Mr. Standfast
shopmen and engineers and farmers’ sons. When I first struck them my
only crab was that the officers weren’t much better than the men. It’s
still true, but the men are super-excellent, and consequently so are
the officers. That division gets top marks in the Boche calendar for
sheer fighting devilment.... And, please God, that’s what your American
army’s going to be. You can wash out the old idea of a regiment of
scallawags commanded by dukes. That was right enough, maybe, in the
days when you hurrooshed into battle waving a banner, but it don’t do
with high explosives and a couple of million men on each side and a
battle front of five hundred miles. The hero of this war is the plain
man out of the middle class, who wants to get back to his home and is
going to use all the brains and grit he possesses to finish the job
soon.”
“That sounds about right,” said Blenkiron reflectively. “It pleases me
some, for you’ve maybe guessed that I respect the British Army quite a
little. Which part of it do you put top?”
“All of it’s good. The French are keen judges and they give front place
to the Scots and the Australians. For myself I think the backbone of
the Army is the old-fashioned English county regiments that hardly ever
get into the papers Though I don’t know, if I had to pick, but I’d take
the South Africans. There’s only a brigade of them, but they’re hell’s
delight in a battle. But then you’ll say I’m prejudiced.”
“Well,” drawled Blenkiron, you’re a mighty Empire anyhow. I’ve
sojourned up and down it and I can’t guess how the old-time highbrows
in your little island came to put it together. But I’ll let you into a
secret, Dick. I read this morning in a noospaper that there was a
natural affinity between Americans and the men of the British
Dominions. Take it from me, there isn’t—at least not with this
American. I don’t understand them one little bit. When I see your lean,
tall Australians with the sun at the back of their eyes, I’m looking at
men from another planet. Outside you and Peter, I never got to fathom a
South African. The Canadians live over the fence from us, but you mix
up a Canuck with a Yank in your remarks and you’ll get a bat in the
eye.... But most of us Americans have gotten a grip on your Old
Country. You’ll find us mighty respectful to other parts of your
Empire, but we say anything we damn well please about England. You see,
we know her that well and like her that well, we can be free with her.
“It’s like,” he concluded as we reached the hotel, “it’s like a lot of
boys that are getting on in the world and are a bit jealous and
stand-offish with each other. But they’re all at home with the old man
who used to warm them up with a hickory cane, even though sometimes in
their haste they call him a stand-patter.”
That night at dinner we talked solid business—Blenkiron and I and a
young French lolonel from the IIIme Section at G.Q.G. Blenkiron, I
remember, got very hurt about being called a business man by the
Frenchman, who thought he was paying him a compliment.
“Cut it out,” he said. “It is a word that’s gone bad with me. There’s
just two kind of men, those who’ve gotten sense and those who haven’t.
A big percentage of us Americans make our living by trading, but we
don’t think because a man’s in business or even because he’s made big
money that he’s any natural good at every job. We’ve made a college
professor our President, and do what he tells us like little boys,
though he don’t earn more than some of us pay our works’ manager. You
English have gotten business on the brain, and think a fellow’s a dandy
at handling your Government if he happens to have made a pile by some
flat-catching ramp on your Stock Exchange. It makes me tired. You’re
about the best business nation on earth, but for God’s sake don’t begin
to talk about it or you’ll lose your power. And don’t go confusing real
business with the ordinary gift of raking in the dollars. Any man with
sense could make money if he wanted to, but he mayn’t want. He may
prefer the fun of the job and let other people do the looting. I reckon
the biggest business on the globe today is the work behind your lines
and the way you feed and supply and transport your army. It beats the
Steel Corporation and the Standard Oil to a frazzle. But the man at the
head of it all don’t earn more than a thousand dollars a month.... Your
nation’s getting to worship Mammon, Dick. Cut it out. There’s just the
one difference in humanity—sense or no sense, and most likely you won’t
find any more sense in the man that makes a billion selling bonds than
in his brother Tim that lives in a shack and sells corn-cobs. I’m not
speaking out of sinful jealousy, for there was a day when I was
reckoned a railroad king, and I quit with a bigger pile than kings
usually retire on. But I haven’t the sense of old Peter, who never even
had a bank account.... And it’s sense that wins in this war.”
The Colonel, who spoke good English, asked a question about a speech
which some politician had made.
“There isn’t all the sense I’d like to see at the top,” said Blenkiron.
“They’re fine at smooth words. That wouldn’t matter, but they’re
thinking smooth thoughts. What d’you make of the situation, Dick?”
“I think it’s the worst since First Ypres,” I said. “Everybody’s
cock-a-whoop, but God knows why.”
“God knows why,” Blenkiron repeated. “I reckon it’s a simple
calculation, and you can’t deny it any more than a mathematical law.
Russia is counted out. The Boche won’t get food from her for a good
many months, but he can get more men, and he’s got them. He’s fighting
only on one foot, and he’s been able to bring troops and guns west so
he’s as strong as the Allies now on paper. And he’s stronger in
reality. He’s got better railways behind him, and he’s fighting on
inside lines and can concentrate fast against any bit of our front. I’m
no soldier, but that’s so, Dick?”
The Frenchman smiled and shook his head. “All the same they will not
pass. They could not when they were two to one in 1914, and they will
not now. If we Allies could not break through in the last year when we
had many more men, how will the Germans succeed now with only equal
numbers?”
Blenkiron did not look convinced. “That’s what they all say. I talked
to a general last week about the coming offensive, and he said he was
praying for it to hurry up, for he reckoned Fritz would get the fright
of his life. It’s a good spirit, maybe, but I don’t think it’s sound on
the facts. We’ve got two mighty great armies of fine fighting-men, but,
because we’ve two commands, we’re bound to move ragged like a peal of
bells. The Hun’s got one army and forty years of stiff tradition, and,
what’s more, he’s going all out this time. He’s going to smash our
front before America lines up, or perish in the attempt.... Why do you
suppose all the peace racket in Germany has died down, and the very men
that were talking democracy in the summer are now hot for fighting to a
finish? I’ll tell you. It’s because old Ludendorff has promised them
complete victory this spring if they spend enough men, and the Boche is
a good gambler and is out to risk it. We’re not up against a local
attack this time. We’re standing up to a great nation going bald-headed
for victory or destruction. If we’re broken, then America’s got to
fight a new campaign by herself when she’s ready, and the Boche has
time to make Russia his feeding-ground and diddle our blockade. That
puts another five years on to the war, maybe another ten. Are we free
and independent peoples going to endure that much?... I tell you we’re
tossing to quit before Easter.”
He turned towards me, and I nodded assent.
“That’s more or less my view,” I said. “We ought to hold, but it’ll be
by our teeth and nails. For the next six months we’ll be fighting
without any margin.”
“But, my friends, you put it too gravely,” cried the Frenchman. “We may
lose a mile or two of ground—yes. But serious danger is not possible.
They had better chances at Verdun and they failed. Why should they
succeed now?”
“Because they are staking everything,” Blenkiron replied. “It is the
last desperate struggle of a wounded beast, and in these struggles
sometimes the hunter perishes. Dick’s right. We’ve got a wasting margin
and every extra ounce of weight’s going to tell. The battle’s in the
field, and it’s also in every corner of every Allied land. That’s why
within the next two months we’ve got to get even with the Wild Birds.”
The French colonel—his name was de Vallière—smiled at the name, and
Blenkiron answered my unspoken question.
“I’m going to satisfy some of your curiosity, Dick, for I’ve put
together considerable noos of the menagerie. Germany has a good army of
spies outside her borders. We shoot a batch now and then, but the
others go on working like beavers and they do a mighty deal of harm.
They’re beautifully organised, but they don’t draw on such good human
material as we, and I reckon they don’t pay in results more than ten
cents on a dollar of trouble. But there they are. They’re the
intelligence officers and their business is just to forward noos.
They’re the birds in the cage, the—what is it your friend called them?”
“_Die Stubenvögel,_” I said.
“Yes, but all the birds aren’t caged. There’s a few outside the bars
and they don’t collect noos. They _do_ things. If there’s anything
desperate they’re put on the job, and they’ve got power to act without
waiting on instructions from home. I’ve investigated till my brain’s
tired and I haven’t made out more than half a dozen whom I can say for
certain are in the business. There’s your pal, the Portuguese Jew,
Dick. Another’s a woman in Genoa, a princess of some sort married to a
Greek financier. One’s the editor of a pro-Ally up-country paper in the
Argentine. One passes as a Baptist minister in Colorado. One was a
police spy in the Tzar’s Government and is now a red-hot revolutionary
in the Caucasus. And the biggest, of course, is Moxon Ivery, who in
happier times was the Graf von Schwabing. There aren’t above a hundred
people in the world know of their existence, and these hundred call
them the Wild Birds.”
“Do they work together?” I asked.
“Yes. They each get their own jobs to do, but they’re apt to flock
together for a big piece of devilment. There were four of them in
France a year ago before the battle of the Aisne, and they pretty near
rotted the French Army. That’s so, Colonel?”
The soldier nodded grimly. “They seduced our weary troops and they
bought many politicians. Almost they succeeded, but not quite. The
nation is sane again, and is judging and shooting the accomplices at
its leisure. But the principals we have never caught.”
“You hear that, Dick,” said Blenkiron. “You’re satisfied this isn’t a
whimsy of a melodramatic old Yank? I’ll tell you more. You know how
Ivery worked the submarine business from England. Also, it was the Wild
Birds that wrecked Russia. It was Ivery that paid the Bolshevists to
sedooce the Army, and the Bolshevists took his money for their own
purpose, thinking they were playing a deep game, when all the time he
was grinning like Satan, for they were playing his. It was Ivery or
some other of the bunch that doped the brigades that broke at
Caporetto. If I started in to tell you the history of their doings you
wouldn’t go to bed, and if you did you wouldn’t sleep.... There’s just
this to it. Every finished subtle devilry that the Boche has wrought
among the Allies since August 1914 has been the work of the Wild Birds
and more or less organised by Ivery. They’re worth half a dozen army
corps to Ludendorff. They’re the mightiest poison merchants the world
ever saw, and they’ve the nerve of hell....”
“I don’t know,” I interrupted. “Ivery’s got his soft spot. I saw him in