The carnival of Chaos had spread like a wanton dementia. Italy had long since flung aside her sane reserve and plunged into the carnage for the shreds of Austria she desired—Tyrol, Dalmatia, Istria, and Albania. Rumania and Greece had joined with Servia and bound the Balkans into a temporary brotherhood. Together with Russia and Italy at Haskoi they had scattered the crazy Turkish army like chaff and swarmed on to the Bosphorus. The allied fleet drove a withering wedge of steel and fire through the Dardanelles. Constantinople fell.
As to a Bacchanal of Blood, the colonies tore out of the map every shred of German colonial territory there was, and poured into Europe their flood of black, white, and yellow men. Little Denmark, catching the festive spirit, reached out for Schleswig-Holstein; and the rest, coveting the Kiel Canal, lent a willing hand to the useful tool. Holland, sore from being the frail buffer between the struggling combatants, placed her interests in the British hands, and opened another gate to the heart of Germany.
Russia debouched her million after million upon the East, and though they died dumbly like flies before the German walls of steel at Thorn and Bromberg, they swept the Germans back over the Vistula and out of East Prussia down to the line of the Warthe and Oder. Austria, torn by internal dissension, was ringed in the upper basin of the Danube, where the Tyrol, the Carpathians, and the Germans protected the few shattered loyal ones.
There was not a German vessel left on the Seven Seas. Her fleet had been put to sleep in the Frisian marshes, outnumbered by the British on the outside, and cut off from supplies by troops landed through Denmark and Holland.
On the West they stood behind the Rhine. The drive had been rapid and relentless from all sides. They left their villages empty except for the dead as they went before the closing ring of steel. They took everything with them that might be used as fuel, as material for ammunition, and left their cities razed more completely than the invader could have done it.
Christmas night found us where Ludwigshafen had been. For two months we had stood, unable to move an inch farther. The thick deluge of fire the Germans rolled upon us at every advance amazed us. There could not long be a bit of iron or copper or saltpeter or food left inside the ring.
We had no knowledge of the source of this indomitable resistance. For months not a living soul had been able to pass across the lines, nor had a single message of any kind or a reply to any, by any means, come out of Germany. For three to five miles about the lines there was a devastated ring, bare of everything, swept by fire and death. Beyond that was grim and gruesome silence. The airmen could see little. Houses were apparently deserted and the people lived in the woods or in the ground. Every particle of earth that could be spared was used to grow something to eat. In the large cities buildings and bridges were torn down. Their cut stone and iron went to the making of fort and cannon.
This Christmas Eve, as we sat in our cement dugout, the silence outside was brooding and heavy. Snow had fallen for a week and there had been no fighting. In the intervals of our talk there was only the sound of a famished cat’s wailing outside. We talked of the war, and of what we were going to do with Germany when the end came.
The talk of the world had been done. The nations at home sat like the knitting ring about the guillotine, waiting for the final scene to be staged. Germany was no more in the world’s mind. They had tried to think about her. Their thought had been brought to folly and confusion. Already she was forgotten. She had become a piece of territory that shortly their armies would occupy. Condemnations of her culture, of her aspirations, of her part in the greatest of the world’s wars, had come to nothing, and were abandoned. Pompous plans for her reorganization, superior homilies to the German people on peace and freedom from their wicked masters, good advice on the improvement of their culture—all these had been written to a shred. To preserve its dignity the world wished to forget them. Its dull, avid gaze saw not beyond the moment toward which it had strained, leaving its mind and simple sincerity of soul behind.
This was the night of the final assault. In a circle of three hundred miles, the word was written, on land and sea, in seven tongues and among a score of races—“AT MIDNIGHT.” We were then to draw tight the halter upon the throat of Germany. Der Tag had become The Hour—Ours. The mailed fist was to have its gauntlet stripped from it and a naked hand should pay us tribute.