Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1915-04-18


~ underhodies. the aeroplanes
Is y from the enemy fleet flew low.
What few anti-aircraft guns the United
States possessed were with the army.
Around the peaceful American cities
were no encircIing Notifications. no
batteries no military works that might
conceal marksmen. The airmen knew
that there was nothing to fear
They Skinned close TO the state
house on Roston's Beacon Hill. They
flew over the tall municipal building of
New York and dipped toward the city
hall They appeared over Providence
and Fall River. over Brockton, over
Bridgeport and New Haven. They
passed over every one of the factory
cities of New Jersey that crowd to be
near New York's harbor.
Where they appeared it if
they bore some instant charm to turn
the world to stone. All the city noises
stopped, dead. All motion stopped.
Wheels stopped turning. and feet stop
ped moving, and every white face was
turned upward. For that long moment
of dumb fear men saw nothing except
the wide-winged bodies. They heard
nothing except the Seipin-s Of the
hundred horsepower motors over them.
Then they fled. Motormen and drivers
bent low AMI yelled, and sent their
vehicles ahead blindly. The crowds
rushed every doorway. They fought
for the protection of narrow cornices
as if they were bomb-proofs. They
squeezed themselves close to the sides
of buildings, and chung to smooth iron
and granite, and stared upward, wait
ing for bombs.
Inste-d of bombs. they things
raining down gently, ightly-lttle
weighted pennants that circled down.
ward in lovely spirals and dropped on
the streets with scarcely sound.
Into every crowded street, into every
open square of half u hundred cities
that day the hostile airmen dropped
these pennants
They were printed. They bore proc
lamations addressed to the people of
America.
Our armies have landed said the pFocama-
don. We shall advance your cities at once.
Any attempt defend them will tueir
destruction. Civilians are warned against max
ing any demonstrations, whether with arms or
oInerwisc- ATTRACTIONS OF this rule OF war will
he punished by summary s1eeutioa; Houses from
which hotilc acts committed will be de-
stroyed- Towns whose civilian population
sists will lie destroyed. Take warnins:''
Recovering from their shock of fear.
the first impulse of the Americans who
read these proclamations was one of
rage. Their cities had grown proud in
unchallenEed greatness. These pen
nants, slowly raining from their sky.
were infuriating insults.
Had the invader appeared in that
moment. the people would have torn
up the paving blocks to fight him.
In the st3tehouse in Boston there
emotion of all the cities along the At
1anfiC coast In that old. rebellOuS
town, where American liberty had been
nurtured in the very presence of an
armed foe, there were gathered many
eminent citizens, with the officials, the
mayor and the governor of their state
One of these officials had pennant
in his hands. What can we do he
asked IF we had all the militia of
the state here we would have less than
5000 men. If the foe arrives and lays
his guns on the town. gentlemen. they
will be guns that fire high explosives
and incendiary shells. We have moth
ing TO fight with. If the army cannot
check him before he arrives, we must,
to save peoples lives, We must
surrender peaceably.''
He turned to man who bore fam
lily name identified with Boston's his
tory from the time of its settlement.
His ancestors had stood in Faneull
Hall with James Otis when he dedi-
Gated it to the cause of liberty.
X
He took the proclamation, held it for
a moment while he looked around the
circle, and then crumpled it suddenly,
angrily in his fist. Throwing it to the
floor, he set his foot on it.
Il say he cried, with flashing eyes,
let him destroy it. Better still. let us
destroy it. When the enemy approaches,
let US send our Boston town up in
not SO much as rivet to pick up for
loot"
There were many men there, of
many minds. They had many inter
ests to guard and many responsibilities
to bear. But for a moment he carried
them with him. They waved their
hands and shouted assent.
IT only for a moment. IF all
thought like YOU. said one. an old,
grave man. But We have 100000 peo-
pie and they are not soldiers or phi
iosophers. They're human men. 1t is
laid on US to protect them, at what
ever price to our national pride If hu-
initiation is the price that we must
pay for our past carelessness, why.
gentlemen. we must pay it, bitter
though it is
30 it was in New York, in Philadel-
phia. in score of cities between and
around them. Everywhere was the first
Outburst of fury and unrecking hero
ism, and then the sober second thought
born not of cowardice. but of cold
logic. This northeastern Atlantic sea
board. with its chain of II, 000, 900 city
jewellers, was no Holland to drown it,
self under its own in order to de-
stToy its foe. These cities were no
Moscows, to devour themselves in fire
that the enemy might perish with
them. This was the United States of
America and this the twentieth
century, and the men. no less brave, no
less patriotic, faced the conditions of
their place and time.
They faced it from Portland. Me-, to
the capes of Virginia. If the army
could not stop the invader. they must
fall.
They formed committees of safety.
They wresfled with their top-heavy
municipal machineries to make them
answer the sharp need. Under the
stress all the defects of their political
rule stood out unconpromisingU not
TO be denied. Their oSerstaffcd depart
Inents were lost in the ingenious mazes
of their own contriving. There was
only one answer to the lnextrtca BILE,
blind confusion. II was martial law.
But here. too. there was inefficiency-
inefticiency that had been cultivated
and tended, like plant, by politics
through the Needless years In the