The Magnetic Storm Page 269

cavalry horse was located soon, and as the young airman walked hurriedly about, troubled as he was, he could not help noticing the listless attitude of every man he past. Men were whispering in a hushed manner, alarm was plainly written in their faces — the fear of the unknown.

Von Unterrichter jumped on to his horse and galloped in the direction of the field radio station. It did not take him long to reach it, and long before he dismounted he could see the bright blue spark of the sending station.

“Gott sei Lob”, he uttered to himself as he jumped to the ground, “at least that’s working.”

Note here the curious mechanism of the Prussian mind. A Prussian officer, the most arrogant, distasteful creature imaginable, is always the great brave hero when he knows that he is fighting with all the advantages on his side. As Heinrich Heine, the poet, — himself a German-hater, — puts it:

“The Germans have no self-respect. They are the only men in the world who, as private soldiers, will stand still while an officer kicks them or bespatters them with mud. They receive the mud with smiles and stand expectantly, cap in hand.”

It is the Prussian-German sort of “honor” that makes a Zabern affair possible, where a foul-mouthed young officer, with his sword, beats a helpless, crippled Alsatian cobbler insensible.

A coward at heart, always ready to blaspheme his maker, when things go right, the Prussian quickly turns to his German Gott, as soon as things go against him.

Heine, — himself a German, and he ought to know, — will tell you so.

Now it so happened that von Unterrichter had been an expert wireless man before the war, and while he did not know a great deal about electricity, he well knew how to send and receive messages.

He ran to the wagon which carried the mobile radio field apparatus and peremptorily ordered the operator in charge away.

“Aber Herr Leutnant”, expostulated the thus rudely interrupted man, “I tell you…”

“Maul halten”, thundered von Unterrichter, with which he sat down, clamping the operator’s receivers on his own head.

He prest the key impulsively, and noted with grim satisfaction that the loud blue spark crashed merrily in the not very up-to-date spark gap.

As he sent out the call mechanically, he wondered vaguely what the matter could be with the government, because it did not even supply a modern, up-to-date Löschfunkenstrecke — quenched spark gap — for field use. Things must be pretty bad when the government must economize even a few beggarly pounds of brass, so necessary for a noiseless spark gap.

But he could not give that matter further attention for he had thrown the aerial switch from “sending” to “receiving.”

He had strained his ears for a reply from the operator from the Kommando, but, as the switch was thrown, instead of a reply there was a loud, constant roar in the receivers, so loud that it was painful. Off came the headgear, while von Unterrichter once more sank into a chair.

He was a pitiful spectacle to look at, the fate of a 20th Century man flung back a hundred years. His eyes roamed idly about till the distant railroad embankment struck his eye. No train was moving. Everything was at a standstill — how could a train move without a telegraph? How could a train be dispatched — there would be a thousand collisions. He turned to the radio operator, who as yet had not grasped the situation in its entirety.