St. Louis Post-Dispatch
October 10, 1915

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AST ious POst DisPaTcH VOL. 68. NO.51. "Se" — fs +7 \t + | SECT ON ee ST. LOUIS, SUNDAY MORNIN G, OCTOBER 10, 1915. PAGES 1—16._ KAISER AT THE BATTLE FRONT As Seon "s a Se Novelist Ludwig Ganghofer, Romanticist, Tells of Dining, German Playwright and Chatting and Automobiling With the Ruler at Lat- ter’s Headquar ters at Front. L dining and chatting there with the UDWIG GANGHOFER, a Bavarian, whose novels and plays have won him a place in the foremost’ rank of German writers, has been adding to his fame of late by taking trips to the fighting lines, Kaiser and other high dignitaries, crawling through damp underground passages, and exposing his life quite as if he were a youth of 20, instead of a man of 60. A few days ago the news came fo this country that he had at last paid dearly for his temerity; that he had been severely wounded and would lose his left eye. This lends peculiar timeliness to Ganghofer’s record of his war adventures, just published in Berlin under the title “Journeys to the German Front” (Berlin, Ulistein & Co.), the sale of which has already run into the hun- dreds of thousands. ——— | HE Bavarian { gives a most in- teresting picture of the Kaiser. When he visited his sovereign the latter was “some- where in France” —not far from Sedan. Gang- nofer’s prestige was such that he was allowed to travel straight to the imperial headquarters. While other pas- gsengers on the train that bore him toward the town harboring the German ruler were submitted to @ most severe ex- amination, all co Ganghofer had to ~~ ‘who he was in order tobe met externals call us barbarian kultur. highly England civilized world empire th utter nonsense. the morality, con dustriousness of HOFER. Kaiser Calls Charge That He Plans World Empire Utter Nonsense. ANY persons who always M judge us Germans know that there is a big differ- ence between civilization can always notice that by ob- serving Englishmen “in society. But to possess kultur means to have the best sort of conscience and morality. These are pos- sessed by my Germans. people in foreign lands declare that I have sought to found a conquering power that will win the universe--KAISER WIL- HELM TO LUDWIG GANG- ded, stretched out his hand, and gladdened the Bavarian’s heart by impulsive praise of his fel- low - countrymen, the Bavarian sol- diers. “Say, Ganghof- er, those Bavar- ians of yours,” he exclaimed, “what splendid fellows they are! They have done good and brave work! And they’re going forward every: where, God be praised!” Then he talked pleasantly of their last meeting, on the occasion of the performance of one of Gang- hofer’s plays at the Crown Prince’s palace in by and always s seem not to and is certainly a nation. You When ey are talking But there is in science and in- the Germans a with a “You are expected” from an aid de camp at the railway station, who forthwith escorted him without delay to the villa where the Emperor was staying. There he learned that he was to be the Kaiser's guest at dinner. While the handful of guests gath- ered in an anteroom, the Bavarian Tell to wondering how the war had affected his sovereign, whom he had yhot seen for years. My heart beat hard under my tourist’s coat; it rose almost to ' my throat in my excitement. My ~ tumultuous feelings reduced _ themselves to asking this ques- | tion: “How will the Kaiser look, what shall I be able to read in his features, what shall I hear ‘n his words, what shall I feel un- der the glance of his keen eyes, in this day of struggle when every German heart yearns for oracular guidance from one who knows, for support and help in _. those moments of trial from which even the most confident amen ms are not entirely free?” BA = had not long to wait. A x H servant flung open the door. BL te The Kaiser entered. Gang- ' — hofer thins describes his appearance: He walks in, in his field-gray “eniform, with the same quiet and elastic step which I have always noticed in him. His hair, to be - *&-sure, with the lIttle rebellious ae | wave over the right temple, has ' | become wo little grayer since the -, @arly part of the year, but hard- ~~ Jy enough to be noticeable, And 3 penete is a wrinkle which I had vk ©r seen before cut into his i, like a shadow, between hie _ ae ao. Les ne “But one glance into those clear ae cs and straightforward eyes is tot _enough—like a glowing wave the eB i r t wish courses through me: ; Would that all the thousands of . a especially those in 2 care and apprehension seek to awaken, might stand now in ‘™) Then they would ee bloody weeks the Kaiser has re- —. the same in every way— ‘no, he is not the same, he has ( @ man who has won some- Event nothing. The Kaiser is by the days through che lives! One feels this cor ting his dignified ‘bearing, his quiet smile, his quiet dance. And before I had heard @ sing! hae) ilar alipeten some- Berlin. “Who could have imagined then,” went on the Emperor, “that what has now happened could ever come to us? And that we should meet | again in France!” After that the party adjourned to the dinner table in a room hung about with hunting trophies won in the Argonne forest. It was a short, quickly served meal. Few servants officiated. Ganghofer confesses that he was so impressed with being in the company of the Kaiser and the other guests, all high dignitaries of ,the army and imperial court, so in- terested in their conversation, that he does not know what was set be- fore him. “And yet I had left the train as hungry as a Wolf and hadn't had a good bite for 24 hours,” he writes. So far as he knows, there was noth- ing but fish, cold meat, potatoes, fruit, a little French wine and water — ‘and war bread, no bread but war bread.” After the meal the Kaiser and the little group of officers and courtiers began talking about the war in a lit- tle garden, “like those which we see on the German stage in many French comedies.”’ Cigarettes and short pipes are lighted and Munich beer is hand- ed around in long glasses, On the table by which the Kaiser seats himseif are lilacs and roses, sent to him by the Empress from Berlin. The whole conversation turns on the course of events at home and important episodes of the war. It is far different from the war talks which carry ovf“n our beer halls and at our tea tables. There at the Kaiser's headquar- ters we did not divide up the world, snatch away lands, make gifts of empires; no “buffer States” were founded, nor was the map of Europe corrected with pretentious pencils. There is no thought except of the serious- ness and necessities of the presi ent; nobody mentions the future. From all the weighty words which I heard rang the firm and clear law of the time: “First we must work and win. Everything else will come as it must come and according to our deserts.” Kaiser’s Dog Privileged. ND while this serious conver- sation Was going on the ing down again just as often as he wished, cuddling up in all sorts of positions by no means comfortable |= the Am a ch levers once arous- . ar ad ba ~ =. oe a 0 Adie a % n ; : 2 it ae t ae A ; Fe : eee jupon cotton. Souther _ Woman Planter Fells How she Helps Ne’ orDo.W Well Renters to Biotec neg Owners Marguerite Martyn Finds Mrs. G. H. Mathis, Who Addressed 28,000 Farmers in Alabama, Her Home State, in 60 Days a Wonderful Woman Who Succeeds in Elevating Her Tenants by Making Them Spruce Up and Cuitivatina Their Am- bition to Elevate Their Social and Livina Conditions. By MARGUERITE MARTYN. HREE loud, lusty cheers bursting from a couple of hundred masculine throats as if from one man, at the close of remarks ad- dressed to them by a woman—a farm woman— would have cheered and gratified all women, and I was the only other woman present in the crowd- ed, smoky-smelling ness it. The occasion was the address of Mrs. G. H. Mathis of, Alabama, on the program with six other practical farmers, advising with the second annual convention of the Farm Mortgage Bank- ers’ Association, which is co-operating with the Government to determine the farm-credit sys- tem to which the present administration is com- mitted. To be sure, Mrs. Mathis is a larger woman than many of us, broad mentally, imposing physically, of great energy, vast experience and manifestly of a great heart. When she addressed the bankers as “neigh- bors,” it was not entirely a slip into colloqual- ism, for she comes as representative of both the farmers’ interests and her State Bankers’ Asso- ciation. During a special agricultural campaign she has talked to 28,000 farmers in the last 60 days. And she not only is a farmer, but a farm renter on a large scale. The extent of her vast holdings in many counties of Alabama was the fact by which she was heralded. Then her speech became most picturesque in a delightful dialect. Softly slurred r’s and omitted final g’s traced her nativity to the land o’ cotton. But it was the good, wholesome, plain-spoken philosophy and homely anecdote with which she interspersed her presentation of facts and fig- ures on the good the campaign has achieved that brought down the house and in the end called forth a remarkable ovation. adopted that a draft of her speech be sent to President Wilson and a testimonial of apprecia- tion to Alabama. convention hall to wit- Resolutions were Booster of Credit System. ra E expect to profit by the farm credit system in Alabama,” said Mrs. Mathis at one point in her address. “A man wrote to me, ‘I hear the Government is letting out money without maturity or security. I wish you would send me $350 by next mail.’ Such ideas may convince you that farmers have got a lot of problems of their own to work out béfore banks can help them. The kind of credit we need is better plowin’! “Now, I suppose,” she went on to say, ‘ Southern people can do more fool stunts to the square inch than any other people. We just get in our own way and stand there. Meet our- selves Coming and going. “We send up here for hog meat, for which we pay from 12 to 30 cents a pound, when we can grow it for 2 cents a pound. We pay $15 to $20 a ton for hay. The grower gets about $6 of that, when the middlemen have got their toll. don’t care who gets our money, so we get ia ot it. “At the same time it’s all we can do to keep from growing hay. We have to kill the grass before we can plant the cotton—kill the grass to grow the cotton to buy the hay. A regular mer- ry-go-round! We can raise 2321-2 bushels of corn to the acre. Can you beat it? Yet we must send off for our corn. Same way with flour and wheat, as well as all other products that will grow in the temperate zone and which will flourish in Alabama. — “IT am glad,” she continued, “the bankers are seeing it is good business to help the farmers to help themselves. The Agricultural Department sent me out to advise the farmers of my State to diversify their crops and not depend entirely Next I shall be urging the banks to extend credit in the South on other crops be- sides cotton.” She told then of a plan of her own ie which for years she has made co-operation with her farm renters good business, by which she built up run-down farms bought cheaply, never had a failure, put the farmer on his feet and enabled at the end of three years. Makes Tenants Spruce Up. E plan is based upon a contract each renter et Se Sn ees eral education for.a farmer. | Pr tuaiet aihat ay’ tenant. cbiaiSerdie all Giee need for food and clothing and stop living off the stores,” sbe said. “I! insist, too, that if they > .* : almost every one to purchase a farm of his own ) €= 4 ‘ SS ‘ of, ff . . »" ‘ ‘ MBS. G. H.. MATHIS. to fix up their houses and themselves. ‘Tl. haven’t any patience with bein’ so‘ everlastin’- “poor! “When they go to town with me to consult with the bankers, they’ve got to have their hair shingled, face shaved and shoes blacked. I insist they raise a garden. They know nothing as a rule but to raise cotton to the very doors. They know, too, the boll weevil is making cotton a mighty unsafe crop. “One prospective tenant I was advising said he always had wanted a garden—always liked a gar- den. But the trouble was, he had a wife who was too blamed lazy to work it. “Some of the provisions contained in my con- tract that goes. with a 50-acre, two-horse crop farm—and I don’t bother with less—are: After deciding about how much the tenant will need for his own use, a certain portion, about fifteen acres usually, shall be planted in corn. - The same way with wheat. Three acres or so shall be put in quick-money crops, such as potatoes, sweet corn, pears, turnips, cabbage, three crops of which can be grown on the.same land in Alabama. The renter agrees to raise one acre of watermelons, to keep a brood sow in the pasture, to raise 100 pounds of pork per year and a certain amount of beef. He agrees to put a good cow in the pas- ture, raise a calf to be a year and a half old before killing, and raise one mule colt each year. He must make one barrel of molasses. Some. Balk on Rules. F course, I have my part of the contract to O fulfill. I furnish house, implements, good pasture, shelter for crops, make repairs and require either one-third of the crop iiself or one-third of the money received therefor for my share. There will be some rules he will balk at unless I insist. But I generally insist. He may say he doesn’t like sorghum. I say, ‘Maybe your family likes it.’ No, he thinks they don’t. ‘Then sell the barrel of molasses,’ say I. Well, he’s afraid he can’t sell it. ‘Make the barrel of molasses,’ I insist, ‘or get off the land.’ And he generally stays on the land. “After carrying out my contract,” said Mrs. Mathis, “the renter is at liberty to raise all the cotton he can. But the contract has seen to it that he is assured of a living and the equivalent in value of 10 bales of cotton, if his cotton crop fails.” She told the story of one ne’er-do-well with a debt of $750 she took in hand. With vigilant supervision, at the end of a year he had cleaned up $3300 on the crops of his 45-acre farm, Mrs. Mathis’ share out of that being $1100. | “But for one who would co-operate my work had not stopped there,” she added. . “His pros- perity attracted the attention of some associates of his younger days. I got an anguished telephone call from his wife, telling me he had gone to town ull fied up. (which detail’ I couldn't object to), with all’ bis money, and she feared the, result. There was only one thing to do—dress up the wife and baby, take my surrey and go after him. We found him in the midst of the convivial group. ) ANS She Addressed 28,000 Farmers in 60 Days, Telling Them How to Pull Themselves Out of the Bog of Debt and to Provide Their Food From Their Own Land Instead of Sending Money to the North and West for It. AIAN wife, who had worked as hard as he at that crop, and the baby, had-a home. “A tterward the wife told me he said to her that night: ‘Mary, let’s stop associating with folks that are beneath us and begin to associate with folks that are above us!’” Profits in Tomatoes. HE told, too, about the girls’ canning club, S fostered by the Agricultural Department; how the well-to-do girls had been the only ones taking advantage of it until a superintend- ent who knew country conditions was instructed to go into the mountain and hill country and in- form the poorer girls of the project. These moun- tain women came into town, but without the wherewithal to buy cans for their tomatoes. She tcld how the aid of society women was not solicit- ead, but commanded; how for a loan of $400 the girls signed notes and 50,000 cans of tomatoes made their way back to town. These had to be cashed in on. The aid of society women again was enlisted. They were told they would have to s¢ll them or eat them. Local merchants refused the consignment, saying they already had bought their tomatoes in Maryland and Virginia. “Very well, if you don’t trade with us, we won't trade with -you,” the merchants were told. “Trade ceased for a time,” Mrs. Mathis said, “but finally the merchants came to the front with offers to bny this year’s crop and the next. “Six thousand dollars was realized from the sale. Some of the girls put themselves in school. Some bought. rocking chairs and phonographs. One lame girl helped her father pay on a peir of mules.’ Some paid doctors’ bills and some bought coffins. “But the $6000 came back to the town. Pretty good return on a $400 loan, don’t you think so?” Ideal Moving Outfit. HE big, underlying purpose of the farm T credit system is to induce the people to return to the land. Mrs. Mathis paid tribute to the American propensity for moving. “The people I havc to deal with,” she said, “the renters, would like to be fitted with wings on their feet so they could fly as well as run and move on wheels. ‘Now,’ I sey, ‘if you. must be on wheels, why, let the wheels of your wagon be barrels. Let one be filled with molasses, another with flour, another with kraut and the fourth with some other commodity of your own raising. Then let your wagon bed be a crib overflowing with corn and let one of your team be a brood mare with’a mule colt trotting beside. I war-, rant you, with a rig such as that, you wouldn’t want to get so far away from home that you wouldn't want to come back.’” Mrs. Mathis’ husband is a well-to-do cotton broker. In an interview later, she expressed firm “If I ever have been criticised for going around and speaking all over the country, I never have ‘| the iConstant, [How It Feels to S peed UnderWater in a Submarine Feet Beneath the Observations of a Post-Dispatch Correspondent in a SuBmersible Built for England at Quincy, Mass. —Watching Maneuvers With Torpedoes 54 Surface of the Sea. ULES VERNE saw more things feature of modern naval warfare. apt to cause enough thrills in one calendar of life in a submarine. dive deep down bottled up in a steel Government. In a’ book of see from the “eyes” of a modern submarine. glimpsed greater wonders in his imaginative explorations, “Twenty Thousand Leagueé Under the Sea,” than any German U-boat commander or any of the allies’ underwater voyagers are viewing in the desperate war between submersibles that now stands out as the most spectacular What are the sensations of a trip under water? By Charles W. Duke, A Special Correspondent of the Post-Dispatch. QUINCY, Mass., Oct. 9. under the sea than it is possible to Capt. Nemo’s captive Writing from the firing line. in Europe Arnold Bennett describes war as casual and vague, Riding in a submarine, viewing the world through the single eye of a periscope, Hving in cramped quarters might also be termed vague and casual, although the actual engagement of a submarine with a ramming craft intent upon the,destruction of the undersea boat is minute to compensate for the long, dreary hours of vigilant monotony that make up the daily and weekly How does it feel to casement? These things I have just experienced as a guest of the Electric Boat Co. of New London, Conn., and the Fore River Ship Building Co. of Quincy, in a three days’ series of maneuvers off Cape Cod on submarines built at Quincy for the English merged submar- recent publication which has aroused ire: of all Jean a French literateur, assimilates the sentiments of a German submar- ine commander. whose vessel. has just been crushed and sunk off the Scilly Islands. Constant imagines that the submers- ible had pre viously sunk liners with wom- en and children aboard. In. the dying. moments of those aboard the sinking. sub- marine, Constant has them raving at the sight of women and chil- Germany, while explain. sorts of things water. When jar. even keel, there engineer sways Physical Sensation of Dive ia Submarine Explained. HE actual physical feeling T speeding under water is very “hard to You can conjure all but the actual observations are very limited in scope. There-- is no rocking of the boat under tips fore or aft in her dive, ‘there is a slight, sensation of changed direction. When a tor- pedo is fired, there is a slight When running ahead on denote motion. The locomotive gine hits a curve, the mariner lurches in the roll of the sea; but down in the sea you just “sit tight” and keep going with- out any perceptible jar. ine convinces me that in warfare I would rather in a submarine than on the dreadnought. One long flight under the water and then a quick dive to the surface brings us } directly under the bow of the United States. in your mind, the submarine sota, where a single properly tleship out of the water before it has a chance to is no feeling to when his en- the speeding sub- merged ine. As aeroplaning, the dren way down under the sea who were victims ‘of the U-boat. An Exciting Life Normally. MAGINATION alone, possibly, is | the only way to get thrills from | an undersea voyage. As a “rookie landlubber” upon my initial voyage under the water I will say that the trip was void of sensation. The thrills were conspicuous by their ab- sence and the ultra spectacular, which I had expected, was something to be created only by fervid firing of the imagination. Of course, it is one thing to be cruising in a peaceful harbor in.a peaceful country and to be cruising in a sea beset by an en- remy’s “mosquito fleet” and submarine destroyers intent upon the wiping out of every submarine that sticks its nose above the water. But the sensations of submersion are the same in either case. Life in a submarine is very much like life in a machine shop—the dif- ference being that these machine shops’ are down in a cellar where no sunshine penetrates, and which is lighted by electricity. When down in one of the undersea craft the thing that impresses you most is the busi- nesslike precision with which every- thing is done and the matter-of-fact way in which the humans who com- pose the crew go about their affairs just as though submarining was the most ordinary thing in the world. « If the “rookie” is of ordinary tempera- ment and not given to “seeing things” this spirit of the crew is sure to communicate itself to the heard it. I don’t know how it would sag mites Ueship a latter seems in- finitely safer. I have tried both and prefer the undersea work. Up in a biplane something goes wrong, the machine tips tail up and down she crashes. In a moment all is ob- livion for the driver. Down in the submarine conti happens and the boat sinks to the bottom. If in shallow water the commander shoots out telephone — cases which float on the surface and afford a means of communicating with rescuers. If in deep water there are a hundred or more experiments that can be tried to get her up again. And the emergency “time allowance” in a submarine disaster is greater - than the few seconds interval in the break and fall of an air craft. The only time the submarine is doomed in the event of a mishap—uniless mortally wounded by a hostile craft —is when she sinks helplessly into unending fathoms where the pres- sure tears through the steel structure and overwhelms the group of men inside tugging at the valves and tanks. NLY in the injection of the O element of warfare, there fore, in the absence of ‘se rious mishap, is the sensation of a thrill provoked. When the undersea craft is under full speed ahead fiy- ing along with only the “all-seeing” eyes of the periscope above water, with the chief gunner’s mate and his crew loading torpedoes into the tubes — and the submarine commander shoot- ing them at an imaginary foe, the that here is the real j@ submarine, the “real ! yi % 5 > velit) 2 _ te @ yay Ring pete s 7 he ee ee +. = + ‘a ; A serve my country battleship Minne- ' torpedo , aimed - will blow the bat- train a gun on’ submer- . between ° ae: Cy — : ” . . ye : v