When we reached Washington we found that city in a panic over news of another American defeat. Philadelphia had fallen and all communications were cut off. Furthermore, a third force of Germans had landed in Chesapeake Bay, which meant that the national capital was threatened by two German armies. We now understood von Hindenburg’s deliberation.
In this emergency, Marshall Reid, brother-in-law of Lieutenant Dustin, the crack aviator of the navy, who had been aboard the Pennsylvania, volunteered to carry messages from the President to Philadelphia and to bring back news. Reid himself was one of the best amateur flying men in the country and he did me the honour to choose me as his companion.
We started late in the afternoon of August 17 in Mr. Reid’s swift Burgess machine and made the distance in two hours. I shall never forget our feelings as we circled over the City of Brotherly Love and looked down upon wrecks of railroad bridges that lay across the Schuylkill. Shots were fired at us from the aerodrome of the League Island Navy Yard; so we flew on, searching for a safer landing place.
We tried to make the roof landing on the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, but the wind was too high and we finally chanced it among the maples of Rittenhouse Square, after narrowly missing the sharp steeple of St. Mark’s Church. Here, with a few bruises, we came to earth just in front of the Rittenhouse Club and were assisted by Dr. J. William White, who rushed out and did what he could to help us.
Five hours later, Reid started back to Washington with details of reverses sent by military and city authorities that decided the administration to move the seat of government to Chicago without delay. He also carried from me (I remained in Philadelphia) a hastily written despatch to be transmitted from Washington via Kingston to the London Times, in which I summed up the situation on the basis of facts given me by my friend, Richard J. Beamish, owner of the Philadelphia Press, my conclusion being that the American cause was lost. And I included other valuable information gleaned from reporter friends of mine on the North American and the Bulletin. I even ventured a prophecy that the United States would sue for peace within ten days.
“What were General Wood’s losses in the battle of Philadelphia?” I asked Beamish.
“Terribly heavy—nearly half of his army in killed, wounded and prisoners. What could we do? Von Hindenburg outnumbered us from two to one and we were short of ammunition, artillery, horses, aeroplanes, everything.”
“Who blew up those railroad bridges and cut the wires?”
“German spies—there are a lot of them here. They sank a barge loaded with bricks in the Schuylkill just above its joining with the Delaware and blocked the channel so that ten battleships in the naval basin at League Island couldn’t get out.”
“What became of the battleships?”