Part 2

Three men, each carrying a small suit-case, came over the side and saluted the officer of the day and the intelligence officer of the admiral's staff, who awaited them at the head of the gangway. The first was a three-stripe officer of the rank the Germans call Korvettenkapitän, the second a warrant officer, and the third (as we presently were informed) a qualified merchant pilot. The Korvettenkapitän was slender of figure, and had a well-bred, gentlemanly appearance not in the least suggestive of the "Hunnishness" one associated--and with good reason, too, as subsequent experience proved--with the German naval officer. His flushed expression showed plainly that he felt deeply the humiliation of the task assigned him of taking the first enemy warships into a German harbour. His head remained bowed a moment after his final salute; then he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and asked to be conducted to the bridge at once in order to take advantage of the improved visibility in pushing on in through the minefields.

If one felt a touch of involuntary sympathy for the senior naval officer, a glance at the sinister figure of the merchant pilot was an efficacious antidote. Thick-set and muscular of build, with slack-hanging ape-like arms and bandy legs, his corded bull neck was crowned with the prognathous-jawed head of a gorilla, and a countenance that might well have been a composite of the saturnine phizzes of Trotsky and Liebknecht. One knew in an instant that here was the super-Bolshevik, and looked for the red band on his sleeve, which could only have been temporarily removed while he appeared among the Engländers to spy upon the naval officer whom the revolutionists would not permit to act alone. The way things stood between the two became evident almost at once, for the officer informed the British interpreter at the first opportunity that he could not be responsible for the pilot, while the latter, when some query from the Korvettenkapitän respecting the position of a certain buoy was repeated to him, contented himself with drawing his fingers significantly across his throat, clucking in apparent imitation of a severed wind-pipe, and continuing the guzzling of the plate of "kedgeree" which had been engaging his undivided attention at the moment of interruption.

After putting a German pilot aboard each of the four destroyers, the _Regensburg's_ cutter was hoisted in, and we got under weigh again. The visibility had improved considerably, and presently a darker blur on the misty skyline resolved itself into the familiar profile of Heligoland. At first only the loom of the great cliff was discernible, but by the time this had been brought abeam a slender strip of low-lying ground with warehouses, cranes, and the masts of ships, was distinctly visible. All hands crowded to the starboard side to have a glimpse of Germany's famous island outpost, but the nearest thing to a demonstration I saw was by two marines, who were doing a bit of a shuffle on the precarious footing of a turret top and singing lustily:

"Oh, won't it be grand out in Hel-i-go-land, When we've wound up the Watch on the Rhine!"

Whatever illusions they had formed of the "grandness" of Heligoland they were allowed to keep, for the only ones who were given to see at close range the dismal greyness of the island fortress were the members of one of the "air" parties, who made a hurried visit in a destroyer to see that the provisions of the Armistice had been carried out at the seaplane station.

The thickening fog-banks which shut off our view of Heligoland were not long in thinning the guiding _Regensburg_ to a dusky phantom nosing uncertainly into the misty smother in the direction of where our charts indicated the Bight should be narrowing to the shallow waters of Jade Bay, in an inner corner of which lay Wilhelmshaven. We had counted on getting there that evening, and a wireless had already been received saying that a German Naval Commission was standing by to come off for a preliminary conference. After heading in for a couple of hours through seas which I heard an officer coming off watch describe as "composed of about equal parts of water, misplaced buoys and floating mines," all hopes of arriving that night were dashed by a signal from the _Regensburg_, saying that she had been compelled to anchor on account of the fog. Calling her destroyer "chicks" about her to mother them for the night, the _Hercules_ let go what was probably the first anchor a British surface ship had dropped into German mud since the outbreak of the war.

The unexpected delay made it necessary for both the _Hercules_ and the destroyer to put up their pilots for the night. This was managed in the former by giving the officer the flag captain's sea-cabin, and slinging hammocks for his two assistants outside. Doubtless the opportunity to enjoy a change of food was not unwelcome to any of them. They were served with the regular ward-room dinner. The officer declined the offer of drinks, and said he had his own cigarettes. The other two made a clean sweep of anything that they could get hold of. Even these had cigarettes, but the young signalman who had the temerity to smoke one which was proffered him in exchange for one of his own, advanced that as an excuse for a mess he made of taking down a searchlight signal from a destroyer two hours later.

"That ---- Bolshevik," said the lad the next day, in telling me about the tragedy, "declared the fag he giv' me was made of baccy smuggled into Germany by a friend of his. I tells him that was no kind of reason for him using me to smuggle the smoke out of Germany. And I tells him it tastes to me like rope end, that baccy, and, what's more, that I'd be very happy to return it to him with a rope end. I can't say for certain whether he twigged that little joke or not."

From one of the destroyers, too, there came the next day a story of similar friction in the matter of dispensing hospitality to the guest of the night. The latter, unlike the one who was sent to the _Hercules_, appears to have been a typical Hun. Beginning by introducing himself as a relative of the ex-Kaiser, he ended up by all but going on strike because no sheets could be provided for the bunk in the cabin which--through turning out its owner to "sling" in the ward-room--had been given him for the night. That alone had been a considerable concession under the circumstances, for, through the presence of two extra flying officers, two "subs" had given up their cabins, and were sleeping in the ward-room already. It must have been a really amusing show that young sprig of Junkerism put up. He mentioned the matter of linen several times, finally rising to the crescendo of "I must have the sheets by nine o'clock, and it now lacks but five minutes of that time." I was never able to verify the story that the steward really gave him the sheets of notepaper that one of the Yankee officers volunteered to contribute. How mad the young exquisite was about the whole affair may be judged from the fact that he left behind him in the morning his own personal and private cake--only slightly used--of toilet soap. Whether this was pure swank--high princely disdain of an object of value--or whether he was blind with passion and overlooked it, they could never quite make up their minds in the _V----_.

The fog lapped and curled dankly round the _Hercules_ that night, wrapping the ship in a clammy shroud of cold moisture that dripped eerily from the rigging and sent a chill to the marrow of the bones of the men and officers on watch. But below there was warmth and comfort. The ward-room celebrated the occasion with a "rag" to the music of its own Jazz band, while in the admiral's cabin the kinema man, who had been brought along to film the historic features of the voyage, entertained with a movie of a South American revolution, a picture full of the play of hot passion and fierce jealousy, enacted in and around an ancient castle which none but a Californian could have recognized as a building of the recent San Diego Exposition. "The Admiral's Movies," "With a Complete Change of Program Nightly," became one of the star turns of the voyage from that time on.

Cut off though we were by the fog from sighting anything farther away than the riding lights of the nearest destroyer, strange voices of the new world we had moved into since morning kept reaching the _Hercules_ on the wings of the wireless. Now it was the _Regensburg_ calling to say, "I am lying off Outer Jade Lightship and illuminating it with my searchlight." Not much help, that, on a night when a searchlight itself was quenched to a will-o'-the-wisp at a cable's length. Then there was a message from the main fount of some "Workmen's and Soldiers' Council" requesting that the Allied Naval Commission should receive a delegation of its members at Wilhelmshaven. It was not a long message, but the reply flashed back to it was, I understand, a good deal shorter. There was chatter between ship and ship, and even the call--from somewhere in the Baltic, I believe--of a steamer in distress. The name of the _Moewe_, in an otherwise unintelligible message, caused hardly the flutter it would have had we picked it up in the same waters a month earlier.

There was little news to us in a message from some land station telling all and sundry that the "high-sea-ship" _Regensburg_ was "_zu Anker bei aussen Jade Feuerschiff_," that the _Hercules_ and destroyers were "_zu Anker bei Weser Feuerschiff_," and that there was "_noch Nebel_." The _Regensburg_ had already told us where she was and our own position we knew: also the fact that "fog continues."

A groan from Germany in travail reached us in a message from the "Soldatenrat" of the "Fortress of Borkum" to the Council in Berlin. They disapproved most heartily of the attitude of the meeting of the "_Gross Berliner_" councils for Greater Germany. They greatly regretted the attempt of one part of the people to establish a dictatorship over another, and considered that this showed a lamentable lack of confidence in "_unserem Volke_"--"our people." "_Wir wollen Demokratie und keine Diktatur_," they concluded; "we want a democracy and no dictator."

Then we heard the German battleship _König_ (which, in company with the _Dresden_, a destroyer and two transports, we had sighted that morning tardily _en voyage_ to make up the promised quota at Scapa) calling to the _Revenge_--at that time the flagship of the squadron watching the interned ships--for guidance. "Am near to the point of assembly with the other ships," she said in German, "and bad weather is coming on. Cannot stop with _Dresden_ in tow. What course can I take from point of assembly?"

Deep called to deep when the C.-in-C. of the Grand Fleet at Rosyth told the C.-in-C. of the High Sea Fleet what arrangements were being made to send back the surplus crews of the interned ships, and for a while the vibrant ether let fall such familiar names as _Karlsruhe_, _Emden_, _Nürnberg_, _Hindenburg_, _Kaiser_, _Von der Tann_ and _Friedrich der Grosse_, men from all of which, we learned, were to be started homeward in a transport called the _Pretoria_.

There was hint of "family trouble" in the German Navy in a signal from Admiral Von Reuter at Scapa to the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea Fleet at Wilhelmshaven. "Request that third group (of transports) may include a flag officer to relieve me," it ran in translation, "as I am returning home with it on account of sickness."

That signal, I think, gave the ward-room more quiet enjoyment than any of the others, for it was the first forerunning flutter of the German wings beginning to beat against the bars of Scapa. "I've often been a prey to that same complaint during our four years at Scapa," said the commander musingly, in the interval following the passing round of the wireless wail. "Of course Admiral Von Reuter is sick--homesick. Who wasn't? _Who isn't?_ But there was no use in sending a signal to any one complaining about it. But isn't it worth just about all we went through in sticking it there for four years to be able to think of the Huns being interned there, and in their own ships? They're not quite so comfy as ours to live in, you know. I wonder what Herr C.-in-C.'s answer will be."

That answer was picked up in good time. "First group of transports have arrived back safely," the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea Fleet began inconsequentially, adding abruptly, "Admiral Von Beuter is advised to stay where he is, if at all possible." That pleased the ward-room so much that the Junior Officers' Glee Club was sent to the piano to create a "Scapa atmosphere" by singing songs of the strenuous early months of the war. "Coaling, coaling, coaling, always jolly well coaling," to the air of "Holy, Holy, Holy!" reached my ears even in the secluded retreat of the "commission-room," to which I had retired to write up my diary.

But the most amusing message of all was one which the senior interpreter--one time a distinguished Cambridge professor of modern languages--was dragged out of his bunk at something like three o'clock in the morning to translate. Everything sent out in German was being meshed in our wireless net on the off-chance that information of importance might be picked up, and, for some reason, the message in question impressed the night operator--as it lay before him, fresh caught, upon his pad, as being of especial significance. This was what I deciphered on the sheet of naval signal paper which the senior interpreter, returning all a-shiver to his bunk after making the desired translation in the coding room, threw at my head when I awoke in the next bunk and asked sleepily for the news.

(?) to (?).

"Good morning. Request the time according to you. My watch is fast, I think."

It was probably from the skipper of one trawler to his "opposite number" in another. It was on my lips to ask Lieut. B---- if he expected to be called when the reply was picked up, but the ominous glare in the unpillowed eye he turned in my direction as I started to speak made me change my mind.

The fog was still thick at daybreak of the following morning, but by ten o'clock the visibility had improved sufficiently to appear to make it worth while to get under weigh. Heading easterly at twelve knots, we shortly came to a buoy-marked channel which, according to our directions, promised to lead in to the anchorage off Wilhelmshaven we desired to reach. The _Regensburg_, which had evidently gone in ahead, was not sighted again, but two powerful armed patrol boats came out to keep us company. It was soon possible to see for several miles, the low line of the Frisian coast coming into sight to port and starboard.

Presently we passed, on opposite courses, a German merchant steamer. Luckily, some one on the bridge observed in time that she had a man standing by the flag halyards at her stern, and so we were prepared to return with the white ensign what must have been the first dip a British ship had had from a German since August, 1914. When the second and third steamers encountered also dipped their red, white, and black bunting, followed by similar action on the part of two tugs and a lighthouse tender, it became evident that general orders in that connection had been issued. That was our first hint of the "conciliatory" tactics which it soon became apparent all of that part of Northern Germany with which there was a chance of any of the Allied Naval Armistice Commission coming in contact had been instructed to follow.

The steeples and factory chimneys of Wilhelmshaven began appearing over the port bow at noon, and a half-hour later _Hercules_ had dropped anchor about a mile off a long stone mole which curved out from the dockyard. Almost immediately a launch was seen putting out of the entrance, and presently it came bumping alongside the starboard gangway. Rear-Admiral Goette, a smooth-shaven, heavy set man of about fifty, was the first up to the quarter-deck, where his salute was returned by the captain, commander, the officer of the day, and several officers of Admiral Browning's staff. His puckered brow indicated something of the mental strain he was under, a strain the effects of which became more and more evident every time he came off for a conference.

The thirteen other members of the Commission under Admiral Goette's presidency followed him up the gangway. The first of these, a tall blond officer of fine bearing, was on the list as Kapitan z. S. von Müller, but it was not until after the final conference, over a fortnight later, that we learned for certain that he was the able and resolute commander of the _Emden_, famous in the first year of the war for her destruction of Allied commerce and the fine fight he had put up before being forced to the beach of North Cocos Island by the faster and heavier armed _Sydney_. If it was a fact, as has been suggested, that the Germans put Von Müller on their Naval Armistice Commission because of the admiration that had been expressed in the British papers of his brave and sporting conduct on the latter occasion, the effect of this fine piece of Teutonic subtlety was completely lost. As I have said, his real identity was not discovered until the last of the conferences was over.

As soon as the last of the German officers had reached the quarter-deck and completed his round of heel-clicking salutes, the party was conducted directly to Admiral Browning's cabin, where the first of a series of conferences calculated deeply to influence Germany's naval future for many years to come was entered into without delay.

II

GETTING DOWN TO WORK

An unfailing test of the treatment the Germans would have meted out to the Allies had their respective positions been reversed during the armistice interval, was furnished by the attitude of all the enemy people--from the highest official representatives to the crowds on the streets--with whom Admiral Browning's Naval Commission was thrown in contact. This was especially noticeable in the case of naval officers, and with none of these more so than with the greater part of those constituting the commission, presided over by Rear-Admiral Goette, which met the Allied Commission to arrange the details of carrying out the provisions of the armistice relating to maritime affairs. Fully expecting from the representatives of the victorious Allies the same treatment they had extended to the beaten Russians at Brest-Litovsk, and the beaten Rumanians at Bucharest, they adopted from the outset an attitude of sullen distrust, evidently with the idea that it was the one best calculated to minimize the concessions they would be called upon to make. When it transpired that the Allied commissioners appeared to have no intention of exercising their victor's prerogative of humiliating the emissaries of a beaten enemy--as no Prussian could ever have refrained from doing in similar circumstances--but that, on the other hand, the former were neither disposed to bargain, "negotiate," nor in any way to abate one whit from their just demands, the attitude of the Germans changed somewhat. They were more reasonable and easy to deal with; yet to the last there was always discernible that feeling of thinly veiled contempt which the beaten bully cannot conceal for a victor who fails to treat him as he himself would have treated any adversary he had downed.

The opening conference between the Allied and German commissions was held in Admiral Browning's dining cabin in the _Hercules_, as were all of those which followed. The German officers, leaving their overcoats and caps in a cabin set aside for them as an ante-room, were conducted to the conference room, where the heads of the Allied Commission were already assembled and in their places. Most of the Germans were in frock coats (of fine material and extremely well cut), with small dirk-like swords at hip, and much-bemedalled. There was none of them, so far as one could see, without one grade or another of the Iron Cross, worn low on the left breast (or just about over the liver, to locate it more exactly), with its black-and-white ribbon rove through a lapel. Only Captain Von Müller wore the coveted "Pour le Mérite," doubtless for his commerce destruction with the _Emden_. Admiral Goette wore two rows of ribbons, but none of the decorations themselves.

The Allied delegates rose as the Germans entered, remaining standing until the latter had been shown to the places assigned them. At the right of the main table, as seen from the door, was seated Admiral Browning, with Rear-Admiral Grasset, of the French Navy, on his right, and Rear-Admiral Robinson, of the American Navy, on his left. Captain Lowndes, Admiral Browning's Chief of Staff, sat next to Admiral Robinson, in the fourth chair on the Allied side of the table. The Flag Lieutenants of the French and American Admirals, and the two officers representing respectively Japan and Italy, occupied chairs immediately beyond the senior officers of the Commission. At two smaller tables in the rear were several British Flag officers, with secretaries and stenographers. The official British interpreter, Lieut. Bullough, R.N.V.R., sat at the head of the table. The heads of the Allied sub-commissions representing the flying services and shipping did not occupy seats during all of the conference, but were called in during the discussion of matters in which they were interested.

Admiral Goette was seated directly opposite Admiral Browning at the main table, with Commander (or Korvettenkapitän) Hinzman on his right, and Commander Lohman on his left. The former--a shifty-eyed individual, with a pasty complexion and a "mobile" mouth which, in its peculiar expansions and contractions, furnished an accurate index of the state of its owner's mind--was from the General Naval Staff in Berlin, which accounted, doubtless, for the fact that Admiral Goette turned to him for advice in connection with practically every question discussed. Commander Lohman had charge of merchant shipping interests, which were principally in connection with the return of British tonnage interned in German harbours at the outbreak of the war. Captain Von Müller sat at the left-hand corner of the table, and Captain Bauer, Chief of Staff, in the corresponding place on the right. At a smaller table opposite the door the eight remaining German officers were seated. These were mostly engineers, or from the flying or submarine services, and were consulted as questions in their respective lines arose from time to time.