“Oh, we knew there were plenty of spies in our midst. We had caught many of them and our custom was to send them back to the rear lines to a prison camp where regular court-martials were held. But the General Staff decided that sterner measures were needed. The general who presided issued his orders. Henceforth, if a spy was found he should be brought to the nearest officer with the rank of major. The major was to select two captains and hold an immediate court-martial on the spot. If found guilty, the man should be executed within three hours.
“ ‘It isn’t pleasant to have to condemn a man to death,’ the general said through tight lips, ‘nor is it pleasant to have to direct such an execution. But remember — one spy knew that we were withdrawing 6,000 men. This one man knew, communicated his knowledge to the enemy — and 2.500 Germans have paid with their lives.’
“There was a lull for three days after that attack. We sat licking our wounds and they dug in, waiting for the attack they knew we had planned against Ypres. Then came Friday. Two of my captains came to me with a story of a German who had escaped from the English prison camp in back of their lines and had managed to get through to us.
“ ‘His name is Johann Gluck,’ one of them said, ‘He was a captain in the Sixth Division who was captured more than a month ago.’
“ ‘That is one of the divisions that was withdrawn, isn’t it?’ I asked.
“ ‘Yes,’ the Captain said, ‘But this Captain Gluck, nice chap by the way, knows so much about the present English position that we wanted to suggest to you that instead of sending him to rejoin his division you keep him here. After that attack the other night we can use another captain.’
“These two captains of mine were named Hermann Kreutzer and Franz Marschner, fine officers both of them. Strictly officers, typical officers to whom war was that for which they had spent a lifetime of training. I told them to bring in this new find.
“A few moments later they brought Captain Johann Gluck in to me. I had a very fine dug-out, really palatial. It was a single, square, sand-bag-and-stone-enforced room. In addition to my cot and a table I had also managed to snare a portable phonograph. I had sent to the rear for records, and although during heavy bombardment the mortality among the records was high, most of my Wagnerian operas had managed to survive, and some Beethoven. If a man has Wagner and Beethoven he really doesn’t need much more.
“Captain Johann Gluck walked into the dug-out. He was slightly built, and he had a scar across his check. He had a firm mouth and very blue eyes. Very blond, he was the true Germanic type, except for his size. He had a boyish look about him, and when I looked at him something clutched at my throat. Because as I looked at him, I knew that within three hours he would be dead.
“ ‘I have heard a great deal about the Major von Genthner,’ he said in his soft Bavarian voice. ‘It is nice to see you...’
“ ‘... again,’ I finished for him, trying to fight down something within me which was crying: ‘You fool, rush to him, throw your arms around him. That is Eric, Eric Rhodes, your friend. That is the boy you grew up with, the boy you went to Heidelberg with, who attended you in a dozen duels, who argued philosophy and music with you. That is Eric Rhodes, your blood-brother!’
“ ‘You two have met before?’ Kreutzer asked. ‘How delightful. That calls for a celebration.’
“ ‘Yes, at Heidelberg,’ I said. ‘We met at Heidelberg. No, it was before Heidelberg... Captain, there’s a bottle of brandy under my cot. Open it. will you?’
“Captain Gluck laughed and there was a mocking light in his eyes as he looked at me. Fine, we’ll have a celebration. We are going to celebrate one of the three most momentous occasions in a man’s life.’
“ ‘Come, now,’ Kreutzer laughed. ‘The three most important occasions in a man’s life are his birth, his marriage, and his death. No one is being born here, certainly no one is going to be married, and, judging by the quiet outside, no one is going to die.’
“ ‘When one meets a very old friend, that too is a very important occasion — no matter under what circumstances the meeting occurs.’ If my face was white, no one, I think, noticed it.
“ ‘Fill mine to the brim,’ Gluck laughed, and the beads of the brandy sparkled on a level with the top of the glass. He lifted it without a drop spilling over and drained it.
“ ‘A steady hand for a man who has been in a prison camp for a month,’ Kreutzer laughed.
“ Well, friend, the next move is up to you. Why not tell your captains who I am.’ Gluck spoke in English and Kreutzer and Marschner looked their surprise. ‘The Major and I learned English at Heidelberg together,’ Gluck said in German. ‘Go on with your drinks. We want to talk over old times. And we want to see if we remember our English. Nicht wahr. Major?’
“ ‘Bestimmt! Bestimmt! Of course. Let’s sit down.’ And we sat down, Kreutzer and Marschner soon being absorbed in discussing their own ideas for our anticipated offensive against Ypres. Cluck, or Eric Rhodes, and I sat there and—”
“Von Genthner,” I broke in, just a bit puzzled. “Who was Gluck? Who was Eric Rhodes? They were the same man evidently, but who?”
“Eric Rhodes was an English officer,” Von Genthner explained. “To put it more bluntly, he was a spy who had come into our lines confident that his perfect German and the fact that the regiment to which he said he had been attached was too far away for any immediate check-up would allay any suspicion. But Eric Rhodes was more than that.
“Eric,” Von Genthner said slowly, “was brought up in Mallsdorf, a small town in Bavaria, where I came from. He came there with his parents, who were English, when he was a child. Eric grew up as any Bavarian child would grow up. He and I played together as youngsters. We went to the same schools. Eric always went back to England once a year for a month or two, and this kept him thoroughly British in mind and in spirit. Outwardly he was as German as I. We dreamed dreams as youngsters do and always in our dreams we shared each other’s success. I would be a great musician, he a great writer. Then came Heidelberg. I specialized in music, he in philosophy. That,” Von Genthner added, wryly, “was the only thing we ever disagreed upon.”
“But, Von Genthner,” I asked, “you said that you and he were blood brothers. What did you mean?”
“In America I believe you have college fraternities,” he said. “At Heidelberg we have corps which roughly correspond to your fraternities. The corps which Eric and I joined had a very impressive ritual of initiation. We were initiated in pairs and we were made — literally — blood-brothers. The symbolic part of it was that in being made a blood-brother to one corps member you become symbolically a blood-brother to all.
“I’ll never forget that ceremony. Eric and I, of course, were paired. Our right wrists were slashed and then my wrist was bound to his. The cuts were placed together and then our wrists were fastened tightly so that actually my blood flowed into his open cut and his blood flowed into mine. The wrists were bound until the blood dotted and then indeed were we brothers. ‘Now we are one’ — I remember the words of the initiation — ‘and if I do injury to you I am injuring myself. If you injure me, you injure yourself.’
“Sounds silly, doesn’t it?” Von Genthner laughed. “But it isn’t silly to a twenty-year-old boy. Eric and I remained friends until we finished Heidelberg; then he went back to London to live and I wandered here and there, coming home just in time to meet the War. But during those years I had often thought of Eric. He had been the closest friend I had ever had.”
“And now you were a German officer. Now you had to court-martial and condemn him to death.”