The next day all the guests of the hotel were locked in and forbidden to leave the hotel. The Lettish staff officers were established in the hotel, two doors away from my room. Two regiments of Esthonians reached Riga that day and their first act was to place a big field-gun immediately in front of the hotel and begin firing over the roof of it into the German position. Knowing the reputation of the Germans for finding gun positions, I was not very sanguine over the prospects of my safe return to America. The shelling lasted for forty-eight hours, during which time the deafening noise and the jarring of the walls made rest impossible.
The Danish Consul and his staff occupied the rooms immediately across the hall from mine. The third day they invited me over to lunch with them in their room, as Lettish soldiers had been billeted in the dining-room downstairs. About four in the afternoon, after the wine had all been consumed, the Danes began singing the songs of their own country. Scarcely an hour later the door of the room was opened and five Lettish officers marched in, ordering us all to “Get your clothes together and get ready.” The Danish Consul asked what they meant. “You have been drinking the health of Germany and singing German songs. Yon are under arrest,” was the answer.
I was somewhat disappointed when they apologized after we had shown them our papers. Arrest and deportation to other shores seemed very attractive to me just then.
A little later the proprietor came in and told us that food was getting scarce, that prices had doubled, and that we would have to pay in Czarist rubles, since the Lettish rubles (which he had been glad to take before) were no longer any good. After we had organized a vigorous protest he recanted and we had no further difficulty on that score.
The next day Michael Farbman of the Chicago Tribune, with G. G. Desmond of the London Daily News, dropped in from somewhere and told me there would be a chance that Sunday night of going to Copenhagen on a British destroyer. Since Desmond was a British subject we chose him to take up the matter with the British mission. His efforts were successful, and we left the hotel under cover of darkness and, hugging the walls of the buildings, we finally reached the British mission. In company with several English officers we started through the dark streets at seven-thirty in the evening with shells falling everywhere, and walked three miles to the bend of the Dvina, out of range of the firing. Twice we were shot at by Lettish outposts who had not been informed that we were supposed to pass. Luckily for us they proved to be bad shots, and the shouts of “English, English” from the officers stopped the firing. At nine in the evening we reached the river and were bundled into two small boats, pulled by a slow-going gasoline launch. The Letts were on one side of the river; the Germans on the other, and both sides impartially fired at us with their rifles, but although they hit each boat once they did not touch us. I shall never forget the English officers, crouching in the bottoms of the boats—beside me—shouting “English, English” at the top of their voices as we proceeded, and persisting in their shouting of the word that had hitherto proven a magic one, in spite of the fact that it could not possibly be heard by either side, and forgetting, apparently, that if it were heard by the Germans it might not deter them.
After two and one-half hours of this, during which we traversed eight miles, we reached the gulf and the comparative safety of the British cruiser Abdiel. At last my troubles were over.
We were to leave for Copenhagen the next morning. However, at ten the next morning we were transferred from the Abdiel to the Princess Margaret, a Canadian Royal steamer which had been converted into a mine-layer during the war, and had come into the harbor the night before, on her way to Riga with a cargo of goods. She could not proceed up the river because of the firing. English officers and all were transferred to this ship, because the Abdiel was not leaving and there was no telling when the Princess Margaret would leave. For three days we were kept on this boat. During this time more than a hundred refugees from Riga were added to its list. Eight or nine British cruisers and destroyers were lying at anchor in the Gulf, and on our second morning on the Princess Margaret we learned that the English had given the Germans until that time to evacuate their positions, after which they would open fire. The Germans had refused, and the bombarding began. The Princess Margaret stood out of range, but we could see with glasses the effects of the bombardment, which lasted the whole afternoon, until finally the German guns were silenced and the Letts crossed the river.
That evening we heard that the destroyer Cleopatra was sailing the next morning for Copenhagen and England and would come alongside to take mail, and that the English officers on the Princess Margaret were going on the Cleopatra. Farbman and I sent Desmond to the captain to get permission for us to go also, which he obtained after some persuasion. The others remained—and may be there still.
At eight the next morning the Cleopatra came toward us, but the sea was running high and she could not approach nearer than a hundred yards. A lifeboat was lowered from the Princess, our baggage thrown in, and we descended on rope ladders to the swaying and tossing boat below. I am a poor swimmer and the brief but exciting journey to the Cleopatra was occupied in meditation on my escape from shot and shell only to be drowned in the waters of the Gulf.
When we finally reached the Cleopatra, I was prepared for more delay, any amount of delay. I had grown so accustomed to it that I thought it would save my nerves from further strain to take it for granted. However we started almost immediately. This was Friday morning, October 17th. We reached Copenhagen Saturday, October 18th, at six in the evening. At last I had escaped the roar of cannon and the sound of bursting shells. The relief and the peace of Copenhagen could only be compared with the peace I had found in “Barbarous Soviet Russia.”