As a matter of fact, within a week Boston had resumed its ordinary life and activities. Business was good, factories were busy, and the theatres were crowded nightly, especially Keith’s, where the latest military photo-play by Thomas Dixon and Charles T. Dazey—with Mary Pickford as the heroine and Charley Chaplin as the comedy relief—was enjoyed immensely by German officers.
As to the commerce of Boston Harbor, it was speedily re-established, with ships of all nations going and coming, undisturbed by the fact that it was now the German flag on German warships that they saluted.
I received instructions from my paper about this time to leave New England and join General Wood’s forces, which had crossed the Delaware into Pennsylvania, where they were battling desperately with von Hindenburg’s much stronger army. On the day following my arrival at the American headquarters, I learned that Lord Kitchener had come over from England to follow the fighting as an eye-witness; and I was fortunate enough to obtain an interview with his lordship, who remembered me in connection with his Egyptian campaigns.
“The United States is where England would have been in 1914 without her fleet,” said Lord Kitchener.
“Where is that?”
“If England had been invaded by a German army in 1914,” replied the great organiser gravely, “she would have been wiped off the map. It was England’s fleet that saved her. And, even so, we had a hard time of it. Everything was lacking—officers, men, uniforms, ammunition, guns, horses, saddles, horse blankets, everything except our fleet.”
A sudden light burned in Lord Kitchener’s strange eyes, and he added earnestly: “There is something more than that. In 1914 Germany was wonderfully prepared in material things, but her greatest advantage over all other nations, except Japan, lay in her dogged devotion to her own ideals. She may have been wrong, as we think, but she believed in herself. There was nothing like it in England, and there is nothing like it in America. The German masses, to the last man, woman, and child, were inspired to give all that they had, their lives included, for the Empire. In England there was more selfishness and self-indulgence. We had labour troubles, strike troubles, drink troubles; and finally, as you know, in 1916 we were forced to adopt conscription. It will be the same story here in America.”
“Don’t you think that America will ultimately win?”
Lord Kitchener hesitated.
“I don’t know. Germany holds New York and Boston and is marching on Philadelphia. Think what that means! New York is the business capital of the nation. It is hard to conceive of the United States without New York.”