“The People’s Kitchen idea is now spreading throughout Germany. But I believe in going further, I believe in putting every German–I make no exception–upon rations. That is what is done in a besieged city, and our position is sufficiently analogous to a besieged city to warrant the same measures. All our food would then be available for equal distribution, and each person would get his allowance.”
This earnest Social Democrat’s idea is, of course, perfect in theory. Even the able, hard-working Batocki, however, cannot make it practicable. Why not? _The Agrarian, the great Junker of Prussia_, not only will not make sacrifices, but stubbornly insists upon wringing every pfennig of misery money from the nation which has boasted to the world that its patriotism was unselfish and unrivalled.
The most important German crop of all at this juncture is potatoes, for potatoes are an integral part of German and Austrian bread. The handling of the crop, to which all Germany was looking forward so eagerly, exhibits in its most naked form the horrid profiteering to which the German poor are being subjected by the German rich.
It was a wet summer in Germany. Wherever I went in my rural excursions I heard that the potatoes were poor. The people in the towns knew little of this, and were told that the harvests were good.
An abominable deception was practised upon the public with the first potato supply. For many months tickets had been in use for this food, which is called the “German staff of life.” Suddenly official notices appeared that potatoes could be had for a few days without tickets, and the unsuspecting public at once ordered great quantities.
The Agrarians thus got rid of all their bad potatoes to the mass of the people. In many cases they were rotting so fast that the purchaser had to bury them. It was found that they produced illness when given to swine.
What other people in the world than the Germans would stand that? But they did stand it. “These are only the early potatoes–the main crop will be all right,” said the profiteers right and left, and gradually the masses began to echo them, as is usual in Germany.
Well, the main crop has been gathered, and Food Dictator von Batocki is, according to the latest reports I hear from Germany, unable to make the Agrarians put their potatoes upon the market even at the maximum price set by the Food Commission.
They are holding back their supplies until they have forced up the maximum price, just as a year ago many of them allowed their potatoes to rot rather than sell them to the millions in the cities at the price set by law.
Some Germans, mostly Social Democratic leaders, declare that since their country is in a state of siege, the Government should, beyond question, commandeer the supplies and distribute them, but just as the industrial classes have, until quite recently, resisted war taxes, so do the Prussian Junkers, by reason of their power in the Reichstag, snap their fingers at any suggested fair laws for food distribution.
The Burgomaster–usually a powerful person in Germany–is helpless. When on September 1 the great house-to-house inventory of food supplies was taken, burgomasters of the various sections of Greater Berlin took orders from the people for the whole winter supply of potatoes on special forms delivered at every house. Up to the time I left, the burgomasters were unable to deliver the potatoes,
Any dupes of German propaganda who imagine that there is much self-sacrifice among the wealthy class in Germany in this war should disabuse their minds of that theory at once. While the poor are being deprived of what they have, the purchases of pearls, diamonds, and other gems by the profiteers are on a scale never before known in Germany.
One of the paradoxes of the situation, both in Austria and in Germany, is the coincidence of the great gold hunt, which is clearing out the trinkets of the humblest, with the roaring trade in jewelry in Berlin and Vienna. As an instance I can vouch for the veracity of the following story:–
A Berlin woman went to Werner’s, the well-known jewellers in the Unter den Linden, and asked to be shown some pearl necklaces. After very little examination she selected one that cost 40,000 marks (2,000 pounds). The manager, who knew the purchaser as a regular customer for small articles of jewelry, ventured to express his surprise, remarking, “I well remember, madam, that you have been coming here for many years, and that you have never bought anything exceeding in value 100 marks. Naturally I am somewhat surprised at the purchase of this necklace.” “Oh, it is very simple,” she replied. “My husband is in the leather business, and our war profits have made us rich beyond our fondest hopes.”
Throughout Austria and Germany in every village and townlet are appearing notices to bring in gold.
The following notice is to be met with in all parts of Germany:–
LET EVERY ONE WORTHY OF THE NAME OF GERMAN DO HIS DUTY NOW.
Our enemies, after realising that they cannot defeat us on the field of battle, are striving to defeat us economically. But here they will also fail.
OUT WITH YOUR GOLD.
Out with your gold! What is the value of a trinket to the life of the dear one that gave it? By giving now you may save the life of a husband, brother, or son.
Bring your gold to the places designated below. If the value of the gold you bring exceeds five marks, you will receive an iron memento of “Die grosse Zeit.”
Iron chains will be given for gold chains. _Wedding rings of those still living will not be accepted_.
From rural pulpits is preached the wickedness of retaining gold which might purchase food for the man in the trenches.
The precedent of the historic great ladies of Prussia who exchanged their golden wedding rings for rings of iron is drummed into the smaller folk continuously. The example is being followed by the exchange of gold trinkets for trinkets made of iron, with the addition of the price paid at the central collecting station–paid, of course, in paper, which is at a 30 per cent. discount in Germany and 47 per cent. discount in Austria. Every bringer of a trinket worth more than 5s. receives a small iron token of “_die grosse Zeit_” (the great epoch).
The gold hunt has revealed unexpected possessions in the hands of the German and Austrian lower classes. To me it was pathetic to see an old woman tremblingly handing over treasures that had come down probably for two or three generations–treasures that had never been worn except on high days and festivals, weddings, and perhaps on the day of the local fair. Particularly sad is this self-sacrifice in view of the gigantic profits of the food usurers and war profiteers. The matter is no secret in Germany or Austria. It is denounced by the small Socialist minority in the Reichstag, to whose impotence I have often referred. It is stoutly defended in good Prussian fashion by those openly making the profits.
There has arisen a one-sided Socialism which no one but Bismarck’s famous “nation of lackeys” would tolerate. At the top is a narrow circle of agrarian and industrial profiteers, often belonging to the aristocratic classes. At the other end of the scale is, for example, the small farmer, who has now absolutely nothing to say concerning either the planting, the marketing, or the selling of his crops. Regulations are laid down as to what he should sow, where he should sell, and the price at which he should sell. Unlike the Junker, he has not a long purse. He _must sell_.
What state of mind does this produce among the people? I know that outside Germany there is an idea that every German is working at top speed with the spirit of the Fatherland flaming him on. That was the spirit I witnessed in the early days of the war, when Germany was winning and food was plentiful.
In certain rural districts as well as in centres of population there is an intense longing for peace–not merely for a German peace–but any peace, and a peace not merely for military reasons, but arising out of utter weariness of the rule of the profiteers and the casualties not revealed by the doctored lists–ingeniously issued lists, which, for example, have never revealed the loss of a submarine crew, though intelligent Hamburg shipping people, who are in close touch with German naval people, estimate the loss of German submarines as at least one hundred. I have heard the figure put higher, and also lower.
This kind of one-sided Socialism makes the people so apathetic that in some parts of Germany it has been very difficult to induce them to harvest their own crops, and in German Poland they have been forced to garner the fields at the point of the bayonet.
When a man has no interest in the planting, marketing, and selling price of his produce; when he knows that what he grows may be swept away from his district without being sure that it will be of any benefit to himself and his family; when, in addition, the father or sons of the households lie buried by the Yser, the Somme, the Meuse or the Drina, it is impossible for the authorities to inspire any enthusiasm for life, let alone war, even among so docile a people as those they deal with.
* * * * *
With regard to the other crops, rye is good; beets look good, but are believed to be deficient in sugar owing to the absence of South American fertilisers; wheat is fairly good; oats extremely good, and barley also excellent. The Germans have boasted to the neutral visitor that their artificial nitrates are just as good fertilisers as those imported from South America. It is true that they do very well for most crops when the weather is damp. But beets, strangely enough, require the genuine Chilean saltpetre to produce their maximum of sugar. The failure to get this, plus the use of sugar in munition making, accounts for the dearth of that commodity among the civilian population.
In order that nothing shall be wasted, the Government decreed this year that the public should be allowed to scavenge the fields after the harvest had been gathered, and this was a source of some benefit to those residing near the great centres of population.
Schoolmasters were also ordered to teach the children the need of gathering every sort of berry and nut.
Passing along an English hedgerow the other day, and seeing it still covered with withered blackberries, I compared them with the bare brambles which I saw in Germany from which all berries have gone to help the great jam-making business which is to eke out the gradually decreasing butter and margarine supply. Sickness and death have resulted from mistakes made, not only in gathering berries, but in gathering mushrooms and other fungi, which have been keenly sought.
It is safe to say that the Germans are leaving no stone unturned to avoid the starvation of the Seven Years’ War. The ingenuity of the chemists in producing substitutes was never greater. One of the most disagreeable foods I have tasted was bread made of straw. Countless experiments have been made in the last year to adapt straw to the human stomach, but although something resembling bread has been produced, it contains almost no nourishment and results in illness.
People who reside in the cities and carefully shepherded visiting neutrals, who do not go into the country, have little notion of the terrific effort being put forward to make the fruits of Mother Earth defeat the blockade, and _above all_ to extract any kind of _oil_ from anything that grows.
Here is one notice:–
HOW THE CIVIL POPULATION CAN HELP IN THE WAR.
Our enemies are trying to exhaust us, but they cannot succeed if every one
does his duty.
OIL _is a Necessity_.
You can help the Fatherland if you plant poppies, castor plant, sunflowers.
In addition to doing important work for the Fatherland you benefit yourself
because the price for oil is high.
I may say that the populace have responded. Never have I seen such vast fields of poppies, sunflowers, rape plant, and other oleaginous crops. Oil has been extracted from plum-stones, cherry-stones, and walnuts.
The Government have not pleased the people even in this matter. One glorious summer day, after tramping alone the sandy roads of Southern Brandenburg, I came to a little red-brick village in the midst of its sea of waving rye and blaze of sunflowers and poppies. Taking my seat at the long table in front of the local _Gasthaus_, and ordering some imitation coffee–the only refreshment provided in the absence of a local bread ticket–I pointed out one of these notices to the only other person at the table, who was drinking some “extraordinarily weak beer,” as he put it. “Have the people here planted much of these things I see on that notice?” I asked, pointing to one of the placards. “Yes,” he said, “certainly. A great deal; but the Government is going to be false to us again. It will be commandeered at a price which they have already set.” Then came the usual string of grumbles which one hears everywhere in the agricultural districts. I will not repeat them. They all have to do with the food shortage, profiteering, and discontent at the length of the war.
Though all Germans, with the exception of a few profiteers, are grumbling at the length of the war, it must not be supposed that they have lost hope. In fact their grumblings are punctuated frequently by very bright hopes. When Douaumont fell, food troubles were forgotten. The bells rang, the flags were unfurled, faces brightened, crowds gathered before the maps and discussed the early fall of Verdun and the collapse of France. Again I heard on every hand the echo of the boasts of the first year of the war.
The glorious manner in which France hurled back the assault was making itself felt in Germany with a consequent depression over food shortage when the greatest naval victory in history–so we gathered, at least, from the first German reports–raised the spirits and hopes of the people so high that they fully believed that the blockade had been smashed. On the third day of the celebration, Saturday, June 3rd, I rode in a tram from Wilmersdorf, a suburb of Berlin, to the heart of the city through miles of streets flaring with a solid mass of colour. From nearly every window and balcony hung pennants and flags; on every trolley pole fluttered a pennant of red, white and black. Even the ancient horse ‘buses rattled through the streets with the flags of Germany and her allies on each corner of the roof. The newspapers screamed headlines of triumph, nobody could settle down to business, the faces one met were wreathed in smiles, complaining was forgotten, the assurance of final victory was in the very air.
Unter den Linden, the decorations on which were so thick that in many cases they screened the buildings from which they hung, was particularly happy. Knots of excited men stood discussing the defeat of the British Fleet. Two American friends and I went from the street of happy and confident talk into the Zollernhof Restaurant. With the din of the celebration over the “lifting of the blockade” ringing in our ears from the street, we looked on the bill of fare, and there, for the first time, we saw _Boiled Crow_.
Through the spring and early summer the people were officially buoyed up with the hope that the new harvest would make an end of their troubles. They had many reasons, it is true, to expect an improvement. The 1915 harvest in Germany had fallen below the average. Therefore, if the 1916 harvest would be better per acre, the additional supplies from the conquered regions of Russia would enable Germany to laugh at the efforts of her enemies to starve her out. Once more, however, official assurances and predictions were wrong, and the economic condition grew worse through every month of 1916.
CHAPTER XIII
A LAND OF SUBSTITUTES
The only food substitute which meets the casual eye of the visitor to England in war time is margarine for butter. Germany, on the contrary, is a land of substitutes.
Since the war, food exhibitions in various cities, but more especially in Berlin, have had as one of their most prominent features booths where you could sample substitutes for coffee, yeast, eggs, butter, olive oil, and the like. Undoubtedly many of these substitutes are destined to take their place in the future alongside some of the products for which they are rendering vicarious service. In fact, in a “Proclamation touching the Protection of Inventions, Designs, and Trade Marks in the Exhibition of Substitute-Materials in Berlin-Charlottenburg, 1916,” it is provided that the substitutes to be exhibited shall enjoy the protection of the Law. Even before the war, substitutes like Kathreiner’s malt coffee were household words, whilst the roasting of acorns for admixture with coffee was not only a usual practice on the part of some families in the lower middle class, but was so generally recognised among the humbler folk that the children of poor families were given special printed permissions by the police to gather acorns for the purpose on the sacred grass of the public parks. To deal with meat which in other countries would be regarded as unfit for human consumption there have long been special appliances in regular use in peace time. The so-called _Freibank_ was a State or municipal butcher’s shop attached to the extensive municipal abattoirs in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, and elsewhere. Here tainted meat, or meat from animals locally affected by disease, is specially treated by a steam process and other methods, so as to free it from all danger to health. Meat so treated does not, of course, have the nutritive value of ordinary fresh meat, but the Germans acted on the principle that anything was better than nothing. Such meat was described as _bedingt tauglich_ (that is, fit for consumption under reserve). It was sold before the war at very low rates to the poorer population, who in times of scarcity came great distances and kept long vigils outside the _Freibank_, to be near the head of the queue when the sale began. Thus we see that many Germans long ago acquired the habit of standing in line for food, which is such a characteristic of German city life to-day.
Horseflesh was consumed before the war in Germany, as in Belgium and France. Its sale was carefully controlled by the police, and severe punishment fell upon anyone who tried to disguise its character. An ordinary butcher might not sell it at all. He had to be specially licensed, and to maintain a special establishment or a special branch of his business for the purpose. Thus, when wider circles of the population were driven to resort to substitutes, there was already in existence a State-organised system to control the output.
Since the war began, sausage has served as a German stand-by from the time that beef and pork became difficult to obtain. In the late spring, however, the increased demand for sausage made that also more difficult to procure, and we often got a substitute full of breadcrumbs, which made the food-value of this particular _Wurst_ considerably less than its size would indicate. It was frequently so soft that it was practically impossible to cut, and we had to spread it on our bread like butter.
The substitute of which the world has read the most is war bread. This differs in various localities, but it consists chiefly of a mixture of rye and potato with a little wheat flour. In Hungary, which is a great maize-growing country, maize is substituted for rye.
Imitation tea is made of plum and other leaves boiled in real tea and dried.
To turn to substitutes other than food, it will be recalled that Germany very early began to popularise the use of benzol as an alternative to petrol for motor engines. This was a natural outgrowth of her marvellously developed coal-tar industry, of which benzol is a product. Prizes for the most effective benzol-consuming engine, for benzol carburettors, etc., have been offered by various official departments in recent years, and I am told that during the war ingenious inventions for the more satisfactory employment of benzol have been adopted. Owing to the increased use of potatoes as food, the alcoholic extract from them, always a great German and Austro-Hungarian industry, has had to be restricted.
It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, as I learned from the owner of a little general shop in a Brandenburg village. He told me that about twenty-five years ago, when kerosene became widely used in the village for illuminating purposes, he was left with a tremendous supply of candles which he could never sell. The oil famine has caused the substitution of candle light for lamp light during the war, and has enabled him to sell out the whole stock at inflated prices. All oils are at a premium. The price of castor-oil has risen fivefold in Germany, chiefly owing to the fact that it is being extensively used for aeroplane and other lubrication purposes.
But it is oil from which explosives are derived that chiefly interests Germany. Almost any kind of fruit stone contains glycerine. That is why notices have been put on all trains which run through fruit districts, such as Werder, near Berlin, and Baden, advising the people to save their fruit stones and bring them to special depots for collection.
Five pounds of fat treated with caustic soda can be made to yield one pound of glycerine. This is one reason, in addition to the British blockade, which causes the great fat shortage among the civil population.
Glycerine united with ammonium nitrate is used in the manufacture of explosives. Deprived of nitrogenous material from South America, Germany has greatly developed the process for the manufacture of artificial nitrates. She spent 25,000,000 pounds after the outbreak of war to enable her chemists and engineers to turn out a sufficient amount of nitric acid.
Toluol, a very important ingredient of explosives, is obtained from coal-tar, which Germany is naturally able to manufacture at present better than any other country in the world, since she bad practically a monopoly in coal-tar products before hostilities commenced.
Evidently, however, substitutes to reinforce goods smuggled through the blockade have not sufficed to meet the chemical demands of the German Government, for great flaming placards were posted up all over the Empire announcing the commandeering of such commodities as sulphur, sulphuric acid, toluol, saltpetre, and the like.
Germany long ago claimed to have perfected woodpulp as a substitute for cotton in propulsive ammunition. She made this claim very early, however, for the purpose of hoodwinking British blockade advocates. Her great need eventually led her to take steps to induce the United States to insist on the Entente Powers raising the blockade on cotton. She went to great trouble and expense to send samples by special means to her agents in America.
The cotton shortage began to be seriously felt early in 1916 in the manufacturing districts of Saxony, where so many operatives were suddenly thrown out of work that the Government had to set aside a special fund for their temporary relief, until they could be transferred to other war industries.
The success which Germany claimed for a cotton-cloth substitute has been greatly exaggerated. When the Germans realised that Great Britain really meant business on the question of cotton they cultivated nettle and willow fibre, and made a cloth consisting for the most part of nettle or willow fibre with a small proportion of cotton or wool.
It was boasted in many quarters that the exclusion of cotton would make but little difference so far as clothing was concerned. Not only does the universal introduction of clothing tickets falsify this boast, but the cloth is found to be a mere makeshift when tested. Blouses and stockings wear out with discouraging rapidity when made of the substitute.
My personal investigations still lead me to believe in the motto of the Sunny South that: “Cotton is king.”
Paper, although running short in Germany, is the substitute for cloth in many cases. Sacking, formerly used for making bags in which to ship potatoes and other vegetables, has given way to it. Paper-string is a good substitute widely used, although “no string” was the verbal substitute I often got when buying various articles, and it was necessary for me to hold the paper on to the parcel with my hands.
The craze for substitutes has spread so extensively that there have been some unpleasant results both for the purchaser and the producer, as was the case with several bakers, who were finally detected and convicted of a liberal use of sawdust in their cakes.
Germany has worked especially hard to find a substitute for indiarubber, though with only moderate success. I know that the Kaiser’s Government is still sending men into contiguous neutral countries to buy up every scrap of rubber obtainable. In no other commodity has there been more relentless commandeering. When bicycle tyres were commandeered–the authorities deciding that three marks was the proper price to pay for a new pair of tyres which had cost ten–there was a great deal of complaining. Nevertheless, without an excellent reason, no German could secure the police pass necessary to allow him to ride a bicycle. Those who did obtain permission to ride to and, from their work had to select the shortest route, and “joy-riding” was forbidden.
“Substitute rubber” heels for boots could be readily obtained until the late summer, but after that only with difficulty. They were practically worthless, as I know from personal experience, and were as hard as leather after one or two days’ use.
Despite the rubber shortage, the Lower Saxon Rubber Company, of Hildersheim, does a thriving business in raincoats made from rubber substitutes. The factory is running almost full blast, all the work being done by women, and the finished product is a tribute to the skill of those in charge.
It is impossible to buy a real tennis hall in the German Empire to-day. A most hopeless makeshift ball has been put on the market, but after a few minutes’ play it no longer keeps its shape or resiliency.
Germany has been very successful in the substitution of a sort of enamelled-iron for aluminium, brass, and copper. Some of the Rhenish-Westphalian iron industries have made enormous war profits, supplying iron chandeliers, stove doors, pots and pans, and other articles formerly made of brass to take the place of those commandeered for the purpose of supplying the Army with much-needed metals.
For copper used in electrical and other industries she claims to have devised substitutes before the war, and her experts now assert that a two-years’ supply of copper and brass has been gathered from the kitchens and roofs of Germany. The copper quest has assumed such proportions that the roof of the historic, world-renowned Rathaus at Bremen has been stripped. Nearly half the church bells of Austria have found their way to the great Skoda Works.
Of course Germans never boast of the priceless ornaments they have stolen from Belgium and Northern France. They joyfully claim that every pound of copper made available at home diminishes the amount which they must import from abroad, and pay for with their cherished gold.
The authorities delight in telling the neutral visitors that they have found adequate substitutes for nickel, chromium, and vanadium for the hardening of steel. If that is really so, why does the _Deutschland’s_ cargo consist mainly of these three commodities?
CHAPTER XIV
THE GAGGING OF LIEBKNECHT
Although Bismarck gave the Germans a Constitution and a Parliament after the Franco-Prussian War as a sop for their sacrifices in that campaign, he never intended the Reichstag to be a Parliament in the sense in which the institution is understood in Great Britain.
What Bismarck gave the Germans was a debating society and a safety-valve. They needed a place to air their theories and ventilate their grievances. But the Chancellor of Iron was very careful, in drawing up the plans for the “debating society,” to see that it conferred little more real power on the nation’s “representatives” than is enjoyed by the stump-speakers near Marble Arch in London on Sundays.
Many people in England and the United States of America, I find, do not at all understand the meaninglessness of German Parliamentary proceedings. When they read about “stormy sittings” of the Reichstag and “bitter criticism” of the Chancellor, they judge such things as they judge similar events in the House of Commons or the American House of Representatives. Nothing could be more inaccurate. Governments do not fall in Germany in consequence of adverse Reichstag votes, as they do in England. They are not the peopled Governments, but merely the Kaisers creatures. They rise and fall by his grace alone.
Even this state of affairs needs to be qualified and explained to the citizens of free countries. The Government is not a Cabinet or a Ministry.
_The German Government is a one-man affair. It consists of the Imperial Chancellor_. He, and nobody else, is the “Government,” subject only to the All-Highest will of the Emperor, whose bidding the Chancellor is required to do.
The Chancellor, in the name of the “Government,” brings in Bills to be passed by the Reichstag. If the Reichstag does not like a Bill, which sometimes happens, it refuses to give it a majority. But the “Government” does not fall. It can simply, as it has done on numerous occasions, dissolve the Reichstag, order a General Election, _and keep on doing so indefinitely_, until it gets exactly the kind of “Parliament” it wants. Thus, though the Reichstag votes on financial matters, it can be made to vote as the “Government” wishes.
As I have said, the Reichstag was invented to be, and has always served the purpose hitherto of, a forum in which discontented Germany could blow off steam, but achieve little in the way of remedy or reform. _But during the war the Reichstag has even ceased to be a place where free speech is tolerated_. It has been gagged as effectually as the German Press. I was an eyewitness of one of the most drastic muzzling episodes which has occurred in the Reichstag during the war–or probably in the history of any modern Parliament–the suppression of Dr. Karl Liebknecht, member for Potsdam, during the debate on military affairs on January 17, 1916. That event will be of historic importance in establishing how public opinion in Germany during the war has been ruthlessly trampled under foot.
The Reichstag has practically nothing to do with the conduct of the war.
Up, practically, to the beginning of 1916 the sporadic Social Democratic opposition to the war, mainly by Dr. Liebknecht, was ignored by the Government. The war-machine was running so smoothly, and, from the German standpoint, so victoriously, that the Government thought it could safely let Liebknecht rant to his heart’s content.
Dr. Liebknecht had long been a thorn in the War Party’s side. He inherited an animosity to Prussian militarism from his late father, Dr. Wilhelm Liebknecht, who with August Bebel founded the modern German Social Democratic Party. Four or five years before the war Liebknecht, a lawyer by profession, campaigned so fiercely against militarism that he was sentenced to eighteen months’ fortress imprisonment for “sedition.” He served his sentence, and soon afterwards his political friends nominated him for the Reichstag for the Royal Division of Potsdam, of all places in the world, knowing that such a candidature would be as ironical a blow as could be dealt to the war aristocrats. He was elected by a big majority in 1913, the votes of the large working-class population of the division, including Spandau (the Prussian Woolwich), being more than enough to offset the military vote which the Kaiser’s henchmen mobilised against him. Some time afterwards Liebknecht was also elected to represent a Berlin Labour constituency in the _Prussian Diet_, the Legislature which deals with the affairs in the Kingdom of Prussia, as distinct from the Reichstag (the _Imperial Diet_), which concerns itself with Empire matters only.
Dr. Liebknecht is forty-four years old. Of medium build, he wears a shock of long, curly, upstanding hair, which rather accentuates his “agitator” type of countenance, and is a skilful and eloquent debater. A university graduate and well-read thinker and student, he turned out to be the one consistent Social Democratic politician in Germany on the question of the war. When the war began the Socialist Party was effectually and willingly tied to the Government’s chariot–including, nominally, even Liebknecht. A few hours before making his notorious “Necessity-knows-no-law” speech in the Reichstag on August 4, 1914, Bethmann-Hollweg conferred with all the Parliamentary parties, and convinced them (including the Socialists) that Germany had been cruelly dragged into a war of defence. Later in the day, following other party leaders, Herr Haase, spokesman for the Socialists, got up in the House, voiced a few harmless platitudes about Socialist opposition to war on principle, and then pledged the party’s 111 votes solidly to the War Credits for which the Government was asking. When the Chancellor afterwards made his celebrated speech it was cheered to the echo by the entire House, _including the Socialists_. I do not know whether Liebknecht was present, though he is almost certain to have been, but if so he made no note-worthy protest. How completely the Government befooled the Socialists about the war was proved a few days later when Dr. Franck, one of the Social Democracy’s most shining lights and the man who was in line to be Bebel’s successor, _volunteered_ for military service. He was one of the first to fall fighting in September, somewhere in the West.
The authorities might have known that Liebknecht was a hard man to keep quiet if he ever decided to speak out. Fresh in the Government’s mind was his bold exposure of the Krupp bribery scandals at the War Office (in 1913) and his disclosures about how the German munition trust for years systematically stirred up war fever abroad, in order to convince the German people of the necessity of speeding up their own huge armaments on land and sea. As soon as Liebknecht’s Reichstag and Prussian Diet speeches began to show that he was tired of the muzzle, the Government called him up for military service. They stuck him into the uniform of an _Armierungssoldat_ (Army Service Corps soldier). This meant that his public speeches in connection with the war had to be confined to the two Parliaments in which he held seats. Anything of an opposition character which he said or did _outside_ would be “treason” or “sedition.”
Liebknecht was put to work on A.S.C. jobs behind the fronts alternately in the East and West, I believe, but was given leaves of absence to attend to his Parliamentary duties from time to time. On these occasions he would appear in the Reichstag in the dull field-grey of an ordinary private–the only member so clad in a House of 397 Deputies, among whom are dozens of officers in uniform up to the rank of generals.
I was particularly fortunate to be able to secure a card of admission to the Strangers’ Gallery of the Reichstag on January 17, the day set for discussion of military matters. I went to my place early–a few minutes past the noon hour, as the Reichstag usually convenes at 1 p.m. The floor was still quite empty, though the galleries were filled with people anxious, like myself, to see the show from start to finish.
The Reichstag’s decorative scheme is panelled oak and gilt-paint. The members’ seating space spreads fanlike round the floor, with individual seats and desks exactly like those used by schoolboys, which is not an inappropriate simile. On the extreme right are the places of the Conservative-Junker–landowners–Party; to their left sit, in succession, the Roman Catholic Clericals (who occupy the exact centre of the floor and are thus known as the _Zentrum_, or Centre Party). The “Centre” includes many priests, mostly Rhinelanders and Bavarians. Then come the National Liberals, the violently anti-British and anti-American Party, the Progressive People’s Party, and the Social Democrats. The latter are on the “extreme left.” That is why they are often so described in reports of Reichstag proceedings abroad. The Socialists comprise 111 out of 397 members of the House, so their segment of the fan is the largest of all. Next in size is the Centre Party, with eighty-five or ninety seats, the Conservatives, National Liberals, and Progressives accounting for the rest of the floor in more or less equal proportions.
The outstanding aspect of the Reichstag is the tribune for speakers, which faces the floor and is elevated above it some five or six feet. It is flanked on the right by the Government “table,” consisting of individual seats and desks for Ministers. In the centre of the tribune the presiding officer, who is “President,” not Speaker, of the House, sits. On his left is a row of seats and desks, like the opposite Government “table,” for the members of the _Federal Council_. The Federal Council, I may remind my readers, consists of the delegates of the various States of Germany. They are not elected by the people, but are appointed by the rulers of the several States. They constitute practically an Imperial Upper Chamber, and are the real legislative body of the Empire. Bills require the Federal Council’s approval before submission to the Reichstag.
On so-called “big days” in the Reichstag a host of small fry from the Departments collects behind the Government and this dominent Federal Council. The Chancellor, whose place is at the corner of the Government “table” nearest the President, is always shepherded by his political aide-de-camp, Dr. Wahnschaffe. There is always a group of uniformed Army and Navy officers on the tribune, too, and to-day, of course, as the Army discussions were on the agenda, there was an unusually brave array of gold braid and brass buttons. Herr von Oldenburg, a prominent Junker M.P., once said if he were the Kaiser he would send a Prussian lieutenant and ten men to close up the Reichstag.
Liebknecht arrived early, a slight and unimpressive figure in somewhat worn field-grey, the German khaki. The “debate” having begun, I noticed how he listened eagerly to every word spoken, jotting down notes incessantly for the evident purpose of replying to the grandiloquent utterances about our “glorious army of _Kultur_-bearers” which were falling from the lips of “patriotic” party orators. Liebknecht had earned the displeasure of the House a few days before by asking some embarrassing questions about Turkish massacres in Armenia. He was jeered and laughed at hilariously; when he went on to say that a “Black Chamber” was spying on his every movement, shadowing other members of the Reichstag, even eavesdropping on their telephone conversations and opening their private correspondence.
While a Socialist comrade, Herr Davidssohn, was speaking from the desk in the centre of the tribune, at which all members must stand when addressing the House, I now saw Liebknecht walking up the aisle leading from the Socialist seats to the President’s chair as unobtrusively as possible. He was walking furtively and he cut the figure of a hunted animal which is conscious that it is surrounded by other animals anxious to pounce upon it and devour it if it dares to show itself in the open.
Liebknecht has now reached the President’s side. The President, a long-whiskered septuagenarian, is popularly known as “Papa” Kaempf. I see Liebknecht whispering quietly in Kaempf’s ear. He is asking for permission to speak, probably as soon as comrade Davidssohn has finished making his innocuous suggestions of minor reforms to relieve discomforts in the trenches. Kaempf is shaking his head negatively. As the official executor of the House’s wishes, the old man understands perfectly well that Liebknecht must under no circumstances have a hearing. Davidssohn has now stopped talking. Liebknecht has meantime reached the bottom step of the stairway of five or six steps leading from the tribune to the level of the floor. He can be plainly seen from all sections of the House. I hear him start to say that he has a double right to be heard on the Army Bill, not only as a member of the House, but as a soldier. He gets no further. The Chamber is already filled with shouts and jeers. “_Maul halten_!” (shut your mouth!) bursts from a dozen places in the Conservative and rational Liberal and Centre benches. “‘_Raus mit ihm!” (throw him out!) is another angry taunt which I can distinguish in the bedlam. Liebknecht has been howled down many times before under similar circumstances. He is not terrified to-day, though his face is pale with excitement and anger. He stands his ground. His right arm is extended, a finger levelled accusingly at the Right and Centre from which imprecations, unceasingly, are being snarled at him. But he cannot make himself heard amid the uproar.
A Socialist colleague intervenes, Ledebour, a thin, grey-haired, actor-like person, of ascetic mien and resonant voice. “Checking free speech is an evil custom of this House,” declares Ledebour. “Papa” Kaempf clangs his big hand-bell. He rules out “such improper expressions as ‘evil custom’ in this high House.” Ledebour is the Reichstag’s master of repartee. He rejoins smilingly:–“Very well, not an ‘evil custom,’ but not altogether a pleasant custom.” Now the House is howling Ledebour down. He, too, has weathered such storms before. He waits, impassive and undismayed, for a lull in the cyclone. It comes. “Wait, wait!” he thunders. “My friend Liebknecht and I, and others like us, have a great following. You grievously underestimate that following. Some day you will realise that. Wait—-” Ledebour, like Liebknecht, can no longer proceed. The House is now boiling, an indistinguishable and most undignified pandemonium. I can detect that there is considerable ironical laughter mixed with its indignation. Members are not taking Ledebour’s threat seriously.
Liebknecht has temporarily returned to his seat under cover of the tornado provoked by Ledebour’s intervention, but now I see him stealthily crawling, dodging, almost panther-like, back to the steps of the tribune. He is bent upon renewing the attempt to raise his voice above the hostile din. The sight of him unchains the House’s fury afresh. The racket is increased by the mad ding-donging of “Papa” Kaempf, trying hopelessly to restore a semblance of quiet. It is useless. The House will not subside until Liebknecht is driven from the speakers’ tribune. He is not to have even the chance of the lull which enabled Ledebour to say a pertinent thing or two. A score of embittered deputies advance toward the tribune, red-faced and gesticulating in the German way when excitement is the dominant passion. Their fists are clenched. I say to myself that Liebknecht will this time be beaten down, if he is not content to be shouted down. He makes an unforgettable figure, alone there, assailed, barked and snarled at from every side, a private in the German Army bidding defiance to a hundred men, also in uniform, but superior officers. Mere _Kanonenfutter_ (cannon fodder) defying the majestic authority of its helmeted and epauletted overlords! An unprecedented episode, as well as an unforgettable one. . .
Liebknecht insists upon tempting fate once more. He is going to try to outshout the crazy chorus howling at him. He succeeds, but only for an instant and to the extent of one biting phrase:–“Such treatment,” I can hear him shrieking, “is _unverschaemt_ (shameless) and _unerhoert_ (unheard of)! It could take place in no other legislative body in the world!”
With that the one German Social Democrat of conviction, courage, and consistency retires, baffled and discomfited. Potsdam’s representative in the Reichstag is at last effectually muzzled, but in the muzzling I have seen the German Government at work on a task almost as prodigious as the one it now faces on the Somme–the task of keeping the German people deaf, dumb, and blind.
Of what has meantime happened to Liebknecht the main facts are known. He was arrested on May 1 for alleged “incitement to public disorder during a state of war,” tried, convicted, and sentenced to penal servitude. A couple of months previously (on March 13) he had delivered another bitter attack on the War Government in the Prussian Diet. He accused the German educational authorities of systematically teaching hate to school children and of distorting even contemporary history so as to poison their minds to the glorification of Prussian militarism. He said it was not the business of the schools to turn children into machines for the Moloch of militarism.
“_Let us teach history correctly_,” declared Liebknecht, “_and tell the children that the crime of Sarajevo was looked upon by wide circles in Austria-Hungary and Germany as a gift from Heaven. Let us. . . ._”
He got no farther, for the cyclone broke. He had dared to do what no other man in Germany had done. He had publicly accused his Government of making the war. From that moment his doom was certain.
This narrative should be instructive to those Britishers and Americans who think it possible that German Socialists may one day have the power to end the war. There are two effective replies to this curious Anglo-Saxon misunderstanding of Germany. The first is that Liebknecht had not, and has not, the support of his own party; the second, that were that party twice as numerous as it is its votes would be worthless in view of the power wielded by the Kaiser’s representative, von Bethmann-Hollweg, backed up by the Federal Council.
It is difficult to drive this fact into the heads of British and American people, who are both prone to judge German institutions by their own.
For, remember always that behind the dominant Imperial Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg, stands the All-Highest War Lord, and behind him, what is still, if damaged, the mightiest military machine in the world–the German Army. Opposed to that there is at present a slowly increasing Socialist vote–the two have grown to about twenty.
CHAPTER XV
PREVENTIVE ARREST
In the beginning of the war, when all seemed to be going well, there was no disunity in Germany. When Germany was winning victory after victory, practically no censorship was needed in the newspapers; the police were tolerant; every German smiled upon every other German; soldiers went forth singing and their trains were gaily decorated with oak leaves; social democracy praised militarism.
All that has changed and the hosts who went singing on their way in the belief that they would be home in six weeks, have left behind homes many of them bereaved by the immense casualties, and most of them suffering from the increased food shortage.
Class feeling soon increased. The poor began to call the rich agrarians “usurers.” The Government forbade socialistic papers such as the _Vorwaerts_ to use the word “usurer” any more, because it was applied to the powerful junkers. Such papers as the _Tagliche Rundschau_ and the _Tageszeitung_ could continue to use it, however, for they applied it to the small shopkeeper who exceeded the maximum price by a fraction of a penny.
As the rigour of the blockade increased, the discontent of the small minority who were beginning to hate their own Government almost as much as, and in many cases more, than they hated enemies of Germany, assumed more threatening forms than mere discussion. Their disillusionment regarding Germany’s invincibility opened their eyes to faults at home. Some of the extreme Social Democrats were secretly spreading the treasonable doctrine that the German Government was not entirely blameless in the causes of the war. It has been my custom to converse with all classes of society, and I was amazed at the increasing number of disgruntled citizens.
But the German Government is still determined to have unity. They had enlisted the services of editors, reporters, professors, parsons and cinema operators to create it; they are now giving the police an increasingly important role to maintain it.
As the German Parliament in no way resembles the British Parliament, so do the German, police in no way resemble the British police. The German police, mounted or unmounted, are armed with a revolver, a sword, and not infrequently provided with a machine-gun. They have powers of search and arrest without warrant. They are allowed at their discretion to strike or otherwise maltreat not only civilians, but soldiers. Always armed with extraordinary power, their position during the past few months has risen to such an extent that the words used in the Reichstag, “The Reign of Terror,” are not an exaggeration.
Aided and even abetted by a myriad of spies and _agents-provocateurs_, they have placed under what is known as “preventive arrest” throughout the German Empire and Austria so great a number of civilians that the German prisons, as has been admitted, are filled to repletion.
With the Reichstag shut up, and the hold on the newspapers tightening,-what opportunity remains by which independent thought can be disseminated?
In Poland meetings to consider what they call “Church affairs,” but which were really revolutionary gatherings, afforded opportunity for discussion. These have been ruled out of order.
The lectures taking place in their thousands all over Germany might afford a chance of expression of opinion, but the professors, like the pastors, are, as I have said, so absolutely dependent upon the Government for their position and promotion, that I have only heard of one of them who had the temerity to make any speech other than those of the “God-punish-England” and “We-must-hold-out” type. His resignation from the University of Munich was immediately demanded, and any number of sycophants were ready to take his place.
Clubs are illegal in Germany, and the humblest working-men’s _cafes_ are attended by spies. In my researches in the Berlin East-end I often visited these places and shared my adulterated beer and war bread with the working folk–all of them over or under military age.
One evening a shabby old man said rather more loudly than was necessary to a number of those round him:–“I am tired of reading in the newspapers how nice the war is. Even the _Vorwaerts_ (then a Socialist paper) lies to us. I am tired of walking home night after night and finding restaurants turned into hospitals for the wounded.”
He was referring in particular to the great _Schultheiss_ working-men’s restaurants in Hasenheide. His remarks were received with obvious sympathy.
A couple of nights later I went into this same place and took my seat, but it was obvious that my visit was unwelcome. I was looked at suspiciously. I did not think very much of the incident, but ten days later in passing I called again, when a lusty young fellow of eighteen, to whom I had spoken on my first visit, came forward and said to me, almost threateningly, “You are a stranger here. May I ask what you are doing?”
I said: “I am an American newspaper correspondent, and am trying to find out what I can about the ways of German working folk.”
He could tell by my accent that I was a foreigner, and said: “We thought that you had told the Government about that little free speaking we had here a few days ago. You know that the little old man who was complaining about the restaurants being turned into hospitals has been arrested?”
This form of arrest, by which hundreds of people are mysteriously disappearing, is one of the burning grievances of Germany to-day. In its application it resembles what we used to read about Russian police. It has created a condition beneath the surface in Germany resembling the terrorism of the French Revolution. In the absence of a Habeas Corpus Act, the victim lies in gaol indefinitely, while the police are, nominally, collecting the evidence against him. One cannot move about very long without coming across instances of this growing form of tyranny, but I will merely give one other.
A German family, resident in Sweden, were in correspondence with a woman resident in Prussia. In one of her letters she incautiously remarked, “What a pity that the two Emperors cannot be taught what war really means to the German peoples.” She had lost two sons, and her expression of bitterness was just a feminine outburst, which in any other country, would have been passed by. She was placed under preventive arrest and is still in gaol.
The police are armed with the censorship of the internal postal correspondence, telegrams and telephones. One of the complaints of the Social Democrat members of the Reichstag is that every movement is spied upon, and their communications tampered with by what they call the “Black Chamber.”
There is no reason to suppose that the debates in the closing session of the Reichstag in 1916 on police tyranny, the Press censorship, the suppression of public opinion, will lead to any result other than the familiar expressions of mild indignation–such as that which came from the National Liberal and Pan-German leader, Dr. Paasche–and perhaps a little innocent legislation. But the reports of the detailed charges against the Government constitute, even as passed by the German censorship for publication, a remarkable revelation. It should be remembered in reading the following quotations that the whole subject has been discussed in the secrecy of the Reichstag Committee, and that what is now disclosed is in the main only what the Government has been unable to hush up or hide.
In his famous speech on “preventive arrest” the Social Democratic Deputy, Herr Dittmann said:–
“Last May I remarked that the system of preventive arrest was producing a real reign of terror, and since then things have got steadily worse. The law as it was before 1848 and the Socialist Law, of scandalous memory, are celebrating their resurrection. The system of denunciation and of _agents-provocateurs_ is in full bloom, and it is all being done under the mask of patriotism and the saving of the country. Anybody who for personal or other reasons is regarded by the professional _agents-provocateurs_ as unsatisfactory or inconvenient is put under suspicion of espionage, or treason, or other crime. And such vague denunciations are then sufficient to deprive the victim of his freedom, without any possibility of defence being given him. In many cases such arrest has been maintained by the year without any lawful foundation for it. Treachery and low cunning are now enjoying real orgies. A criminal is duly convicted and knows his fate. The man under preventive arrest is overburdened by the uncertainty of despair, and is simply buried alive. The members of the Government do not seem to have a spark of understanding for this situation, the mental and material effects of which are equally terrible.
“Dr. Helfferich said in the Budget Committee in the case of Dr. Franz Mehring that it is better that he should be under detention than that he should be at large and do something for which he would have to be punished. According to this reasoning the best thing would be to lock up everybody and keep them from breaking the law. The ideal of Dr. Helfferich seems to be the German National Prison of which Heine spoke. The case of Mehring is classical proof of the fact that we are no longer far removed from the Helfferich ideal.”
Herr Dittmann went on to say that Herr Mehring’s only offence was that in a letter seized by the police he wrote to a Reichstag deputy named Herzfeld in favour of a peace demonstration in Berlin, and offered to write a fly-sheet inviting attendance at such a meeting. Mehring, who is over 70 years of age, was then locked up. Herr Dittmann continued:–
“How much longer will it be before even thoughts become criminal in Germany? Mehring is one of the most brilliant historians and writers, and one of the first representatives of German intellectual life–known as such far beyond the German frontiers. When it is now known abroad that such a man has been put under a sort of preventive arrest merely in order to cut him off from the public for political reasons, one really cannot be astonished at the low reputation enjoyed by the German Government both at home and abroad. How evil must be the state of a Government which has to lock up the first minds of the country in order to choke their opposition!”
Herr Dittmann’s second case was that of Frau Rosa Luxemburg. He said that she was put under arrest many months ago, without any charge being made against her, and merely out of fear of her intellectual influence upon the working classes. All the Socialist women of Germany were deeply indignant, and he invited the Government to consider that such things must make it the positive duty of Socialists in France, England, Italy and Russia “to fight against a Government which imprisons without any reason the best-known champions of the International proletariat.” The treatment of both Mehring and Frau Luxemburg had been terrible. The former, old and ill, had had the greatest difficulty in getting admission to a prison infirmary. Frau Luxemburg a month ago was taken from her prison bed in the middle of the night, removed to the police headquarters, and put in a cell which was reserved for prostitutes. She had not been allowed a doctor, and had been given food which she could not eat. Just before the Reichstag debate she had been, taken away from Berlin to Wronke, in the Province of Posen.
Herr Dittmann then gave a terrible account, some of it unfit for reproduction, of the treatment in prison of two girls of eighteen whose offence was that on June 27th they had distributed invitations to working women to attend a meeting of protest against the procedure in the case of Herr Liebknecht. He observed that they owed it entirely to themselves and to their training if they had not been ruined physically and morally in their “royal Prussian prison.” When they were at last released they were informed that they would be imprisoned for the rest of the war if they attended any public meeting. Herr Dittmann proceeded:–
“Here we have police brutality in all its purity. This is how a working-class child who is trying to make her way up to knowledge and _Kultur_ is treated in the country of the promised ‘new orientation,’ in which (according to the Imperial Chancellor) ‘the road is to be opened for all who are efficient.’ These are the methods by which the spirit of independence is systematically to be billed. That is the reason for the arrests of members of the Socialist party who stand on the side of determined opposition. You imagine that by isolating the leading elements of the opposition you can crush the head of the snake.”
Herr Dittmann’s next case was that of Dr. Meyer, one of the editors of _Vorwaerts_, who was arrested many months ago. He is suffering from tuberculosis, but is not allowed to go to a sanatorium. Another Socialist journalist named Regge, father of six children, has been under arrest since August, his only offence being that he has agitated against the militarist majority. Herr Dittmann then dealt at length with the Socialist journalist named Kluhs, who has been in prison for eight months, also for his activity on behalf of the Socialist minority against the majority, and was prevented from communicating with his dying wife or attending her funeral,
Herr Dittmann gave the details of three cases at Dusseldorf and one at Brunswick, and then explained how the military authorities in many parts of Germany are deliberately offering Socialists the choice between silence and military service. A well-known trade union official at Elberfeld, named Sauerbrey, who had been declared totally unfit for military service because he had lost several fingers on his left hand, was arrested and charged with treason. He was acquitted, but instead of obtaining his freedom he was immediately called up and is now in training for the front. Herr Dittmann said that this case had caused intense bitterness, and added:–
“The Military Command at Munster is surprised that the feeling in the whole Wupper Valley is becoming more and more discontented, and the military are now hatching new measures of violence in order to be able to master this discontent. One would think that such things came from the madhouse. In reality they represent conditions under martial law, and this case is only one of very many.”
Herr Dittmann gave several instances of men declared unfit for service who had been called up for political reasons, and he ended his speech as follows:–
“In regard to all this persecution of peaceful citizens there is a regular apparatus of _agents-provocateurs_, provided by officials of all kinds, and the apparatus is growing every day. If these persecutions were stopped a great number of these agents and officials could be released for military service. In most cases they are mere shirkers, and that is why they cling to their posts and _seek every day to prove themselves indispensable by discovering all sorts of crimes_. Because they do not want to go to the trenches other people must go to prison. Put an end to the state of martial law, and help us to root up a state of things which disgraces the German name.”
The Alsatian deputy, Herr Haus, said that Alsace-Lorraine is suffering more than any other part of the country, and that more than 1,000 persons have been arrested without any charge being brought against them. Herr Seyda, for the Poles, said that the Polish population of Germany suffers especially from the system of preventive arrest.
In his contemptuous reply, which, showed that the Government was confident that it had nothing to fear from the majority in the Reichstag, Herr Helfferich said:–
“The institution of the dictator comes from ancient Rome, from the classical Republic of antiquity. (Laughter.) When the State was fighting for its existence it was found necessary to place supreme power in the hands of a single man, and to give this Roman dictator authority which was much greater than the authority belonging to preventive arrest and martial law. The whole development proceeds by way of compromise between the needs of the State and the needs of protection for the individual. The results vary according to the particular level of civilisation reached by the particular State. (Socialist cries of ‘Very true.’) We are not at the lowest level. When one considers the state of things in Germany in peace time we can be proud. (Socialist interruptions.) I am proud of Germany. I think that our constitutional system before the outbreak of war and our level of _Kultur_ were such as every German could be proud of. (‘No, no.’) I hope that we shall soon be able to revert to those conditions.”
Herr Helfferich went on to argue that repression in Germany is really much milder than in France, England, or Italy; and for the debate on the censorship, which followed the debate on preventive arrest, he came armed with an account of the Defence of the Realm Acts. When he enlarged upon the powers of the British Government he was interrupted by cries of “It is a question not of theory but of practice,” and the Socialist leader Herr Stadthagen made a scathing reply. He said:–
“Even if everything in England is as Herr Helfferich described it, the state of things is much better there than in Germany. Herr Helfferich stated the cases in which arrest and search of dwellings may take place, but those are cases in which similar action can be taken in Germany in time of peace under the ordinary criminal law. The Englishman has quite other rights. He has the right to his personality, and, above all, the officials in England, unlike Germany, are personally responsible. When we make a law, that law is repealed by the Administration. That is the whole point, but Herr Helfferich does not see it, and he does not see that we live in a Police State and under a police system. Did it ever occur to anybody in England to dispute the right of immunity of members of parliament? Did it ever occur to anybody in England to go to members of the Opposition in Parliament and demand that they should resign their seats on pain of arrest? Or has anybody in England been threatened with arrest if he does not withdraw a declaration against the committee of his party? Two newspapers have been suppressed in England because they opposed munitions work. I regret this check upon free criticism in England, but what would have happened in Germany? In Germany there would undoubtedly have been a prosecution for high treason. In England, moreover, the newspapers are allowed to reappear, and that without giving any guarantees. In Germany we are required to give guarantees that the papers shall be conducted by a person approved of by the political police. Herr Helfferich employs inappropriate comparisons. I will give him one which applies. The political police in Germany is precisely what the State Inquisition was in Venice.”
An interesting point in the censorship debate was the disclosure of the fact that the local censors do what they please. Herr Seyda protested against the peculiar persecution of the Poles. He remarked that at Gnesen no Polish paper has been allowed to appear for the past two years.
But as significant as anything was Herr Stadthagen’s account of the recruiting for the political police. He said that the police freely offer both money and exemption from military service to boys who are about to become liable for service. He gave a typical case of a boy of seventeen. The police called at his home and inquired whether he belonged to any Socialist organisation and whether he had been medically examined for the Army. A police official then waylaid the boy as he was leaving work and promised him that, if he would give information of what went on in his Socialist association, he could earn from 4 pounds to 4 pounds 10 shillings a month and be exempt from military service.
There is a peculiar connection between censorship and police. The evil effect of the censorship of their own Press by the German Government is to hypnotise the thousands of Government bureaucrats into the belief that that which they read in their own controlled Press is true.
No people are more ready to believe what they want to believe than the governing class in Germany. They wanted to believe that Great Britain would not come into the war. They had got into their heads, too, that Japan was going to be an ally of theirs. They wrote themselves into the belief that France was defeated and would collapse.
Regarding the Press, as they do, as all-important, they picked from the British Press any articles or fragments of articles suitable for their purpose and quoted them. They are adepts in the art of dissecting a paragraph so that the sense is quite contrary to that meant by the writer.
But the German Government goes further than that. It is quite content to quote to-day expressions of Greek opinion from Athens organs well known to be subsidised by Germany. Certain bribed papers in Zurich and Stockholm, and one notorious American paper, are used for this process of self-hypnotism. The object is two-fold. First, to influence public opinion in the foreign country, and, secondly, by requoting the opinion, to influence their own people into believing that this is the opinion held in the country from which it emanates. Thus, when I told Germans that large numbers of the Dutch people are pro-Ally, they point to an extract from an article in _De Toekomst_ and controvert me.
These methods go to strengthen the hands of the police when they declare that in acting severely they are only acting against anarchistic opinions likely to create the impression abroad that there is disunity within the Empire.
Never, so far as I can gather, in the world’s history was there so complete a machine for the suppression of individual opinion as the German police.
The anti-war demonstrations in Germany range all the way from the smashing of a few food-shop windows to the complete preparations for a serious crippling of the armies in the field by a general munition strike.
Half-way between were the so-called “Liebknecht riots” in Berlin. The notices summoning these semi-revolutionary meetings were whispered through factories, and from mouth to mouth by women standing in the food lines waiting for their potatoes, morning bread, meat, sugar, cheese, and other supplies. Liebknecht was brought to secret trial on June 27th, on the evening of which demonstrations took place throughout the city. I was present at the one near the Rathaus, which was dispersed towards midnight when the police actually drew their revolvers and charged the crowd.
The following evening I was at an early hour in the Potsdamer Platz, where a great demonstration was to take place. It was the second anniversary of the murder at Sarajevo. The city was clearly restless, agitated; people were on the watch for something to happen. The Potsdamer Platz is the centre through which the great arteries of traffic flow westward after the work of the day is done. The people who stream through it do not belong to the poorer classes, for these live in the east and the north. But on this mild June evening there was a noticeably large number of working men in the streets leading into the Platz. I was standing near a group of these when the evening editions appeared with the news that Liebknecht had been sentenced. A low murmur among the workmen, mutterings of suppressed rage when they realised the significance of the short trial of two days, and a determined movement toward the place of demonstration.
I hurried to the Potsdamer Platz. The number of police stationed in the streets leading into it increased. The Platz itself was blue with them, for they stood together in groups of six, ten and twelve. I went along the Budapester Strasse to the Brandenburger Tor, through which workmen from Moabit had streamed at noon declaring that they would strike. They had been charged by the mounted police, who drove them back across the Spree. There was a blue patrol along the Unter den Linden now. A whole army corps of police were on the alert in the German capital.
I returned to the Potsdamer Platz. It was thick with people now–curious onlookers. There were crowds of workmen in the adjacent streets, but they were not allowed to approach too near. Again and again they tried, but, unarmed, they were powerless when the horses were driven into them, I saw a few of the most obstinate struck with the flat of sabres, and on others were rained blows from the police on foot. Nobody hit Back, or even defended himself.
There was practically no violence such as one expects from a mob. It was something else which impressed me. It impressed my police-lieutenant friend, also. That was the dangerous ugliness in the workmen. Hate was written in their faces, and the low growl in the crowd told all too plainly the growing feeling against the war.
The Government realised this. They had already seen that the unity they had so artificially created could only be held by force. They had used force in the muzzling of Liebknecht, and quietly they were employing a most potent force every day, the force of preventive arrest.
In July there was agitation for the great munition strike which was to have taken place on the day of the second anniversary of the war. The dimensions of the proposed rising were effectually concealed by the censorship. The ugly feeling in the Potsdamer Platz had taught the Government a lesson.
No detail was neglected in the preparations against the strike. There was a significant movement of machine-guns to all points of danger, such as the Moabit district of Berlin, and Spandau, together with countless warnings against so-called “anarchists.” Any workman who showed the slightest tendency to be a leader in a factory group was taken away. The expressions of intention not to work the first four days of August became so strong that the Press issued a warning that any man refusing to work would be put into a uniform, and he would receive not eight or more marks a day as in munition work, but three marks in ten days. Even the Kaiser supplemented his regular anniversary manifestoes to the armed forces of the Empire and the civilian population with a special appeal to the workmen.
I was up and ready at an early hour on the morning of August 1st. Again the city was blue with police. But this time they were reinforced. As I walked through streets lined with soldiers in the workingmen’s quarters, I realised the futility of any further anti-war demonstrations in the Fatherland.
I stood in the immense square before the Royal Palace, and reflected that two years ago it was packed with a crowd wild with joy at the opportunity of going to war. There was unity. I stood on the very spot where the old man was jeered because he had said, “War is a serious business, young fellow.”
On August 1st, 1916, there were more police in the square than civilians. On Unter den Linden paced the blue patrol. There was still unity in Germany, but a unity maintained by revolver, sword and machine-gun.
CHAPTER XVI
POLICE RULE IN BOHEMIA
In his speech to the Senate President Wilson, said: “No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognise and accept the principle that Governments derive all their just powers from the consent at the governed. . . . No nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.”
The realisation of these admirable sentiments presents infinite problems in various sections of Europe, but nowhere, perhaps, more than in Austria-Hungary. In his heterogeneous collection of peoples, the old Emperor had to make a choice between two courses in order to hold his thirteen distinct races together in one Empire. He could have tried to make them politically contented through freedom to manage their own affairs while owing allegiance to the Empire as a whole, or he could suppress the individual people to such an extent that he would have unity by force.
He chose the second course. With the Germans dominant in Austria and the Magyars in Hungary, other nations have been scientifically subjugated. As in the case of the procedure of “Preventive Arrest” in Germany, the authorities seek to work smoothly and silently, with the result that only an occasional echo reaches the outside world.
The description of the relations of the various peoples and the “Unity-Machine” employed would fill a large book. Control of public opinion has been the first action of the rulers of the Dual Monarchy. In peace time, not only were the suppressed nations, such as the Czechs, Slovaks, Rumanians, Luthenians, Poles, Slovenes, Italians, but all the citizens of Austria-Hungary, denied the right of free speech and freedom of the Press. Some of the regulations by which the Government held absolute sway over its subjects are:
(1) No newspaper or other printing business could be established until a heavy deposit was made with the police for the payment of fines, such fines to be arbitrarily imposed by the police–in whom is vested extraordinary power–when anything political was written which did not please them. They are difficult to please, I may add.
(2) A complete copy of each edition must be sent to the police before it was put on sale. “Good” editors whose inspiration was of a nature to enable them to interpret the wishes of the Government, sometimes received a dispensation from this formality.
(3) No club might hold a private meeting. A representative of the police must be present. This rule was often extended even to friendly gatherings in private homes in such places as Bohemia.
(4) No political meeting might be held without a permit, and a representative of the police must be present. Often he sat on the platform. It is amusing for the visitor from a free country to attend a political meeting where the chairman, speaker and policeman file up on the stage to occupy the three chairs reserved for them. The policeman may be heard by those in the front rows continually cautioning the speaker. If he thinks the speaker is talking too freely he either intervenes through the chairman and asks him to be moderate or dismisses the meeting.
These regulations, I again remind the reader, were in force in peace time. It is easy to see how an extension of them effectually checks attempts of the Czechs (Bohemians) and other peoples to legislate themselves into a little freedom.
When I came to England early in the war from Austria-Hungary and Germany I heard many expressions of hope that the discontented races in the Empire of Francis Joseph would rebel, and later expressions of surprise that they did not. Englishmen held the opinion that such races would be decidedly averse from fighting for the Hapsburgs. The opinion was correct, and nobody knew this better than the Hapsburgs themselves.
Like the German Government in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, the Austrian Government has endeavoured to mislead public opinion in foreign countries as to the state of mind of the Czechs by false information and to conceal the true military and political situation from the population at home. Austria’s first problem at the outbreak of war–a problem which has been worked out to the last detail–was rapidly to move the soldiers of the subjugated races from their native lands. Since the Bosnians, for example, are of the Serbian race, they were mobilised secretly in the middle of July and sent out of Bosnia. I saw 30,000 moved through Trieste several days before war was declared on Serbia. A German acquaintance, with great shipping interests, enthusiastically indiscreet at sight of them, exclaimed to the little group of which I was one: “A wonderful system–a wonderful system! The Bosnians could not be trusted to fight the Serbs. But we Germans can use them if they prove troublesome to Austria,” he continued excitedly. “We can send them against the French. We will tell them that if they do not shoot the French, we will shoot _them_.” I thought this a rather curious conversation for July 25th, 1914.
Less than fortnight later I saw two Bohemian regiments arrive at Prasso, Transylvania, the province farthest removed from their homes, to be garrisoned in a region, the population of which is Rumanian, Hungarian and Saxon. I was told later that the Rumanians who had left the garrisons at Prasso had gone to Bohemia. As I observed these initial steps in the great smooth-running Austro-Hungarian military machine, I was impressed with the impossibility of revolution. With the soldier element scientifically broken up and scattered all over the country, who could revolt–the women and children?
The Slav soldiers of Austria-Hungary desert to Russia at every opportunity. The fact that she now has upwards of 1,200,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners is sufficient refutation of the sugar-coated propaganda describing how all the peoples who make up Austria-Hungary rushed loyally and enthusiastically to arms to the defence of their Emperor and common country. This is perfectly true of the politically dominant races, the Germans and the Magyars, but the “enthusiasm” I witnessed among the subjugated races consisted chiefly of sad-faced soldiers and weeping women.
The Bohemians have given most trouble. One German officer who was sent to Austria to help bolster up her army told me that he didn’t worry over the desertion of Bohemians singly and in small groups. He expected that. But he did take serious exception to the increasingly popular custom of whole battalions with their officers and equipment passing over to the Russian lines intact.
The story of the Bohemian regiment trapped in the Army of Leopold of Bavaria is generally known in Austria. When the staff learned that this regiment planned to cross to the Russians on a certain night, three Bavarian regiments, well equipped with machine-guns, were set to trap it. Contrary to usual procedure, the Bohemians were induced by the men impersonating the Russians to lay down their arms as an evidence of good faith before crossing. The whole regiment was then rounded up and marched to the rear, where a public example was made of it. The officers were shot. Then every tenth man was shot. The Government, in order to circumvent any unfavourable impression which this act might make in Bohemia, caused to be read each day for three days in the schools a decree of the Emperor, condemning the treachery of this regiment, the number of which was ordered for ever to be struck from the military rolls of the Empire.
During the terrific fighting at Baranowitchi in the great Russian offensive last summer, at a time when the Russians repeatedly but unsuccessfully stormed that important railway junction, some Prussian units found their right flank unsupported one morning at dawn, because two Bohemian battalions had changed flags during the night. The next Russian attack caused the Prussians to lose 48 per cent. of their men.
This was the final straw for the Staff of Leopold’s Army. An Order was issued explaining to the troops that henceforth no more Czechs would have the honour of doing first line duty, since their courage was not of as high a degree as that of the others. I found that the Prussians, despite their depleted state, actually believed this explanation, which filled them with pride in themselves and contempt for the Czechs.
But the German officers in charge of reorganising the Austro-Hungarian Army were not content to let Bohemians perform safe duties in the rear. Consequently, they diluted them until no regiment contained more than 20 per cent.
The authorities have been no less thorough with the civilian population. From the day of mobilisation all political life was suspended. The three parties of the Opposition, the Radicals, the National-Socialists, and the Progressives, were annihilated and their newspapers suppressed. Their leaders, such men as Kramarzh, Rasin, Klofatch, Scheiner, Mazaryk, Durich, the men who served as guides to the nation, were imprisoned or exiled. This is surely a violation of the principle that Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, for all these men were the true representatives of the people. The fact that the Government was obliged to get rid of the leaders of the nation shows what the real situation in Bohemia is.
The Czech deputies who were considered dangerous, numbering forty, were mobilised. They were not all sent to the front; some were allowed temporary exemption; but the Government gave them to understand that the slightest act of hostility towards the Monarchy on their part would result in their being called up immediately and sent to the front.
The fetters of the Press were drawn more tightly. Even the German papers were not allowed into Bohemia. For some months, two or three enterprising editors used to send a representative to Dresden to read the German and English papers there. At present three-quarters of the Czech papers and all the Slovak newspapers have been suppressed. The columns of those which are still allowed to appear in Bohemia and Moravia are congested by mandates of the police and the military authorities, which the editors are compelled to insert. Recently the Government censorship has been particularly active against hooks, collections of national songs, and post-cards. It has even gone so far as to confiscate scientific works dealing with Slav questions, Dostoyevski’s novels, the books of Tolstoi and Millioukoff, and collections of purely scientific Slav study and histories.
The Government, however, have had to proceed to far greater lengths. By May, 1916, the death sentences of civilians pronounced in Austria since the beginning of the war exceeded 4,000. Of these, 965 were Czechs. A large proportion of the condemned were women. The total of soldiers executed amounts to several thousands.
Is it not peculiar that among people which the Viennese propaganda represents as loyal, hostages are taken in Bohemia, and condemned to death, under the threat of execution if a popular movement takes place? The people are told of this and are given to understand that the hostages have hopes for mercy if all is quiet.
Not only have the authorities confiscated the property of all persons convicted of political offences and of all Czechs who have fled from Austria-Hungary, but a system has been established by which the property of Czech soldiers who are prisoners in Russia is confiscated. The State profits doubly by this measure, for it further suppresses the allowances made to the families of these soldiers. In order to terrorise its adversaries through such measures, the Government instructs the Austrian newspapers to publish long lists of confiscations and other penalties.
After a time, however, the Austrian Government practically abdicated in favour of the Prussians and now undertake to carry out the measures of Germanisation dictated by Berlin. The rights in connection with the use of the Czech language in administration, in the Law Courts and on the railways, rights which were won by the desperate efforts of two generations of Czech politicians, have been abrogated. The management of the railways has been placed in the hands of Prussian military officials; the use of the Czech language has been suppressed in the administration, where it had formerly been lawful. The Czechs have been denied access to the Magistrature and to public offices where they had occasionally succeeded in directing the affairs in their own country.
CHAPTER XVII
SPIES AND SEMI-SPIES
A comprehensive account of the German system of espionage would need something resembling the dimensions of a general encyclopaedia, but for the present I must endeavour to summarise the subject in the course of a chapter.
Spying is just as essential an ingredient of Prussian character as conceit, indifference to the feelings of others, jealousy, envy, self-satisfaction, conceit, industry, inquisitiveness, veneration for officialdom, imitativeness, materialism, and the other national attributes that will occur to those who know Prussia, as distinct from the other German States.
Prussian men and women hardly know the meaning of the word “private,” and, as they have Prussianised to a great or less degree all the other States of the Empire, they have inured the German to publicity from childhood upwards.
In the enforcement of food regulations the hands of the Government in Germany are strengthened by certain elements in the German character, one of which is the tendency of people to spy upon each other. Here is a case. Last Easter the customary baking of cakes–a time-honoured ceremony in Germany—was forbidden all over Prussia from April 1 to 26. A certain good woman of Stettin, whose husband was coming home from the trenches, thought that she would welcome her soldier with one of the cakes of which German men and women are so fond. She foolishly displayed her treasure to a neighbour, who had dropped in for gossip. The neighbour cut short the interview, went home to her telephone, called up the police and, as she put it, did her duty. I suppose from the German point of view it is the duty of people to spy in each other’s houses. From an Anglo-Saxon point of view it is something rather like sneaking at school.
With these elements in their character, it is natural that the Germans should be past masters in the art of espionage. It does not follow that they are equally successful in the deductions formed from their investigations in foreign matters, but they are so egoistical and so literal, so fond of making reports, so fond of seeing things only from their own point of view, that, while they may be successful in obtaining possession by spying, purchase, or theft, of the plans, say, of a new battleship, they are not able to form an accurate estimate of the character and intentions of the people among whom they may be spying.
Their military spying is believed to be as perfect as such work can be, marred occasionally by the contempt they feel for other nations in military matters. I presume that there is not much difference in the systems of various nations except that the German military spying is probably more thorough.
It is also true that Germans of social distinction will often take positions far beneath their rank in order to gather valuable information for their Government. The case of the hall porter in the _Hotel des Indes_, the most fashionable hotel in The Hague, is a notorious example. He is of gentle birth, a brother of Baron von Wangenheim, late German Ambassador to Constantinople.
In one of the most luxurious dining-saloons on one of the most luxurious of the great German liners–I promised my trustworthy informant not to be more definite–the man who was head-waiter during the year preceding the war impressed those under him with being much more interested in some mysterious business ashore than in his duties aboard ship. He threw most of his work on subordinates, who complained, though unsuccessfully, to the management. Unlike other head-waiters and chief stewards, he was never aboard the ship when it was in port. He was the only German in the dining-saloon, and he seemed to have great influence. He conversed freely with influential passengers of various nationalities.
The liner was in the English Channel eastward bound, when news came that Germany had declared war upon Russia. What little interest he had previously displayed in his duties now vanished completely, and he paced the deck more and more impatiently as the vessel neared Cuxhaven. He was one of the first to go ashore, but before leaving he turned to two of the stewards and exclaimed, “Good-bye. I am going to Wilhelmshaven to take command of my cruiser.”
In general, the work of military attaches of all countries is added to by more or less formal reports by officers who may be travelling on leave. But German military spying goes much farther than this, for inasmuch as most Germans have been soldiers, the majority of Germans travelling or resident in a foreign country are trained observers of military matters and, often act as semi-spies.
The system of “sowing” Germans in foreign countries, as I have heard it called in Germany, and getting them naturalised, was begun by Prussia before the war of 1866 against Austria. It was so successful under the indirect auspices of the Triumvirate–Moltke, Roon, and Bismarck–that it was developed in other countries. Thus it is that, while there are comparatively few Frenchmen, for example, naturalised in England, many German residents go through this more or less meaningless form just as suits their particular business or the German Government, double nationality being regarded as a patriotic duty to the Fatherland.
There are, as a rule, three schools of German espionage in other countries–the Embassy, the Consulates, and the individual spies, who have no connection with either and who forward their reports direct to Germany.
There is a fourth class of fairly well-paid professional spies, men and women, of all classes, who visit foreign countries with letters of introduction, who attend working-men’s conventions, scientific, military, and other industrial congresses, receiving from 40 pounds to 100 pounds monthly by way of pay. The case of Lody, whom the British caught and executed, was a type of the patriotic officer spy. But his execution caused no real regret in Germany, for he was regarded as a clumsy fellow, who roused the vigilance of the British authorities, with the result, I was informed in Germany, of the arrest and execution of several others, mostly, it is said, Dutch, South American, and other neutrals.
The atmosphere of spying in business is a subtle and comparatively modern form of German espionage, and has developed with the remarkable rise of German industry in the last quarter of a century. It fits in admirably with the Consular spy system, and links up Germans, naturalised and otherwise, in a chain which binds them together in a solidarity of workers for the cause. The Deutsche Bank and the Hamburg-Amerika Line were very potent engines of espionage.
Nor does the “Viktoria Insurance Company of Berlin” limit its activities to the kind of business suggested by the sign over the door. A “Special Bureau” in the Avenue de l’Opera, Paris, consisted of German Reserve officers who spent a half-year or more in France. As soon as one of these “finished his education” he was replaced by another Reserve officer. Their duties took them on long motor-trips through eastern France, strangely enough to localities which might be of strategic importance in the event of war. It is not without significance that all the clerks of the “Special Bureau” left for Germany the day of mobilisation.
Many of the semi-spies of the German commercial, musical, and theatrical world are, from their point of view, honest workers and enthusiastic for German _Kultur_. They recently fastened upon England, because the Germans for many years have been taught to regard this country as their next opponent.
They are now as industrious in the United States as they were in England before the war, because those Germans who think they have won the war believe that the United States is their next enemy. How active they have been in my country may be gathered from the revelations concerning Bernstorff, von Papen, Boyed, Dumba, the officials of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, and many others, whose machinations have been revealed by the _New York World_ and other journals.
It is the duty of the German Minister and his staff in any foreign country, and particularly in countries likely to become hostile, to get as close as possible to members of Governments, members of Legislatures, leaders of thought and society, and members of the Press, especially the first and the last in this category. Count Bernstorff in the United States did exactly what Prince Lichnowsky did in Britain before the war, and, if I may say so, did it a great deal more successfully, though it is the plea of the Prince’s defenders that he succeeded in making very powerful and permanent connections in Great Britain,
Our American Ambassadors, on the other hand, confine their attention to strictly ambassadorial work, attend to the needs of travelling Americans, and communicate with their Government on matters vital to American interests.
The excellent German Consular system, which has done so much to help German trade invaders in foreign countries, is openly a spy bureau, and is provided in almost every important centre with its own secret service fund. Attached to it are spies and semi-spies, hotel-keepers, hairdressers, tutors, governesses, and employees in Government establishments, such as shipbuilding yards and armament factories. It is a mistake to suppose that all these are Germans. Some, I regret to say, are natives of the laud in which the Germans are spying, mostly people who have got into trouble and with whom the German agents have got into touch. Such men, especially those who have suffered imprisonment, have often a grudge against their own country and are easily caught in the spy net.
Part of the system in England before the war was a commercial information bureau resembling the American Bradstreets and the English Stubbs, by which, on payment of a small sum, the commercial standing of any firm or individual can be obtained. This bureau, which had its branches also in France and Belgium, closed its activities immediately prior to the war, the whole of the card-indexes being removed to Berlin.
It is the German boast, and I believe a legitimate one, that they know England better than do the English. _Their error is in believing that in knowing England they know the English themselves_.
At the outset of the war, when the Germans were winning, Herr Albert Ulrich, of the Deutsche Bank, and chief of their Oil Development Department, speaking in perfect English, told me in a rather heated altercation we had in regard to my country that he knew the United States and Great Britain very thoroughly indeed, and boasted that the American submarines, building at Fore River, of which the Germans had secured the designs, would be of little value in the case of hostilities between Germany and the United States, which he then thought imminent.
It is typical of German mentality that when I met him in Berlin, fifteen months later, he had completely altered his time as to the war, and his tone was, “When is this dreadful war going to end?” This, however, is by the way. Herr Ulrich is only an instance of the solidarity of Pan-Germanism. An English or American banker visiting a foreign country attends to his affairs and departs. A German in a similar position is a sort of human ferret. An hotel with us is a place of residence for transient strangers. The Hotel Adlon and others in Berlin are excellent hotels as such, but mixed up with spying upon strangers; Herr Adlon, senior, a friend of the Kaiser’s, assists the Government spies when any important or suspicious visitor registers. The hotel telephones or any other telephones are systematically tapped. German soldiers are granted special leave for hotel service–that is to say, hotel spying.
When Belgium and France were invaded, German officers led their men through particular districts to particular houses with certainty, with knowledge gained by previous residence and spying. I know an officer with von Kluck’s army who received the Iron Cross, First Class, for special information he had given to von Kluck which facilitated his progress through Belgium.
Any German spies who may be working in England to-day have no great difficulty in communicating with Germany, though communication is slow and expensive. They can do so by many routes and many means. As it is impossible to isolate Great Britain from Europe, it is equally impossible to prevent the conveyance of information to the enemy with more or less rapidity. Agents of the various belligerent Powers are plentiful in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and the United States. So far as the maritime countries are concerned, ships leave and enter daily. It is quite impossible to control the movements of neutral sailors and others engaged in these vessels. To watch all the movements of all those men would require a detective force of impossible dimensions. That information comes and goes freely by these channels is notorious. That all the sailors are legitimate sailors I do not believe, and as a matter of fact I know that they are not.
The transmission of documents via Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway has been rendered difficult, but not always impossible. Cabling and telegraphing have been made very risky.
Judging by the impatience manifested in certain quarters in Berlin at delay in getting news of Zeppelin raids, for example, I believe that the steps taken to delay communication between England and Germany have been effective, and delay in spy work is very often fatal to its efficiency. The various tentacles of the German spy system, its checks and counter-checks, whereby one spy watches another; whereby the naval spy system has no connection with the military spy system, and the political with neither, greatly mars its utility.
Take one great question–the question that was all-important to Germany as to whether Great Britain would or would not enter the war in the event of an invasion of Belgium or declaration of war against France. I was informed on good Berlin authority that from every part of Great Britain and Ireland came different reports. So far as London was concerned, Prince Lichnowsky said “No.” Baron von Kuhlmann was non-committal. As a result Lichnowsky was disgraced and von Kuhlmann continued in favour.
It is common knowledge in Berlin, and may be elsewhere, that the most surprised person in Germany at Great Britain’s action was the Kaiser, whose violent and continual denunciations of Great Britain’s Government, of King Edward, and King George, are repeated from mouth to mouth in official circles with a sameness that indicates accuracy.
All the ignorance of Great Britain’s intentions in 1914 is to me the best proof that the German minute system of working does not always produce the result desired.
As one with Irish blood in my veins, I found that Germany’s Irish spy system (largely conducted by hotel waiters and active for more than five and twenty years) had resulted in hopeless misunderstanding of Irish affairs and Irish character, North and South.
German spies are as a rule badly paid. The semi-spies, such as waiters, were usually “helped” by the German Government through waiters’ friendly societies. It was the duty of these men to communicate either in writing or verbally with the Consul, or with certain headquarters either in Brussels or Berlin, and it is only in accordance with human nature that spies of that class, in order to gain a reputation for acumen and consequent increase of pay, provided the kind of information that pleased the paymaster. That, indeed, was one of the causes of the breakdown of the German political spy system. A spy waiter or governess in the County of Cork, for instance, who assiduously reported that a revolution throughout the whole of Ireland would immediately follow Great Britain’s entry into the war, received much more attention than the spy waiter in Belfast who told the authorities that if Germany went to war many Irishmen would join England. Ireland, I admit, is very difficult and puzzling ground for spy work, but it was ground thoroughly covered by the Germans according to their methods.
The military party in Germany, who are flaying von Bethmann-Hollweg for his ignorance of the intentions of Britain’s Dominions and of Ireland, never cease to throw in his teeth the fact that he had millions of pounds (not marks) at his hack to make the necessary investigations, and that he failed. That and his lack of the use of ruthlessness, his alleged three days’ delay to mobilise in 1914, are the principal charges against him–charges which, in my opinion, may eventually result in his downfall.
The great mob of semi-spies do not derive their whole income from Germany, nor are they, I believe, all actually paid at regular intervals. The struggling German shopkeeper in England was helped, and I have no doubt is still helped, by occasional sums received for business development–sums nominally in the nature of donations or loans from other Germans. The army of German clerks, who came to England and worked without salary between 1875 and 1900, received, as a rule, their travelling money and an allowance paid direct from Germany, or, when in urgent need, from the Consul in London or elsewhere. Their spying was largely commercial, although many of them formed connections here which became valuable as Germany began to prepare directly for war with Britain. They also helped to spread the knowledge of the English language which has enabled Germany to analyse the country by means of its books, Blue-books, statistical publications, and newspapers. They also brought back with them topographical and local knowledge that supplemented the military spy work later achieved by the German officers who came to live here for spying purposes, and the great army of _trained_ spy waiters, who are not to be confused with the semi-spies in hotels, who drew small sums from Consuls.
One of the finest pieces of spy work achieved by Germany was the obtaining by a German professor of a unique set of photographs of the whole of the Scottish coast, from north to south. Those photographs showing every inlet and harbour, are now at the Reichs-Marine-Amt (Admiralty) in the Leipsigerplatz. They have been reproduced for the use of the Navy. I do not know how they were obtained. I _know_ they are in existence, and they were taken for geological purposes.
Thefts of documents from British Government Departments are not always successfully accomplished by German agents, I was told. Some of the more astute officials are alleged, especially by the Naval Department, to have laid traps and supplied the spies with purposely misleading designs and codes.
Assiduous fishing in the troubled waters around the Wilhelmstrasse–waters that will become more and more troubled as the siege of Germany proceeds–renders the gathering of information not so difficult as it might appear.
By sympathising with the critics of the German Foreign Office in the violent attacks upon the Government by the non-official Social Democrats, a sympathetic listener can learn a great deal.
One thing I learned is that, beyond question, the German spy