We had to pass single file through soldiers and policemen, who looked at our passports and asked an infinite number of questions.
I must here record the kindness I received from the chief official, who, seeing my difficulty of luggage transit, sent me a boy to carry my things, and also allowed me to proceed without waiting for my registered box, which had not yet arrived. How grateful I felt towards one who spared me weary hours of waiting and a chance of not arriving at Rotterdam that night!
At Oldenzaal, the Dutch frontier, the same business was gone through, the same single file through bayonetted soldiers, the same close inspection, and added to this, a policeman came into my carriage and demanded to see my permission to travel, as well as my passport.
“This is the climax,” I thought. “Now I am to be put out on the frontier--stranded in a field between the two countries, miles from any station or habitation, according to the delectable vision that had been held warningly before me at Hamburg by the American Consul!”
Driven to my wit’s end I produced my passport and pretended not to understand the official, when, fortunately for me, a young man, whose papers were all wrong, diverted his attention by pushing himself between us, while I slunk away into a corner of a third class compartment, concealing myself behind the burly form of a Dutch woman and a huge basket. Between the two men a lengthy altercation must have taken place and saved the situation for me.
No proper refreshment could be obtained anywhere. At one station, where we had to undergo another revision of customs, we saw at the farther end a tea restaurant, with two trim maids standing outside. I, as well as several others, beckoned eagerly to them to bring us tea, but they never moved, only smiled and pointed. I was afraid to get out. Suppose the train should go on! But had I known how long we were going to stop I might have had twenty cups of tea. No one replied to the ceaseless enquiries. Near me sat an East Prussian woman who had had nothing to eat or to drink all day.
Suddenly we were all commanded to descend and then the cause for the conduct of the tea girls became clear. They were guarded by armed men.
We had to walk again single file through the back part of the station and the same minute examination took place, only no one asked me for my police permission. Good tips helped my cause, and, oh joy! at the end of the passage we found ourselves in the restaurant, where tea, etc., was being liberally consumed.
Refreshed and much relieved we crawled into Holland. How I loved every field and dyke of this neutral land! How happily we threw open the windows, hitherto tightly closed, and let in the free air! Red bills were posted in all the German carriages begging us to respect the safety of the bridges, etc., by keeping the windows shut, and thus prevent destroying bombs from being thrown from the trains. In one place I saw what looked like a bomb lying in a corner seat, on it was written “Excelsior.” One may imagine I left it alone and fled to the farthest end of the train. To be discovered even near it would have been ruin.
As the train crept on thirst again took possession of the worn-out travellers. Soldiers filled the corridors, and while leaning out of the windows drank beer. I pushed one aside and asked if I could get a drink of anything?
“We are just off,” said the conductor, and I retired to my seat, wishing that I had even a pebble to suck.
Two or three stations off that dear man tapped me on the shoulder, I was half asleep--to tell me that here there would be an opportunity for getting some lemonade. God bless him, though he was a German!
And now the black windmills stood out against the red sunset on the horizon, for the long, long day drew to its close amid the glorious colouring peculiar to Holland, and to some extent peace settled over us.
I must have fallen asleep, wedged in as I was between odoriferous East Prussians, for Amsterdam, with its many lights and reflections, passed as the vision in a dream. At Rotterdam my friends met me towards midnight, and the remainder of the journey to London was without incident.
No one knows what freedom means until he has been a captive, nor the value of friends and country until he has been separated from them. Oh! the delight of again being home, of seeing old, familiar faces and landmarks; to find that the barbed wire I had been told was stretched all over London to catch the Zeppelin bombs was an illusion of the German mind, or a fabrication of their mean little papers, as well as the monstrous victories they had gained. Buckingham Palace, too, still stands, as also all the other public buildings I had been forced to believe were burned down. What a relief to find our dear, secure island home still the land of the kind-hearted, the true and the free. My heart throbs with admiration to see how the call to arms has awakened the old British spirit and there is now no need to ask in the words of the song:
“Where are the yeomen of England?” for from every corner of the grand old country comes the answer from thousands of marching men:
“Here we are again!” and “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary.”
MARCUS KNOX.
Transcriber’s Notes
A missing closing quotation mark was added to the name of Hymn on page 43: “Lord if now of Sion’s city.”
Other printer’s errors such as odd or non-standard hyphenation, punctuation, spelling and grammar have been retained.