The Feast of Victory
As we drove into Suwalki, the muffled rolling of the guns followed us through the damp twilight. Stopping at the Europiski Hotel, a faded building of painted stones, we passed to the clicking of sentries' heels under a dripping archway, opening into a filthy, watery court. One saw bare-legged women, yoked with double pails, picking their way between the shiny automobiles of the staff, to a typhus menacing well beyond. On the right of the archway a flight of heavy stone steps ran up to a dingy drinking room; a tea room now, since the days of the vodka ukase. A greasy proletarian smirked a welcome from behind a counter, laden with platters of food, as sour as his smile. Excusing himself, Rittmeister Tzschirner opened the door to a larger room on the right, which we had seen open during the day, but always closed after six at night. Taking seats at one of the little round topped tables, I watched the German officers filing in, taking plates from a high stack, and helping themselves from the large platters on the counter, always paying the price without comment and in money, while the greasy proprietor rang a merry tune on his cash register, and contemptuous, no doubt, that the conquering Germans paid his outrageous prices without protest. I knew the man with the smirk was thinking that had the Russians been the conquerors they would not have bothered about the score. No, not the Russians. They would have had his daughters dance for them, and they would have eaten their fill in the name of the Czar. To give him full measure, they might have beaten him with the flats of their swords. Bah, these Germans, they were fools!
"Excellence von Eichorn," said Tzschirner, returning, "begs that you be his guest at dinner."
I could scarcely credit my good fortune. Dinner with the Commanding General of the 10th German army on the night of his triumph.
"We shall eat with Excellence and his staff—in celebration of the victory," added the Rittmeister.
This latter was a bit of gentle irony that for the moment I missed. I later learned that the room which always closed at six, was the dining hall of General von Eichorn and his staff. As we passed in with Tzschirner, the officers showed a polite curiosity and then bent over their food. "Amerikaner!" I heard some one say. Soon I was shaking hands with the hero of the battle of Augustowo Wald. A tall white haired man, who must have been over sixty, whose face betokened more of the scholar than the soldier. The clear twinkling eyes and the fine thoughtful forehead, were those of a serene doctor of laws who was living out his life among the flowers of some pretty university town; and yet his jaw was a buttress of steel and his mouth had a way of thinning in a straight grim line—a strange combination of the humanitarian and militant elements.
"I congratulate your Excellency" (what a feeble attempt it was!) "upon your wonderful victory." Telling me I was very kind, he then by some trick of his marvelous personality almost succeeded in making us feel that we, not he, were the heroes of the evening. While we were meeting different members of his staff, we learned what the Russian rout was. The entire Tenth Army under General Russky had been smashed. One hundred thousand men had been made prisoners; eighty thousand wounded, forty thousand dead, ten thousand fugitives. About three hundred and fifty cannons had been captured, with munition and with machine guns, so vast in numbers that there had not yet been time to count them. An entire army annihilated! The white haired man, who, sitting at the table at the end of the room, from which radiated other tables like those at a banquet, and he who was now raising a cup of tea, and smiling about him with gentle eyes, he had directed it all—the smashing of almost a quarter million men—making ninety thousand of them captive and killing or wounding or starving the rest.
And this was the feast in celebration of victory. In English and American newspapers I had read of the drunken revels with which the Barbarians made the nights of their triumphs more terrible. I had read that the first great drive into France fell short of Paris, because entire staffs had gone drunk; and then I recalled Rittmeister Tzschirner in extending Von Eichorn's invitation had added with genial irony—"in celebration of the victory."
And this was the feast, stewed hare and fried meat cakes, mashed potatoes and rice, all covered with a brown gravy and served all in the same big platters, a slice of black bread, tea, the sweetened whipped white of an egg, and one glass of a cheap Bordeaux for each man—that was the menu with which the battle of Augustowo Wald was celebrated.
I was busy at the hare when the Rittmeister said to us: