The Log of a Noncombatant

The Log of a Noncombatant

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Title: The Log of a Noncombatant
Author: Horace Green
Release Date: February 3, 2004 [EBook #10918]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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THE LOG OF A NONCOMBATANT
by Horace Green
Staff Correspondent of the New York Evening Post Special
Correspondent of the Boston Journal
1915

Preface
In the following pages the ego is thickly spread. Their publication is the
result of persuasion from many sources that, before returning to the war
zone, I should put into connected form my personal experiences as
correspondent during the first year of the War of Nations. A few of
these adventures were mentioned in news letters from the Continent,
where I limited myself so far as possible to descriptions of armies at

war and peoples in time of stress; but the greater part of them were
merely jotted down from time to time for my own benefit in "The Log
of a Noncombatant."

Contents
I. From Broadway To Ghent II. The Second Bombardment Of
Termonde III. Captive IV. A Clog Dance On The Scheldt V. The
Bombardment Of Antwerp VI. The Surrender Of Antwerp VII. Spying
On Spies VIII. The Sorrow Of The People
Appendix: Atrocities

The Log Of A Noncombatant

Chapter I
From Broadway To Ghent

When the war broke out in August, 1914, I was at work in the City
Room of the "New York Evening Post." One morning, during the first
week of activities, the copy boy handed me a telegram which was
signed "Luther, Boston," and contained the rather cryptic message:
--"How about this fight?"
It was some moments before I could recall the time, more than two
years before, when I had last seen the writer, Willard B. Luther, Boston
lawyer, devotee of some, and critic of many kinds of sport.
We had been sitting on that previous occasion--a crowd of college
fellows, including Luther and myself--in a certain room in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, not far from the University in that neighborhood where
Luther had attended the Law School and the rest of us, on our
respective graduation days, had received valuable pieces of parchment
with the presidential signature attached. The conversation had already
run through the question of Votes for Women, progressive politics, and
prize-fights, and before the card game began it had settled on the
last-named, chiefly because of my own vainglorious description of
adventures at Reno, Nevada, at the time of the Jeffries-Johnson battle

for the heavyweight championship of the world. I remember telling
with some gusto of my first newspaper interview--one with "Bob"
Fitzsimmons, then the Old Man of the ring, and "Gentleman" Jim
Corbett, who was Jeffries' trainer at Reno.
"I had always wanted to see that performance," said Luther, "and would
have gone in a flash if I could have got any one to make the trip with
me. But remember this fact: whenever the next big fight is held I'm
going with you." Later in the evening we shook hands on the
proposition.
At the time that Luther's telegram came I was planning to start for the
Continent as Staff Correspondent of the "New York Evening Post" and
Special Correspondent of the "Boston Journal." Remembering that
Cambridge agreement I immediately wired:--
"Yes. This fight will do."
So that is how it came to pass that Luther and myself boarded the
Campania together, landed in Liverpool, cast about for ways and means
of getting into the scrimmage, and for the first month and a half of my
four months of wandering on the Continent were brother conspirators,
until the duties of partnership called my friend home and left me
without a companion in adventure.
In London we absorbed to some extent a heavy British fog and to a
greater extent British public opinion. We marveled at the exterior calm
of a nation plunged in the greatest of wars, yet fighting, so it seemed at
the time, with its top hat on and its smile still undisturbed. Across the
English Channel three days later the Dutch steam packet Princess
Juliana carried us safely through mine fields and between lanes of
British torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers. We landed on the
Continent at Flushing. Thence we headed for The Hague, Holland, the
neutral gateway of northern Europe, where we found the American
Minister, Dr. Henry van Dyke, and his first secretary, Marshall
Langhorne, shouldering the