World's War Events (Vol. 1-3). Various Authors

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СКАЧАТЬ they waved white cloths. The Sheik, to whom a part of our camels belonged, went over to them to negotiate, then Sami Bey and his wife. In the interim we quickly built a sort of wagon barricade, a circular camp of camel saddles, rice and coffee sacks, all of which we filled with sand. We had no shovels, and had to dig with our bayonets, plates, and hands. The whole barricade had a diameter of about fifty meters. Behind it we dug trenches, which we deepened even during the skirmish. The camels inside had to lie down, and thus served very well as cover for the rear of the trenches. Then an inner wall was constructed, behind which we carried the sick men. In the very centre we buried two jars of water, to guard us against thirst. In addition we had ten petroleum cans full of water; all told, a supply for four days. Late in the evening Sami's wife came back from the futile negotiations, alone. She had unveiled for the first and only time on this day of the skirmish, had distributed cartridges, and had conducted herself faultlessly.

      Death of Schmidt and Rademacher.

      "Soon we were able to ascertain the number of the enemy. There were about 300 men; we numbered fifty, with twenty-nine guns. In the night, Lieutenant Schmidt died. We had to dig his grave with our hands and with our bayonets, and to eliminate every trace above it, in order to protect the body. Rademacher had been buried immediately after the skirmish, both of them silently, with all honors.

      The men suffer from thirst.

      "The wounded had a hard time of it. We had lost our medicine chest in the wreck; we had only little packages of bandages for skirmishes; but no probing instrument, no scissors were at hand. On the next day our men came up with thick tongues, feverish, and crying 'Water! water!' But each one received only a little cupful three times a day. If our water supply was exhausted, we would have to sally from our camp and fight our way through. Then we should have gone to pot under superior numbers. The Arab gendarmes simply cut the throats of those camels that had been wounded by shots, and then drank the yellow water that was contained in the stomachs. Those fellows can stand anything. At night we always dragged out the dead camels that had served as cover, and had been shot. The hyenas came, hunting for dead camels. I shot one of these, taking it for an enemy in the darkness.

      "That continued about three days. On the third day there were new negotiations. Now the Bedouins demanded arms no longer, but only money. This time the negotiations took place across the camp wall. When I declined, the Bedouin said: 'Beaucoup de combat,' (lots of fight.) I replied:

      "'Please go to it!'

      Troops of the Emir of Mecca.

      "We had only a little ammunition left, and very little water. Now it really looked as if we would soon be dispatched. The mood of the men was pretty dismal. Suddenly, at about 10 o'clock in the morning, there bobbed up in the north two riders on camels, waving white cloths. Soon afterward there appeared, coming from the same direction, far back, a long row of camel troops, about a hundred; they draw rapidly near by, ride singing toward us, in a picturesque train. They were the messengers and troops of the Emir of Mecca.

      "Sami Bey's wife, it developed, had, in the course of the first negotiations, dispatched an Arab boy to Jeddah. From that place the Governor had telegraphed to the Emir. The latter at once sent camel troops, with his two sons and his personal surgeon; the elder, Abdullah, conducted the negotiations; the surgeon acted as interpreter, in French. Now things proceeded in one-two-three order, and the whole Bedouin band speedily disappeared. From what I learned later, I know definitely that they had been corrupted with bribes by the English. They knew when and where we would pass and they had made all preparations. Now our first act was a rush for water; then we cleared up our camp, but had to harness our camels ourselves, for the camel drivers had fled at the very beginning of the skirmish. More than thirty camels were dead. The saddles did not fit, and my men know how to rig up schooners, but not camels. Much baggage remained lying in the sand for lack of pack animals.

      The party reaches Mecca.

      "Then, under the safe protection of Turkish troops, we got to Jeddah. There the authorities and the populace received us very well. From there we proceeded in nineteen days, without mischance, by sailing boat to Elwesh, and under abundant guard with Suleiman Pasha in a five-day caravan journey toward this place, to El Ula, and now we are seated at last in the train and are riding toward Germany—into the war at last!"

      "Was not the war you had enough?" I asked.

      "Not a bit of it," replied the youngest Lieutenant; "the Emden simply captured ships each time; only a single time, at Penang, was it engaged in battle, and I wasn't present on that occasion. War? No, that is just to begin for us now."

      Mücke's great task.

      "My task since November," said Mücke, "has been to bring my men as quickly as possible to Germany against the enemy. Now, at last, I can do so."

      "And what do you desire for yourself?" I asked.

      "For myself," he laughed, and the blue eyes sparkled, "a command in the North Sea."

      Japan was bound by alliance with Great Britain to join with her to attack any aggressor, and to carry out her pledges she, at the outbreak of the war, prepared to capture the German stronghold Tsing-tao, the capital of the concession of Kiao-chau, which Germany had obtained from China, and had converted into a German possession.

      CAPTURE OF TSING-TAO

       A. N. HILDITCH

       Table of Contents

      Qualities of the Japanese.

      Count Okuma Prime Minister.

      Japanese ultimatum.

      Tokyo, capital of Japan, lies at the head of Tokyo Bay, in the south-east of Nippon. Its two million inhabitants are distributed among houses and streets which present curious intermixtures of Japanese and European architecture, customs, or science. The jinrikisha notably has been displaced largely by tramcars which, carrying all passengers at a uniform rate of four sen, make it possible to travel ten miles for a penny. It is an industrial city, but on account of occasional earthquakes no very large buildings line the thoroughfares. The traveller can here observe to advantage the strange characteristics of the most stoical race upon earth, or can contrast, if he will, the courteous, imperturbably serene disposition of the most martial nation of the East with the present disposition of the most rabidly bellicose nation of the West. When Japanese and German, indeed, met in conflict before Tsing-tao in the autumn of 1914, there was seen, in the Japanese soldier, during a campaign of peculiar hardship and difficulty, a revival of the qualities of the old Samurai, with his quiet courage, his burning patriotism, his patience, his habitual suppression of emotional display singularly distinct from those of the modern Goth. Nor was the statesmanship which brought about that conflict less admirable. Japan's alliance with Great Britain was at once a solemn pledge and the guiding principle of her foreign policy. August 1914 found British interests and the vast trade that centred at Hong-kong in danger: German armed vessels prowled the seas, and the German naval base of Tsing-tao was busy with warlike preparations. Great Britain appealed to Japan to free their joint commerce from the menace. The Japanese Prime Minister, Count Okuma, might well hesitate, however, before recommending intervention. Was he the right minister to direct a war? He was nearer eighty than seventy years old, and recently had been for seven years in retirement: his Government had a minority in the Diet, and to the Genro his name was anathema: he claimed the allegiance of no party, and the powerful military and naval clans, Choshiu and Satsuma, were openly hostile. He had been raised to power a few months before by public demand for progressive government. СКАЧАТЬ