must learn French at school,' said the officer, who spoke a little French. "One of the Germans seized little Lisa, while another caught little John. "Where is your father?' he asked in a harsh voice. 'Where are the French that passed here?' "Lisa raised her blue eyes to this foreign soldier and, all trembling, replied in dialect. John did the same. The soldiers, irritated, suspecting a trick, searched the house, but did not find the trap-door which had been previously covered with dirty straw. They threatened to cut the children's throats. They told them they would kill their mother, too, if they did not answer. The poor children began to cry, but, faithful to their mother's directions, they repeated, through their tears, the same phrase. "The French soldiers who were in the cellar and who heard everything through a ventilator felt their blood boil, and, but for their officer, would have come forth to protect the poor children, and, without doubt, would have been killed, for they were outnumbered. "The Prussians did not think that such young children, threatened with death, would be capable of such heroic discretion; they ended by believing that they could not make themselves understood and rode away. "And that is how two little children, Lisa, aged 8, and John, aged 10, by their obedience to their mother and by their courage kept thirty men from being killed; twenty-eight wives still have their husbands, and forty-seven little children have their papas. Among these forty-seven little children my little Marcella and my little Charlie will perhaps see their papa again." I leave this story in its fine simplicity. A workman who had become a soldier chats with his children far away. But the chief attraction in it for me is that the fact reported is quite authentic. I know the farm in the district of Meurthe et Moselle, and later on I shall tell its name, as well as those of the farmer's wife and the two children, who have received a well-earned reward. WE The Work of the Women E are beginning to see the little hats of the women chauffeurs, the women cab-drivers, multiplying in Paris. The straw and ribbons give them a certain charm, and it is a change for us from the caps and gray beards. of their antique colleagues. In the Post Offices, in the banks, women bend over their work, assiduously scratching paper. Everywhere the tic-tac of the typewriter strikes you, and the stenographer, a pencil between her lips, keeps her company. As there is no more piano playing, this is a different kind of duet; that is all. Slowly women's work takes the place of men's work. It is very necessary. Skilled labor is rare and sought after; the most urgent tasks have to wait. And then lightness of touch, skill, taste, all the qualities necessary in a host of Parisian industries, can no longer be learned, when, through the passage of years, one has lost the habit of them. Why should we not see women barbers, women watchmakers, women decorators? And I say nothing of the endless branches of commerce in which women, when they wish, succeed as well as men. The women are courageous, industrious, careful; they do not shirk pains; but they ought to be encouraged, guided in the new phase of our common existence in which they are necessarily called to take the places of men at the front. If it had only been a question of a very short war, as was expected, we should have adapted ourselves; but the months mount up; we must provide not only for the present but for the future also. The wives of soldiers at the front receive for themselves and for their chil dren a rightful allowance. But many among them ask nothing better than to increase by work a sum that hardly goes beyond the strict necessaries. And then not all women receive the allowance; these also need to earn their living. In a host of professions yesterday occupied by women a lack of work makes itself cruelly felt. We must consider this. * * * But it is already being considered! To organize courses and apprenticeships, to prepare, for the future, workwomen, women workers, well trained and prepared, is a way as good as many another to assure the rapid restoration of economic and social France after victory * * *while waiting for our leaders to make the recruiting of the class of 1935 not fall too far short. The Aerial Attack on Ravenna By Paolo Poletti In L'Illustrazione Italiana this distinguished Italian author expresses his indignation at the bombardment of Ravenna by Austrian aviators, when the ancient Basilica of Sant' Apollinare narrowly escaped destruction. I [Translated for CURRENT HISTORY] WRITE with a feeling of relief. My beautiful Sant' Apollinare is uninjured, or nearly so. A blind bomb may have furrowed the April sky of my city, in this marvelous foretaste of Spring; but the criminal attempt has been in vain. And, with me, innumerable citizens of Ravenna have breathed a sigh almost of content. It is true that there were human victims. But our pity for them is too deep for any comment to be adequate; the only way to commemorate them worthily is to avenge them. But it is not of this wrong we wish to speak today. We wish only to bring together and to distill into a brief comment the living essence of the spirit of Ravenna, as it has affirmed itself in this historic, solemn hour. The people of Ravenna have felt a lightning flash of sudden revolt because of the outrage perpetrated on their monuments. The citizens of Ravenna, if they have not, for the antique glories of their city, the fully conscious veneration which we shall hardly expect to find among them, nevertheless do breathe in from these monuments a deep impression of exaltation and well-founded pride. Our readers will remember those "Monologues" which Gigi Easi wrote with such grace and such penetrating humor. In one, "The Art of Delivering a Monologue," he introduces as speakers the inhabitants of the various capital cities of Italy, each of whom magnifies the beauty of his own city. So it happens that, along with the Florentine, the Neapolitan, the Venetian, and the rest, there is not lacking a good citizen of Ravenna who, with vibrant words and potent adjectives, in intense and enthusiastic exaltation, energetically affirms the supremacy of his mosaics and his basilicas. The scene is not only most exhilarating, but also, from the point of view of psychology, profoundly true. Our populace lives, and feels that it lives, with its mighty memories and with its great historic personages, whose moral significance at least it knows how to estimate, and whose remoter glory it understands by a kind of natural and traditional intuition, and respects it, I might almost say, by a distant residuum of atavistic suggestion. Galla, daughter and sister of Emperors; Theodoric sleeping, sleeping, according to these humble fancies, a secular sleep under his heavy monolith; Justinian, upraiser of precious churches and reviser of the imperial idea and the laws of Rome; Theodora, the dancing girl become a Queen, speak a language incomprehensible to the rough minds of our people, yet a secret fascination emanates to them from the rich vaults, heavy with gold, of the antique basilicas; The basilica of Theodoric, made the target of the iniquitous attempt of the Barbarians, ever speaks to the people in the mysterious tongue of days long gone. * * Oh, my beautiful Sant' Apollinare! we dreaded to see shattered thy gleaming mosaics; we dreaded to see cut in two and mutilated thy ten-centuries-oil campanile, which sends forth joyful peals in the luminous evenings of May; we feared that the voice would be stilled, which arises from thee, to chant a profound poem of history and of art. We recall your founder, Theodoric, and his reign in Ravenna; his wise and successful attempt to bring together in peaceful relations the conquerors and the conquered, engrafting into the ultimate The Fight of the stem of Latin civilization the young shoot of fresh barbaric energy; so that his terrible invasion did not interrupt the continuity of history, but proceeded to develop harmoniously in the integration of the old Roman elements with the new, blended in a single composed form of enduring life. Of the art which reminds us, through the verses of Gabriel d'Annunzio, of the millenary of Ravenna, one might also speak of the "Purple night, gleaming with gold"; of the Virgins of Sant' Apollinare, in Francesca's passionate speech: "The Virgins of Sant' Apollinare burn not so bright in their heaven of gold"; and the prophecy: By Michael MacIntyre Third Officer sailing without lights. A vessel ahead was burning her foremast headlight. We were overhauling her rapidly, and just before 6 o'clock she was quite close, about six points. on our port bow. She started to call us on the Morse signal, and I answered. She then asked "What ship?" I reported to the Captain, and he told me to make no answer. She again asked the question, and we then inquired her name. She answered "Author, from Liverpool," and we then gave our name. By this time she was abaft our beam, and she immediately signaled "Stop at once, I am a German cruiser." The Captain instantly ordered the engineers to give us all the speed they could, and at the same time I bluffed and signaled to them that we were stopped. The German then signaled for us to stop, as he was sending a boat aboard. When he saw our signal he at once stopped his own engines, with the result that he was left astern. But as soon as he found that we were not stopped he started again full speed ahead, and fired across our bows. Our own gunners then got busy at the Captain's orders and fired back. Then the fun began. The next shell struck us on the fo'c'sle head, smashing up the windlass and the lookout man, a Lascar. The third went through the second officer's room and the steward's room; it seemed to be shrapnel, and splinters were hurled all over the deck, the port dinghy on the bridge being smashed up. All this time our own two gunners were firing as hard as they could, and we could see that they were hitting. A number of shells seemed to go singing by our ears. The German was only 200 yards away, but nearly all their shots missed, only four actually striking us. 66 The next to hit us struck the top of the engine room, killing seventeen men and wounding five, all Lascars. Another hit us below the water line in No. 5 hold, badly damaging us. It was obviously useless to carry on the fight, and the Captain then ordered cease fire," and stopped the ship. I signaled the German in Morse to this effect, but owing to the smoke some time passed before they could see our signal, and they continued to fire. Even as I signaled our gun went off owing to the order "Stop fire" being delayed in transmission. And that, of course, caused more trouble. The whole thing was over in less than fifteen minutes. They signaled to ask if we had any wounded aboard. Being on the bridge, I did not then know our full casualties, and replied that we had only one. They signaled that they would send a boat, and we began to get out our own lifeboats. It was not until we were taken on board the raider that we ascertained the extent of their casualties. Although our shells were so small-the gun was only a six-pounder-it seems we had done a good deal of damage, and their bluejackets told us we had killed four of their crew and wounded two. When the German commander came aboard he asked for the Captain, and on Captain Oliver coming forward he demanded to know why the Clan MacTavish had fired on them. "I wanted to get away, of course," replied the Captain, "and I fired to protect my ship. My Government put a gun on board, and I used it. It wasn't put there for ornament!" They lined us up on the deck, and a number of men mounted guard with drawn revolvers, threatening to shoot without warning the first man who made a movement. We were kept at attention for some time, and then ordered into the boats, the Captain's and chief officer's going to the cruiser, while mine and the second officer's were ordered to the Appam-as we found the second vessel to be. On board the latter we were taken below, and kept under armed guard in a first-class stateroom all that night and the next day, when we were transferred from the Appam to the cruiser. The raider was later disguised by being repainted a dark yellow, like the P. & O. boats, with a yellow funnel. They also cut off a conspicuous derrick post aft and put bulwarks where there had been rails. Whenever she chased another vessel we were confined below in the forecastle. While they were firing at the Flamenco we found an old gramophone there with a number of tunes, and all the time she was chasing and firing at the Flamenco we played these tunes, 'Tipperary," "The Stars and Stripes," and "The Double Eagle being among them. " We were told that the commander of the Möwe was Count von Donah, and that he was a junior Captain in the German Navy. The vessel was nothing but a huge floating bomb. She had huge stores of torpedoes and shells, and mines and bombs were lashed everywhere. They were fastened on her decks and in all the rooms, and we were told she could be blown up at a moment's notice. They were determined not to be captured, they said. If we had only had a bigger gun and could have got some shells home she would have gone up. We did not see the sinking of the Clan MacTavish after we had left her, but it was accomplished by two bombs with time fuses, hung over her side, and the firing of one torpedo. At the end of twenty-four days the Möwe took the steamer Westburn. That night they came and told us that all the crews of the ships captured were to go to Teneriffe in her, with the exception of the Clan MacTavish men, who were to stay behind for firing upon the cruiser. They added that they intended to keep us with them until they reached Germany or were sunk. The beggars kept us in suspense until the very last moment, when all the other crews had embarked, and then informed us that we could all go except the Captain and the two gunners-Reece and Angus. Altogether 228 of us went on to the Westburn, the Cap tain and second officer of which were also kept on the cruiser. A guard of eight men were put on board with us, the commander being a German petty officer, who wore the Iron Cross. Bombs and mines were lashed everywhere in the ship, ready to blow it up at a moment's notice, and we were warned that on the slightest trouble this would be done. Every time one of the guards came aft to speak to us he carried a bomb ready to throw. We arrived at Teneriffe on Feb. 22 and found that, only half an hour before, an English cruiser coming from another direction had entered the harbor and anchored. We learned that our German colors were seen just before we entered territorial waters, but it was then too late for the warship to do anything. As we passed close to her the German petty officer jeered at the Englishmen's helplessness in the matter and exclaimed: "If I were the commander of that British cruiser I would shoot myself.” Sunk at Sea by a U-Boat By Arnold C. B. Groom Late Captain of the British steamer Coquet This stirring story of the experiences of a trading ship's crew plying between American and Mediterranean ports has interest alike as a true tale of adventure and as a historic example of the cruelties of U-boat warfare. The Coquet was sunk somewhere on the route between Port Said and Malta. A BOUT 10:45 A. M., Jan. 4, 1916, I was writing in the saloon of the Coquet when I heard a gun fired. On my reaching the bridge the third mate told me it was fired across our bow. Then another was fired across the bow, one over the bridge and one under the stern from a submarine on the port quarter. At the same time one or two people told me there was another submarine on the port bow. I stopped the engines and indicated that I had done so by flag signals. The firing stopped and the submarine was soon close to us with signals flying "abandon ship." Immediately I took the chronometer, sextant, and chart in the starboard boat and we left the ship. The We other boat left a little before us. had no sooner got clear of the ship than the submarine started firing at her. Eight shots were fired. One of them broke the signal halliards on the bridge. They stopped firing then and coming close to the boats ordered us alongside. This was a dangerous proceeding, as the submarnie's deck was just awash and there was a big swell. I was ordered aboard the submarine and then some Austrians armed with revolvers and cutlasses were sent in our boats and the two boats returned to the Coquet. All hands were given twenty minutes to get what they wanted from the ship. At the same time the Austrians looted whatever they could in the time given. |