Part 17

"We expect, therefore, that you take this warning to heart, and that we may not be forced to take stronger measures against those among you who either cannot or will not submit!"

* * * * *

There was a suggestion of power and strength in the name itself, and in setting out to inspect the Great Belt Forts there were few in the party who had not visions of uncovering the secrets of something very much in the nature of a Baltic Gibraltar or Heligoland. "Number One" or the "International" sub-commission turned out in full strength in anticipation of what had generally been regarded as the crowning, as it was the concluding, event of the visit. The very protestations of the Germans only whetted their interest the keener, for it was a precisely similar line to one they had taken in the matter of the visit to Tondern, where there _had_ been something worth seeing. "Look out for surprises in connection with the 'Great Belt' inspection," was the word, and every one in any way entitled to attach himself to what was to be the last party landed before the return of the Commission to England made arrangements to do so.

Brave with swords, bright with brass hats, aglitter with aiguillettes was the imposing line of French, British, Italian, American and Japanese officers who filed across from the _Hercules_ to the _Verdun_ an hour before dawn on the morning of December 16. An hour after darkness descended, wet with rain, bespattered with mud, ashiver with cold, those same officers straggled back to the _Hercules_ again. This is the order in which one of them summed up the day's observation: "The most notable event of the inspection," he said as he warmed his chilled frame before the ward-room fire, "was the sight of the first pig we have clapped eyes on in Germany; the next so was meeting a Hun with enough of a sense of humour to take us three miles round by a muddy road and over ploughed fields and deep ditches to a point he could have reached by a mile of comparatively dry railway track; and the third was a drive through ten miles of Schleswig countryside that was beautiful beyond words, even in the pelting rain. The Great Belt Forts? Oh, yes, we saw them. They were five holes in the ground on top of one hill, four holes in the ground on the top of another fifteen miles away, and a dozen or so ancient guns dumped into the hold of a tug. But--let's talk about the pig."

There is not much that I can add to the succinct summary of the inspection of the forts of the "Baltic Gibraltar." What the sub-commission saw--or rather failed to see--there went a long way toward confirming the impression (which had been growing stronger ever since the arrival of the _Hercules_ at Wilhelmshaven) that Germany had depended upon mines rather than guns for the defence of her coasts. The porker mentioned was the one I alluded to in an earlier chapter as just failing to win the officer sighting it the pool which was to go to the first man who saw a pig in Germany, because an Irish-American member of the party had testified that it had "died from hog cholera an hour before it had been killed." The lovely stretch of farming country driven through showed many signs of its Danish character, and at several windows I even saw the red-and-white flag of the mother country discreetly displayed. This region, of course, falls well north of the line that is expected to form the new Danish boundary.

* * * * *

At the final conference with the German Naval Armistice Commission, which was held in the _Hercules_ on the morning of the 17th, Admiral Goette and his associates, in striking contrast to their belligerent attitude at the first meeting in Kiel, proved thoroughly docile and conciliatory. All of the important points at issue were conceded--including the surrender of submarines building and the delivery of the _Baden_ in place of _Mackensen_--and tentative arrangements were made for future visits of special Allied Commissions whenever these should be deemed necessary to insure the enforcement of the provisions of the armistice. Work on the reconditioning of all Allied merchant ships was to be given precedence over everything else. Considering that he had no trumps either in his hands or up his sleeve, Admiral Goette played his end of the game with considerable skill. Such futile attempts at "bluffing" as he made were invariably traceable to pressure exerted upon him from the "outside," probably Berlin. Personally, in spite of the severe nervous strain he was under (the effects of which were increasingly noticeable at every succeeding conference), he deported himself with a dignity compatible with his heavy responsibilities. The same may be said of Captain Von Müller, which is perhaps as far down the list as it would be charitable to go in this connection.

* * * * *

Weighing anchor at noon of the 18th, the _Hercules_ was locked through into the canal in good time to see in daylight that section which had been passed in darkness in coming through from the North Sea. A rain, which turned into soft snow as the afternoon lengthened, was responsible for rather less frequent and numerous crowds of spectators than on the previous passage. The ubiquitous Russian prisoner was still much in evidence. An especially pathetic figure was that of a lone _poilu_--still in horizon blue, with the skirts of his bedraggled overcoat buttoned back in characteristic fashion--whom I sighted just before dark. Leaning dejectedly on his hoe in a beet-field, he watched the _Hercules_ pass without so much as lifting a finger. Most likely the unlucky chap took her for a German, for the rapturous demonstrations with which a score of his comrades signalized their arrival aboard a few days before showed very clearly how a French prisoner would greet a British ship if he knew her nationality.

The _Hercules_ went into her lock at Brunsbüttel an hour before midnight. The _Regensburg_, which had preceded her through the canal, was already in the adjoining lock, and in attempting to pass on the light cruiser _Constance_ and three British destroyers at the same operation the canal people made rather a mess of things. There was a savage crashing and tearing of metal at one stage, followed by a considerable flow of profanity in two languages. When, the next morning in the Bight, a signal of condolence was made by the _Hercules_ to one of the destroyers following in her wake on the "messy" state of its nose, the reply came back. "Don't worry about my nose. You ought to see the _Regensburg_. I've got a piece of her side-plating on my forecastle!" That was the second time the unlucky _Regensburg_ had come to grief in locking through at Brunsbüttel with the ships of the Allied Naval Commission.

Owing to the fog, the Germans were unable, or unwilling, to send a ship to take off their pilots from the _Hercules_ and escorting destroyers after the outer limits of the mine-fields had been passed, and it became necessary as a consequence to carry them on to Rosyth. The change of air and food incidental to their personally conducted tour to Scapa (to await the next German transport home) was evidently a by no means disagreeable prospect to them, judging by the way they took the news. The steward who reported that the pilot he was looking after had been "stowing away grub like he expected a long continuance of the blockade," may have stumbled upon the reason for their philosophic attitude.

We found the Firth of Forth as we left it--wrapped in fog. There was just enough visibility to make it possible to find the gates in the booms and the main channel under the bridge. The historic voyage came to an end when the _Hercules_, after tying up to the _Queen Elizabeth's_ buoy for a few hours, went into the dry dock at two-thirty in the afternoon of the 20th. The Commission left for London the same evening in a special train provided by the Admiralty.

THE END

Transcriber's Notes:

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Spelling in "dialect" passages not changed.

German nouns printed in lower-case have not been changed to upper-case.

Inconsistently-spaced abbreviations have not been changed.

The following three typographical errors were corrected by referencing a later edition of this book:

Page 90, paragraph ending: "Liverpool or Liverpool?" ended with a comma and closing quote.

Page 144 "the latter being" was printed as "the later being".

Page 287: "model cities" was printed as "model cites".

End of Project Gutenberg's To Kiel in the 'Hercules', by Lewis R. Freeman