Elizabeth stood paralyzed between an impulse to drop down upon the grass and another to run for shelter. At the observation post behind her the corporal had rushed inside to the telephone. No batteries were stationed at this point, for the Germans counted on the Allies not caring to drop bombs on Château-Plessis, but a telephone call could bring anti-aircraft guns to bear on intruding planes from the north of the town. While Elizabeth stood frozen to the spot, the airplane above her, as though scorning to recognize the fact that Château-Plessis was in German hands, flew over her so close that she could see the glistening paint of the American emblems on its wings and tail, and the pilot, sitting alone in his little monoplane, leaned over the side and looked at her.
Elizabeth let fall her baskets, heedless, she who was always so careful, of the fragile provisions within. The face looking down with eager eyes from a hundred feet above her was Bob Gordon’s. He reached toward his feet, and, through the roaring of the propeller, Elizabeth heard a wild shout of warning directed to her from the observation post behind. But no bomb was flung from the plane which had her at its mercy. Instead she was suddenly enveloped in a shower of papers fluttering down toward the grass from the pilot’s hand. As she brushed them dazedly from her shoulders, Bob leaned out once more and threw a last paper, only this one was crushed into a ball with a hasty pressure of his fingers. Then the anti-aircraft guns crashed out, and the Nieuport rose like a bird and winged its way toward the sun, dropping another shower of papers as it mounted, which scattered over the green, daisy-starred surface of the field. The balls whistled through the air, but before any accurate shot was possible, the daring little scout had disappeared behind a drifting cloud beyond the reach of fire.
Elizabeth had picked up the ball of paper as soon as it touched the grass. With trembling hands, while she watched the Nieuport make its swift escape, she smoothed out the wrinkled sheet and held it against the sunlight.
“What’s that you have there, Donnerwetter!” asked an angry voice behind her, and the corporal, red-faced and panting, looked over her shoulder, then stooped to pick up another of the leaflets.
“Some more of President Wilson’s talk,” said Elizabeth, still looking with a critical air at the printed sheet before her. “But Himmel!” she added, turning to the corporal with an anxious shake of the head. “For a moment I thought I was done for. I did not know what to do!”
“It was no time to stand staring, like a dummy,” was the corporal’s comment. “Come, Frau, help me gather up this trash, and I’ll burn it and give the impertinent Yankee that for his pains.”
Elizabeth nodded, leaning down to pick up the papers thickly scattered over the grass. Her heart was beating so hard she could hardly conceal her hurried breathing, in spite of her calm and docile exterior as she obeyed the corporal’s orders. She gathered up the crumpled sheet together with the others, crumpling them all into a wad before handing them to her companion. She had seen all she wanted in those two or three minutes while she held the paper against the sunlight. The printed leaves were copies in English and German of a part of President Wilson’s speech made in New York on the 18th of May. But the paragraph that Elizabeth read had been pricked with pinholes[[3]] before it was dropped at her feet. It was as follows:
There are two duties with which we are face to face. The first duty is to win the war. And the second duty, that goes hand in hand with it, is to win it greatly and worthily, showing the real quality of our power not only, but the real quality of our purpose and of ourselves. Of course, the first duty, the duty that we must keep in the foreground of our thought until it is accomplished, is to win the war. I have heard gentlemen recently say that we must get five million men ready. Why limit it to five million?
[3]. [TN] The letters that were marked with pinholes are marked here in bold.
Against the glowing sunlight Elizabeth read Bob’s message: “I shall try to land to-night.”