somerset, the St. Botolph, the City Club, the Algonquin, the Harvard Club, paying liberally for the finest suites and the best food by the simple method of signing checks to be redeemed later by the city of Boston.

Non-commissioned officers made themselves comfortable in smaller hotels and in private houses and boarding-houses to which they were assigned. A popular eating-place was Thompson’s Spa, where a crush of brass-buttoned German soldiers lunched every day, perched on high stools along the counters, and trying to ogle the pretty waitresses, who did not hide their aversion.

It is worthy of note that the Tavern Club was burned by its own members to save from desecration a spot hallowed by memories of Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Charles Eliot Norton, and George William Curtis.

I must mention another instance of the old-time indomitable New England spirit that came to my knowledge during these sad days. The Germans levied upon the city of Boston an indemnity of three hundred million dollars, this to be paid at the rate of three million dollars a day; and on the morning of July 4, two of von Kluck’s staff officers, accompanied by a military escort, marched down State Street into the now deserted region of banks and vaults and trust companies, to arrange for the regular payment of this sum. Entering the silent halls of a great banking house, they came to a rear office with the door locked. A summons to open being unanswered, they broke down this door; whereupon a shot, fired from within, killed the first soldier who crossed the threshold. A German volley followed, and, when the smoke cleared away, there sat a prominent Boston financier, his father’s Civil War musket clutched in his hands and the look of a hero in his dying eyes. All alone, this uncompromising figure of a man had waited there in his private office ready to defy the whole German army and die for his rights and his convictions.