HE WALKED STEADILY ENOUGH IN THE DIRECTION OF THE GENERAL STORE One dripped from his damaged nose. shirt sleeve had been half torn from its parent at the shoulder. But, most curious of all, Slim's face was evenly marked by a perpendicular series of long red scratches as though he had been dragged from stem to stern along a parŚlim ticularly abrasive gravel walk. seemed quite calm. His approach was made in a somewhat strained silence. At length there spoke a dry, sardonic voice. "Well," said it, "did you kill Beck?" "Naw!" replied Slim's remains, disgustedly, "the son of a gun wouldn't fight!" Threads by Which Nations Hang BY GEORGE ABEL SCHREINER Late Representative of the Associated Press with the Armies of the Central Powers HE fate of nations at war often hangs by a slender thread. In nearly all cases this thread is timely military information. If the sacred geese of the Temple of Juno had not cackled in time the Capitol at Rome might have been taken by the Gauls-would have been taken, if the legend is to be relied upon. Since then twenty-six hundred years have elapsed, and one might think that the goose as the purveyor of military information was a thing of the past. So far as I know it is, and still in the present war there came to my notice, at first hand, a case in which other members of the feathered tribe, ducks and drakes, served the same high purpose. I refer to the ducks of Mitrovic. Mitrovic lies on the north bank of the river Sava, in Slavonia. On the south bank of the river, which is Serbian, lies Mitrovica. Both places are important strategical bases. The Sava is a broad sheet of water at this point, and up to the middle of November, 1914, neither Serb nor Austro-Hungarian had been able to gain foothold on the other's bank. Though the Austro-Hungarians made many attempts to cross the river in sufficient force, they always found that the Serbs were well informed as to the strength of the forces they had to checkmate. No matter what the Austrian commander might do, he would find that the Serbs had anticipated him. If he made an attempt to cross the river to the west of Mitrovic, the Serbs were sure to be there en masse. Several attempts to cross the Sava opposite Sabacs were frustrated in a like manner. It was plain that spies were at work. This was no startling discovery, by the way. Many of the Slavonians sym VOL. CXXXVI.-No. 815.-84 pathized with the Serbs. Jugo-Slavism had ripened to that extent anyway. Many arrests were made among the inhabitants of Mitrovic and the villages up and down the river. But that did not seem to improve matters, as General Potiorek found out on several occasions. The river bank was carefully patrolled. No boat was ever seen to cross the Sava, and nobody seemed to fish for bottles which might have contained the information. No trace of heliograph, semaphores, wire, signal lantern, and the like was ever found. The case seemed hopeless. But one day an Austrian officer, a little shrewder than the rest, noticed that there were ducks on the river near the western outskirts of Mitrovic. There was a shallow place in the water nearby, and to this the birds had been in the habit of going in search for food. It would have been a simple matter to order the ducks off the river. But the Austrians had lost so much time by now that a few days did not matter. It seemed more important to find out whether the ducks served any particular purpose aside from their usual one. 66 They did," said the base commander of Mitrovic, as we discussed the case. "We watched the owner of the ducks, and soon learned what he was about. The first thing we noticed was that he never let the birds go on the water at the same time of day. That was unusual. Generally ducks are left to roam as they will. They go out on the water at daybreak, if not restrained, and return to their pen late in the afternoon. "But these ducks made for their feeding-ground always on the hour. Sometimes that would be seven in the morning, then it might be nine, or again they might not appear until two in the afternoon. We learned that the man kept them in the yard when he didn't want to have them on the river, and that usually he did not allow all of the birds their freedom. We also ascertained that he bought more ducks-all of them white. "One day we arrested the man, and before we hanged him we got his code. It was a most elaborate scheme, consisting of over sixty combinations. When the birds on the feeding-place were all white it meant that as many of our battalions as there were birds had gone through Mitrovic in a westerly direction; when there was one colored bird among them it meant that so many battalions had gone east. Battalions going north were indicated by two colored birds, and so on. In all cases the white ducks indicated the number of departing and arriving battalions, while the colored birds indicated the route direction. "A Serbian officer stationed on the roof of the custom-house in Mitrovica used to count the ducks and send up a small smoke ball when he had understood. We had seen the man there many a time, but thought him an ordinary observation officer." Thereafter the Austrians began to work the code. The Serbs did not know that their agent had been found out, and accepted the news from across the Sava as bona fide. That was to be their undoing. One day the Austrians "ducked" across the river that all of their troops had gone in a westerly direction, when in reality they had been taken a few miles toward the east of Mitrovic. The ducks indicated that the Austrians intended to attempt a crossing of the Sava between Sabacs and Belgrade. In reality such a crossing had been planned to take place at the apex of the Machwa triangle. It will be seen that the news coded was contradictory. It had been "ducked" that the Austrian battalions had gone west, the direction in which the Machwa lies, and to this had been appended the "information" that the Austrians proposed to cross the river east of Mitrovic. I questioned the officer on this. "That was done to impress the Serbs," he laughed. "The agent over here was a civilian, who could know what battalions arrived and departed, and what route they had taken. He could not know, however, what the plans of General Potiorek were. We knew that the Serbian officer would take the second part of our message for what it seemed worth in the face of the information that our battalions had gone west. He would take that for an idle rumor, of course, and feel sure then that his agent was still on the job. Only a civilian would make a blunder of that sort. "And the thing worked. During the following night the Serbs came across the Sava a little east of here and ran into the arrangements we had made for their reception. Few of them got away. We took almost two thousand prisoners. Incidentally we had drawn from the Machwa sufficient enemy troops to get our own men across. Our campaign into Serbia got a good start in that manner." About February 15, 1915, I arrived in Constantinople. It was being voiced about that the British and French were sending a large fleet into the eastern Mediterranean for the purpose of forcing the Dardanelles and taking the Ottoman capital. How the news leaked through I do not know. It came to my attention first at Bucharest, where the agents of all the warring governments in Europe were plentiful-too plentiful, in fact. It was claimed at the time that a certain chanteuse, the favorite of an Entente military attaché, had spread the story first. Be that as it may, the Turks and Germans got their information in Bucharest. Later the news was corroborated from Athens. Those were anxious days in Constantinople. While officials of the Ottoman government never tired of asserting that the Allied fleet could not get through, certain German naval men, whose acquaintance I made, were not so confident. It seemed to be entirely a question of ammunition. I had heard in Bucharest that the Rumanian government, some of whose officials were not as strictly honest as they might have been, was through negligence permitting armor-piercing ammunition to reach the Turks. manian government officials denied this most vehemently to others and myself. But nobody would believe them. The camp of pro-Germans in Rumania was Ru still very strong in those days, and it would have been a very natural thing for them to induce Rumanian state railroad officials to be a little complacent in matters affecting shipments to Turkey from Germany. So loud were these rumors that the British, French, and Russian ministers made protests to the Rumanian government. Premier Bratianu assured them that they had been misinformed. When I arrived in Constantinople I discovered that M. Bratianu was right. Not a single shell from Germany was going over the Balkans. agent The case is of interest for the reason that later it was to become one of the greatest factors in the European War. One has but to start a rumor of that sort - and every government will seize upon it to show that he is really worth his salt. Spies, be they of the respectable sort or of that type which decent men shun, have a great habit of warning their superiors of the "dangers" ahead. That in doing so they may do their country great harm does not seem to occur to them. The Entente agents in Bucharest had blackened the name of the Rumanian government without good cause, and no matter what that government did thereafter to prove its innocence it was impossible to eradicate from the minds of the governments in London and Paris that a great deal of "bluehead" ammunition had gone from Germany through Rumania into Turkey. That impression was to cost the Allies a great deal, as will here be shown. Had it not been for the "zeal" of the Entente agents in Bucharest, the Allied fleet might have returned to a renewal of the attack made on the Outer Dardanelles shore batteries on March 18th. The Allied fleet was doing its best to force the Dardanelles when my duties as war correspondent brought me to that waterway. The Turkish shore batteries at Kum Kalé and Sid-il-Bahr were silenced by a tremendous expenditure of ammunition, and after that the batteries along the Outer Dardanelles were paid much attention. I went through the entire series of bombardments, and will vouch for the fact that the intentions of the British and French were sincere enough. Even the minor affairs were not so puny, seeing that from three to seven ships of the line, not to mention cruisers and other vessels, participated in them. The chief performance occurred on March 18th. Two shells from the super-dreadnought Queen Elizabeth inaugurated the event at eleven twenty sharp, as I have good reason to remember, seeing that they landed near the little café where I was just having a glass of tchai-which is tea in Turkish. While the debris of several houses was coming back to earth, I was making off for Fort Tchemenlik in the hope of finding some shelter under its parapets and traverses. For a while the protection seemed ample. By noon it seemed not so ample, and once more I retreated. War correspondents are not supposed to do heroic things. At about one o'clock the fire of the Allied fleet had reached its maximum intensity. Out in Erenkoi Bay lay nineteen ships of the line and some thirty cruisers and other craft, and they were pumping shells into the Turkish emplacements at the rate of five every minute. It was one of the great days of the war-in a manner the greatest. Never before had so large a fleet tried issues" with coast batteries. The crash of artillery was frightful. In Tchanak Kalé houses collapsed as a result of the tremors. The glacis of Fort Anadolu Hamidieh had rents in it that ran from one end to the other, and showed that the shore had subsided at least three inches. It was a most spectacular day. Over the Dardanelles landscape lay the delicate green veil of early spring. The hedges were green, and from the meadows was being driven the last tinge of winter's shadows. The sky was of that intense blue we find in southern climes, and the waters of the strait sparkled in a joyous mood. Such was the scene at eleven twenty. An hour later the cañon in which the Dardanelles run was filled with powder fumes. The feeble south breeze was unable to carry off the vapors. At first they merely hovered over the scene of the gigantic struggle, and later they at times completely enveloped everything, forming a dense bank from which sprang the red beams that announced that more shells were on the way. Soon the towns of Kilid-il-Bahr and Tchanak Kalé were in flames. The Greek quarter of the latter was a roaring furnace. The shells of the Allies would throw up more earth-gushers in and near the forts, and out on the bay rose the waterspouts of the Turkish "blueheads." Now and then the roar of artillery made it impossible for minutes at a time to hear words spoken directly into the ear, and even the leather-lunged Turkish and German officers had difficulty making themselves understood to their crews, despite the use of large megaphones. Out on the Allied ships the gunners were serving guns as fast as they could be served. Volley came upon volley, crash upon crash, and above this din always rang the stentorian "Atesh!" "Fire!"-of the officers in the Turkish batteries. The crashing sound of tumbling buildings and the vicious clatter of steel fragments, the wail of projectiles tearing the air and the echoes of detonation, the flames of explosion, the terrible red of the smoke-screened sun, allowed only the few to think and live consciously. For two hours this frenzied chaos reigned. The Allied ships had so far given the shells of the Turks a wide berth. But that led to a waste of ammunition and time. Gradually the two circles formed by the craft enlarged. With splendid recklessness the Bouvet, one of the French ships of the line, came in closest. In Fort Anadolu Hamidieh, manned by Germans almost exclusively, they had their eye on the Bouvet. The range-finders showed that she was still out of effective range. Captain Herschel, the commander of the emplacement, had some difficulty restraining the younger officers. "Not yet, not yet!" he cautioned, made the circle, fired her forward turret twins as her bow showed and then steamed on-slowly and majestically. There was little spray at her bow. Again two ominous tongues of violet fire leaped from her forward turret. Two more shells crashed into the yard behind the parapet of Fort Hamidieh. Now a little of the flank of the vessel could be seen. "Thirteen-fifty," said the officer at the range-finder. Captain Herschel thought for a moment. Then he seized the megaphone. "Thirteen-ten!" he shouted. "Make ready!" It took interminable minutes for the Bouvet to get to the position the captain had selected. In the emplacements the gunners were once more training their eyes on the sights. The crews had stepped aside. The blue-gray battle monster was now nearing the zenith of her course. She was showing full broadside. It was one fifty-seven o'clock. "Fire!" rang the terse command from Captain Herschel's megaphone. Four shafts of flame issued from behind the parapet and four shells sped toward the Bouvet with the shrieks of demons. One of them raised a huge waterspout near the stern of the vessel then a red sheaf of sparks leaped up and disappeared almost instantly as the particles of steel cooled. The next instant a tremendous column of smoke, steam, and water rose from the body of the ship. A second later she showed a heavy list. More shells were being rammed into the guns of Fort Anadolu Hamidieh. The Bouvet was no longer moving. She was beginning to settle by the bow. Four more shells sped toward her from Fort Hamidieh. Another hit. A little more wallowing, then a lurch to the side and the Bouvet disappeared under the surface of the strait at exactly two o'clock by my watch. There was a lull as men everywhere jumped upon parapets and traverses to see the first of the day's victims go down. And then a mighty chorus of hurrahs sped over the waters of the Dardanelles and reverberated in the hills. During the short fire-pause an at |