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Portrait photograph of Floyd Gibbons
Liberty, 6 April 1939, with first part of "The Red Napoleon
"The Red Napoleon,"
Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, New York, 1929
Orthographic and typographic errors found in the book used to build the RGL edition of The Red Napoleon have been corrected without comment. Where necessary, place names have been modernised. Russian words and names have been changed to conform with present-day English transliteration standards. —Roy Glashan, 14 May 2020.
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Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII |
Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV |
TODAY is the 17th of July 1941.
It is the fifth anniversary of the conclusion of the War between the United States of America and the World Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
It is pleasant here on the veranda of the old Bermudiana Hotel in Bermuda. A warm breeze rustles the palm fronds and the white- hot light of the sun makes the leaves shine as though buttered by the generous hand of a farmer's boy.
In a rattan deck chair, twenty feet away from me, sits the man who rocked the world—the man whose defiant pride in his coloured skin, struggling against an instinctive inferiority complex originating from impacts with white dominance, fired him with the ambition to fuse all races—white, yellow, black, brown, and red—into one human race, the only one he acknowledged.
Representing the World Press, it is my job to sit here in the paradise of this island and watch this man die. I report daily on his captivity and exile, his opinions on his military victories and mistakes.
I quote his reflections on the failure of his aim to avenge countless women of colour, carelessly possessed over hundreds of years by white men, by encouraging the possession of white women by yellow and black men, and, lastly, on his futile determination to blend all bloods so that never again could white skins call themselves better than yellow, black, brown, or red.
Defeated but not crushed, his armies disbanded, his navies sunk, his air fleets brought low, he still remains the defiant symbol of inflexible will power that dictated the infamous miscegenation policy to the world and ordered his battling hordes to "CONQUER AND BREED."
Today, in exile, he still retains the bearing and master- manner of conviction that gave example to his followers by taking an American wife who bore him three half-breed sons.
Far from recanting his beliefs, he is proud of the many children bearing his Mongol strain, born to him by other white women of beauty, brains, social position—or all of these—carefully selected by him to be the mothers of his progeny.
And of the thousands of Eurasian, mulatto, mestizo children, half-yellow, half-black, half-brown, or half-red, born to white women in the wake of his conquering armies in Europe and the Americas, he holds that they constitute the lasting mark he has made upon the population of the world and calls them the first step toward the "deliverance of mankind from the curse of race prejudice."
That is his attitude today—July 17, 1941, the day after his forty-first birthday. I have just cabled the above last quotation as he gave it to me this morning.
Back in 1928—the thirteen intervening years of bloodshed seem like thirteen centuries—back in 1928, I returned to America from Europe, a confirmed pacifist. I was sick of war. As a correspondent I had been in wars for the preceding fourteen years.
Wars in Mexico, wars on the American-Mexican frontier, then the World War (to end wars). The armistice and the peace of 1918 brought to me the feeling that my gory job was over, but that was only the beginning.
From 1918 to 1928 I averaged another war a year—the Polish-Russian War, recurring revolutions in Germany, the War in Ireland, the War in the Baltic, the War in South Russia, the War in Siberia, the War in the Near East, the War in China, the War in Morocco, the Revolution in Poland, and the War in Nicaragua.
As the dramatic critic attends first nights and takes each new stage-play through the agony of its first public appearance, so it had been my job to be present and observe the human strife and agonies, the bloodshed and misery, the maiming and torture, the burning and devastation of these recurring spasms and convulsions, which are the curse of humankind.
I could not compute the hundreds of men I had seen actually killed—shot—burned—blown to bits. I would not figure the thousands I had seen dead on the fields and streets of battle. I hated to total the tens of thousands of maimed and wounded, of blinded and crippled, I had seen in war time hospitals around the world. I avoided estimating the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of war victims, living and dead, I had written about during my years as a war correspondent from 1914 to 1928.
Indefinite as those impressions were, their effect was crushing upon me; I was sick of killing. In 1927 I completed the biography of Baron von Richthofen, which Liberty published under the title of "The Red Knight of Germany," and through the 100,000 words of that gory recital of the killings of one single individual, I could not help but reveal the growing sickness that was upon me—a deadly disgust, a bitter abhorrence for Mars and his bloody harvest.
But how was I to know that during the following ten years—that terrible decade between 1928 and 1938—my duty was to lead me through even more sanguine spectacles?
How could I foresee the ruthless spilling of white blood in Southern Asia and the Australian massacre? How could I know of what was then going to happen in North Africa? How could I suspect a new and struggling Europe to turn itself back into a shambles?
How could I ever imagine America, blockaded, isolated from the world, fighting the world, and invaded by the most powerful, brutal, cruel military force that ever had marched under a single standard?
By what power of prevision could I anticipate that I was to accompany the leader of this force on his conquests, to fight with and against him, to be with him at the heights of his glory and still with him as I am today in the depths of his fall?
How was I to know that a girl and two American boys, all of whom were children during the days of the A.E.F., were to play the flaming romance of their lives almost before my eyes and win heroic records in the deliverance of the white race from the greatest terror ever visited upon it?
How could I anticipate that I would be stationed in Bermuda, in this year 1941, reporting the historical sequence of those terrible events, and writing it at the elbow of the dying man whose iron will, military genius, and soaring ambition brought the world to the brink of destruction?
He is sitting there on the veranda now, in the God-given peacefulness of this glorious sunshine, as I write these opening lines of the history of those days. This is an account that needs no fictional touch, nor romantic shading.
I have been a reporter all my life, and this report will stick to the facts as they are; but so close is the relationship between these events and the man responsible for them, that these lines will be biographical as well as historical. So close has been my relation with the man in question that much of what follows will be autobiographical as well. I am credited with knowing him better than anyone in the world. I believe I do.
Karakhan of Kazan is still a young man. Age has not yet taken a tuck in his six feet one of slim erectness. The years have put no additional weight around his girth. Only in the sallowness of his complexion are revealed the traces of the disease by which he is slowly dying.
Here in his exile it is only upon rare occasions that he dons again the uniform he wore on his conquests. For the most time he is garbed as he is today, in his semi-tropical civilian attire of light tan, whose only concession toward the military is in the closed lapels and collar, buttoned close around the neck. The long conservatively-cut palm-beach slacks reveal the pointed- toed, black Cossack high boots, which are his habitual footgear.
His black hair, now slightly graying over the temples, is still as short-cropped and close-fitting to his skull as it has been so well presented in photograph and caricature the last ten years. He continues to nurse his aversion to beards and moustaches and remains clean-shaven of face. That bullet-scar, so well marked in all of his photographs, gleams white and silken against the lemon tawniness of his skin.
The black eyes burn with the same light that illuminated them when he dictated the peace of Europe in Paris, 1933, five days after the third Battle of the Marne.
His long-fingered, well manicured hands rest outstretched on the arms of his chair. On his lap is an unfolded map of the Caribbean. Today he has been studying the Battle of the Windward Passage, to which military critics attribute his defeat. As he looks across the blue Atlantic he seems to be contemplating the waters wherein his sun went to its setting.
My close relations with Karakhan dated from the autumn of 1932, but it is proper now, in view of the vivid biographies and commentaries that have been written concerning "the scourge of the world," that I report in brief the origin of this vital human dynamo, who wrote his name in blood at the top of the list of the greatest military conquerors in history.
Karakhan of Kazan was born July 16, 1900, in the village of Almaz on the slopes of the Urals, east of the city of Kazan, capital of the Tartar Republic located on the easternmost frontier of European Russia.
His father, Fyodor Karakhan, was a Captain of Don Cossacks, from which people he descended by a long line of Mongol fighting- men. But somewhere in that line the yellow blood of the East had been bleached by an infusion of white, most probably from Swedish or Finnish invaders who left their traces in the region of the Volga.
Although still with his Cossacks and of them, Karakhan the elder felt a superiority to them, and this distinction he based upon the lighter texture of his skin. He had enjoyed the delights of the white guard garrisons in St. Petersburg and preferred Nordic and Western refinements to the primitive coarseness of his own people. In the words of Harlem, he had "gone white."
Kazan, Capital of the Tatar Republic,
Birthplace of Karakhan.
This disposition manifested itself early in his relations with the woman he married, Aral, the yellow daughter of a dark-skinned Cossack by a Mongol woman. The elder Karakhan found ample use for his wife's dowry, but personally considered her as wholly Asiatic, and consequently of inferior breed, and openly treated her as such.
This was the sturdy mother of the boy who was to later unfurl the banner of race equality and carry his conquests around the world. There remains no doubt that he drew from his mother's breasts the resentment she felt toward the father. She reared her son as yellow and into him breathed her hatred of white power.
The boy was born in a tent, during his mother's visit to the grazing grounds of the large herd of Mongol horses which was the dowry she had brought to her husband.
Karakhan, the father, and his troop of horse, were attached to the Czar's garrison at Kazan and were engaged principally at that time in policing the peasants on the vast estates of Prince Davidov, one of the Czar's favourites, whose extensive domain ranged eastward from the Volga and southward between the rivers Kama and Cheremshan.
The boy had some pride in his father as a soldier, but it was from his mother that he derived the thrift, industry, and efficiency which was to enable him to take fullest advantage of his military genius in later years.
It would appear that Karakhan senior preferred the gaieties of Kazan to the hardy domesticity by which Mother Karakhan was able to augment the family fortunes through the sale of horses to the army. She and the children spent most of the time in the hills following the herds.
They lived as the herders lived, and it was with these men that the future would-be Dictator of the world was brought up. The visits of the father were infrequent, and the young Karakhan held him in respectful awe. But his earliest recollection of his father was one of aversion.
This he told me one day when I asked him why he had never worn beard or moustache. He replied that on the first visit he remembers of his father, the latter lifted him up and kissed him full on the mouth.
The boy was four years old at the time, and he recalled that the father's bushy black beard was damp and sulphurous with mixed fumes that he later learned to have been a combination of Turkish tobacco, vodka, and raw cucumbers.
And that same year the elder Karakhan ended his swash- buckling, gambling, drinking career in a death-charge at the head of the Czar's Horse across a muddy field on the outskirts of Mukden. He never came back from the Russo-Japanese War; but the debts he had left in Kazan were sufficient to reduce Mother Karakhan's prize herd from a thousand to several dozen horses and to reduce the family fortunes to almost nothing.
Young Karakhan's comrade on the plains of the Urals was an old Tartar-Mongol ex-soldier who had returned to his civilian pursuit of herdsman. He had lost his right arm in the service of the White Czar. Karakhan learned to read and write from this old warrior and world traveller, now turned into a humble camp- follower and tutor.
Sabutai was his name, and through him Karakhan first learned the Tartar and Mongol legends of the great Sabutai, the hard- riding, hard-fighting Lieutenant of the great Genghis Khan. Through him he learned how the yak-tailed standard of the Mongol Conqueror had spread death, destruction, and dominion over a kingdom extending from the Yellow Sea to the Persian Gulf.
From Sabutai he first heard the stories of the great Khan of Tartary—the great Khan of Kazan, to whom the White Russians of the West, even the all-powerful Ivan the Terrible, had paid tribute against the threat of the raids of the Tartar hordes. These were the campfire tales the boy heard at night around the fire on some chill hillside overlooking the sleeping herd in the valley below. They constituted his early instructions and were the foundation on which were based the future dreams of one who was to outdo Genghis Khan, Sabutai, Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, Attila, and Napoleon.
It was from Sabutai that he learned first to ride and then to shoot, but above all, to endure. Sabutai shared with him the hill-man's contempt for obesity.
Fat men were not men. Fat men were gluttonous hulks of feathers. Fat men were beeves stuffed for the killing. They were the horrible examples and victims of self-indulgence. They were not free men; they were slaves of their appetites—slaves, chained with rolls of fat, with double chins, with short breath, with labouring lungs, with weak hearts, with jaded eyes, with the soft, padded bodies of women. They resembled eunuchs. They were proper prey for the temperate, who had the strength to make their appetites subject to their wills; for the moderate and self- denying, who ruled their tastes instead of letting their tastes rule them.
It was a Spartan course, interwoven with a glorification of the strong and a contempt for the weak. Young Karakhan learned frugality and abstinence from Sabutai. He learned to practice these qualities with the assiduousness of a fasting monk. At the end of a day's march he would be proud to show the full leathern water bag hanging from his saddle, from which he had denied himself a single sip throughout the day's ride.
It was cold at night, sleeping in the open in one's clothes under a single horse blanket, but Sabutai did it, and Karakhan learned it from him. It was a frugality, necessitated neither by nature nor circumstances, but invoked by the will, and its expected reward was superiority and power over those who could not thus master their wills.
It was Sabutai who regaled the boy in wild Asiatic philosophy with examples drawn from nature. Life and power were the reward of the strong; slavery and death the penalty of the weak. Immorality was self-indulgence; morality was self-control.
It was a primitive adoption of the law of fang and claw. From it Karakhan learned to weigh every man he met. If the man were strong, he was to be respected, watched, suspected, guarded against, feared; but at the same time studied most carefully to ascertain, if possible, the weak point in his strength, because in that weak spot might lie the power for a cleverer man to overcome him. If he were weak, it was just, it was equitable, it was moral and right—it was absolutely natural—that he, the stronger, should bend that weakness to his will.
These teachings came to a violent fruition in the boy in the spring of his twelfth year. He and Sabutai were riding herd on the upper reaches of the Ufa river. An hour before dawn the oddly matched pair, while taking their single cup of hot tea and baked kasha cake, became aware of a movement among the horses in the valley below them. Soon the herd was in wild stampede in two directions.
Both Karakhan and Sabutai knew the meaning. It was a raid of horse thieves. A few hurried words were spoken, the boy and the old man saddled their riding animals; then Karakhan was off in the darkness in pursuit of that half of the herd which had forded the river.
Daylight found him riding through a forest on the flank of the herd which was being driven forward by a single Tartar horseman. The boy dismounted, brought his heavy rifle to his shoulder and a bullet whizzed across the clearing. The rider's horse tumbled, hurling the Tartar to the ground. The man attempted to arise, but crumpled back.
Karakhan tethered his own horse and warily crossed the two hundred yards between him and his crippled victim. There was a fresh cartridge in the chamber of his rifle and his finger was on the trigger.
From a distance of twenty yards he saw that the raider had been disarmed in his fall from the horse. Fool! Sabutai had always taught him to carry his rifle on his back or in his hand, and never slung from the saddle.
With his own rifle at the ready, the boy walked up to the helpless raider. He walked once around him. The Tartar thief's face was drawn with pain from the broken leg.
He looked steadily into the eyes of the boy with the rifle. Karakhan looked into his. Not a word was exchanged between them.
Both knew.
At ten paces Karakhan deliberately shot him between the eyes. One hasty look at the gaping hole between the dead man's bulging eyes, and the boy returned to his horse, mounted, and rode on to the herd, which had now stopped to graze. He rounded up the animals and drove back toward the ford.
On the return the horses shied at the still figure on the turf; they gave it wide berth on either side. Karakhan, following the herd, dismounted beside the body. He rolled it over without feeling, explored the pockets of the glazed sheepskin garments; removed a knife, a deer-horn spoon, and a leather pouch of tobacco. Without a backward look he remounted, rejoined the herd, and rode back to meet Sabutai, who had recovered the rest of the horses.
To me there has always been something strangely pathetic in the crumpled body of that Tartar thief lying there unburied on the green slopes of the Urals, in the spring of 1912, and a twelve-year-old boy standing over it with a complete absence of feeling.
It was his first kill. It left him totally unaffected, except possibly for a wave of satisfaction that swept over him. He had done right according to his code, and was proud that he had been able to do it.
In the stormy years that followed, when the killing under his direction leaped to the thousands and went into the hundreds of thousands, he was still unaffected. To him the defeat of the weak by the strong was the law of nature. It was further inducement and further proof of the necessity of being strong.
Between the ages of ten and fourteen Karakhan spent his winters in Kazan with his mother. The circumstances of the family were reduced. Grazing had been bad; horses had died; sales were few; prices low. It was frequently a struggle for Mother Karakhan to feed, clothe, and house her brood of three boys and two girls.
A returned army officer conducted a school for officers' children in Kazan. Mother Karakhan could not afford the tuition, but Colonel Subilov had been a comrade of Captain Karakhan, and this comradeship the veteran extended to the son. Young Karakhan partially paid for his schooling by breaking and training an occasional horse for the Colonel, who was by way of being a gentleman dealer in more or less blooded stock. The Colonel was not above consulting the youth on horse flesh, and frequently found the latter's judgement on values a profitable one to follow.
Of those four years' schooling in Kazan, the world has received enlightenment in the brief monograph entitled, "Karakhan of Kazan at School," which Colonel Subilov finished writing two months before his death, just two years ago.
"My strongest impression of the young Karakhan," wrote Colonel Subilov, "concerned his attentiveness, his curiosity, his frugality with words, and his intensive application. His dislike for the games and sports of his comrades amounted to contempt. After all, his spring and summer outings in the Urals, riding the herds with Sabutai, were sports far more interesting than the games in our small gymnasium.
"Karakhan's avidity for the exact sciences was most notable. He was provided with a memory that made study almost superfluous. Mathematics, particularly speedy mental calculations, seemed to come to him naturally. Geography was to him what moving pictures are to the schoolboys of today.
"He never considered foreign places except in relation to their distance from Kazan, to the means of transportation available, and to the time of travel. When he mastered the location of a place, he had mastered the routes to it.
"Maps lived for him. He measured them in days' journeys by foot, by horse, by sleigh, by train, by boat. Even at that early day, he tried to figure progress in terms of flying hours.
"History was relaxation to him.
"Events had no importance from the standpoint of their grandeur or the picturesqueness of the ceremony attached to them. His interest in such events concerned solely the conditions and elements that caused them and the effects produced by them.
"Great historical characters he studied intently, but with scant admiration. He was not a hero-worshipper. He refused to make gods of the great whose lives caught his interest. He was ever conscious of their human origin, and his alertness to isolate and discern their mistakes was keener than his appreciation of their achievements.
"He told me once after he had finished reading 'Plutarch's Lives,' that he knew by memory the mistakes made by each one of them. 'I believe everyone makes mistakes' he said. 'The greater the man, the smaller the mistake. The small mistakes of the great are the great lessons of the small.'"
Colonel Subilov has related the several instances where his intervention became necessary in disputes and controversies more or less violent arising between his white pupils and this solitary, almost brooding boy from the hills. Karakhan did not mix well. He had few friends or intimates among his fellow students. He was always aware of the superior quality of their clothing over his own. They could count their pocket money in rubles; he seldom had two kopek pieces to jingle. He was conscious of their whiter skins and their air of superiority over him, and this made him hate them. But he was certain of his superiority over them.
Young Karalov, son of a wealthy General, made fun of him one day at the close of school. Karalov was three years his senior and heavier.
"Yellow boy of the hills," he said, "You have lice in your sheepskin, and you smell like a mountain goat."
Karakhan's hand suddenly grasped the left wrist of the taunter in a grip of surprising strength. Without a word, but with blazing eyes, he slowly twisted the wrist outward and backward. The older boy, made defenseless by the sudden manoeuver, writhed in pain. Karakhan pressed him to his knees.
Karalov cried out to his companions, but they had noticed the demon of fury in the narrowed eyes of the quiet one; they had seen the firmly pressed jaws, the drawn yellow skin, the tightly clenched teeth of the boy from the Urals. They thought better of interference.
"Feel the bite of the louse," Karakhan spoke evenly into the upturned face of his white victim. "Know the strength of the mountain goat. Tell me now, does he smell sweeter to you?"
"Stop! You hurt! Enough! I did not mean it; I am sorry. Please stop, you are breaking my arm. Help me, someone," whimpered the General's son.
With an added pressure on the tortured arm, the "hill goat" toppled the boy over and released his hold. Standing above him he said, "Mother's lap dog may go home now and get some new perfume. Poodles smell better than mountain goats, but that is what poodles are for."
And again, the hill boy's pride in himself and in his mother received a severe shock by an incident which caused a widespread circle of chuckles in the neighbourhood of his mother's home. Every smile was a stab to the boy when he learned their meaning.
A white Russian mountebank, who earned his vodka and a precarious living by providing public houses with doubtful music on a concertina, was accepted as an overnight lodger by Mother Karakhan. Young Karakhan and the other children were out of the house on the following morning when the wandering minstrel sought to pay for his bed by inviting Mother Karakhan to share it with him.
The white man ran from the house, half-dressed and half- scalded from a kettle of water which the yellow mother hurled after him. While the neighbourhood laughed at the outcome of this not unusual advance on the part of a white man to a comely yellow widow, the widow herself calmly profited by the incident by selling the minstrel's concertina for which he had the prudence not to return.
Young Karakhan, livid with rage but silent, wore his knife that night as he prowled about the drinking places of Kazan on a futile search, which had it been successful would have wiped out the deeply felt insult. Countless whites, men and women, were to pay.
School days ended in the spring of 1914. That was also the last summer he spent under the tutelage of old Sabutai of the hills. For him a new school was to open that year; a school in which he took the courses that perfected him to become the scourge of the world.
Russia mobilized—War.
Russia needed horses.
Commissary officers carried the word into the backwoods of the Urals. All available animals were concentrated along the rail centers. Mother Karakhan carried on negotiations in Kazan. Three hundred head of stout Mongol horses were sold at the Army Supply Depot in Kazan. Mother Karakhan cashed a government order for 30,000 rubles.
The war pack was moving. Sabutai and the boy received the orders at Birsk on the upper reaches of the Volga. There was a railroad to the South of Ufa, but it was congested. Thousands of horses had been brought in from the hills. There was not sufficient railroad equipment for their transportation.
The Quartermaster's Department at Ufa ordered Sabutai to drive his horses overland to Kazan.
This was young Karakhan's first service in war. Sabutai was too old for the trip. He had to remain with the foals and the old mares. He must carry on with the herd.
The pair parted the following morning. The light of the campfire glowed up into the yellow faces of the young boy and the old man. Sabutai placed his hand on Karakhan's shoulder. The instructions were simple: Deliver the horses.
They did not indulge in the customary Russian kiss of farewell. Sabutai didn't believe in it. Karakhan had learned from him to consider it an effeminacy. By dawn the herd was on the march to war.
A fourteen-year-old boy, with three lieutenants and a command of three hundred horses, with a journey of 450 versts ahead of him. Young Karakhan's assistants were three Tartar peasants: one, an elderly, bearded grandfather; the other two, boys of sixteen years.
Karakhan knew the country; knew the best grazing, and by following the river he kept close to the water. They averaged forty-five versts a day. Karakhan brought up the rear of the moving herd, one boy riding ahead; the other boy and the old man on the flanks. They ate in the saddle and changed mounts three times daily. At night they corralled the herd in river ravines, hemmed in by their campfires.
It was necessary to guard the animals from thieves. It was war time and horses were the same as gold. Karakhan and his lieutenants were armed with old rifles and the ubiquitous knife of the hill man.
On the evening of the tenth day, Karakhan delivered his horses into the army stockade in the railroad yards on the outskirts of Kazan. He had started with 300 horses, and had lost none. At the end of two days, during which the horses were watered, fed, and rested, and several lame ones eliminated, they were entrained in a single train of forty box cars and sent westward.
A fat and elderly Quartermaster Major was in command of the train. He had reached Kazan the previous day from St. Petersburg. He had been a clerical soldier for twenty years and hated horses. Major Bransky was his name.
"Yellow Boy," he said with attempted impressiveness to Karakhan, "do you wish to be a man and a soldier as I am? Do you wish to hear the roar of guns? Do you wish to go to the front? If you do, I will take you, but you must work on the train."
Major Bransky did not notice, or if he did notice he did not understand, the look in Karakhan's steady eyes during this speech. The boy certainly did not want to be a man and a soldier like Bransky, sitting puffing in the August heat in the compartment of the caboose.
But Karakhan did want to go to war. He was right in his presumption that Bransky was afraid of the horses. Bransky's horsemanship, as a matter of fact, had been confined almost entirely to negotiating political contracts for horseshoes and equipment, which seldom if ever came to specifications. Karakhan accepted, and it was he who dictated to Bransky the essentials of the trip.
They watered and fed at Nizhiniy-Novgorod; again at Moscow; again at Smolensk; again at Minsk, and delivered their charges at the cavalry remount station at Pinsk; headquarters for Grand Duke Michael's Army.
Major Bransky was commended for bringing his charges through safely, and he celebrated the citation with a vodka debauch in his billets. At the height of his alcoholic generosity, he received the young horse boy of the Urals, complimented him for his assistance, and gave him the elaborate document which constituted Karakhan's first citation in war.
It was a combination citation and military pass, reading as follows:
"The bearer, Ivan Karakhan, fourteen years old; height 5 ft. 10 in.; hair black; eyes black; complexion yellow; domicile, Kazan, son of Aral Karakhan; widow of the late Captain Fyodor Karakhan, Fifth Regiment Don Cossacks, is under contract with the Quartermaster Department for the purchase, sale, transportation, delivery and training of horses for the army of Grand Duke Michael.
This pass provides him with transportation on all trains, military and civil, in and outside of the zones of the army, and entitles him to billets and maintenance in all Quartermaster Supply Depots, at the bases, and with representatives of the Quartermaster's Department at the front.
Signed, Laminov, Quartermaster General.
Pinsk, September 3, 1914.
Karakhan saw war in 1915 and 1916. It was his schooling.
He was with the victorious Russian advance at Lemburg; he heard
the roar of the guns, as the Russian masses hurled themselves
upon the Austrian Army, and in the attempt to force the passes of
the Carpathians. He escaped capture by minutes, when the Germans
retook Memel in March of 1915.
He located his father's old Cossack Regiment, and was received by its Colonel, who had been a Lieutenant when Karakhan senior fell at Mukden. The Colonel gave him the necessary permission to wear a slight adaptation of the Russian uniform, thus making his movements behind the Russian lines much easier.
In 1917 he saw the Russian Army melt; he saw the mutinies that preceded the Revolution; he saw the strength of the Russian Army crumble through lack of discipline, through failure of its supplies, through incapacity of its directing.
His ever critical mind searched for the mistakes, the errors, and found them. Then came the Revolution. Karakhan's feelings toward the Czar were based on his characteristic contempt for weakness. Nicholas II, in his estimation, was a mental and physical weakling, and as such deserved whatever fate decreed.
The year of the fall of the Russian Empire, Karakhan, at the age of seventeen, became a soldier of the Red Army. He had read Gibbons' "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"; he had read Carlyle on the French Revolution; he had read half a dozen lives of Napoleon; and he was able to recognize opportunity.
With the red brassard around the left sleeve of his uniform tunic, with belt, bayonet, and rifle, he became a member in the ranks of the Sixth Battalion of Soldiers, Sailors, and Workers of the Red Army.
Most of his comrades were youngsters, as he himself was.
Soldiers of the old army took their release with avidity; thousands of them returned to their homes, but with the crash of constituted authority in the areas back of the old front, there were thousands of younger spirits that pressed forward for places in the new ranks.
Karakhan's three years with the army had been a great aid to him. He knew organization; he knew discipline; and "he knew the way to promotion and pay." In two weeks he had become leader of his company, not with the rank of a commission it is true, because at the time officers or any form of representative authority were far from popular in the ranks of the Revolution. His 120 men called him "Tvarish Tehyt" [sic*]—"Comrade Chief."
[* As in the print edition. Probably an
orthographic or typographic error. The Russian equivalent of
"comrade chief" is "tovarishch vozhd'"
(товарищ вождь)
or "tovarishch nachal'nik" (товарищ
начальник).
If the men were using the Cossack word for "chief"
the correct phrase would be "tovarishch ataman."
(товарищ
атаман) —R.G.]
He was severe with them from the start, but they could not fail to understand that, in return for their submission to his strict discipline, they could depend upon him for rations, for supplies, for quarters. He always found some occupation for their idle minds and hands. He invented ways and means of overcoming the deficiencies in equipment, the lack of supplies and transportation.
With permission of his battalion commander, who happened to be a former non-commissioned officer, he mounted his company of infantry and trained them in saddle. In camp, his mounted men were used for headquarters service by the battalion commander. On the march, he brought up the rear and performed the dual service of preventing stragglers from becoming deserters, and at the same time gathering new recruits among the young peasants.
His battalion marched into Moscow with the ragged forces of Trotsky and Lenin. He participated with it in the fighting in the Red Square; he witnessed dozens of wholesale executions of White Russians in the same square.
That year, with the rank of a Colonel, but with his regiment swollen to the size of a brigade, he was transferred by train to Penza, and moved eastward against General Gaida, the young Czech commander, whose Czech-Slovak legions, unwilling to lay down their arms to the Austrians, had moved across South Russia, leaving a path of devastation behind them.
Gaida was forced out of Samara, retreating along the railroad lines westward and northward to Ufa. Karakhan stuck to his trail. It was horse war, and it was Karakhan's country. Gaida withdrew across territory untouched by the war. He found fresh horses and supplies as he moved eastward.
He left behind him the saddle-sore and crippled animals, burning wheat fields, granaries, and houses.
Karakhan's ride in pursuit caused him to remember Napoleon's great plunge eastward into Russia, but in the Urals it was different. He adopted other tactics. He knew the streams, the valleys, the countryside. He cut in on the flanks of the retreating Czechs, whose numbers were now largely augmented by weary and dispirited White Russians.
Gaida was the strongest fighting force with Kolchak. Karakhan mastered him, outmanoeuvered and outfought him in a dozen different encounters. It has often been commented upon that neither of these warriors, who bore the brunt of the internecine fighting in Russia in 1918, was a professional soldier.
Gaida was older than Karakhan by seven or eight years, but he was still a boy. He had been a drug clerk in Prague when the war broke out, and he had been forced to take his place in the Austrian Army. In his first engagement he had deserted to the Russians, together with thousands of Czechs and Slovaks, whose hearts were not with Austria. Russia employed him to organize these same deserting troops into the Czecho-Slovakian Army that fought the Austrians.
But with all his experience, plus the compelling motive of Czecho-Slovak independence, Gaida was mastered by the hill boy of the Urals, who returned to Moscow the following year and received his promotion to full General, at the age of nineteen. That year he commanded successfully in the Baltic against Yudenich. His success in the field caused his reassignment to South Russia, where he inflicted severe losses upon the White Russian forces of Denikin.
In 1921 France launched Pilsudski on his ill-fated eastern drive to Kiev. Karakhan at the time was engaging the forces of General Wrangel in the Crimea. It was Karakhan who proposed the right-face movement which suddenly hurled itself westward upon the Polish invaders.
The Red main body was flanked on both sides by strong, hard- riding units of mounted troops. Budyonny covered the left wing; Karakhan rode on the right. The movement resulted in a crashing defeat for Pilsudski and almost the complete annihilation of the Polish Army, which fell back in disorder almost 500 miles to Warsaw.
As a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, I was with the Poles throughout the retreat and was almost captured by Karakhan's Cossacks in the burning city, Brest-Litovsk.
Weygand and French tanks saved the Poles and turned the Reds back at the walls of Warsaw, but the return of the Russian forces to Russia was celebrated for the victory that it actually was. Following the victory parade in the Red Square in Moscow, Karakhan was married.
So much has been written and said about this first white woman in Karakhan's life, that little remains to be told of the strange forces of psychology that met and struggled in their union. Lin Larkin was six years older than the successful twenty-one-year- old soldier she married in 1921.
She was born in Boston of factory-working, tenement-living, Irish immigrants, from whom she inherited the rebellious nature she first demonstrated in the industrial strikes in the Fall River region. Her leadership in these disputes early gained her a prominent position in radical circles in New York and on the soap boxes of Union Square.
When the Selective Draft Act went into effect in America, she espoused the cause of the conscientious objectors and married one of them for the sole purpose of keeping him out of the army.
Divorced after the armistice, she took up the cause of the Russian revolutionists, and denounced the presence of American soldiers in Siberia and in Archangel, and finally joined the staff of Ludwig Martens, representing the Russian revolutionists in New York.
When Martens and his staff were deported by the Department of Labour on January 22, 1921, she went to Russia with them and was given representation on the American delegation to the Third Internationale in Moscow, together with Bill Haywood, Ruth Bryant Reed, and other American Reds.
Lin was class-conscious, but not race-conscious. I had many conversations with her in Moscow the following year. Her hatred was centered on the capitalistic system. She proudly boasted no prejudice against Jews, Negroes, Chinamen, Turks. Karakhan's yellow skin meant nothing to her; he was a young war god fighting victoriously for the masses.
To Karakhan, this educated, brilliantly spoken, composed yet rebellious woman was a spirit from a far world, but a spirit that attracted him far and beyond any of the cowed and beaten Asiatic women he had known. He wanted her and he felt that he needed her.
According to communistic regulations, they announced their marriage and registered the union which was to have such a great influence upon the subsequent events of his life and the history of the following years.
I met Karakhan for the first time in 1922, during the Russian famine. He had headquarters on the Volga at Samara, the scene of his first military victory over the Czecho-Slovaks. At this time his division was stationed in garrison towns along the Volga, guarding the wheat supplies of the Red Army. While hundreds of thousands died in this famine-stricken granary of the world, Karakhan safeguarded the food necessary for the Russian Army and held it against hordes of starving peasants.
In his reports to Moscow, Karakhan bitterly criticised the operations of his military predecessors in the grain belt. His mind ever seeking cause and effect, found the mistake responsible for the 5,000,000 lives snuffed out during the famine. The General preceding him at Samara during the previous year had confiscated the peasants' seed grain; had swept bare the floors of the granaries; and the crop failure of the succeeding year was inevitable.
Food profiteers came in for bitter denunciation in these reports, which were submitted direct to Trotsky. Karakhan refused to avail himself of the warning and caution suggested by his staff, who feared that Trotsky would make the criticism grounds for his removal from the army or to make him a subject for disciplinary action.
Karakhan's hatred for Trotsky developed at that time and reached its peak of bitterness in 1927, when he benefited with Stalin in the downfall of the Jewish Commissar of War and his exile to an unimportant post in the wilds of Siberia.
Karakhan tried to keep out of politics. He had set his course with the army. In 1923 it was in the Caucasus. In 1924 in Persia: in 1925 his division brought the threat of invasion to the frontiers of Turkestan and Afghanistan, and sent a shiver through India. It was a tremor that was felt from Calcutta to Downing Street.
In 1926 and 1927 his headquarters was at Irkutsk on Lake Baikal in mid-Siberia, and it was arms, munitions, and organizers from his headquarters that welded the strength of the Mongolian war lords from Severodvinsk to Urga and down the Kalgan trail almost to the walls of Pekin.
He was there also in 1928, when slowly awakening China came to an open clash of arms with the Japanese at Tsinan-Fu. Japan looked askance toward the Kalgan trail and the presence of Karakhan and his strong forces along the trans-Siberian railroad centering in Irkutsk. Chang-tso-lin, the Northern dictator, was in occupation of Pekin with forces strung out on both sides of the Hangkow-Pekin railway in the Province of Chihli. The bomb that wrecked his retreating train and killed him came from Karakhan of Kazan.
It was in 1929 that Karakhan made himself the principal influence behind Russia's refusal to concur in America's proposal for a Pan-China Peace Conference to settle the fate of China. Diplomats have since attributed to him the principal responsibility for the subsequent events of that year, which led to the unification of China under the Nationalist forces.
American recognition of the new China forced the surrender by England, France, Italy, Portugal, and Japan of their extra- territorial privileges and concessions in the yellow Republic, and was directly responsible for the lowering of White prestige in the East.
The terrible events of 1930: the bloodshed in Calcutta, Bombay, and Saigon, and the final expulsion of the French and British forces from Southern Asia, was the natural result of the unification of China.
In the following year, the seeds which Karakhan had planted far out on the Kalgan trail spread westward through Persia and the Near East. Foreign concessions on the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Persian Gulf, Arabia, Mesopotamia, fell one after the other, culminating in 1931 with the North African revolt, which spread from Egypt westward through Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco, where armies of Britain, France, Italy, and Spain held out on armed fronts against the strongly armed native forces that pushed them from the south.
Europe suffered another blow of vital consequence to her ultimate downfall. The year 1932 will always be remembered in Europe for the influenza epidemics and famine that occurred late that summer just after the debacle of the Arms Limitation Conference in Washington.
The Conference failed for the same reason that it failed at Geneva in 1927. The American proposals for limitation of total cruiser tonnage and England's counter-proposals for the reduction of individual tonnage proved incompatible once more, and the Conference was wrecked.
During the summer of 1932—the month of July—I reported for the newspapers of the Chicago Tribune Syndicate the extent and ravages of the 'flu epidemic in France, Italy, Germany, and the Balkans, and also cabled a number of reports on the shortage in food supplies, which was becoming serious and was accompanied as usual by rising prices.
In the following month, bearing credentials from the Spanish, French, Italian, and British war offices, I made a motor trip behind the entire Allied front, stretching across North Africa from Casablanca on the Atlantic to Port Said at the Mediterranean terminal of the Suez Canal.
On the various sectors across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Tripolitania, and Egypt, the Allied forces numbered approximately three-quarters of a million men, made up of 400,000 French troops, 150,000 British; 100,000 Spanish; and 100,000 Italian.
The opposing forces of revolting Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians, Egyptians, and Sudanese were variously estimated at a total strength of 1,000,000. The Allied line was so extended that it could be held only by lightly defended blockhouses against which native concentration frequently hurled themselves with most successful results. The effect of these repeated minor victories was prejudicial to White prestige in the North African lateral.
I was fortunate in obtaining from the Allied General Staff located at Algiers, the first documentary proof of the assistance the revolting natives were receiving from their sympathizers in Asia and in Russia. Money, munitions, and propaganda invoking the Holy War and the war of colour constantly emanated from Moscow, and it was on the basis of these revelations that I was ordered to go to the capital of Russia and report this news from its source.
I arrived in Moscow the latter part of August, 1932, and established a Bureau for the Chicago Tribune in the Savoy Hotel.
It was there, during the first week of my arrival, that I met the American youth, whose strange story is so inextricably interwoven with the events which I am about to relate.
Stephen (Speed) Binney was the "spittin'" image of his father. That was my first impression when this tall, slender, blond- haired, smiling-faced, bright-eyed, twenty-two-year-old bundle of flaming American youth introduced himself to me in the lobby of the Savoy Hotel.
"Mr. Gibbons," he said, "my name is Steve Binney, and you knew my father, Speed Binney, during the days of the A.E.F. in France. I have this letter for you from him. You remember him, of course?"
Did I remember Speed Binney? I did. Flier, fighter, drinker, pal; one of the wildest war birds in the squadron of Frank Luke, the balloon buster. Binney, who flew a flaming coffin; Binney, who shot down eight German planes; Binney, who had flown me over the German lines on a day bombing raid, in open violation of regulations; Binney, who had been shot down once himself. We had both been wounded, and occupied adjoining cots in American Base Hospital No. 1 in Paris during that tough month of June, 1918. Binney, who dove off the foyer balcony in the Folies Bergères and swung on the crystal chandelier until brought down under orders from a lieutenant and three men of the Provost Marshal's office; Binney, who had been court-martialed for "borrowing" a speedy Sopwith fighting plane from a "friendly" British airdrome. Did I remember Binney?
Come to think of it, I also recalled the night when he and I locked ourselves in a room in the Lutetia Hotel in Paris, and fought a knock-down and drag-out battle that lasted almost an hour. Just a friendly bout, in which we had given each other the best we had.
Binney had been on the receiving end of the snappiest left slam I have ever had the pleasure of delivering. He bounced off it and crashed through a glass partition into our bathroom. I picked him up and shook out the glass and we squared off for the next round.
The hardest sock I ever took on the button came from Speed's right fist, supported by his right shoulder, hip, thigh, heel, and toe. He put everything he had in it, and I carried all of it with me as I imbedded myself in the oaken panel of an upright wardrobe. I think both of us cried and laughed by turns, as we bathed the blood from each other's faces.
That was when Speed told me about his wife back in St. Louis and their nine-year-old kid. And here was that nine-year-old, standing stalwart and husky, the very reincarnation of his old fighting Dad there in Moscow. I opened the sealed letter he handed me. It read:
BINNEY SHEET & TUBE COMPANY
17-19-21
Chestnut St., St. Louis.
Office of the President.
Dear Gibbons:
You lucky hound. You are in the midst of a scrap again. How I envy you. The armistice of 1918 meant a return to the slavery and drudgery of civilian life for the rest of us, but your luck holds out as ever.
From what I have read of your stuff in the last twelve or fourteen years, it looks like you have been in a couple of wars every year since then. No such luck for me. I had the wife and kid back in St. Louis, where I landed in the summer of 'nineteen.
The phosphorus on that German ball in my shoulder kept the old wound from healing, and bad liquor also contributed to my sky-rocket nerves for the following two years, but then I got my stride.
Worked like a dog since then. Cleaned up a little jack. Now president of my own works with a couple of plants operating here and another one up in Massachusetts at Fall River. That's that, but this is more.
Do you recall a bawling match we had one night in the Lutetia Hotel in Paris, and you got all soggy-eyed trying to tell me what a wonderful mother you had, and I cried a bathtub full explaining to you the wonders of the then nine-year- old angel that called me Daddy? Do you remember me telling you what a sweet baby boy I had?
Well, this tender, delicate little cherub is the roughneck who has just handed you this letter. For the last three years his early sweetness has been complicated with inclinations that have made him as popular with the constituted authorities as a combination of the Bubonic Plague and the Seven Years' Itch.
His greatest collegiate achievement was to distinguish himself as the first person to perfect the process of mixing cocktails in an electrical washing machine.
He is a flying fool with wings or without.
He celebrated his twentieth birthday two years ago by flying his Eagle flivver up the Main Street of Westover, his college town. He skimmed the trolley wires and the telegraph poles, stopped traffic, and made a three-point landing on the chest of the bronze statue of Westover's Unknown Soldier, located in the center of Pershing Square.
As was to be expected, the plane and the statue went down to ignominious defeat, while the flying fool escaped without a scratch. It cost me $11,000 in bail, fines, attorney fees, and damages, and that incident graduated him from college without the formality of final exams. He has been with me more or less in the business for the last eighteen months, and the business just can't stand it any longer.
His pilot's license has been revoked three times for as many convictions on charges of reckless flying, and one more conviction means a jail sentence. I know it is impossible to keep him out of the air, but I am hoping it will be possible for me to keep him out of jail.
I don't think he will kill himself, or anybody else, because actually he is the best man I have ever seen in the air. I have flown with him and have never felt a neater touch on the stick. He could land a flying boat on a tennis court.
The point of all this is that the kid is too speedy for the old man. From what I know of you, I think you have kept up the old war time gait of 1918. And you are the only one I know who can help me to get a few serious thoughts into the crazy head of this young idiot. For the life of me I cannot understand where he had inherited his wild tendencies.
I want you to put him to work and make a man of him. From the way you hop around the world I know that you need speedy transportation. This kid can deliver it. I have told him that if he can sell himself to you for a job as an air chauffeur, I will buy him the speediest, latest plane that's made. His heart is set on one of the new French Bréguets. They are big bi-motor amphibians, with plenty of lift, speed, space, and fuel capacity. This letter is to ask you as an old pal to take this job on for me. Make him work. And make a man out of him.
Sincerely your Pal, Speed Binney.
P.S. If you box or 'mix' with him, be careful of his left; it's poisonous. S.B.
I folded the letter and considered the job, as I looked
up into the smiling face of young Speed, who sat before me on the
edge of the table. Additional responsibilities are far from
desirable to one whose existence has been more or less a
satisfaction of his selfish whims and comforts. What business did
I have wet-nursing a young, untamed cyclone?
But young Binney was smiling. A clean, infectious smile, which I could only refrain from joining by an exercise of the will. Friends of the "old man" are supposed to be more or less staid and gruff old codgers. I tried to live up to such specifications. I pinned him with a serious look.
"Do you drink much, Speed?"
"What have you?" he replied with a smile. "I just arrived this morning, and am not familiar with the local oil, but am ready to try it."
Over two small glasses of vodka, "Speed" Binney, Jr., and I came to terms. The interview lasted an hour and closed with the following statement:
"You understand, then," I said, "that I am not responsible for you, but that from now on you are going to be responsible for me. You've had your fling at irresponsibility, and now I am going to show you what an irresponsible person really is.
"You know what I've got to do; you've got to help me do it. I am not going to try to tell you how to drink, or when to drink, or where to drink. I'm not going to treat you like a boy or a charge. You're a man and you will be expected to act as one. Is it agreed?"
"Agreed," said Binney. We shook hands. He left Moscow the following morning by the passenger air line for Paris, and one week later returned to the Moscow airdrome with the big bi-motor Bréguet.
We were ready for the most hectic year of our lives.
"LIFE in Moscow in this year of our Lord 1932 is damned precarious for a freeborn American male, who likes a drink and has an eye to beauty," announced Speed Binney, dropping helmet and goggles on my desk.
"Another mess?" I asked, without looking up.
"Almost," replied Speed. "Met the sweetest little Communist that ever wore red socks, last night at the air field; asked her in sign language to bust a vodka with me, and she led the way.
"Took me to an office where the bird in charge started making out papers that I figured were necessary to buy a bottle of Government hooch. Instead of that, what do you think it was?"
"Can't guess."
"Communist Goernment Marriage Bureau! You and the Tribune almost lost your aerial dispatch rider. I escaped the sacred wounds of bedlock, or the sacred bonds of wedlock, by a split second—almost signed on the knotted line. I'm studying the language from now on."
"Wish you'd hurry it up so you could read these things," I remarked, indicating the fresh pile of Moscow morning papers in front of me. "Somebody's got to translate this stuff for me. The situation's getting hot."
"Red-hot," agreed Speed. "Saw the kids going to school this morning carrying their cute little gas masks at the ready. Wow! What a war scare. Every Red from Inskyville to Whiskervitch sees behind every lamp post an army of enemies led by old General Chopyerheadoff. I guess old Papa Stalin and the boys in the Kremlin know their proletariat to the last pro."
"The papers are bristling with it," I added. "Here's a translation from yesterday's Izvestiya, which I sent on the radio."
Binney read it aloud:
"The failure of the Washington Arms Limitation Conference means another World War. America, Great Britain, France, and Japan have been unable to agree on their respective naval strengths, due to the policy of the British Admiralty in refusing to live up to the naval parity agreement of 1922 with America, which they successfully circumvented in 1928 by the secret military and naval pact with France.
"On the surface, these developments point to an impending struggle for supremacy between Great Britain and the United States, but actually these appearances are camouflage for an understanding existing between the capitalistic nations to hurl their sea, air, and land forces against Russia, to suppress the race revolt in North Africa, to regain white prestige in Asia, to divide China once more for their exploitation and to regain control of India.
"Capitalism and imperialism once more show themselves unwilling to bend their policies in the direction of peace. Socialistic Russia must be prepared to defend the principles of the Revolution to the last man, the last woman, and the last child."
"It's not only in the press," added Binney, "but they're shooting the same stuff out day and night over the radio and they have speakers feeding it to the factory-workers during the lunch hour. It's been getting stronger every day for the last two weeks.
"They've now got the women sewing socks for soldiers and some of them even drilling with machine guns, and the school kids are chipping in kopeks to buy fighting airplanes to carry the name of each school."
It was true that the Government had taken full propaganda advantage of the war scare, which had aroused a popular frenzy beyond the expectations of some of its promoters. The afternoon newspapers brought the climax.
Karakhan was appointed by the Union Council of Peoples' Commissars, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Air, and Sea forces of the nation, and was given full authority to reorganize the national defence and place Russia in a position to defend herself against the expected storm. Inner politics of the anti-Jewish faction of the Council played its part in the event.
The newspapers carried large photographs of the new Commander. Glowing accounts were published of his military genius and his successes in the field. His victories over Denikin, Wrangel, Pilsudski, Yudenich, Kolchak, and Gaida were detailed at great length. He was hailed as the man who could save Russia from dismemberment.
Karakhan accepted the new post without a word, and for almost two weeks no public statement issued from his headquarters in Moscow, but there was terrific activity within.
A number of general officers in high command were transferred to new posts, and their places suddenly taken by new and younger spirits, mostly of lesser rank, but coming direct from Moscow with orders signed by the Commander-in-Chief.
Then Karakhan spoke. It was a blast.
He acknowledged his responsibility to the people of Russia. He declared he found the defences of the country in a deplorable state; there were terrific deficiencies in equipment; the army lacked supplies and vital necessities. Political influence, manifesting itself through favouritism in appointments, had lowered the morale of the men in command, and had reduced the discipline of the troops.
His statement, which I cabled in full, concluded with these words:
"I have accepted the task placed before me by the people of Russia. Certain of their confidence in me, I dedicate myself to organize immediately the defences of the nation in keeping with the requirements of a country of 130,000,000 people.
"This is the command I have received from the Russian masses. I recognize no higher command. I will brook no political interference with my efforts to carry out my sacred duty."
The statement went well with the masses, but caused a
terrific furor in Government circles. It amounted plainly to a
declaration of military dictatorship. The Union Council of
Peoples' Commissars met in hurried conference to decide what
measures could be taken to conserve its authority.
Rudzutak, Commissar of National Transportation, advocated immediate disciplinary action against the young Commander-in- Chief. Smirnov, Commissar of Post and Telegraph, endorsed the proposal, but Malig, Commissar of the Workers and Peasants Inspection, startled his confrères by telling them such action was too late.
"The people are tired of politicians. There is a scarcity of food and prices are high," he told them. "Karakhan has captured their imagination.
"His appointment as Commander-in-Chief has given them new confidence. Any attempt on the part of the administration to discipline him at this time will result in a popular confirmation of the practical dictatorship which he, himself, has announced. Comrades, we face a fait accompli."
Confirmation of the speaker's words came the following day, two hours after the appearance on the streets of the Izvestiya with a bitter front-page denouncement of military dictatorship.
Crowds gathered in front of the newspaper office. From unknown sources there suddenly appeared banners bearing the legends, "We have had enough of politicians." "Orators have dissipated the fortunes of the Revolution." "Enough of words." "More of action."
Speakers addressed the crowds from boxes in the street. An orator appeared at a second-story window of the newspaper office and obtained the attention of the crowd. He began a defence of the Government and a denunciation of strong methods.
Angry shouts and gibes arose from the crowd; a stone crashed through a window above the speaker's head. The crowd surged forward toward the entrance of the building.
As it did so, there was a movement at the end of the street; a squadron of mounted troops approached at a trot. It was wildly cheered. The officer at their head took the speaker's place on the balcony and addressed the throng in the street. He said:
"I speak in the name of your comrades of the Red Army of Russia. We renew our oath to you. We are armed now with leadership. From the Baltic to the Sea of Oshkosh we thank you for the new Commander you have placed above us. Under his command the sacred soil of Russia will never be invaded by the powerful enemies opposed to us, or betrayed by the incompetence, negligence, and corruption of bureaucrats.
"The sacred principles of the Revolution will suffer neither violation from abroad nor political dissipation from within. Our Little Uncle" (Karakhan's nickname in his own army corps) "desires that you return peacefully to your home and your work.
"He promises that the editorial policy of the Izvestiya will from now on be in keeping with the will of the people.
"Long live Russia; long live Karakhan of Kazan."
The street reverberated with cheers. The mounted men returned down the street to the accompaniment of singing throngs that marched beside them on the sidewalks.
Two hours later another edition of the Izvestiya appeared on the streets of Moscow. It apologized for the "misdirected" editorial of the morning edition and announced a complete change in the board of directors and the editorial management of the paper's columns. Karakhan's own lieutenants had written the new version.
I cabled daily dispatches on the events of the following two weeks, during which time the Dictator made his force and power felt in almost every department of the Government. The garrison of Moscow was doubled under his orders, and there were frequent movements of troops through the streets.
Guard mount was held at sunset each day in front of Lenin's tomb on the Red Square. Karakhan made only one personal appearance and on that occasion was roundly cheered by the multitudes.
Incoming newspapers and dispatches from other capitals revealed that the development of the long feared Russian Dictatorship sent a tremble around the world. The menace of the Russian bear appeared again as a shadow against the hopes of world peace.
On the heels of the surprise caused by the Russian presentation of a fighting front toward the world, came America's great gesture of peace—the passage by the United States Congress of the Lampson Bill, granting full and complete independence to the Philippine Islands.
President Hoover signed the bill the same day it passed Congress, and one month later to the day, the Governor General and his staff in Manila turned over the reins of Government to Emanuel Quezon, President pro tempore of the new Philippine Republic, with the parting reminder, "America keeps her word."
The idealistic aspect of America's action in withdrawing from the Islands was highly questioned, both in America and abroad.
European observers attributed the move to necessity growing out of the failure of the Arms Limitation Conference. They pointed out that under the terms of the Conference of 1922, America had surrendered all right to fortify the Islands further, and that without adequate naval bases in the Pacific, she was more than ever unable to defend this exposed flank and believed it best for her own national security to withdraw.
South American critics interpreted the action as confirming their fears that American expansion was southward and not westward.
American radicals celebrated the liberation of the Islands as a victory in their long fight for the fulfilment of President McKinley's old promise, and a further extension of the Wilsonian policy of self-determination for all peoples.
American pacifists greeted Philippine independence as the elimination of the last possible cause for war between America and Japan.
American conservatives doubted the outcome. Some who had opposed the independence bill publicly stated their belief that an independent Philippines meant war in the Pacific within a year.
American property owners in the Islands denounced the lowering of the American flag on Corregidor and denied that the American Constitution granted any power either to Congress or the President to alienate the sovereignty of territory which, since the Spanish-American War, had been United States domain.
American socialists denied the administration's gesture of idealism and attributed the passage of the bill to the power and influence of the dairy interests of Wisconsin, the American Tobacco Combine, and the Sugar Trust, all three of which were bitterly opposed to the duty-free importation of Philippine products in competition with home-grown. Social economists predicted higher prices for vegetable fats, tobacco, and sugar.
One curious effect of the liberation of the Islands was the howl that went up against it from thousands of Filipinos of the property-owning and employing classes. Many of these saw an inevitable fall in values and the reduction of the Islands' standard of living, once their exports to American markets had to compete in price with the same products coming from the Asiatic countries of coolie labour.
The strategic effect of the liberation was that the Asiatic squadron of the United States Navy sailed out of Manila Bay and took up its new base at Honolulu. The problem of the Pacific took on a new phase. America's western frontier was drawn back half- way across the ocean.
But the third repercussion of the failure of the Arms Conference was the greatest.
The return of the Japanese delegation to Tokyo was the signal for the terrific anti-war, anti-monarchy, and anti-Government demonstration, directed by the Farm-Labour Party, the Japanese Labour Council and the Proletarian Young Men's League of Japan.
A sudden drastic application of the Japanese censorship silenced newspaper correspondents in Tokyo, and I was instructed to cover the story from Russian sources, which I found particularly well-informed and eager to get the news out to the world.
Since the dissolution of the three radical organizations in 1928, together with the arrest and imprisonment of 1,000 Japanese Communists, the Red movement in Japan had been forced under cover and, in spite of the efforts of the national police, had become most extensive and powerful. In four brief years its membership had increased by hundreds of thousands and, by reason of the Universal Compulsory Military Service, "cells" of Communism existed in all branches of the Navy, Army, and Air services.
In my dispatches I reviewed how successive Diets had passed increasingly restrictive amendments to the Defense of the Throne Act, by which the suppression of radical groups was authorized. Arrest and exile of hundreds of Communists under this severe measure had only served to add new strength to the proletarian movement.
The curtailment of Japanese foreign interests in Shantung, Chihli, and Manchuria by the unification of China had resulted in successive economic crises, while the Island Kingdom underwent a severe period of economic readjustment. As usual, the brunt was borne by the lower classes, and the flame there smouldering was continually being fanned by Communist propaganda, both from Soviet Russia and China.
Thousands of students joined the workingmen, who marched through the streets of Tokyo in that monster demonstration which came to such a fatal conclusion on the third day of October, 1932, when firing opened between the mobs of demonstrators and the 4th Regiment of the Imperial Guard drawn up around the Imperial Palace. I was fortunate in getting a long distance telephone hook-up from Moscow, by which I scored a ten-hour scoop on the outbreak.
The history of these three days of frightful bloodshed in the capital of Japan caused the world to shudder. Not since the days of the last Shogun had Japan been torn by such internal strife. The details of that fighting and its consequent results reached the world principally through Moscow, where Karakhan gave full swing to military and proletariat demonstrations and processions celebrating "the downfall of tyranny, the overthrow of monarchy, the disappearance of capitalistic slavery among our yellow comrades of the East."
It was openly boasted by Moscow spokesmen of the Communist Internationale that the thousands of Chinese and Russian rifles, small arms, hand grenades, and gas bombs, that suddenly appeared in Tokyo on the day of the Revolution, had come from the stores originally assembled on the shores of Lake Baikal by Karakhan five years previous. For years there had been a steady infiltration of these munitions into Japan from Vladivostok and from Shantung.
The turning point in the uprising came when the 2nd and 3rd Regiments of the Imperial Guard, stationed in the Tokyo garrison, suddenly joined the Revolutionists. Emperor Hirohito and the members of the Imperial family fled by airplane, and their whereabouts were unannounced for three days.
Later, it was learned they had endeavoured to land at Yokohama, where the Japanese fleet was at anchor, but had changed plans upon receipt of radio messages from the besieged Palace in Tokyo informing them that mutiny had taken place throughout the fleet, that Admiral Katsu had been assassinated on his flagship, and that the fleet was in the hands of the Reds.
A week after the disappearance of the Japanese Imperial family, the steamship American Banker, of the American Dollar Line, delivered the Emperor and his family safely ashore at Manila. They had been picked up at sea in sight of the Island of Hachyioshuma.
The infant Philippine Republic came in for much denunciation in the Moscow press when the reports of the Japanese Emperor's arrival in Manila were published.
In Tokyo, Kato Yamkata, at the head of the Committee of Soldiers, Sailors, and Workers, assumed the responsibility of the Red Government. A former Colonel of the Imperial Guard, who had been expelled from the service for refusing to carry out an order of execution against one of his soldiers convicted of Communist propaganda in the ranks, was placed in command of the Revolutionary forces. New Communist drafts were called to the Red flag of Japan and the Revolutionary Army.
There followed that frightful six weeks of executions; the flight of the elder statesmen, cabinet ministers, and members of the Diet. The Revolution in its sixth week carried more the aspect of a military than a proletariat affair.
Russia immediately recognized the new Government and Karakhan published his hearty congratulations to the Japanese Commander- in-Chief, in spite of the fact that groups of Japanese "reactionaries" managed to hold out for many months in strong positions in the interior.
That month of October, 1932, in Moscow was a busy one for Speed Binney and myself. The Red Foreign Office—"The Kommintern"—soon proved to be the best source of information in the world for news concerning developments in Japan. Story after story of the horrors of the Revolution came to me through this medium.
The Russian Embassy in Tokyo, through its liaison with the Japanese Revolutionists, was able to maintain a twenty-four-hour direct-wire communication with Moscow and render full reports of all developments.
Foreign correspondents in Tokyo found themselves handicapped by their former relations with the old Imperial Government, and both their operations and access either to their cables or the radio were under the suspicion and restriction of the Japanese Reds.
Not so with the capable "International Public Relations," spokesman of the Kommintern. My cable and radio dispatches filed in Moscow, principally on the Japanese developments, averaged 2,000 words a night during that hectic month of October.
Once, when communication lines out of the country became congested, I obtained permission to send Binney out by air with my dispatches to Riga. The bi-motor Bréguet made the 600-mile flight in five hours, and I was able to score a twelve-hour scoop with my dispatch, which carried the first news of the capture and execution of the Japanese Imperial Governor of Korea.
Binney flew back two days later, with cables which the editor in Chicago had addressed to me in Riga and which informed me that I had been awarded a thousand dollar bonus for "beating the world" to the story. I split this windfall with Binney and that night we decided to celebrate.
The Café Mont Blanc was the scene of our party. It offered the best night entertainment in Moscow and it bore the old nickname that Nikolai Lenin won with his fellow exiles in Switzerland during the days under the Czar. Snow had already fallen in Moscow and the café interior was warm with lights, with music and the heat of humanity. A French-speaking headwaiter accepted my chervonets note, and seated us at a table opposite the dancing space.
Streamers of entwined red and green tissue paper formed a cheap and garish ceiling above the dancers, whose efforts were in the best direction of an American two-step. A six-piece Russian orchestra at one end of the room provided the music.
The attendance was international and motley. Interspersed among the white guests, wearing European garments, were Bashkirs, Tartars, Kirghizians, and Kalmyks, with shaven heads and some of them wearing their black fur kaftans.
There were Indian women wearing veils over the head, and the white Russian girls present were attired for the most part after the fashion of Paris. Some of them, however, wore knotted red silk kerchiefs around their necks, marking them as members of the young Communist groups.
Two diminutive Japs in military uniform, but wearing red brassards on the left arms signifying their Revolutionary status, were received with applause as they were seated opposite us. They acknowledged the recognition with bows and smiles.
At the next table was a curious pair. A girl with bobbed blond hair and a young man with dark eyes and yellowish complexion. Both were dressed in European attire; both sipped glasses of hot tea and lemon; both were silent. Her eyes watched the dancers on the floor; his ever sought her face.
"And there sits Miss Russia, straight from the Atlantic City contest," Binney said to me, indicating the girl. "Wow! what a pip. Wonder what language she would agree to dance with me in." He tossed off a glass of vodka and his eyes went back to the hatless beauty with the shingled hair.
"Looks Nordic," I replied. "Fresh, clean skin, good eyes and chin, fine head. Probably Scandinavian."
"Not fluent in Norsk," replied Binney, looking steadily at the girl, "but maybe she will get the old international code."
Their eyes met. Binney's twinkled. His lips parted, revealing a row of even white teeth that carried the almost pleading "Will you?" The girl did not move her gaze but her features remained immobile, peering back at him through the flame of a match held to her cigarette.
"Four out of five, get it, back in St. Louis," Speed observed, as he shifted his now silly smile to me. "Is my face dirty or have I got a wart on the nose? Somebody ought to make Communists safe for Democrats. Did you feel that look she gave me—like a draught through an igloo. A walrus hide against a cake of last year's ice, she's an Eskimo. She needs me like the north pole needs a panama hat."
An hour later when our small bottle of vodka had disappeared, mostly in Speed's direction, that person had shaken off the chilblains and was now openly smiling into the still immobile features of "Arctic Annie," considerably to the annoyance of her swarthy companion.
A roll of drums, a chord from the orchestra, and one of the managers took the floor with his hand lifted for silence. The headwaiter answered my nod by standing at our table and translating what followed.
"Comrades," the manager announced, "here with us tonight are two new heroes of the World Revolution: Comrades Ishii and Karugi, both of whom took glorious parts in the fighting in front of the old Imperial Palace in Tokyo three weeks ago and one of whom, Captain Karugi, was wounded. They are the guests of Russian comrades of the World Revolution tonight. We welcome these heroes to the birthplace of World Revolution and offer this token of our admiration and love."
Amidst cheers and applause two waiters placed two large armfuls of cut flowers, bound with blood-red ribbons, on the table of the Japanese Revolutionists, both of whom smiled back their embarrassment. There were cries for a speech and Karugi, the smaller of the two Japanese, arose amidst a roar of applause.
With a sibilant intake of breath, in true Japanese fashion he accepted the flowers. In a clipped speech he expressed his thanks for Russia's assistance to Japan in throwing off the "monarchical, imperialistic yoke."
"Shoulder to shoulder with you we stand now in our greater fight to free the whole world from the shackles of bourgeois greed and prejudice," he said.
"Russia and Japan are the only two countries in the world where race and colour offer no barrier to the equality of brotherhood. White and yellow, brown or black, we are all red as the blood in our veins and equal.
"We accept the flowers as a token of the tie that now binds Russia and Japan. I express our appreciation of the honour, and tie the knot tighter by bestowing them now on the comrade present who appears to us as the living symbol of glorious Russian womanhood." He laid the flowers on the table for the blond-haired girl who had so excited Speed's interest.
She flushed and smiled with embarrassment as a roar of applause greeted the gesture. But not so with her yellow companion. Rising angrily to his feet, he grabbed the flowers in both hands and swung the wet, heavy bunch of thorny stems and buds across the smiling face of the astonished Japanese hero.
Chairs scraped across the floor, tables overturned, and bottles and glasses crashed, as all present jumped to their feet. The girl also was up, speaking hurriedly. Her companion shouted something in a different tongue and as if by magic other swarthy skins among the guests moved toward him. The fight was on.
The girl's companion floored Karugi and at the same time tripped a huge Russian who lunged at him. In falling, the man's shoulder struck the girl and staggered her.
"My cue," shouted Speed, as he dove into the melee. I followed instinctively. We had just reached her side when the lights went out.
"Boss, where are you?" It was Speed's voice.
"Here beside you," I shouted.
"I've got her. Come this way."
Shoulder to shoulder we pushed our way in the darkness through a mess of overturned chairs and broken tables. All about us were cries, shouts, screams, blows. Several times I felt the impact of a blow react through Speed's shoulder. The "poisonous left" was working.
We came to a wall and worked our way along it in the darkness. Speed was in the lead and I could feel from his movements that several human obstacles were being pushed out of the way. Several shots rang out above the general bedlam of the cries, curses, and crashes. Someone on the floor grabbed my legs, but I was able to free myself with a kick.
"Here's a door," came Speed's voice. "Here we go!"
We squeezed through a narrow aperture. Although still in the darkness we were out of the fight and found ourselves standing ankle deep in the snow, mud, and rubbish of a backyard.
"Some party," said Speed. "Now can you ask this baby in French, or something, where we can go and have my dance?"
A light laugh came from the slender figure now standing beside us.
"No need for French. I believe I can understand you if you speak slowly." Her English was perfect.
Her voice was well-modulated, warm, and with the lilt of a hidden laugh in it.
"Holy ailerons, did I grab the wrong one in the dark?" came in startled tones from Speed.
"Wait, I'll light a match," I offered.
"Please don't," said the girl quickly, placing her hand on my arm in sudden restraint. I imagined she drew closer to me as though to screen herself from something.
"Then let's get out to the alley and onto the street," said Speed. "If this was St. Louis, the cops would have been here by now."
"I fear it will be impossible for me to go with you, although I would like to very much," said the girl. Her words seemed hesitant but they conveyed a chuckle.
"We'll take you back in, if you want to," laughed Speed.
"No, not that either," said the girl.
"Then what in h—."
"You know I am so sorry, but I need a coat. As a matter of fact, I need more than a coat. Actually, I require a skirt. I lost mine in the fight. I am quite satisfied to carry on as I am here in the dark, but I rather dread a public appearance. Wouldn't you?"
"We've all had that dream," said Speed. "But your's came true. That's what you are—a dream come true—if you are the one I think you are—and now I'm sure you are. Here, take my coat—you know—wear it like an apron—tie the sleeves around your waist. Real frat make-up for a Scotch highlander."
"Draughty and with southern exposure, but sufficient unto the emergency," replied the girl.
"Sir Walter Raleigh having said it again with a coat, it is hereby established that coats are the limits of male chivalry," said Speed. "Better than that no man can do, for what profit it if a man gains the whole world and loses his own pants?"
Leaving them giggling in the darkness I made my way through an alley to the side street and hailed a passing drosky. I returned with it to the backyard of the café where Speed and the girl joined me.
Above the frowzy horse blanket that served as a lap robe, our upper appearance was de rigor as we drove back to the Savoy. The girl's transfer from street to our rooms was made with the assistance of a polo coat which Speed brought down from the rooms, while the girl and I waited in the drosky.
While the girl went into temporary retirement in Speed's room, he started the samovar and brought out glasses. She joined us in five minutes, a radiant, striking figure in a pair of Speed's gray plus-fours, with a light-blue golf sweater, V-shaped at the neck. She swaggered in with hands in the trouser pockets, plumped into an easy chair and lighted a cigarette.
"Lady Godiva, what's your name?" inquired Speed.
"Does it matter, Sir Walter?" she replied with a smile. "Remember I'm wearing the trousers now—almost filling them, too."
I interrupted to remark it might be advisable, in view of the constant espionage to which all foreigners were subjected in Moscow and the fact that her presence at the hotel might require explanation at the desk below, that she tell us as much as she cared to about herself.
She picked up paper and pencil and spoke as she wrote.
"Name? Margot Denison. Address? 24 Sofiskaya, third floor front. Family? Ishvinsky. Profession? Stenographer. Occupation? Unemployed. When last employed? Three days ago. Last employer? Moscow Office, British Platinum Co., Ltd.
"Reason for leaving last job? Suspected of reporting Company's business secrets to Soviet Department of Commerce. In other words, suspected of being a Red spy. Nationality? British. You do not want the rest, do you? Birthplace, age, complexion, weight, height, etc.?"
I waived it aside.
"Who was the Chink with you tonight?" Speed broke in.
"Oh, that was Ahmed. He is not a Chink," replied the girl. "He is an Arab. Could you find out if he was hurt? Poor devil, he is frightfully loyal, but awfully excitable and always in trouble. It was horrible of him to hit that little Jap, but he resented the flowers. He understands not a word of Russian. He thought the Jap was forcing his attentions on me."
We chatted until past midnight. There was a quiet dignity about the girl that I liked. Her knowledge of current affairs belied her twenty-three years. In manner of speech and conduct there was a certain touch of refinement and a delicacy which never carried the air of superiority. Her opinions were vigorously young and strongly humanitarian.
Margot was more than a parlour pink; she was an ardent internationalist, and betrayed by her arguments that she had read enthusiastically, if not widely. It was her interest in the Russian sociological experiment that brought her to Moscow. She was one of the modern sisterhood that wanted to go places and see things.
Her views were quite in sympathy with the Soviet plan for uplifting the masses, and she believed that much progress had been made, although she disagreed with the World Revolution views of the Third Internationale.
When I asked her if there were any grounds for the suspicion that she was a Red spy, she told me no, and I believed her. She said that she had been frank in her statements and discussions with her former employer, the General Manager of the company, who hated everything radical, considered her a possible disturbing influence on the staff and discharged her. At least she attributed her dismissal to this.
Her facility with languages made her a valuable acquisition for my office, so I arranged with her to work part time in the Bureau, reading and translating the Russian newspapers for me, typing letters and doing general office work.
Binney took her home and I went to bed.
The following morning I was called to the Bureau of the Moscow Cheka, the Russian secret police.
Fears for my pilot and the English girl and also for myself, as a result of the fight in the café, were uppermost in my mind as I seated myself before the desk of Zurov, the chief of the Cheka, and looked across into the steely eyes of that much feared master of Asiatic cruelty.
"You are aware the death penalty prevails in Russia for spies, counter-revolutionaries and those who shield them?" came the slow measured words from the thin unsmiling lips of the head of the secret police system.
I nodded.
"We have a prisoner who claims to be a fellow countryman of yours," Zurov continued, still fixing me with his eyes. "And we must know what you know about him.
"Who is he?"
"He uses the name of Whitney Adams Dodge and says he is from Boston."
"Can't recall him exactly," I replied slowly, although to anyone cognizant with early American history the three names were more than familiar.
"We have reason to believe him a British agent. He admits having been with the British Army in Egypt. We know that he crossed the fighting lines south of Cairo, where he presented himself to the commander of the Egyptian Red Army as an American journalist.
"For the last six months our agents have followed his movements through Abyssinia, Persia, Turkey, and Armenia. We arrested him a month ago at Astrakhan, on the technical charge of entering Russia without a vise, and he's been held since for investigation. What do you know about him?"
"Nothing," I replied, with honest relief. "But that doesn't condemn him. I don't know everyone that writes for American newspapers. What does he look like?"
"You'll see," Zurov pressed a desk button. Two guards entered from a side door, with a tall young man between them.
The prisoner's dark hair was uncombed and his face carried a month's growth of stubble. He was coatless and his khaki shirt was open at the collar. His blue trousers were stained and wrinkled and he held them up grotesquely, with a hand on each hip.
His shoes were without laces and loose wrinkled socks exposed bare skin between ankles and trousers.
The absence of necktie, belt, garters, and shoe laces was evidence of the prisoner's importance in the opinion of his jailers. The Cheka took no chances of losing its prey by the suicide route.
The boy looked Zurov in the eye with an attitude of undisguised disdain. Contempt, tinged with defiance, was manifest in the clear eyes, peering from well-cut features, as he moved his glance to me.
"Dodge," Zurov spoke. "If you are an American, here is a fellow countryman of yours. Maybe you can convince him of your nationality and reason for being in Russia."
The youth surveyed me suspiciously. I read distrust in his look. He had probably been inspected by other Americans, alleged or otherwise, who had turned out to be more Red than American. There were such Americans in Moscow.
I introduced myself.
"Yes, I recognize you now," he said eagerly. "Saw you in Cairo during the fighting on the Nile. I do wish you could get me out of this mess. I've been caged up in this filthy hole for a month, for what reason I can't say.
"I have no connection with my own Government, or any other. I have a roving commission from the Boston Transcript, for whom I do occasional articles. I had hoped to do a series for them in the new Russia."
A half-hour's interrogation of Dodge in front of Zurov convinced me he was bona fide. He was twenty-four years old and had spend most of his life abroad. His Boston accent, somewhat emphasized by long residence in England, was not affected; it was natural.
Dodge was an Oxford postgraduate and had pulled an oar in a shell victory over Cambridge. The breadth and carriage of his shoulders bore out the modestly made statement. He visited his parents yearly in Boston but returned every winter to Oxford for various graduate courses, by which he hoped to equip himself for a post in the United States diplomatic service. He maintained "chambers" in Ormonde House, St. James Street, Piccadilly, and used that as his London address. All this he told me.
The session closed with my assuring Dodge that I would do everything in my power to obtain his release. He shook my hand heartily and left the room with his guards.
"Now, your honest opinion," Zurov asked.
"Straight as a die," I replied. "Believe I can convince you in ten minutes."
"How?"
"Put an urgent long distant call through to my office in London," I explained. "I'll talk to our correspondent and you can listen in or take a stenographic report of the conversation."
Ten minutes later the familiar voice of John S. Steele, the London correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, came over the wires across Europe.
"Know Dodge well," said Steele. "Old New England Colonial family. His father was one of the founders of the English Speaking Union. Old Mayflower stock. Honor student at Oxford and big oarsman. Likes to live in England.'
"He's prominent in the American colony in London—where he started an organization of London-Americans advocating cancellation or further reduction of English war debt to the States. Dodge is all right—just over serious. Not a spy in a generation of them. I'll vouch for him."
"And I'll vouch for him, too," I said to Zurov, hanging up the receiver. "Steele knows every American of any consequence that's lit in London in the last quarter of a century. His word is good."
After a delay of twenty-four hours, Zurov acted upon my appeal and Dodge was released on my recognizance. He moved into an upper floor suite at the Hotel Savoy and luxuriated that night in the first bath he had had in a month.
His hair trimmed, his face clean-shaven, and rigged out in clean linen and a spare suit of my clothing, he received me buoyantly in the salon of his suite, where he had invited Speed Binney and myself to dinner.
"You'll have to excuse my sky cowboy," I explained, "but I couldn't locate him with your invitation. We've a new stenog in the office and I suspect he's out rushing her. But I want you to tell me what it was that prompted you to take the risks you did in crossing the fire zone on the Nile. Few people live to do that and tell about it."
"I just wiggled across at night," explained Dodge. "Shot at a couple of times, but the swine missed me. Thought I was going to get a good story, but failed miserably."
"What was the story?" I asked.
"It all started with the disappearance of the Princess Victoria Louise," Dodge commenced, between mouthfuls. "Did you ever see the account I cabled on it from Cairo? That was the last story I wrote, and what a story it was! I haven't seen a newspaper in months. Has she been found yet?"
"Nothing published on it, if she has been," I informed him, "but it is presumed in London that her whole disappearance was a ruse and that, as a matter of fact, she was secretly sent back from Egypt to England on a cruiser and is now doing penance for her escapades in some English convent."
"Hadn't heard that," observed Dodge. "But hope it is true, although I doubt it. She's wild enough to be caged up. What a girl she is!
"Saw quite a bit of her in Cairo. She refused to stay at the residency and lived at Shepherd's Hotel. Headstrong as a young colt, you know, just another one of her democratic whims to cause further concern and embarrassment to the King and Queen."
"What is she like?" I asked.
"Like a high school graduate who has read Karl Marx for the first time," said Dodge. "All worked up over sociology—rampant against the English aristocracy; buffoons the peerage and seems to think that formal conventions were only made to be shattered."
"But she is a blue blood, herself," I reminded him. "Isn't she directly related to the King?"
"He's her great-uncle," replied Dodge, "and at one time she was his favourite. Back in 1918, when she was nine years old, he had her with him in the Royal receiving stand with Queen Mary, when the British Expeditionary troops marched back in the peace celebration.
"She made one visit to a war hospital with the Prince of Wales, and the King's physician believes that her recollection of the maimed and crippled soldiers she saw there is responsible for the pacifistic obsession she has today."
"The first time I ever heard of her," I interjected, "was back in 1927 when she became one of Cynthia Moseley's disciples and made speeches in the flapper vote movement in London."
"That was just a commencement," said Dodge. "Her escapades on the Continent since then created considerable stir in court circles in London, but nothing compared with that caused by her disappearance during the fighting south of Cairo.
"With only a native boy servant, she rode out on the desert from one of the camps on the Nile and was last seen galloping across the sands in the moonlight. Of course, it was immediately feared that she had either been killed or kidnapped by the Egyptian Reds. And you can imagine what a victory it would be for those filthy Rebels and Communists to get their hands on a grand- niece of the Royal family of England.
"I thought I might be able to locate her in the Rebel camp, and that is why I crossed the lines. But all trace of her was lost. I hope, however, that your report is right and that she is locked up in England. She is wonderful! I danced with her one night at Cairo and . . ."
Dodge stopped abruptly and looked down on his plate. The interruption was only for a second and he attempted to cover it by launching into a bitter denunciation of Egyptians, Russians, Communists, Bolsheviks and Rebels, closing with the statement that "they were all swine and filth," and, as far as he was concerned, "represented the worst curse that the world had ever suffered from."
"Easy, easy," I countered. "Please, Dodge, soft-pedal that stuff around here or you'll be back in the Cheka, and I might be with you this time.
"I don't agree with the Reds in their theories and practices, but I'm in their country on sufferance as a guest, and must conduct myself accordingly. After all, it's their country and they can run it as they see fit. I am here to report it—not reform it."
"I'm awfully sorry," Dodge apologized. "I can't help hating them. I'll try to keep it to myself hereafter. Wish I had some of your tact in keeping a tight lip."
I felt sufficient uneasiness at the time to heartily endorse his wish. Moscow was no place in those days for a loose tongue, as events were shortly to prove.
JUST as that pistol shot fired in June, 1914, in Sarajevo precipitated the bloody cloud-burst known as the World War, so another small leaden pellet launched on its death flight in Moscow was destined to change the political organization and destinies of Europe and Asia and to plunge the world into a war that was to write new records of barbarism in the history of man.
Joseph Stalin was assassinated November 2, 1932. A half-witted Jewish boy, whose parents lived in Poland, fired the fatal bullet that instantly killed "the man of steel" in whose hands rested the political power behind the Government of Red Russia.
The assassination occurred at ten o'clock in the morning on the Red Square, just as Stalin, in his automobile, was leaving the Kremlin by the old Spasskaya gate. The bullet, crashing through a side window of the car, struck him full in the face.
The only other occupant of the car, the man who was sitting beside the silent political leader, and the man in whose arms he died, was Karakhan of Kazan.
Walter Duranty, Moscow correspondent for the New York Times, and myself, happened to be in a bookseller's shop on the Red Square at the time. Although we did not hear the shot, we saw people rushing across the square, and followed them.
Learning what had happened, I raced back to the book stall and telephoned a flash bulletin of bare facts to my office to be dispatched immediately by cable and radio to Chicago. And at the same time, I told Margot Denison to notify Speed Binney to have the plane ready for a quick flight to Riga, with a "follow" story.
In that dispatch, which Binney managed to get out, I reviewed the events that had culminated in the assassination, and revealed for the first time the confidence which Stalin had imposed in Karakhan.
His selection of the young, serious student-soldier had been the result of Stalin's long duel with Leon Trotsky, which had not ended even in 1927, when Stalin had brought about the expulsion of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev from the Communist Party. When he exiled the former leader of the Red Army to the little town of Alma Ata, near the Mongolian border, he had already picked a new Commander-in-Chief for the military forces, and his choice had been Karakhan all the time.
Now it became apparent that it was Stalin who had directed the war scare that had placed such extraordinary powers in the hands of Karakhan. Stalin had executed this political move for the purpose of eliminating from the Central Committee of Commissars a number of Trotsky's friends who had been plotting for a return of the old leader.
Trotsky's supporters in the Central Committee had recognized Stalin's manoeuver too late. The Semitic question was bound to enter the conflict, due to the opposing races of the two political enemies and the fact that the Trotsky faction, bitterly opposed to Stalin, was largely composed of Jews.
Stalin had convinced Karakhan that the only enemy he had to fear was Trotsky and the Jewish faction.
As the news of the assassination spread through the streets of Moscow, the cry immediately arose that Stalin's assassination was the first movement in a Jewish plot to take over the Government of Russia.
In the days that followed I was unable to ascertain, and in fact it has never been proven, that either Trotsky or any of his supporters had anything whatever to do with the insane act of the mentally unbalanced Jewish boy that fired the shot.
But public tension reached such a pitch that sane consideration of the case was out of the question. Once more the century-old cry was raised against the Jews.
This was all Karakhan needed.
Twenty-three hundred Jews were killed in the streets of Moscow the day following the assassination. It was such a pogrom as had not been witnessed since the days of the Czar. It was White Russian hate reviving stronger than it had ever shown itself during the days of the Empire.
Horrible scenes occurred in the streets of the Jewish quarter. Women and children were run down and trampled under the hoofs of mounted soldiery and police. Young Jews were bayoneted as they fled from their homes. Stores, shops, and dwellings were looted.
I dispatched thousands of words daily on the horrors and atrocities which outraged the world. Much to my own surprise, and that of the other foreign correspondents in Moscow, the Government censorship placed no ban on broadcasting these terrible eye-witness reports.
They served to detract attention, momentarily, from the fact that Karakhan immediately took over the complete reins of Government and placed the civil administration under Pyotr Malig, one of Stalin's closest friends and ablest lieutenants, who, up to this time, had held the post of the Commissar of Peasants and Workers Inspection in the Central Committee.
Karakhan made himself Stalin's successor as the permanent Secretary-General of the "Politburo." He appointed Malig as his active assistant of this extra Governmental position, which extended its power and control through every branch of the Government by means of the Communist party organization.
It was to the "Politburo" that the Secretaries of all of the Communist locals all over Russia reported. And it was through this network of political henchmen and police spies, combined with Karakhan's strong hand on the military control that the complete transition of Russia was consummated.
The nation of 150,000,000 people remained in name the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but actually it came under the force and power of one man more abjectly than it had ever been in the days of Nicholas II.
My daily cables and radio dispatches to America described how Moscow and Leningrad were under the iron hand of Karakhan's reinforced garrisons, and how the only important opposition to his dictatorship existed solely in South Russia in the region of Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov.
Karakhan knew the Ukraine as though it were his own backyard. Trained divisions of Tartars, Bashkirs, and Mongols were immediately moved to the threatened area, which was placed under martial law.
There was street fighting in Kiev and Odessa, which lasted three days in the first place and four days in the latter. When quiet was restored, approximately 3,000 persons had been killed in each place.
Malig's agents of the Cheka moved in on the heels of the military forces and established extraordinary tribunals with the power of life and death. The terror was applied with public executions.
Within ten days all opposition had been completely crushed and the Jew-baiters of the Ukraine, many of whom had profited from the loot of the homes and businesses of murdered Jews, were adding their acclaim of the dictatorship of the "Little Uncle."
For Karakhan's purposes, however, it was too early for the idea of peace and security to prevail. Malig's Propaganda Bureau and newspapers spread the report of widespread counter- revolutionary plots, and hundreds of suspects were arrested. This produced a national condition which enabled Karakhan to call two classes of trained soldiers to the colors.
Credit for the first news of this secret mobilization must go to my pilot, Speed Binney. He obtained the information from the French mistress of a staff Colonel. Not a word had been published concerning it, and but few people outside of the General Staff circle were in on the secret.
It was a staggering piece of news.
The Russian Standing Army at that time was 600,000 men, and under the compulsory military service regulations fresh classes of 550,000 young men were available for military service each year. An equal number of trained soldiers returned to civilian life each year, but were subject to a call to arms at any time.
The mobilization of two organized and trained classes meant an addition of 1,100,000 men, bringing the total strength of Karakhan's forces under arms to 1,700,000.
It was by far the largest army in the world.
The significance grew in my mind when I found an old 1928 edition of the "World Almanac and Book of Facts," and read therefrom, on page 884, the table entitled "Available Military Man Power of the World, as Revised by the United States War Department up to October 1, 1927."
Although the table was five years old and understated the world military strength at that time, it provided a comparison of Russia's military manpower with that of her European neighbors. The table in part was as follows:
The grave import of the above comparison I embodied in a 2,000-word dispatch, which my secretary filed over the radio early that afternoon.
Due to delays and breakdowns of communications, it had been my custom to make duplicates of important dispatches and send them by air to Riga. On this day I followed this custom and Speed Binney flew the Tribune dispatch plane westward with the duplicate of my story, with instructions to place it on the cable in Riga.
I retired with the happy feeling I had put over an exclusive piece of news that would hit the front page across the United States and would cause a rumble, if not a tremble, through a number of foreign chancellories in Europe.
It was six o'clock the following morning—cold and dark—when I was aroused from bed in my rooms at the Savoy. An officer, wearing the uniform of a Colonel, stood smiling at the foot of my bed. He introduced himself airily as follows:
"Good morning, Comrade Gibbons. I am Colonel Boyar, of the staff of General Karakhan, and I bring you the invitation to breakfast with the General."
The cold, the unusual hour, the sudden awakening, and the importance of the invitation or "command," sent the suspicion of an egotistic dream through my mind. Although I had repeatedly requested the privilege of renewing acquaintance with the man I had met in 1921 during the year of the great Russian famine, my application had been ignored.
"Fine," I replied, rolling out of bed. "Be with you in a jiffy."
"Do you ride?" Colonel Boyar asked.
"Most anything."
"Good. Jump into boots and breeches and maybe the General will take you with him on his morning canter."
Attired accordingly, I left the hotel with the Colonel in his military car. In the cold, dark winter dawn we sped along the Tverskaya, passed under the Triumphal Arch near the Brest-Litovsk Station on the northwest outskirts of Moscow, and swung on to the broad Leningrad Chaussée. Colonel Boyar politely held a match for my cigarette, and began:
"For a man who has never been a soldier, you have a remarkable amount of military experience," he said. "The Little Uncle read the Foreign Office dossier concerning you last night. Interested him intensely, as did also the dispatch which you filed yesterday on the new mobilization."
"Was the story all right?" I asked.
"Entirely too much so, I fear," Boyar replied with a smile.
"Then it ought to cause quite a rumpus in Europe," I observed, with ill-disguised pride.
"Not a ripple," Boyar smiled. "Your story was not sent. I am afraid your millions of readers on the other side of the world will be deprived of the pleasure of reading your masterpiece. But you may have the satisfaction of knowing that it made most interesting reading for the General. He immediately called for the Intelligence Section reports on you, and this invitation to breakfast is the result."
Invoking the censorship against my story immediately verified it and increased its importance in my mind. It convinced me that my information and deductions had not only been right, but that my predictions of grave future events were fundamentally sound.
Uppermost in my mind, however, was the consoling thought that Speed Binney and the bi-motor Bréguet had safely reached Riga with the duplicate of the dispatch and that the story was safely transmitted to America. Naturally, I gave no expression of this thought to my companion.
We drew up at the old Petrovsky Palace, in the park of the same name. Half a hundred saddled horses were being held by orderlies in front of the semi-circular colonnade of stone pillars bordering the driveway from the road to the Palace entrance. We passed down a marble hallway, thick with smoke from the cigarettes of several dozen officers, many of whom revealed, both by complexion and uniform, that they were from yellow regiments from the east and the southeast.
Boyar opened a door, and I followed him into a side room.
"We will wait here a minute and—" He broke off the sentence upon the unexpected appearance of another occupant in the room.
The slim, medium-height, uniform-clad figure stood with its back to us, facing a window opposite the door. A round, flat Cossack cap of black Persian-lamb topped the head at a jaunty angle. There was something unnatural in the poise and stance of the thin-legged riding boots.
The figure turned, facing us, and I found myself looking into the familiar face of the American wife of the Russian Dictator. Her tight-fitting tunic was a feminist adaptation of the Hussar's coat, with black silk frogs across the breast and collar, and cuffs of Astrakhan.
But it was not the same face that I had last seen in Moscow some eleven years earlier. At that time there were no lines of sadness on the even, Irish features of Lin Larkin. The proud, defiant expression, which this young New York radical agitator had worn at the time of her self-imposed exile to Russia, was gone.
I marvelled at the change. Was it love and motherhood that had brought this about, or had something of the old fire been suppressed through contact with a fiercer flame? Had the spirit of the old Lin Larkin subsided before that of the man whose name she bore?
She remembered me, and stepped forward with a smile and an outstretched hand.
"Like old times to see you here again. There must be excitement in the air! Why are you here? Do you smell war?" she said gaily. Then, turning to Boyar who had advanced to introduce us, she continued, "Not necessary, we know each other from the old starvation days of the famine. It was a different Moscow then."
"Wasn't it," I agreed, "but there are better accommodations today. No necessity to share hardtack and Salami out of the same food-kit. Events have moved swiftly since then. You now sit in the White House of Russia, and you look wonderful!"
Her figure straightened and the still piquant chin elevated itself by the barest degree.
"It is wonderful—glorious," she replied. "I am the happiest woman in the world. I am the wife of a great man and I have had the joy of the years of struggle with him to his greatness. I have three wonderful children, and I have tasted the realization of many hopes that were only dreams and prayers back in the soap-box days in New York."
In the somewhat oratorical delivery of this statement, I sensed a contradictory ring. I could not wholly believe the professed happiness of Madame Karakhan. The militant, feminist bearing of the old Lin Larkin was absent. We chatted amiably.
"I see you are going to ride with the General this morning," she said. "I haven't ridden with him since the old fighting days. That was before we were married. I have been at home with the children mostly since then. I plan to surprise him this morning, and have a gallop. I am not supposed to be at headquarters, but I wanted to show him my riding-habit. I designed it myself. Do you like it? Do you think it befits the wife of the Commander-in- Chief?"
As I was about to answer, a side door opened and a young officer appeared and nodded to Boyar.
We arose. Madame Karakhan stepped forward and said, "I will take the pleasure of presenting you to my husband"—and the three of us walked into his presence.
Karakhan stood alone in front of the fireplace at one end of the large room. The full six foot one of his stature brought his shoulders well above the white marble mantelpiece over the fireplace, so that the surmounting gilt mirror reflected the back of his head.
The close-cropped black hair, crowning his forehead as tightly as a black skull cap, seemed to add intensity to his searching eyes. His head was inclined slightly forward, and the tight- lipped mouth bared no smile. He stood with his back to the fire, his shoulders thrown back, his hands held behind him, his feet slightly apart.
The high-collared, single-breasted khaki tunic seemed to fit his slender form without a wrinkle. It was cut rather long below the hips, where riding breeches bagged outward and downward to be encased just above the knee in high, black Russian boots. The polished blackness of the boots revealed the straightness and slenderness of the legs that seemed like spindles and increased the impression of height.
Madame Karakhan stood several paces forward of us, facing her husband. The latter's burning eyes fastened on hers, but no glance of greeting or recognition passed over the yellow features. The prolonged silence was excruciating, as the woman waited for some word to break the spell of that piercing look, which I can only describe as venomous.
"My dear," Madame Karakhan essayed to speak. But the voice, even the tone, was completely different from that we had just heard. "How do you like—I thought maybe you—eh, eh—I wish to present an old comrade of mine of—But, but—maybe you are busy, dear."
Karakhan's face remained immobile. The burning eyes of the yellow mask remained fixed on the face of the white woman. Instinctively, I felt her embarrassment, and suffered with her. The silence was painful. She handled her riding-crop nervously. Her figure seemed to wilt and a forward movement of her head told me that she had torn her eyes away from the compelling gaze before her—had lowered them like a dog facing punishment from his master.
"Return home immediately," came the almost hissed English words ground from the tight-pressed lips of the husband. "My children await you. Change that clown's costume before you let them see you. Trousers remain the exclusive male privilege of my family."
Madame Karakhan half-turned and half-backed out of the room. Her eyes escaped mine as she passed, but I saw the quiver of her lips. I could not believe that this was Lin Larkin who had led mobs and defied police in Boston and New York—the Lin Larkin who had exhorted strikers to violence—the Lin Larkin who had preached World Revolution and Red Terror.
During the distressing minute of the incident, Boyar and I had stood stiffly at the salute. Karakhan's eyes never so much as acknowledged our presence with a glance until the door had closed on his wife.
Then the yellow face and the peering eyes turned to me and I felt the electric presence of this man assaying me—weighing me from head to foot. He took his time about the scrutiny, and although it could only have been seconds, it seemed much longer before he acknowledged our salute with a slight nod.
"Good morning," he said, in a tone a shade kindlier than the one in which he had addressed his wife. "We will have tea. We ride in ten minutes. You may take an American breakfast after our return."
His English carried the same American pronunciation as that of his wife, from whom he had learned it. Just a thought of those courtship days of language instruction and romance between this Asiatic and the formerly spirited girl he had just humiliated before us passed through my mind as I looked into the cruel yet fascinating features of the veritable lord and master.
We drank glasses of steaming tea, standing before the fireplace. My desire to inject the subject of army mobilization and my censored dispatches was overridden by Colonel Boyar, who maintained a running chatter about the weather, horses, and similar subjects. Karakhan said nothing.
At times I would feel, rather than see, him looking at me, and I imagined he was once more taking my measure. But he added nothing to his initial acknowledgment of my presence.
Tea finished, he left the room and we followed. Several minutes later, in the courtyard, he indicated a horse standing beside his own. We mounted and rode off, followed by the rest of the officers. I rode on the General's left, Colonel Boyar on his right.
"How were things in North Africa when you left?" Karakhan asked me as we walked our horses across the road and took the path leading westward across the Khoduninskoye fields, through numerous parks of artillery and horse lines, representing recent additions to the Moscow garrison.
I recited briefly some of my observations concerning conditions in the Spanish, French, and Italian armies engaged against the natives in Tripoli, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco, and endeavoured to lead the conversation back to the subject of my previous night's dispatch, by concluding with the statement:
"But none of the European powers either in Africa or in Europe, General, have as many men as you have, or will have under your present mobilization."
"Which of the troops in North Africa appear to have the highest morale?" Karakhan shot back, ignoring my obvious lead. He spoke without turning his head toward me.
I told him I thought Mussolini's Fascisti divisions had more heart in the fight than either the British, French, or Spanish troops.
"Is it true," he said in his even, nerveless tone, "That the French and Italians use large bombing planes for troop transport across the Mediterranean?" I told him I had written several stories about the limitations of this form of troop transport across the Mediterranean. He was silent for several minutes, then changed the subject.
"What do you think of the Rumanian Army?"
"Not much," I replied. I thought he would smile, but he did not. He advanced his horse to a trot and Boyar and I did likewise.
"You were with Pilsudski once?" he observed, from which I knew he had studied my dossier rather well. I could only be frank on my record.
"Yes, sir!" I replied. "I was with him against you, General, in 1921. That was a long run you gave us from Kiev back to Warsaw. Your Cossacks almost got me and my driver just west of Brest-Litovsk. I believe my car happened to be the last one out of the city. It was a close call."
For one hour, as we rode through the woods west of the fields, this curious conversation continued.
At times the General pushed his horse to a gallop and the cavalcade of half a hundred men thundered along behind us.
For a correspondent seeking an interview, it was discouraging. Instead of my interviewing Karakhan, I found that even against my will he was interviewing me. His questions covered almost every phase of military subjects—roads, bridges, railroads, transport, artillery, anti-aircraft guns, munition works, food supplies; effects of the famine and the influenza epidemic in Europe; discontent of the people, morale of the troops, and my opinion on the various European army commanders I knew personally.
We arrived back at the Petrovsky Palace and dismounted. He acknowledged the salutes of his officers with the barest nod, and seemed like a man obsessed with some weighty problem, but what he was thinking about I had no idea. With Boyar I followed him into his office, where cigarettes and tea awaited.
This time we were seated. Karakhan looked at me quickly across the table. After a heavy silence that must have lasted a minute, during which he looked steadily into my eyes, he said:
"I have decided. You will remain with me; that is, you will remain in Moscow. As a matter of fact, you know entirely too much about military affairs to be at large in Russia at present.
"The dispatch you wrote last night could have done harm to my plans. For that reason it was not sent. I do not wish to cause unnecessary anxiety among the neighbors of Russia.
"The calculations on which you based your deductions were good. I prefer to deal with intelligence, even if it is antagonistic, rather than with ignorance that might be friendly.
"You will not be permitted to communicate your dispatch of last night to your newspapers by any route, and for the present I do not wish you to leave the country.
"I believe it will be as much to your personal interest and the interest of your newspapers for you to remain, as it will be to my interest to have you remain; therefore, I desire that you remain of your own accord.
"In your dossier I have read a letter that General Pershing once wrote you, in which he said: 'You have always played the game squarely and with courage, and I wish to thank you.' Pershing was a man of few words. That is why I believe I can trust you. That is why I am now offering you your choice of arrest or parole.
"If you do not accept the parole, it will be necessary for me to place you in the custody of Colonel Boyar, which, however, will not mean confinement. Of necessity, however, the custody will extend to your Bureau. I mean your pilot and your stenographer, and naturally they will not be allowed to operate or communicate.
"I do not think you will find the conditions of parole severe; on the contrary they will be advantageous for both yourself and your newspaper.
"If you give me your word that neither you nor any of the members of your staff will communicate with any place outside of Russia except through censorship, I will permit you to see everything, and we will endeavour to supply you first-hand with official statements concerning matters of interest to the world, which, of course, will not be injurious to Russia.
"I will not ask you to mis-state a single fact, and you will not have to feel that your presence in Russia depends upon your propaganda value to me. I do not need propaganda."
He paused, and I asked him if he would permit me to report my situation to my cable editor in Chicago.
"If you accept the parole, yes!" he replied.
"May I accept the parole limited to the time I receive an answer from my cable editor?"
He was silent several moments and replied, "Yes, but your report to your cable editor must be submitted to Colonel Boyar."
"Naturally," I replied.
Karakhan arose and Boyar and I were on our feet. The General addressed Boyar.
"I will see both of you when the reply arrives. Good morning!" We left.
Boyar accompanied me back to Moscow. If I were to have a jailer, I could not have picked a better one for my own convenience. His lightheartedness belied his fifty years. He did not take his military duties too seriously. He had a humorous twinkle in his eye and he knew life. His ideal of existence was to gather what happiness one might. I listened to little of his light chatter as we motored back, but was very glad he was with me when I arrived at the hotel.
Two soldiers were standing guard at the doors leading into my rooms. They stepped aside upon Boyar's command, and we entered, finding two more guards inside. Whit Dodge and Margot Denison were seated on a divan in front of the fireplace.
"What's happened!" exclaimed Whit, jumping to his feet. "I called here and was talking with your secretary when the guards appeared and told us we were under arrest. Hope your intercession with the Cheka for me hasn't caused this."
"Nothing to do with it," I lightly assured him. "Just a mixup with the censor. Glad you came along. See you two have introduced yourselves. Guard the office secrets, Margot. Remember Mr. Dodge is a competing correspondent."
"All the Tribune valuables are safe and accounted for with one exception," replied the girl. "There's no word from Speed."
It was the first time I had heard Margot use Binney's first name, and in her voice I detected an anxiety which I immediately shared. Knowing the importance of the dispatch he was carrying, it was not beyond that young dare-devil to risk uncalled-for dangers in his mission to deliver it with all possible speed to the cable office in Riga.
"If you are speaking of your pilot, Mr. Binney," Boyar injected as he finished reading the folded paper handed him by one of the guards, "I can tell you that he is under guard at the airfield. I'll have him here shortly."
He spoke in Russian at some length over the telephone, listening closely to replies which apparently amused him extremely, as a series of smiles followed one another over his bubbling countenance and he gave vent to several happy chuckles. Hanging up the receiver, he announced:
"It seems, Comrade Gibbons, that your dashing young aviator is quite handy with his fists, but is now convinced that he cannot prevail against the entire Russian Army.
"Our air patrols were waiting for him last night when he tried to fly past the border-control station at Sebosh without the formality of landing. He was forced down and arrested, although not without some physical remonstrance on his part, which our aviators were able to overcome. He was brought back to Moscow on the night train. I have asked them to bring him here."
"He was not hurt?" Margot asked excitedly.
"Oh, ho!" replied Boyar, beaming upon Margot knowingly. "The charming lady is interested. Then the charming lady must know that her cloud cavalier bears no serious results of the engagement, but the Red Air Service suffered a few casualties, which I feel certain they will endeavour to repay at some future meeting."
"Hope they don't put him in my cell at the Cheka," said Dodge.
Half an hour later, Speed Binney was delivered by two guards. His appearance in the doorway brought shouts and an outburst of laughter from all of us. He was wearing a beautiful black eye.
"Break out the flowing flagons and put a blue ribbon on the fatted calf," Speed announced, tossing his helmet and goggles to Margot, and shaking himself free of his heavy flying coat. "The wandering boy staggers home with a new starboard light!"
While Dodge ordered the big breakfast to be served in the room, and Binney disappeared for a much needed bath, I dictated a message to the cable editor, explaining Karakhan's proposal of parole, or arrest, and requested instructions. Boyar okayed it and dispatched it to the radio office by one of our guards. It was a merry breakfast party with the genial, beaming Boyar sitting at the head of the table like a happy father. Binney kept us in gales of laughter, with the account of his pursuit, capture, incarceration, and return in handcuffs.
"This's the first time I've ever been pinched in the air," he said. "We had a merry mixup on the ground when I landed, but the plane is safe and sound. What those Red fliers don't know about the use of fists, they make up in numbers. A good gang, though. Why, that calaboose they caged me in at Sebosh had the swellest service of any jail I've ever been in."
"Can't say the same for my keepers in the Cheka," observed Dodge.
"You mustn't be too finicky about cells, Whit," Speed cautioned him. "You can't 'high hat' a jailer."
"How should one treat a jailer?" asked Dodge.
"Speak their own language," said Binney. "Flatter them on their menu, compliment them on their housekeeping, give statements out to the newspapers how everybody has been so sweet to you. In other words, mix with them, get in with them. You're in anyhow."
Whit refrained from answering, and addressed himself to his meal, while Speed rattled on. I could not help but notice these additional differences between the two youngsters. Whit obviously considered Speed a roughneck, and Speed esteemed Whit a "high hat."
Boyar and Binney were splitting a bottle of yellow wine from the Caucasus with their breakfast. Boyar lifted his glass to Margot and Binney joined him in the toast.
"And here's a toast to you," he added, as the two of them lifted their glasses toward me and emptied them.
"And another toast," said Speed, refilling. "This one to old Whit Dodge, and may he find the Princess of the fairy tale and become Mr. Prince and live happily ever afterward."
"What's this?" said Boyar. "Our Yankee friend and a princess?"
"Mr. Dodge crossed the firing lines in Egypt at the time of the disappearance of the Princess Victoria Louise," I informed Boyar. "It was a very daring thing to do for a story, but unfortunately he did not find her."
"Here's hoping my next reincarnation is that of a war correspondent," said Boyar—"Travel, war, women, excitement, liquor, planes—and even a princess! What more could the gods grant? All of you are lucky dogs, and I drink to your health."
We made a merry day of it while I waited for the cable instructions from Chicago, determining my future status in Moscow. Late that night the answer came. The message read:
NOVEMBER 16, 1932
URGENT
XM CHICAGO
GIBBONS CHITRIB MOSCOW
ACCEPT PAROLE REMAIN WITH KARAKHAN STOP CABLE DAILY FULLY AS POSSIBLE HIS PERSONALITY ALSO POLITICAL MILITARY DEVELOPMENTS RUSSIA UNDER NEW REGIME STOP TREMENDOUS WORLD INTEREST
CHITRIB
And so it was I remained in Russia on parole. I gave
Karakhan my promise that I would communicate nothing except
through his censorship, and in return received his assurance that
my movements would not be restricted and that I would be given
every opportunity to observe and investigate.
Colonel Boyar, nominally my jailer and censor, became actually my escort and companion. Great was the benefit and many the advantageous facilities I was to derive from this relationship which was to grow into a long and lasting personal friendship.
More than ever was I now convinced that events of the utmost importance were near at hand. But the wildest fears, or prospects, borne of my new sensitiveness, fell far below the vast and far-reaching realities, to which I became an eye-witness. Although I appreciated that my freedom to report full details of these events, as they happened, was somewhat curtailed by the limitations of my parole, nevertheless there rested always in my mind the thought so well carried out by Sir Philip Gibbs in his first after the war book, "Now It Can be Told." I felt that if I survived what was about to happen, sometime the censorship would lift and I could then tell the story. It is that story I am writing here.
I managed to get several dispatches through every day, but mainly they concerned official announcements of the new Dictatorship. Karakhan permitted me to quote him on the first interview he ever sanctioned, but his opinions were guarded, and in their international effect, almost innocuous. I patched the story out with a character sketch of the personality of this curious Europeanized Asiatic, who still was a subject of mystery to the rest of the world. For that matter he was a mystery to me.
My particular interest lay in the direction of the rapid development of Russia's tremendous military strength. Dozens of dispatches I wrote on the subject, only to have Boyar suppress them with the smiling verdict, "Not yet!"
I found that thousands of new and second-hand automobiles had reached Russia in the previous eighteen months from America. These used vehicles, the presence of which had been a glut on the American motor market, were arriving in Russia by the Pacific, Black Sea, and Baltic ports and were being made over on a large scale in temporary machine shops, employing hundreds of German mechanics.
Thousands of airplane parts had been imported from Germany, Czecho-Slovakia, Austria, and some from Japan, and under the direction of German mechanics had been made ready for quick assembly in dozens of army depots throughout European Russia.
The plants established in Russia in 1929 by Ford and the American General Electric company were being expanded on a large scale.
There had been old World War stores of phosgene gas that had disappeared from Germany in the years following the 1918 armistice, that were buried in enormous quantities in subterranean chambers in the old Russian fortresses. During 1931 and 1932 enormous quantities of new chemicals had been imported and machinery installed for the manufacture of shells.
While the old Russian Army was still equipped with the old- fashioned rifles, firing a clip of six cartridges, new stores of automatic rifles and one-man machine guns had been secretly stored away and were ready for use.
My dispatches concerning requisitions for thousands of horses from Mongolia and Central Siberia fell under the censor's blue pencil. Accounts of the commandeering of grain and foodstuffs for military supplies—requisitions so severe they stripped the granaries of the Volga—were never allowed to reach the outside.
The scarcity of food in Russia amounted to almost an automatic rationing of the civilian population, but every hour in the twenty-four the Moscow broadcasting stations maintained their lectures, attributing these conditions to a combination of capitalistic powers that formed an iron ring around Russia.
Malig's propaganda agents added new fuel to the war scare and kept alive the menace of counter-revolutionary plots and intrigues against the new regime.
On December first there was another revolt of the peasants in Bessarabia against the Rumanian Government, and once more thousands of them started on their weary march to lay their troubles at the feet of their boy king, Michael, in Bucharest.
The revolt was neither more extensive nor severe than those which had occurred almost annually since 1928, and the movements of the Rumanian Army in the direction of the Dneister were no more widespread than in the previous revolts, but the Rumanian mobilization was sufficient excuse for Karakhan to make extensive troop movements westward.
Odessa, Kiev, Gomel, Minsk, and Smolensk became the headquarters for army groups. Night and day the troop trains passed westward and southward through Moscow. I learned that thousands of troops had been moved from the Volga to the region of Kharkov and Yekaterinoslav.
My dispatches indicating these movements were suppressed, but news of the western mobilization reached the outer world through other sources.
Moscow issued official statements, some of which I transmitted, to the effect that no troops had been moved within twenty miles of Russia's western frontier, and that the Soviet Union had taken only defensive measures for its internal security.
Messages from the Chicago Tribune offices in Europe acquainted me with the fear that went across the Continent during these tremendous days in the last month of 1932. France, Italy, and Spain held up the shipment of new reinforcements to their battling armies in North Africa, and world interest centered on Moscow.
Then, like a bolt from the blue, came that unexplained explosion of poison gas, on New Year's Eve, in the Russian Embassy in Warsaw, resulting in the death of the Red Ambassador, Igor Jader, and eight members of his diplomatic family.
The news of this catastrophe reached Moscow in the early hours of the morning on the first day of the New Year, and was immediately broadcast by radio.
The announcers called the explosion "a wholesale assassination."
It was accepted as confirmation of the fears which had been so long officially circulated.
Here was the proof and the basis in fact for the threat of war which the Soviet Government had seen on the horizon previously, and which the Government had met with the appointment of Karakhan to the supreme command of Russian defences.
All eyes turned to the new Dictator.
The Polish Ambassador in Moscow called upon him and made personal and profuse apologies and the deepest expressions of regret for the Warsaw tragedy.
Karakhan was cold. He pointed out that this was the second ambassador Russia had lost by the hand of an assassin in Warsaw. Diplomatic procedure in the previous case had availed nothing.
"Poland has withdrawn its protection from Russian representatives in Poland," he said, not with anger or even severity.
Karakhan's decision was sharp and final.
As he pronounced it to the Polish Ambassador, the yellow face of the Red Dictator wore one of its infrequent smiles.
"The assassins of Warsaw will be tried by Russian military tribunal in Warsaw."
It was War.
KARAKHAN invaded Poland on the 2nd of January, 1933. The Red conquest of Europe was on. My first war correspondent's dispatch to my newspapers on the opening of the hostilities was as follows:
URGENT PRESSE
MINSK RUSSIA JANUARY 2, 1933 (BY FLOYD GIBBONS) TWELVE NOON
TRIBUNE CHICAGO RUSSIAN INVASION POLAND BEGAN DAYBREAK THIS MORNING STOP UNDER PERSONAL COMMAND KARAKHAN COMMA RED TROOPS WHICH CROSSED FRONTIER DAWN HAVE ADVANCED FROM TEN TO TWENTY MILES INTO POLISH TERRITORY ON FRONT OF APPROXIMATELY FOUR HUNDRED MILES EXTENDING NORTH SOUTH FROM MINSK TO KAMENETS PODOLSK STOP POLISH RESISTANCE SHATTERED STOP HAVE JUST INTERVIEWED RED COMMANDER IN CHIEF WHO PERMITS ME QUOTE HIM FOLLOWS QUOTE OUR LINES ADVANCING ACCORDING PLAN UNQUOTE NOTE CABLE EDITOR MORE FOLLOWING STOP BINNEY FLYING THIS BULLETIN TO CABLE OFFICE RIGA
GIBBONS
The Tribune dispatch plane, with Speed Binney at
the controls, made a striking picture as she left the flying
field at Minsk. My young pilot had painted American flags on both
side and the top and bottom of the fuselage; and the upper and
lower surfaces of the wings bore a large red C on a square field
of green. This was an aerial adaptation of the green brassard
which Binney and I both wore on the left arms of our uniform
coats, officially designating us as accredited war correspondents
and signifying our status as non-combatants.
Colonel Boyar, my ever-present censor and parole agent, arranged necessary permission and passes for Speed's departure to the Latvian capital. This authorization was an unusual and highly flattering expression of the confidence Boyar had in both my own and Binney's respect for our words.
Karakhan's general headquarters had been at Gomel during the night, but shortly after midnight he and a number of staff officers departed by air for the front. He nodded to me with one of his rare smiles as he stepped into the cabin of his plane.
Colonel Boyar, Binney, and myself, in our Bréguet amphibian, accompanied the Commander-in-Chief's squadron, which was escorted on both flanks by fighting planes.
It was bitterly cold as we sat huddled in furs and heavy flying boots in our darkened cabin. Binney had been instructed to maintain a flying position immediately behind the two fighting monoplanes guarding the rear of Karakhan's plane. Our cabin instruments showed us eastbound at the five thousand-foot level. We flew on through occasional snow flurries. The momentousness of coming events hung heavily on me. The minutes passed interminably like those preceding the zero hour.
"Opening hostilities at this period of the year breaks all precedents in my experience in war," I remarked to Boyar. "Snow, ice, and cold will make it no easier for ground troops. It all seems a big hazard to me. It has happened even with greater suddenness than the World War. No parleys, no delays, no preliminaries, no ultimatum. Spring or summer are more seasonal and conventional for the outbreak of a war."
"You talk like a Polish General," Boyar laughed. "At least we feel certain that the Polish General Staff believes as you do. That's the crux of Karakhan's plans—suddenness of attack, mobility of forces, flexibility of organization. Depend upon our Little Uncle for doing it differently.
"Pilsudski is in his dotage, and there's hardly a man on the Polish General Staff under sixty years of age. They couldn't conceive of a war starting at this time of year.
"Remember Karakhan is just thirty-two years old. This is the inevitable battle of youth against age. The result will be similarly inevitable.
"As for cold, snow, and ice—Our first line troops this morning are trained to Siberian winters. The Russian-Polish frontier will be like the Riviera for them."
"We'll soon see," I interrupted, and told Boyar that I was going to try for an hour's sleep to prepare me for the work of the morning. He moved forward to a seat beside Binney at the lighted control board, and we flew on through the night.
The clear winter dawn broke late over the snow-covered, flat country.
Our course lay northward, along the advancing line. Large groups of Russian fighting planes passed us frequently toward the west, on which horizon we witnessed three separate aerial combats with Polish air forces. The Russian planes outnumbered the Poles three and four to one.
Down below us on the east, long columns of troops pressed forward on every road, while cavalry moved forward across the fields in many places through drifts hip high on the horses. On the roads extending to the western rim of visibility, we could see and frequently hear the air-bomb explosions, marked by waving fingers of black smoke.
"Signal to descend." Binney's voice coming to me upon the cessation of our roaring motors stopped my observations. We landed on a large field close to a village through which a railroad ran.
Karakhan's plane had arrived several minutes ahead of us, and one of his staff officers greeted us as we stepped out. Boyar translated:
"This is the Polish town of Lakhva. We stop to take our morning tea on conquered soil. The Russian frontier has moved westward since dawn. It is all according to plan, and to the wishes of the Little Uncle. Speed, my son, give drink to your thirsty motors. We are off again in ten minutes."
Within that time, we were flying northward again, but on a more westerly course, and still accompanied on the left by an unending column of smoke pillars that marched northward to the horizon like an avenue of towering trees.
Shortly before noon we landed at Minsk, army group headquarters, where I wrote my initial dispatch. After Binney's departure, Boyer found places for us in a staff plane, and we flew southward once more over the advancing lines.
The Russian western movement had been along the railroads from Minsk, Lenino, Olevsk, Slavita, Bug, and Kamenets-Podolsk. Troop trains pushed forward behind the engineer groups repairing the railroad. Mounted columns advanced across country. The stream of sled tractor traffic along all roads to the east was unending. From the air it looked like a country-wide migration toward the west.
Late in the afternoon we landed in the captured Polish town of Ostrog, and found that engineers had already placed it in telephone communication with Moscow. Boyar passed my second dispatch and arranged for a long distance telephone call through to the Tribune office in Moscow. I dictated the dispatch over the wire to Margot Denison, to radio to America.
I outlined the surprise element of Karakhan's unprecedented advance along so wide a front, crediting mobile units of Polish Uhlans with making heroic but futile resistance to the advancing Red wave. I explained how the Red van moved in extended order across fields and through forests, avoiding mass formations, which deprived the Polish artillery of the targets they desired.
I reported the surprise of Red corps commanders, upon finding that the Poles had neglected to erect barbed-wire defences before vital positions, although thousands of spools of this wire were at hand.
The little Republic of Poland had been preparing its defences against Red Russia since 1919, but the suddenness of Karakhan's onslaught found them completely unprepared.
"Is Speed with you?" Margot asked, as I finished dictating. I told her he was flying back from Riga, and asked her about Whit Dodge.
"The poor fellow is miserable and raging," came Margot's voice over the wire. "Some more trouble about his credentials. They won't let him go to the front."
Although Whit was actually a competing correspondent, I felt sorry for his predicament. But more engrossing matters demanded my attention. It was not until late on the night of that first day that I learned of Russia's first Ally in the war.
In such complete accord with the Reds that it seemed as though it acted on orders from Moscow, the small, active army of Lithuania moved southward to retake its old capital of Vilna, taken from them by Pilsudski in 1920.
Lithuania, child of the Versailles Treaty, and dupe and victim of the League of Nations, moved forward to correct the crime she had suffered at the hands of her Polish neighbour.
The feeble Pilsudski called upon the other nations of the Little Entente: Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, and Jugoslavia.
By the articles of the defensive agreement existing between these four Allies and backed by France, mobilization orders were immediately issued in Bucharest, Prague, and Belgrade.
"Here's the latest news off the enemy radio," Boyar announced from a sheaf of papers in his hand. "Council of the Little Entente, assembled in Prague, announces its common cause with Poland. Now we'll see fun. The European house of cards is beginning to tumble."
I put a long distance telephone call through immediately to Moscow and started dictating.
"I sent it, briefly, two hours ago," Margot told me. "It's known around the world now. Moscow is in the throes of a wild war demonstration. Crowds marching through the streets singing the Internationale and carrying large pictures of Karakhan. The mobilization of the Little Entente is accepted as another proof of European capitalistic hostility against Russia."
I hung up the phone and turned to Boyar.
"What now?"
"Your plane's here." (We were in the captured Polish town of Tarnopol.) "We are flying south immediately with the Commander- in-Chief. You'll see."
That following day of January 4 we trailed Karakhan's flying squadron up and down the line of the river Dniester from Kamenets-Podolsk to Odessa. The yellow leader's response to the appearance of Czecho-Slovakia, Jugoslavia, and IOUs in the ranks of his enemies—a response long prepared—went into effect with a suddenness and dispatch that even excelled the speed with which his forces had moved across the Polish frontier.
Red columns of mounted Mongols, Tartars, Bashkirs, and Kalmyks swarmed across the Dniester at four different points, along a front of 200 miles, extending from Tiraspol to a point south of Kamenets-Podolsk.
There was isolated resistance from small garrisons of Rumanian artillery and infantry in the villages along the west bank of the river, but the Bessarabian peasants, already in revolt, welcomed the invaders with open arms.
The Red advance was like a forest fire. Ever preceded by their predominating air forces, the invading columns pushed westward along all railroad lines and roads. Czernowitz, the capital of Bukovina, fell on the north, and in the south the dispossessed Bulgarians raised the Red flag in the Dobruja, suddenly creating another hostile flank on Rumanians south.
Binney, in a long distance telephone conversation with Margot, learned the latest developments in Moscow. The Little Entente had asked France and England to send naval strength to the Black Sea. Russia at once countered this threat by broadcasting Mustapha Kemal Pasha's secret alliance with Moscow. The Bosphorus was closed and Turkish mine fields were planted across the Dardanelles at Chanak.
Karakhan's greatest ally was the weather. It was bitterly cold and dry, and the roads in eastern Poland were banked high with snow, greatly impeding the French-made motor transport of the Polish Army, but offering no serious obstacle to the hordes of Red horsemen.
In IOUs it was milder, and there the Reds were aided by the complete co-operation of the Bessarabian peasants and the general disorganization of the Rumanian Army.
Karakhan's forces occupied the capital of IOUs ten days later. Colonel Boyar had obtained a staff car, and in this we rode into Bucharest behind the advance cavalry. The city capitulated without fighting, as it did during the World War when Mackensen's victorious armies marched down the Calle Victoria. At the Plaza Athene Hotel we awaited the arrival of Speed Binney and Margot, coming by air from Moscow.
Before their arrival, I typed 2,000 words on the occupation of Bucharest and the rout of the Rumanian Army. Boyar arranged its transmission over the Rumanian Government's radio, which the defeated Army had neglected to destroy.
Late in the afternoon we took the air for Warsaw. Margot sat beside Speed at the dual control board, while Boyar and I studied the maps in the cabin. While at work we were startled to find Binney standing close beside us. Our altitude was some 5,000 feet.
"My God," shouted Boyar, "who's flying this damned thing?"
"No other than little Margot, herself," responded the smiling Binney. "I taught her on the flight down from Moscow. She hasn't taken off nor made a landing yet, but she can handle it all right at our altitude. I have appointed her my relief pilot."
I sent Binney back to the controls. Our flight northward took us over the captured cities of Czernowitz and Lemberg, to the southwest of which yellow troops were steadily forcing the passes of the Carpathians.
As we flew over these captured cities, I thought of the thousands of dead Russians and Austrians of the World War buried at Przemysl, just south of Lemberg, and I called Boyar's attention to the fact that Karakhan's advance was being made in the same direction as the Russian attempts of 1914 and 15.
"But the Czar's armies failed," said Boyar. "Karakhan follows in the footsteps of a greater leader than any of the puppets of the Romanovs. It was a yellow man that first forced the passage of these mountains beneath us."
"Who?"
"In this same month of January about 700 years ago—the exact date, if I remember, was 1241—a fighting Asiatic gentleman by the name of Mr. Genghis Khan sent one of his hardboiled Generals, Sabutai, through these very same passes. He got through and cleaned up the Hungarians on the other side.
"You know, of course, that our Little Uncle Karakhan is a great student of the campaigns of Genghis Khan. It is possible that in the next few weeks certain striking similarities will occur to you." Boyar laughed knowingly.
The following morning we landed at Praga on the banks of the Vistula, opposite Warsaw, which had been evacuated by the Poles during the night. At eleven o'clock in the morning, from the balcony of a suite of rooms on the second floor of the Bristol Hotel, we looked down upon Karakhan riding at the head of his yellow horsemen, on his triumphal entry of the city.
Although in the brief space of two weeks Karakhan had advanced 250 miles along a front almost 700 miles long, or almost twice as long as Europe's western front in the World War; although he had captured two European capitals and routed both the Polish and the Rumanian armies; he would not permit his victorious hordes so much as a breathing spell.
South of Warsaw, the all-important city of Krakow fell the following day, opening a new pass southward through the Carpathians to the plains of Hungary. This was the right arm of the Russian pincers. The left arm, pushing westward from Bucharest, skirted the Transylvanian Alps and pushed up the valley of the Danube toward Belgrade.
The central force of the entire movement debouched through the Carpathian passes southwest of Lemberg.
It was the unexpected and enormous number of armed men under the Red command that made these triplicate and quadruple movements possible at the same time.
More important, however, than the size of his forces were the flexibility and mobility of his organizations and their highly developed capacity of endurance and self-sustenance and their speed of movement.
The most serious resistance was encountered in East Prussia, where a German Nationalist Army of fifty thousand trained men, calling themselves "steel helmets," held on the line of the Mazurian Lakes.
The former German Crown Prince, who sought to regain lost popularity by leading this futile hope, died with some 40,000 gallant German Nationalists in the three days of terrific fighting that ended in the Red victory at Allenstein.
The explosion of a Communist mine in the Althaus tunnel, with the consequent killing of 1,200 soldiers of the 233rd French Colonial Infantry, revealed the secret attempt of France to reinforce the fleeing Poles before the radical weight of the French Chamber could oppose.
The recall of French and Italian troops from across the Mediterranean was marked by renewed pressure of the North African rebels. Touareg fanatics drove the French out of Biskra and captured the Garden of Allah. The Egyptians advanced between Cairo and Alexandria. The Moroccans retook Fez and the Senussi surrounded the walls of Tripoli.
The fate of Central Europe was decided on the plains of Bratislava, east of the old Austrian city of Pressburg. In the two days of terrific fighting that began on the morning of January 29, Karakhan decisively defeated the forces of the Little Entente, totalling some 300,000 men including almost 200,000 fresh Serbian troops.
Superiority and flexibility of ground forces, plus superiority and concentration of air strength, were responsible for Karakhan's decisive victory. The union of the forces, which he pushed through the Carpathian passes along the old path of Genghis Khan, was the key to his strategy.
On the night of January 31 I dictated the end of the battle over the long distance telephone to Margot Denison in Warsaw. Binney left by air that same night to bring her and the office equipment forward, because already we knew that our next headquarters would be Vienna.
Little Austria, pitiful remnant of the once great Austro- Hungarian Empire, offered no resistance to the onward sweep of the Asiatic tide.
Although the Federal Government of the little republic of 6,500,000 population had remained conservative throughout the years of starvation and depression following the Versailles Treaty, the Socialist Government of the city and province of Vienna itself had consistently gone more and more to the left, until Vienna, once the gayest city in Central Europe, had for some years also been the Reddest.
Hans Breitner, the Viennese Dictator himself, motored out from Vienna, met Karakhan on the border and escorted him to the Austrian capital. Boyar and I motored behind them over that forty miles of scenic splendour along the south bank of the Danube.
As we rode down the Ringstrasse that morning, Viennese traffic policemen were performing their usual duties at street intersections, each accompanied by two Red soldiers, one mounted and one on foot.
We installed ourselves at the Grand Hotel and Boyar, in his excellent German, telephoned the Hofburg, the old Palace of the Emperor Franz Josef, where Karakhan had established headquarters.
"Quick, get your hat," he shouted, hanging up the receiver. "There's something doing at the Palace. You mustn't miss it."
We rushed downstairs and into the waiting car, where he explained that the Austrian Cabinet, including Monsignor Ignatz Seipel, the aged Prime Minister, and President Michael Hainisch had been arrested, together with a number of notable Viennese of the old regime. Dr. Dumba, former Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to Washington, was among the prisoners.
"Karakhan is going to kill all of them," said Boyar.
This statement took my breath away. Three of the men about to die were personally known to me. Five years earlier I had published long interviews with each of them. Their personalities charmed everyone and their constant efforts on behalf of their stricken country had, time after time, brought Austria back from the brink of dissolution.
"In the name of God, why?" I asked, as our car passed the sentries at the gates and entered the palace gardens. "These men are not combatants; they have done nothing against Karakhan. Austria has not opposed his advance. There's been no sniping in the streets; the occupation of the country has been peaceful. This is plain, useless murder."
"All you say is true except for one thing," Boyar replied. "Rest assured that the Little Uncle does nothing uselessly. These executions are part of the policy of terror. Terror is necessary to the execution of war.
"The Germans did it in Belgium, and denied it. The British have done it repeatedly in India and Egypt, and suppressed it. The French have done it in Africa, and lied about it. You Americans, yourselves, have practiced it in the Philippines and in Haiti.
"Karakhan's policy of executing the conservative heads of the Capitalistic Government, who number only several dozen, is far more humane than the killing of thousands of nobodies to achieve the same end."
"But this will turn the rest of the world against him," I said. "The executions in Bucharest and Warsaw were bad enough, but the killing of these men of international reputation and esteem will send a shudder around the world."
"Exactly," replied Boyar. "It will be a shudder of fear that will make the strength and will of Karakhan felt everywhere. There's nothing more cowardly than capital. Dollars don't fight; neither do capitalists.
"The real effect of these executions will be to weaken the resistance of every conservative power in the world and strengthen the internal forces of the radicals. Several dozen lives is a cheap price to pay for it."
The memory of that morning I will carry to my grave. The executions took place in the Palace courtyard. Boyar rushed me to a second floor window of a side wing, from which place I could look down below on the left into the faces of the condemned, while on my right was the balcony from which Karakhan himself viewed the slaughter.
Tall, thin, slim, his yellow features immobile as ever, he stood alone, immediately behind the railing, several feet in advance of a line of staff officers.
The prisoners were marched out one by one; their hands bound behind them. They were placed with their backs to the wall, facing a line of Chinese riflemen. Over the heads of the execution squad, they could look upward into the grim, lemon- coloured mask of the man upon whose orders they were to die.
A volley rang out as we took our places at the window, and I saw one crumpled form prostrate on the cobblestones. It was carried away on a stretcher, and then from between the columns of a side corridor marched the tall, erect figure of the President of the Republic of Austria, surrounded by guards.
As his shoulders were placed against the wall, he raised his eyes, throwing back his head so that it lifted the angle of his long, flowing gray beard. That was his position when the blast of withering fire struck him.
Dr. Seipel was next. He was garbed in the long, somber cassock of his priest's order and wore his small, black, four-cornered cap back over the shiny pate of his bald head. There was a smile on his face and a prayer on his lips, as he faced his death.
I saw him die. And then poor old Dr. Dumba. He fell as he had lived—an aristocrat to the end.
My eyes sent one more imploring look across that angle of the courtyard fifty feet away, into the stern face of the Yellow Terror. It was useless. Karakhan's head moved neither to the left nor to the right. His eyes looked coldly down into the face of each one of his victims. It was the face of a demon without heart. Hope was futile.
"God, this is awful," I whispered to Boyar. "I've got to get out of here. I can't stand it. These men were friends of mine. This is the most inhuman sight I have ever witnessed."
We walked back to the hotel where, reinforced with several shots of schnapps, I sat down to write my impressions of the horror, much as I have stated them above. Boyar told me there would be no restrictions whatever upon my account of the executions. I would be allowed to communicate it to my newspapers just as I had seen it, and could give full vent to my own impressions and emotions.
"Tell it all," he said. "As Speed Binney says, 'Tell the cockeyed world!' Let the world know that the East has risen in its might."
My 4,000-word dispatch on the execution of the Austrian Cabinet went out to the world that afternoon over the old Austrian Government's wireless, now operating at full capacity under Red administration. No use for me to describe here the tremendous, widespread reaction to that dispatch. It shocked the world.
I had spared neither words, nor the personality of the Red Napoleon in telling the cold, plain, brutal facts, and I was to learn later that my openly expressed opinions had aroused fears on the cable desk in Chicago that I, myself, would be shot for sending it.
My editor did not know then that it was Karakhan's purpose to make news that would shock the world. It was the roar of the lion.
Speed Binney and Margot Denison burst in during the afternoon, followed by a file of porters carrying typewriters and office paraphernalia, hurriedly brought by air from Warsaw.
They stood side by side in the doorway, their goggles perched back on their leather flying helmets and their hands held in mock salute beside their glowing, youthful faces. Margot wore a short, belted leather flying coat, a pair of Speed's riding breeches, and boots laced to the knee.
As she busied herself directing the placing of effects and the establishing of the new office in the adjoining rooms, Binney told me that my blond secretary had flown the big Tribune plane all the way.
"Maggie's a regular Amelia Earhart," he said.
"Took hold of the controls and held them 350 miles. Rode her right over the Carpathians without a flicker. She'll be taking them off and putting them down in no time, if this war don't suddenly go dead on us."
"Don't worry about that," announced Colonel Boyar, rising from the telephone. "You'll get your belly full of it soon enough, young fellow, and maybe tonight."
"What now?"
"I have pleasure to announce the appearance in the lists of a new enemy, and a good one—the first one in Europe with sufficient audacity to take offensive action against Karakhan! Italian troops have forced the Brenner Pass and are marching northward on Innsbruck. Other columns are moving on Lienz and Klagenfurt. Advances have been made along the railroad line from Trieste to Laibach and along the road leading up from Fiume to Zagreb."
"Three Tyrolean yodels and an umlaut for old man Mussolini," shouted Binney.
"He will need them," Boyar retorted, laughingly. "Our Little Uncle will soon call the bluff of Il Duce. Our troops have been moving eastward and southward all day. The air forces are already engaged. Ground contact is not yet established with the enemy, but it will be soon.
"Mussolini's move is right into Karakhan's hands. To every Austrian now comes the chance to destroy the threat that has menaced and insulted him from the south for twelve long years of persecution. It definitely aligns everybody in Austria under Karakhan's standard."
That very night Italy carried the war to Karakhan—to the very room in which the Red Napoleon was sleeping. Vienna was visited by a terrific air bombardment, executed by several squadrons of Italian bombing planes, which arrived over the city shortly after midnight.
One of the bombs dropping in the Palace courtyard that had been the scene of the morning executions made an enormous crater 100 feet in diameter and fifty feet deep. Every window in the Palace was shattered and flying glass fell on the bed occupied by Karakhan.
Red night flying squadrons took the air against the invaders, and the cold moon, approaching the full, supplied an eerie illumination for the terrific aerial duel thousands of feet above the city.
Seven Italian bombing planes and thirteen fast Italian fighting planes were brought down by Karakhan's air forces. One of the fighting planes carried the leader of the raid—no other than the aged Italian poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, who made his first flight over Vienna in 1918 when Italian and Austrian armies were locked in battle on the Isonzo.
We recalled the following morning that d'Annunzio, in his World War raid on Vienna, dropped only Italian propaganda pamphlets. There was no gesture about this raid; Mussolini sent the flying poet this time with tons of death and destruction, which he delivered most effectively and paid for his daring with his life.
Karakhan directed the preparations against Italy from Vienna, making almost daily flights to the Italian front.
In the north, his advancing forces in Poland had reached Pozen, and columns from Lodz and Krakow had crossed the German- Polish frontier into Silesia and occupied Breslau.
On February 3, at Kolin, in the valley of the Elbe thirty miles east of Prague, the Reds encountered the remainder of the Czecho-Slovakian Army under General Gaida.
It cost the Red leader 60,000 casualties to destroy this heroic remnant of the Czecho-Slovakian Army.
Prague, the capital, fell to the Red horde two days later, and on February 8, Karakhan's forces occupied Pilsen with its Skoda works and munition plants which had produced the great forty-two centimeter howitzer of 1914.
"The capture of these munition plants and factories is Karakhan's most important victory of the entire campaign," I explained to Speed Binney, upon our arrival in Pilsen the day after the occupation. "Pilsen is the armory of Central Europe."
"And the fountain head of the finest beer in the world," added Speed. "There's a subterranean sea of Pilsner located under the brewery, and the Braumeister's house is stocked with Prague ham. Now, here's a real place for an office."
On February 6, Whit Dodge, who had finally reached the southwest front from Moscow, turned up in Vienna with the story of the progress of the Red armies which, after the fall of Bucharest, had skirted the mountains of Transylvania and had taken a defensive line across the valley of the Danube east of Belgrade.
"Ours was almost a quiet sector," Whit explained. "I thought the Serbs would surely defend their capital, but when your Red Napoleon wiped out three-quarters of the Serbian Army at Bratislava, there was nothing left for the remainder of the Serb forces to do but capitulate.
"They fell back on Belgrade and the Reds occupied it the following day. There was hardly anybody of any consequence left in the city.
"Queen Marie of Rumania, with the boy King Michael, had been there as refugees with her daughter, the former Princess Marie, who, as you know, is the Queen of King Alexander the first. Both of the royal families departed by plane, and I believe they are now temporary guests of King Zogu of Albania.
"Jugoslavia has gone completely to the Reds. No more fighting there. The differences of the Croats, Bosnians, and Slovenians with the Serbians opened the door. All of these people want autonomy, and the Reds have promised it to them.
"The Macedonians have put the same thing over in Greece, where the Reds are receiving a royal welcome. Since the death of Elentherios Venizelos, they've had it all their own way.
"Bulgaria is trying to remain neutral, but it's useless. King Boris has already quit the country."
"How about Hungary?"
"Red," replied Whit. "Don't know that I can blame them, though. Dismembered and made defenceless by the Versailles Treaty, deserted by all their Allies and surrounded now on all sides by victorious Red armies, the Bolos are in the saddle again as they were in the days of Bela Kun. The radicals control Budapest, and Admiral Horthy is in hiding.
"Karakhan's forces met no opposition when they marched through on the way to Bratislava. It must always be remembered that the Magyars are more Asiatic than European. They are all of them Tartars under their skin, and now they swear they are blood brothers to Karakhan and his yellow horde."
Tremendous stories popped on the heels of one another. The European powder house was in flames. My dispatches to America some days totalled 10,000 words. America and Western Europe were staggered by the march of events.
While the opposing forces on the Austrian-Italian front measured one another and reinforced themselves for the impending clash, the theater of news suddenly transferred itself to the north.
Leaving Margot in charge of the Vienna office, Binney and I flew to Berlin. Since the invasion of Silesia by the Reds, Germany had made two rather mild protests against this violation of her declared neutrality.
The London and Paris press first insinuated and then openly charged the existence of a tacit understanding between Russia and Germany, permitting the passage of Red troops across German territory.
The Berlin press emphatically denied these accusations and placed the blame for the present state of affairs upon the exactions which France and England had written into the Versailles Treaty, stripping Germany of all power of defending herself against any invader.
Landing at Tempelhof airdrome shortly after midnight, I taxied downtown through the deserted streets to the Tribune office, located in the Adlon Hotel Building at No.1 Unter den Linden. Sigrid Schultz, the Tribune's multi-lingual girl correspondent, was still at her desk.
"Glad you came," she greeted me wearily. "It's about time Chicago sent some relief. I have been on this job twenty hours a day for the last week. There's another putsch coming. Everything points to it."
"I'll take your word for it, Sigrid. No one should know the indications better than you. You have covered every revolution in Germany since they threw the Kaiser out."
"But this one will be the worst of them all," she replied. "The German Reds are stronger than they have ever been in the history of the Communist Party, and the Nationalists are weaker. The terrific defeat of the 'steel helmets' in East Prussia has left the Communists as the only organized force outside of the Government, and there is every reason to believe that both the Reichswehr and the Security Police are infested with Communist cells.
"On top of it all there is a widespread national feeling through Germany against the old allied world. The country is defenceless and the people have suffered.
"They blame their condition on the Versailles Treaty. There will be a popular acceptance of anything, or any power that would relieve the Germans from what they call the crime of Versailles."
"But," I protested, "has Germany already forgotten the French black troops billeted in the homes of white German women on the Rhine? Don't Germans realize that Karakhan's armies are hardboiled, toughened fighting men from the suppressed colours and races of Asia that now taste victory over white men for the first time? Can't German husbands and fathers and brothers realize what white women mean to such troops?"
"Certainly," she replied. "Germany's experience on that score is bitter. That will be one reason why Karakhan's forces will be accepted as Allies. Better that Germany received them as brothers-in-arms than be forced to accept them as conquerors. Germany has had enough of that."
And as this girl correspondent had predicted, the German coup d'etat materialized the following morning when thousands of marchers, comprising the memberships of the Communist organization, paraded down Unter den Linden and through the arches of the Brandenburger Tor, the top of which bristled with machine guns. They met with no resistance from the Government forces which lined the streets and kept order.
Without the bloodshed that had marked the several Berlin revolutions since 1918, the capital of Germany, and with it the country, changed over night from a normal socialistic defeated nation into a communistic and active Ally of Karakhan.
In Hamburg, in Bremen, in Stettin, large photographs of the Red Commander were carried aloft through the streets, escorted by dozens of Red flags and followed by victorious cheering. It was all over but the shouting.
By the close of the day, the German Republic had been succeeded by the Dictatorship of the German proletariat, under the leadership of Erich Schulz-Berger, the German Communist leader who, as a member of the Third Internationale of Moscow, had long been under direct orders from that source.
This change in the political complexion of the country, which occurred on February 10, 1933, was preliminary to the subsequent incorporation of the population in the European Soviet scheme.
In East Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria, large units of the German Reichswehr joined the Red and Yellow forces in their resistless advance westward.
Binney and I returned to Vienna by air, by way of Prague. Although it was barely dawn, I found Margot waiting in the Grand Hotel, her typewriter desk stacked high with radio messages and dispatches from Chicago acquainting me with the shock with which the rest of the world received the news of the developments in Germany. Margot's face was serious.
"Karakhan's wife has come to Vienna," she said in a quiet, low voice. "I wanted to tell you before Colonel Boyar arrives. Karakhan forbade her to leave Moscow. I presume he is aware of her departure by this time, but I am not sure whether he knows she is here."
"Where is she?" I asked.
"In my bedroom," said Margot. "She came here at midnight, after your departure for Berlin. She asked for you. I told her I was your secretary and that you were in Germany. She explained her plight and asked to remain until you returned. I could not do otherwise. I hope I have not made a mistake."
Here was a complication that threatened to wreck all of my arrangements. Here was a white woman, a fellow American, for all her radical propensities, hurling herself into the mesh of the war, into the grinding cogs of the ruthless military machine run by the Yellow Terror, who was at the same time her husband, her lord and master, and the father of her children.
I could not help but recall the humiliation which Karakhan had forced upon his wife in my presence upon the occasion of our last meeting in Moscow, when he forbade her presence in his military headquarters. What would be the force of his temper now should he learn that she had followed him almost to the battle front of his fighting armies?
What would be his feeling toward me for aiding her in her disobedience?
I had almost decided upon the cowardly course of doing nothing—of refusing to see her or have any actual knowledge of her presence in our rooms—when the door of the adjoining room opened and Lin Karakhan appeared.
She wore a dark-gray tailored suit and a small felt, cloche hat which fitted tightly around her ears and came low over the forehead, partially screening the dark eyes that bore traces of weeping.
"Please see her in that room," Margot pleaded. "Boyar might be here at any minute." I grasped Lin's extended hand and walked into the adjoining salon, closing the door behind us.
"I know it's wrong," she said. "I know he will be terrible when he finds me here. I fear it will be bad for you. His anger is fiendish."
"But why did you come?"
"To be near him, if I can, even in his anger. I know I am not wanted, but I cannot help it. I am not the girl that you knew. I am a different person. I am his wife. I am the mother of his children. I am his slave. I love him."
I marvelled again by what power it was that this yellow man had been able to change this once fiery spirit of white American womanhood into a symbol of the Eastern domestic code by which the Asiatic's wife becomes his chattel.
"What would you like me to do, Lin?" I asked. "Your being here complicates things a bit. The General's spies are sure to discover you. What would you like me to do?"
"Nothing," she replied. "Just let me stay in Margot's room. I have had all my meals there, I won't go out. I won't be seen. All the news of him passes through your office. She will keep me informed of each hour's events.
"I must know what's happening. Suspense is unbearable. He is so daring. He knows no fear. He is exposed to daily dangers—death in the air, at the front, assassination here in his headquarters. Can't you understand why I want to be near him?"
I did and I didn't. But there was nothing I could do. I took the weaker middle-course. I agreed to her remaining with Margot, and the interview ended with Lin's tearful thanks. I returned to the office room, just as Boyar swept in from the corridor, breezy as ever.
"Welcome back from Germany," he said. "Big events await you, and you, too, pretty blond lady. Our Little Uncle leads us on to the seat of the Caesars. We are about to travel—moonlight on the canals of Venice, gondolas and tinkling guitars, the lakes of Italy, the road to Rome."
"When?"
"We leave this morning for the front," Boyar replied. "Affairs in Germany for the meantime stabilize matters on the north flank. Now for the hammer blow on the south. The curtain will go up tomorrow morning."
It did. February 16 marked the opening of Karakhan's offensive against Italy. Accompanied by a tremendous concentration of his air forces, the scourge of Europe hurled his yellow hordes southward and downward from the Carnic Alps.
I was to see the cradle of Western civilization reel under the flame and blade of another Attila.
BENITO MUSSOLINI was killed on February 18, 1933, by an air-bomb that landed squarely on the advance general headquarters of the Italian armies at Udine.
It was the third morning after the opening of the terrific general Red offensive against Italy under the personal command of Karakhan.
Consternation and panic spread throughout Italy. America, as well as Western Europe, which had long feared for Italy's future after the death of her strong leader, was now confronted with the fact.
Radical and anti-Fascisti organizations, suppressed and harassed by the great Dictator, came out in the open under the leadership of his many enemies.
Fascism's hard-fighting armies stubbornly resisted the Red thrusts southward from Innsbruck, from Lienz, from Klagenfurt, and westward from Zagreb.
Personal bitterness and a spirit of vengeance stimulated the Austrian and Slovenian divisions which, under the command of yellow Generals, blasted and carved their way across the Istrian Peninsula.
The old Austrian city of Fiume was first to be wrested from the control of the Italians. Trieste next felt the heel of the Conqueror, and as the Red flood poured down the valley of the Isonzo, the vital city of Gorizia was taken.
Speed Binney flew the Tribune plane, from which Colonel Boyar and I observed the ten-hour cloud battle between the concentrated air fleets.
Two days before his death, Mussolini, directing his air forces in that same battle, saw his fighting squadrons shot down, shattered, destroyed, and realized the definite passing of aerial supremacy to his foe.
Karakhan also directed his war birds from the air that day.
Fifty Italian Communists were executed in the Piazza Duomo in Milan by Fascist gendarmes. But these and similar stern measures failed to stop the derailing of troop trains, destruction of tracks and bridges, and general sabotage operations in the rear.
With revolt and political dissensions at its back, the Italian Army broke on the north front and the debacle began.
Violent uprisings in Florence, February 28, contributed to the collapse and surrender of the defenders, commanded by General Martino.
The road to Rome was open. The Eternal City fell eight days later on March 6, without a single shot from Government troops.
From behind a stone balustrade on the banks of the Tiber, Boyar, Binney, and I watched the brief and fearful fighting in the Piazza San Pietro, as the loyal defenders of the Vatican, the Swiss, the French, and the papal guards died to the last man, under Cellini's noble colonnade at the portals of the Holy Palace.
Stern Red discipline saved the art treasures of the Vatican from looting. But the fate of the Pope hung in the balance.
My dispatch, quoting Karakhan's decision not to execute Pius XI, was interpreted by Catholics as a miracle in response to millions of prayers offered up for the safety of the Roman Pontiff.
"No sentimentality in that decision," Boyar unfeelingly explained. "If Karakhan killed the Pope, then the Sacred College of Cardinals would meet somewhere else in the world and elect another head of the Church. As long as Karakhan keeps the Pope a prisoner, we retain control of the Holy See—whatever that is."
"Why keep him a prisoner?" I asked.
"Why not?" Boyar replied. "Other Popes have been imprisoned—the Italians did it half a century ago. Captivity is not strange to the head of the Catholic Church. He was a self-imposed prisoner in the Vatican for fifty years until 1929."
Prior to the occupation of Rome, King Victor Emanuel III and the Royal family fled from Naples to Lisbon, aboard the armored cruiser Trento. Karakhan occupied the Quirinal Palace, where Boyar arranged quarters for Binney and myself in the old guards' barracks.
During the week, in which the Holy City reechoed night and day with the wild celebration, the street singing and dancing of the victorious Red troops, I sent daily dispatches to America reporting the numerous executions of notable Italians of the old regime and also outlined the terrific plight of American tourists and students in their efforts to leave Italy by the crowded ports of Brindisi, Naples, and Genoa.
The troubles and fears of these Americans, many of them women, renewed the ever-present anxiety of Binney and myself for Margot Denison, whose continued presence in Vienna was complicated by the fact that Karakhan's wife was secreted in the Tribune rooms in the Grand Hotel.
Her covert flight from Moscow to Vienna in defiance of her husband's commands, and Margot's sympathetic connivance in her disobedience, exposed the English girl to dangers I dared not think of.
The fact that Whit Dodge also remained in Vienna contributed no special pleasure to the thoughts of Speed Binney, who had twice asked permission to fly Margot from Vienna to Rome. As usual, old, smiling, mystic Boyar cleared the clouds for us, with both a shock and a reassurance.
"Intrigue bears heavily on the shoulders of you Western innocents," he announced at lunch. "Have you forgotten that you pure whites granted the heathen Asiatic a monopoly 'for ways that are dark?' Karakhan has known all along that his wife was befriended by your secretary and hidden in your offices in Vienna."
Binney and I exchanged glances of surprise.
"An intelligence system is the first requisite of all successful commanders," Boyar continued. "But never mind that now. You will see both Mrs. Karakhan and Margot tomorrow. They are together and will be waiting for us when we land. We leave for the north at three o'clock with Karakhan's staff squadron. Be ready."
With Binney at the controls, we flew from Rome with Karakhan's aerial escort. Our course followed the coast line northward to the Gulf of Leghorn. We flew over the Island of Elba, with thoughts of another conqueror whose will and spirit had been too much for the Island's bondage.
"It's almost ten weeks since Karakhan's armies hopped across the Polish and Rumanian borders," Boyar observed, "and in that time you have seen more war than Bonaparte ever staged in a year. Just look here on the map," he said. "With our armies now installed in both Germany and Italy, you can draw a line straight north from Genoa on the Mediterranean to Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea.
"From that line eastward, clear to the Pacific Ocean, everything is Red.
"Our enemies still lie to the west. You have witnessed the success of Karakhan's forces across Central and part of Western Europe. There has been some resistance, but everywhere we have been aided by political dissensions in the ranks of our enemies. Now we go forward to test the strength of an Allied line that emerged victorious from the World War.
"While the Red forces in Italy threaten the Franco-Italian frontier, we go to see the greatest battle of this war, and probably the contest which will decide the fate of the old world."
We passed over Genoa at dusk, and leaving the Mediterranean flew inland over the broad motor road to Milan. On our left the maritime Alps rose majestically, and in increasing height. Ahead of us the snow-clad peaks appeared like an insurmountable wall. I spelled Binney at the controls while he munched a couple of sandwiches and took coffee from our thermos flask. High above the Alps that night, Boyar, muffled in his furs, awoke me with the following observation:
"That other Napoleon crossed this fence of rock and ice quite a few years ago. He was headed south. Tonight our Little Uncle takes them on the wing without a thought. He is probably asleep in the cabin of his plane ahead. What are the Alps to a will?"
We crossed Switzerland and landed at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, where our planes were refueled by several hundred mechanics from the hangars of the Zeppelin Works—the hangars from which the Graf-Zeppelin sailed on the first trans-Atlantic flight back in 1928. We continued our flight across Wurtemburg, flying over Stuttgart in the darkness and landing before dawn at Frankfurt on the Main.
During the fight, Boyar brought me up to date on the latest information of the General Staff concerning the Red forces and their lines in Germany, as well as the different strengths and dispositions of the opposing armies.
"The Russian-Siberian armies, together with the Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, and East India corps, and not forgetting the reconstructed divisions of Poles, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Austrians, and Serbs, give us a total of about 1,300,000 men on the battle line in Western Europe. That figure includes almost the entire old German Standing Army of 100,000, reinforced by 125,000 Security Police. They now stand on the line of the Rhine."
"What do you estimate is the strength of the opposing forces?" I asked.
"We estimate the Belgian Army at 150,000 men.
"The English forces in France total somewhere around 300,000. Two-thirds of them crossed the Channel from England, and the rest were transferred from North Africa.
"The best estimate we can make about the French is that their forces in Northern France number 900,000 men. They have to keep some strength out of the line to guard against the menace of the Italian border.
"I estimate that the French, British, and Belgians have about 1,350,000 troops against Karakhan's 1,300,000.
"I think your old Allies will miss you Americans on the western front this time. Your country won't be with them in this fighting, Gibbons, because you are with us."
"Since when," I inquired.
"Since the United States Congress passed the Burton Resolution," Boyar explained. "The part that America will play in the approaching battle may be a passive one, but it is a most important one and may, perhaps, be the decisive factor."
Boyar easily read my disbelief, so I hastened to say:
"If that is so, it is a tremendous story for my readers. How do you figure it out?"
"You have been so busy writing the war in Europe that you have missed some developments at home," he answered. "America has been swept by a wave of repugnance since the outbreak of war. The subject-matter of your dispatches has contributed to it. It is the same sentiment that was expressed throughout your country at the outbreak of the World War.
"Your histories recount that in 1914 and 15, America's popular song was 'I Didn't Raise my Boy to be a Soldier.' And you had such popular slogans as, 'Too proud to fight,' and 'He kept us out of war.'
"All very beautiful and almost an exact prévue of popular clamour in America for the last two months. This time the American theory for stopping the war was embodied in the Burton Bill.
"You will recall that although your famous commoner, Alfred E. Smith, beat President Hoover for re-election in 1932 when the Republicans split on your curious prohibition issue, he found himself in the position of having to work with a Republican majority in Congress. The Burton Bill, backed by organized Pacifist societies, was pushed through Congress over the President's veto with the aid of thousands of telegrams from the society members.
"It prohibits the export of arms and munitions from America to any fighting nation. France and England have made the mistake of depending, this time, on America's industrial production to pull them out of their difficulties, as it did in the last war. Fortunately for Karakhan, America's industrial might is not standing behind France and England as it once did. Not a single American shell or cannon has been exported from the United States.
"On the other hand, our war production machine is running smoothly at full peak. The hidden munitions and arms of Germany and the output of all of the German factories are now in our hands. Every wheel that turns, from the Pacific Ocean westward as far as the Franco-Italian and the Franco-German borders, is now turning at full speed for us.
"That's what I mean when I say the Burton Bill makes the United States a definite Ally of Karakhan."
His closing statement was practically the initial paragraph of the first dispatch which I sent on the opening of the great advance that morning from Karakhan's headquarters in Frankfurt, where Binney and I found Lin and Margot established in the largest suite in the Kaiserhof Hotel.
Whit Dodge, who had made the trip by motor with them from Vienna, explained that Karakhan had not yet permitted his wife to see him, but had ordered everything to be done for her comfort and accommodation. Staff officers had told Margot everything would be satisfactory as long as Lin refrained from "bothering" the Red leader, personally, during the approaching conflict.
Professional strategists have devoted hundreds of thousands of words to the technical analysis of the five days of preliminary fighting in which Karakhan fenced and whip-sawed his powerful adversaries to manoeuver them into position for the final blow.
But no better description of the tremendous movements of those five days has ever been made than that of Jimmie Collins, American pilot of the French Foreign Legion, who subsequently died from wounds received in the battle.
"You don't need any compasses, maps, or different coloured pins to find out what happened in the mess," he told me. "Karakhan simply outmanoeuvered, outfought, and outguessed us, everywhere. The only rule that yellow devil knows is—Get the other guy, sock him, and keep on socking him until he quits."
More terrible still was the story told by the mounds of dead—the battlefield stenches, the blackened ruins—left in the wake of the Red hordes' forward swoop.
In Paris, London, Washington, and all the capitals of South America, startled, astonished General Staff officers bent over the war maps, unable to believe the forward movement of the Red markers across Northeastern France.
During those five unreal days and nights, when Binney, Boyar, and I flew hundreds of miles to cover all points of contact, my most lasting reminders of the horrors of the battle are as follows:
A one-armed boy of the Welsh Fusiliers, staggering stark mad through the crowds of Chinese infantry in front of the Palace Hotel in Brussels.
The body of a gray-bearded Belgian peasant hanging over a green and white picket fence beside the road south of Namur.
A white girl, insanely drunk, riding forward in the same saddle with a black-bearded Cossack.
A blinded French poilu tapping his way across a field with a stick.
In the air battle over Luneville, we saw a flaming comet crash to earth, and, landing near by, we searched the charred remains and found the metal disk that identified them as the body of young Jules Vedrines, the French ace.
We spent a night at Koblenz—then far in the rear of the invaders—and in the morning saw Karakhan's Red standard flying above the ramparts of Ehrenbreitstein, on the same staff from which Old Glory proudly floated back in the days of the American occupation of the Rhine.
Karakhan concentrated his air attack first against the inferior aerial forces of the British and the Belgians. Depriving his left flank of its air support, he mobilized his upper arm in one compact, mobile unit, and hurled it against the weaker Allies on the north.
This manoeuver came as a distinct surprise to the French air forces, which had been prepared for a tremendous defensive effort in connection with their own armies.
Karakhan's center crashed through Luxemburg and, in spite of terrific losses inflicted by French light artillery and gas, his fresh divisions of eager Asiatics had leap-frogged forward until the center of his advance rested on Sedan and Metz—the old armistice line, on which the A. E. F. came to a victorious halt, November 11, 1928.
The center drive, by hammering night and day blows, crossed the Meuse and plunged into the Argonne to the west of Verdun.
Nancy and Toul fell to the south of Verdun, and the Red forces pushed westward on Bar le Duc. The Red lines closed in behind Verdun at Sainte Menehould.
Buried under enormous smoke clouds the guns of the fortifications were reduced by air-bombs, in spite of strenuous efforts of the French air defences.
Names of sacred memory to all Americans who knew the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne turned Red daily on the map—Montefaucon, the white marble crosses over American dead on the slopes of Romagne-Buzanzy, Grand Pré. St. Mihiel, the scene of the American Army's first drive in 1918, was taken, curiously enough, from the south.
Marshal Pétain, with the flower of the French Army, made his last stand along the line from St. Quentin, southwest by south through Rheims, Chalons sur Marne and Saint Dizier, Chaumont, Langres, and Dijon.
In the midst of this reorganization, Karakhan opened a diversion on the Franco-Italian frontier, and French divisions which had been called north to strengthen Pétain's position had to remain in the southwest under the command of General Lamont at Annecy.
This was the general position of the belligerent forces on the morning of March 21, at the opening of that tremendous conflict, which has gone into history as the third Battle of the Marne. The date was exact to the day—the fifteenth anniversary of Germany's great spring offensive of 1918.
Once more the Allied commanders struggled with the same old handicap that blocked them so disastrously in the spring of 1918. Suspicious and jealous of one another, they found it impossible to achieve a unity of command.
Field Marshal Sir Edward Wilkins, commanding the British forces on the left, can place some of the blame for his disastrous defeat at San Quentin on his inability to co-operate with Pétain, who was commanding the center.
General Sanger, the Belgian Commander-in-Chief, was in complete disagreement with both Pétain and Wilkins as to the disposition of the Allied forces. The situation proved that all of the lessons of the "old war" had gone by the board.
This time there was no Pershing to force united action.
The Allied plan of defence showed little improvement upon the blind theory of attrition that marked the last three years of the old war—acres of barbed wire, miles of trench systems, massed artillery, pill-boxes and machine-fire zones and concentrated artillery.
To me it seemed that the Allied armies set themselves like muscle-bound, immobile giants, awaiting the onslaught.
Karakhan's strategy was based on movement—fluidity and flexibility of his forces, infiltration of groups—relentless attack.
With the man power of practically all Eastern Europe and Asia behind him, he was able and willing to take severe losses—and he did. It was his determination to sacrifice hundreds of thousands if necessary, rather than permit the development of "trench warfare," as it was known in the World War.
The ever-changing nature of his advancing lines deprived the hard-spitting, light field guns of the French of the fixed targets they desired.
By concentration of his air forces, Karakhan proved able at will to dominate every desired position, and take it. We saw him do it repeatedly.
His progress was a flood—a restless, resistless wave. His genius for speedy movement enabled him to maintain the steady arrival of fresh divisions from the rear.
During the five days of the battle, his losses, which had been 70,000 on the first day, decreased to 40,000 on the last day. The French losses, not more than 20,000 men on the opening day, mounted to 100,000 men killed or wounded during the last twenty- four hours that brought the battle to an end on the evening of March 28 in Allied disaster.
The pounding tactics of the Red Commander had prevailed.
British stragglers poured southward through Beauvais and Compiègne.
Rheims fell—its Cathedral walls once more battered and broken.
As in that great German drive May 28, 1918, which first tested the battle mettle of Americans in the World War, the yellow hordes flung themselves across the Aisne, the Vesle, the Ourq, and the Marne.
Chinese infantry camped in the American cemetery at Belleau Woods. Once more, the bridge at Chateau Thierry was blown up in a cloud of dust and fragments. The French Army had collapsed—the Red hordes moved westward down the valley of the Marne.
Paris was occupied on April 3.
Karakhan's victory over the combined French, English, and Belgian armies, even more than his Central European victories and his invasion of Italy, forced world recognition of his military genius.
The third Battle of the Marne brought to him the name by which he is still known—"The Red Napoleon"—although the extent to which he eventually spread his control over the world far exceeded the record of the man who died on St. Helena.
In Paris, where the French Government had collapsed, after a futile effort to remove itself to Bordeaux, Navarre—the Apache leader, who first came before the public when sentenced to death for mutiny in the French Navy—took over the reins of Government in Paris in the name of the Third Internationale.
Karakhan occupied the French capital April 3, installing himself in the Elysee Palace. I saw the swaggering Navarre present himself, with overassurance, before Karakhan, and five minutes later saw him shot in the gardens of the Palace. The execution put an end to the cockiness of the French radical leaders but did not stop the wild scenes in the streets of Paris.
Margot and Whit Dodge, emerging from the Crillon Hotel, were parties to a typical encounter. A column of Mongolian horsemen were emerging from the Avenue Gabriel. They wore their gray fur caps far back on their bald, yellow foreheads and sang a weird Eastern chant as they moved along.
One of them wheeled his horse to the sidewalk and, swinging far out of the saddle, sent his arm around Margot's waist. The girl slipped from his grasp in a flash, and the same instant Dodge grasped the horse's bridle.
The Mongol pulled the animal back on its hind legs, and one of the pawing forefeet struck Dodge on the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. Boyar and I, who had witnessed the encounter from the hotel entrance, rushed forward expecting—we knew not what. We were surprised when the horseman only laughed at the sprawling figure and retook his place in the marching column.
Dodge, livid with rage, but unhurt, was helped into the hotel where Boyar told Margot that she would have to remain within the hotel until order was completely restored.
"Remember, fair lady," he said, "soldiers are soldiers the world over, and fair ladies have always been the spoils of war. There are wild men in Paris today who have ridden hard and fought their way across Asia and Europe to get here."
The conditions of the Atlantic ports of Western Europe were frightful. As the old Continental systems crumbled before the spread of the Red Terror, the middle- and upper-classes of the invaded countries had fled westward. Hundreds of thousands of them had been in Paris, and during the third Battle of the Marne they had been forced to renew their flight to the west—this time joined by the French bourgeoisie and capitalists large and small.
By roads, trains, and airplanes, by motors, by horse and afoot, they streamed westward to the coast and southward across the frontiers into Spain. Thousands clamoured for passage to America, and the smallest tramp steamers received fortunes in gold in return for deck-space passage.
All the paper money of Europe became useless at the ports. Thousands of American tourists were caught in the flight. American Shipping Board ships were ordered to accept American passengers only. But this rule was departed from in a number of notable instances.
Karakhan's first official act in Paris, withdrawing French and Italian troops from North Africa, won him the allegiance of the coloured races around the world. It also forced Great Britain and Spain to withdraw their now useless forces from the north lateral of the Black Continent.
The return of the Spanish troops resulted in simultaneous revolutions in Spain and Portugal. King Alfonso joined the flight of the other deposed rulers in Europe. The crowned heads of Denmark, Holland, Sweden, and Norway followed within a week; most of them obtaining asylum in America because now the situation in England was approaching the greatest crisis in the history of the Empire.
In four months Karakhan had extended his influence across Europe. Pyotr Malig, Karakhan's political organizer, and Malig's field force, had followed in the trail of the victorious Red armies. Although Government was administered in the name of the Dictatorship of the proletariat, the newly conquered and adhering states were promised political autonomy under the Soviet plan.
European exchanges on world markets went off the board.
European banks stopped payment. Morotoria were declared and war debts between Europe and Asiatic countries were cancelled—all by dictatorial decree.
While Karakhan kept his armies in constant movement, sending German troops to Italy and Italian troops to Spain, he concentrated his attention on the maintenance of industrial production, particularly in so far as it applied to essential war industries.
The inevitable hoarding of food was countered by extensive Government searches and confiscations. Civilian populations began to feel the consequent shortage. Thousands of British, Belgian, Spanish, French, and Italian soldiers, entirely out of sympathy with the program, found themselves foodless, penniless, and facing only one alternative for existence. That was to adopt the Red brassard on the left arm, which distinguished them as having joined the Reds. Appearance on the streets in a uniform without the Red arm band meant arrest as a prisoner and enforced labour.
In the midst of this reorganization, news reached Paris revealing that the next nation to feel the might of Karakhan's fist would be people of his own colour.
The Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune published the refusal of the Legislature of the Philippine Republic to rescind or modify the famous Book-keeping Law, which forced Japanese and Chinese merchants and officials to keep all records of their business in Spanish instead of their native language.
Japanese-Philippine relations, which had been none too good since the Filipinos had granted temporary asylum to the Japanese Imperial family in October of the previous year, were not improved when Emperor Hirohito and his suite removed themselves surreptitiously to America.
The Philippine attitude on the Bookkeeping Law was accepted by the Japanese as an unwarranted discrimination against their race and language.
Karakhan radioed the order by which the Japanese fleet and troop ships sailed for Manila Bay. American pacifist opposition to any move by which America might become involved, spiked the guns of the United States State Department, which had prepared a vigorous protest.
Not so with spunky little Australia, which cabled a futile complaint to London and denounced, in no uncertain terms, the proposed invasion upon the Philippines by the Japanese.
All Red Paris laughed at the idea of protests.
Boyar showed me the secret radio reports received by Karakhan daily concerning what he called "the Philippine incident."
From these messages I learned that Japanese transports, convoyed by the Red fleet, landed in the Lingayen Gulf and marched southward along the railroad toward Manila. Twenty-two thousand native infantrymen, most of them former members of the Philippine Constabulary and well trained by the American Army officers before the granting of Philippine's independence, made a valiant but futile resistance lasting two days and resulting in the complete annihilation of the loyal little force.
Manila surrendered. The Red flag replaced the standard of the Philippine Republic on the Island of Corregidor, and the Red Japanese fleet, accompanied by the French battleship Paris, bearing Karakhan's special representative, sailed into Manila Bay. Karakhan pronounced by radio the passing of the old order in the Islands and established the Dictatorship of the Philippine proletariat under Juan Espinosa, who had been a Philippine delegate to the Third Internationale for a number of years.
Boyar's prediction that the Philippine incident was only a flash in the pan proved true. All mention of it was swept from the front page by the rise of the British Labour leader, Joe Cook, and the growing strength of the Labour Party in the British Parliament.
The difficulties between the Liberal and Conservative parties in England had enabled the Labour minority in Parliament to force the withdrawal of the British troops from Egypt, and the recall of the British fleet from the Mediterranean.
On May 1 the Churchill Cabinet tried to pass a revised Defence of the Realm Act, which covertly included authority for emergency mobilization of the United Kingdom.
The Socialist, Communist, and Labour members of the House of Commons marched out in a body and thirty minutes later extra editions of London newspapers were on the street announcing a general strike on twelve hours 7 notice. In the face of this revolutionary threat, the Churchill Government resigned.
Three days later, Joe Cook presented the names of a new Cabinet to the king, who could do no other than bow to the voice of the new leader.
Cook's first act as Prime Minister was the announcement of a new First Lord of the Admiralty. The man designated for this position was the Communist seaman, Bill Brandon, V. C., former gunner's mate who had won his high decoration at the Battle of Jutland.
Brandon acting under the direction of the new Cabinet at once issued orders, the execution of which meant that the entire British Navy would be brought to anchor in its home ports and the Channel left free for the passage of Karakhan's troops. This order caused the first armed clash between the British Communists and the sturdy adherents of the old order.
Almost without exception the commissioned officers refused to acknowledge the authority of Brandon and with the aid of small groups of loyal seamen resisted to the death. But the struggle was brief. Brandon had expected opposition and secret orders to the organized Reds on every vessel had prepared them for mutiny. Within a few hours every ship of major importance was in the hands of the Revolutionary Government.
It was reported that the surprise attack had failed to a degree among the submarines and that several of these had escaped through the efforts of loyal crews, but having no place on which to base, it was evident that they could do little or no damage.
Within forty-eight hours, Brandon's orders had been carried out and the ships of the great navy that had so long been England's pride were lying quietly at anchor.
Caretaking crews were left aboard but the rest of the men and such officers as had gone over to the Reds were given indefinite leaves of absence. Prime Minister Cook proclaimed this proceeding as the greatest single act ever taken for the benefit of humanity in the direction of peace by any nation in the world.
Actually, it was just the opposite, as he well knew.
This practical unmanning of the greatest fleet in the world—this reduction of the traditional defences of England—this resignation of Britannia as mistress of the sea, was greeted with popular acclaim by the English proletariat, as the symbol of the end of the war. But it sent a shiver through conservative England and across the Atlantic.
I sat in the Press gallery of the House of Commons the following morning when Cook, red-faced and bullet-headed, spoke the most startling words ever uttered in that historical chamber.
"Comrades, the Parliament of England is dissolved."
A heavy, breathless silence awaited his next words, but when they came they were unheard in the uproar of applause that arose from the radical members of the House.
Conservatives—some still wearing their high silk hats—moved for the doors. They were locked. It was the coup d'etat.
Burly constables, specially appointed that morning, stood guard at the exits, permitting the departure of the radical members only. The remainder were prisoners.
I heard shots on the outside of the building and managed to reach the street by way of one of the exits of the Press gallery.
Mobs were pouring into the square in front of the Parliament Building. They carried Red flags and marching banners with pictures of Lenin, Karakhan, and Joe Cook.
The crowds split at Whitehall—some moving toward Trafalgar Square and others in the direction of Knightsbridge. I followed the former, endeavouring to reach the London offices of the Chicago Tribune, located at 72 Fleet Street.
From the plinth of the Cenotaph, a docker, with pantaloons strapped below the knees and wearing a red handkerchief about his neck, waved his arms invitingly to the crowd, as he urged them to keep moving in the direction of Trafalgar Square. He harangued them in the husky, throaty tones of the professional street orator:
"On to the Palace," he shouted—"On to Buckingham!"
"I fought for the King in France for four bloody years—for what? Only to have fifteen years of bloody starvation and hell afterwards. One million of us were killed for his bloody nationalism. Thousands more are rotting in Egypt, in India, in China. Thousands more—our women and our children—are the victims of the system he represents.
"On to Buckingham!"
The speaker's face was almost purple from the exertion, and his bulging eyes, magnified behind the myopic lens of his glasses, gave him the popeyed, malignant glare of a goblin.
The mob took up the cry, and as it did, the rumour spread that the King had fled.
The mobs poured through the Admiralty Arch into Pall Mall. The Horse Guards Parade and Green Park were black with thousands. From Piccadilly and Oxford Circuses, marching columns pushed down Haymarket Street, Regent Street and St. James Street.
From the direction of Victoria Station and from Marble Arch at Hyde Park corner, the vast multitude increased by thousands.
Scotch Guard regiments at Buckingham Palace opened fire as the van of the mobs surged past and climbed up the sides of the Victoria Memorial.
An old friend of mine, Major Aubrey Coker, was clubbed senseless and literally torn to pieces at the bronze gates of the Palace.
The sound of shots increased the fury of the mob, which surged back before the withering fire of the guards.
Barricades of park benches, barrels, overturned wagons and taxicabs made their appearance as if by magic in the streets leading to the Palace. Cobblestones and paving-blocks were torn up with bare hands and thrown in front of the breastworks.
Similar scenes were being enacted all over London that day. In every center of resistance, by police or soldiery, firearms and all manner of weapons appeared as though by magic. Well-armed Communist leaders, wearing Red arm bands, directed the fighting.
Late in the afternoon the Communists were reinforced by an advance guard of one of Karakhan's divisions, which had been ferried across the Channel as soon as word was flashed that the fleet had been taken. These veterans of European battles looked on the street fighting as a joke and were, for the most part, content to let their British comrades bear the brunt, only taking hand when serious resistance was encountered. But there were enough of them brought over to make certain that any organized resistance by British land holders and farmers in the country districts could easily be taken care of.
The conflict in London lasted three days. The Scotch guards in Buckingham Palace were exterminated to the last man, the Palace looted thoroughly—women and hoodlums participating in the sack of art treasures, furniture, fixtures, and all manner of valuables.
Women tore the velvet hangings from the walls of the reception and throne rooms and, draping themselves in the brilliant, heavy folds, tripped mincingly down the broad marble stairs leading from the main reception hall, singing the popular ditty, "Ta! Ta! Duchess!"
Later I learned of similar incidents that took place throughout England and Scotland; of the assassination of conservative Mayors and City Councils—of the execution or ruthless killing of countless old English land owners who fought it out to the bitter end in front of their homes.
The world remembers how the fate of the Royal British family was not known for two weeks, until it was revealed they had reached Halifax on the New Zealand cruiser Manganui.
With a bribe of twenty-five pounds in gold, Speed Binney had been able to sneak the Tribune plane out from the hangars at Croydon, and take off for Paris with my dispatches.
Boyar and Margot returned with him. Boyar arranged with Joe Cook for the interview in which the Labour Revolutionary, now acting as spokesman for the English Revolutionary Committee of Workers, Sailors, and Soldiers, revealed the recommissioning of the British fleet under Red command.
He told me that every ship in the British Navy was now manned and officered by Communist seamen and gunners. He described the secret skeleton organization of Communists which had been operative throughout the fleet for ten years.
On June 20, Karakhan announced the formation of the Pan- Eurasian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and formally invited the proletariat of the old British Empire to full membership in this new association of world peoples. Cook and his Cabinet, obviously as a matter of form, publicly accepted the invitation on behalf of the Empire.
England, Scotland, and Wales would comprise a separate Soviet by themselves.
For the first time in history, northern and southern Ireland acted in agreement. They refused the offer.
Canada, Australia, and New Zealand registered emphatic "No's!"
English Radicals told me they were astonished that the most bitter opposition to the program of the Third Internationale came from the Socialist Labour Government of Australia. Tim Clapp, an Australian friend of mine, reading one of my dispatches in the Sydney Bulletin, cabled me as follows:
"If England has gone crazy, Australia remains sane. Yanks, Canadians, Anzacs, all of us fought together in France. We can do it again anywhere the job is needed. Australia has a Labour Government but that will never change its policy and pride in being a white man's country."
From the Australian capital at Canberra, Government radio appeals went out to Vancouver, Ontario, Washington, Dublin, and Belfast, the only remaining capitals under conservative governments in the northern hemisphere.
There were demonstrations in the streets of Brisbane and Sydney and the Government broadcast its proclamation definitely rejecting the Red invitation.
That decision was the death knell of White Australia.
Karakhan flew to London and from the Admiralty Building on Trafalgar Square dispatched the specific radio orders upon which the Japanese fleet and an initial expedition of twenty troop ships sailed for the Antipodes.
Under cover of the guns of the fleet the first debarkations were made in Sydney Harbour early in July. The landing was preceded by an aerial combat in which the planes, released from three Japanese air carriers, drove off the attack of the Australian air bombers and later succeeded in destroying them.
"The slaughter among the Australian forces which resisted our landing was terrific," read the radio dispatch of Fergi, the Japanese war correspondent, reproduced the following morning in London.
"Unsupported by coast defence and but lightly equipped with field guns, the white defenders on the shore valiantly replied to the heavy caliber shells of our ships, rifles, and machine guns. The resistance was brief.
"To our gallant infantrymen the occupation of Sydney was a mopping-up affair, but unfortunately stubborn sniping and house- to-house fighting of the Australians necessitated tactics which have amounted to extermination.
"The streets of Sydney are running red and it has been impossible as yet to dispose of the bodies which will become a menace to our troops."
Many weeks afterwards the terrible details of the massacre of the "down under" Continent became known to a horrified world. As it had been in Sydney so it was in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Adelaide. The city of Hobart in Tasmania was depopulated to the last man. Wellington, New Zealand, was burnt to the ground and Auckland suffered a similar fate.
Australian Territorials, led by officers who had come up from the ranks of the old Anzacs, bared their breasts to the steel of the invaders and accepted death for themselves, their women, their children, rather than live under the domination of yellow conquerors.
Many days afterwards, at an opportune moment, I asked Karakhan if the ruthless murder of seven million Anzacs had been committed by his command. With calm deliberation which amounted almost to an expression of surprise over my question, he quietly observed:
"Naturally. It was necessary for the human race."
Speed Binney and I sat in the Tribune's London office that July night as Margot concluded the typing of my dispatch, with the above quotation from the lips of the Red Napoleon.
"God help my country and my people," she said.
"And ours, too," added Speed, "I feel we're next."
And it was to come sooner than either of us expected.
"KARAKHAN ASKS U.S. JOIN REDS."
THIS was the screaming front page headline carried by dozens of American newspapers after the first official statement outlining the sensational invitation of the Pan- Eurasian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to the United States and the nations of South and Central America.
I read it first in London where the late editions of the London Press of August 25, 1933, reproduced it by telephoto across their own front pages.
The papers reached my desk in the Tribune Bureau on Fleet Street, as Speed Binney and Margot Denison and myself were listening to the loud speaker tuned in on WEAF, New York. Across the thousands of miles of ocean came the familiar voice of my friend, David Lawrence, the political announcer, speaking from Washington.
"Excitement in the capital this morning is tenser—more vibrant than I have witnessed since the momentous days in April, 1917, when America entered the World War.
"Crowds in front of the Washington Post Building are packed thick 300 feet across Pennsylvania Avenue to the walls of the District Building.
"At 17th and C Streets, thousands are standing in front of the white marble palace of the Pan-American Union, although the special meeting of the Pan-American Union delegates, called by the President of the United States, ended at midnight.
"Dr. L. S. Rowe, Director of the Union, described for me the assembly of the Union delegates. Each of the twenty-one American Republics, comprising the membership, was represented by its Ambassador or Minister with the exception of Nicaragua whose Minister is now in his own country assisting in the suppression of the Sandino Revolution.
"Secretary of State, Conger Reynolds, opened the meeting by deploring the fact that this was the first time since the organization of the Union in 1889 that any political problem had been presented for consideration.
"But he expressed the belief that the proposal, which the Governments of the Western Hemisphere had before them now, demanded the united consideration, if not the united action, of all the member nations.
"Secretary Reynolds then stated the position of the United States with regard to Karakhan's invitation that this country join the Red Union. The Government of the United States respectfully declined.
"This statement was followed by a three-hour discussion, resulting in the agreement of all delegates to await instructions from their respective countries.
"In spite of the rain of last night, large crowds surrounded the Pan-American Building when the motor cars of the diplomats left the Conference.
"America's reaction to Karakhan's proposal is best reflected in the cartoons carried by this morning's Washington newspapers, which depict the Red Napoleon as a gruesome, leering, cruel, Machiavellian figure of superlative evil with dripping, blood-red hands extended across the Atlantic to Uncle Sam, and the symbolic figures of the other American nations, welcoming them to join the mountains of skulls under the rising clouds of smoke and flame that are shown hovering over destruction, famine, and pestilence representing the Revolutionary Continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
"The general editorial tone of the American Press is one of bitter denunciation of yellow domination of the white race. The Burst Service has once more raised the fear of the yellow peril."
While Karakhan's proposal was repugnant to the political, economic, social, and racial ideals of America and generally denounced as such, later editions of the London Press that day reported the Red invitation had received consideration in some American quarters.
Lin Karakhan, the American wife of the Red Napoleon, pointed this out that night as all of us dined at the Savoy Hotel, where she and Margot occupied a large suite adjoining the apartments of Speed Binney and myself.
The cable dispatches from New York related there had been a serious riot in Union Square, where supporters of William Z. Foster, Benjamin Gitlow, and other American Communists attempted to make soap-box orations advocating American membership in the Red Union. Disorder, immediately starting, resulted in two women garment workers being trampled to death, and the death of four men from blows. One policeman was killed by a knife thrust in the back. The emergency ward at Bellevue, and other near by hospitals, were filled with minor casualties.
"Is it hopeful, or is it futile?" observed Lin reminiscently.
I thought I knew what was going on behind her pensive sorrowing eyes. Union Square was the scene of her old days of radicalism and agitation, only twelve years before. The interim might have been a century for the changes it had wrought in that fiery spirit, whose sole interest now was in her children and their father—the man she loved and the man that the rest of the world called "The Yellow Terror."
Washington's refusal had been expected in London, but the unanimity with which the other member nations of the Pan-American Union took the same course registered a public surprise. Pan- American unity was a show of strength.
I saw Karakhan the day the answers arrived. Our long co- operation in the field throughout the Red Napoleon's fearsome sweep across Europe, had developed an odd familiarity which, nevertheless, was not without respect. The eyes peering from the tense yellow face studied mine.
It was difficult for me to realize that this tall, thin, nerveless man, just thirty-three years old, had in less than one year placed all of Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia under his Dictatorship.
Out of a world population of approximately 2,000,000,000 people, more than three-fourths of them were under his domination.
The conquests of Hannibal, Caesar, Alexander, Phillip, Napoleon sunk into obscurity.
"You Westerners will have to join some day," he said calmly, looking into my eyes. "If not now—a little later. It matters little. There is but one race—the human race. The herd must be kept together."
I asked him if America's refusal had surprised him, and he replied:
"No. It is just as I expected, and fits in exactly with my plans."
Exactly opposite was the bitter attitude of the entire Press throughout communistic Europe, Asia, and Africa. The Pan-Red Press Service assembled a startling symposium of these editorial opinions published in London, Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and Moscow. I radioed it to my papers in America that night. The important ones follow:
"We, of the Old World, held out the hand of peace and comradeship to the working millions of America—only to have our offer hurled back in our faces by the mad money barons and slave drivers of the Western Hemisphere"—L'Humanité of Paris.
"The economic forces of 1,500,000,000 workers of Europe, Asia, and Africa will be sufficient to answer the impudent responses of American capitalism. The organized industrial production primary materials domestic commerce, communications and international transportation cannot be ignored"—The Berlin Vorwärts.
"Nikolay Lenin's body lies honoured in Moscow, but his spirit goes marching on. America cannot stop it"—Izvestiya of Moscow.
"The Dollar Deities, in their California feudal estates, blind themselves to the approaching day when the sunny slopes and fertile valleys of the Sierra Madres will be the homes of now landless millions"—Jiji Shimpo of Tokyo.
"American obstinacy gives stimulation to the struggling, pent-up, crowded masses of Europe and Asia to expand—to tear down the walls of greed and selfishness and partake of the bounties and spaciousness of the world. It is the right of humanity"—Il Avanti of Milan.
The tone of the London Daily Herald in contradiction to its communistic policy was openly jingoistic:
"The world is sickened of Yankee arrogance. That arrogance is due for a terrific fall."
"The Red Navy is overwhelmingly the greatest navy in the world."
"The Red air fleet is superior, by far, to the combined air forces of the Western Hemisphere."
"The Red Army stretches around the world and is the most powerful, irresistible organization that ever bore arms."
"Karakhan, our Little Uncle, is the greatest military leader and organizing genius the world has ever seen."
"Today the sun never sets on the Red flag."
"These are truths worthy of deepest consideration in 'God's country'—the dollar God."
"It all amounts to a paper bombardment," Margot observed, as she finished typing the excerpts. "All of these newspapers are propaganda organs under the direction of the Red Union Press control. They print what Karakhan directs. I do not believe these opinions reflect the feelings of the people."
"Maybe the mass doesn't think that way now," Speed contributed, "but they soon will. Today's gobs of mud are only the beginning of an anti-American publicity campaign. We'll be as popular as the Seven Year Itch in seven days. Why don't you change citizenship, Margot, and become a good Yank—be one of us?"
Speed was right. By press and radio the campaign started immediately. Meeting Whit Dodge several days later in the American Club in Piccadilly, he expressed his alarm.
"The hate makers are at work," he said. "I have just written a symposium on the abuse we now receive from all sides. Russian Reds are being reminded that American millions backed Denikin, Wrangel, and Kalchak against Lenin and Trotsky. They are reminded of the American Army that fought Red Russia south of Archangel, and the presence of an American Expeditionary Force in Siberia in 1918-19.
"In Berlin they are howling against the 'Yankee double-cross' in Wilson's famous fourteen points, as well as the exactions of the Dawes plan.
"The French Communists have reopened the painful subject of the money France owes America.
"Milan, Rome, and Naples have resuscitated the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and are howling about the atrocities of Ellis Island.
"Throughout Africa the Negroes are being told that Americans are barbarians and that lynching is our national sport.
"Clippings from Asia show that the crowded millions of Japan and China are being reminded daily that the United States Government has characterized all people of coloured skin as inferior and unfit for admittance to America.
"Every emotion—pride, hate, love, greed—all are being appealed to to increase the hatred of Uncle Sam."
Although I agreed thoroughly with Dodge, I could not help smiling. In spite of England having succumbed to the Reds, the boy's pro-English sympathies blinded him to the fact that of all the controversies, conflicts, and differences of opinion existing between the United States and other nations, those rivalries and disputes which had developed between the United States and Great Britain since the armistice of 1918 were by far the bitterest.
American residents in England had for some time begun to feel the same suspicions directed toward them as were directed by the English against German waiters in 1914.
Two American sailors had been killed in a dance hall brawl in Liverpool. An American college student, somewhat intoxicated, had received a fractured skull in a barroom argument on the Strand. Even the old Countess Cathcart case had been revived when the British authorities retaliated by deporting Susie Boyce, the American moving picture actress, who had figured in five divorce suits.
Dodge and I continued our discussion that evening in my rooms at the Savoy Hotel, where Brace Conklin was having dinner with me. The Chicago lawyer was in London, representing the meat packers on a question of their interrupted contracts for South American beef shipments. Speed Binney, accompanying Margot and Lin Karakhan, joined us at coffee.
Dodge greeted Margot effusively. "Don't you feel like an alien in this gathering?" he said. "One English girl amongst all of us Yanks?"
"Not at all," replied Margot. "In these days of internationalism few nationalities exist."
"You are right, Miss," Conklin replied to Margot. Then turning, he addressed Mrs. Karakhan: "Your husband, Madame, has removed a number of troublesome frontiers around the world, and nationalities have more or less gone with them. There are not many nationalities left, but we are trying to hold on to ours back in the United States."
"World conditions would not be what they are today if the British and American people had been able to understand one another," Dodge observed. "The two greatest things in America are the English language and the English common-law. We received them from the Mother country. Our American crime waves show how we have misapplied the law, and our American dialect, slang, and accent show what we have done to the language.
"Just a minute young fellow," Conklin interrupted. "Whose language is it anyway? There were 400,000,000 people in the British Empire before Karakhan grabbed it, but how many of them spoke English? Exclude the 300,000,000 Indians and the 40,000,000 natives of other colour and you can't scrape together more than 60,000,000 Britishers who speak English in any form."
"We have twice that many in America—120,000,000 of 'em," said Binney enthusiastically. "And they understand one another from Portland, Maine, to San Diego, California. If we owe England anything for the language, what does she owe us for teaching it and spreading it."
"About the English Law," Conklin resumed, "there is a big question whether the English courts get more justice out of it than we do in America. After all our legal mistakes are mostly in the direction of humanitarian efforts, reduced sentences, probation periods, hopeful corrective measures. The English law operates quite closely with the English Class System."
"Right again," said Binney, returning to the argument with gusto. "Jones, the maid-servant, gets six years for stealing her 'Marster's' liquor and Lady Hoosis is sentenced to a sanitarium on the Riviera for lifting a pearl necklace."
"Back on the battle of democracy versus aristocracy. Why renew your dislike of the titled classes?" Dodge replied to Binney with some asperity—and all the time his eyes were on Margot's face. The English girl hearing the objection, hurriedly said:
"Not at all, Whit. Let us have Speed's views on the classes in my dear, defunct country. Have there not been enough notables of the English peerage and the church of England executed to suit him?"
"God, yes," replied Binney. "When they shot the Archbishop of Canterbury, it was too much for me. The old man faced the firing squad bravely, and even smiled when the Red Captain of the execution party told him that he ought to be happy because he would soon be in his heaven with the God that he had preached so much about.
"Then they shot him. I don't want any more of the poor devils shot, but if the titles carried by the English aristocracy had been exterminated a hundred years ago, England wouldn't find herself under the Reds today."
"Absurd," replied Dodge. "Almost every title in the House of Lords can be traced back to great men who contributed in leadership, science, defence, organization, or riches to the advancement of the British Empire. A grateful country recognized their distinctions by titles, and it was the sons and daughters of men and women of that breed and type that comprised the British titled class."
"That gibes with what I am telling you," and Binney. "I've just read about the first Duke of Marlborough—how he stole bread from his own soldiers—how he practically sold his sister—how he plotted and double-crossed to get the Dukedom and I'll admit he did something for England when he kicked the sauerkraut out of the Heinies at the Battle of Blenheim.
"But what about the present Duke of Marlborough? What did he ever do for England outside of marrying two American heiresses and bringing their money over here to pay off debts and lift mortgages?"
"America has its class system, also, Speed," Lin interjected herself into the discussion with just a flash of her old-time radical self. "America has its cattle kings, oil kings, wheat dictators, beef barons, money lords, diamond queens; its millionaires and multi-millionaires—all comprising a class far above the rest of the population who are mostly middle class or lower-class regardless of what they call themselves. The trouble with the American proletariat is that it refuses to admit that it is proletarian."
"I think I can straighten both of you out," said Conklin. "The difference is this: The British class system is permanent, and the American class system constantly changes. An Englishman born in the working-class usually dies in it, because few vacancies ever occur in the permanent titled class above him. An Englishman's title goes to his eldest son, whether that son is an honour or a disgrace to it.
"The difference in America is that the son of an American millionaire inherits his father's millions and class distinction as a money lord—but unless he inherits his Dad's distinctive brains, courage, industry, or business capacity, he will not be able to retain the fortune which, with its accompanying distinction, will pass on to struggling ones who are on their way up from the bottom. Thus the American class system purifies itself, continually, taking up new brains and new driving forces."
"A perfect description of our differences." Margot observed. "The same difference, I believe, applies between American and European labour.
"The European workman, convinced that he can never achieve financial independence, works with his eye on a pension. The American workman's aims are not to hold onto the old job, but to get a better paying one."
"Right again, Margot," Speed applauded. "It's the same thing all over again. European capital is aristocratic and permanent; American capital is impermanent and democratic. If my Governor leaves me the Binney Sheet and Tube works out in St. Louis, and I haven't got enough savvy to run it, there will be plenty of people to take it away from me, and how."
"The fault lies in our history," Margot resumed. "America can well boast of its equality of economic opportunity, because the Declaration of Independence gave it a fresh start with democracy. European capitalism is aristocratic because it is built on the remains of our Mediaeval Feudalism.
"Renters and hopeless wage slaves, subsisting on a low standard of living, have some reason for revolution; but home owners, with high standards of living and opportunity to participate in ownership through shares and stocks, oppose revolution and work to preserve the order of things under which they prosper. That's the economic difference."
"Well spoken, Margot," said Whit, his eyes on the girl's face. "Your ideas are not so well based on facts because you do not know America as well as you do your own country. But you do manifest the one right that Englishmen have always clung to, the privilege of self-criticism. If we had some of that privilege in America, we would be better off. As it is, most American thinking is dictated and standardized.
"It would have changed under a good Anglo-American alliance. Blood is thicker than water, and an honest belief in a policy of 'Hands across the Sea,' would have saved the world from the present mess. The possibility of a war between America and Great Britain was nothing short of unthinkable if both countries would have exterminated their Bottomley's and William Hale Thompson's with their persistent and vulgar insults to the personal heads of friendly foreign nations."
"I never heard of Bottomley," said Speed. "And I don't believe England gave a damn about anything Bill Thompson ever said. But it did make American males sick when the Prince of Wales went over and stopped traffic, even though he is a good guy. The most of the trouble came from American papas and mammas who sent their daughters to London to be presented before the King and Queen in masquerade attire. Can you imagine me wearing black silk knee- pants and slippers with silver buckles?"
A burst of laughter went around the room.
"Binney's right," Conklin said. "It was getting so every time Washington sent an Ambassador to the Court of St. James he had to be selected with a view as to whether his legs would show up well in long silk stockings.
"The Chinese Ambassador could appear in pajamas and a fan. The minister from Abyssinia could wear a nose ring and a feather duster. But the American Ambassador had to change his belt for a pair of suspenders, discard his native garments and get into the regalia of a foreign court. There will be no more of that now. That's one good thing Karakhan has done."
Our discussion that night well reflected the decade-old disputes that had aroused emotions both in America and England for the preceding ten years. England's war debts—England's pride, injured by the passing of financial control from London to New York—America's grabbing of English foreign markets—Britain's nominal surrender of naval superiority at the Arms Conference of 1922.
Mistrust, fear, and jealousy toward England existed in America. The history of the battles in 1776 and 1812 were known to every school child. England's sympathies for the South during the Civil War was interpreted as an attempt to Balkanize America.
The differences of opinion covered the entire range of the national policies of the two countries—sea rivalries—political rivalries for all categories, financial and commercial prestige.
John Bull spoke of "The White Man's Burden" and Uncle Sam advocated the "Square Deal." In Asia, England had been for concessions and territorial rights. America had stood out for the "Open Door." Englishmen cherished the slogan—"Britannia rules the Waves." Americans held out for "Freedom of the Seas."
The growing bitterness and misunderstandings which President Coolidge had so pointedly made public back in 1928, still existed in 1932. A sensational but not unexpected event rekindled the flames of dissension.
Karakhan's automobile was blown up by a bomb hurled from fourth floor windows of an American newspaper reading room on Trafalgar Square.
Eleven civilians and four soldiers were killed in the explosion which wrecked the car and rendered the Red Napoleon unconscious from steel splinters which grazed his skull.
Julio Vincenzo, valet and orderly to Mussolini, who stood at the side of the Italian leader when he was killed at Udine, was caught and admitted the outrage. He declared proudly he had thrown the explosive to avenge the death of the "greatest man of modern times," and further, that he hoped he had killed Karakhan and liberated the world from "Red Communism and yellow subjugation."
Although Vincenzo insisted he had acted entirely alone, he admitted that he had fled from Italy to America when the Reds reached Rome, and that he had lived in the Italian quarter in New York until his arrival in England one month previous.
These facts were sufficient for the press of the Red Union, without exception, to lay blame for the attempted assassination at the doorstep of America. Uncle Sam was charged with harbouring among European refugees and emigres violent elements engaged in fomenting counter-revolutionary plots and white intrigues.
The United States State Department immediately made denial of these charges, expressed deepest sympathy and regrets concerning the dastardly attempt, and the American Ambassador in London personally presented the congratulations of the President to Karakhan upon his fortunate escape from death.
Karakhan's wound was slight, but for the assurance of the masses he made a public appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. A white bandage covered half of the yellow forehead of the Red Napoleon as he stood there, tall, thin, erect, in his tight-fitting khaki tunic, acknowledging the thunderous cheers of the thousands below.
No smile disturbed the serious, almost sullen look that seemed stamped on his Asiatic features. He took his plaudits as Mussolini had taken his—with the conviction that he merited them.
At the height of the world-wide reverberation, touched off by Vincenzo's bomb, relations between the Red Union and the United States were suddenly subjected to a new and final strain.
On the night of November 29, 1933, the 6,000-ton tramp steamer, Sandino, flying the Nicaraguan flag, steamed slowly into the Pacific entrance of the channel leading to the Panama Canal. According to custom it stopped opposite Flamenco Island, where it was met by a pilot boat, containing, in addition to the pilot, the customary guards, inspectors, and officials of the Canal Zone.
The American pilot took over the wheel, while the Canal officer retired to the Captain's cabin to examine the ship's papers. The inspectors and guards proceeded on their respective duties, while the ship, according to custom, resumed headway up the narrow channel toward the signal station located at the Balboa entrance to the Canal four miles away. (See map in Index.)
What happened on board the steamer will ever remain a mystery because, of the estimated crew of fifty and the American boarding party of fourteen not a single soul survived.
The Sandino approached within two miles of the signal station without establishing the customary communication by blinker light between the American zone signalmen on board and the waiting officials in the signal station. The station signalled the Sandino to flash its code password.
No reply came from the ship, which increased speed as it moved toward the Canal entrance. The station then signalled to the Sandino to anchor immediately. Still no response from the approaching vessel. There could be no doubt now that its speed was increasing. The station next signalled by blinker light:
"Anchor at once, or we open fire."
At the same time an alarm sounded across the zone and crews manned the guns on Guinea Point, Farfan Point, and on the heights of Cerro San Juan.
The Sandino continued under way, ignoring the signals.
There was a flash of light close to the water's edge at Guinea Point and a three-inch shell tore through the steamer's rigging. Star shells bursting a thousand feet above the channel released calcium flares suspended from small silk parachutes.
In the sickly white light shed downward, men were seen struggling on the deck of the approaching steamer and several pistol shots were heard.
Then twenty guns of the Canal defences, which had been trained on the Sandino for the preceding five minutes, spoke in unison from the darkness of the shores. The impact of the shells resulted in a most terrific explosion.
The Sandino suddenly changed from a dark blotch on the water to a volcanic eruption of orange and yellow brilliance which illuminated the heavens, and was seen clear across the Isthmus.
It was accompanied by a tremendous detonation that blew the windows out of the hotel in Panama City and dismantled every navigation light within an area of five miles.
Pieces of steel hull and deck rained down on Guinea and Farfan Points for three minutes following the explosion, the nature of which was now apparent to the commander of the zone defences, who immediately put emergency measures into effect.
Hidden guns commanding every approach to the channels on both sides of the Isthmus were trained and manned. Motorized infantry units and marines took prearranged positions at vital points along the Pedro Miguel Locks, the Culebra Cut, and the Gatun Locks.
Army and navy planes immediately took the air, while destroyers under full steam sped forth through the night with belching funnels, to reconnoiter the approaches.
By noon of the next day it had been established by the United States Intelligence that the Sandino, although flying the Nicaraguan flag, had been under charter to Compton Thompson, Ltd., Harbour Construction Engineers of Liverpool, and had sailed four days previously from Salina Cruz, Mexico, with a cargo of sisal bound for Liverpool.
Confronted with these facts, the American public did not need the explanation of amateur strategists to appreciate that the Sandino, once she had put out to sea from Saint Cruz, had dumped her cargo and shipped another one estimated at between three and four thousand tons of T.N.T. and that her purpose had been to explode this terrific charge within the Panama Canal and block it.
In Panama it was presumed that the pilot and signal man, as well as the other members of the American boarding party, had been overpowered on board the Sandino, and threatened with death, unless they signalled the proper responses, to enable the ship to enter the Canal.
Today the tall marble and bronze shaft erected to the memory of these fourteen men stands in Balboa Park in Panama City as a lasting symbol of a nation's appreciation of the lives they laid down for their country.
The attempt to destroy the Canal shook America. Washington expected the usual expressions of official disavowal and regret from London, but in this respect diplomatic Washington was destined for a shock.
The Red Union denied the presence of explosives on board the Sandino, and asked for a diplomatic explanation for the sinking of an unmanned merchant vessel and the killing of twenty- two citizens of the Red Union. The act was characterized as "unwarranted."
While the Foreign Offices in Washington and London exchanged long cable dispatches, the United States battle fleet, long stationed in the Pacific, passed through the Panama Canal into the Caribbean Sea. The naval evacuation of the United States naval base at Pearl Harbour, Honolulu, was executed without the world knowing what had happened. It was not until the combined forces of the American Navy, comprising all warships in the Atlantic and Pacific, had been mobilized in one fleet off the Atlantic entrance of the Canal, that the manoeuver became public.
The resultant uproar from Chambers of Commerce and Congressmen representing Pacific Coast states was answered by the unofficial statements from Washington revealing that the sudden mobilization of the United States fleet in the Atlantic was demanded at that time by the presence in the same ocean of an overwhelming strength of the Red Navy, comprising all of the old British fleet, all of the old French and Italian sea forces and one-half of the Japanese fleet, which had been moved westward by way of Suez.
American newspapers endeavoured to make the public understand that any splitting up of American naval forces in the face of such a tremendously superior foreign fleet in the Atlantic would be nothing less than fatal to the country.
But even the clamouring of organized American pacifism was silenced by Karakhan's next step.
The Mexican Ambassador in London was notified that unless the Municipality of Salina Cruz paid the sum of $10,000,000 back interest overdue for ten years on bonds now held by the Red Union for debts contracted between the Mexican State of Oaxaca and Compton Thompson, Ltd., for harbour construction at Salina Cruz within twenty-four hours, the Pan-Eurasian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics would land forces at Salina Cruz and take over the customs authority of the port.
Upon receipt of the news of this ultimatum to Mexico, the American State Department advised the Red Foreign Office in London that the United States Government would consider such action on the part of the Red Union in Mexico as a hostile act against the United States. Official American notification pointed out that any landing of an European force in Salina Cruz was a direct violation of the established American policy, the "Monroe Doctrine."
Washington proposed that the twenty-four-hour ultimatum to Mexico be rescinded or extended long enough for an investigation with a view toward a tri-party arbitration of the question, with the possibility of the United States guaranteeing payment on the defaulted Mexican bonds.
Karakhan's unofficial retort was as follows:
"What is the Monroe Doctrine?
"Investigation of all Foreign Offices' archives of Europe, Asia, and Africa, fail to locate a single record of any recognition on the part of any of the old nations, now comprising the Red Union, of any such policy by which those nations surrendered the right to protect the interests of their citizens in any country in the world.
"Likewise the Foreign Office of the Red Union is unaware that the so-called American Monroe Doctrine has been recognized by any country, or any Central or South American nation.
"Finally, the Red Union does not recognize it."
It was war.
Attaches and secretaries were closing their desks, destroying files and packing bags when I reached the American Embassy on Grosvenor Square. I had just a word with Commander Dawson, the naval attache, and he explained to me, confidentially, that the Red threat of a landing at Salina Cruz had been made for the same purpose that failed when the Sandino was blown up before it blew up the Panama Canal. He told me that the Salina Cruz expedition was calculated to inveigle part of the American Navy back through the Panama Canal into the Pacific.
If that had been the intention of Karakhan's naval advisers, it failed, because the United States fleet remained as a single unit in the waters of the Atlantic, where the country faced the greatest enemy sea force ever mobilized.
In the Tribune office on Fleet Street, I was completing my dispatch on the inevitable outbreak of hostilities, when Speed Binney and Whit Dodge both burst into the room. I do not know which one of them asked the question first. It might have been both.
"Where is Margot?"
The girl had been missing since morning.
THREE Americans in London on the eve of the opening of hostilities between our country and the enormous might of the Red Union, and not one of us could think of anything or anyone but an English girl!
Speed Binney and Whit Dodge submerged their mutual dislikes for one another under the cloud of this threat of danger to Margot Denison, whose disappearance at this particular time chilled us with fear.
Red Revolutionary London, capital of the Pan-Eurasian Federation of Soviets and headquarters of the yellow military genius whose will and frightfulness had consummated this mighty amalgamation of force, was a startlingly different city from the London of King George V. And Margot's possible plight made us see it with eyes opened anew to those spectacles of horror to any American—that age-old horror born of pride of race that has set a desperate barrier between white women and men of colour.
Yellow, Black, Brown, and Red, the Asiatic and African troops of the Red armies mingled with the white communistic soldiery of Europe in the crowded streets, hotels and bars of the Red capital.
Comrades-in-arms, now, these veterans of ruthless blood- spillings from the shores of massacred Australia to the gory execution chambers of European capitals, drank and sang and took the spoils of war in what had once been the capital of the English speaking world.
And it was in the center of this bubbling cauldron of inter- racial license and debauch, that Margot had dropped completely out of sight. If the girl had been my sister, I could not have felt more deeply the inherent fear for her welfare.
Since that wild night in Moscow, when Binney and I had delivered her from the riot in a revolutionary café, my paternal or fraternal affection for her had grown constantly as my dependence upon her valuable assistance increased.
Throughout the sweep of Karakhan's armies across Europe, she had never failed in the many duties for which I had called upon her. Long hours, hard travel, uncertain accommodations—nothing had daunted her in the transcription and transmission of my dispatches.
In Paris and London, during the Yellow Terror's political and military reorganization of his distant conquests, Margot's familiarity with the politics, diplomacy, and economics of the Old World had raised her from the rank of a private secretary to a collaborator. Her youthful viewpoint and almost encyclopedic fund of information had been invaluable.
"It's hell," Whit said, with clenched teeth, as the three of us sat glum in the Tribune office on Fleet Street. "My fingers itch to get at each yellow throat I see."
Binney's emotions were so strong that for once they silenced him.
Our telephone inquiries for her whereabouts covered London, but the sum-total of our search was that she had left the Savoy Hotel in a closed car after receiving a telephone call. Colonel Boyar gave us the only ray of hope.
"She's all right—just wait," he said.
It was the night of that same second day of the New Year—January 2, 1934—that the news of the Red Bombardment and occupation of the town and harbour of Salina Cruz, far south on the Mexican-Pacific coast, was made public on the streets of London.
As the newspaper extras, printed in dozens of languages, reached the streets, the wild celebration of the crowds mounted to a new pitch.
The Press made it clear that the commencement of fighting between American and Red forces would be reported at any minute. The United States had notified Karakhan that America would intervene and resist any attempt on the part of the Red Union to invade Mexico, on the grounds of a violation of the Monroe Doctrine.
The Red Official Communiqué read:
"The landing of Red troops, comprising Siberian, Mongolian, and Japanese contingents, in Salina Cruz has been effected with only slight losses.
"The landing, which was made under cover of the guns of Japanese units of the Red fleet, was preceded by a bombardment resulting in considerable damage to the town and a number of deaths among the civilian population. Our troops are advancing northward along the railroad which crosses the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
"Mexican forces are retreating toward the Gulf of Campeche.
"Red air patrols are present in force."
I was to learn later that at the moment we received the
first news in London, American and Red air forces were already in
contact over the Mexican front.
Upon my request, Boyar arranged an interview for me with Karakhan.
The halls of Buckingham Palace buzzed with excitement as I made my way toward the waiting-room of the Red chief. Without delay I was admitted to the long salon in which he had his office. As the door closed behind me, I found that the Red Napoleon and I were the sole occupants of the room.
I advanced to the long, broad table, behind which Karakhan was standing. His head was bent forward, showing the short-cut black hair that fitted his head like a skull cap. His eyes were fixed on a large map which almost covered the top of the table. From the waist up, he leaned his body over the map, balancing it on the extended fingers and thumbs of both hands.
In a fleeting glance at the map I saw it was a planisphere. The Western Hemisphere was in the center flanked on the right by the Atlantic Ocean and Europe; flanked on the left by the Pacific Ocean and Asia. It was lined and dotted with marks in various colours and studded with different coloured flags and pins.
From either end of the table, light from two shaded reading lamps shown down on the white surface of the map and was reflected up into the yellow features poised above it. Immediately beneath his eyes was the United States.
During the minute of silence that Karakhan forced me to wait, standing there before him, my mind grasped the symbol of this colossus of evil, his tapering finger tips on the surface of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, his thin body, his high shoulders, his yellow face, and close-cropped head towering over and glaring down upon my country.
Then his head lifted and the peering eyes pinned me with a look. There was no smile, no greeting. Not because he did not recognize me, I believe, but because of the disturbance to his study.
"What is it?"
The tone was hard and dry. Not unfriendly, just direct and curt.
"I have come to surrender my parole," I replied. "You are now at war with my country, or you will be in a few hours.
"I am a citizen of the United States and, as such, I have been pleased to serve with your forces during the last year. I have enjoyed and respected the confidence which you have seen fit to repose in me, and which I have even presumed to cherish in the light of a personal attachment.
"You know my personal views on patriotism and nationalism, in brief, on plain loyalty. I am requesting permission to return to my country and to take my two co-workers with me."
My statement was met with another long silence, in which the steely eyes peered forth from his unemotional face into mine. The yellow features beamed with an intensity almost sardonic. Try as I might, I could not figure out what to expect from that look and that silence.
My long and close association with the Red Napoleon forced me to the realization that I could depend upon our curious relationship for no consideration, if such a consideration was contrary to the advantages of the yellow leader. Then he spoke:
"The world is on the threshold of a new era. Taken as a house, it is now too small to accommodate two conflicting systems of thought. This division of opinion is about to be eliminated. There must be one master.
"I have no regret for what is happening at Salina Cruz today. If it had not been there, it would have happened somewhere else.
"My pride is that since the peace of Paris, I have been able to so organize my forces, that today finds me in readiness to march into the destiny that lies ahead of us, with the certainty of victory.
"Napoleon conquered all of Europe, but was held back by the strip of water between the Continent and these British Islands. I have conquered all of the world except the Western Hemisphere.
"The English Channel and the British fleet held up Napoleon's progress. That was the beginning of his failure and his end, that was the weak spot in his plans; that was his great mistake. I have profited from his mistake."
This was a long speech for Karakhan. Others have said that he made Calvin Coolidge seem like a chatterbox. The man of few words continued:
"The people of the New World are hoping that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans offer them the security that England found in the English Channel in the days of Bonaparte. That hope is their mistake. They will find it so. The Atlantic and Pacific offer no obstacles to me. We are ready for a showdown.
"You know the forces that marshal themselves under the Red flag today—the 900,000,000 people of Asia; the 400,000,000 of Europe; and the 180,000,000 of Africa.
"Opposed to us are the 130,000,000 of North America and possibly the 40,000,000 of South America.
"Compare the totals: 1,500,000,000 people against less than 200,000,000.
"Under the Red flag are the material resources of three entire Continents. We have food and primary products more than ample. The industrial output of Europe combined and working together for the first time is more than sufficient to our needs.
"The merchant marine of the three Continents is sufficient to bridge the oceans of the world. The navies of the Pan-Eurasion Union will be in command of the water routes of the world within twenty-four hours. No ship will sail the sea without our flag—I repeat: no ship!"
I had forgotten about this. How was I to return to America?
"My armies encompass the globe!" Karakhan's even, nerveless voice continued. "Outnumbering any enemy or possible combination of enemies in the world, I go to war knowing that behind my combat lines stands a reserve of man power so enormous as to enable me to replace fresh and even greater forces in any theater of operation, as fast as I require them.
"Why do you suppose I have permitted you to observe and report my military operations across Europe during this last year? Your sight is keen; your perception is good; you write with graphic vividness.
"I had hoped that your words would carry conviction to your people—a conviction that would save them from the inevitable disaster that now awaits their latest defiance. Force must be the teacher now—it is the best one anyhow.
"About your request to return to your country. You appreciate, of course, that it remains within my power to keep you here with me. I would have no moral scruples against such a course. Morals are surplus baggage in war, but it serves my purpose better to send you back to your people. I learn by the mistakes of my predecessors.
"One of the greatest mistakes in the World War was made by the military leaders of both sides. It was the error of blind censorship, suppressing information—military or otherwise.
"The censorship had no reason for existence. It was imposed by military fools, in the hope of preventing their costly blunders from becoming known among the civil populations.
"I have applied terror in Europe. You saw our executions beginning in Warsaw and Bucharest; you saw the number of bourgeoisie that paid with their lives in Belgrade and in Vienna; you saw the Fascist fools mowed down by the thousands in Italy; you saw Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Englishmen forfeit their lives before our execution squads. You were permitted to report it fully with all its gruesome details. Why?
"That is war. I was waging war. I had nothing to conceal; nothing to regret; nothing to be ashamed of. The world sees the result today in the unification of three Continents; the pacification of a billion and a half people and the amalgamation of their economic, financial, and military forces under one flag—and all in the space of one year.
"That is a worthy accomplishment. Worthy of all the lives taken, of every drop of blood; and of every tear shed to bring it about."
Karakhan walked the length of the long table and returned to his position behind the map. Resting one long finger within the outline of the United States, he said:
"Your country and your Government should have learned something from what has happened in the last year. The phenomenal prosperity that came to your country after 1918 produced a national blindness to realities. Since the debt question became acute in 1918, American popularity in Europe has steadily declined.
"The dull ignorance that has marked the advice, which your back-country statesmen have repeatedly offered to the rest of the world, has been more sickening than instructive.
"Like President Wilson at Versailles, America has repeatedly boasted that it wanted nothing from the rest of the world, and rather deplored the fact that the rest of the world was inclined to want and demand things.
"That policy was all right for America, which had everything and needed nothing. But it was poor medicine and poor sermonizing for American moralists to propose such a code to overcrowded, struggling, poverty-stricken nations that had nothing and needed everything.
"I speak frankly because I would like you to let your people know exactly the esteem their Government is held in around the world.
"You ask to return to America, and I am granting your request. You have respected the agreement we made in Moscow. At times it was necessary for me to withhold some of the dispatches you wrote for publication in America. Some of your conclusions were a trifle premature for my purposes.
"But now, upon your departure I wish you to go with the feeling that you will be under no restrictions or obligations concerning what you report or communicate from now on.
"All that you know, all that you have seen, all that you have heard, and any of the old-fashioned military secrets that you may think you possess—you have my sanction to reveal it all. Present the information to your Government and your people with my compliments."
I bowed acknowledgment of the offer. Karakhan picked a sheet of paper from his desk and consulted it.
"Your airplane pilot, Binney, will go with you," he said. "But your stenographer or secretary will not. She is not an American. She is a citizen of the Red Union. You and your pilot will be escorted in safety to the American lines and, if the fortunes of war are kindly to you, it is quite possible that we will meet again. I will look forward to the meeting with pleasure. You may go. Colonel Boyar will attend to details."
So he knew the whereabouts of Margot. A question sprang to my lips but was silenced by another "That is all," spoken with an irrevocable air of finality by the Red Napoleon.
But Boyar knew and this was my thought as I hurriedly returned to the Tribune office where I found the smiling Colonel and the nervous Speed Binney.
"Where's Margot?" I demanded. "You know."
"Now I can tell you," Boyar replied.
"Quick!" shouted Binney with something of a menace in his tones. "Where?"
"Safe and sound and as happy as it would be possible for a pretty girl to be, while separated from the exciting rivalries of an American democrat and an American aristocrat. By the way, Whit ought to be here also. Where is he?"
"To hell with Whit. Where's Margot?" from Binney.
"She will not be allowed to return with you," Boyar replied. "That's definite. It develops out of our Little Uncle's domestic affairs. Unfortunately, Mrs. Karakhan has the Western conception of the wife's constant position behind her husband.
"Margot saw fit to befriend her when she went to Vienna against the General's orders to the contrary. Karakhan has no feeling against Margot for that reason.
"On the contrary he feels that she has done much to prevent him from being bothered by a hysterical wife—so much, in fact, that he will see that the two of them remain here together. He has seen neither of them, and I doubt if he will.
"The General's affairs with women in general are one matter. The conduct of his domestic household—his wife and the mother of his children—that is an entirely different one. Such an arrangement is for the best. It will guarantee the safety of both Mrs. Karakhan and Margot. That ought to please you, Speed."
"And she'll have to remain in England until the war is over?" Binney asked.
"Unless the General permits her to accompany his wife to New York," said Boyar, smilingly.
Packing my bag for our departure that night, I discovered the following note in my toilet-case:
"The Reds are rounding up all Americans for internment. You and Binney are all right, but they are after me. If they get me it will not be without my getting several of them. I do not know how I am going to get to the States, but I will get there and be in the fight if I live.
"I think I know where Margot is, and I will see her before I go. Good luck, and good-bye. Whit."
Late that night, Binney and I accompanied by Boyar left London by night plane over the Red trans-Eurasian airways, destination Yokahama. Boyar explained that we would be returned to America via the Pacific. During the four days and nights of air travel, we spent hours with the ear phones clasped to our heads, listening to the Red broadcasting out of London.
We heard the voice of the Red Napoleon himself as he delivered, in slow, precise English, his radio declaration of war which combined assurances of success to the millions of the Red Union with a general appeal to the "American Proletariat." It was followed by Red appeals in all languages to the varied and supposedly divergent sections of the United States. Territorial autonomy within the borders of the United States was offered to all foreign-born elements and hyphenates.
To the German speaking citizens of Wisconsin, the Reds offered an autonomous Soviet of their own. Announcements in Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish carried to the Scandinavians of Minnesota and the Dakotas the plan for an independent New Scandinavia.
To the Italians of New York, to Irish-Americans—wherever they were—to the immigrants of North and South Slavic extraction, to citizens of Mexican and Spanish derivation in the southwest—to all of them, independent territory was offered.
Moses Carling, American Negro exile, for many years proprietor of a prominent Moscow café, addressed himself through the microphone to ten million Negroes in America, declaring that Karakhan would give them the states of Louisiana and Mississippi for an independent Soviet of their own, if they would revolt against the "lily white Lynchers" of Washington.
"More receiving sets in America than in all the rest of the world combined," explained Boyar. "Every set in the Red Union is known and registered by the police, and we can call them in anytime we want to. Washington has no control over the sets in America, so I see no way you can prevent our propaganda reaching you by air."
Later, in Washington, I learned it had been within the power of the Government broadcasting stations to jam the air with conflicting waves that would have silenced Red radio propaganda. But Washington had abjured this defensive measure and left the radio open to the propaganda of both sides. It became a war of words in the air.
Loyal Americans of all foreign and racial extractions broadcast replies in every language. But in spite of this fair and patriotic effort, some of the Red seeds of dissension did take root.
Ending our air flight at Yokahama, we found the harbour alive with shipping—vessels from all parts of the Orient being loaded for the west coast of Mexico. The Red naval bases at Yokosuka, Maizuru, Kure, Sasebo, and Pescadores were similar hives of activity.
More as distinguished guests than the prisoners we felt ourselves, Binney and I were escorted aboard the steamship Reba Harris, of the American Dollar Line, one of the many American vessels captured upon the declaration of war in a foreign port.
In this casual manner we were confronted with the terrible fact that the existence of the vastly superior Red fleet, plus the non-existence of neutral ports anywhere in the world, had resulted in the American flag being swept from the seas.
Thousands of tons of American shipping had been captured racing to reach home ports; while many Yankee vessels that happened to be in Red ports when war was declared were captured before they could steam out.
We put to sea with 3,000 Japanese troops on board. There were a large number of Japanese and Russian staff officers bound for Salina Cruz for staff duty under General Kamku, who Karakhan had placed in command of the Red Pan-Eurasian Expeditionary Forces in Mexico.
In French, German, and English they chatted gaily with us over their prospects in Mexico. For the most part they were young, light-hearted, daring. They spoke of wine and white girls, of twanging guitars, of moonlight on palm trees. Binney and I were silent in the face of their exuberant raillery, but Boyar joked with them and with us.
"Our lines are pushing steadily northward from Salina Cruz," the Colonel told me, on the morning of our second day out as we paced the deck in the bracing January air of the North Pacific.
"Kamku is a wild devil," he continued. "He's the yellow one that made the landing north of Manila Bay in the Philippine conquest—knows his business like a book—used to be an officer in the old Imperial Army—sort of a renegade nobleman—real Samuria gone Red. Something like old Chicherin in Moscow."
"Was there no naval opposition to the landing at Salina Cruz?" I asked.
"Unfortunately for us, no," he replied. "One purpose of the action was to draw American naval units back into the Pacific. Half of the Japanese fleet covered Kamku's landing. They would have taken care of any American warships that could have been spared from your fleet in the Caribbean.
"But apparently you have some brains on your strategy board in Washington, as no United States sea forces were sent to the defence of Salina Cruz, although your politicians along the Pacific Coast roared and yowled to high heaven for the navy. The radio was full of it."
"What is Karakhan's tactical objective," I asked. "How many men has he? What's he driving for?"
"His forces number over 100,000 men now," Boyar explained: "More are landing at the rate of 10,000 a day. They're not all coming from Japan, you understand.
"Some of the contingents were shipped from Australia, New Zealand, the Philippine Islands, and some of the Pacific island groups, formerly British and French. During the past three months, the garrisons on these oceanic stepping-stones have been doubled and trebled and the troops trained down to the last minute in landing tactics. Many of them are veterans of the Australian massacre. Don't think this expedition is a hit-or-miss affair. It's been planned for some time.
"Kamku is advancing along the Trans-Isthmian railroad, running from Salina Cruz northward across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to Puerto Mexico. His objective is to push through to the Gulf of Mexico. I think he'll do it. Remember it is only about 135 miles across the Isthmus."
We went into the smoke-room, where a war map of the Mexican front covered the bulletin board.
"Red forces took the junction town of San Geronimo, here," Boyar explained, pointing. "Salina Cruz, you see, is the hub of a fifty-mile circle which, roughly, represents our line around the city.
"We hold the railroad south to Cerro Loco. The nature of the country is such that all of the fighting is along the Trans- Isthmian railroad. I do not know the strength of the American and Mexican forces opposed to us, but I believe they are badly crippled by the fact that they have only a single line railroad behind them. They are based on Puerto Mexico and Vera Cruz."
One of the few civilians on board the Reba Harris was Remus Stein, an old agent of the Moscow Foreign Office who had previously been an exile in America. His mission to Mexico was diplomatic, and Boyar introduced him to explain what was known of the internal situation in Mexico.
"You know, of course, that Madame Kollontay, the old Russian Ambassadress at Mexico City, represented the Red Union there," Stein explained. "She is one of the Revolutionary comrades of Lenin and Trotsky. Your American Secret Service has been interested in her work in Mexico for many years. She is now in Salina Cruz and has reported fully on the events following the receipt of our ultimatum in Mexico City."
"What happened?" I asked.
"The customary Mexican crisis," Stein replied. "Your American Ambassador Ketcham conferred with President Maytoreyna immediately and there were many long distance telephone conversations with Washington. Morones, leader of the opposition, charged Maytoreyna with an over-ready willingness to call upon the United States for assistance in an emergency which the opposition believed could be handled adequately by the Mexican army and air forces.
"There was a public demonstration, in which the opposition announced its policy in the slogan—'Soviet federation with Karakhan rather than capitalistic slavery under American imperialism!' I don't mind telling you that this was an open appeal to the widespread anti-American prejudice in Mexico, but I am sorry to admit that it failed. President Maytoreyna officially invited the assistance of the United States in resisting our landing."
"How long did these negotiations take?" I asked. "Every hour must have been counted."
"The negotiations were plain smoke and buncombe," Stein replied with a smile. "Washington had not even waited for the negotiations. Hours before their conclusions, American regulars from half a dozen army posts in the West and Middle West were concentrated along the Mexican border. Troops from the Atlantic Seaboard, mobilized at Tampa, Mobile, and New Orleans, were on board the transports and en route for Mexico while the fools in the streets of Mexico City were still shouting about their independence."
"When did the Yanks get into action?" Binney asked, ignoring Stein's cynicism.
"According to the Washington radio Communiqué an American squadron appeared off Puerto Mexico not an hour after agreement was reached. The Yankee warships saluted the Mexican flag and the Mexican batteries ashore saluted the American flag. United States marines landed first, followed by an unknown number of American troops which advanced southward along the railroad, toward Salina Cruz, where they joined forces with Mexican troops. And that's where the opposing lines are fighting now."
"Atta boy," said Binney. Stein smiled indulgently.
"Madame Kollontay's work was more successful in the north," the Red diplomatist continued. "Yaqui Indians revolted in Sonora and seriously impeded the movement of American troop trains southward from the Arizona border.
"Their resistance was so determined at Hermosillo that the American advance was held up two days by the rebels and the mutinied garrison of the city. Hermosillo suffered severe damage from American shells, which killed a number of civilians.
"An American troop train was derailed south of Chihuahua City and another was blown up by a mine just before it reached the railroad junction at Irapuato. American casualties have been very high."
Later I was to learn that the Mexican General Staff had wisely employed a large part of its military strength in the defence of the Mexican west coast ports of Manzanillo, Guaymas, Mazatlan, Topolobambo, and railway artillery had been concentrated on the coastal lines along the Gulf of California.
Binney complained daily about the slowness of our ship and I felt with him the itch for speed to hurry our arrival to our own army. Boyar understood and respected our feelings, but seemed to enjoy most keenly each bit of discouraging information he brought us.
"Would you like some cheery wireless news for breakfast, my dear Yankee friends?" he asked gaily on the morning of our tenth day out from Yokahama.
"I know," Speed replied with a sour look. "Lake Michigan has overflowed and swept the Mississippi Valley into the Gulf of Mexico and A 1 Smith has gone dry. Now try and break my heart, little blue bird."
"Not quite that bad," replied the smiling Boyar, "but there's a hell of a fight going on in Hawaii. The Japanese population has revolted and seized one of the forts, together with arms and munitions. They also hold the Wahiawa reservoir with the water supply of Oahu.
"There has been some hard fighting in the streets of Honolulu and I am sorry to say that a number of the American pineapple planters and their wives and children have been killed by their employees.
"We have been intercepting radio reports from the Japanese rebels and these, together with the United States Army code radios, which we have deciphered, indicate that a pleasant time is being had by all. It looks like another Australian party."
"Baloney," replied Speed. "You boys don't seem to realize that you are fighting Yanks now."
"Why don't we?" Boyar replied. "There's no one else in the world to fight. You forget, Speed, that the United States Navy has evacuated the naval base at Pearl Harbour, so that your land forces on the Island now have to fight it out or perish. There's no hope of reinforcements reaching them. We control the Pacific.
"Whether the Hawaiian revolt succeeds or not, matters very little. I doubt whether Karakhan would attempt to take the Islands with an expedition. They are not worth it to us, and now they are useless to you because you have no navy in the Pacific. You might make it a little nasty for us as a submarine base, but I think you will need all of your undersea craft in the Atlantic."
"I notice just the same," remarked Binney, "that this ship runs without lights at night and we are giving Honolulu a wide berth. I guess you're taking no chances on our subs."
Several times on the trip we had been approached by Japanese destroyers and once had been hailed in the night by the 30,000- ton liner Nichi Maru, which Boyar told us had been converted into an armed merchant marine destroyer and carried four six-inch guns.
"She accounted for four American ships last week," he said. "Captured two and sank two more whose Captains refused to 'heave to' upon her orders. She is returning to Yokahama with the captured crews and passengers."
Binney and I, leaning over a side rail, peered across the water and watched the ship pass us dimly in the night. Our thoughts were with the several hundred of our fellow countrymen on board the Nichi Maru, who were bound for the prison cages and labour camps back in Japan.
We steamed into the harbour of Salina Cruz on the morning of our twenty-second day out from Yokahama. Two small, semi-rigid dirigibles, their cigar-shaped envelopes tinted rose and silver by the morning sun, patrolled slowly above the brown coast ahead of us. Mine sweepers preceded us, and Japanese destroyers cut in and about in constant vigilance. Airplanes buzzed overhead. Traffic lanes to and from the port were crowded with eastbound and westbound shipping.
Riding in the long Pacific swell, we saw the luridly painted hulls and superstructures of battleships—their great sides now splotched with grotesque and futuristic camouflage. Boyar pointed them out. They were the old Imperial Japanese battleships Ise and Fuso, old-timers, both laid down back in 1917 and 1915. Their tonnage was slightly over 30,000; speed, twenty-three knots, and both carried main batteries of twelve- inch guns. We could recognize the Ise, with her tripod masts and three sets of twin gunned, superimposed turrets.
Further to sea were the old cruisers, Hiyei and Kongo, slightly smaller vessels but speedier by five knots, and each mounting eight fourteen-inchers.
"There are the air carriers Akagi and the Kaga," said Boyar, pointing. "You can recognize them by the three swivel funnels jutting out on the left side of the ship and from beneath the landing deck. They carry a hundred planes each, and are armed with eight-inch guns."
A constant procession of planes rose from the decks of the carriers and flew inland beyond the town to the semicircular wall of bare, brown hills that form the ovaliform basin in which the city of Salina Cruz is tucked. Looking at that ring of hills from the sea, it was impossible to locate the breach through which the railroad runs northward to cross the Isthmus.
Numbers of anti-aircraft guns, their muzzles pointed skyward, were mounted on the two encircling arms of white cement breakwaters that form the outer harbour.
The concrete superstructure of the breakwater on the right of the inner harbour entrance appeared severely damaged as though many feet of it had been blown off.
"Some little American birdie must have dropped an egg in the toy harbour," Speed remarked to Boyar, with the pride of an airman.
"I wish they had, Speed," Boyar replied. "It would have saved us the trouble of blowing that breakwater up ourselves. We did it because the entrance was only ninety feet wide and some of our ships have a greater beam than that. Yank and Mexican planes have been over trying to bomb us, but our air forces have been able to keep them off."
Inside the inner harbour, which has a superficial area of about twenty acres, troop and supply ships were moored alongside the quays, and the electric cranes, lifts, and conveyor systems were rumbling away, swinging out guns, gun carriages and mounts, tanks, automobiles, and all manner of military impedimenta. Above the noise of the unloading could be heard the boom of distant cannon.
Pouring out of the sides of the ships down the gang-planks flowed long lines of marching Japanese infantry. Rifles were slung over their shoulders, together with water bottles, haversacks, gas masks, blanket rolls, and personal equipment.
Japanese stewards respectfully brought our baggage to the quay side and accepted our tips with thanks and smiles. Mexican cargadores, bare to their sash-bound waists, mounted our bags to their bony brown shoulders and, led by a smartly dressed young Japanese Lieutenant, we proceeded up the main street of Salina Cruz to the Hotel Guasti, now the headquarters of General Kamku, who, according to our escort, was expecting us.
The Japanese Commander was middle-aged, short, round-faced, round-bellied, and hot. He smiled through his moist discomfiture, revealing two even rows of white teeth. He spoke in French:
"We have received instructions from London to deposit you behind the American lines. Unfortunately it will not be possible in daytime, because I do not wish you to observe our positions which might be visible from the air, but you will be dropped by parachute tomorrow night somewhere over the harbour of Puerto Mexico."
I looked at Binney with a question in my eyes. Was parachute jumping in the dark over a strange harbour considered healthy? Binney shrugged his shoulders.
"General, there need be no restrictions on what Mr. Gibbons and Mr. Binney may observe," Colonel Boyar said suavely. "They are—"
"I consider only the safety of my forces," Kamku shot back, rising to his feet angrily. "Our lines are hard-pressed on the north. Our present positions must be veiled as much as possible. I am in command here. I will not permit the passage of spies through—"
"Would the General be so kind as to read these instructions?" Boyar interrupted, as he presented a folded white paper, which bore a half-inch border of red.
Silently we watched the Japanese Commander's pin-point eyes, as they oscillated across the typewritten page. Without a word he returned the document to Boyar and sat down. Addressing his adjutant, he said:
"You will make arrangements for the flying personnel and equipment required by Colonel Boyar when and where he desires. That is all."
With a mutual exchange of bows we left the room, and in the corridor outside Binney winked at Boyar and whispered:
"I do not know what scriptural text you carry on that paper, but to Papa Kamku it must have read like his master's voice."
"It came from Karakhan," Boyar responded. "We will fix you up for a daylight landing, with everything possible for your safety."
While the sweating cargadores removed our bags to the Hotel Gambrinus, Boyar, accompanied by the guide, led us to the Terminal Hotel, now a hospital.
"There are some wounded American officers here," Boyar explained. "No reason why you should not talk to them." Following an orderly, we went into a guarded room at the end of the second floor corridor.
Partially covered by a sheet, on a cot in one corner of the room, was a man. The face and features were darkly sunburned, but the lighter pallor of his cleanly shaven pate identified him as white. He was smoking a cigarette and looking at the ceiling when we entered the room, but immediately lowered his gaze to us and finally his eyes rested on mine.
"Well, I will be good, and God d—"
"And so will I," I interjected as I stepped forward with outstretched hand to grasp the extended one of Major Hickey Collins, of the 5th U.S. Marines.
Beside his reputation of being one of the most profound oathsmen of the Marine Corps, Hickey Collins had come up from the ranks, winning his commission in the early days of June, 1918, when the Marine Brigade of the old Second Division drove the Germans back from the Marne. Hickey and I had liquidated subsequent battles and bottles in Paris. The last time I had seen him was back in 1924 in Pekin, where his battalion was attached to the American Legation guard.
When I had explained briefly my presence in Salina Cruz, he told me of the fighting inland in which he had been wounded and taken prisoner.
"They landed the brigade at Puerto Mexico and my battalion was pushed on the train immediately for the interior. We left a company at Santa Lucrecia, which is the junction point of the road that runs north to Vera Cruz, and I took the other two companies on south to the foot of the hills around Chievela. And maybe it wasn't hot there!
"Jungles, creepers, underbrush, snakes and screeching parrots, land crabs crawling underfoot, and jungle growth so damp and hot that steam comes out of the ground.
"We made a line right and left on the railroad and tried to dig in. The jungles on both sides were full of Japs. The air fighting went on above night and day.
"Our flat cars had no sooner pushed into Chievela than Jap air bombers blew up the railroad in back of us and we were S. O. L. for supplies.
"I got mine from an air-bomb on the third day; a big chunk of it in my back and the concussion must have put me out. Guess our line had to give way on the right, because they certainly were throwing blacksmith shops full of iron into us. Anyhow, I woke up in the hands of the enemy.
"They carted me down here, and it looks like the jug for me, and prospects of a long war. Me, a prisoner of the Japs, and God, how I hate rice!" he finished disconsolately.
Binney and I shared our pocket money with Hickey and told him that we would communicate with Mrs. Collins, whose bungalow address near Quantico, Virginia, he gave me.
We parted with a tight grip of the hands.
After lunch Boyar escorted Binney and me, together with our baggage, down to the waterfront, where we loaded onto a dispatch boat that took us beyond the harbour and alongside the airplane carrier Akagi.
We took off from the landing deck of the air carrier in a large transport plane, Binney, Boyar, and I. For ten minutes we circled above the wind and sandblown streets and brown flats of Salina Cruz, while an escort of fifty pursuit planes joined us in formation. Steadily climbing for altitude, we flew north on a course east of the railroad, a blackened, winding groove in the jungle green beneath us.
Twice we sighted American planes in smaller numbers and there was one combat in which two American and one Japanese machines went down. The surviving Americans hung to the tail of our group, which continued northward.
One hour later, we flew over the Bay of Campeche. A perfect hell of anti-aircraft fire greeted us from the suburbs and harbour defences of Puerto Mexico. American destroyers and light cruisers were in full speed movement beneath us, their vertical guns spitting shells upward and thick black smoke pouring from their funnels.
The American planes flew to the attack to prevent the accompanying Red bombers from getting into position above the warships.
I made a last inspection of my parachute harness, tied the life-preserver around my waist and stood ready for a jump. Binney stood beside me, similarly prepared to follow me into space.
"Don't forget what I told you," I heard him shout in Boyar's ear. "Tell Margot I'm coming to get her."
There was a sudden pressure of air on my ears as our plane dove from its 10,000-foot level. When about 1500 feet above the surface of the harbour, the machine came out of the dive on an even keel.
Boyar slid back the side door and smiled into my face as he placed his hand on my shoulder.
"Good-bye, Gibbons, here's where we part."
"Good-bye, Boyar, until we meet again," I replied.
With my fingers clasped to the steel trigger ring of the parachute, I stepped out into space.
THERE was a flash of the blue water 1500 feet below, but the sight so unnerved me that I closed my eyes. It was my first parachute leap. I feared it was my last.
Turning over and over as I fell, I forced myself to count four slowly, and then pulled the steel ring on my shoulder harness. To me it seemed an eternity that I waited for the opening of the silken parasol upon which my life depended.
It ended with a jolt that felt like a terrific blow across the middle of the back. I was spun and snapped about like a lash of a whip. The 'chute had caught the air—I was floating down.
An inshore breeze slowly drifted me inland toward the long line of white surf east of the harbour of Puerto Mexico. I noticed several speed boats cutting through the water in the direction in which the wind was taking me. One of them was not fifty feet away when I struck water and disentangled myself from the still inflated 'chute.
I was pulled aboard with a boat-hook and brought face to face with a Yankee sailor who pointed a wicked Colt automatic at my stomach and told me to hold up my hands. The speed boat made a left turn and picked up Binney, not a hundred yards away.
Our attempted explanations to the nervous holder of the automatic were futile. He knew about spy-dropping from enemy planes and was taking no chances. Fifteen minutes later I was taken before my friend General Phelan Logan, the Marine Commandant in the town who recognized me at once and reported my arrival to Vera Cruz and Washington.
With our clothes still wet and with the two suitcases, which the ever-thoughtful Boyar had parachuted down after us, Binney and I left for Vera Cruz in a large marine seaplane. We dined that evening with Major General McArthur, commanding the American Expeditionary Forces and General Mendoza, the leader of the Mexican Allies.
On my plate were two army-radiograms. The first one was as follows:
CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR SAFE RETURN STOP PRESIDENT SMITH REQUESTS YOUR PRESENCE BEFORE CABINET MEETING WASHINGTON TOMORROW NIGHT
HAND
The message flattered me highly and it was with some pride that I handed it to General McArthur. I really felt important. While he was reading it, I tore open the second radiogram. It read:
NO EXPENSE ACCOUNTS RECEIVED FROM YOU FOR LAST ELEVEN MONTHS AUDITING DEPARTMENT MUST HAVE ALL HOTEL BILLS AND TELEGRAPH RECEIPTS STOP ATTACH VOUCHERS FOR ALL EXCHANGE TRANSACTIONS
TRIBUNE CHICAGO
Binney and I slept like babies that night in the big navy
transport plane, high above the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, as
we were flown northwest for New Orleans and Washington, where we
landed at Bolling Field late the following day. Unshaven and with
clothing dried but wrinkled, we were taken by car to the White
House and after a brief delay Charles Hand, the President's
secretary, led me into the Cabinet room.
President Smith, slightly grayer and somewhat heavier, greeted me kindly with a few words recalling the night in 1919 he had introduced me before a lecture audience in Carnegie Hall and had pronounced the "h" in Chateau Thierry. "My French always was poisonous," he observed. "You see, I learned it in a fish market." I have never decided whether the pun was unconscious or intentional.
Other members of the Cabinet personally known to me were Secretary of State Conger Reynolds, Attorney General Frank Comerford, and Secretary of Agriculture Ruth Hanna McCormick. I had assisted slightly in Mrs. McCormick's election to Congress in 1928 and two years later when Illinois sent her to the Senate to take the chair of her late husband. Upon the death of Secretary of Agriculture Fordyce in 1932, Mrs. McCormick had resigned her seat in the Senate to accept President Hoover's appointment of her as the first woman member of an American Cabinet, and the highest political position ever held by any woman in the United States. Although she was a stalwart Republican, President Smith had reappointed her to the same post when he entered the White House in March, 1933.
"Floyd, tell us what you know about Karakhan?" President Smith said. "What's the source of his power? What's the secret of his repeated successes? Where does his strength lie? What is his aim? What's he really want?"
There was a silence around the long table as I prepared to answer the questions. I told them how the Chicago Tribune had stationed me in Moscow in 1932. How I had investigated and written stories about the origin of the Red Napoleon from his boyhood with the horse-herders on the slopes of the Urals through his experiences with the old Imperial Russian Army.
I recounted his record through the Russian Revolution; his rise to prominence under Stalin; his seizing of personal power in Russia; his military preparations for expansion; his attacks on Poland and Rumania; his conquest of Central Europe; his invasion of Italy; his annihilation of the French, British, and Belgian Armies at the third Battle of the Marne; his assistance in the English Revolution and his invasion of the British Isles; his ruthless order for the massacre of 6,000,000 whites in Australia; his scientific organization of all the enormous forces of the Continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa; and finally his determination to conquer the last great power and bring the whole world into a Red family of Soviets under his personal domination.
It was a long recital, frequently interrupted by questions, but upon its conclusion the questions came from all directions.
Secretary of State Reynolds questioned me concerning the inter-political organization of the Red Union and my opinion as to the cohesiveness of its structure.
Secretary of Treasury John J. Raskob asked about the monetary situation in the Union.
Secretary of Navy Maitland Davidson questioned me on the organization of the Red fleet, its bases of supply, its organizations, the caliber of its officers and the morale of its men.
Secretary of Commerce William Eberhardt wanted to know something of the internal industrial situation, productivity of the factories, and the efficiency of the railroads.
Secretary of War Myron G. Wallace asked for facts concerning the organization and strength of the Red Armies, the tactics of yellow troops, officer material, arms, equipment, artillery, tanks, gas.
Secretary of Interior Peter Cuneo asked concerning the administration of nature's resources—coal, iron ore, nickel, copper, tin, oil, manganese, through the countries of the Red Union.
The welfare of the peasants, the productivity of the farms, the live-stock, food supply—these were the subjects of interest to Mrs. McCormick, Secretary of Agriculture.
Postmaster General Emory Olds asked whether the communication systems—telephone and telegraph lines—were standing up under Communistic administration.
Secretary of Labor James Ryan interrogated me on the pay, working hours, and housing conditions of the Communistic workers.
The cross-examinations lasted more than four hours, and the air in the room was blue with cigar and cigarette smoke. Coffee had been served to us around the table in lieu of dinner and my voice was gradually becoming a whisper from the continued talking.
Although the situation faced by the country was tense, the feeling gradually grew on me during the interview that full realization of the dangers at hand had not been brought home to the nation. My impression was that some of the Cabinet considered my views concerning Karakhan's powers to be considerably exaggerated and somewhat unjustifiably alarming.
"Isn't it possible, Mr. Gibbons," Secretary of War Wallace said, looking me straight in the eye as he pointed his finger at me—"Isn't it just possible that your association with Reds, Radicals, and Communists has distorted your judgment? Is it possible that you have forgotten some of your Americanism? Could it be, now, that you, yourself, have come under the domination of what you call the terrible personality and will power of this Yellow Terror? It is my opinion that many of the stories that have appeared in the American press in the last year have been written with a propaganda purpose for Karakhan's own benefit. He seems to have treated you like a comrade and almost a confidant and you come to us direct from him. I believe that the biggest strength of the Yellow Terror is yellow journalism."
His blunt implications stung me to the quick. I had run a number of risks, worked long and hard, seen as clearly as I was capable, and reported as fairly as I could write. I had as much pride in my true Americanism as any man that sat around that table. I swallowed the bitter retort that sprang to my lips and endeavoured to answer Mr. Wallace's insinuations calmly.
"Mr. President, I haven't come three-quarters of the way around the world just for the purpose of scaring Secretary Wallace. I'm here because I am an American and I believe my observations of the military affairs, internal politics, and economics of the Red Union will be of vital benefit to my country.
"I have seen hundreds of thousands of dead on the fields of Europe. I have seen women and children mowed down in the streets of Italy. I have seen organized butchery in London. I have witnessed indescribable horrors in the wake of the Yellow Scourge.
"Mr. President, I was looking into the face of the President of the Republic of Austria when he was executed, and I saw the members of his Cabinet shot. I want you to understand that the man that attacks us now with all the weight and might of three of the world's greatest Continents back of him—that man is a supreme genius of evil—a cold, cruel, calculating, dominating force that knows no moral code, no scruples, no principles, no God. And this man, gentlemen, this Asiatic who hates us as only yellow hates white, told me in London, hardly a month ago now, that he intends to crush America.
"Gentlemen, if you do not believe it—if I cannot make you see it, God help us."
My throat was husky from excessive talking and countless cigarettes and I was exhausted from the accumulated fatigue of the long sea and air voyages and the prolonged discussion before the Cabinet.
In the adjoining waiting-room I ran face to face with Whit Dodge. So many things had happened, I had travelled so far, so much had transpired since the boy's flight to escape internment in London, that for a minute I thought my eyes deceived me.
"It's good to see you," I said, wringing his hand. "How did you get away from them? Where's Margot? How is she?"
"Long story, but here I am," Dodge replied. "Remember the note I left in your toilet-case in London? I told you I would get through, and I did. I have just come from the Navy Intelligence Office. Congratulate me. I am a Lieutenant in Uncle Sam's Navy!"
Dodge took Binney and me with him to his apartments in the Mayflower Hotel, where baths, shaves, and clean pajamas gave new life to Speed and myself. Dodge related his escape with an American Secret Service Agent.
"I hid out for a while in London. A number of Americans were shot after your departure," he explained. "Hunted down like rats by yellow execution squads and exterminated or put in prison camps.
"Ireland was our safest bet. Although the Reds occupy the country, the Irish submit no more to them than they did to the English. Once more the old undercover Sinn Fein Army is making guerilla warfare—as in the days of Micky Collins.
"You remember how the Germans used the west coast of Ireland for submarine purposes during the Old War? Well, today the Irish are offering American submarines the same secret facilities. My companion and I boarded one of our submarines in Bantry Bay near Queenstown, and that's how I returned home.
"We torpedoed the old British liner Cedric just outside of Liverpool, and our officers and crew swear that it was the first score for the American Navy in the war."
"Where's Margot?" Speed insisted. I saw the two boys exchange a look that had little of friendliness in it.
"In Ireland with Lin," Dodge replied. "Karakhan shipped both of them over and has them in a castle on the west coast. He won't see his wife, or either of them, for that matter. He wants to keep Lin out of London.
"He's amusing himself for the present with Lady Jane Blaysden—you know, the society pink. She is a disgrace to the white race and a traitor to her class. That yellow devil will drop her just the same as he did that little Austrian Countess in Vienna and Madame Duprey in Paris.
"He's gone completely crazy on the idea of having children with white women—London and Paris will be full of his half- yellow brats. All of his officers have white mistresses and most of them willing ones."
"I'm glad Margot's in Ireland," I said. "And I hope Karakhan never sees her." There was a growl of profanity from Speed followed by a sharp question to Dodge.
"Why did you leave her there? Why couldn't you bring her back on the sub?"
"I tried to. She wouldn't come," replied Dodge. "She has a duty to perform and she's doing it. It cannot be discussed."
I fell asleep during the subsequent bickering between Speed and Whit, but the latter reopened the subject with me on the following morning and outlined the means by which I was to communicate with Margot. The girl, herself, had originated the idea by which I could include a spoken code in my radio broadcasts which she would receive there in Ireland.
Long accustomed to taking my dictated dispatches, she would take my radio reports stenographically, locate the key-word introducing the code, and decipher the letters from the key-words that followed. It was simplicity itself.
Dodge confided that although he was in the submarine service, his duty assignment was with the Intelligence Section, and it would be his mission to make frequent trips to the Irish Coast and frequent contacts with Margot.
"She's a brave little Britisher," he said proudly. "Her King is a refugee in Canada but she serves him still within the enemy lines. Blood and breeding tell. She knows the penalty if they catch her. That didn't stop Edith Cavell: it won't stop Margot Denison."
My following days in Washington during that exciting month of February, 1934, were a succession of shocks. The effect of war on the economic fabrics of the nation was far greater than I had expected. But what alarmed me most was the fact that the American people did not realize the full and terrible extent of the disaster.
With the overwhelming strength of the Red Navy supreme in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the American flag had been swept from the seas. More than half of the American Merchant Marine, numbering 20,000 ships with a total tonnage slightly more than 15,000,000 tons, had been seized in foreign ports or captured or sunk on the high seas.
The immediate stoppage of all American exports, which had reached the grand total of $5,000,000,000 in the previous year, brought the wheels of American industry to a standstill; while docks and warehouses of American ports and seaboard rail terminals were congested and piled high with industrial and agricultural machinery, metal products, silk, wool, paper manufactures, and thousands of tons of cotton, packing-house products, wheat, and chemical products.
The cessation of all imports brought the country face to face with a famine in the essential materials of tin, manganese, rubber, quinine, camphor, vegetable fats, tea, coffee, and wood oils. American housewives began to feel the pinch when the Government rationing scheme touched the neighbourhood grocer.
The war wiped out immediately all hope of any payment to America on the old war debts, and new measures of taxation and loan issues were advanced to produce revenue to cover the enormous expenditures.
The crash on Wall Street, which had swept many brokerage firms, as well as individuals, into bankruptcy, had been followed by a country-wide run on the banks—a panic—which had only been stopped by the Government's declaration of a general moratorium.
At the special session of Congress called by President Smith to ratify the declaration of the existence of a state of war, the War Department presented its already prepared Selective Draft Bill, which passed both Houses by large majorities. Pacifist opposition, which advocated voluntary military service as opposed to conscription, was overwhelmed.
The election machinery of the country went into effect immediately for the registration of all males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. Nationwide registration revealed the man power of the nation at about 19,000,000, fifteen per cent of the population. Quotas went forth from Washington to the States, and drawings started immediately to fill the ranks of the first million called to the colours by President Smith.
The War Department machinery of mobilization and training went into operation immediately under the direction of Regular Army officers, but the backbone, the skeleton, and the nerve system of the first million depended upon the 110,000 members of the Officers Reserve Corps, who took charge of the hurriedly assembled units in villages, towns, and cities all over the country.
"We're in a hell of a fix for equipment," a friend of mine in the Army Supply Department told me. "The National Guard mobilization numbering about 280,000 troops was expanded by some 20,000 last minute enlistments, and that wiped out almost the entire reserve of military stock.
"It's the same old story over again—unprepared to fight. We have men in civilian clothes drilling with broom-sticks because there are not sufficient uniforms and rifles. We need tractors to draw field guns, and shells for target practice.
"Our organization is suddenly called on to expand to ten or twelve times its size—it's like watering milk to the same proportion."
In militarized industries the country was less ready for war than it was on April 6, 1917, when America joined the Allies against Germany. At that time, the industrial machinery of the nation had been tuned up and running at high pitch on a military schedule to supply the martial needs of the Allies before our entrance.
The passage of the Burton Resolution in 1933, prohibiting the export of martial supplies of any kind to warring nations, had prevented the transformation of America's peace time industries to the needs of war.
"European and Asiatic industry is in high gear on a war basis," Jimmy Hodgins of the Commerce Department told me. "You know that. You saw it abroad, and here are our screw machines all set to turn out phonograph needles, radio accessories, electric fan attachments, and manicure sets. What a bunch of saps we are.
"We're as safe as a Yankee peddler armed with a tray full of gold-plated collar buttons trying to defend himself from a mob of armed and hungry gangsters."
In the War Department I found the expected confusion due to red tape and indirect peace time methods. But the desk soldiers, in defending themselves from public criticism, transferred the blame to the shoulders of Congress—pointing to repeated refusals of the "Capital Hill vote getters" to provide adequate appropriations for national defence. Requested appropriations under pressure of organized Pacifist opposition had been slashed to fit political measures; while cuts made in the name of economy had successively reduced the Regular Army in officers and men, and almost wiped out all allowance for maneuvers or war games.
In no one single item was the deficiency of defence equipment brought home more strongly to the public than in the matter of gas masks. The civilian population became infected with fear of the horrors of latter-day warfare—gas-bombs from the air.
In the United States there were not sufficient gas masks to equip the men under mobilization for military service—not to mention the entire civilian population.
It needed no word from Washington to start enterprising manufacturers in hurried production of differing, unstandardized types of alleged gas masks, which were thrown on the market by the thousands and gobbled up at high prices by the frightened public.
The fact that these untested devices were in most instances totally worthless resulted in thousands of civilian deaths in later months when life everywhere in the United States depended upon gas protection.
The menace of gas and air attack switched public attention to internal dangers and the country was swept by a terrific spy scare. There was a disastrous fire in New York's Chinatown—a bitter race riot in Chicago's black belt, and the disgraceful tar and feathering of three Japanese farmers in California.
Gorkus Marvey, President of the Amalgamated Ethiopian Order of the Black Plume, was arrested in his Harlem headquarters and a quantity of literature, advocating revolt of the American Negroes, was confiscated.
Secret Service raids on American Communist clubs uncovered widespread plans for sabotage throughout the industrial areas. There were printed directions for the injection of chemicals by which dynamos could be corroded, water pumps destroyed, boilers exploded, and vital centers of communication paralyzed.
Politically, the nation presented a solid front, but each successive meeting of the Cabinet revealed new inadequacies. A conflict raged between the Secretary of War and the Secretary of Navy over priority in supplies and materials. Competition, rather than cooperation, resulted in delay, friction, and waste.
In the separate aviation branches, inter-departmental rivalries impeded progress, and precious time was lost cutting down the jungle growth of archaic bookkeeping and paper work. Changes of systems and adoption of short cuts occurred hourly. Reports of dismissals and resignations appeared almost daily in the papers.
But it was war news from Mexico that took the principal attention of the crowds standing night and day in front of the newspaper bulletin boards. The hard-pressed American lines on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec held fast. Kamku's ever-increasing forces had now pushed southward down the Pacific Coast into Guatemala and El Salvador, in spite of the loyal but futile resistance. As each new west coast port fell into their hands, the Reds were able to push their advance southward. It became apparent that, regardless of the outcome in Mexico, the southern movement would eventually reach Panama.
The nation received a shock on February 9 when the troop ship, City of Memphis, carrying two regiments of reinforcements bound from New Orleans to Panama, was torpedoed and sunk as it passed through the Yucatan Strait. Twenty-seven hundred American soldiers perished in the disaster. Survivors were landed near Cape Catoche, on the peak of the Yucatan Peninsula.
Instead of removing the survivors from Cape Catoche, the War Department sent reinforcements and established the strong position guarding one side of the Yucatan Channel. On the American war maps, this area was referred to as the "Dardanelles."
The Memphis disaster switched public interest, momentarily, to the naval situation when it became known that Kingston, Jamaica, was the base from which the Red submarine operated.
Diplomatic complications, following the outbreak of war, had delayed a settlement of the question of Jamaica's status for some time. The Negro population on the island under the leadership of thousands of Chinese and East Indians had finally decided the question for themselves by killing the old English Governor and five members of his council and taking the Government into their own hands. That this had all been in accordance with Karakhan's plan was proven by the use of the island as a Red submarine base.
The harbour defences in Kingston did not permit of an attack from sea, and the War Department was not prepared with sufficient trained troops to launch an expedition from Cuba. The fact was, that while Jamaica remained a thorn in our sides, threatening all communication to the Panama Canal, it was not possible at the time to take it.
The superior Red fleet, based on Bermuda and Trinidad, patrolled the Atlantic Seaboard, and the American fleet was forced to abandon its base at Colon and withdraw to the Gulf of Mexico.
A Political outcry rose from the Atlantic Seaboard and questions were asked publicly as to why the fleet had not been based on Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Norfolk.
The reason was simple. In addition to naval superiority, Karakhan possessed air superiority. An air offensive launched from carriers off the coast could destroy shipping based on the Atlantic Coast naval bases at any time. The area of the Gulf of Mexico prevented any such concentrated attack from the air, and the American mine fields that now closed the Florida and Yucatan Straits made an attack by surface craft almost impossible.
The undeniable fact, faced by the joint Army and Navy Board of War Plans, was that Karakhan controlled the waters of the world. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which Pacifists had depended upon for defence, were Red lakes.
Map showing bases of the Red Fleet in the Atlantic.
America's first line of defence—her Navy—was bottled up in the Gulf of Mexico as the Germans had been in the Bight of Heligoland.
The nation's second line of defence against territorial invasion was coast defences, forts, and coastal railroad lines and motor roads over which heavy artillery could be moved to the relief of threatened points.
Karakhan examined that ring of defences and placed his finger on the one weak spot.
More than a century of peaceful relations between the United States and Canada had given rise to the American-Canadian boast of the longest unfortified frontier in the world. No warships patrolled the Great Lakes; there were no forts glaring at one another across the American-Canadian frontier.
Agreements to that effect extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Those conventions of good will and amity provided the weak spot that Karakhan found for his next blow.
On the evening of March 1, 1934, U.S. submarine V-29, patrolling forty miles west of Cape Flattery, State of Washington, was disabled and captured by Japanese destroyers, which were acting as a screen for a fleet of Japanese cruisers, battleships, air carriers, troop ships, and tankers.
At dawn on March 2, two enormous air fleets of seaplanes, bombers, and fighters appeared at an altitude of 10,000 feet over the Straits of Juan de Fuca, sixty miles inland from the Pacific. American and Canadian fighting planes, from air fields at Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, and Bremerton flew to meet the invaders but were overwhelmed by the enemy strength.
Citizens of Victoria, British Columbia, awoke to the sound of terrific detonations. The enemy cloud, concentrating its attention first on the ancient armament of the old British navy yard at Esquimalt, completely destroyed it in a downpour of heavy bombs. Five minutes later the munition depot of the station blew up.
Unopposed now in the air, the enemy air fleet flew eastward across the Strait to the American defences at the entrance to Puget Sound, forty miles away.
The ancient twelve-inch mortars of Fort Worden at Port Townsend, together with a quartet of twelve-inch guns, were dismantled in the first fall of thousand-pound bombs from the attackers.
Fort Casey, five miles eastward on the opposite shore of the Admiralty Inlet, received similar attention with the same result. More ancient twelve-inchers, constituting the defences of Fort Flagler, five miles to the south of Port Townsend, met a like fate.
The American crews of these guns were ordered away from their useless pieces—none of them fired a shot. All of them were mounted for use against surface craft. American-Canadian agreements against the strengthening of border defences had prevented any improvement of the mountings for high-angle fire.
The anti-aircraft defences of the three old forts were unable to offer any appreciable interference to the attacking planes. The small six-inch guns at Fort Whitman, far to the north on an island in the center of Deception Pass, did not figure in the resistance.
Under the morning mists, a line of thirty Red mine sweepers, stationed half a mile apart and covering the entire width of the Juan de Fuca Straits from the Canadian to the American shores, steamed slowly inward from the Pacific, their progress punctuated by explosions of underwater mines as they came in contact with the cable sweeps.
Returning from their silencing of the Puget Sound ports, the Red air fleet swung westward again and followed the line of the Milwaukee Railroad from Port Townsend to Twin Rivers and Deep Creek, dropping explosives on the railroad and motor roads running through Sequin, Port Angeles, and Piedmont.
Two regiments of American field guns and one train of eight- inch railroad artillery, hurriedly moving into position along the railroad line, were destroyed.
Thus in the brief space of time between dawn and noon on a March morning Karakhan's air forces, without the assistance of naval bombardment and without the co-operation of landing forces, so effectively concentrated their strength as to overcome all American and Canadian resistance in the air and destroy all long- range defences on the ground.
The shock of the news staggered the nation.
Binney and I were in St. Louis on the day of the attack, visiting at the home of his father—my friend and old flying pal of the days of the A. E. F. Within an hour, my young pilot and myself were off by air for the new front in the Northwest.
During those tense hours of the days and nights of March 2 and 3, America was suddenly brought to a new realization of realities. Although our Navy was bottled up, although our little Regular Army was fighting in Central America, although we had a million men in training camps, the country still clung to the false security idea of its perfect isolation. Not since 1812 had an enemy been able to place his foot on American soil. That day was over.
We landed at Spokane for fuel. There was not a machine left on the air field. Troop trains were pushing through over the transcontinental line of the Milwaukee Railway. Spokane, "Metropolis of the Inland Empire," although removed many miles from the fighting front by the breadth and height of the Cascade Mountains, was panic-stricken. We picked up the latest news.
Mine sweepers had cleared Juan de Fuca Strait, and Japanese cruisers and troop ships had passed the ruined defences of Forts Worden and Casey and steamed into Admiralty Inlet leading to Seattle. Hundreds of oil tankers, flying the Red flag, were anchored in Washington Sound, and the waters surrounding them were covered, seemingly, by thousands of Red seaplanes.
Karakhan's ability to put such an enormous force into the air from a base thousands of miles across the Pacific was a complete surprise to both the army and navy air forces. The secret of the achievement was in the fact that each of sixty special cargo ships accompanying the Red fleet was, as a matter of fact, an improvised air carrier, as well as a troop ship.
Stored in the holds of each were fifty seaplanes. Each plane had been shipped in four parts: fuselage, wings, motor, and the pontoon landing gears. The mechanical force was so trained that these planes were assembled with the speed and facility with which an American machine gunner can demount and reassemble his weapon. The attachment of the wings and landing gear to the fuselage took place while the complete motor was being installed in the nose, and the fuel and wiring lines connected.
Once assembled, the planes were lowered over the side to float on the water near the mother ship. It has since been proven that the number of planes participating in the Red attack on Puget Sound was 3,000. Fifty of these machines had been assembled during the night of March 1 on each one of the sixty-cargo ships that brought them, their pilots, mechanics, munitions, and bombs to America.
This startling innovation, accomplished for the first time in the history of warfare, was made possible by Karakhan's control of the sea and his possession of three-quarters of the mercantile marine of the world. A calm sea and mild weather unusual to Cape Flattery, contributed largely to the success of the operation.
The leadership of this hurriedly assembled air force came from the Regular Japanese Navy squadrons attached to two navy air carriers.
With local control of the air, and of Puget Sound to the sea, the Red troop ships and light naval forces began the debarkation of troops. Landings were made along the east shore of the Sound from Bellingham to Everett. Thousands of infantry debarked at Port Angeles and Port Townsend and west shore points.
American-Canadian resistance was heroic but futile.
The townsmen and boys, armed with hunting rifles, joined the incoming units of National Guard divisions that opposed the invaders with machine guns and also with bayonets in terrific hand-to-hand fighting. The tragic story was almost always the same. Each point of resistance held by the defenders was first attacked from the air, shattered with high explosive bombs, and then rushed by the yellow hordes.
American field guns, brought forward by tractors, became the target of air bombers and low flying combat planes. Mobile units of anti-aircraft batteries sweated and choked in their gas masks as they manned their weapons against the seemingly unending stream of Red planes.
So complete was the Red air control of the Puget Sound country that Binney and I, flying westward from Spokane, were forced to make a detour to the southwest and land south of Olympia. We reached Tacoma by automobile in the midst of a terrific air raid, and left the city shortly afterward by motor for Seattle, which was reported to be in flames.
Thousands of civilian refugees clogged the roads, bound southward from the blazing front. Long columns of American infantry pushed northward. Engineers worked to repair destroyed rails and bridges.
Civilian volunteers, many of them girls and women, struggled to remove wreckage from the bombed roads and keep vital traffic flowing.
Every report from the front carried news of new disasters. Binney was frantic.
"What the hell use is a pilot on the ground," he said. "I've got to get up front and get just one shot in anyhow. I'll see you again at headquarters, wherever that's going to be. From the way this line is flowing south it looks like it might have to retreat to Kansas." We shook hands and he stepped in with an infantry column marching north.
I walked into the burning city of Seattle, Washington, just in time to turn around and get out of it again. It was my first visit to the largest city of the Pacific Northwest, and the distinctive beauty of its hilly site, extending along the clear waters of an inland sea that reflected the snow-capped Olympics on one side and the great Cascade Mountains on the other, struck me with a sense of pity as I saw the slow and serene clouds of smoke rising above the city sky-line.
Red tongues of flame and black smoke poured from the windows of a white skyscraper which was pointed out to me as the L. C. Smith Building. As I watched it, it was struck by a shell somewhere up near the fortieth storey. There was a cloud of white smoke and flying debris and one corner of the building slipped downward into the street.
The last of the civilian population had moved southward. The sound of shelling and machine-gun fire came from the downtown district. Shells began to whine overhead and burst in the suburbs to the south.
A boy, pushing a motorcycle, asked me what seemed a foolish question; namely, whether I would let him have some gasoline. In response to my puzzled look, he pointed over my shoulder to the tanks of the vacated filling station in front of which I was standing.
"Take what you want, bud, it's not mine. Here I'll help you," I said, taking hold of a pump handle while the boy inserted the hose in the motorcycle's tank.
"Might as well take it before the Chinks get it," he said. "They've everything else and there's no stoppin' 'em."
This was my meeting with Bobbie Pierson, with whom I walked and rode along the crowded, torn-up roads from Seattle to Tacoma. And it was from him that I received the now famous story of the Lambert atrocity, the published account of which stirred America to a far greater degree than the mention of the martyred nurse, Edith Cavell, had ever aroused the enemies of Germany during the days of the World War.
This twelve-year-old boy was the only American who escaped from the captured city of Everett. He was the brother of Mrs. Vivian Lambert—twenty-one-year-old Everett girl—who, two years previous, had won first prize in the Pacific Coast beauty contest. Walter Lambert, the girl's husband and proprietor of an Everett garage, had been killed before his wife's eyes. Bobbie witnessed the murder and told me how it occurred.
"Viv and Walt had been takin' care of the wounded since the Chinks started comin'," he said. "I helped Sis, and so did Dr. Kirkwood. He was operatin' on the hurt soldiers. They were stretched out on both the second and third floors of the garage and there were more out on the sidewalk.
"Sis got all the bandages from Bartlett's drug store and when they run out we tore up sheets and beddin' and rags and things. Sis cooked for 'em, too.
"Our soldiers were mighty game but some of 'em were cut up awful. They kept dyin' and we took them out in the alley.
"All the time, seems like, night and day, the boats out in the bay from off the Indian Reservation kept throwin' bombs into the town.
"Goldberg's Emporium burned down and then a great big shell hit the roof of the Casino Theater and it fell in on a lot of wounded; must have killed about a hundred.
"They blew the steeple off the Baptist church and one shell tore the whole front off the American Legion hall. All night long they dropped things on the railroad station until it was all messed up.
"Everybody else was beatin' it south out along the railroad tracks and down the roads, but there was not much room because our soldiers were comin' up in trucks and walkin' the railroad tracks.
"Walt tried to make Sis go on south with the rest of the folks, but she said she would not leave the wounded, and I stayed with her. She worked night and day.
"Then the Chinks broke into town from over on the north side. Seemed like there was millions of 'em. Our soldiers fought 'em in the streets and then there was so much shootin' we couldn't get out. At last the Chinks rushed into the garage, with bayonets on their rifles. One of their officers sent them out through the side door into Bergdoll's hardware store.
"They kept fightin' in the town all night, but the next mornin' it stopped and the Chinks began marchin' through. They kept goin' through all day and all night, and we could hear from the noise that the fightin' was goin' on way down south of town.
"They put a guard of forty Chinks and an officer in the garage, and the men slept downstairs, but the officer came up in Viv's flat on the top floor. He was a Chink, too, or a Jap. He made us eat at the same table with him.
"Sis kept cryin' for Walt, and three days later Mrs. Mehaffey told us Walt was a prisoner over in the railroad yards and that the Chinks were makin' all of the Americans repair the railroad and clean up the streets.
"Just as I was goin' out to find him, Walt and Jim Durkin and Mr. Rasmussin and old man Burton and about a dozen other men were marched up in one gang under guard, and they were ordered to carry all of our wounded out of the garage and make room for Chink wounded.
"A Chink officer, in an automobile, stopped in front at that moment when Viv came downstairs. Viv saw Walt with his face all unshaven and his clothes torn and some blood on his shirt that had come from carryin' wounded and she screamed and ran toward him.
"The Chink officer grabbed her by the hand and swung her back, and Walt just let go of the end of the stretcher he was carryin' and made a leap for him. The officer pulled his pistol and shot him right there at the door of the garage.
"Sis and I ran to him. There was more blood on his shirt, and some that kept comin' out of his mouth, and he tried to swallow all the time. Then he kind of slumped down.
"Viv cried and shouted in his ear for him to speak to her and then she screamed and held him up in her arms, and the blood got all over her new waist and the officer took hold of her and lifted her up. Then he made the two of us get in the automobile with him.
"He drove us out to Carter's big house and locked her up in the front bedroom on the first floor and when I tried to get in with her, he slapped me and said something in Chinese to the men and they took me and locked me up in the attic.
"I heard Viv scream durin' the night and an awful tussle took place in the room, and then she must have rushed to the front window because I heard her cry and then it was quiet.
"The men let me out the next day and made me peel potatoes in the kitchen and I went out front on the lawn in the afternoon and saw Sis at the front window. She was cryin'.
"I sneaked upstairs and talked to her through the locked door, and she said, 'Get away if you can, Bobbie. Get back to our folks. Tell them what they did to Walt, and what they are doin' to me.' And I told her that I'd go down and see the Governor, and he would bring the rest of the militia and drive the Chinks out and then somebody came down the hall and I had to go.
"I sneaked out that night and walked out toward Peterson's farm and got his motorcycle out of the barn. I've been movin' ever since."
From a railroad station, south of Tacoma, I telegraphed every word of Bobbie Pierson's graphic story to Chicago, from which place it was distributed to newspapers across the country. It was illustrated with photographs of the beauty contest winner. Popular indignation knew no bounds. It was a recital that put murder in every white man's heart.
Washington estimated that neither the Red successes in driving the American flag off the seas or the actual invasion of the Pacific Northwest had raised American dander to such a pitch as the violation of one American girl by a yellow soldier.
Speed Binney, back from the Seattle front, joined me in Portland, Oregon, when I received the request from Washington to broadcast the exact account of the atrocity once more.
"Those birds in Washington still can't believe it," he said with a growl. "That propaganda bureau outfit think it just another atrocity tale like the old ones about Germans crucifying Canadians in France. The story has raised a hell of a rumpus and Washington wants to fix the responsibility on you in case it's a lie."
I retold the Lambert case over the air and inasmuch as the Red broadcasting station in London was still launching daily blasts of propaganda, it was confidently expected that the story would be officially denied. Binney was sitting with me in front of the loud speaker in our room the following night, like millions of other Americans, when the Red announcer at the London microphone made the following reply:—
"The Lambert incident as published and broadcast throughout America is, with the exception of certain sentimental variations, essentially true. General Krassin, commanding the Red forces on Puget Sound, has reported fully.
"Walter Lambert, the American garage owner, was shot dead by Colonel Harvey Wu, commanding the 248th Medical Battalion of the North Pacific Expeditionary Forces. Lambert, while a prisoner, attempted to strike the officer.
"Colonel Wu is the son of one of the oldest families in China and although not a Christian at the present time, he was baptized as such in China and given the name of the white scientist who discovered the circulation of the blood. Colonel Wu is a graduate of Oxford and the London College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a highly educated, intelligent, accomplished scientist, and has a fine record as an officer.
"Colonel Wu and Mrs. Lambert were married at a military ceremony in Everett, Washington, this afternoon. The couple have received the felicitations of the Red high command, to whom the marriage is most acceptable.
"The union of Dr. Wu and Mrs. Lambert is a happy and conventional conclusion of an incident not unusual or strange in the annals of war.
"For centuries conquering white men have taken the women of the black, yellow, red, and brown races they have conquered.
"American males, civilian as well as military, have possessed themselves of the women of American Negroes and of American Indians. The number of half-breeds and quarter-breeds, mulattoes, and octoroons in the population of the United States today testify to the fact.
"There are thousands of American mestizos in the Philippines today, who are the children of irregular unions between the soldiers of the conquering American Army and Navy in 1900 and the Filipino women of Chinese, Moro, Polynesian, and Negro races. Both Europe and Asia are full of Eurasian half-breeds who are the children of yellow mothers by white fathers.
"The mixing of blood of races of different colour has ample precedent in America. It also has precedent in Europe. In Spain the touch of darker blood was brought by the males of the conquering races.
"Spain reached its greatest height in the history of the world after its conquest and occupation by the Moors. The coloured blood of the invaders helped.
"The Pan-Eurasian Union fights under the standard of racial and blood equality for the entire world.
"The inevitable Red victory in the present struggle with the United States will abolish forever all race and colour prejudices, as the wars of history have already abolished religious and nationalistic prejudices.
"Pagans and Christians once killed one another by the thousands; Catholics and Protestants did likewise. The result of it all was good. Religious prejudice was banned from the world.
"And after the wars of religion, came the wars of nationalism, in which equally foolish prejudice of one nationality against another was settled only in more oceans of blood through frightful centuries of battle and slaughter.
"Religious, nationalistic, racial, and colour prejudices have been abolished in the Red Union where the men, women, and children of all colours, all races, all nationalities, and all religions in the three Continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia are brothers.
"Ignorant masses of the United States, misled and aroused by their capitalistic masters, represent the last stronghold today of race purity. The last defence of the Nordic myth.
"The one and one-half billion people of the Pan-Eurasian Union, white, yellow, red, brown, and black, fight to crush the last inequality preventing world peace. Our enemies represent the forces of ignorance and intolerance entrenched in blind race prejudice.
"We recognize but one race—the Human Race."
America heard aghast.
It was Speed Binney, sitting tense and drawn before the loud speaker, who spoke the thought that was in the hearts of all American listeners that minute.
"Karakhan—that slimy, yellow devil—Oh for a chance to wring the neck of that—that—"
Speed's emotion was beyond profanity. He choked and stopped. Suddenly he grasped my arm in a grip that hurt.
"Margot—! God, she's over there among those swine!"
AS I attempt this resume of the remaining months of 1934—that terrible first year of the war—I realize, reluctantly, that any balanced account of that frightful epoch, within the scope of general reading, must of necessity touch but briefly many of the tremendous events that advanced the yellow invasion closer to the heart of America, the last stronghold of the White Race.
Books of popular reminiscences, war maps, military analyses, economic surveys, and historical chronologies record the details which I am forced to omit. And after all, my object is to report the cataclysm in relation to my association with the Red Napoleon himself whose exile I share today here in the peace and sunlight of Bermuda.
My years as a war correspondent had hardened me to battlefield carnage but nothing had brought the horrors of war home to me so poignantly in 1934 as the death of my favourite nephew, eighteen- year-old Jimmie Byrnes. He was just one of the many thousands of that heroic, untrained FIRST MILLION of Americans whose nameless graves around Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, marked the advancing lines of Karakhan's yellow hordes in the Pacific Northwest.
Dozens of American Army friends of mine had gone to their death on the Southwest front in the jungles of Tehuantepec, to hold the invaders back from the Gulf of Mexico, only to turn Karakhan's Mexican invasion into an overland advance toward Panama.
With me throughout the year was the tragic thought of a beautiful English girl in the hands of the enemy and separated by the breadth of the Atlantic from the two boys who would have fought each other to the death to give their lives for her.
Margot Denison's strange but dangerous association as companion and fellow-prisoner with Karakhan's wife was a matter of constant fear—a fear I shared with Lieutenant Speed Binney of the air corps and Lieutenant Whit Dodge of the submarine service.
Whit cursed the defensive policy that kept our Navy bottled up in the Gulf of Mexico. Speed damned the political and administrative blunders that left America defenceless in the air.
That naval inferiority and aerial defencelessness, together with the unpreparedness of the land forces, opened the door for the events which I am about to report.
Covered by a cloud of seaplanes which completely annihilated the puny Canadian air resistance, Karakhan began the landing of troops on the unfortified Northumberland Strait coast of New Brunswick, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
In two days of easy fighting the Red invaders, pushing inland, were in possession of the main line of the Canadian National Railroad from Nova Scotia to the Province of Quebec. The harbours, mining areas, and industrial centers from Pictou to Campbellton were occupied, and shattered Canadian regiments had joined the panic-stricken migration of the civilians to the south.
High flying Red seaplanes, released from enemy air carriers and cargo ships off the Maine coast near Bar Harbour, bombed the inland railroads and disrupted communications across the Maine- New Brunswick and Maine-Quebec frontiers. While engineers worked to repair the gaps, northbound trains of American reinforcements were held up and thousands of Canadian refugees forced to continue their southward exodus on foot or plunge into the endless stream of motor traffic that clogged the roads.
On the third day of the offensive, Red transports, troop ships, and light cruisers, following an advance screen of mine sweepers, steamed boldly up the St. Lawrence river, making successful landings at the important railroad points of Rimouski and Rivière du Loup.
In the intervening space of eighty miles, the invaders, composed chiefly of Siberian Mongols and North Slavic Communists, took possession of the railroad along the south bank of the river and landed thousands of tons of field guns, tanks, and equipment. Columns pushing southward from Rivière du Loup cut the front of the National Transcontinental Railway where it turns east from the Province of Quebec into New Brunswick.
The sum-total of resistance to this enormous operation consisted of ineffectual air encounters by isolated squadrons of American and Canadian planes, sporadic land fighting by vastly outnumbered units of Canadian militia, interspersed with civilian volunteers, and the efforts of American submarines which succeeded in sinking four enemy transports and one light cruiser in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
American military apologists explained that Karakhan's success on the northeast front was attributed to—
1. Superiority of his air forces.
2. The absence of all coast fortifications, due to Canada's century-old dependence upon the British Navy for defence.
3. Weakness of the Canadian land forces on account of their largest strength being employed against the Red line in British Columbia.
4. Delay of American land forces in reaching the front, due to the repeated destruction of American-Canadian rail communications by enemy air bombers.
5. Karakhan's unimpeded lines of water communication extending uninterruptedly back to Liverpool, Queenstown, Antwerp, Hamburg, Cherbourg, Boulogne, and Lisbon supply bases.
From my personal observations throughout those exciting
days and nights when Lieutenant Binney and I flew, motored, and
walked hundreds of miles along the retreating Canadian front, I
can only consider all of the five reasons above enumerated as
supporting proofs of the yellow military genius who combined
them.
Karakhan bent the very physical features of the country to his will. He could ignore the wilderness on the north bank of the St. Lawrence. His light naval forces in the river protected the right flank of his land forces, which in turn rested their left flank on the backbone of the Notre Dame mountain range. Down this well- protected corridor, on the south bank of the St. Lawrence, from thirty to fifty miles wide, his troops advanced victoriously on Quebec.
Physically the city was the same rocky pinnacle that Wolfe and Montcalm gave their lives for on the Plains of Abraham, but actually its defences were as archaic to modern weapons and war from the air as the muzzle-loading cannons manning its ancient ramparts.
For 100 years of costless security, the pennywise colonials of the Dominion had depended upon the British Navy as their only defence. There was not a single modern fortification or piece of heavy ordnance along the river from Lake Ontario to the sea.
Without the British Navy barring the way, the St. Lawrence was a broad and open highway leading to the heart of Canada.
On their left was the mountainous, uninhabited wilderness, comprising the northern peak of the State of Maine. Even this region of virgin forest, untapped by railroads or motor roads, was usefully employed by Karakhan. The thousands of small lakes became the airdromes for his mobile seaplane fleet.
Night and day, huge transport planes carried forward the fuel, bombs, and supplies for these new air bases, which could not be attacked by land forces by reason of their inaccessibility. Located centrally as they were between the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence valley, their strategic position enabled them to dominate a radius of 200 miles in all directions. Tankers and air carriers in both the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic provided additional bases of supply for them.
I encountered only one American who found any satisfaction in the difficult problem presented by Karakhan's ingenious attack. Colonel Willoughby Watkins, retired engineer of the United States Coast Defence, actually smiled as he presented the following question:
"Now why do you suppose Karakhan's wastin' all this time and trouble, plowin' round through farms and timber land and fishin' villages up round the St. Lawrence when he's really aimin' to get into the United States. He don't care anything about 8,000,000 Canadians.
"He's out to lick Uncle Sam. Why do you suppose he didn't jump us down on our coast—land his forces in Massachusetts or Delaware or Norfolk like the British did when they came over from Bermuda and burned Washington? Now why do you suppose he didn't try it?"
"I'll bite, Colonel," Binney interrupted, in a tone not entirely respectful. "Why?"
"Because the United States Coast Defence is the only damn arm of the United States service that's worth a damn," replied the Colonel emphatically. "We've got forts, fortresses, and emergency gun mounts all along the Atlantic Seaboard from Key West to the Bay of Fundy, and we've got big guns mounted on the coastal railroads, and tractor drawn cannon for the motor roads all along the coast. We could bust hell out of him anywhere he tried to set foot ashore. And by God, Sir, that's the reason he's tryin' to get into us through Canada."
"All right, Colonel, but what happened to your Coast Defences on Puget Sound?" Speed reminded him. The Colonel suddenly got red in the face.
"The ... Pacifists in Canada and America have been belly- achin' about the 'frontier of peace' for a hundred years, and they stopped the proper fortification of the Puget Sound. If they'd let us arm the place, as it should have been, that yellow belly wouldn't have dared to try a landin'. The Navy and the Army and Marines do all the talkin', but it's the Coast Defence that has kept the U.S.A. a white man's country."
Quebec fell to the Reds June 15 and Karakhan, establishing headquarters there, flew from the highest flagstaff above the Mansard roof of the Chateau Fontenac, for the first time in the world, the new standard of his armies—the flag of miscegenation.
This rainbow-like emblem of his own design consisted of different coloured rays emanating from a rising sun of composite hues, and symbolized the blending of the red, yellow, white, brown, and black races into the only species of mankind recognized by the Red Union—the HUMAN RACE.
The flaunting of this flag above the heads of the remaining French-Canadians of Quebec was another defiance to the white man's colour prejudice. Frenchmen, who complained about the billeting of Karakhan's blacks in the same houses with white women and children, were reminded, publicly, that France had quartered her Senegalese soldiers in the homes of German women during the French occupation on the Rhine. American heard it over the Red radio.
Speed Binney and I, motoring south from Armstrong, Quebec, along the road to Augusta, Maine, loaded our car with French women and children refugees and the bundles of clothing these refugees had saved. One, a white-haired French woman whose eyes held traces of both horror and resignation, spoke.
"Oh, Monsieur, you couldn't know—I have seen our soldiers dead, unburied in the fields. Our girls—- my daughter—taken—killed—my husband, my grandsons forced to work in the labour gangs under the yellow man with the whip. Every day in the village of St. Damien they shoot more—they kill. By the roads the bodies of our priests hang by the neck from the telegraph poles. Sacre Dieu! I have seen too much."
Hampton Ferguson's forced surrender of the 20,000 survivors of his shattered Canadians at Fredericton, New Brunswick, marked the collapse of the Maritime Province.
Halifax had been taken by land from the rear and Red troop ships and battleships filled the harbour as it was back in the days of the World War.
In the investment of St. Johns by the Red land forces, enemy ships entered the tidal Bay of Fundy and unloaded supplies or debarked troops in this harbour, in which was located the largest graving dock in the world, an asset of tremendous value of Karakhan's Navy operating in the West Atlantic.
America's "Flivver army," so named from its varied types and kinds of impressed automobiles, from light delivery trucks to elegant limousines, failed to hold along the railroad line from Woodstock to St. Andrews, and, under a constant downpour of gas and explosives from the air, was forced back across the border into Maine. Without fuel, these troops destroyed or abandoned their improvised transports and retreated along the line of the Canadian Pacific and the Maine Central, and roads leading south.
The invaders had gained their first foothold in New England.
Pushing eastward along the Maine coast and southward down the valley of the Penobscot, their concentrated land and air assault on Bangor resulted in the destruction and occupation of the city two days after the capture of Quebec.
On the war maps in front of American newspaper offices the battle line in New England on June 17 ran southward from Quebec along a line ten miles east of Jackman and thence to the coast at Belfast, Maine. Bangor was in the hands of the enemy and the American line based its defence on the motor road connecting Augusta with the town of Armstrong, Quebec. This front from the St. Lawrence to the Atlantic was 200 miles long.
American morale on the home front was jolted. Men turned away from the bulletin boards with grim looks in their eyes. Women questioned them. Successive headlines in the hourly extra editions expanded slight tactical successes of American units, but this misdirected optimism failed to overcome the spread of fear.
In the five successive months of the war, 5,000,000 men had been called to the colours by President Smith. The uniform was to be seen by thousands on the street of every American city. But for every selected man fortunate enough to receive regulation khaki, there were at least two still in civilian attire, with only a badge to indicate their service—a three-inch khaki brassard worn on the left arm.
The training camps, from one end of the country to the other, were packed to overflowing, with insufficient or no accommodations for the housing and feeding of the men and a woeful deficiency in instructors to train them. Thousands had never had a firearm in their hands and for tens of thousands of them the Government was still unable to provide. They spent their time, principally, in setting-up exercises, field drill, and camp chores.
Theaters and halls were taken over and, in several states, penitentiaries and jails were emptied to provide quarters for the waiting draft.
Half-finished divisions of untrained recruits had been hurried to the fronts in Oregon and Mexico to replace veteran Regulars and National Guard divisions, which had been withdrawn from the line and called back across the Continent to face the greater menace in the Northeast.
Among the defeated American troops, who had tried to stem the Southern sweep of the Reds, morale was not of the highest. They charged the Army Aviation with failing to protect them from air attack, and the Quartermaster's Department with inability to supply the fighting line with food and ammunition.
"So you're a flyer, huh?" an Infantry Lieutenant remarked with some contempt, as Mr. Lynn, proprietor of the Hotel North in Augusta, introduced him to Speed Binney and myself. "I used to read about you war birds in France. Didn't have nothing to drink but champagne. Did a hell of a lot of fighting in the magazines about ten years after the war, as I remember it. Real hero knights of the air. Must have been different from this war.
"The only Yank planes I saw up North were flying South as fast as they could with Chinks shooting feathers off their tails."
Speed's face reddened and he grasped his hands behind him in a muscular effort that betrayed itself in a tensing of his shoulder muscles.
"You're right in one way, Buddy," he replied slowly, once more in possession of himself. "I'm only a kiwi. I haven't had my hands on a plane in three weeks. There are none."
"What do you mean he's right only in one way? Where's he wrong?" Mr. Lynn asked. "Why shouldn't our fliers stand and fight and defend the doughboys?"
"That used to be our damned fool system," Speed replied. "And that's why we haven't got any air force today. Every division commander on the front wanted the air corps split up and a part of it sent to him for the protection of his special division. That's what we did at Puget Sound. That's what we did in Mexico. That's one sure reason why they licked us.
"I've seen Karakhan's air fleet knock down everything that got near it, all the way across Europe. He didn't do it by peddling out planes to every regimental commander for air patrolling. He did it by concentrating his air strength into a superior, mobile force and using it offensively. You can't win battles on the defensive in the air any more than you can on land or in a street fight. Victory goes to the side that hits the hardest blow.
"We've been spreading out our air forces and pecking at the enemy like a lot of pigeons. You know what happens to a pigeon when the hawks get after it? Well, there's no more pigeons."
Some American air strength, however, did remain; but it had been concentrated and withdrawn for offensive action. The headlines of June 18 vindicated this change of policy in the following words:
U.S. WAR BIRDS BOMB HALIFAX
DIRECT HIT ON RED CARGO SHIP CARRYING 10,000 TONS T.N.T. PRODUCES EXPLOSION AND HOLOCAUST IN HARBOR AND CITY RIVALING CATASTROPHE OF 1917 ENORMOUS LOSS OF LIFE.
KARAKHAN'S ATLANTIC BASE BLOWN OFF MAP.
The published accounts greatly exaggerated the damage
inflicted and completely ignored the fact that more than half of
the American planes participating were destroyed by vastly
superior Red air forces which attacked them upon their return
flight.
American optimism over the "success" of the Halifax raid was short lived. Karakhan retaliated the following night by launching terrific air raids over Boston. Binney and I happened to be visiting the father and mother of Whit Dodge in their Beacon Street home in Boston.
"Beg pardon, sir," the faultless butler addressed the elder Dodge as we sat in the rigidly precise New England living-room, "but the telephone operator has just informed me that enemy airplanes are approaching the city and a raid is expected.
"The police are spreading the alarm by telephone and everyone is advised to cover all lights, extinguish all household fires, keep off the streets, and remain in the lower floors or in the basement of the house."
"Very good, Hodgins," Mr. Dodge replied with out emotion. "You will give the necessary instructions to the servants and arrange a divan and a coverlet for Mrs. Dodge in the basement. I would like a chair, a table, the electric reading lamp, and a pot of tea. And I say, Hodgins, send down my copy of the Evening Transcript."
Binney and I bade good-bye to the elderly couple and stepped out into the June night.
Fire apparatus patrolled the streets, sounding bells and sirens. The city was darkened. Hundreds packed their families in cars and sought the country, but the absence of headlights and street illumination resulted in countless collisions and traffic jams.
The first Red bomb landed in Boston Common, just off Park Street. The following detonation blew all of the windows out of the State House and caved in the Cambridge tunnel and the Boston subway in the neighbourhood of the point where they cross at Tremont Street.
The raiders released brilliant calcium flares, suspended from small silken parachutes. Search lights of the anti-aircraft batteries, located on the outskirts of the city, whipped the sky with beams of brilliance that reached upward into the darkness like prying fingers. Then came the downpour of death. One bomb, falling in the courtyard of the Copley Plaza Hotel, wrecked the front and one wing of the building and killed 180 occupants.
Another missile crashed through the roof of the Milk Street station of the Washington Street tunnel, where 3,000 people had gathered for protection. The bodies of several hundred victims were terribly mutilated by the blast but the greatest loss of life came from the ensuing panic. Hundreds of men, women, and children were trampled to death or suffocated in the mad crush of terror-stricken humanity, following the explosion.
The congested districts of Charlestown and East and South Boston were shaken by dozens of bombs, and hundreds of lives were lost in the collapse of newly erected apartment houses and in fires that broke out in the frame and brick tenement district surrounding Bunker Hill.
In Cambridge, a Red incendiary bomb, landing on top of the large building of the Athenaeum Press, destroyed the well-known publishing house of Messrs. Ginn and Company. Another wrecked the Harvard Stadium.
Boston counted its dead, and the survivors of the terrible retaliation breathed a sigh of relief as the sound of the explosions and the crashes of the antiaircraft defences ceased, indicating that the raiders had passed over.
Thousands of curious emerged from their shelters and returned to the downtown streets to see the damage wrought or to shudder at the long rows of pitifully twisted bodies being brought out from demolished buildings and from the depths of the Milk Street station.
Then the second raid broke over the city. This one, as later learned, was launched from Red sea carriers standing off the coast. Again the bombs fell, but this time there had been no warning. The planes had come in from a terrific height and dove on the city with silenced motors.
The crowds in the streets changed to panic stricken mobs, shrieking, screaming, plunging down stairways, clogging the subway stations, hiding in cellars. The bursting of the water- main in front of the Boston Opera House trapped 800 men, women, and children, who were drowned like rats in the flooded basements. Gas-mains broke and new fires started on the hill in Charlestown and in the Back Bay.
The physical damage inflicted by the raid had not been great, and of little military value. But the horrible loss of over 7,000 lives sent a shudder across America. Criticism hurled at Washington for the absence of air defences was supported by the public generally throughout the country, as the fear of similar disasters spread in all directions.
One wing of the Army Air Corps, consisting of fifty-four fighting planes, was almost annihilated in its heroic but futile effort to bring down the sky raiders. Only five of our airmen survived the fight.
A significant feature of the raid, which the American public failed to grasp, was that in all of the hundreds of bombs dropped during the raid, only three had landed anywhere near the docks and shipping district. Karakhan had no desire to destroy these facilities which were useless to America since our ships no longer dared sail the high seas. The raiders had carefully avoided damaging the docks. Karakhan had use for them later.
One result of the Boston raid was that Governors, Mayors, and Chambers of Commerce from towns and cities all over New England petitioned Congress vigorously for the assignment of anti- aircraft batteries and air defences to their cities; and the General Staff in Washington came under a flood of bitter criticism. It stubbornly opposed this dissipation of what remained of the country's essential defences against air attack, and President Smith had the political courage to back it.
It could not be explained, publicly, that the anti-aircraft forces, and particularly the mechanized groups, were concentrated on the protection of the primary war sinews of the country; namely, the steel mills and coal mines of Pennsylvania, the waterpower units at Niagara, and the vital communication arteries for iron ore at Ste. Sault Marie.
With the tremendous docking and terminal facilities of Quebec, St. Johns, and Halifax, now at his disposal. Karakhan was able to accelerate his advance down the valley of the St. Lawrence and into eastern Maine. The major weight of the drive was directed in Canada.
Successively the hard-pressed lines of Canadians and Americans, stretched north and south across that forty-mile corridor, were forced to give way under the intensity and rapidity of the enemy's blows.
Their communications were cut behind them under a downpour of bombs. Their front lines reeled and fell back under the repeated mass attacks. Light naval forces in the river, far back of the enemy lines, shelled the American resistance points from long range. The ground forces were exposed constantly day and night to bomb and gas attacks from above.
Trois Rivières fell on the right flank, admitting the Red naval forces to the broad expanse of Lake St. Peter. Southward from the river, the defenders were compelled to withdraw from Thetford Mines to Sherbrooke to prevent a flanking movement on their exposed left.
On the Maine front the enemy pressure was lighter, but persistently applied, ever assisted by squadrons of seaplanes that flew in from cargo ships stationed off the Coast. Bath, Maine, was occupied by forces advancing along the coast roads through Rockland and Waldoboro.
The civilian population of Augusta moved southward through Lewiston to Portland, and after a sharp day's battle the Reds occupied the capital of the state.
American-Canadian casualties were high. Division after division, dug in behind barb wire defences in reserve positions, were rolled up in the advance. It was not necessary for them to advance to the line—Karakhan sent the line forward to them. So determined was their resistance that the survivors who managed to trickle back from the front were hardly sufficient to maintain the identity of their units. Machine gunners, without ammunition, fought on with rifle and bayonet; many of them dying beside their useless guns.
Karakhan's sweep up-valley from Lake St. Peter now straddled both banks of the river. The railroads leading into Montreal from the south and west were cut by air bombers as fast as engineers could repair them. Motor roads, back of the American-Canadian line, were torn up with huge craters disrupting wheel transport.
On the morning of July 20, the Red advance penetrated Montreal from the north. Red hordes, moving along the right-of-way of the Canadian Pacific from Joliette, succeeded in crossing the Ottawa and the Back rivers, in spite of determined resistance by French- Canadian infantry and massed light field guns firing repeatedly from the heights of Mount Royal Park.
Karakhan, who personally directed the attack, employed his unopposed air forces to drench the wooded heights of the Park with clouds of smoke and gas.
From the river opposite Chambly, Red cruisers bombed the city with eight-inch shells. Austrian field guns on the south bank of the river subjected the city to a terrific drum fire.
Shells that fell short, in the artillery duel with the Canadian gunners on Mount Royal Park, destroyed half of the buildings of McGill University and the Royal Victoria Hospital on the edge of Fletcher's Field. Hundreds of helpless wounded and war nurses were killed.
Before withdrawing, the city's defenders set fire, but not effectually, to the extensive Angus shops of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which Karakhan's shells had carefully avoided.
The demolition squads did a better job on the locks of the all-important canal which routes water traffic from the lower St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes, around the La Chine rapids. This vital communication link was completely destroyed.
Montreal capitulated on the afternoon of July 21 and a rear guard of some 5,000 Canadians and 1,000 Americans were taken prisoners.
On that day, the line of the front marking Karakhan's advance ran from a point on the St. Lawrence slightly southwest of Montreal, southeastward across the Richelieu river, across the old Canadia-Vermont frontier between Phillipsburg and Richford, through West Burke and Gorham in New Hampshire, and thence to the Atlantic Coast at a point ten miles north of the harbour of Portland, Maine.
In the thirty-six days of terrific fighting, the Reds had advanced approximately 170 miles along a front over 200 miles wide. The forward movement of the yellow horde had averaged four miles a day.
Americans and Canadians could understand the German military machine rolling across Flanders that fast, but the bitter experience of actuality—the terrible story so apparent on the war map—had been necessary to bring the realization that such a thing could happen in North America.
Our military apologists picked a shred of meager optimism by comparing Karakhan's sweep across Europe in 1933 to his invasion of New England in 1934 and concluding that American resistance had been stiffer. It was the first time the yellow horde had encountered a nation free from internal class dissension.
But in the four months and ten days covering the next phase of the yellow invasion, America suffered disasters greater than any in the history of the nation. In spite of this the stiffening of American morale was evident in the increased resistance which contested each foot of ground. Hundreds of thousands of American and Canadian troops failed to stop the forward movement of Karakhan's martial juggernaut, but they did succeed in slowing up his advance even though they did it with their bodies. Karakhan did not stop at Montreal.
While thousands of civilian and military prisoners, working under the lash of yellow task-masters, reorganized the damaged land and sea facilities of Canada's great inland port, the yellow scourge exploited his gains across the flat, open country south of Montreal, and poured troops and supplies down the valley of the Richelieu river.
On both the east and west shores of Lake Champlain, the Red flood poured southward into northern New York and Vermont.
The prepared American positions, north of Plattsburg, crumbled under the onslaught. St. Albans and Milton on the Vermont shore fell to the invaders. Burlington, Vermont, was made untenable by an air attack.
Mongol cavalry, cutting through the retreating American forces east of the city, executed their frightful raid up the valley of the Winooski river. Not one of these fanatics survived but their daring adventure opened the way for the land forces that occupied Montpelier, the capital of the State.
American lines of communication between the Green Mountains and the lake were continually torn up by air bombardment. On the New York shore, between the lake and the peaks of the Adirondacks, similar tactics were employed.
The flanks of the Red advance were continually harassed by bands of resolute, keen-shooting woodsmen from the forests of the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains. Karakhan met these minor disturbances on either flank by dispatching lateral columns of Asiatic horsemen right and left into the hills. Red airplanes, hovering high above the fields, dispersed all concentrations of the defenders by the application of explosives and gas. But the enemy did not fear heavy attacks—the mountain walls prevented.
The reminiscences in print today of the guerilla fighting in the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains provide America with another proud tradition that justly deserves the name of the modern "Leather Stocking Tales." The heroic resistance of the American woodsmen was only a diversion, however, which could never have possibly succeeded in diverting Karakhan from the main purpose of his campaign.
The Red Napoleon had chosen to bring the full weight of his might down that historic inland waterway which has been the cockpit of North America since the Iroquois and the Mohawks called it the "Warpath of the Nations."
Down that valley had marched the lilies of France. Up that valley England had advanced. It had been the path chosen by Burgoyne in his attempt to strangle the republic. It was sacred to America with the names of Ethan Allen, Stark, Rogers, and Putnam. It contained the shrines of Ticonderoga. Its soil held the bones of American, English, French, German, Dutch, and Indian warriors, and now new invaders, representing all races and colours from the far-flung corners of the globe, poured southward down that gap.
On the left flank of his line in Maine, Karakhan maintained a steady pressure down the coastal strip between the White Mountains and the Atlantic. Portland was taken from the land side. The excellent, permanent fortifications of its harbour defences had been designed against attack from the sea. The loss of America's northernmost port, recognized as one of the eight principal ports of the Atlantic Coast and one of the greatest wheat shipping centers in the world, was a new blow to public morale.
Although American submarines, operating out of Boston, succeeded in sinking a number of enemy craft, the fact remained that two days after the yellow occupation of the city, Red troop ships and supply ships were unloading and disembarking alongside the Maine State piers. The thousand-foot modern docks, constructed of concrete and steel, had resisted the explosives which the retiring Americans had placed under them.
While the Red line pushed southward steadily on Lake Champlain, American counter-attacks on the Atlantic Seaboard achieved local successes south of Portland, but never once were the counter-offensives able to threaten the Red hold on the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway, connecting Portland with Montreal.
It was during one of these American advances on the Atlantic Seaboard that I spent a night in the cellar of what had been a quaint New England home, on the outskirts of the little town of Rochester, New Hampshire. The ruins were the billets of Speed Binney, now temporarily assigned as an "Aviation Liaison" officer to a battalion of infantry holding the line one mile to the north.
Successive shelling and air bombing had eliminated the second floor of the house and much of the debris—timbers, bricks, and roofing—had been improvised to strengthen the cellar dugout.
"Welcome to the home of the Reverend Timothy Jenkins, and duck your head or you'll bump it," was Speed's greeting as he made a place for me around the wooden table on which two candles, mounted in cider bottles, were burning. At one end of the dugout a soldier was starting a fire in a cook stove. On the floor in front of the stove was a pile of pamphlets and paper ready for the flames.
"Great joint, this," Speed explained. "Been here three days now. Catchin' up on my readin'. Pretty safe diggin's and plenty of literature. Let me show you some of it.
"The Rev. Mr. Jenkins seems to have represented every peace society in the world. The remains of his library upstairs is stacked with tons of peace propaganda. If the line remains stationary on this front, this dugout has fuel for the winter."
He walked over to the stove and picked up a handful of the pamphlets.
"Let me read you some of this stuff," he said, resuming his seat. "Here's a pamphlet entitled:
"'Organizations in the United States that promote better International Understanding, and World Peace.' First on the list is 'The American Committee for the Outlawing of War—offices in New York; Dr. Salmon O. Levinson, Chairman. Purpose: To educate the world to the proposition that the war systems should be superseded by a judicial system. Activities: Publishing articles and distributing pamphlets abroad, arranging lectures, and corresponding with the peace workers throughout the world.'
"Here's the second one on the list: 'The American Foundation, officered by its founder, Mr. Edward W. Bok. Purpose: To create an enlightened public opinion for the entry of the United States into the World Court and to such later steps as will assure World Peace.'
"Can you beat that," said Binney. "Fifty-seven pages containing the lists of American pacifist organizations running from the Association to Abolish War down to the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods. Here's some more of them:
"'The Parliament of Peace and Universal Brotherhood, organized at Point Loma, California, by Katherine Tingley, Foundress- President, for the Promotion of Peace and Universal Brotherhood.' And listen to this one—'War Resisters' League,' and the Secretary of said League is one Jessie Wallace Hughan—sex not designated. Don't know whether it's a man or a woman. But here's the purpose it sets forth:
"To unite those to whom participation in war in any form or under any conditions is a violation of their conscientious convictions, regardless of political, social, or religious opinion.'"
Binney threw the pamphlet at the stove and picked another at random from the table.
"Ha, ha! Here's some enlightenment," he said, reading from a buff-coloured folder: "'Japanese ambition is to be friendly both to Asia and the West. The guardian of the Peace of the Pacific: that an Asiatic League pitting the yellow race against the white race is far from her desire is shown by the repeated assertions of her officials that Japan stands for World co-operation. She is taking an active part in the League of Nations and the name of the new Emperor—new era—is Showa, or enlightened peace.'"
"Dr. Jenkins' pamphlets are not quite up to date," I observed. "With the Japanese Emperor a refugee in America, and the League of Nations deader than a Dodo for more than a year."
"Well, maybe I could interest you, Mr. Gibbons," Binney resumed, reading from another pamphlet, "in a five-point program for churches working for a warless world. Or could I take your subscription here for 'The Messenger of Peace,' or this two-page bi-weekly Informational Sheet entitled: international good will.'"
Binney rose disgustedly and hurled the literature into the stove.
"There's one of the reasons America finds herself in this mess today. For years we have been fed on this kind of 'pap.' We damn near deserve a lickin'."
Binney's ire overlooked the hundreds of sincere pacifists who gave their lives that year as proof of their realization of the error into which their ideals had led them. Their bodies marked the battlefields from Crown Point through Ticonderoga, through Whitehall, Lake George, Glens Falls, Fort Henry, Schuylerville, and Saratoga Springs.
Worse than the suffering of the unprepared armies of Britain and France during the earlier years of the old World War was that of the successive drafts of raw, brave, willing, eager American troops who paid the frightful toll of the Red advance. Casualty lists that came back from the fighting just north of Saratoga Springs were so appalling that Washington withheld publication for many months.
At Saratoga Springs two Allies came to the aid of the hard- pressed American line. It was November 30 and an early winter providentially put its grasp of ice and snow on the lakes and closed Karakhan's main artery of supply—the St. Lawrence river. The other fortuitous circumstance was a serious outbreak of influenza just then that swept through his western armies.
In all churches throughout America, the prayers of the Thanksgiving Day just celebrated were offered once more to Providence.
True, Karakhan still had untold reserves in man power in Europe, and Canada's ice-free ports of Halifax and St. Johns, as well as the excellent terminal facilities of Portland, Maine, served him in spite of winter. These latter, however, were not sufficient for the tremendous amount of overseas supplies required by his forces which now numbered between three and four million men.
At the close of the fighting in northern New York, American forces west of the Adirondacks were holding a line running across the Thousand Islands from Watertown, New York, to Kingston on the Ontario shore. The line ran up the valley of the Black river to the southeast to a point fifty miles north of Utica and then due east to Saratoga Springs and Schuylerville on the Hudson.
To the east of the Hudson, Americans still held parts of Vermont and New Hampshire as far north as Rockingham in Vermont and Concord in New Hampshire. The line touched the coast just north of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
In western New York, the American bases at Syracuse, Utica, and Albany had been repeatedly bombed from the air—but the line to the north still kept these cities out of range of the enemy field guns.
The position of the American defenders north of Boston became untenable. The enemy was penetrating to the south of them in western Massachusetts and they were in danger of being enveloped on their left flank. Karakhan was quick to realize the advantage of his strategic position. Concentrating his sea communications on Portland and reinforcing his Atlantic flank with fresh divisions of winter-hardened Siberians, he opened the southward movement that culminated in the occupation of Boston on Christmas Day, 1934.
America was unable to stem the tide. The General Staff in Washington insisted that the integrity of the American lines in western New York was more vital to the existence of the country than the loss of the Hub city.
Karakhan's southern drive from Montreal to Saratoga Springs of almost 200 miles had been made in the space of 132 days—not quite two miles daily.
It was America's most hopeless Christmastide. We were invaded on three fronts—New England had been torn from us and the spearhead of the enemy thrust was pointing toward the industrial heart of the nation—the coal fields and steel mills of Pennsylvania.
Eight million Americans were in uniform. Five million of them spent the winter on that line that ran from Plymouth Rock to Watertown, New York. In the Pacific Northwest, 2,000,000 more held the Red flood back in Oregon. Another million hung desperately to the barrier that held the yellow forces of Kamku back from the Gulf of Mexico, in which the American fleet was bottled up.
I met Whit Dodge in New York City several days after the New Year. In my rooms in the New Weston Hotel he shared with me a new fear.
"Margot is in America by now," he said.
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Two weeks ago I went ashore at night at Bantry Bay on the west coast of Ireland, where Karakhan has kept her and Mrs. Karakhan ever since he opened the New England drive. That yellow devil still refuses to see his wife.
"Lin conceded that she would not go near him if he would permit her and Margot to go to America. She pleaded to be allowed to go to Portland, Maine, and mentioned her fear for the welfare of her parents who live somewhere north of Boston.
"Karakhan granted the request. Although he ignores his wife completely, I believe there is just that spirit of vanity within him which makes it not unpleasant that she see his new conquests over here.
"Margot and Lin were packing on the night I saw them. I described to her Gray's Cove, a point on the Maine coast north of Portland, where our submarines had hidden out during their operations against Red troop ships bound for Portland Harbour, and that is where I am going ashore five nights from tonight to see her."
"But how will she know the night to expect you?" I asked.
"That's where you come in," Dodge explained. "Wherever she is in Portland, she will be listening for your broadcasts over the radio. You will use the same key-words and the old code. Just mix it up with your talk. She will take it down stenographically and figure it out."
"My God, Whit, this is a dangerous job. It's death for both of you if you are caught."
"I know," said the boy. "But it's no more risk than that girl has been under night and day for the last year. I have been only a messenger boy. Her information concerning the condition of the Red industrial machine in England and the interior politics of the Red Union has proved the most important intelligence that Washington has been able to obtain from behind the enemy lines. Margot realizes her risk and ignores it in the face of a duty she considers higher."
The code message which I included in each one of the radio broadcasts, which I made for the following five days through the New York microphone, read as follows:
"GRAY'S COVE, MIDNIGHT, JANUARY 7"
THOSE were anxious days I spent in New York during the first half of January, 1935, while I awaited the return of Whit Dodge from his hazardous mission behind the enemy lines on the Maine coast. Had Margot Denison received my radio code arranging the rendezvous with Whit in Gray's Cove?
Had the American submarine been able to enter the inlet unobserved? Had Whit been able to go ashore, and if success had attended all of these risks, had the boy been able to regain his craft and escape to sea again?
To relieve my mind from these worries, I plunged myself into a study of the situation on the home front. How was the internal and domestic strength and stamina of the nation prepared to stand the spring offensives which Karakhan would unquestionably open on all three fronts—New England, the Pacific Northwest, and Mexico? With two invading armies, totalling almost 6,000,000 men within our frontiers, the American public had very little attention for developments concerning our neighbour nations in South America.
Since the opening of the war in America, Karakhan had taken possession, consecutively, of the principal South American ports. He held the harbours of Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Valparaiso, and the small port of Arica.
Separated units of the Chilean, Argentinean, and Brazilian navies had gloriously engaged battle with superior Red sea forces and been defeated. Two Chilean battleships, one Argentinean, and one Brazilian had escaped the general fate of their sister ships and by remarkable feats of seamanship had eluded their pursuers and joined the United States fleet in the Gulf of Mexico.
Karakhan's occupation of the ports guaranteed him the supply of primary materials necessary for his industrial machine in Europe and Asia, and particularly did this apply to the important item of Bolivian tin, the loss of which essential import the United States felt deeply.
The South American nations without industrial production sufficient to their needs, and deprived now of all imports from America, were forced to accept passively the Red occupation of their ports. Resistance was futile because Karakhan controlled the sea.
The relations between the United States and Canada after much initial bungling concerning territorial integrity had developed into something even stronger than a mutual alliance between the two peoples whose economic interests had been always interdependent in spite of their differing political affiliations. With the departure of the Canadian Government from Ottawa, the refugee British King, Edward VIII, the former popular Prince of Wales, who had succeeded to the throne upon the death of George V, had moved his Court to Washington, where he joined the ranks of the royal emigres, representing all of the European thrones overturned by the yellow horde. These kings, queens, and princes proved an important and picturesque background for propaganda amongst the thousands of their old subjects now enjoying an asylum in America.
A number of Foreign Legions—the Loyal British—French Republican—Italian Fascisti—German Nationalists—Royal Swedish, and Norwegian were organized under the command of American officers and did excellent service on the fronts. Only one kingly prerogative of the royal guests was curtailed by President Smith.
The generous distribution of foreign decorations to American soldiers, politicians, Government officials, and society notables was suddenly discontinued upon the circulation of a request from President Smith, revealing that the wild stampede among certain types of Americans craving these gaudy baubles was considered by the White House to be contrary to American ideals of democracy. The awarding of foreign decorations ceased.
King Edward's popularity in Washington society was given a rude setback by the enemy radio broadcast of old British Government secrets which had fallen into the hands of the enemy. The official Red announcement of this sensational disclosure reached the ears of hundreds of thousands of American listeners in the following words:
"The American radio distribution of speeches by the deposed British King and the deposed Japanese Emperor, exhorting Americans to greater effort in the war against the Red Union, is particularly interesting in the light of documents recently found in the old Royal and Imperial war office archives in London and Tokyo.
"In both capitals were found duplicate copies of war plans which Great Britain and Japan had mutually agreed to put into effect in the event of a conflict between either nation and the United States. This agreement, which was secretly referred to as the red and yellow or orange plan, specified a combination of the Royal British and the Imperial Japanese navies against the United States Navy. This secret British-Japanese war plan called for a British invasion of America by way of Montreal and Lake Champlain and two Japanese offensives on the Pacific Coast. The first through British Columbia into the State of Washington and the second a land attack on the Panama Canal.
"The Red Union war office found the plans for the elimination of the American Navy and the invasion of the United States already prepared for us and, with the exception of certain vital improvements, emanating from the military genius of Karakhan, himself, these are the very ones being employed so effectively in North America by the victorious forces of the Red Union today. The plans were made by the old deposed governments whose monarchs are enjoying American hospitality now."
This expose, reminiscent of the Bolshevik publication of the famous "Willy-Nicky" correspondence between the German Emperor and the Russian Czar, brought forth columns of bitter newspaper comment in the American press and reduced the popularity of visiting crowned heads almost to the vanishing point.
My anxieties over Margot and Whit Dodge were relieved January 15 when the smiling submarine officer popped into my room in New York, his face wreathed with smiles.
"Worked like a clock," he said. "Not a light or a soul to be seen when we came to the surface in Gray's Cove. I paddled ashore in a collapsible boat and found Margot waiting at the appointed place. We were together an hour. She's the most glorious girl in the world.
"Karakhan has Lin and Margot quartered in an old country residence on Lake Sebago. They have perfect freedom of movement and make motor trips around the country. She reached our meeting place in a runabout, without lights.
"Lin has located her parents at Salem, Massachusetts, and she and Margot are moving there this week. I have arranged a new meeting place for us on the coast between Salem and Gloucester, called Lobster Rock. I remember I used to fish there when I was a kid."
"Has Karakhan seen Margot yet?" I asked. In addition to my own anxiety, I wanted the information for Speed Binney.
"No, thank God," Dodge replied. "That yellow devil has seen neither Lin nor her. Seems to enjoy subjecting his wife to exquisite torture. You know he only let her come to America upon her promise not to visit his headquarters. I hope he never sees Margot."
"Who's with them, then? They cannot live there alone," I exclaimed.
"No other than your talkative friend, Colonel Boyar," Dodge replied. "More cocksure of victory for Karakhan than ever. He rides with him in Boston when he visits his headquarters there, and is full of gossip about the Red spring drive. Margot gathered much, and I am taking the information to the General Staff tonight.
"New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington will get hell from the air this year. Karakhan's main drive will be west of the Hudson. She thinks he will try to break the American lines based on the Erie Canal.
"His objective is the coal mines and steel mills of Pennsylvania. The date for the opening of the offensive is not settled yet as it depends upon the melting of the ice in the St. Lawrence.
"Isn't she a marvel? Could you imagine a girl with brains enough to grasp the importance of military information like that? If she doesn't get a Distinguished Service Medal, it will be an outrage. She deserves a Congressional Medal of Honour."
As though it had been perfectly timed to verify the exactness of Margot's information, a terrific air raid was launched over Philadelphia the very night of my conversation with Whit Dodge in New York.
On the following night I was in Washington, D.C., when the enemy raiders executed a three-hour aerial offensive which killed only a comparatively small number of people, but destroyed a number of public buildings and local transportation lines.
One bomb, believed to have been aimed at the White House, destroyed the Belasco Theater on Lafayette Square. The rambling white relics of 1918, long occupied by the navy and the army at 17th and B Streets, were burned to the ground by incendiary bombs.
President Smith witnessed the beginning of the raid from the roof of the White House, but was forced by his Secret Service squad to take shelter in the cellars of the Executive Mansion. After the raid was over the President visited a number of hospitals and spoke with the wounded.
The result of this first attack on the National Capital since 1814, when the British burned it, was the issuance of immediate orders for the evacuation of the city and the removal of the governmental departments to St. Louis, Missouri. All of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the Government moved, together with large numbers of working and unemployed diplomats.
Three years after the conclusion of the war, when I returned to Washington, the city that once had a population of 540,000 had less than 10,000. Without an industrial or commercial foundation, it was reduced to the importance of a village upon the withdrawal of the governmental departments with their hundreds of thousands of employees.
April 21 was the date chosen by Karakhan for the opening of the spring drive of 1935. On the dawn of that day, from Cape Cod to Lake Ontario, the massed artillery of the Red Napoleon erupted simultaneously to the accompaniment of terrific aerial bombing.
Synchronized to the hour and minute the yellow armies in the Pacific Northwest launched new onslaughts against the American forces in Oregon, and far south in Mexico the Asiatic hordes under Kamku renewed their drive northward across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in a final effort to break through the American lines and reach the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
This general offensive along the enemy's line in all three theaters of war was intended to puzzle the American High Command and screen the sector against which the Red Napoleon intended to strike his principal blow.
The purpose might have been achieved had it not been for the advance information Margot Denison had sent from behind the enemy lines. This information, confirming the deductions of the American General Staff, had resulted in a tremendous reinforcement and strengthening of the American defences on the line of the Erie Canal.
During the months of January, February, and March, the American forces had solidified themselves in this important sector, which was the last barrier between the invaders and the industrial heart of the nation in Pennsylvania.
Hundreds of square miles of barbed wire entrenchments extended westward from Saratoga Springs and, following the northern reaches of the Mohawk Valley, rounded the foothills of the Adirondacks whence they reached northward to Watertown and the Thousand Islands.
Cement pill-boxes and long subterranean communicating tunnels connected the four front lines through the support and reserve positions which were so located in the rear as to be useable as successive front line positions in case of forced retirement.
These successive zones and areas of resistance in depth were parallel bars or strips running east and west across the state as far south as the Pennsylvania line. All available ordnance, representing the last-minute output of the hard-pressed American munition works, as well as all artillery that could be spared from other parts of the line, were massed in these defensive zones.
Although the American air forces had been reorganized and were again in the air, Karakhan still retained his enormous aerial superiority, and our operations aloft were confined to hazardous observation sorties in which contact with enemy planes had to be avoided.
The Chicago Tribune had been able to obtain another dispatch plane for my use, and through my acquaintance with the General Staff I had been able to have my old pilot, Lieutenant Speed Binney, assigned to my plane, although the young war-bird was much opposed to the arrangement which withdrew him from duty with the fighting forces.
Under my credentials as an accredited war correspondent, our plane could not be armed. Our status in the air was designated by a large red letter C imposed on a circular green field on both the upper and lower surfaces of the wings and the sides of the fuselage. We were not foolish enough to hope that this non- combatant designation would save us from attack by enemy planes, but it carried out the rules of war to the letter.
The opening of the spring offensive meant new duties for me. In addition to being a war correspondent, I became a war broadcaster. Our plane was equipped with radio transmission in constant touch with the land receiving station which the National Broadcasting Company had established at Binghamton, New York, headquarters of Lieutenant-General Francis X. Mullins, commanding the army of New England.
My observations, spoken into the microphone in my plane above the fighting lines, were picked up in Binghamton, amplified, and sent across the country on the red, white, and blue network of local stations.
Peggy Stanley, a stenographer in the office of Speed Binney's father in St. Louis, transcribed my initial war broadcasting effort as she received it from the loud speaker. She mailed me a typed copy of my excited and disconnected observations, spoken into the microphone from above the battle lines.
Inasmuch as this was the first war corresponding ever done by radio broadcast, I reproduce parts of it herewith, with apologies for its fragmentary nature:
"This is Floyd Gibbons speaking at the microphone in the joint Chicago Tribune-National Broadcasting Company's observation plane on the western New York front. We are flying westward from Schenectady, 10,000 feet above the Mohawk Valley. It's cold up here and there is a mist in the air, but I can see white patches of snow still on the mounds of the Adirondacks behind the enemy lines on the north.
"The artillery duel, which has been going on two days now, continues in intensity below. Shells from the massed American guns are falling on the enemy positions in Ballston Spa. A tremendous cloud of smoke is rising over a little town off there on the right—wait till I find it on the map—it's Malta. The Reds hold it. Fires are burning south of it in Mechanicsville.
"Cohoes is under a terrific downpour of enemy shells. The Reds seem to be concentrating their attack at this part of the line—Whir-rr-r-r. Did you hear that? I don't know how it sounded to you, but I don't like it. It wasn't static. It was a high angle American shell passing. Speed Binney, who is piloting the plane, said that it sounded like a street car to him.
"Speed is nosing the plane down a thousand feet now to get below the trajectory of American shells. If this broadcast is suddenly interrupted, it might be from an unfortunate meeting with one of these missiles.
"Below me on the left, the line of the Erie Canal jogs westward, dotted with the chimney-tops and smoky roofs of factory towns. We are just passing over Rotterdam Junction. Binney is keeping a good lookout for enemy planes. Our plane is unarmed. We're heading north.
"An American barrage is sending up geysers of earth and debris just north of Gloversville. Broad patches of rust-brown barbed wire surround the town. Wait just a minute—now I can see it through the binoculars.
"It's an enemy advance. Thousands of Reds are trying to tear their way through the entanglements. The ground around them is alive with explosions. Sometimes the smoke clears. Now, more shells—more fountains and jets and geysers of smoke, earth, and debris leap upward from the earth.
"We're going back. Binney has just swung—we're headed south—full motor. Wait a minute—he has just seen—yes, they are Red planes—they're coming up from the right. We're off.
"Sorry to leave that little fight at Gloversville. It looks awfully hot. I can just see the wire. It's dotted with bodies—Reds—our boys are holding them. But the attack will be renewed. I know it—I have been in the field with Karakhan in Europe. I have seen the way he hurls thousands of men to their death to gain a position he desires.
"We are just over St. Johnsville—I think it is. It looks all battered up from here. Richmond and Little Falls are just ahead of us. Hope you can follow me on the map. It's difficult in the air to know just exactly where we are. I have to always look for the Erie Canal to locate myself. We're headed west now.
"A large town is in flames ahead of us. I think it is Middleville—it is. I can catch the flash of Red cannon hidden in the forest to the north of the town. That's Herkimer, off on our left to the south. Looks all right from here.
"Middleville certainly is getting hell. Clouds of smoke and flame are rising above it and—wait a minute. Binney just banked the bus. The whole picture spins around. Wait till I find out which way we are heading—back south again—no—southeast. I see now. There're flames back to the right of us. Can you hear the roar of our motor? The tachometer in front of me reads 1800 R.P.M. Binney is nosing her down to increase speed. Hear the wind shrieking through our wires?
"There's a big line of earth-works on the edge of a forest just ahead of us. I can see the flash from guns—they're American guns on this side. We're over behind our lines now. The fire from the forest is rapid. I don't know what place it is and if I did know I wouldn't be allowed to reveal it.
"We're heading east again—wait a minute—do you think it's all right, Speed? He has nodded yes. We'll take another chance up front. Crossing over the Canal now—far back in the hills behind the enemy lines I can see the silver surface of a big spread of water. Let me see what it is on the map—here it is—it's the Hinckley Reservoir. It just occurred to me that if the radio audience hearing this broadcast is bending over a map looking at these places as I point them out—you're almost exactly in the same position—your eyes are at least—as I am looking down on it from above, and now right under my eyes is a small town surrounded by barbed wire—and there's a rush across the field—they're Reds—it's the enemy—wait—there's been a break through the line—now I see—"
That's the way the stenographic report of my broadcast
suddenly ended. The reason was the sudden break in our
transmission caused by the violent bank into which Binney threw
the plane to avoid a diving attack from a Red machine which
riddled our tail surfaces with machine gun bullets.
By a series of spins and dives, Binney shook off the Red plane and we escaped to the south.
From the number of letters reaching me at Binghamton, I was gratified to learn that my subsequent war broadcasts were less excitable, hectic, and disconnected than my initial one.
Two or three times a week we made cautious flights along different portions of the line and I described the fighting from the air. But the fact that our distinctly marked plane was not attacked made me suspect enemy ears also wished to listen to my descriptions and that the Reds had orders to ignore the non- combatant air craft. I was very cautious to make no mention of any observations that could have been of military value to the enemy.
We did not push our luck. Whenever we spotted a Red plane we gave it wide berth and generally kept to our own side of the line.
Through those terrible months of May and June, the pounding, pounding, pounding of the guns continued night and day. The weight and mass of hot metal and the amount of gas hurled by the conflicting forces against one another passed all previous records of modern warfare.
The continual disruption of the vital communications supplying the American front lines was overcome by the labour of thousands of engineers stationed in dugouts along all the railroads and motor roads. Before the dust of air-bombs had settled, these persistent workers were repairing the damage. The flow of traffic to the front was continuous. The front lines needed it.
The yellow masses made local gains in a number of places—crossed the Chenango Trail south of Watertown. One dent in the lines drove perilously close to the Erie Canal between Utica and Rome, but the flanks held and the invaders were driven back under a cross-fire from both sides and the center. Troy in ruins fell to the Reds but Cohoes held out.
American losses were heavy, but did not equal the enemy casualties which ran into the hundreds of thousands. Karakhan's famous fluidity of attack failed to reach the depth of the American zones of resistance. Day after day American spirits rose as the western New York line on the war maps remained stationary.
The American front held.
The irresistible force had met the immovable object. Strategists have since explained that Karakhan's ambition and over-confidence contributed to the failure of the offensive. It was pointed out that his only successes were in the valley of the Hudson and in the upper valley of the St. Lawrence. Although the Adirondacks, immediately behind his center, were criss-crossed with motor roads, these arteries of communication were not sufficient to supply the enormous amount of material required by his pounding tactics.
There was a new birth of optimism in America's celebration of that 4th of July, 1935. Binney and I, on leave from the front, spent it with his father and mother in St. Louis, now the capital of the nation. Speed Binney, the elder, old war-bird of the A.E.F., glowed with pride in his son.
"Lucky dogs, both of you," he said, as we surrounded a pitcher of Mrs. Binney's home-made "noble experiment" after dinner. "The biggest thing in my life was my fighting in France, and I would have been tickled if I could have gotten into this. Gee! Instead of diving one of these new Lindbergh falcons onto a Chink's tail from 10,000 feet, I've got to stay out here in the sheet and tube factory and change my machinery from making bedsteads into making tubing for airplanes.
"Hell's bells! I can fly as well as any of these youngsters that are going into the air nowadays, and here I am refused a commission—held out of the ranks and actually conscripted under oath to do my fighting in the factory.
"It's tough, but I realize it's the only way we have to win. President A 1 Smith has more under that brown derby than hair. His appointment of ex-President Hoover as head of the War Industries Board was not only a brilliant piece of domestic politics, but it will save the country from defeat by reorganizing and strengthening the economic front.
"I never thought that I'd have a Quaker for a Commanding Officer, but he's my superior officer now. Look what he's done already. Got the inland waterways working, and God knows we need them with the railroads being bombed night and day.
"Look at his decisions on the priority of materials—no politics in it now. The vital industry that needs the material gets it, and the industries unnecessary to war get nothing. His standardization of types has thrown out a lot of wasted effort and speeded up the whole industrial machine. What he's done to produce synthetic substitutes to overcome our terrible shortages in essentials, such as rubber, tin, nickel, manganese, is nothing short of marvellous. He learned his stuff right in the Department of Commerce and in the old war in Europe and his four years in the White House were a P.G. course.
"What would have happened to us this summer if he'd not put over his program for the decentralization of industries from cities to farms by hooking up all of the electrical energy in the country and distributing it under his super-power power system? When those last two raids destroyed the power plants in Niagara and the Commonwealth Edison in Chicago, all we had to do was to pull another switch and route electricity in from another source. The wheels of industry didn't miss a revolution—or at least not many. Do you know how we are assembling airplanes now?"
"Are we?" Speed junior, interrupted. "Didn't know we had any. I never see them around the front."
"Shut up," said his father. "You think the whole damned war runs from your cockpit in the air. I thought the same when I was flying in France. Listen, before this summer is over, there'll be screw machines working in every barn on every farm in the country, and every one of them will be turning out machine parts necessary for arms, munitions, airplanes, or necessities of war.
"If Karakhan's bombers can blow hell out of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. His raids can stop production in Dayton and interrupt it every place where enough of it is concentrated so that he can hit it. Hoover's decentralization of industry by wiring electrical power to the farms is the true solution of our dilemma.
"We're making the parts on the farms, assembling the motors and planes in rural centers at night and flying them away in the morning.
"Karakhan can't drop a bomb on every farm in the entire country on the same night. While his raids interrupt production in one place, we're turning out the stuff in another place. He's giving us hell from the air now, but when Hoover's present program reaches production peak, that yellow b——will find out that he hasn't licked us by a hell of a sight.
"You remember Harold Stearns over in Paris? Remember how he used to say that the Mississippi Valley would some day be the last stand of the white race? Well, here we are on our last stand. 'From the Great Lakes to the Gulf, and from the Alleghenies to the Rockies, the sound heart of America beats true.'
"The wheat and corn are bursting in the fields. Every forge is ablaze and the hammers ring, and the wheels turn and the trains move and the boats steam by. We are turning out planes, motors, submarines, floating docks, cannon, shells, rolling stock, motor transports—everything.
"Maybe we have to drink imitation coffee and tea and have our sugarless and meatless days and go easy on gasoline and do without a lot of other things, but we've got the men, we've got the brains, we've got the heart, and we've got the guts, and we got the best part of the greatest country in the world. Hell, we're just starting to fight!
"The Red Napoleon calls himself the Red ace of the world, but he'll be a lousy deuce before he gets through with Uncle Sam. Remember, we're not fighting this war to lose it. We're fighting to win it, and we are going to."
"Dad, you're damned right," said Mrs. Binney, and the word did not seem out of keeping with her bobbed gray hair. She took up the defence of the home front. "And look what the women are doing. No more knitting socks and sewing shirts like I did in the last war when they wouldn't let me go to France as a nurse, just because your Dad was over there. Son, where do you think your mother is working now?"
"What is it, mother, embroidery work in a quarry?" young Speed answered.
"Almost," replied his mother. "No, it's a coal mine, and soft coal at that. I am superviser in charge of 400 girls on the night shift in the hopper department. We loaded 300 cars of coal and twenty-two canal barges last night. Now laugh that off, you big strong, he-fightin' men, and don't forget when peace does come that American women had something to do with it."
American optimism was premature. The intensity of the firing on the New York front west of the Hudson gradually diminished, and on July 20 opened with a crescendo of bombardment on the east end of the line between the Hudson and Cape Cod Bay.
As though stung by the failure of his effort on the west, Karakhan transferred large units of his mobile artillery to reinforce his lines east of the Hudson.
The American positions were well entrenched, well defended with barbed wire, and dotted with cement pill-boxes and communication trenches, but these positions were not supported by adequate artillery—in fact, almost all of the corps and army artillery, which should have been in support, had been transferred to the western New York front, to resist the enemy's main drive.
Karakhan's sudden shift of pressure to the east enabled him to bring a superior weight against the "milked" line. His southward drive was down the two corridors formed first by the area on the east bank of the Hudson, between the river and the Berkshire Hills, and secondly the valley of the Connecticut river. Concentrating all of his forces down these two avenues, he launched his overwhelming advance on New York City.
His unopposed air forces destroyed the few bridges across the Hudson between Albany and New York City, thereby delaying the transfer of reinforcements from the Erie Canal sector to the east Hudson front. It became necessary to dispatch these trains of motor and rail transport by way of New York City.
In five days of terrific fighting, Karakhan was able to break through the defence zones, both in the valley of the Connecticut river and on the east side of the Hudson, where his forces came under a continual cross-fire from American artillery on the high west bank of the river.
His force occupied the important railroad junction of Chatham in Columbia County, and then advancing along the line of the Boston and Albany Railroad captured the city of Hudson on the river, and, inland, the town of Pine Plains in Dutchess County.
First the ruins of Northampton and then the city of Springfield fell to the invaders in the valley of the Connecticut, and in the following week of futile resistance the American defenders were forced to retreat southward from Hartford, Connecticut.
The American position between the Connecticut river and the Atlantic became untenable. Karakhan's right flank was comparatively safe on the east banks of the Hudson river and there was every prospect that his drive south would reach Long Island Sound. When this trap became apparent, it was necessary to withdraw from eastern Massachusetts and the southern part of Rhode Island. The retirement was made along the coastal railroad lines through Kingston, Rhode Island, and New London and New Haven, Connecticut. Karakhan's advance had been a superb stroke, executed with overwhelming strength, suddenness and surprise. It was masterful.
The American lines east of the Hudson rolled up before the advance. Speed Binney and I covered most of that terrible retreat, and heard the pitiful stories of the refugees—American refugees, this time—American women and children and old men and straggling units of annihilated commands. Roads were clogged with humanity and choking with dust in the heat of late July; trains and bridges were bombed; telephone and electric light wires were hanging in broken festoons from their poles. It was a debacle.
Thousands of American civilians and soldiers, as well as several thousand invaluable pieces of artillery, fell into the hands of the enemy, together with railroad equipment and motor transport.
Demolition squads worked day and night through the retreat, blowing up factories, demolishing power plants, destroying trains, bridges, ammunition dumps, and supply depots. But so swift was the onward sweep of the yellow horde that much had to be left undone—this in spite of the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property went up in flames.
The Reds, entering Block Island Sound, had come under the guns of Fisher's Island; but even these mighty pieces of American coast defences failed to stop them. Putnam, Norwich, and New London were successively occupied on the line of the New Haven and Hartford Railroad. Middletown was captured. Waterbury was in flames when the civilian population, seeking escape to the south, found themselves cut off by the Red advance on Bridgeport.
Between the Catskill and the Hudson, the enemy progress kept pace with the movement to the east. Poughkeepsie was occupied and the halls of Vassar College were soon pounded to ruins by shells from American guns located on the heights of Highland on the opposite side of the river. The line swept onward to the south through Beacon and Peekskill, ignoring the rain of artillery fire from the guns of West Point on the opposite shore.
That portion of New York's water supply derived from the Ashokan Reservoir, and which crosses to the east side of the Hudson by siphon mains and tunnels near Storm King Mountain, was cut and the metropolis, requiring hundreds of millions of gallons of water per day, found itself waterless.
With the onward sweep of the Reds, evacuation of the civil population had begun, under orders of Major-General Aaron Rosenthal, who took command of the metropolitan sector following the suicide of Major-General Amos B. Grundy.
Night and day thousands of automobiles passed through the Holland vehicular tunnel to the Jersey shore—vans loaded down with crying babies, wide-eyed children, and household goods, including pet dogs and parrots; army supplies and motor transport reinforcements poured steadily under the river bound for the front lines, which now clung to a line extending roughly from Tarrytown on the Hudson river, White Plains to Port Chester on Long Island Sound.
In spite of the ever present Red bombing planes above, ferry boats sped back and forth night and day, transporting frantic thousands to the Jersey shores; w T hile clamouring mobs clogged the streets for miles around the docks. All available shipping in the harbour was converted to ferrying purposes.
The best efforts of the reinforced batteries of anti-aircraft artillery, firing from both sides of the river, failed to prevent Red bombers from sinking three crowded ferry boats in midstream with loss of life running high into the thousands.
A two thousand-pound bomb, landing in front of the Astor Hotel at 45th Street and Broadway, killed hundreds in the enormous crowds watching the electrical war map on the New York Times Building.
Then came the rain of bombs. Downtown streets caved in under the terrific impact of dropped explosives, and surface lines and subways went out of operation.
Central Park was a refugee camp packed to suffocation. Down the long avenues from the north frantic crowds poured in mad panic. The sound of the approaching guns punctuated by the closer crashes of air-bombs was ever present.
The line of defence broke once more and fell back on prepared positions running from Yonkers on the Hudson across to Pelham and from there to New Rochelle on the Sound. Through Westchester, Eastchester, and Pelham Manor our advance reinforcements passed through the backwash of terror stricken women, men, and children.
Street intersections and road crossings were clogged with tangles of disabled motor cars, and military police with civilian helpers struggled with these piles of abandoned vehicles that held up the flood of traffic like log jams across swollen rivers.
Throughout it all, the guns from the forts comprising the coast defences of Long Island Sound fired on long range targets behind enemy lines. The fourteen-inch disappearing rifles of Fort Totten, on the Long Island side of the Sound, and Fort Schuyler on the mainland, executed terrific destruction among the massed artillery of the invaders. The defences of the lower bay—Fort Tilden at Rockaway Beach, Fort Hancock at Sandy Hook, and those two guardians of the Narrows—Fort Hamilton, on the Brooklyn side and Fort Wadsworth, on Staten Island—hurled tons of missiles at the air raiders above the city.
The heavy guns of these fortifications were so placed as to protect New York from attack by sea, and were of little use against a land invasion.
The Red air forces lost many planes from the anti-aircraft guns, located about these forts, but the enemy program of keeping them under a continual downpour of gas, shells, and high explosives was not relinquished.
The guns of Fisher's Island, at the eastern entrance of the Bay, went out of commission after six weeks of continual bombardment from the air, and Fort Terry on Plum Island suffered a similar fate. Communications of supplies to the Americans on the east end of Long Island failed by reason of the constant destruction of the railroads and motor highways.
Following the subsidence of the defences at the entrance of the Sound, Red mine sweepers cleared a water-path from New London Harbour into Gardiner's Bay and Greenport, in both of which places the enemy paid dearly for the hard-won privilege of setting foot on the Island.
Only the complete absence of American air protection enabled Karakhan to beat down the resistance of the defenders so that his landing force could gain a foothold. With Peconic Bay and Riverhead once in their hands, the Reds moved westward down the Island following the three main lateral highways and the branches of the Long Island Railroad.
American resistance was reduced almost to a rear guard action, the purpose of which was to delay the enemy advance as much as possible to permit the further strengthening of the last line of defence. Port Jefferson, Smithtown, Sayville, Islip, Babylon, and Huntington fell successively to the yellow flood which rolled on, to be halted at last on a line running from Long Beach on the Atlantic shore through Rockville Center, Hempstead, Mineola, to Roslyn on the Sound.
On the mainland—that narrow peak of land between the Hudson and the Sound—the yellow hordes swept through Pelham Bay Park on the east and Courtland Park on the west. There was bitter house-to-house fighting in the Bronx, but the advance of the enemy along the lines of Riverdale Avenue, Broadway, Fordham Road, Jerome Avenue, the Grand Concourse with its extension on Mott Avenue, and the Boston Post Road did not cease.
The American defenders contested the ground block by block. The apartment house conflicts with bayonets, hand-grenades, and gas-bombs continued night and day. Gaining the corner building of a block, the Reds would fight their way southward through the block by breaking through the connecting walls.
There were incidents of hand-to-hand fighting in apartment buildings, side by side—one full of Reds, the other full of Americans. The dividing wall between the houses was the battle line, and the Reds were expert in the art of making breaches through these walls and gaining the adjoining building by rushes.
It was fighting of this bitter hand-to-hand character that brought the Red line to the north shore of the Harlem river. That waterway became the last ditch for the defenders of New York. The greatest skyscraper city of the world was under the field guns of the enemy.
Fort Schuyler held out for weeks and continued to pour shells into the rear of the enemy, but was forced eventually to surrender—not, however, until it had fired its last shell and succeeded in destroying the guns.
Whole volumes have been written about the artillery and gas duel that continued night and day without recess through the winter months of 1935 and '36. All of the bridges crossing the East and Harlem rivers had been destroyed. The American forces clinging to the edge of Nassau, Queens, and Kings Counties were supplied through the three subway tubes crossing under the East river south of Brooklyn Bridge and, at night, by small lighters crossing from Staten Island to Bay Ridge.
The defenders in New York received their water, supplies, and ammunition from the Jersey shore by way of the Holland vehicular tunnel and the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad tubes. Repeated efforts on the part of the air raiders to destroy these vital arteries by dropping delayed action bombs in the Hudson river were unsuccessful. But the destruction which these bombs wrought at the land terminals on both sides was considerable, and it required the constant labour of thousands of engineers to keep the exits and entrances open to traffic.
The three months of constant bombardment reduced the city to that strange aspect of a mountainous dump heap—- the photographs of which are so well-known to school children today.
Upon rare occasions, when the opportunity offered, Binney and I flew from air fields on the Jersey side and looked down from above on the ruins of the metropolis. Manhattan Island was an irregular mound of debris, rubbish, and wreckage, from the Battery to the Harlem river.
No longer could one see the narrow canons that marked the streets of the city. These ravines had been gradually filled with the wreckage of the ruined buildings that once towered clifflike above the streets. The terrific pounding of the shells had had the effect of levelling off the architectural irregularities that once formed the magic sky-line of the city.
But the surface of this mound of wreckage was not on the street level. The higher the buildings had been the higher the peaks and rolling knolls of debris. Here and there the shattered wrecks of tottering walls, or towers with blackened windows that seemed like dead eyes, reared their heads to gaze across the uneven billows of twisted steel girders, blocks of masonry and general wreckage. In many places the upper level of the rubbish heap was twenty floors above what had been the street.
The levelling by gunfire continued night and day. Geysers of white plaster dust spouted into the air continually. Heavy shells, with delayed action, pounded the surface of the mass and hurled eruptions of debris to the skies.
In all of my observations of war, there was nothing with which I could compare the picture other than the appearance of the ruins of Ypres as I had seen them after the German guns had played on them for four years.
The surface of what had been New York was much the same as at Ypres but on a greater scale. Streets, avenues, and landmarks alike were obliterated. The difference was this:
So many skyscrapers had been crowded together on the little island of Manhattan, that no amount of explosives could level them to the ground. There was not sufficient room around any building for it to level out. Red shells successively battered down the super-structures of the city's crowded giants, but the debris from the upper stories, constantly falling downward, brought the level of the surrounding streets up to the level of what remained standing of the buildings.
What actually happened was that instead of buildings collapsing into the streets, the streets were so filled with wreckage that their levels rose to the mean levels of the mound.
The appearance of Brooklyn from the air was much the same. The Harlem river ran through white mounds of debris. From the heights of the Palisades on the west banks of the Hudson, American massed guns pounded continually on the rear of the invaders. This terrific cross-fire was maintained without cessation on the Red lines of communication.
From New York to Albany the American line held strong on the west bank of the Hudson and resisted all attempts of the enemy to cross. General Rosenthal, commanding the defences of Manhattan Island, had his headquarters on the lower floors of the Equitable Trust Building on Wall Street.
Tunnels had been excavated through the debris which filled the street. The buildings were lighted by electric power wired in from Jersey and were ventilated through the elevator shafts extending upward to the ruined top of a building at about the twentieth floor. Engineers had repaired the subways, now far below the surface, and military trains were running between the Battery and Brooklyn and the Harlem river.
New York had become a subterranean city-—an American Verdun, with accommodations and supplies for its defenders.
A number of New York celebrities and Broadway notables figured among the casualties during the evacuation and destruction of the city. Flo Ziegfeld and A 1 Jolson were crushed to death in the collapse of an office building. Their bodies were not found until the following year. My old friend Heywood Broun, who had turned from column conducting to war corresponding, succumbed to gas poisoning. Arthur "Bugs" Baer died underneath a heavy cash register which fell on him in the basement of a 48th Street club during the bombardment. Will Rogers, whose radio broadcasts from St. Louis are so well remembered throughout the war, suffered the loss of his right arm during an air raid. Irvin S. Cobb was one of the many hundreds drowned when one of the Lackawanna ferries sunk in the middle of the Hudson. Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., was killed by an exploding shell at his headquarters on the Hudson front. O. O. McIntyre continued to write his daily column from a dugout underneath the ruins of the Ritz Hotel, and Herbert Corey still syndicated his "Manhattan Days and Nights" from a sandbagged office in the cellar of the old Belmont Hotel. Colonel Grover Whalen, former Police Commissioner of New York City, acted as military provost and directed all movements of underground traffic.
I spent Christmas night with doughboy friends of mine quartered in a $20,000 a year apartment on the third floor of a building at Park Avenue and 48th Street. At dinner a runner guided me upstairs to the "top of the world." It was located just above the fifteenth floor. The five floors above that level had been blown off.
Field guns had been drawn to the top by way of the elevator shafts, which also were converted into ammunition houses. Under flat shadowless screens of camouflage netting, the field guns had been mounted on reinforced foundations on top of the ruins.
Bud Thacklebury, my doughboy guide, steered me to an old fire- escape ladder mounting the remains of a roof-tower which had been turned into an observation point. Standing on our ricket perch in the dark, we looked northward across the ruins of what had been once the roof-tops of New York.
A light snow had fallen, giving grotesque shapes and forms to the uneven sea of wreckage from which girders, clad with snow and ice, reached upward grotesquely like the arms and hands of men sinking in quicksand.
Stars blinked peacefully down from a black-blue sky and an occasional flare of red or green light cut a lurid arc against the black curtain. Shells were arriving intermittently, blasting black blotches on the snow-clad ruins that looked like a floe-ice of an arctic scene. From near at hand, our own light field pieces cracked the night with their barking.
Ugly howitzers, posed and mottled like squatting bull-frogs, sat back on their haunches and vomited eruptions of brilliant orange flames; while heavy missiles whined overhead on missions of death. It was a scene of frozen hell.
We descended to Bud's quarters, far below on the third floor of the building, passing floor after floor occupied by reserve troops. We entered the luxurious apartment formerly occupied by the socially prominent Rex Cole, whose New York pied a terre consisted of a pitiful sixteen rooms and four baths furnished with rich tapestries, Oriental rugs, antique furniture, and a number of rare and well-selected oils.
Floors and furnishings had suffered severely from plaster- covered hobnail boots and the general ravages of war time exigencies.
"Couldn't ask for a better dugout than this," said Bud, as he introduced me to six members of his squad.
"You know I used to deliver Scotch here to old man Cole before the war, but I never thought I'd be living in his joint. I wrote him about it last week. He's out in St. Louis. He's my bootlegger now. Sent us back a case of the best. We're celebrating tonight."
We did.
Ding Webster sat at the baby-grand piano and provided the chords for our raucous chorus. We "did" "Ramona," and how! We harmonied on "Blue Heaven" and murdered "Sweet Adeline." Bat Woolsey did a solo of seventeen verses on "Abdul, abul, abul, Emir," in which the august character of Karakhan of Kazan came in for profane treatment.
A note of something serious came to us in that warm, cosy room 100 feet below the surface. Toward midnight someone turned on the loud speaker and there was silence in the room as the voice of my old friend, Quinn Ryan, the announcer, came over the air from the broadcasting station in St. Louis, as follows:
"On this Christmas night every heart in America beats for our noble defenders holding forth so valiantly on the blazing battle front on Manhattan Island, and—"
"Us poor boys," said Bat, emptying half a glass of Scotch down his throat and adjusting the velvet divan cushions under his head. Quinn's voice continued:
"—the ruins of New York City have become the Verdun of America. The enemy shall not pass. Tonight's bulletin from the front states the line of the Harlem river holds strong and our defences on the west end of Long Island still stand.
"President Al Smith today forwarded Christmas Day greetings and congratulations to General Aaron Rosenthal and all the troops under his command for the glorious defence they have put up against terrific odds. General Rosenthal telegraphed the following reply to President Smith and his message has been received with cheers and with joy in every home throughout the nation. The message reads:
"'East side, west side, all around the town, the American lines stand solid barring the way. They shall not pass. 7"
"Good for Old Rosy," came a shout from one corner of the room. "Let's down a stiff drink to the fightenest Jew in the world." As we downed the toast, Quinn Ryan's voice, resumed from the loud speaker:
"There is one man that cannot speak to us over the air tonight, although his voice would be particularly appropriate to the boys on the Gotham front.
"Jimmy Walker lies wounded and still unconscious in a certain hospital in Jersey. But doctors report that there is every hope that he will recover from the wounds he received last week, on the Harlem."
And then over the air came the half-talking, halfsinging nasal tones of old George Cohan, as he sang, with his own special pleading and tenderness, a song that brought tears to thousands of New Yorkers in and out of New York on that Christmas night, 1935.
Down deep in the ruins of New York his voice came to us through the air in these words:
Give my regards to Broadway, remember me to Herald Square,
Tell all the boys around Forty-second Street that I will soon
be there,
Tell them of how I'm yearning to linger with the old-time
throng,
Give my regards to old Broadway and tell them I'll be there
ere long.
Our Christmas night celebration was interrupted by the sound
of buzzing bells throughout the apartment building. It was the
gas alarm, meaning that the enemy was once more up to his old
tricks of drenching the "top side" with heavy poison gas intended
to carry death to the hidden garrisons below.
The whir of the ventilator fans increased as we fixed gas masks; while two of the boys, assigned to gas protection, opened the intake taps of the old vacuum cleaning system, located in each room. These tubes that once sucked dust-laden air now cleaned the quarters of poisoned gases and permitted fresh air to be blown in from the ventilators.
We still wore our gas masks when Bud led me down the stairs.
I stepped out into the electrically lighted, arched tunnel that was once Park Avenue. We shook hands and said our muffled good-nights through the folds of the gas masks. I walked southward under the arches of the tunnel toward the Grand Central Station.
My mind, under the stimulation of Scotch, reverted to another Christmas night ten years before, when, togged out with top-hat, white tie, and cane, I walked that same way beside a dainty, fur- clad figure, in search of a taxi. Same street, same night, but what a difference! No Christmas sky above: Park Avenue, a tunnel with a crude arched roof to hold up the thousands of tons of debris wedged down in it from above.
In the lower levels under the ruins of the Grand Central Station, I pushed my way through the soldiers crowding in front of a Salvation Army doughnut stand, presided over by a blond woman whose familiarity of tone and remark made her instantly recognizable by the doughboys. "Hello Sucker—give that little boy a hand—full of doughnuts." Yes, it was the same old Texas Guinan.
I caught a supply train on the shuttle subway and, still underground, rode the caboose of a water train under the river from the Pennsylvania Station and reached my air field outside of Newark.
Noon of the following day, Speed Binney and I were flying above the ruins of New York in the radio plane and I was attempting to give through the microphone a description of the subterranean city and also to describe the enemy positions north of the Harlem river; to do the latter it was necessary to fly behind the Red line.
Just east of Yonkers, New York, the plane gave a violent lurch to the left, and looking suddenly at Speed I saw him slump into his seat. We had been attacked from above by an enemy plane and were headed down at a terrific speed.
Grabbing the stick of the dual control, I managed in a bungling way to bring the machine out of the dive and flatten the plane out. I saw the ground spring up toward me.
MY next conscious impression was one of suffocation. My throat was parched, my tongue as dry as a ball of yarn. I could not breathe through my nose. I opened one stiff and swollen eyelid and looked up into the sad eyes of a pale-faced woman whose black hair was topped with a nurse's cap. She smiled—a wan smile.
"Water," I croaked, and she held a glass tube to my bruised lips. I swallowed painfully and sought her eyes.
"You're better now. Everything will be all right," she said.
I started to ask, "Where am I?" but the thought of the triteness of such a question made me hesitate. Low in spirit, but normal in vanity, I avoided the stereotyped.
"Let's hear the rest of the story, sister," I said slowly. "My last recollection was the plane falling, the earth coming up at a terrific speed, and then 'continued in our next.'"
"You were shot down behind the Red lines," the nurse said quietly. "You are wounded and you are in a hospital in Boston, a prisoner."
"Since when?"
"It happened the day after Christmas. You were brought here the next day—that was yesterday."
"Where is Speed?"
"Who?" she asked.
"My pilot, the boy who was with me. Is he alive?"
"Here beside you," she answered, nodding toward the next bed. "He's still unconscious—skull fractured."
"Will he live?" I asked.
"We don't know yet," she replied. "But you must talk no more now. Rest a bit and you'll feel better."
I returned to a sleep of exhaustion and woke with a clearer head ten hours later in the middle of a flow of Yankee profanity.
"You yellow hawk-faced Chink, I'll—How did you like that sock?—Now taste this—You like white women, do you? You lemon-skinned mustard plaster—"
Speed Binney was raving in a delirium in the next bed where two blacks, wearing the uniform of the Red Senegalese Legion were holding him in bed. A Chinese doctor quieted the disordered mind with a hypodermic. In perfectly spoken English, he addressed me.
"In addition to his fractured skull, your pugnacious friend suffers from that common psychosis Americana—the colour complex. He will get over it, but it will require thorough chastisement and a few years of subjection to educate the rest of your countrymen away from their prejudiced delusion."
I was in no mood to argue. I closed my eyes and let my thoughts dwell on my dilemma. I was a prisoner in the hands of Karakhan.
During the year I had spent with this man throughout his conquest of Europe, I had personally witnessed in dozens of executions the ruthlessness of his treatment toward individuals who stood in his way.
In the two years during his invasion of America, I had published and broadcast throughout America many denunciations of the "scourge of the world." What fate could I expect at his hands now that I was his prisoner?
Finding no answer to my musings, I opened my eyes and I looked up into another set of yellow features, but these were smiling and familiar.
"Welcome home, Tovarishch Gibbons," said the smiling Boyar, as he grasped my hand warmly. "Lo! the prodigal has returned. Almost two years now since we parted over the front in Mexico. Much blood has gone over the sword since then and many graves have been filled. But the flag of our Little Uncle Karakhan still moves forward. Welcome back to our midst.
"Many of your stories have I read and enjoyed! Many of your broadcasts over the air have brought back the tender recollections of our comradeship in the European campaign. Enemy—wounded enemy and prisoner—I grasp your white hands in my yellow ones and call you friend, old campaigner."
"I'm glad to see you, Colonel, and to know that you are alive. The last two years have been pretty hard but it has not been as easy for Karakhan as the old campaign. He cleaned up Europe in one year, but he's been two years in America and the American line still holds."
"Not all of it," replied Boyar.
His tone startled me. I spoke my fears. "New York hasn't fallen—Don't tell me that you have crossed the Harlem—"
"No, not that," replied Boyar smiling. "Your Yanks still hold the rubbish heap of Manhattan Island and your lines still stand on the Hudson to Albany and on the Erie Canal to Lake Ontario, but something else of tremendous importance happened the day you were shot down."
"San Francisco hasn't fallen?"
"No."
"Our fleet is still in the Gulf of Mexico?"
"Yes—for the present at least," Boyar replied smilingly, "but two days ago the Red Army, which has been slowly advancing down through Central America toward the Canal, finally reached its objective. The American forces, defending the Canal, have been without sea or land communication with the United States for almost a year now. They were forced to abandon the position in the face of our advance overland. Unable to hold out longer, they retired southward through the jungles into Colombia, but before going managed to blow up the locks of the Canal.
"The wedding band of the Atlantic and the Pacific has been broken. The two oceans are now distinctively divorced in the approved American fashion, but Karakhan's rainbow standard flies over the ruins from Balboa to Colon."
This was a new disaster on a front unknown to me. During the previous year I had read many radio dispatches from the Canal Zone describing the valiant defence being put up by Major-General Leonard W. Foster.
With the disruption of all communications by sea when the American Navy was forced to withdraw into the Gulf of Mexico, this comparatively small force of determined Americans had clung tenaciously to the strip of American soil on the Isthmus of Panama. Although the vastly superior Red fleet patrolled the Caribbean coast line, it had wisely been at pains to remain beyond reach of the heavy guns of the Canal defences. These defences had been bombed repeatedly from the air, but the enemy airmen had carefully avoided inflicting any damage on the locks. With the American fleet bottled up in the Gulf of Mexico, the Canal was of no use to America but it would be of use to the Red fleet if the position could be taken intact.
"I cannot see that that effects the situation any," I replied to Boyar. "It just gives you another patch of Central American jungle. With the Canal blown up, the Canal Zone is useless to the Red fleet."
"Quite wrong," Boyar explained. "The mines have now been swept out of Colon Harbour and the Red fleet is using it for its principal Caribbean base. The facilities are much the best in the Caribbean Sea and it is located much closer than Trinidad to the Yucatan Strait. It places our sentry nearer to the door of the cell in which we have locked up your Navy. Another sentry stands guard at Trinidad and another at Bermuda.
"Our throttle-hold on the United States fleet is now complete. Karakhan is happy. The comparative lull in our operations which winter caused along the northern fronts have been very boring to our Chief. This new development in the south now interests him.
"He heard of your capture and wanted to see you, but instead he left by plane to inspect the Red Navy in the Caribbean. He wants to see you upon his return."
"Tell me the truth, Boyar. How does he feel about me? Am I due for a squad and ten rifles?"
"Not at all, old fellow. You should know our Little Uncle better than that. He likes you. As Napoleon liked his Bourrienne, as Johnson liked his Boswell, as Caesar esteemed the humble scribe who wrote his commentaries, even as dear Samuel Peppys loved his diary writing other self, so Karakhan values you as a recorder of war.
"You will remain with us from now on and it is you who will write the history of our conquest and the glory of our victory over your own country. No, my dear Gibbons, you will not face the execution squad—neither you nor Binney. But one man has already faced it in your place."
"My God, who?" I asked.
"The pilot who shot you down," replied Boyar. "Since your first appearance in the air in that marked plane almost two years ago, orders have been out through every branch of the air service to ignore you and to refrain from molesting you. You were not to be interfered with. Our Little Uncle wished you reserved for his special purposes after the war. You are destined to write the great life of Karakhan of Kazan. It will be your life's work and historians of the future will bless you for it. That Polish idiot who shot you down stated that it was a mistake—that he had failed to recognize the markings of your plane. His plea of ignorance did not save him. Negligence and disobedience amount to the same thing. He paid for it with his life. Voila!"
"I'm sorry he got it that way," I answered. "Poor devil—even though he did almost finish Speed and me.
"But tell me, Boyar, if I am to be kept a prisoner to write this biography of the Red Napoleon, tell me something about him. Is he the same man I rode with in Moscow? Remember I haven't seen him for two years. Has there been any change in him?"
"Naturally," Boyar replied. "Any man who could extend his conquests over Europe, Asia, and Africa, spread his dominion over all the seas in the world, hold South America in the hollow of his hand, and occupy practically all of Central America and large parts of Canada and the United States—naturally such a man changes. His character develops. Remember, Karakhan is still a young man. He is only thirty-five years old.
"How has he changed?" I asked.
"To begin with," replied Boyar, "the world—that is our world—now realizes that Karakhan was not an accident. He was something more than the offspring of a Mongol-Tartar woman by a swashbuckling Don Cossack. Feng Hai, the great Orientologist, has now traced the lineage of our leader and found one source of his greatness. Karakhan carries in his veins the blood of Ghengis Khan. He is a direct descendant of the old Mongol conqueror, and a worthy one."
"But I thought Karakhan cared nothing about birth and station. I thought he was all for equality—whatever that means."
Boyar smiled. "That was yesterday—a long ago yesterday," he said. "Now Karakhan has pride of ancestry and with reason. Ghengis Khan was the greatest soldier in history. When Karakhan was a boy, herding horses in the foothills of the Urals, he heard the tales and learned the story of the great warrior. He was the idol of his boyhood. It is natural now that he would trace some of his success to his descent from such a man. After all, leadership—such leadership as Karakhan has demonstrated—is not accidental."
"That's a new development in the man," I agreed. "You know on the other side of the line, our principal information about Karakhan concerns his miscegenation policy—his numerous affairs with white women, and his desire for many children by them. I knew this was so in Europe, but I wondered if it had continued in America."
"No reason why I should not tell you the truth," Boyar replied. "And I can't help it if it shocks your nationalistic and racial prejudices. It is quite true. His mistresses have been many.
"He now has two children by Mrs. Randolph Ramsey, formerly of Bar Harbour. She lives there now. Her husband was killed with the American troops in New Brunswick. Then there is the Bunsen girl—you know she was the divorced wife of your wood pulp millionarie. She calls her son Kenneth Karakhan. They live in Bangor. He has a daughter by Lillian Elkhart of Newport. There have been others, but these are the principal ones."
"Have these American women submitted to him willingly?" I asked. "Or has he taken them as the spoils of war? It cannot be love on their part, can it? Every tradition of their lives would revolt against such a thing. American women have pride in their race and are conscious of the ostracism that awaits half-breed children. What white woman would want to bring her son into the world with the taint of colour in his blood?"
"You'd be surprised," said Boyar. "Remember that Karakhan is not a man who craves easy conquests. Remember he is above the caliber of a common soldier. Remember he is not a debauchee. These American consorts of his are with him—when he lets them be—because they love him.
"And do not forget that the first woman in Karakhan's life was a white woman and an American woman. You know how Lin loves him."
I had been waiting for the mention of the name to ask questions that had been uppermost in my mind during the conversation. "Where is she—still in London?" I asked, blandly, "and is Margot with her?"
"No, they have been here in America for over a year now," Boyar replied. "They occupy a big place called 1 Greystones,' up on the coast near Salem."
"Has Karakhan seen Lin yet?"
"Yes. There was a meeting last fall, and since then he has spent a number of week-ends at Greystones."
"I am glad for Lin's sake," I said. "His refusal to see her was a bitter torture for her. I am glad they are reconciled."
"Oh, there's been no reconciliation," Boyar hastened to explain. "Their lives are as much apart as they were in Europe, and as they will continue to be. The daughter of an Irish immigrant is not the fitting consort for a man of Karakhan's eminence and importance in the world. He realizes that.
"I know that you and she were old friends, and you will not agree with me. But I feel the same way about Karakhan's early marriage as he does, himself. It served its purpose during the radical days of the old Russian Revolution, but those days have passed. The marriage was a mistake."
"And what about Margot," I asked. "Is she with Lin all the time? How do they spend their time? Has Karakhan seen her?"
"Frequently," Boyar replied. "The three of them ride together. Your former English secretary is a stately, striking figure on a horse. She carries her head like a Queen—a real Queen. How much do you know about Margot, Gibbons?"
"You know how we met that night in the Cabaret Internationale in Moscow. She is English born and her home is just outside of London, I believe, although I never visited it and I never met her people. We were so busy those terrible months of the English Revolution and the tense weeks preceding the outbreak of the war in America. But I do know she is one of the finest and most intelligent girls I have ever met, and I have sorely missed the great assistance that she gave me as my private secretary."
"What's become of Whit Dodge?" Boyar asked. "I think he was in love with Margot. I saw it in his eyes. I believe she made him forget all about the little English Princess who disappeared in Egypt. A young Yankee in love with Royal blood suddenly transfers his affections to a stenographer. Didn't that ever occur to you as curious?"
I looked up to find Boyar's eyes watching me closely.
"I never saw the Princess Victoria Louise," I replied, "but I don't blame Whit for falling in love with Margot Denison. She is one of the most wonderful girls I have ever known."
"Well, you are going to see her in an hour. She and Lin are motoring in from Greystones. I telephoned them that you and Speed were here. I will leave you all alone for a grand White, Nordic reunion. I'll pop back and see you later."
A babble of disconnected words came occasionally from the next bed where Speed, still unconscious, fought the nightmares of his delirium. I fell asleep after my long talk with Boyar, but was awakened an hour later by the nurse.
"Two ladies to see you," she said. "The General's wife and another. They're coming up." She straightened the bed-covers, slapped the pillow, tidied the table between Speed's bed and my own. Lin and Margot came in each with an armful of chrysanthemums.
I smiled as best I could through the bandages of my battered nose, and waved one bandaged hand to the doorway. Smiles came to their faces—only to be succeeded by a look of fear—of deep concern and dread, as their eyes caught the restless figure in the next bed.
"Thank God you're alive," said Lin.
"Will he live?" said Margot, one nerveless hand in mine but her eyes gazing into Speed's drawn features beneath his turban of white bandages.
"I feel sure he will," I said, as I pressed her hand. There was a collection of moisture in her eyes, but the tears did not fall. For once I saw a tremble on her lips—the first concession I had ever seen Margot give to emotion. She was beautiful.
Presently the two women were seated beside my bed—Margot on my left between my bed and Speed's.
"When I heard what had happened," said Lin,
"I prayed for your lives. Yes, prayed. Radical, atheistic, communistic Lin Larkin prayed; two years more of change and I have completed the inevitable cycle of the radical. I am back at the place I started—back to religion."
Margot was holding one of Speed's hands in both of hers, her eyes on the boy's face, her lips murmuring, "Speed, Speed, dear."
A movement in the bed and the boy's discoloured eyelids opened. There was a look of weakness, succeeded by one of surprise, followed by another of disbelief, and then, the eyes beamed with a light of recognition, of relief, of satisfaction. A smile struggled around his battered lips, and as his hand tightened in both of hers, there came the word—"Maggie."
Speed's return to consciousness was but a fleeting minute, and then the weary eyes closed, but the regular breathing was evidence of normal sleep.
I had no chance to talk alone with Margot, but it was a satisfaction to know that I was to see her again. Before Lin left the hospital it was arranged that Binney and I were to spend our convalescence at Greystones, and two days later Speed had regained sufficient strength to be removed by ambulance to the large stone country place not far back from the gray Atlantic Coast on the outskirts of the little town of Salem.
Binney's wounds confined him to his bed and his room on the third floor of the house, but after a few days I was able to hobble about with the aid of a cane.
Several servants, one an American, remained in the house, but for the most part the service was performed by silent-moving Chinese soldiers under the direction of a yellow butler. Although there were sentries at the Lodge gate and guards w T ere supposed to patrol the high stone wall surrounding the extensive estate, they were unobtrusive and our status as prisoners was not apparent. There was no parole and no regulations of hours, inspection, or registration. Our captors were confident in the strength of their prison.
Millions of fighting men along the New England front destroyed any hope of escape overland to join our own people. The presence of the Red fleet in the Atlantic was the bar to escape by sea. And yet, the thought of escape was uppermost in my mind all the time, although I refrained from discussing it with Rinney. It was necessary that the boy regain his strength.
Boyar was a frequent visitor at Greystones. During the third week of our captivity—it was about January 18 of that momentous year of 1936—he told me Karakhan was returning to Boston.
"There's a man of action for you," he said. "Flew from Boston to Bermuda, from Bermuda to Trinidad, from Trinidad to Panama and back again. Inspected all three bases and the Red fleet. You'll see action coming out of this. Karakhan inspires men to die for him. You'll see him at Greystones within a week."
I conveyed this information to Lin as we sat alone before the glowing logs in the library. The firelight shone on her wearied face, which betrayed by new lines the fear constantly in her heart.
"I want to see him, and yet I dread his coming," she said. "I will always belong to him, and yet he no longer belongs to me. In these last few months that he has talked with me I have noticed the change, and I have read enough of Freud to suspect the cause. His ever active mind and surging ambition reach out always for new frontiers, for new goals, for new peaks to climb.
"To him I am a battle won—a battle commemorated by the monuments of my children. I believe I was the first woman in his life, and I am the only woman he has ever married. And now he wishes to divorce me—to set me aside. I have not kept pace with his soaring ambition."
"How do you know this, Lin?" I asked.
"He hasn't told me in so many words," she replied, "although if it should fit his purpose he would be quite frank and blunt. But I know what is in his mind.
"A change has taken place. Unlimited power has deprived him of some of the fineness I always saw in his character. He recognizes no will but his own—no power above his own. Delusions of grandeur, of dynasty, of blood, of caste—and all the other pomps and symbols and playthings of paste-board kings now occupy his thoughts.
"To satisfy this craving, he has traced his ancestry to Ghengis Khan. If the progression continues the result will be a red and yellow aristocracy. We will revert to the caste system, the high and the low. His complex is becoming plainly Napoleonic, and I am Josephine.
"Now, you know what is in my mind. Now you know the dread that I live with day and night. Who my successor will be I do not know. What I have in mind is not his light affairs with women—God knows there's been enough of that—I mean the woman who will represent a new goal for him.
"I don't know where he will find her, but I feel certain that his choice will light upon some of the blooded aristocracy of the world and he will seek one of the oldest lines to breed with his boasted strain of Ghengis Khan.
"It is all so puny, so pitiful—that this man who rules four-fifths of the world today begins to show the weakness of all unlimited power; namely, the breaking down of self-control. He has toppled over the thrones and tinsel crowns of Europe and most of their royalty, nobility, aristocracy, and the rest of the picture-card rigmarole that he fought against are now refugees in the land of democracy. Yet it is to one of these weakling strains that he would tie his future. I know Karakhan. I see where he is going."
We were silent a moment, both looking into the flames. "But who is his fancy now?" I asked.
"I do not know," replied Lin. "I do not want to know. There is a woman in Boston, I believe. I have never seen her. I have been glad of the opportunity these last few months to see him on his week-end visits here. He comes with a number of his staff officers, and they ride together.
"I have ridden with him also, and so has Margot. He likes to ride with her. I have seen the devil in his eyes even when they light on this girl, who is the dearest in the world and has become my closest friend."
"But you don't mean that Karakhan wants to marry Margot?" I asked.
"No, I don't," she replied. "How could an English stenographer appease this new born caste craving within him? But he is increasingly attentive to her."
"Is Margot aware of this?" I asked.
"I believe so, and increasingly embarrassed, but she has great courage and self-control. I trust her more than I would any person in the world, and I am determined that Karakhan shall never get his hands on her.
"I will stake my life on that. Not because of my feeling for him—great as it is—but because of my love for her. Were she my own daughter, I could not feel closer to her. I believe she feels the same toward me."
Karakhan came to Greystones. A dozen large staff limousines poured through the bronze and stone portals and snorted up the private road to the house bearing tall, thin officers, wearing their long, belted, double-breasted dark-gray overcoats with fur collars. The downstairs hall rang with their sharp voices, their laughter, as they clicked heels, clinked spurs, and touched glasses, standing in the light and heat of the large fireplaces.
Ten of us sat at the long table at dinner that night. Karakhan at the head, Margot on his right and Lin at the other end of the table. I was seated on the left of the Red Commander and Colonel Boyer sat to the left of me.
Karakhan's greeting to me had been curt and business- like—not a word spoken—just a nod. No reference to our last meeting in London—no reference to my wounds, nor mention of my position as a prisoner, in the house of his wife.
Talk and laughter rippled around the table, but Karakhan seldom, if ever, participated. Occasionally he spoke to Margot, but the mask of his yellow features betrayed nothing that could support in my mind the suspicions communicated to me by Lin.
In the hall when the coffee was served Lin and Margot excused themselves and left us. Boyar told me that Karakhan would see me in the morning. I mounted the stairs to my wing of the house, first stopping in Speed's room to say good-night. He was sleeping soundly.
Gone was Karakhan's frozen manner when he received me at eight o'clock the next morning alone in the library, which had been shut off as an office. War maps were spread out on the long library table, behind which the Red Napoleon stood.
In pose, in gesture, in directness, he was the same Karakhan to whom I had said good-bye two years ago in London, but with the subtle difference that all of his characteristics seemed emphasized and hardened. His self-confidence had grown through egotism to arrogance.
At times during the talk, which was almost a monologue, he would pace up and down the room, and I noticed on several occasions the fleeting inspection he gave of his reflection in a tall pier glass on one wall. There was a touch of vanity about his carriage and his walk had more of the strut.
"Your war correspondent days are over," he said. "It was unfortunate that you were shot down. That was a mistake. Glad you survived. I have much work for you. I have decided that you will write the story of my life.
"The war will end this summer. Nothing will be able to withstand my spring drive for victory. I have tested the metal of your fighting men and find it keen. Therefore, I anticipate no peace of negotiation. It will be a peace of victory. I will dictate the terms.
"They will not be harsh, but America will become a part of the Red Union of the World. Your country men will need to know me better. They will know me through you. You will be the means of their education. I will be the subject.
"Since you have been with your own army, I have read a number of articles which you have written concerning me. Many of them did not hold me up in what might be considered the best light, but they were true. I desire that you gather your notes and these articles, clippings of which I have on file, and prepare to make this book your life work.
"With the conquest of America, I will be master of the world. There will be no more division, conflicts, disputes—no more inequalities, injustices. My administration of affairs will be so organized as to prevent it. All of this will mean peace, at least, for the world.
"The earth will no longer stand divided—race against race, colour against colour, continent against continent. Instead of these bitter internecine struggles, there will be political unity and economic cooperation. All this will mean guaranteed world peace, for the first time in the history of mankind.
"This will have been my life's work, and I am proud of it, and you may say that I am proud because I am strong enough and honest enough to be proud of my pride.
"You are well-informed on many of the personal phases of my life, and from now on you are to familiarize yourself fully on all of them. There will be new matters of interest that at first may shock some of my people. But there will be no opposition. I know that I know best. They will find out that I know best as they have already found out, and as America will find out before this year is out.
"I am about to make a change in my domestic affairs. My position warrants a consort who can contribute to my heir a lineage and a strain of blood as worthy of leadership as my own. To accomplish this it will be necessary for me to divorce my wife. It will be done at the proper time."
"May I ask the General a question?" I ventured.
"What is it?"
"Has the General selected the lady who is to be his next wife?"
"I have, but for the present there will be no announcement of her name. She has no knowledge of my intentions. I do not intend to awe her by my power. I will not employ against her the force at my command. In due time she will become my wife because she herself will desire it."
"When will this marriage take place?" I asked.
"Immediately after my conquest and occupation of the United States," he replied. "My wedding will occur in the month of September this year in St. Louis, the capital. I intend to make that city my world capital.
"I inform you of these matters because I do not wish to clog up the preliminary chapters of the book with any sentimentality that might contradict subsequent developments. For the time being you will remain here and convalesce.
"I will not place you under parole because I am confident you cannot escape if you desire. I have seen to that. After your full recovery, I will assign an office staff to help you in research and the compilation of material. Colonel Boyar will assist you."
"If the General permits me to select my private secretary, I request the appointment of Miss Denison for this post. We have worked long together and she knows my ways."
"That is impossible. For the time being she will remain with Mrs. Karakhan. I wish it.
"I believe that is all. If you need anything else, or have anything to report, you may do so through Colonel Boyar, or I will see you as often as convenient. Good morning."
I saluted. He ignored it. I withdrew.
The words of the man almost froze my blood. Boyar was right. He had changed. Lin's fears were well founded. He did mean to cast her off. His statement confirmed her analysis. His mind was bent on a new marriage based on blood lineage. Who was the candidate?
Karakhan and his staff left by motor for Boston that evening, and after their departure Margot and I chatted an hour with Speed, who was now back on his feet but still confined to his room by weakness.
Margot, I thought, was holding herself against the strain of some unusual excitement, and sensing that she wished to tell me something I ended the chat by telling Speed that if he ever expected to get his strength back he would have to go to bed. He grumbled something about never having a chance to see Margot alone. I grinned and Margot flushed.
"Very well," I said in my best formal manner, "I'll give you five minutes in conference." I bowed to Margot, "I'll be waiting for you in the library."
It was a good fifteen minutes before she joined me. I pretended not to notice her bright eyes and flushed cheeks, but got to the point at once.
"You have something to tell me?"
"I have information of tremendous importance," she said quietly. "It came to me from Karakhan this afternoon right in this room. I was here with him alone and I believe his purpose in imparting this information was to impress me indirectly with his power and the control he can exert, if he so desires, upon people of my race.
"He asked me with a politeness which is not his custom and which I loathe, if I would take notes on a letter he wished to dictate. I did so, and typed it for him. I have retained a duplicate of it. Here it is." She handed me the paper, and I read as follows:
Office of the Commander-in-Chief.
Admiral Joseph Brixton,
Commanding the Red Fleet, Colon.
1. As I told you in no uncertain terms in Colon, I am dissatisfied with the result of my inspection of the Red fleet and our sea bases in the Caribbean. The morale of the officers and men, which I have placed under your command, is still dominated by the old fallacious British naval policy of caution. And this policy has been responsible for the inactivity of the Red naval forces under your command for the last two years.
2. That British policy of caution was responsible for the failure of the superior British fleet to overcome the inferior German fleet at the Battle of Jutland. The policy of fighting men under my command must be one of aggression. You must realize that I consider fleets and sailors as expendable as armies and soldiers.
3. To the north of your forces in the Gulf of Mexico there rides safely at anchor the inferior American enemy fleet. The forces under your command in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic outnumber it more than two to one. I will not permit your policy of caution to leave us open to a defeat similar to that suffered by the British Navy at Jutland. If you cannot change this policy, I can change your command, and I will.
4. My general offensive in Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, and on the New England front will open toward the middle of April. During that month the Red fleet will attack the American fleet in the Gulf of Mexico. You will destroy the mine barriers in both the Yucatan and the Florida Straits and force a passage into the Gulf. You have two weeks after receipt of this order to submit your plans to me for confirmation. Proceed at once and, if possible, forget some of your archaic British naval traditions. Remember I prefer a naval victory to a fleet in being. Victories are won by daring, not caution.
(Signed) K.
I folded the paper hastily and returned it to the girl.
"This is of tremendous importance to the General Staff," I said to her. "It reveals an entire change in Karakhan's sea policy. How can we get this in their hands?"
"There is only one way," said Margot—"Whit Dodge."
"But how will we know when he will come? I am not there to broadcast the code."
"We foresaw that possibility," she explained. "In the event of anything happening to you, Whit arranged to have Quinn Ryan include the message in his broadcast. I will be tuned in on him all the time now."
"But if Whit comes, Margot, you must go with us. I cannot leave you here with Karakhan."
"I want to go, also," she said. "I detest the feeling of his eyes upon me every time I look up. He has said nothing—has made no advances and I feel that I do not have to fear force from him, but bit by bit, he unconsciously reveals himself to me. His dictation of the Brixton letter to me today was simply another means of impressing me with his power. But I will stay here with Lin. It is my duty—a duty to my country and my people. If white men can face danger on the field of battle, then I can face it here for them. I will stay."
The following day at luncheon, Boyar turned on the loud speaker in the dining-room, and over the air came the voice of Quinn Ryan, broadcasting from St. Louis. We listened to his account of the artillery duel which still continued on the Harlem front, and his story of an air raid in the vicinity of Utica, New York, and then there came to me the Indian name—Kenosha, followed by the reading of a dispatch from that town.
Kenosha was the key-word and in the words that followed was hidden the code message that Whit Dodge wanted to reach Margot. I looked across the table and saw her scribbling with a pencil on the white cloth. They were shorthand characters. She studied them for awhile and then drew the caricature of a face around them. Boyar, looking innocently on, applauded her composition.
After luncheon she told me the import of the message.
"Whit's sub will be lying off Lobster Rock at eleven o'clock three nights from now."
On that night, Speed Binney and I—the former still weak on his feet—made the rendezvous with Whit, who came ashore in a collapsible boat.
Up to the last I had been afraid that Speed would jeopardize our plans by his unwillingness to leave Margot behind. I don't know what the girl said to him in the necessarily brief moment of parting, but somehow she convinced him that she was right.
But it was with gloom in our hearts as heavy as the night which shrouded our movements that we boarded the V-4, which submerged at once and headed south, bound for the New Jersey Coast.
IT was the first of February, 1936, when I reached St. Louis with the stolen Karakhan letter which was to have such a tremendous effect on the outcome of the war.
"This document is of inestimable value to us," said Admiral Wentworth, Chief of Naval Operations on the General Staff. "It's worth ten times its weight in gold. You have done a great service, Mr. Gibbons, in obtaining it for us."
"The credit is not mine," I hurriedly explained. "There's an English girl, who has been facing and continues to face death and even worse than that, behind the enemy lines. This information would never have reached my hands had it not been for her."
Then I told the Board how Margot Denison had obtained the letter, how she had turned it over to me, and how Whit Dodge had taken us off on the Massachusetts coast at night in the V-4 and put us ashore at Atlantic City.
Knowing the contents of Karakhan's letter presaging a conflict between the hostile fleets, I asked the General Board for information on the subject. "If there's going to be a sea fight, I want to see it and report it, but my war corresponding has been almost entirely confined to fighting on land, and I must confess that I don't know a barnacle from a binnacle. I would appreciate it if the Board would assign an officer to explain the exact situation to me."
And so it was that Commander "Blink" Russell, who won his Congressional Medal of Honour in his daring submarine exploit in Boston Harbour, was assigned to bring me up to date on the status of naval affairs. Another Chicago Tribune dispatch plane, a beautiful amphibian this time, was placed at my disposal and Speed Binney, now fully recovered and itching for another fight, was back at the controls. Four days after my arrival in St. Louis, Binney flew Russell and myself south to the Gulf for an inspection of the improvised naval bases of the American fleet in the Gulf.
We visited Tampa, Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, Galveston, Tampico, Vera Cruz, and later, for two hours, at the headquarters of the American "Dardanelles" Expedition at Cape Catoche on the northeast peak of the Yucatan Peninsula. From this point we flew northeast over the mine fields closing the Yucatan Strait, picked up the western tip of Cuba, and landed at Havana.
During our air hops and our inspections at the bases, I received my instruction in naval affairs from Commander "Blink" Russell.
"Your ignorance on naval matters," he explained, "is on a par with that of the majority of Americans. In order to understand intelligently the exact situation at this time, you must remember the Coolidge naval program, which Congress finally passed early in 1929, and the speed with which we pushed through construction appropriations to complete the entire program for the meeting of the Arms Limitation Conference, which was then set for 1931 but which, as you recall, was postponed until 1932.
"In the fall of that year, the delegates met in Washington and the Conference ended in a failure. Unfortunately for the United States, it occurred just after the wet split in the Republican Party had prevented the re-election of President Hoover and given the political victory to Al Smith. President Hoover's appointment of his successful Democratic opponent to an ex-officio position in the expiring cabinet, during the interregnum, just saved the situation for us.
"But our achievement of the Coolidge program resulted in Great Britain, Japan, and all the major powers accepting, in actuality as well as in principle, the basis of the 5-5-3 ratio. In 1929 all of them began scrapping and building programs to bring their navies up to the full ratio allotment, and in this policy Great Britain took the lead, both in recognition of the seriousness of the world situation at that time and for the purpose of meeting the American point of view.
"From this you can understand how it was that in 1931, for the first time in the history of the world, the sea powers reached an agreed basis of sea strength."
"But how do the opposing fleets stack up against one another in strength now?" I asked.
"Almost two to one against us," Blink replied. "You must remember the Red fleet comprises the navies of Great Britain and Japan, which alone would outnumber us in a ratio of about 8-5; but in addition to that Karakhan also has the best units of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and air cruisers of the smaller French and Italian and German fleets. Other war craft, he acquired with the Scandinavian navies, have been employed as escorts for his sea communications.
"The Red fleet in the Caribbean Sea now has thirty-one battleships against the sixteen of the United States. Its superiority is not only numerical—their guns outrange ours on an average. They have heavier broadsides and the average speed of their ships is greater than ours.
"It seems like an impossible problem, but nevertheless it is the one that confronts us.
"Our Navy also has laboured under another drawback. Politics centered our naval bases on the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. The enemy naval and aerial superiority made them untenable. The strategic situation forced our retreat into the Gulf of Mexico, where not a single American base existed. We have been forced to build enormous floating docks to keep the ships in condition."
"It looks hopeless to me," I said. "How can our Navy, so heavily handicapped, have any chance against such tremendous odds?"
"There is a chance for us," Russell resumed. "In the first place, we have now modernized the organization of our defence. The eternal fighting between the army and the navy departments and the conflicts between the Air Service attached to each of them is now finished. President Smith brought that issue to a head."
"How?" I asked.
"The Air Service has been divorced from both the Army and the Navy and is now a complete unit by itself. Our armed forces of land, sea, and air are now represented in the Cabinet under one head—The Secretary for National Defence, Maitland Davison, the old Secretary of the Navy."
"What's to become of Wallace, the Secretary of War?" I asked.
"Resignation accepted—fired but not announced yet," replied Blink.
"Damned glad of that," I said. "He's the bird that called me a traitor and a yellow journalist two years ago when I returned from Europe and was called before the Cabinet to tell them how powerful Karakhan was. Wallace said my reports were sensational exaggerations and amounted to enemy propaganda.
"But equally important with this reorganization," Blink continued, "we now have the mobile air fleet, thanks to the production program of Mr. Hoover's War Industries Board, which reached its peak two months ago. We have planes now—plenty of planes—more planes than pilots, although we're training them as fast as we can. The air fleet has been held intact so far."
"The army wanted it held back entirely until the land forces could spring it suddenly on the New England front this spring. The navy wanted it to co-operate with the fleet on the theory that we can never overcome Karakhan on land as long as the Red fleet controls the seas and guards his sea communications."
"The old inter-service rumpus all over again," I said. "What settled it this time?"
"That letter that Margot Denison got from Karakhan—that's the real low down on the matter," Russell explained. "Secretary Davison has assigned the air fleet as a mobile separate unit to cooperate first with the navy in the Gulf of Mexico."
"I can't see the connection between that letter and the assignment of the American air fleet to duty with our Navy," I said. "Wish you'd explain it."
"Simple as pie," Russell explained. "We now know just what to expect from Brixton, the Commander of the Red fleet. In the first place, we know his record. We know that as a Lieutenant commanding a British destroyer during the Battle of Jutland, he was criticised for a lack of aggressiveness in pushing a night attack against the retreating fleet of Von Scheer—In other words, he was reprimanded for over caution.
"Now we know he has received another bitter and insulting rebuke from Karakhan, reiterating the same charge. It is the function of the Navy Intelligence Department to study the psychology of the individual enemy commanders.
"That study is just as important to us as a study of his ships and guns. From it we are able to calculate what action that Commander would most likely take in any given set of circumstances. We know what he must do and we know what we can do. Our possession of this information concerning Brixton is an ace in the hole for our Navy. Our mobile air fleet is another ace. Our chances are based on these two cards. Another point in our favour is that Karakhan is a soldier and not a sailor—the first Napoleon had the same fault."
To me the air was tense with excitement those last days of February we spent in Cuba, while the secret preparations for America's great effort proceeded night and day. The night transports from Key West to Havana ferried thousands of reinforcements across the Florida Straits and these were moved eastward on the Island and quartered in villages extending from Santiago to Cienfuegos.
It was not practicable to increase the marine garrisons in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and Porto Rico, which had remained almost inactive throughout the two years of the war. Although the mobile coast defences on these islands would have proven a serious obstacle, it is admitted that Karakhan could have taken the latter islands, but it was apparent that the Red Napoleon considered this West Indian real estate a side issue and he did not permit his interest to be diverted from the main theater of war in New England. Light American forces had used the fortified harbours on the north coast to these islands for advance bases.
Karakhan's most dangerous holding in the Caribbean was the old British Island of Jamaica, the Island which Great Britain had used as a base for its preparations against New Orleans in 1814. This piece of foreign territory, which had been considered the keystone of the proposed British-American Confederation, represented now, as it always had, a hostile stronghold standing like a menace at the southern entrance of the Windward Passage and ever threatening the Panama Canal from the air. To the Caribbean Sea, Jamaica was what Gibraltar was to the Mediterranean.
Jamaica's particular significance in the present strategic situation was that it was Karakhan's closest advance base to the Yucatan Strait, the southern exit of the Gulf of Mexico. It had been Red submarines, operating out of Kingston Harbour, that had originally disrupted American sea communications with Panama.
To take this Island was the object of the American preparations now on foot.
Hundreds of acres of sugar and tobacco fields in the eastern half of Cuba had been marked as auxiliary flying fields, and portable machine shops, refueling equipment, etc., had been delivered and were hidden under trees adjacent to the fields. The vegetation on the fields had been allowed to remain until the last moment.
Major-General I.K. Sanford (the famous "Inky" Sanford of the ballad) was in command of the Jamaican expedition, and had his temporary headquarters at Santiago, Cuba, from which place I covered the incidents leading up to the battle.
The fleet and transport movement, planned to the last detail by the Army, Navy, and Air Board, began on the afternoon of February 29. From Key West, Tampa, Pensacola, Galveston, Tampico, and Vera Cruz, fast troop ships steamed out for a rendezvous near the Yucatan Strait.
At midnight of the following day the United States air fleet, 200 squadrons strong and numbering a little over 3,600 planes, moved southward for the landing fields in Cuba and Haiti.
Squadron after squadron passed over Key West to Havana. The flying was done at night and at high altitudes, the squadrons reaching their destinations at break of day to find that vegetation covering the old sugar and tobacco fields had been burned during the night and many thousands of labourers had worked through the darkness of the night rolling the fields and putting them in readiness. As rapidly as the planes landed, they were covered with canvas, camouflaged the same colour as the ground.
Air Marshal A.E. Rumsay, commanding the air fleet, was able to report by noon that all his birds had found their nests on the new fields in both Cuba and Haiti and it was believed that the manoeuver had been completed without the knowledge of the enemy.
On the night of March 1, the convoy of fast troop ships, consisting of twenty-knot liners, rounded Cape San Antonio under cover of darkness and reached the lee of the South Shore of the Isle of Pines.
While American destroyers maintained a strong patrol to keep submarine observers out of the water surrounding this little island, American air patrols flew guard above. The trying daylight hours of March 2 passed without the convoy being spotted by the enemy.
Late in the afternoon, the troop ships, escorted by submarines and land cruisers, steamed at full speed on a course southeast for the north coast of Jamaica.
Just before dusk that same night, March 2, more transports,
their decks packed with doughboys, steamed southward out of
Santiago Harbour and the Gulf of Manzanillo for the same
destination.
Each transport from the Cuban shore carried with it four beetle boat landing barges, two lashed on either side of the ship.
Sea-going tugs towed more of these flat-bottomed craft, which also employed their own power during the crossing. The beetle boats' design was an improvement of the old type used by the British landing forces at the Dardanelles and later by the Spanish in their expedition against Ab El Krim at Alhuzemas Bay on the north coast of Africa, in 1926. I had witnessed the latter operation.
Two hours before dawn, the United States air fleet took the air from sixty different landing fields and flew southward toward Jamaica. A number of squadrons, stationed on Haitian air fields, had gone aloft on the same mission an hour earlier.
With Commander Blink Russell seated beside me and Speed Binney at the controls, we took the air in our Chicago Tribune amphibian and nosed up to accompany the air fleet on the first united action in its history.
The Battle of Jamaica opened at dawn on the March 4, 1936.
Under a terrific bombardment from American air and sea forces, our beetle boats, with landing parties jammed beneath their armoured deck, pushed shoreward at Montego Bay at the west and Annotto Bay at the east end of the Island, both strategic points connected by rail with Kingston. We watched the landing from above. Fifteen miles off the coast, the big guns of our battleships blazed away, their shells crashing into the two little towns on the Jamaican shore.
Through the smoke clouds, rising above Annotto Bay, we could see the beetle boats as their square prows grated on the sandy beaches. Their gangplanks dropped and the landing parties poured forth.
The Red coast defences, small mobile units of three-, six- and eight-inch guns, were smothered under a downpour of gas and bombs from our flyers. But from that deadly strip of yellow sand along the shore, dozens of machine gun nests poured further streams of death, and we could see doughboys, loaded down with heavy equipment, dropping in their tracks under the withering blast. Some died waist deep in the surf as they tried to wade ashore, holding their automatic rifles above their heads.
Low-flying attack planes dove down to their relief. Skimming along at 150 miles an hour, barely fifty feet above the curling surf, these two-seater ground strafers poured seemingly endless streams of fire from their machine guns into the Red positions on the shore.
Other ground strafers skimmed the tree-tops and small shore growth, dropping hand grenades from their automatic hopper outlets, every five feet.
At Montego Bay it was the same story. Our landing forces had moved inland, in both places taking the railroad. The enemy defenders, withdrawing before them, were continually harassed from the air.
"Gosh, it's a push over," said Binney. "We have both ends of the railroad and the niggers are beating it to the mountains."
Sunrise and our air fleet had turned the trick.
Dawn had found our greatly superior air forces hovering over the five Red flying fields in Jamaica. Bombs crashed through the hangars, destroying planes. Munition dumps of bombs were exploded. Fires started. Red pilots, who managed to launch their planes into the air, were pounced on and shot down from above.
Flying southward across the Island toward Kingston, we saw several Jamaican fields already actually occupied by our forces, with American planes standing in readiness "on the line." Air Marshal Rumsay had added a new feather to the pride of the air force. They had not only taken territory by bombing the enemy out, but had actually landed transport planes with small forces sufficient to hold the isolated fields.
"There's Kingston," Blink Russell shouted, pointing. Shells were bursting over the capital city, indicating that the anti-air defences of the harbour were active.
Over the strongly fortified position of Port Royal, squadrons of our air bombers were getting a hot reception from Red anti- aircraft guns. American torpedo planes, diving in formation at terrific speed, swooped down on the submarine anchorage, releasing torpedoes, bombs, and depth mines.
Kingston Harbour itself, almost entirely landlocked and shaped like a large banana, extending seven miles east and west and a little over a mile wide, was dotted with small craft, which from our position above seemed to be in constant movement as they sought to escape the successive dives of our low-flying seaplanes.
Three undersea boats, surrounded by small craft, seemed to be in a sinking condition. A light cruiser, later identified as the old Portugese Man-of-War, Vasco da Gama, was tied up at the Royal Mail wharf, where it had been undergoing repairs. Its crew valiantly operated its guns at the highest possible angle of fire, and succeeded in bringing down two American planes, until one torpedo striking amidship, just below her water line, opened a gaping wound in her side. She keeled over and went down at the dock.
Although the anti-aircraft guns continued to send up their barrages over Kingston, we flew over the city at an altitude of 12,000 feet—about 1,000 feet above the long line of heavy bombers which maintained an uninterrupted parade and continued to drop death on the doomed city.
The large white dome of a building, which I later learned was the old Roman Catholic Cathedral, rose majestically intact into the air from the explosion of a 1,000-pound missile bursting within its walls. At the same time, we noticed a light-coloured concrete chimney some 200 feet high and located on the waterfront sway under the impact of a bomb and then crash downward into a white cushion of smoke and dust.
From our altitude we could observe, far out to sea, American warships, troop ships, and beetle boats nosing their way to the harbour. But none of this spectacle was visible to the enemy observers in the city, or the forces manning the harbour defences. A curtain of creamy grey smoke hung like a heavy pall almost 1,000 feet high, shutting off all view of the sea from the city and its surrounding wall of hills. Behind this sinister smoke screen, constantly replenished by more planes, mine sweepers were already advancing making a path for the on-coming transports.
Destroyers darted everywhere, their wakes punctuated by successions of explosions, indicating the depth charges they were dropping. Seaplanes, hovering over the habour exits, were able to pick up the trail of enemy submarines seeking escape towards the sea.
Upon discovery of each one of these undersea craft, nosing blindly toward open water, a convoy of seaplanes would dart downward like gulls after a choice morsel in the wake of an excursion steamer. Skimming the surface above the submarines, they dropped depth charges that meant disaster to the underwater crews.
Seven Red subs were sunk in this manner, four of them coming to the surface where their crews were rescued and taken prisoner by American destroyers. The others met their horrible fate on the bottom.
The Battle of Kingston was a conflict between the air and inferior anti-air forces. By four o'clock in the afternoon the city was a mass of smoking ruins, and only an occasional shot indicated that any of its defences were still active. American marines, who landed first, west of the railway wharf, occupied the railroad station, from which place they entered the city.
General Lincoln Wilberforce, the Negro Commander-in-Chief, surrendered at five o'clock that afternoon, and that night American troop ships were unloading stores and men in the harbour.
It was America's first great victory. The new untried air fleet played the most important part in the capture of this enemy stronghold that had been a strategic threat against the United States for more than a century.
The Stars and Stripes replaced the rainbow standard over 4,500 square miles, torn from the grasp of the Red Napoleon. It was Karakhan's first loss and our first territorial gain in the war.
Binney landed Commander Russell and myself in the harbour shortly after the entrance of the marines, and we were present in the market place for the impromptu ceremony which marked the capitulation of the Island.
Thousand of Jamaicans, native blacks, Chinese, and East Indians, but for the most part women and old men, bared their heads in the crowded approaches of the ancient square as the American flag ascended the staff to the strains of the "Star Spangled Banner." Ye gods! what a thrill to dismiss in a paragraph!
Tin-hatted marine M.P.'s policed the crowds. Stiff lines of our doughboys, with arms at the present, stood rigidly through the simple ceremony. Field guns on the outskirts of the city boomed conventional salutes, echoed by the guns of troop ships and their escorts now in the harbour.
A disappointment awaited me. The iron hand of the censor clamped down on the 4,000-word dispatch I submitted for transmission that night. The capture of this old British stronghold of Jamaica—the taking of the entire Island in the space of hardly ten hours, the glorious participation and co- operation of the army, the navy and the air forces, the vindication of our new mobile air fleet—all represented elements of tremendous importance and stimulation to the American people.
It was the kind of story I had been craving to write through all the long months of defeat and disaster. I could see in it the dawn of victory, or at least an even break for our hard-fighting forces. Commander Russell explained why my story could not be transmitted to the waiting millions in America.
"It's like this," he said. "Luck has been with us throughout the entire operation. The initiative is now on our side. The Red forces were caught off guard. They did not think we'd ever dare to take the chance.
"Our air attack today paid special attention to the destruction of the Red wireless stations all over Jamaica. We hope we succeeded in destroying all means of communication. During the morning Wilberforce undoubtedly communicated with the Red fleet, based on Colon. But those early reports could only convey the information that the attack had begun.
"We hope no word reaches them that we've taken Jamaica. It is to our interest that the Red fleet commander believe that his forces are still holding out on the Island. It seems a shame to deprive the American people of the news of this great victory on this glorious day, but even a greater one is at stake.
"Somewhere out there," he said, pausing significantly and pointing southward across the blackness of the Caribbean, "somewhere out there, two enormous forces are grappling for one another in the dark. On the outcome of their manceuvers may depend the finish of the war.
"We have taken Jamaica—thorn in our side for a hundred years. Now we must hold it. Somewhere north of Colon, the Red fleet—the mightiest armada of floating force that ever steamed under one command—is mobilized and headed in our direction. The only thing between us and that force is the American Navy. Upon the movements of these two forces depend everything."
It has since been established that the hopes of the American Command with regard to the enemy communications were well based. Geronimo Peake, the Jamaican Negro war correspondent who survived our conquest of the Island, writes on page 121 of his book, "The Fall of Jamaica," as follows:
"The outcome of the Battle of the Windward Passage, and consequently the final result of the war, hung on a slender thread of fate. General Wilberforce had reported to Colon both the landings at Montego and Annotto Bays, but so terrific was the American aerial onslaught that not a single radio station remained operative on the entire Island by the time the attack on Kingston developed in its full force.
"General Wilberforce tried to report his situation through the radios on the ships in the harbour, but the air was so jammed none of his messages got through. Surface vessels that endeavoured to pass the American sea forces were sunk and not a single submarine escaped.
"Our pitifully weak air forces hardly survived the first two hours of the fighting. One plane, slightly damaged in the morning, was repaired shortly after noon and took off at three o'clock, bearing Wilberforce's last report and appeal for help. That plane failed to deliver its report. Whether it fell at sea by accident, or was shot down, has never been ascertained." ("The Fall of Jamaica," by Geronimo Peake, Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, New York, $12.50.)
I slept that night on my unsent dispatch. Binney made arrangements for our departure early in the morning by air. Blink Russell returned to the hotel late, full of secret information concerning the disposition of American naval forces to the south of Jamaica. He was also full of Jamaica rum and he was chewing Jamaica ginger. We prepared for an early morning start to join the fleet at sea.
We flew southeast at dawn, circling over Kingston and Port Royal harbours to gain altitude. We witnessed the arrival of new units of the mobile fleet on numerous fields across the flat lowlands west of the city. Eastward, in the direction of Morant Point, more Yank air squadrons occupied the level valleys south of the Blue Mountain ridge. Thousands of black prisoners were levelling the fields. They had been at work throughout the night.
We joined a group of navy seaplanes flying east at the 8,000- foot level. Within an hour we saw ahead of us a large number of warships which Russell identified as the second battleship group of the United States fleet.
"There's the California," he said, pointing. "That's the group flagship—Old Admiral Battling Butler runs this outfit—four battleships, four cruisers, a squadron of destroyers, a submarine division, and an air carrier—there she is—the new Wright, with her destroyer screen. If you need any gas, Binney, we can drop down and get it. I know the Commander."
"Tank's all full," replied Speed. "Don't need anything this morning but a fight."
"There's the Oregon," Russell pointed. "She's the flagship of the entire fleet. She flies the flag of Admiral Kennedy. Right there, in that gray control tower, is the brain center of whatever happens today as far as Uncle Sam is concerned."
Off to the east of the second battleship group, Russell picked out units of the air carrier group under the command of Vice- Admiral Davis, composed of the air carriers Dewey and A.C. Reed, the new battleship Maine, and the fourth cruiser division, made up of the Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Raleigh, and Detroit. The group was steaming southward, its van and flanks covered by a moving arc of eighteen destroyers.
We continued on a course into the southeast, accompanying the seaplane squadron which flew high in a large "V" formation. The day was mild and glorious, the sky almost cloudless, the sun shining down brightly on the blue and gentle Caribbean, slightly rippled now by the trade winds from the northeast.
Shortly before noon we picked up smoke far on the horizon ahead, and the leader of our group led his convoy upward, but continued on the same course. Shortly afterward Russell was able to recognize the craft as American.
"That must be the third battleship group," he said, "under command of Admiral Custer in the Texas. The battleships Pennsylvania, Arizona, and New York are with her, and she should be accompanied by the second cruiser division, the Chattanooga, the Galveston, the Denver, and the Des Moines. She's another compact fighting unit in herself, with a destroyer squadron, a submarine division, and an aircraft group around the carrier, John Rodgers. Air Commodore Doc. Watson commands the Rodgers. We'll drop in on him and get the latest dope."
Binney circled above the carrier, which pointed its bow into the wind, but did not reduce speed. My pilot brought the wheels of our amphibian down lightly on the broad deck; our hooks picked up the arresting gear and we came to a stop almost squarely on top of the forward elevator deck. Mechanics rolled us into position on this platform, which lowered us to the deck below.
Commodore Watson received us on the bridge, and the sight of his face recalled to me the many gay evenings in his bachelor quarters in Washington, D. C., back in 1928, when he was in command of the naval air station at Anacostia. Same broken nose, same jovial eye, same happy voice that used to sing, "Ain't anything sacred to you?" He greeted me with a hearty handshake.
"We're looking for trouble today and liable to get it anytime now," he said. "But where the devil Mr. Karakhan's floating iron mines are I'll be damned if I know. We've been steaming top speed all the way from Samana Bay without a sight of him. Not even one of his subs lurking in the Mona Passage, according to their usual habit, and not a smell of either of his outfits from the Gulf of Para or the Gulf of Venezuela. But you remember what we used to say in the old days in Washington—
"'It won't be long now.'"
Commander Russell and I lunched with the Commodore, and Binney joined the officers' mess in the ward-room. Shortly before one o'clock, with replenished tanks, our amphibian sped down the long level deck of the John Rodgers, and we took the air in the direction west by south.
"I think if we keep on this course, we ought to pick up the rest of the outfit quite a ways ahead of us," Commander Russell explained. "That first battleship group seems to have disappeared entirely since it blew the stink off of Montego Bay yesterday morning; but you can safely make a wager that old man Kennedy has got them working somewhere."
We sped into the afternoon sun. It must have been around three o'clock when we sighted the American first battleship group down on the southwest horizon. Its direction appeared to be toward the southeast.
Commander Russell explained that this group, under the command of Admiral Atkins, was composed of the first battleship division, consisting of the West Virginia, the Tennessee, the Maryland, and the Colorado, which carried Atkins' flag.
Ahead of the battleship division steamed the four cruisers—Salt Lake City, Chester, Chicago, and Pensacola, the latter carrying the flag of Rear-Admiral Burns. The group was preceded by submarines and destroyers, and followed by an aircraft unit organized around the carrier flagship, the new Langley. Russell's keen eyes saw a squadron of planes leave the deck of the Langley, in fighting formation, and speed ahead.
"Those birds look like they've got business on their minds," Binney shouted from the forward controls. "Pipe that tight formation. If I were working for Mr. Karakhan, I wouldn't credit them babies with having any good intentions."
We sped southward in the wake of the fighting planes, but could not keep up with them. We passed over the widespread screen of destroyers, which preceded the cruiser line, and some ten miles further on were able to detect the submarines of the group, advancing on an extended line and proceeding awash with only their conning towers and part of the decks showing above the surface. They appeared to be steaming as fast as the fleet.
For a time we lost sight of the air squadron, but we stuck to the same course in the hope of either catching up with them, or meeting them on the way back. Russell presumed that they had been sent on a scouting expedition to the southwest.
His presumption was correct and when we again came upon the nine planes they were engaged in a dog fight with seven Red planes. The combat lasted twenty minutes, during which six of the enemy planes were shot down and two of ours met a similar fate.
Our plane, being an amphibian and much slower, as well as being unarmed, hovered off to one side of the combat, although I could tell from the light in Speed Binney's eyes that he itched to get into the melee.
As far as I could see at the time, no surface vessels of any kind were in sight, although we knew the submarines and the destroyers of Admiral Atkins' group were not far off.
When the first American plane spun downward, out of control, Binney depressed the nose of our amphibian, and soon the wind was shrieking through our struts as we raced toward that little spot of slate-gray on the darker green of the sea. Binney spiralled down into the wind and, with retracted running gear, our boat bottom smacked the waves at fifty miles an hour, not 300 feet away from the disabled American plane.
We taxied toward it as it began to sink. Russell went forward into the bow compartment, and I stood by in the side door of the cabin with a life preserver. Our efforts were wasted. The pilot strapped at the control seat was dead. Blood flowed from three bullet wounds full in the face. He had received the entire burst in the head. Russell ascertained this in his hurried examination of the control cabin of the still sinking plane. I saw him reach in and bring up the pilot's limp left arm. He snatched something off the wrist and putting it hurriedly in his mouth clambered back to our plane. The navy fighter slowly settled. Russell removed a silver disk and a bit of fine chain from his mouth, and said:
"Poor devil, he's through. Drilled three times right through the head. Here's his identification tag. We can ship that back to the folks. A flyer's death and a sailor's grave. Good-bye, and—"
"Stand clear," Binney suddenly shouted. "Here comes another."
Our big motors sprang to life under full throttles and we plowed forward across the water. As we taxied at full speed, a second falling Yankee plane was still in the air. The plane managed to come out of the dive just before it struck the water. The under carriage wheels hit a wave crest, depressing the nose, which struck the water with an audible whack. As the tail rose, a whirling body catapulted out of the fuselage.
"There he goes," shouted Binney, as he wheeled the amphibian slightly to the left. A minute later, Russell, hanging dangerously far out of the bow opening, was grasping a wet collar and looking into the dripping face of an American boy.
With some difficulty we brought him on board; the red-checked features seemed to us to carry a smile.
"Dreaming like a baby," said Russell, loosening the water- soaked flying jacket. "Don't think he's hurt, though; just knocked cold. Lucky we saw him."
Just at that minute, the object of our tenderness came to with a suddenness and a ferocity that was literally staggering. Both of the diminutive flyer's fists shot out in as many different directions, and Russell and I had to throw ourselves upon him, and hold him to the floor of the cabin, while both of us shouted in his ears that he was all right and that we were all right and that everything was all right, and if he would call a recess on the war for several minutes, we'd let him up.
The combative, midget Yank turned out to be seventeen-year-old Paderewski Czarnecki, of New Leipsig, North Dakota. Private 1st Class, U. S. Air Corps.
I reproduce the spelling of the name and address correctly because I copied it letter by letter from the identification bracelet, tattooed in blue ink around his left wrist and surmounted by a luridly lithographic "old glory." But our attention was quickly shifted.
A jet of water jumped twenty feet into the air—fifty feet away from the plane. As the spouting column returned to the sea, we heard the whine of another shell.
"Going right away from here," shouted Binney, as the motors roared and the amphibian started to skim into the wind. We left the water and climbed upward on a left bank. We sped northward on a zigzagging course, but continually climbing.
"That came from an enemy sub," said Russell. "Not over a six- incher, but big enough to wreck us. I don't think he's alone, either. I believe it's the van of the Red fleet. They've surely made their concentration by this time and must be headed north from Colon.
"Their fleet and our battle groups are converging from opposite directions on this point, according to my calculations. It's time we get out of here."
We did.
Binney pointed the plane into the northeast, where Russell believed we would soon encounter the advance units of Custer's third American battle group.
None of us knew it then, but we all are aware now that during those minutes we were flying northward to escape from that marine No Man's Land, the surface forces of the Red and the American fleets made their first contact.
The historical moment, which opens this phase of the Battle of the Windward Passage, was 4:45 p.m., March 4, 1936, and the respective positions of the contending forces at that precise minute are best illustrated in the plate in the index of this volume, compiled with extreme care by the Special Historical Commission appointed by the United States Congress, covering the approach, contact, flight, and pursuit of the opposing fleets.
It shows the advanced scouting line of the Red fleet strung out 200 miles east and west on a course somewhat north of northeast, and located about 240 miles south of Jamaica.
Slightly southwest of Jamaica was the first American battle group, headed into the southeast.
Directly south of the easternmost tip of Haiti was the third American battle group, headed southwest.
Much further to the north, but somewhere almost midway between the first and second battle groups, and almost directly south of Point Morant, was the American Commanding Admiral, the second battle group, and various fleet auxiliary groups.
The American forces were thus disposed at three corners of an irregular triangle, the base of which was gradually contracting as it advanced in a general southerly direction.
Blink Russell was trying to mark these approximate positions on our plotting sheet as we continued our flight into the northeast. We met a squadron of navy planes and joined their course which was to the eastward. There was not a vessel in sight on the smooth surface of the sea below. An hour of this patrol cruising and then all hell lit on us from above.
A compact fighting formation of about forty Red planes dove down on our group. A general dog fight followed, during which each American pilot fought to shake off the two or more Red planes attacking him. In the first five minutes of the fight, four of our planes went down—one in flames. I saw only one Red plane take the fatal plunge.
Binney swung our heavy amphibian into a steep dive as we sought to escape the center of the aerial maelstrom. A speedy Red fighter clung tenaciously to our tail. Leaden pellets tore through the side of the cabin. I was looking into the glass face of the descending altimeter when the dial flew into bits from a bullet. Little Czarnecki took one straight through the head and toppled over dead. Russell clapped one hand on his shoulder with a curse.
"What fine picking we are," Russell said. "Unarmed fools."
"Gas line cut," the hard-working Binney sang out forward. He spun the ship over on one side in another effort to shake off that chattering machine gun behind us. The cabin filled with the strong smell of gas.
"Pressure tank hit," Binney shouted. "I'm dumping her." He pulled the master-switch on the roaring motors just as the amphibian straightened out and touched the water. Fire broke out in the left engine nacelle.
There was a roar over our heads and a splintering stream of machine gun lead ripped through the top of our machine from nose to tail, as the Red pilot delivered the death blow to his fallen prey. He skimmed away to the left, leaving us alone—a blazing wreck on the surface of the sea.
While Binney and I applied pressure extinguishers to the flaming left wing, the air fight above shifted—the three surviving American planes heading off to the north, pursued by three times their number of Reds.
"Not a chance to put that fire out," Russell shouted. "The wings are soaked with gas. Drop the motors and cut the wings. We're all through for flying, but maybe the hull will float if we keep the flames away from it."
We passed the small ax back and forth as we attacked the bolts and metal connections attaching motor to wing and wings to the fuselage. Binney smashed the motor fastenings and both of our Dragon motors sank, hissing beneath a cloud of steam. The three of us placed our shoulders under the burning upper wing and heaved. The hull slid backwards and we shot out from under the flaming mass which fell to the surface of the water in front of us and continued blazing.
"Hell of a mess," said Russell disgustedly. "No water, no food, nothing to rig for a sail, and marooned out here in the middle of the Caribbean while the greatest naval fight in sea history is going on. Poor little Czarnecki," he said, looking into the face of the body on the cabin floor, "poor little devil, your number was sure up today. I almost envy you."
"This is the last plane I'll ever fly without a gun," was Binney's dejected observation. "This is the second bus I've lost trying to defend it by throwing kisses back at a guy with a machine gun. The Chicago Tribune is sure going to have a nice fat expense account for this war."
Night fell black and sudden.
WHILE we bailed and waited, my thoughts went back to a night in February, 1917—a night that I spent in an open boat after the Cunarder Laconia had been sent to the bottom by two German torpedoes. Almost twenty years ago it was, and war was still the only means that civilized man had to settle his differences with his brother. Men still fought to kill. Strange how thoughts of peace come to one when the presence of death is felt. After all, life is a fight and peace only comes at the end—with death.
Across the black waters somewhere off to one side—the direction was lost to me—there came the heavy roll of gunfire. Blink Russell sprang to life.
"God, they're in action," he said, "and the sound is getting closer. I believe it's coming this way. There is just a chance—just a chance for a pick-up."
Now we could see the flashes of the guns—stabs of orange brilliance far down on the black horizon.
"A sweet mess and a hot one," Binney said, "but how in hell they can tell one another apart in the night is more than I can see."
And then a roaring black monster, its three low funnels crested with lurid red, tore past us at terrific speed. The destroyer had missed us by twenty feet. Our rudderless hull bobbed around like a cockle shell in the curling foam of her wake. We shouted in unison, but whether we were heard or not, I do not know.
Now the moving battle was almost on us—guns crashed right and left in the night and shells tore across the water above our heads. Some fell near by, sending jets of water into the air. A terrific explosion right in front of us shattered our eardrums and turned the night into day with a mountain of brilliance that reached upward toward the black zenith.
Outlined against the flames we could see black chunks of wreckage, and on the level of the water a blazing hulk keeled far over on one side. Heads bobbed up and down in the pathway of light that came across the dark water to us.
"God, what was that?" Binney shouted.
"A big fellow from the sound of the explosion," Russell explained. "A battleship at least. That torpedo certainly found its target. I hope to God it was one of ours."
Destroyers shot by us right and left. A disabled one sank beneath the surface not fifty feet on our right, and across the water we could hear the voice of men in the water as they called to one another.
Involuntarily we called to them and several of them swam to us. We pulled them aboard.
They were survivors of the U.S. D-201, attached to the third squadron of the second flotilla of the destroyer group under command of Vice-Admiral Haltigan. Another destroyer stopped close by to pick up survivors. We shouted and they bumped alongside our little hull. We clambered aboard. The wreck of our amphibian drifted off, carrying with it the body of little Czarnecki. We found ourselves on the destroyer leader Wortman which, for some reason or other unknown to me, was affectionately called by her crew "The McGinnis."
Fate thus placed us in the center of the terrific fighting that continued throughout that night of March 4 and the morning of March 5 which naval strategists referred to as the "Second phase of the Battle of the Windward Passage."
Speed Binney's itch for action put him in the crew of a forward gun, while Russell and I joined Commander Haney on the bridge. The speed of the long, slender craft was tremendous. The vibration from her forced draft boilers was terrific to one unaccustomed to the sea. After a few words with the busy Haney, Blink Russell explained to me what was happening.
"The three groups of our fleet that we saw during the day are now retiring northward to a point of concentration. The Red fleet is in pursuit. Our destroyer squadrons are attacking. We are in for a busy night."
"What I can't understand is," I said, "why was the American fleet split up in three widely separated battle groups? Why weren't they all together? I thought it was the accepted naval policy to keep all strength in one unit."
"You are no more puzzled about it than the enemy are," Russell explained. "They bumped into our third battle group on the east and our first battle group 200 miles away on the west. They think they have us separated and they're trying to drive a wedge in between. In the meantime we are taking advantage of modern communications and are concentrating our forces. The advantages of our battle group organization, as you saw it this afternoon, are many.
"In the first place, with each group a complete independent unit, it enables us to apply superior force at any point of contact—In other words, it carries out what old General Nathan B. Forest said during the Civil War—'Get thar furstest with mostest.'
"Second, the battle group organization permits the full use of the high speed of cruisers, destroyers, and aircraft.
"Third, it enables a greater utilization of the submerged functions of the submarine.
"Fourth, it permits any one of the groups to open the fight and provides immediate support for any group attacked by superior forces—in other words, we have easier concentration and greater general flexibility."
"What's the enemy system like?" I asked.
"Just the same old British tactics employed since the time of Nelson. Battleships in one unit, battle cruisers in another unit, and so on down through all the classifications. It's all right for action, but it's too cumbersome and unwieldy for manoeuvering."
Russell's naval strategy was interesting, but the developments of the minute were more so. To me those following hours of darkness will ever remain a wild nightmare of dashing ships, of crashing guns, of explosions, disaster, death.
The course of that night action, as the enemy fought its way north across the Caribbean in pursuit of the retiring American fleet, has been vividly treated by the naval strategists who have given full credit to Admiral Kennedy, the fleet commander, for the orders by which he sent his light forces into the van and the flanks of the advancing enemy, while his three battleship groups sped to their assembly point and reorganized for the culminating action of the next day.
The result of the night fighting proved the soundness of the plan. In the repeated attacks against the enemy's main body, we lost dozens of destroyers which were raked fore and aft by the heavy caliber guns of their greater adversaries and sent to the bottom with the loss of thousands of lives. But in those rushes, some of the destroyers managed to get through the enemy's destroyer and cruiser screen, and they were the ones that drove home the torpedoes which sent to the bottom three capital ships.
An ingenious trick played a prominent part in the successful outcome of the pursuit action, I learned later. Both fleets employed night recognition signals—blinker lights—dots and dashes similar to the challenges and responses of land sentinels.
A Red destroyer encountering an American destroyer blinked its recognition challenge across the darkness. The signal was picked up and recorded by the signal officer of the American destroyer which refrained from answering and succeeded in escaping in the darkness. Possessing this enemy challenge signal, our destroyer upon approaching another enemy ship used the stolen signal to challenge and the Red vessel replied with the proper code response.
The American commander of the destroyer immediately code- radioed both the enemy's challenge and response signals to its destroyer leader which spread it by radio to the other units of the group. Several times during the night our destroyers by reason of this information were able to respond to the enemy's signal challenges and pass unmolested through their destroyer and cruiser screens and release their torpedoes at close range against the battleships.
One purpose of the American night attack was to wear down the numerical superiority of the enemy. The Red fleet, which entered the action March 4 with thirty-one first-line battleships, had only twenty-eight the following morning.
In addition to the American destroyer losses, America lost one first-line battleship—the old battleship Maryland, on which President-elect Hoover made half of his South American trip in 1928, was sunk by an enemy torpedo at three o'clock on the morning of March 5. She had fallen behind her sister ships in the first battleship division and was overtaken by enemy destroyers who broke through her screen and sent home the death blow.
The three Red battleships sunk during the night were: Iron Duke, Royal Sovereign, and The Marne.
The destroyer leader, with gaping holes through her funnels and considerable damage to her decks, but with undiminished speed, was tearing northward an hour before dawn when we came up with the rear of the American fleet which, having just achieved a concentration of its three separate groups, was now deploying in line of battle.
Haney picked out the flagship Oregon midway in the steaming line of battleships and drew alongside. The semaphore carried the information that Russell, Binney, and myself were on the Wortman and wished to be taken aboard. Rope ladders came down over the wet steel flanks of the warship and we clambered up on deck.
The Wortman whirled away to rejoin its flotilla.
As day broke there came the sound of renewed firing south of our position. Russell told me the faster Red fleet had finally caught up with us. This was the opening of the major and final engagement of the Battle of the Windward Passage, illustrated in the accompanying detail chart and legend.
"Our cruisers are screening the rear," he explained. "They are engaging the cruisers in the van of the Red fleet now. The enemy are gradually creeping up on us on a course to the eastward. That means they will get in between us and the east coast of Jamaica. Our position now is about forty-five miles east of Point Morant and we're headed into the Windward Passage."
The single gray line of American battleships—fifteen of them steaming at full speed—were stretched out 500 yards apart in a single line.
The Red battle fleet of twenty-eight battleships was strung out in a similar array on a line off to the west. Aerial observers reported their position as about twenty miles away. Already the aerial combat waged fiercely above as observers from both forces endeavoured to report the exact positions and courses of the two fleets. Russell spoke to the communications officer by telephone and then smiled at me.
"We have intercepted radio code messages sent by Brixton to the Red Commander on Jamaica calling for the full co-operation of the Red air forces on the Island," he explained.
"Now do you understand why we had to suppress your story on the taking of Jamaica? See what it means now?
"Brixton is still unaware that the Island is in our hands. He's still depending on air assistance from the Jamaican air fields. He doesn't know that all those fields are now occupied by squadrons of our air fleet. He has a nice surprise awaiting him."
Seven o'clock came and the fleets still steamed on their separate courses—the Reds slowly creeping up. At that hour they were about ten or fifteen miles almost directly east of Point Morant.
Russell took me to the fighting fore-top of the Oregon, but even with the most powerful binoculars my eyes could not pick out the line of enemy ships just over the rim of the western horizon. In spite of this distance, however, the sound of firing continued and we knew that the cruiser forces were engaged in a running combat. In another hour the Red battleship line was parallel and almost opposite the American line. The big guns on Red ships opened fire at extreme range at this minute. It was just eight a.m.
Russell told me, "The range is at least 32,000 yards—sixteen miles. They're firing from aerial direction. There's a short," he said, pointing to a mountainous upheaval of water a quarter of a mile away.
Then the American guns began to speak as they concentrated their fire on the first ship in the enemy's line. Whether they hit or not I never knew. I couldn't even see what they were firing at. My head ached and my eardrums were splitting from the tremendous crashing of the Oregon's sixteen-inchers.
As the broadsides let go from the fore and aft turrets, the enormous ship would wallow on one side from the recoil and we, perched high in the fighting top, were snapped about like the cracker on the end of a whip.
Billows of acrid smoke belched from the muzzles of the guns and rose upward in mountainous upheavals, completely enveloping us. It stung the eyes and made us gasp and choke. Fortunately, the wind was out of the northeast and the smoke of our guns drifted out away from the ship.
"Old Admiral Kennedy has picked the time and position to his advantage," Russell shouted in my ear. "Notice the rising sun behind us—at our backs—that means, it's in the enemy's eyes."
In spite of the fact that visibility was good, I do not believe either side registered a single serious hit during that hour of the long range duel. But ahead of the heavy ships, the opposing lines of cruisers and destroyers blazed at one another at closer range as each sought to turn the other's line.
"Look," shouted Russell. "Now you can see they have turned in towards us. They are closer now. They are closing the range. No!—by God, it's the air fleet!"
He grabbed the telephone for further information while I peered through the observation slit and tried to project my imagination fifteen miles across the blue water to the scene of the engagement. Tiny specks—a flock of them like a cloud of midges—hovered above a smoky blotch far down on the horizon. That was all I saw.
To our ears came the sound of a terrific explosion and a low, long, distant rumble of guns. It was not until many minutes later that Russell could tell me what had happened. It was this:
A line of American submarines had come up under the Red cruiser screen on the west and launched a torpedo attack on the flank of the battleship's line. As these cigar-shaped engines of death sped toward them, the Red battleship line swung off to the right. And as this turning movement took place, down from above dove squadron after squadron of United States bombers and torpedo planes.
They had come from the captured air fields on Jamaica.
Red squadrons from the enemy air carriers dove into the melee to protect the battleships, whose anti-aircraft batteries blazed away under the disadvantage of the changed course. The air fleet from the land bases gave us numerical superiority above.
The result of this sudden double attack from two unexpected quarters was that two Red battleships, the Warspite and the Rodney, went to the bottom, while the old Italian battleship, Conte di Cavour, was so badly disabled she fell out of the line and became easy prey, within the next hour, for air bombers who finally sank her.
"Three more of their big fellows gone," Russell shouted in my ear. "The odds are getting better. We're fifteen now against their twenty-five."
But Red shells began falling around the Oregon and the other American battleships ahead of and behind us. Our guns blazed away. The enemy shells began to register hits on the American line and Admiral Kennedy changed his course slightly, to open the range.
With its superior speed, the enemy closed the range again and just before ten o'clock a sixteen-inch shell landed at a high angle on the aft deck of the battleship Oklahoma, causing terrific havoc.
The steering gear went out of commission and the Oklahoma left the line at full speed on a wild curve toward the enemy, completely out of control.
As this mad manoeuver brought her closer to the Red line, the guns of a dozen ships concentrated on the derelict. Her end was quick.
With a terrific explosion the ship rolled over and presented its hull to the sky. She went down shortly afterward.
Now Admiral Kennedy sent a charge of destroyers ahead of him and suddenly there appeared between us and the enemy a thick screen of smoke, behind which the American line turned sharply away almost at right angles. The superior range of the enemy guns and the weight of their broadsides plus their advantages in speed was still too much for our line. The Red battle line tried to close in again. After his turning movement of ninety degrees, Admiral Kennedy resumed the same course.
It was now twelve o'clock and the general movement of the fight northward had brought the head of the American line at that moment to a point about thirty-five miles south of the Cuban coast.
The Red line now north of us was between us and the coast. The range was closer now, and I could see through my glasses the second great operation of the general action. It was the springing of another Yankee trap.
At that hour, the submarine division under the command of Vice-Admiral Thomas attacked the Red line from the north, and as the enemy ships turned away to avoid the subs, fresh Yankee air squadrons made their attack from above. These groups of the air fleet came from the fields on the Cuban coast in the vicinity of Santiago and Guatanamo Bay. As the range closed, the American battleships concentrated their fire on the head of the enemy line with terrific effect—and—
"There she goes!" shouted Russell. "Another one down. That's the Marlborough. And look at those heavy hits on the rest of the line. Gee that's punishment! See that one on the left out of control? That's the Aisne and she's just as good as through. And look at the fire amidships on that mottled green one in the center. That's the Queen Elizabeth."
One other enemy ship left the line disabled, at this point. It was the old British battleship Ramillies.
Like waiting vultures, the air forces wheeled above their wounded victims and finished them with bombs. In that hour between twelve and one, as Brixton bent his course eastward, parallel to the Cuban coast, he lost six battleships under the concentrated submarine and air attack and the excellent marksmanship of American gunners. The last two enemy craft to pass out of the picture at this point were the Emperor of India and the Barham.
Admiral Kennedy temporarily withdrew from this successful engagement under cover of a thick curtain of smoke let down by the air fleet, but once more resumed his old course.
The capital strength of the two fleets was now nineteen to fourteen, and the control of the air rested unquestionably with us. Thus approaching battleship parity, Kennedy accepted the challenge to a gun duel and closed to effective battle ranges between 22,000 and 24,000 yards.
The thunder of the guns of the Oregon became deafening—maddening. The belching smoke and flame, the terrific reverberations of the guns, and the crashing, rendering impact of shells striking the armoured turrets, I can only characterize as beyond human endurance. The memory of such frightful minutes turns hair white and leaves its stamp on every shattered, palsied nerve.
The advantage of aerial observation was with us, and Russell loudly swore that the American fire control was far superior to the enemy. Joy actually beamed through his smoke-grimed face.
"God, what a fight," he said. "I've lived all my life in the navy for this minute. Did you see what we landed this time? Two more of Mr. Karakhan's row boats have gone to Davy Jones' Locker. The first was the German, Von Tirpitz, and one Jap baby, the Mutsu. They were assigned to the battle cruiser fleet but Brixton had to call them in to help him."
Russell continued to chortle with glee, pointing out disabling fires on four more enemy vessels. But his joy subsided suddenly as the American fleet suffered its second major casualty of the day.
The new battleship Nevada, after withstanding heavy hits from the concentrated fire of the Nelson, the Royal Oak, and the Resolution, fell behind, and although our air forces endeavoured to screen her plight with smoke curtains, enemy light cruisers and destroyers reached her with a torpedo attack and sent her to the bottom.
"Poor old Jensen," Russell said solemnly—"Classmate of mine at Annapolis; fine fellow. He's on the Nevada. Poor devil, it looks like curtains for him."
Although the terrific battering of the close-range gun duel had perceptibly lowered the speed of both fleets, the head of the Red line was drawing beyond the American battleships. The fire from the Red guns was sporadic and wild. To prevent having his line crossed, Admiral Kennedy executed his next turning movement and headed due south.
Convinced of the superiority of our fire control, which would enable us to inflict damage without receiving it, the Yankee sea dog opened the range to about 30,000 yards and the course of battle swung due south.
It was between four and five in the afternoon now, and the Battle of the Windward Passage had been in progress since dawn. Still on the inner circle, the Yankee gunners once more had the advantage of the afternoon sun at their backs while Brixton's gun layers and spotters had it in their eyes.
The respective battleship strength of the two forces was now seventeen enemy ships against thirteen American. But during that hour in the afternoon absolute control of the air had gone to the Yankee air fleet. Air Marshal Rumsay's war-birds concentrated their full strength on the remaining enemy planes, and in the prolonged aerial combat that followed the Red air forces were completely overwhelmed.
Bombers dived down on the enemy aircraft carriers Eagle, Furious, Courageous, and Glorious.
Thousand-pound bombs crashed through the landing decks into the holds.
Binney's clear voice came to me over the telephone line in the fighting top. Throughout the day he had been with the flying officers attached to the Oregon.
"I've got a bus with a gun on it this time," he said. "The Air Commander is going to let me take off from the deck catapult. Bring Commander Russell down with you and we'll go up and get into the mess. I want one chance to get even."
Five minutes later the three of us were shot off the Oregon's catapult in an armed naval observation plane. Binney nosed up for altitude and we flew southward, looking for trouble.
From out the center of the whirling dog fight above us, a Red plane shot downward at terrific speed. Binney's eyes caught the sight of it.
"There's one," he shouted, "striking it for home, pulling out of the fight. He's had enough. He's going to have some more. This baby belongs to me."
We could tell from the yellow arc on the Red flyer's plane that it was a machine from one of the Japanese aircraft carriers. The flyer, intent on escape, apparently did not see Binney's dive in his direction, or, if he did see it, it is probable he did not expect that an observation plane would dare attack an air fighter.
The next thing I knew, I was looking over Speed's shoulder down into the cockpit of the Japanese plane. Speed's thumb pressed the trigger on the control stick and the two synchronized machine guns above our head poured forth streams of lead.
I saw a seam of black dots—bullet holes—appear as if by magic on the upper surface of the fuselage and extend itself like a dotted line toward the cockpit.
At that minute, the round, black helmeted head of the flyer turned and I was looking into the goggled eyes, and below them the yellow features, of a man who was going to die.
I saw his mouth sag, his jaw drop, his body slump in the seat. The helmeted head nodded almost drowsily. The Red plane nosed up and, falling on one wing, headed downward in the death spin.
I looked into Binney's face. It was tense—cruel—the jaws clenched—his lips moved. I read curses. Binney saw his victim strike the surface of the water and dive under.
"Fine work, Speed, old buzzard," Russell shouted. "Another yellow baby gone to his ancestors. The Red Napoleon better start counting his men."
Binney was quiet, thoughtful, changed. Gone was the hate of the fight. He spoke slowly—almost with embarrassment.
"Poor devil. Know how he felt on that dive, I went down like that once myself. Well, hell, let's look for another."
We witnessed the closing spectacle of the Battle of the Windward Passage from an altitude of about 5,000 feet. At that hour the Red fleet, steaming southward, was between ten and fifteen miles off Cape Dame Marie, the westernmost tip of the Island of Haiti.
The American fleet, further out to sea, and leading to the southwest, was about ten miles northeast of that little speck of barren rock called Navassa Island. I am ashamed to say that I never knew before that this Island was territory of the United States.
That was the location of the respective forces when Admiral Kennedy sprang the third surprise of the day—his grand attack. Another ambuscade of American submarines, that had been waiting in the Gulf of Conaives, attacked the eastern flank of Brixtons' hard-pressed battleship line. At the same time, fresh American air squadrons from the Haitian fields appeared overhead in large numbers.
Once more the synchronized operation of aircraft and seacraft was executed. As the Red line turned westward, to escape the paths of the charging high-speed torpedoes, bombers and torpedo planes from above dove in formation through a hail of anti- aircraft fire from the unprotected battleships. At the some time, the guns of the American line belched broadsides—miles of smoke and fire—as tons of hot metal whistled eastward.
From our position above—safe now in the absence of any enemy airplanes—the water surrounding Brixton's super- dreadnoughts seemed to be boiling. Bubbles—jets—fountains and eruptions leaped into the air from the bright blue surface of the sea.
Missiles, striking the decks of the enemy ships, exploded with terrific force. Masts staggered and went down in tangles of wreckage.
Terrific internal explosions burst upward from the bowels of several vessels, turning them into active volcanoes of flame and smoke.
It was frightful destruction. It was the concentration of all of man's scientific, death-dealing devices in one tremendous effort. It was the heaviest blow ever delivered by the American Navy.
Russell beside me talked incessantly. Like a radio announcer he pointed out the losses, counted the score, tallied the cost.
"There goes the Benbow," he said. "She was the flagship of the first British battleship division and a beautiful piece of machinery. That one on her side over there is all that is left of the Revenge. That one with both masts down is the Somme. She was the flagship of the French battleship division. And that one going down by the head—there she goes with her stern out of the water—you can see her screws; take a last look at her—she's the old Giulio Cesare of the Italian division. That one that just blew up—the one furthest to the east—is the Nagato, and the one burning right beside her is the Togo. Both are of the Japanese eighth division. They were the pride of the old Imperial Japanese Navy. I believe the Nagato was the flagship for Admiral Oki. Brixton had him commanding the battle cruiser fleet."
This terrific toll of six capital ships was the damage inflicted by Kennedy's grand attack off Cape Dame Marie. In battle cruisers, armoured cruisers, light cruisers, and smaller craft, the losses were even higher. They have been enumerated by the naval experts, who have analyzed the tactics of the action.
The remnants of the Red line now headed south out of the Windward Passage and bound for the Caribbean, seeking escape from the successive pitfalls and traps it had encountered in that expanse of water bound by the shores of Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti.
But Kennedy was not through. Eleven battleships of the great Red fleet remained, but now the odds were with us. Thirteen American super-dreadnoughts were still in action.
Kennedy closed the Red line, now almost in confusion, and in the growing dusk the final gun action of the battle took place just southeast of Navassa Island.
Fortunately for us above, the evening wind from the northeast frequently dispelled the heavy clouds of smoke beneath which the battle evolved into a series of individual ship-to-ship combats. Over an expanse of some hundred square miles of sea area, this terrible, final drama of the sea spread itself beneath our eyes.
Recorders have since shown that it was at this point that Admiral Brixton sent out from his badly disabled flagship, the Nelson, the general retirement order, at the same time ordering his destroyers and submarines to put up a desperate rear guard action.
In the first hour of the following pursuit, the victorious American line ran afoul of the submerged Red submarines that had been coming up from the south. Their tardy appearance in the action was unexplained and in the confusion that followed their appearance the fear rose that maybe victory would be snatched from our grasp at the last minute.
Two mighty American ships, the West Virginia—carrying the flag of Rear-Admiral Atwood—and the Idaho, received their death blows and went to the bottom, although it was possible to save a number of survivors on both ships. This culminating disaster checked American exultation. Admiral Kennedy, reorganizing his remaining forces, pushed the pursuit of the surviving Red battleships.
Binney landed Russell and I beside the Oregon, and we went aboard. Binney stood by, taking the sheets as they came from my typewriter and rushing with them to the radio communication office, from which place they went out through the air to carry the glorious song of victory to the folks back home.
With nerves shaking from the prolonged excitement and multiple pots of hot coffee, I sank back in my chair exhausted as I typed the last page of my story on the Battle of the Windward Passage.
The far-flung armies of the Red Napoleon might still stand on American soil, but the sea power with which this yellow military genius held his grip around the world was broken. It was the dawn of victory.
"Gee, chief, what a story," Binney said. "I hope they read it over the air, broadcast it to the world—I'd give a million dollars to be beside Margot up there in Massachusetts when she hears it.—Good God—what's going to happen to her now?"
I was too exhausted to reply and I hated to think.
OF all the events of tremendous world importance during the epochal year of 1936, nothing so changed the course of the war as the American naval victory of the Windward Passage.
The enormous expeditionary forces of the Red Napoleon in the Western Hemisphere—4,000,000 men on the New England- Canadian front: 2,000,000 men occupying Washington, Oregon, and old British Columbia on the northwest Pacific front; and another army of 2,000,000 holding the Mexican front of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and occupying the rest of Central America as far south as the destroyed Panama Canal—all these far-flung forces depended for their very existence upon millions of tons of sea-borne supplies.
The destruction of the Red fleet released the victorious American Navy from its long confinement in the Gulf of Mexico. Our remaining battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines steamed forth unopposed. Control of the seas passed into our hands and, with it, Karakhan's vital lines of communication with his European bases and the rest of the world went out of existence.
American sea forces, after pursuing and sinking or capturing the battered remnants of Brixton's mighty armada, blockaded Karakhan's base ports in the Atlantic and Pacific. The Red flag was swept off the seas. Bermuda and Trinidad, without sea defences, surrendered and became American naval bases.
American naval demonstrations were staged off the now idle Red ports in Europe and Asia and this show of strength was sufficient to start the internal crumbling of the enormous political machine which the Red Napoleon had built up so hurriedly to control his vast conquered territories.
During the terrific fighting of 1934 and 35, Karakhan's demands upon the man power and economic wealth of his people had been enormous. The employment of such a tremendous amount of shipping as required for the supply of his overseas forces had gravely affected the state of overseas commerce between the continents under his power. Serious shortages had developed in materials and supplies not essential to war, but greatly demanded by the several millions. Wholesale rationing, widespread restrictions, taxations, and levies for the support of the enormous military machine had caused just sufficient minor revolts as to indicate that the underlying morale of the people was not what it had been.
Karakhan's failure to overcome America in one year, as he had promised, and the crushing defeat of his sea forces, served to kindle growing discontent on his home front.
Not so, however, with his armies in the field. Proclamations, printed in all languages, were distributed to the yellow, brown, red, and black divisions, as well as the solid white Communist forces, urging them to a greater effort and intimating that their very lives depended upon victory.
"Comrades, we are on foreign soil far across the seas from our homes and families," one of the proclamations read. "Our sea communications behind us have been destroyed. We face the forces of race prejudice and capitalistic greed, and it will be their aim to destroy us. Our backs are to the sea, and the sea is no longer ours. Only one escape presents itself, and that is to break through the line, reach the industrial heart of America, conquer the country in the name of our great Karakhan, occupy it, and live.
"One more great effort and the last obstacle is removed. On to victory."
American morale was mounting. The tremendous economic forces
of the nation had begun to exert themselves to reach new records.
Ex-President Hoover's War Industries Board had now geared up the
industrial machine of the nation to a production peak exceeding
anticipations. By the distribution of super-power, industry had
been decentralized from the old congested districts so that
production of vital supplies continued night and day, regardless
of the frequent local interruptions from increasingly heavy enemy
air raids.
Our armies along the fronts were no longer raw, untrained, unprepared recruits. Two years of bitter fighting, and casualties totalling over 2,000,000, was the school of experience from which came the veteran armies of 1936. Nine million Americans were under arms and 5,000,00 of them were located on the New England front from Lake Erie to Albany and down the west bank of the Hudson to New York City.
No scarcity of supplies now—no lack of equipment. It was the greatest fighting machine ever mobilized under the American flag. And now for the first time it was to have assistance from the air.
The American air fleet, which had turned the trick so nicely in the Battle of the Windward Passage, had flown north from the Caribbean the day after the crushing defeat of the Red fleet. New pilots and machines replaced the losses suffered in the sea and air fight, and Air Marshal Rumsay's forces were reorganized and enlarged to compose the fighting cloud that would now contend with Karakhan in the air.
Control of the seas was ours, and now was to come the decision on the question of the mastery of the air. During the first half of that month of March, 1936, the opposing forces on the ground girded themselves for the coming spring drive.
The American air offensive was launched on March 17. The objective was an attack on Boston, which, in addition to being Karakhan's military headquarters and principal base, was also his principal air force center. Rumsay directed the operations personally from aloft. The flagship of the air fleet was a large, heavy-powered, light, armoured observation plane.
Air General De Long was in command of the Red air forces which numbered between 6,000 and 7,000 planes.
Our air fleet was composed of 400 squadrons of eighteen planes each, making a total air strength of 7,200 machines. It was the largest single fighting formation that ever took the air. The front flying fields for this enormous air armada extended over the States of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and parts of New York.
The fleet made its aerial assembly an hour after dawn on the morning of March 17 in the vicinity of Philadelphia. It flew straight out to sea and, once out of sight of the coast, took a northeast course.
A few hours later the American battle cloud swept in from the Atlantic and appeared over Boston. Once more the rain of death fell on the old city and enemy anti-aircraft guns fired their barrages but no enemy planes were in sight. Rumsay's scouts reconnoitred far inland to the north and south, but the Red airdromes were empty. This curious absence of the Red fleet was explained at one o'clock that afternoon when Rumsay received the following radio communication:
TREMENDOUS ENEMY AIR FORCE THOUSANDS OF PLANES OVER BUFFALO, NEW YORK STOP INDUSTRIAL SECTION OF CITY IN RUINS STOP NIAGARA FALLS POWER PLANT DESTROYED ANTI-AIRCRAFT DEFENCES OUT OF ACTION
Rumsay radioed immediate orders to his group commanders and
the American air fleet started westward across Massachusetts.
Almost at the same time the enemy cloud, having completed the
destruction of Buffalo, swung eastward on its return flight. The
fleets met at four o'clock in the afternoon in the vicinity of
Albany, New York. Both were low on fuel. In the flight across
Massachusetts, Rumsay had ordered every one of his planes to
dispose of their bombs—thus lightening their burden.
It was a fight against time. Both fleets had been in the air between eight and ten hours and tanks were almost empty. The Red fleet was furthest from its bases around Boston. Thousands of ground soldiers watched this great battle of the skies. Planes fell thick and fast—tumbling down out of control; many were in flames. Rumsay's orders were to fight on to the last shot and the last drop of gas. The combat covered a tremendous area and took place at all altitudes up to 21,000 feet.
Shortly after five o'clock, a cold wind from the east came to the assistance of the battling American forces and the air combat swung westward over the battle front. Soon planes began to fall from lack of fuel. Now the battle was behind the American lines and the advantage was distinctly with Rumsay. The American Air Commander generally held in line of formation to the north and to the east of the enemy. Dusk was falling as the fight swept southward and westward into New York State.
Now both contestants began to go down. There were hundreds of crashes as the planes made forced landings in the dark. Enemy air men, falling behind the lines, were captured by civilians and soldiers. Many, whose planes landed in the country, sought to escape by hiding. One yellow pilot, landing safely in a field near Cooperstown, shot a motorist, refilled his tank from the automobile, and managed to fly away in the night.
As a whole, the air combat was indecisive, but after its conclusion the advantage rested with the American forces. It was estimated that two-thirds of Karakhan's air fleet had either been shot down or had been forced to land without fuel in back of the American lines. The American casualties, including planes destroyed by crashes and forced landings, totalled 2,000.
Thus it was with distinct aerial superiority that the American forces opened that famous victory drive on the first day of April, 1936. It was preceded by a tremendous bombardment along the entire battle front from Lake Erie to the Harlem river.
On the second day of the artillery preparation, our infantry advanced across the fields of barbed wire on the east bank of the Hudson opposite Albany. In the first day's fighting, much of it bitter hand-to-hand bayonet combats, the enemy were driven out of Waterford and Troy. Opposite Albany the advance took the direction of Nassau and was supported by the massed American artillery on the west bank of the Hudson. Night and day the enemy hinterland was subjected to a terrific rain of bombs from the air.
The new American Rickenbacker tank, with its high-speed devices, proved itself vastly superior to the enemy's Vauxhall type. The gasoline cavalry charged across fields of barbed wire, ripping up the entanglements and crashing in dugouts. The speed and independence of these land wire ships—which made their first appearance at his time—provided the most effective weapon of the attack.
Trench line after trench line was taken and occupied by the advancing infantry. Low-flying attack planes co-operated with the tanks.
American losses in the first week of the advance were severe, but not out of keeping with the progress made and the obstacles overcome. In seven days our lines pushed twenty-five miles eastward and crossed the New York-Massachusetts border. The center of the line held on Williamstown on the Hoosic river, and twenty miles directly south we had occupied Pittsfield and were still pushing in. North Adams and Briggsville fell into our hands, and on the north our forces, after intensive fighting, occupied the town of Bennington.
Karakhan's efforts to apply pressure on the left flank of the American push were countered by a terrific bombardment of his infantry concentrations caught in the open by five groups of the American air fleet.
Binney and I covered the battle daily from the air. Albany was now out of the range of the Red guns and we used it as a base from which I dispatched my stories. My dispatch plane, another amphibian, still carried the Red letter C on the green disk, marking its function, but we were no longer unarmed. The bus now carried two machine guns forward and one which I could operate from the rear. The plane in a pinch would accommodate four passengers.
On April 15 General Mullen's battling tanks had pushed through to Greenfield and Northhampton on the Connecticut River, and that phase of the offensive which the historians call the Battle of the Berkshire Hills was concluded.
Karakhan made a bitter stand on the line of the Connecticut river. General Subrev, who had been in command of the army group, was first relieved and then executed. Karakhan personally directed operations from advance headquarters in Worcester.
But the American machine was in motion. By weight of numbers, courage, determination, and the very momentum it had gained, it broke the line of the Connecticut opposite Holyoke and subjected the enemy forces in Springfield to such a downpour of heavy shells and gas that they were forced to withdraw.
Our supremacy in the air was not unquestioned. Night and day we carried the air fight behind the enemy lines. Without observers in the air, Karakhan's gunners could fire from map calculations only.
And then the panic started to the south. Yellow hordes, on the Harlem river opposite the ruins of Manhattan Island, began to withdraw. The withdrawal at first was orderly with well-fought rear guard actions, as the enemy dropped back from a line running from Yonkers, New Rochelle, and later on Tarry town, and White Plains to Port Chester.
But American troops, crossing the Hudson on newly constructed pontoons, maintained continual contact with the retreating Reds and the retreat which had started in an orderly fashion soon became disorganized. More and more stragglers dropped behind to accept capture. The roads through New Haven, Hartford, Providence, and Fall River became clogged with traffic. Hundreds of thousands of troops madly strove by all means of locomotion to reach Boston before Mullen's flank movement took the city. The backbone of the Red strength in New England had been broken. The retreat became a rout. Fifty thousand men, composing the Red forces on Long Island, surrendered by negotiation. Through Connecticut, regiments and divisions, unable to move in any direction, suffered terrific losses from the visitations of our air bombers. Unprotected above, they surrendered by spelling out the word "Surrender" in large white panels on the ground.
Worcester fell, then Fitchburg—the debacle had started.
In the midst of these tremendous events, as the American advance pushed forward on Boston, I received a code radio message from Whit Dodge, informing me that Margot had failed to meet him at his last rendezvous at Lobster Rock near Salem.
Dodge wired that his submarine was patrolling off the coast and that he had been ashore three nights in succession, but Margot had not been at the appointed place. He wired his fear that something had happened to prevent her from coming there. I communicated the information to Speed Binney, and we made a joint and immediate decision.
"I can land near Greystones," Speed said. "Know a nice little field that I can side slip into, one-fourth mile from the house and back from the road. Spotted it one time when Lin and I were walking."
We left Albany an hour before dawn and flew east.
"If that yellow devil ever lays so much as one hand on my girl," Speed said, "I'll tear his heart out."
It was not only the fear of Karakhan that was in my mind about Margot; it was the thought of the rabble of that retreating army as it plodded north to get away from American retribution. In victory or defeat, white women were still desirable spoils to the yellow troops of the Red Napoleon.
While Speed flew the plane, I busied myself cleaning and oiling the four automatics we carried for side-arms. Both of us knew the hazard of being caught behind the enemy's lines, but the object at stake was worth the risk, and also I believed that there was a fair chance of success in our plan to get Margot out of Greystones and escape with her in the plane.
We could see the panic stricken masses in the streets of Boston as we flew over the city, and continued up the coast toward Salem. Somewhere in these waters off shore I knew that Whit Dodge and the V-4 were keeping their vigil and I shared also the anxiety that Dodge felt for the girl he loved.
Binney headed the plane inland from Salem, flying above the familiar road we knew during the days of our convalescence hardly two months previous. What tremendous events had transpired in that brief space!
"Just a couple of miles from here," Speed shouted. "It ought to be about over there where that smoke is." We were above the spot in less than a minute.
"That's the lodge and the driveway, but where's the house?" I shouted, and then my eyes fell upon the unexpected pile of smoking ruins, dismantled walls, with blackened, gaping holes that had once been windows.
"He's beat it," shouted Binney, circling low over the wreckage where Karakhan had once kept his unwanted white wife and the English girl whose daring secret service work behind the enemy lines had played such an important part in the present rout of the Red armies.
Binney was swearing. "The yellow skunk. Burns his camp and takes it on the lam. God! Where's Margot?" There was fear in the boy's voice. "I've got to land and find out."
"No use, Speed," I cautioned him. "The place is deserted. And if she is in the ruins, it's too late. There's only one hope now. Find Karakhan. From the thoroughness with which he has cleaned up Greystones, it means he is definitely in flight. But where?"
"Can only be one place left," Binney replied. "From the way his army is rolling back, he's licked on land, and we have the jump on him in the air. His only chance of escape is the sea."
"Not the sea, Speed, but under the sea," I shouted in his ear with new hope. "What a pair of saps we are. We have forgotten The Star of Asia."
"The super-sub, of course. Margot told me about it," said my pilot eagerly. "She told me Karakhan always kept it moored up the coast in a cove near Manchester. It's only ten miles from here. There's just a chance. We'll be there in a couple of shakes."
As we headed at full speed up the coast, I recalled with more detail the description Margot had given me of this enormous modern submarine which Karakhan had turned into a private undersea yacht. I had asked her why Dodge didn't sneak in some night and destroy it, and the girl had told me that Dodge knew all about The Star of Asia but had avoided operations so near Greystones for fear of directing Karakhan's suspicions to his own domestic circle. The boy feared any move which might betray Margot's daring mission in the household of Karakhan's wife.
"No luck, chief." Speed's disappointed voice brought me back from my thoughts. "There's the cove. Surface water smooth and clear. You can see the bottom, it's so shallow. She's not here. We're out of luck again."
"Let's put back to Long Island Sound—notify the patrol fleet to be on the lookout," I advised.
"Too late now," said Speed sadly. "It's probable he's on a course north for Halifax. He won't stay submerged. It's too slow. He'll travel on the surface to make speed. We might be able to spot him from the air. It's a last chance, and a slim one, and I want to take it."
I agreed, but reminded the boy we had been in the air a long time from Albany, and I didn't think we had many hours' gas left in the tanks. His reaction to our prospect of being marooned far out from land without fuel was a shrug. I read the thoughts behind his tense, drawn face. What difference, if he lost the girl?
Flying northward on the Halifax course, we scanned the surface of the sea in all directions, as far as my binoculars would reach, but not only was there no trace of The Star of Asia, but no craft of any kind was in sight. With the American blockade ships patrolling further out to sea, these waters were dangerous even to the smallest boats. Dodge's submarine was engaged in this duty, and I hoped that in case of fuel failure we might be picked up by one of them.
"Looks like a fishing boat down there ahead of us," said Binney. I looked in that direction and saw the tiny speck of white on the surface far ahead. I kept my glasses on it as we drew nearer.
"It's an open boat," I said. "Now I can see it. It's probably a life boat washed overboard or drifted out to sea."
"I can see someone in it," said Speed. "We'll drop down and ask for information. Maybe they've seen what we're looking for."
As he headed down on a long glide, my glasses soon discerned the fact that there was but one person, and I was almost certain it was a woman in the boat. I told Speed, just as he brought the amphibian's bottom down on the surface and started taxiing toward the small boat.
The woman was standing now and waving her arms to us. When we were thirty feet away, I recognized her. It was Lin Karakhan.
"Where's Margot?" Speed's voice rang out, as he taxied alongside with idling motors. I reached out and, catching Lin around the waist, drew her into the plane.
"In the submarine," the distraught woman gasped. "In The Star of Asia. He has her with him. He put me adrift here to die."
"How long ago?" I demanded.
"About an hour."
"Where are they going? Which way?" Speed questioned hastily, as he opened his throttles.
"I don't know—Halifax, I think, for fuel. And then to England."
"Hold everything and watch 'em sharp!" Speed shouted over his shoulder, as we shot into the air. "We're on his trail, chief. Our luck has changed if our gas holds out." And then to Lin,—"Has he—is she—he hasn't hurt her, has he?"
"No, Speed. Not yet, at least; but he will," the white wife of the Yellow Scourge replied. "He is beside himself with rage. I've never seen him in such a temper. He attributes his defeat on the front to betrayal."
She told me how Karakhan, with a few staff officers, had appeared at Greystones at dawn, had forced Lin and Margot into a closed car, ordered everybody out of the house, and then blown it up. As Speed and I had surmised, he had motored to Manchester, taken the women and Colonel Boyar with him aboard The Star of Asia, and put to sea.
"He fears the blockade," Lin explained, "and is running submerged most of the time, but he came up two or three times to make observations. The last time, he tore me from Margot's arms and dragged me up on deck. I was put in the small boat and left there.
"His last words, shouted to me as the sub moved off, were 'Go back to your country of pale-faced mongrel immigrants! The next consort of Karakhan of Kazan will be a woman worthy of the blood of Genghis Khan.'"
The amphibian seemed to leap under with the power of its speeding engines. Speed's eyes searched the waters ahead. With binoculars I scanned the horizon right and left. Lin was sitting with her back to the front, her graying black hair somewhat disheveled, her eyes aimlessly looking out across space and sea behind us.
"I just saw a puff of smoke out there," she said, pointing over my shoulder, astern. I swung the glasses quickly and shouted to Speed.
"Turn right and head back! Something doing over there. Can't make out what it is, but we'd better find out."
"It's a sub," said the pilot, "but not The Star of Asia. I can tell from her super-structure. She's a Yank type. Looks like a 'V' class. But what's she shooting at? I can't see anything else."
"I can now," I replied. "It's another sub—in the low haze, about a mile beyond her. Here, Lin, look through these. Can you recognize the other one?" She placed the binoculars to her eyes.
"I can't see—oh, now I do—yes I see. I don't know if it is the same. Yes—yes—it is. It's The Star of Asia. It's Karakhan!"
The wind through our struts rose to a shriek. Speed had heard and we were whistling down the long slide at a terrific pace. Now, with the binoculars, I could see the exchange of shots between the deck guns of the two undersea craft—a strange combat unheard of before by me.
Both, or at least one of the ships, must be disabled and unable to submerge before either one of them would have engaged in such an unaccustomed battle. A body blow to either would prove fatal. The vibration of our speeding amphibian was frightful.
"Take it a little slower, Speed," I cautioned. "You'll tear the wings off her." He ignored my warning, and I held my breath in fear as he brought her bottom down on the surface at a terrible speed, and taxied in between the two fighting subs.
"Not there, for God's sake!" I shouted. "Swing around to the other side. We're between both fires. They'll rake us."
As I spoke, the forward gun on the Yank sub barked, and I saw the gun on the after deck of The Star of Asia crash over and point skyward. I returned my eyes to the Yankee crew which had displayed such marksmanship, and saw them preparing to fire again. But more welcome to me were the single letter and figure standing out in white on the wet side of the super-structure. It was the V-4.
"It's Whit Dodge!" I shouted.
"He'll kill Margot if he lets go another shot," Binney replied, racing through the water toward the gaping muzzle of the cannon.
We saw the gun crew load. A blue clad figure on the super- structure lowered his binoculars and angrily waved an arm, ordering us out of the way. I recognized Dodge.
"For God's sake, cease firing!" Speed shouted, bringing the amphibian alongside and blocking the pointed gun with its wings.
"You'll sink her. Karakhan's aboard," I shouted.
"I hope to God I do," Whit Dodge shouted back. "Get that crate out of the way." Then to his gunners:
"Get her in the hull, lads! Never mind the superstructure. Give her hell and sink her!"
"Margot's there too, you idiot. Karakhan has her a prisoner," I shouted. "My God, man, you will kill HER!"
"Cease firing!" Whit commanded. I could see his face whiten beneath its tan. "Good God, I've hit her twice already. She's disabled and both her guns are out. I hope she isn't sinking."
His eyes and glasses anxiously sought the deck of the craft. I looked also, and saw a cloud of smoke suddenly interpose itself alongside and obliterate the forward half of the craft from our view.
"She's afire!" one of the crew shouted. "Shall we prepare the small boat, sir?"
"Stand by your piece and be ready to fire," Dodge commanded. "She's not afire. That's a smoke bomb, and he's screening something on his forward deck. I can't see what it is. He's up to something dirty."
"Here then, take Lin on board, and we will find out what they are doing while you keep them covered with the guns," I said, as I helped Lin out of the amphibian onto the deck of the submarine.
At that moment a speeding object skimmed just above the water out from behind the smoke cloud.
"It is a plane," Speed shouted. "That yellow pup thinks that he is going to get away now. He is my meat this time," and the motors roared as we leaped from the water and headed straight for the other machine.
It was a light seaplane of the common folding-wing type carried by the larger subs and released from deck hatches. It had three open cockpits and pontoon landing gears. I could see the twin Maxim guns on the forward edge of the upper plane and noticed the revolving machine gun mounted over the rear. A heavy, bulky figure sat crouched under the gun.
Speed climbed faster than the Red plane and soon had achieved his fighting position above and behind. We crept closer and I could tell that Speed was getting ready for a dive from the way he tested his forward machine gun, ripping out a couple of shots to be sure there were no jams.
We were closer now and I could see the bulky parachute bundles strapped like cushion packs on the backs of the three occupants of the plane. Occasionally the pilot in the forward seat would look anxiously over his shoulder and change direction in an effort to shake off his pursuer. Then I saw the gun mounted over the rear cockpit trained on us, although the distance was yet too great for effective firing. I looked into the yellow face in back of the machine guns and knew at once that the man behind the gun was no other than the Red Napoleon himself.
"Get ready, chief," Speed shouted, "I'm going to dive and let him have it."
Speed nosed her down and trained his guns. I saw his thumb in position on the machine gun trigger of the control stick.
Karakhan fired. A burst of lead shattered the wooden cowling in front of our faces, and then the figure in the second cockpit turned around; the face was white. It was Margot.
"My God, that was close," Binney said. "I'd almost fired." He banked the machine out of the line of the stream of bullets pouring from Karakhan's machine gun. "I don't dare shoot him down; I'll kill her. God, what a mess to be in!"
Karakhan noticed our sudden change from the offensive to the defensive and must have guessed the reason. He knew that we would not endanger the girl by firing. Taking immediate advantage of our dilemma, the Red plane turned.
Around and around in circles we went. Speed endeavouring to keep out of the stream of machine gun fire to which we could not reply.
And then something happened; then the quick wit of the girl, air-wise and battle-wise: the girl that Speed Binney had taught to fly came to relieve the situation.
Karakhan was busy with the machine gun in the rear of the cockpit; the pilot was controlling the plane in the forward cockpit.
We saw a tall, slender body stand up in the middle compartment, straining against the terrific rush of air.
One foot reached the coping, and Margot launched herself into space. We saw her parachute open immediately. She drifted down toward the water.
"Atta gal, Maggie," Speed sang out at the controls, as he turned the plane to the direction taken by the drifting parachute. Our thoughts were not on Karakhan now. To hell with him. Get the girl. He could have flown to England for all either of us cared. Our eyes and hearts were on Margot.
But then came the final act of the yellow fiend. The Red plane swerved, dove, and brought its guns to bear on that little inflated patch of white silk, on which Margot's life hung.
"Christ!" yelled Binney, and with a sudden burst of speed he headed straight for the Red plane. His machine guns spoke in unison, and a stream of lead tore through the Red pilot's cockpit. The plane nosed up, fell on one wing, and started down to the water. I saw Karakhan helplessly enmeshed in the belts and mountings of the machine gun, while he struggled to extricate himself.
We went down to the surface several minutes later beside Margot and pulled her aboard, white and somewhat breathless, but unhurt. Speed held her in his arms. "Maggie, what an ace you are!"
We taxied over to the wreck of the Red plane. It was afloat although its pontoons had crumpled under when it struck water. The pilot was dead and Karakhan was sitting limp in the rear cockpit, a trickle of blood on his forehead where it had come in contact with the machine gun mounting.
"He's alive," I said, dashing some water into the motionless face.
"Yes," said Binney, "he would be."
Karakhan revived slightly and we dragged him aboard the amphibian. I sat beside him and Speed launched the plane into the air with its now heavy load of four people. To the south we picked up The Star of Asia and the V-4 steaming side by side toward us. The Stars and Stripes flew from the superstructure of the captured sub, indicating that Whit Dodge had put a prize crew aboard her. I also presumed, and correctly, that Dodge was on board in command of his prize.
Yankee sailors drew us alongside. Speed left the controls and helped Margot out. They stepped on deck together, arm in arm. Back of them the tall, thin figure of the dejected Karakhan walked, a streak of blood showing wet on his yellow forehead. In his hands he carried the useless leather flying helmet. I brought up the rear of the procession.
Lin was standing near the conning tower beside Dodge when we came on board. She gasped and a look of pain came across her face as her eyes fell on the blood trickling on the forehead of her husband. She stepped forward involuntarily with hands outstretched toward him. "You're hurt—you're hurt!"
In a flash the yellow features changed to that Asiatic mask of cruelty we all knew so well. He spoke almost through clenched teeth. His words came faster and with more venom than I had ever heard from him.
"You," he snarled, "you did this. This is your work—the filthy work of a white bitch. You have been the curse of my life—you and all of your white sisters high and low!"
And suddenly his right hand, from which dangled the heavy leather helmet, shot out and he whipped it across the woman's face. What occurred next happened so quickly that it seemed unreal. Before Speed or I could move, a sailor tugged out his service revolver and fired.
Even though staggered and almost blinded by the stinging blow, Lin saw his movement, whirled, and threw herself in front of Karakhan. At that instant came the shot and the bullet found its target in her breast. A wide-eyed, puzzled look came over the face I knew so well, and she slumped down at the feet of her husband.
Margot and I were beside her in a minute. Margot held her in her arms. Lifting her head she looked up into the cruel, yellow features of the Red Napoleon.
"I love you," she whispered. She died in Margot's arms.
Karakhan stood unmoved, a bluejacket holding him by either hand.
Whit Dodge confronted him. "You yellow beast. That's the last white woman you'll ever lay hands on."
One of Karakhan's rare smiles crossed his face as he turned his head and looked into Margot's face. Dodge, watching him closely, said with slow emphasis:
"Do you know who this lady is? I have suspected that you knew all the time."
Karakhan's smile was enigmatical.
"I'll wipe that smile off your mush," Speed said angrily, and then to Dodge—"What do you mean—Know who she is? If anybody wants to know who she is—she's my girl and she's going to be my wife."
Dodge was staggered. He looked steadily and long into the beaming eyes and flushed cheeks of Margot. Then his speech came with hesitation and deference.
"Is—is—is this true?"
"It is, Whit, I love him," the girl replied.
Speed was beside her in an instant, his arms around her. Dodge hesitated, then extended his hand and said:
"You win, Speed, you win more than you know," and then facing Margot continued: "I presume you release me from my promise of silence?"
Margot looked startled. Her eyes sought Speed's with a smile and then she nodded assent to Dodge. He bowed formally:
"I then have the honour and the pleasure to wish all the happiness in the world to your Royal Highness," he said.
"Is that supposed to be comedy?" said Speed, looking at Dodge half-puzzled, half-angry.
"No, Speed, it's the truth," Dodge replied. "The lady who is to be your wife is her Royal Highness, the Princess Victoria Louise."
Speed's amazement was beyond speech. He looked from one to the other and then turned to the girl:
"Maggie, is this on the level?"
"Yes, Speed."
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
A slow flush mounted Margot's cheeks and spread to her forehead, but she looked Speed squarely in the eyes. "I thought it might make a difference if you knew—a difference between us, dear."
Speed pulled her closer. "It wouldn't make any difference if you were the Queen, herself," he said, "and anyway, I've got a swell new title for you: 'Mrs. Speed Binney.' How's that?"
A cheer came to us from across the water. Five hundred feet to the side men were rushing out on the deck of the V-4. Strings of different coloured flags ran up the rigging connecting the super- structure with the stern and the bow. The crew on deck were cheering and throwing their hats in the air. The V-4 pulled closer to us. A bluejacket aloft was madly wigwagging a message with his arms.
"What's all the shouting about?" Speed asked. An officer at a megaphone shouted across to us:
"The war is over, American Official Communiqué just received by radio reads:
"GENERAL BOLLINOV CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE RED ARMIES OF NEW ENGLAND SURRENDERS STOP UNDER WHITE FLAG OF TRUCE HE ENTERED AMERICAN LINES SOUTH OF BOSTON TO NEGOTIATE ARMISTICE STOP KARAKHAN HAS ESCAPED AND IS NOW SUPPOSED TO BE IN FLIGHT."
Good Lord, the story. Me standing here tingling sentimentally
over a couple of romantic young fools, and the biggest news story
in the world in my hands and I hadn't brains enough to transmit
it. The whole Army and Navy of the United States looking for the
Red Napoleon, and I had captured him.
A few minutes later the first lines of my story dated "On board Karakhan's super-submarine, The Star of Asia" were going over the air by radio. It was a story and a scoop, and I am satisfied that the fates will never be so kind to me again—I know such luck can never come twice.
While my dispatch was going out over the air, we were steaming toward New York to be met half an hour later by warships, destroyers, and planes. They converged on us from all directions. The air was thick with messages—so many that the hardworking Yankee operators on The Star of Asia could not receive them all.
We were transferred to the cruiser Minneapolis and the messages continued to come in throughout the night. In the morning we were off Sandy Hook when orders were received to proceed to Norfolk. New York was in ruins and the mine fields of the harbour prevented entrance.
I radioed a newspaper bulletin on this change in plans, and the rest of the story is history. The world now knows that American white feeling in Norfolk was so bitter against this yellow man who had enunciated the slogan—CONQUER AND BREED—that it was not possible to land him in the city. We anchored in Hampton Roads and Karakhan was turned over to a group of staff officers under the command of General H. B. Smith. (No relation to the "hardboiled Smith" of A. E. F. fame.)
We were transferred aboard the battleship Oregon and sailed for Bermuda, where the Red Napoleon has been in exile ever since.
Every schoolboy knows the rest of the story—the subsequent capitulation of the Red forces in the Pacific Northwest and in Central America; the counter-revolutionary outbreaks in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna; the political disintegration of the ambitious communistic federation, which Karakhan had expected to complete with the conquest of America and call it "The Red Union of the World."
And I have no need to describe Europe's return to nationalistic sanity and the economic reorganization of the Continent under the new name, "The United States of Europe" or how the repatriation of the millions of yellow soldiers in America required almost eighteen months of time and necessitated the employment of all the remaining shipping in the world.
Hundreds of thousands of Karakhan's white troops found their blessing and good fortune as a result of the war. America's extensive colonization program gave to them that which they had lacked all their lives—land. Today they are the thriving colonists and citizens of the new States of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and old British Columbia, now called Vancouver. The inclusion of all of the Canadian provinces as equal States of the United States of America was the result of the great Canadian plebiscite of November, 1937.
The political merger of the two peoples became necessary in view of the economic potentialities of a unified Europe.
St. Louis remained the capital and the Stars and Stripes flew from the Arctic Circle to the Mexican border. The old British strongholds of Jamaica, Trinidad, and Bermuda are no longer under European dominion. British Honduras and the three Guyanas are now parts of the American Republics Guatemala, Venezuela, and Brazil.
Speed Binney and Margot flew over from New York to visit me here in Bermuda just last week. The former Princess Victoria Louise is now a Congresswoman, representing the State of Saskatchewan. Speed says that Margot's victory in the election of 1940 squares up the old score with the British, who took an American girl—Lady Astor—and made her a member of Parliament. Americans now elected a Princess of the old British Royal family to represent them in the Democratic Congress of the United States.
Colonel Boyar is with me here in Bermuda. He shares the exile with Karakhan and it is he who has helped me with maps, documents, and information for the compilation of this work.
Karakhan is a sick man. He was forty-one years old this year—1941. I walk with him and sometimes we ride together. But most of the time he sits alone in the sunlight on the veranda of the Bermudiana Hotel and most frequently he has in his lap a map of the Caribbean Sea in which his star of destiny went down to the Battle of the Windward Passage.
I talk with him daily in my capacity of joint representative for the World Press. His attitude toward me does not seem to have changed a bit. He carries still the bearing and conviction of a World Conqueror. His armies gone, his navies sunk, his air fleets brought low, and world empire disbanded, the Red Napoleon refuses to be crushed even in defeat and exile.
Always to me he will remain a symbol of defiance, of inflexible will, of steel determination, of Asiatic cruelty. His correspondence, which only reaches him through General Smith's censorship, is voluminous. And by means of the censorship I am aware of the contents of many of his letters. They come from the white women whom he took as erstwhile wives in Europe and in America, and they bring to him news of the numerous children, half-white and half-yellow, who carry in their veins the blood of his Mongol strain.
"I am as proud of my yellow skin as you are of your white," he told me one day. "Who is there to say that straight hair is better than kinky hair, or that one form of a skull is superior to another form. You whites still prattle of your superior civilization. You forget that yellow men and brown men had civilizations vastly superior. Men of yellow skins built the Pyramids, invented gunpowder and paper, founded the sciences of medicine, surgery, higher mathematics, astronomy, algebra, at a time when your white ancestors in Europe were wearing skins, living in caves, and eating raw meat.
"I am condemned because I have sought unions with white women and because I advocated miscegenation—because I ordered my armies to conquer and breed.
"I have nothing to recant. In that direction lies the future of the world. There have been men of strength of will and determination before me and some of them gained their points and some of them only succeeded in planting the seed. I have planted the seed. There is only one means of correction—force. My mistake was in the failure of the application of my force at sea. I am proud of my military career. I am proud of the blood of Genghis Khan in my veins, and I will probably die cooped up here under this white Nordic beast, Jailer Smith. But the world will remember me for something more than a conqueror. I am a humanitarian.
"War, conflict, struggle, strife—they are the only instruments of progress. By their use, old prejudices of the world—nationalistic—religious—class— economic—have been wiped out or at least set aside. But one prejudice remains—race prejudice—and it will be the next to go.
"A comparative handful of white skins cannot continue to crowd their brothers of coloured skin out of a place in the sun. You Yankee race purists, you worshippers of the Nordic delusion—you organize the beauty spots of the world as you regulate your Jim Crow transportation in the southern states. Why do you discriminate against colour? I will tell you—Fear of our might. There's one race of colour in the United States that you do not discriminate against. Vice-President Curtis had Indian blood in his veins. Mrs. Woodrow Wilson boasted the same. Why do you accept them when you would ostracize either one of them if that strain of foreign blood was black instead of red?
"Why? I will tell you the reason. You no longer fear the Indian. You have conquered him—disbanded his tribes, disarmed his warriors, possessed his women—coralled them like zoological specimens in reservations, exhibited them as snake dancers, rug makers, or museum pieces—but your prejudice against the yellow and black is different. You fear our might.
"I tell you these things because I want you to write them. To your Nordic ears they sound revolting, but I want the record left because some settlement of the question will have to come. The hatred between the colours and the species must be stamped out.
"The commandments of your white God—the tenets of your white religion—the constitutions of your white governments—the basic laws of your white biology—all proclaim the brotherhood and equality of all colours, as members of the human family. These same scriptures are the record of your colossal hypocrisy.
"I recognize but one race—the HUMAN RACE."
Karakhan will never leave this island. There will be no escape
from Elba—no "Hundred Days" for the Red Napoleon.
He is aware that the world—the hated white world, is still too conscious of the losses in lives and wealth that it suffered at his hands, to permit even the remotest chance of his return to power.
But in the seeds of discontent he has sown and in the character of the hybrid progeny of his miscegenation policy, he holds stubbornly to the hope of future vindication.
The End
Naval battle of the Windward Passage.
Diagram showing Red attempt to destroy Pacific
entrance to Panama Canal to divide United States Fleet.
Approach, contact, flight and pursuit of opposing fleets on the day and
night of March 15, 1936, preliminary to battle of the Windward passage.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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