“Do you mean to say that we have no national spirit in America?”
“Not as Germans understand it. You live for material things, for pleasures, for business. You are a race of money schemers, money grovellers, lacking in high ideals and genuine spiritual life without which patriotism is an empty word. Who ever heard of an American working for his country unless he was paid for it?
“Think what America did in the great war! Why was your president so wrought up in 1915 when he assailed Germany with fine phrases? Was it because we had violated Belgium? No! When that happened he had nothing to say, although the United States, equally with England, was a signatory of the Hague Conference that guaranteed Belgium’s integrity. Why did not your president protest then? Why did he not use his fine phrases then? Because the United States had suffered no material injury through Belgium’s misfortune. On the contrary, the United States was sure to gain much of the trade that Belgium lost. And that was what he cared about, commercial advantage. You were quick enough to protect your trade and your money interests. You were ready enough to do anything for gold, ready enough, by the sale of war munitions, to bring death and misery upon half of Europe so long as you got gold from the other half. High ideals! National spirit! There they are!”
CHAPTER IX. — BOSTON OFFERS DESPERATE AND BLOODY RESISTANCE TO THE INVADERS
Our wing of the advancing German army remained in Hartford for four days, at the end of which all signs of disorder had ceased; in fact, there was little disorder at any time. The lesson of New Haven’s resistance had been taken to heart, and there was the discouraging knowledge that a row of German six-inch siege-guns were trained on the city from the heights of Elizabeth Park, their black muzzles commanding the grey towers and golden dome of State House, the J. Pierpont Morgan Memorial, the gleaming white new City Hall, the belching chimneys of the Underwood typewriter works, and the brown pile of Trinity College.
There was the further restraining fact that leading citizens of Hartford were held as hostages, their lives in peril, in James J. Goodwin’s palatial home, among these being ex-Governor Morgan G. Buckley, Mayor Joseph H. Lawler, Bishop Chauncey B. Brewster, Dr. Flavel S. Luther, Bishop John J. Nilan, Mrs. Richard M. Bissell, Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn, the Rev. Rockwell Harmon Potter, Charles Hopkins Clark, Rolland F. Andrews, the Rev. Francis Goodwin, Thomas J. Spellacy, and Sol Sontheimer.
So the invaders’ march through New England continued. It is a pitiful story. What could Connecticut and Massachusetts do? With all their wealth and intelligence, with all their mechanical ingenuity, with all their pride and patriotism, what could they do, totally unprepared, more helpless than Belgium, against the most efficient army in Europe?
Three times, between Hartford and Springfield, unorganised bands of Americans, armed with shotguns and rifles, lay in ambush for the advancing enemy and fired upon them. These men declared that they would die before they would stand by tamely and see the homes and fields of New England despoiled by the invader. Whereupon the Germans announced, by means of proclamations showered upon towns and villages from their advance-guard of aeroplanes, that for every German soldier thus killed by Americans in ambush a neighbouring town or village would be burned by fire bombs dropped from the sky. And they carried out this threat to the letter, so that for every act of resistance by the fathers and brothers and sons of New England there resulted only greater suffering and distress for the women and the children.