But what amazed me more than anything else about Von Hindenburg is the way he is regarded by official military circles in Germany. I knew that to the mass of people and soldiers he is a hero; they think him a military genius of almost divine inspiration. I mentioned this fact one night to a captain in the Great General Staff.
"Oh, yes," he said, "Von Hindenburg is a great general. He has had his opportunity. If he were killed to-morrow there is another general ready to step in and carry on the same work. And if that general were to be killed there is still another. I could mention five or six. You see Von Hindenburg, great man that he is, is simply a cog in a machine. A very great cog, to be sure, but then, don't you see, it is not a single individual that counts but the whole machine. If we lose a part of the machine it is replaced. It is very simple. I know General von Hindenburg and I know that all this talk about him, all this fuss, this idea of asking him, a super man, is very distasteful to him."
Von Hindenburg, only the part of a system! The real hero of Germany then must be the composite of a myriad of remarkably efficient units of which Von Hindenburg is a single element in the war machine of such consummate ability that he seems to stand alone.
WITH THE AMERICAN RED CROSS ON THE RUSSIAN FRONTIER
A gray morning crept up somewhere beyond the Russian plains and in the half light, the church tower and housetops of Gleiwitz loomed forbiddingly against the dreary sky. A butcher was opening his store as our droschky clattered down the cobbled streets of the old Silesian town. The horses' hoofs echoed loudly; only a few stragglers were on the streets. Coming to a square, massive building of yellowish brick--you instantly had the impression that Gleiwitz had grown up around it. We saw a blue coated soldier standing on the steps.
"Where is the American Hospital?" we asked him.
He stared at us in a puzzled way and, using that German expression which seems to fit any situation: "_Ein Augenblick_" (in a minute), he proceeded to give our driver elaborate instructions. Off we rattled, down another vista of gray cobbles and squat gray houses, and presently we stopped before a clean-looking house of stucco, before which paced a soldier in the long dark gray coat of the _Landsturm_.