“I think that he has made his occupation good,” said another. “In our own Army’s Rules of Warfare, paragraph 290 expressly states that ‘it is sufficient that the occupying army can, within a reasonable time, send detachments of troops to make its authority felt within the occupied district.’” “It makes little difference,” interposed the Mayor. “We can’t take him before a Court of Appeals to argue hair-splitting distinctions. He has us, and can do to us what he pleases. He needs only the color of law to go to any extremity. We should be insane to argue with him. The only thing to do is to give renewed and urgent orders that the population must absolutely avoid any act of violence.” Again the cold logic of inexorable circumstances forced humble submission. Through all the districts north of the Harlem and through Westchester County almost to the line of the enemy patrols, there was sent by every possible method of communication the following warning: “The invading forces assert occupation of the territory in which you reside. Under this occupation, any act of disorder involving raiding, espionage, damage to railways, war material, bridges, roads, canals, telegraphs or other means of communication is punishable by death as war treason. Communities in which such acts occur may be punished collectively. All persons are warned earnestly to yield full obedience to the occupying military forces and to abstain from all offensive acts.”[147] _A Matter of Lawyers’ Logic_ Thus for the men of New York war was no matter of glorious resistance or of a splendid death. It was a matter of cold lawyers’ logic with imprisonment or execution as felons the only answer should they try to assert their manhood. The knowledge held all the territory passive. Men and horses and motors moved into Westchester County with no more opposition than if they were pleasure-seekers moving through friendly country. Guns jolted along the highways with their artillerists sitting at ease. The Westchester hills and valleys echoed no shots, no cries of battle. In every village and town the American flag fluttered down from the flag-staffs of schools and town halls. The corps commander that evening established his headquarters in one of the great houses in the famous residence colony of Orienta Point, Mamaroneck. His columns, advancing along the shore, spread out, occupied New Rochelle and Mount Vernon, and encamped for the night in a great line that stretched from the Long Island Sound to the Hudson River, fencing New York City on the north with a wall of men and artillery. It was a wall of silence. Not a word came through to the city from Yonkers, from Mount Vernon, from Pelham, or from any of the other places already taken. _The Battle in the Night_