By night $800,000,000 had started West and the next morning Chicago was the financial capital of America.
At midnight General Wood gave final orders for resistance to the last gun and the last man; and, when early the next morning the German general again sent officers with a flag of truce demanding the surrender of Manhattan Island, Wood’s reply was a firm refusal. He tried, however, to gain time in negotiations; and a few hours later I accompanied a delegation of American staff officers with counter-proposals across the East River in a launch. I can see von Hindenburg now, in his high boots and military coat, as he received the American officers at the foot of the shattered Brooklyn Bridge. A square massive head with close-cropped white hair, brushed straight back from a broad forehead. And sad searching eyes--wonderful eyes.
“Then you refuse to surrender? You think you can fight?” the Field Marshal demanded.
At which the ranking American officer, stung by his arrogance, declared that they certainly did think they could fight, and would prove it.
“Ah! So!” said von Hindenburg, and he glanced at a gun crew who were loading a half-ton projectile into an 11.1-inch siege-gun that stood on the pavement. “Which is the Woolworth Building?” he asked, pointing across the river.
“The tallest one, Excellency--the one with the Gothic lines and gilded cornices,” replied one of his officers.
“Ah, yes, of course. I recognise it from the pictures. It’s beautiful. Gentlemen,”--he addressed the American officers,--“I am offering twenty-dollar gold pieces to this gun crew if they bring down that tower with a single shot. Now, then, careful!...
We covered our ears as the shot crashed forth, and a moment later the most costly and graceful tower in the world seemed to stagger on its base. Then, as the thousand-pound shell, striking at the twenty-seventh story, exploded deep inside, clouds of yellow smoke poured out through the crumbling walls, and the huge length of twenty-four stories above the jagged wound swayed slowly toward the east, and fell as one piece, flinging its thousands of tons of stone and steel straight across the width of Broadway, and down upon the grimy old Post Office Building opposite.