the journey are removed
to a hospital at the frontier.
6. The furniture vans A transparent untruth used for transporting on the face of it. If only wounded to the hospitals one train came into Potsdam at Potsdam and other why use furniture vans at cities have proved a great all? The furniture vans success. These vans, are used for purposes of moreover, all bear the sign concealment, and because of the Red Cross, and may the very large ambulance easily be recognised as supply always on duty at hospital vehicles. the great military hospitals at Potsdam was unequal to the task. I saw no Red Cross indications.
7. That men who are My statement is that all seriously wounded should the German wounded at give one an impression of the present stage of the weariness goes without war, lightly or otherwise, saying. Lightly wounded compare badly with the men who travel from the English and French Somme to Boulogne may wounded, whom I have make a better appearance seen. They are utterly than the seriously wounded war weary and suffering who have made the long not so much from shell journey from the West shock as from surprise front to Potsdam. shock, the revelation of the creation of a British
Army that had never occurred to the German soldiers.
8. As to the great “Hush! I have made inquiries hush! machinery”–what is of British officials, and one to call the attempt they tell me that it is to keep the truth from absolutely untrue that the neutrals by closing channel is closed to English harbours near the neutral shipping when the Channel to neutral shipping English hospital transports for whole days at a proceed to England. time–during which the This untruth is on a par English ship-transports of with the others. wounded proceed to England?
9. The figures published An interesting revelation by the Ministry of War as to German casualty lists. concerning the numbers of It is stated by this head men dismissed from lazarets medical officer of Potsdam (hospitals) are based upon that these lists are drawn up unquestionable statistics. from the men _dismissed_ from These statistics remain as lazarets (hospitals), that is given–despite all the to say, this doctor admits aspersions of our enemies. that the custom is now to keep back the casualty lists until the man is _discharged_, whereas your British lists, I am informed on authority, are published as speedily as possible after the soldier is _wounded_. The whole of the German wounded now in hospitals have not yet, therefore, been included in casualty lists–the casualties which are forcing the Germans to employ every kind of labour they can enslave or enroll from Belgium, Poland, France, and now from their own people from sixteen up to sixty years of age of both sexes.
10. It would prove interesting For obvious reasons I to learn the name of the decline to subject my “patriotic German Statesman,” friend to the certain who is said to cherish the punishment that would follow same opinions as this writer disclosure of his name. in the _Daily Mail_.
I regret to burden readers with a chapter so personal to myself, but I think that anyone who studies these German denials with the preceding chapter on the Contalmaison wounded will learn at least as much about the German mind as he would by studying the famous British White paper of August, 1914.
CHAPTER XXIV
GERMANY’S HUMAN RESOURCES
Three factors are of chief importance in estimating German man-power. First, the number of men of military age; second, the number of these that are indispensable in civil life; third, the number of casualties. Concerning the last two there are great differences of opinion among military critics in Allied and neutral countries. As regards the first there need be little difference, although I confess surprise at the number of people I have met who believe the grotesque myth that Germany has systematically concealed her increase in population, and that instead of being a nation of less than seventy millions she has really more than one hundred millions.
It is safe to say that at the outbreak of war Germany was a nation of 68,000,000, of whom 33,500,000 were males. Of these nearly 14,000,000 were between 18 and 45; 350,000 men over 45 are also with the Colours. The boys who were then 16 and 17 can now be added, giving us a grand total of some 15,000,000.
Normally Germany employed men of between 18 and 45 as follows:–Mines, 600,000; metals, 800,000; transport, 650,000; agriculture, 3,000,000; clothing, food preparation, 1,000,000, making a total of 6,050,000.
Up to this point there can be little difference of opinion. From this point on, however, I must, like others who deal with the subject, make estimates upon data obtained. During my last visit to Germany I systematically employed a rough check on the figures derived through the usual channels. Concentrated effort to obtain first-hand information in city, village, and countryside, north, east, south, and west, with eyes and ears open, and vocal organs constantly used for purposes of interrogation, naturally yielded considerable data when carried over a period of ten months. The changes from my last visit and from peace time were also duly observed as were the differences between Germany and the other nations I had visited during the war. Walking, of which I did a colossal amount, was most instructive, because it afforded me an opportunity to study conditions in the villages. Discreet questioning gave me accurate statistics in hundreds of these that I visited, and of many more hundreds that I asked about from people whom I met on my travels. For example, in Oberammergau, which had at the beginning of the war 1,900 inhabitants, about 350 had been called to the Colours when I was there, and of these thirty-nine had been killed.
My investigations in the Fatherland convinced me that of the 3,000,000 men between 18 and 45 formerly engaged in agriculture, considerably fewer than 100,000 continue to be thus occupied. This work is done by prisoners and women. Mine and metal work have kept from 60 to 70 per cent. of their men of military age; but transport, already cut somewhat, lost 25 per cent. of the remainder when Hindenburg assumed supreme command, which would reduce 650,000 to about 300,000. More than 90 per cent. of those engaged in the preparation of food and the making of clothing have been called up. Thus of the 6,050,000 engaged in the occupations given above, about 1,750,000 remain, which means that more than 4,000,000 have been called to the Colours.
From building and allied trades at least 90 per cent. are in military uniform. Assuming that some 2,000,000 men of military age are included in indispensable engineers, fishermen, chemists, physically unfit, and so forth, we conclude on this basis that Germany can enrol in her Army and Navy more than 11,000,000 men.
We may approach the subject from a somewhat different angle by considering what percentage of her total population Germany could call to the Colours under stress–and she is to-day under stress. Savage tribes have been known to put one-fifth under arms. An industrial State such as Germany cannot go to this extreme. Yet by using every means within her power she makes a very close approach to it. In practically every village of which I secured figures in Saxony, Bavaria, Posen, East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and Oldenburg, a fifth or nearly a fifth have been called up. In some Silesian and Rhenish-Westphalian districts, however, not more than from a seventh to a tenth. If we allow for all Germany a little less than one-sixth, we get 11,000,000.
What are the factors which enable Germany to call this number or a little more than this number to the Colours? First, the organisation of the women. I have seen them even in the forges of Rhineland doing the work of strong men. “The finest women in the world, these Rhinelanders,” as one manager put it. “Just look at that one lift that weight. Few men could do better.” And his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.
Second, and of tremendous importance, are the huge numbers of prisoners in Germany, and her sensible determination to make them work. She has taken about one and two-third millions on the field of battle. _There also happen to be in Germany nearly a million other prisoners, buried alive, whose existence has apparently escaped the notice of the outside world_. These are the Russian civilians who were caught in the German trap when it snapped suddenly tight in the summer of 1914. Before the war 2,000,000 Russians used to go to Germany at harvest time. The war began at harvest time. The number of these men, which from my own first-hand investigations in the remote country districts I estimate at nearly a million, would have escaped my notice also, had I not walked across Germany.
Another important factor in the labour problem in Germany is the employment of the Poles. Not only are they employed on the land, but great colonies of them have grown up in Dusseldorf and other industrial centres. I saw an order instructing the military commandants throughout Germany to warn the Poles, whose discontent with the food conditions in Germany made them desire to return home, that conditions in Poland were much worse. This, then, is an official German admission that there is starvation in Poland, for _much worse_ could mean nothing else. Germany is keeping Poland a sealed book, although I admit that she occasionally takes tourists to see the German-fostered university at Warsaw. Just before I left Germany still another order was issued for the regulation of neutral correspondents. Under no circumstances were they to be allowed to talk with the natives in Poland. From unimpeachable authority I learned that the Poles were intensely discouraged at the thoroughness with which the Prussians stripped the country after the last harvest, and that in some sections the people are actually dying of hunger. Even in Warsaw, the death-rate in some neighbourhoods has increased from 700 to 800 per cent. I was witness to German rage when Viscount Grey stipulated that food could be sent there only if the natives were allowed to have the produce of their own land. Prussia wanted that produce, and she got it.
I mention these supplies here because the Poles who worked to produce them must be included in German labour estimates just as much as though they had been working in Germany.
Germany also adds to her man-power by utilising her wounded so far as possible. Her efforts in this direction are praiseworthy, since they not only contribute to the welfare of the State, but benefit the individual. I have seen soldiers with one leg gone, or parts of both legs gone, doing a full day’s work mending uniforms. The blind are taught typewriting, which enables them to earn an independent living in Government employ. In short, work is found for everybody who can do anything at all.
In a previous chapter I have spoken of the organisation of the children, a factor which should not be left out of consideration.
* * * * *
Having considered the assets, let us turn to the debits.
The German casualty lists to the end of 1916 total 4,010,160, of which 909,665 have been killed or died of wounds. My investigations in Germany lead me to put the German killed or died of wounds at 1,200,000, and the total casualties at close to 5,000,000. If we assume that 50 per cent. of all wounded return to the front and another 25 per cent. to service in the interior, we must also consider in computation of man-power that the casualty lists do not include the vast numbers of invalided, and the sick, which almost balance those that return to the front. This means, in short, that the net losses are nearly as great at any one time as the gross losses. Consequently, according to my estimates there must be at least 4,500,000 Germans out of action at this moment.
In a war of attrition it is the number of men definitely out of action which counts, for the German lines can be successfully broken, and only successfully broken, when there are not enough men to hold them. The Germans now have in the West probably about 130 divisions.
Hindenburg’s levies in the late summer were so enormous that I am convinced from what I saw in Germany that she has now called almost everything possible to the Colours. One of Hindenburg’s stipulations in taking command was that he should always have a force of half a million to throw wherever he wished. We have seen the result in Rumania, and the men skimmed from the training units then have been replaced by this last great levy from civilian life.
Therefore, with something over 11,000,000 men called up, Germany has now 6,000,000, or a little more all told, many of whom are not at all suited for service at the front.
Germany on the defensive at the Somme certainly lost at least 600,000 men. Attrition, to be sure, works both ways, but if the Germans are out-gunned this year in the West to the extent expected their position must become untenable. The deadly work of reducing German man-power continues even though the Allied line does not advance. I know of a section of the German front opposite the French last winter which for five months did not have an action of sufficient importance to be mentioned by either side in the official reports, yet the Germans lost 10 per cent. of their effectives in killed.
The more munitions the Allies make Germany use, the more fat she must use for this purpose, and the less she will have for the civil population, with a consequent diminution of their output of work. Germany simply cannot burn the candle at both ends.
CHAPTER XXV
BERLIN’S EAST-END
The poor of Berlin live in the north and east of the city. I have seen Berlin’s East-end change from the hilarious joy of the first year of the war to an ever-deepening gloom. I have studied conditions there long and carefully, but I feel that I can do no better than describe my last Saturday in that interesting quarter of the German capital.
Late in the morning I left the Stettiner Bahnhof in the north and walked eastward through the Invalidenstrasse. There was practically no meat in the butchers’ shops, just the customary lines of empty hooks. A long queue farther on attracted my attention and I crossed the street to see what the people were waiting for. A glance at the dark red carcases in the shop told me that this was horse-meat day for that district.
The number of vacant shops of all descriptions was increasing. The small shoemaker and tailor were closing up. The centralisation of food distribution is greater here than in the better-class districts, with the result that many small shopkeepers have been driven out of business. In parts of Lothringerstrasse a quarter of the shops were vacant, in other parts one-half. The bakers’ shops are nearly empty except at morning and evening. In fact, after my long sojourn in blockaded Germany I still find myself after two months in England staring in amazement at the well-stocked shop windows of every description.
Shortly before noon I reached the _Zentral Viehund-Schlachthof (the slaughter-houses). Through a great gateway poured women and children, each carrying some sort of a tin or dish full of stew. Some of the children were scarcely beyond the age of babyhood, and their faces showed unmistakable traces of toil. The poor little things drudged hard enough in peace time, and in war they are merely part of the big machine.
The diminishing supply of cattle and pigs for killing has afforded an opportunity to convert a section of the slaughter-houses into one of the great People’s Kitchens. Few eat there, however. Just before noon and at noon the people come in thousands for the stew, which costs forty pfennigs (about 5 pence) a quart, and a quart is supposed to be enough for a meal and a half.
I have been in the great Schlachthof kitchen, where I have eaten the stew, and I have nothing but praise for the work being done. This kitchen, like the others I have visited, is the last word in neatness. The labour-saving devices, such as electric potato-parers, are of the most modern type. In fact, the war is increasing the demand for labour-saving machinery in Germany to at least as great an extent as high wages have caused such a demand in America. Among the women who prepare the food and wait upon the people there is a noticeable spirit of co-operation and a pride in the part they are playing to help the Fatherland _durchhalten_ (hold out). Should any of the stew remain unsold it is taken by a well-known restaurant in the Potsdamer Platz, which has a contract with the municipal authorities. Little was wasted in Germany before the war; nothing, absolutely nothing, is wasted to-day.
As at the central slaughter-house, so in other districts the poor are served in thousands with standard stew. The immense Alexander Market has been cleared of its booths and tables and serves more than 30,000 people. One director of this work told me that the Berlin authorities would supply nearly 400,000 people before the end of the winter.
The occasional soldier met in the streets looked shabbier in the shabby surroundings of the East. The German uniform, which once evoked unstinted praise, is suffering sadly to-day owing to lack of raw materials. I was in a Social Democratic district, but the men in uniform who were home on leave were probably “good” Social Democrats, since it is notorious that the regular variety are denied this privilege.
The faces of the soldiers were like the rest of the faces I saw that day. There was not the least trace of the cheerful, confident expression of the days when all believed that the Kaiser’s armies would hammer their way to an early peace–“in three months,” as people used to say during the first year and a quarter of the war. Verdun had been promised them as a certain key to early peace, and Admiral Scheer was deified as the immortal who tore loose the British clutch from the German throat. But Verdun and Jutland faded in succeeding months before the terrible first-hand evidence that the constant diminution of food made life a struggle day after day and week after week. The news from Rumania, though good, would bring them no cheer until it was followed by plenty of food.
In the vicinity of the Schlesischer Bahnhof occurred a trifling incident which gave me an opportunity to see the inside of a poor German home that day. A soldier in faded field-grey, home on leave, asked me for a match. During the conversation which followed I said that I was an American, but to my surprise he did not make the usual German reply that the war would have been ended long ago if it had not been for American ammunition. On the contrary, he showed an interest in my country, as he had a brother there, and finally asked me if I would step into his home and explain a few things to him with the aid of a map.
Though I was in a district of poverty the room I entered was commendably clean. An old picture of William I. hung on one wall; opposite was Bismarck. Over the low door was an unframed portrait of “unser Kaiser,” while Hindenburg completed the collection. Wooden hearts, on which were printed the names Liege, Maubeuge, and Antwerp, recalled the days when German hearts were light and German tongues were full of brag.
A girl of ten entered the room. She hated the war because she had to rush every day at noon from school to the People’s Kitchen to fetch the family stew. In the afternoon she had to look after the younger children while her mother stood in the long lines before the shops where food was sold. The family were growing tired of stew day after day. They missed the good German sausage and unlimited amount of bread and butter.
The mother looked in on her way to the street, basket under arm. She was tired, and was dulled by the daily routine of trying to get food. She talked bitterly about the war, but though she blamed the Agrarians for not doing their part to relieve the food situation, she expressed no animosity against her own Government. The father had been through Lodz in Hindenburg’s two frontal assaults on Warsaw, where he had seen the slopes covered with forests of crosses marking the German dead, and his words were bitter, too, when he talked of his lost comrades. And then, the depressing feeling of returning from an army pursuing the mirage of victory to find his family and every other family struggling in the meshes of that terrible and relentless blockade!
It never had occurred to him that his Government might be in the least responsible for the misery of his country. Like the great bulk of the German people he is firmly convinced that the Fatherland has been fighting a war of defence from the very beginning. “To think that one nation, England, is responsible for all this suffering!” was the way that he put it. He is a “good” Social Democrat.
When I once more resumed my walk I saw the lines of people waiting for food in every street. Each time I turned a corner great black masses dominated the scene. I paused at a line of more than three hundred waiting for potatoes. Ten yards away not a sound could be heard. The very silence added to the depression. With faces anxious and drawn they stood four abreast, and moved with the orderliness of soldiers. Not a sign of disturbance, and not a policeman in sight. Some women were mending socks; a few, standing on the edge of the closely packed column, pushed baby carriages as they crawled hour after hour toward the narrow entrance of the shop.
Every line was like the rest. The absence of policemen is particularly noteworthy, since they had to be present in the early days–a year ago–when the butter lines came into being. Drastic measures were taken when the impatient women rioted. Those days are over. The Government has taught the people a lesson. They will wait hour after hour, docile and obedient henceforth, if necessary until they drop–make no mistake of that.
But the authorities also learned a lesson. “People think most of revolution when they are hungry,” was what one leader said to me. On this Saturday of which I write not a potato was to be bought in the West-end of Berlin, where the better classes live. Berlin had been without potatoes for nearly a week. To-day they had arrived, and the first to come were sent to the East-end. In the West-end the people are filled with more unquestioning praise of everything the Government does; they applaud when their Kaiser confers an Order upon their Crown Prince for something, not quite clear, which he is supposed to have accomplished at Verdun. Therefore they can wait for potatoes until the more critical East-end is supplied.
I went farther eastward through the Kottbuser district to the Kottbuser Ufer on the canal, along which, a couple of hundred people waited in an orderly column without any guardian–another evidence of the success of the drastic measures of July and early August, when the demonstrations against the war were nipped in the bud. These people were waiting for the free advertisement sheets from the gaudily painted yellow Ullstein newspaper building across the square. They had to stand by the side of the canal because a _queue_ of several hundred people waiting for potatoes wound slowly before Ullstein’s to the underground potato-shop next door.
I had not heard a laugh or seen anybody smile all day, and when darkness fell on the weary city I went to a cheap little beer-room where several “bad,” but really harmless Social Democrats used to gather. Among them was the inevitable one who had been to America, and I had become acquainted with them through him. They talked in the new strain of their type, that they might as well be under the British or French, as under their own Government.
Their voices were low–a rare event where Germans gather at table. They did not plot, they merely grumbled incessantly. The end of the war had definitely sunk below their horizon, and peace, not merely steps to peace, was what they longed for. There was the customary cursing of the Agrarians and the expressions of resolve to have a new order of freedom after the war, expressions which I believe will not be realised unless Germany is compelled to accept peace by superior forces from without.
I left the dreary room for the dreary streets, and turned towards the centre and West-end of Berlin, where the _cafe_ lights were bright and tinkling music made restricted menu-cards easier to bear.
Suddenly the oppressive feeling of the East-end was dispelled by the strains of military music drawing closer in a street near by. I hurried towards it, and saw a band marching at the head of two companies of wounded soldiers, their bandages showing white under the bright street lights of Berlin.
The men were returning to their hospital off the Prenzlauer Allee from a day’s outing on the River Spree. Scores of followers swelled to hundreds. The troubles of the day were forgotten. Eyes brightened as the throng kept step with the martial music. A roll of drum, a flare of brass, and the crowd, scattered voices at first, and then swelling in a grand crescendo, sang _Deutschland uber Alles_. To-morrow they would complain again of food shortage and sigh for peace, but tonight they would dream of victory.
CHAPTER XXVI
IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW
A little, bent old woman, neat, shrivelled, with clear, healthy eye and keen intelligence, was collecting acorns in the park outside the great Schloss, the residence of von Oppen, a relative of the Police President of Berlin.
I had walked long and was about to eat my picnic lunch, and stopped and spoke with her. We soon came to the one topic in Germany–the war. She was eighty-four years of age, she told me, and she worked for twelve hours a day. Her mother had seen Napoleon pass through the red-roofed village hard by. She well remembered what she called “the Bismarck wars.” She was of the old generation, for she spoke of the Kaiser as “the King.”
“No,” she said, “this war is not going like the Bismarck wars–not like the three that happened in 1864, 1866, 1870, within seven years when I was a young woman.” She was referring, of course, to Denmark, Austria, and France. “We have lost many in our village–food is hard to get.” Here she pointed to the two thin slices of black bread which were to form her mid-day meal. She did not grumble at her twelve hours’ day in the fields, which were in addition to the work of her little house, but she wished that she could have half an hour in which to read history.
Her belief was that the war would be terminated by the Zeppelins. “When our humane King really gives the word, the English ships and towns will all be destroyed by our Zeppelins. He is holding back his great secret of destruction out of kindness.”
The remark of that simple, but intelligent old woman as to the restraint imposed by the Kaiser upon the Zeppelins constituted the universal belief of all Germany until the British doggedly built up an air service under the stress of necessity, which has brilliantly checked the aerial carnival of frightfulness. People in Great Britain seem to have no conception of the great part the Zeppelins were to play in the war, according to German imagination. That simple old peasant lady expressed the views that had been uttered to me by intelligent members of the Reichstag–bankers, merchants, men and women of all degrees. The first destruction of Zeppelins–that by Lieutenant Warneford, and the bringing down of LZ77 at Revigny, did not produce much disappointment. The war was going well in other directions. But the further destruction of Zeppelins has had almost as much to do with the desire for peace, in the popular mind, as the discomfort and illness caused by food shortage and the perpetual hammerings by the French and British Armies in the West.
It should be realised that the Zeppelin has been a fetish of the Germans for the last ten years. The Kaiser started the worship by publicly kissing Count Zeppelin, and fervently exclaiming that he was the greatest man of the century. Thousands of pictures have been imagined of Zeppelins dropping bombs on Buckingham Palace, the Bank of England, and the Grand Fleet. For a long time, owing to the hiding of the facts in England of the Zeppelin raids, even high German officials believed that immense damage had been done. The French acted more wisely. They allowed full descriptions of the aeroplane and Zeppelin raids in France to be published, and the result was discouraging to the Germans. I remember studying the British Zeppelin communiques with Germans. At that time the London Authorities were constantly referring to these raids taking place in the “Eastern counties,” when the returned Germans knew exactly where they had been. The result was great encouragement. Nothing did more to depress the Germans than the humorous and true accounts of the Zeppelin raids which were eventually allowed to appear in the English newspapers.
The Germans have now facts as to the actual damage done in England. They know that the British public receive the Zeppelins with excellent aircraft and gun-fire. They know that anti-aircraft preparations are likely to increase rather than decrease, and while, for the sake of saving the nation’s “face,” it will be necessary that Zeppelins be further used, the people who are directing the war know that, so far as land warfare is concerned, they are not a factor.
There have been more mishaps than have been published; more wounded and damaged Zeppelins than the Germans have ever announced. I was informed that the overhauling and repair of many Zeppelins after a successful or unsuccessful raid was a matter, not of days, but of weeks. There was great difficulty in obtaining crews. Most of them are sailors, as are the officers. There have been suppressed mutinies in connection with the manning of the Zeppelins.
Count Zeppelin, who, up to a year ago, was a national hero, is already regarded by a large section of the population as a failure. The very house servants who subscribed their pfennigs and marks in the early days to help conduct his experiments now no longer speak of him with respect. They have transferred their admiration to Hindenburg and the submarines.
The majority of Germans of all classes believe what they are officially instructed to believe, no more, no less. The overmastering self-hypnotism which leads the present-day German to believe that black is white, if it adds to his self-satisfaction, is one of the most startling phenomena of history. But what of Ballin, Heineken, von Gwinner, Gutmann, Thyssen, Rathenau, and other captains of industry and finance? Some of them have expressed opinions in interviews, but what do they _really_ think? I am not going to indulge in any guesswork on this matter. I am simply going to disclose some important statements made at a secret meeting attended by many of the business directors of the German Empire. The meeting was for the purpose of discussing actual conditions in a straightforward manner, therefore no member of the Press, German or foreign, was present.
In striking contrast with custom when the war is discussed, nothing was said of _Kultur_, of German innocence or enemy guilt, of an early and victorious peace, of British warships hiding always in safety, or of the omniscience and infallibility of the Supreme Military Command.
The little circle of Germans who have displayed such brilliant organising ability in commerce and industry are practical men, who look at the war and the days to follow the war in the cold light of debit and credit. This being the case, the honest opinions expressed by Arthur von Gwinner, President of the Deutsche Bank, are worthy of serious consideration. His chief points were:–
1. The belief cherished by the mass of the nation that a Central Europe Economic Alliance will amply compensate us for any shortcomings elsewhere, and enable us to sit back and snap our fingers at the rest of the world is too absurd to be entertained by serious men. Our trade, import and export, with Austria-Hungary was as great as it could be for many years to come, and it was only a small part of our total trade. After the war, as before, the bulk of our trade must be with countries now neutral or enemy, and we must seriously consider how to hold and add to this trade in the future.
2. The solution of the labour problem will be vital in the work of reconstruction. We must make every provision in order to forge rapidly ahead immediately after the close of the war.
_No German, except for necessary reasons of State, should be allowed to leave the country for a number of years after the war_.
3. Before the war 3,000,000 Russians came to us every year at harvest time. These must continue to come.
4. We have done wonderful work in scientific agriculture, but the limit of productivity of the soil has undoubtedly been reached.
5. Do not place too much hope in an early war between the United States and Japan.
6. There is great rejoicing over the sinking of enemy ships. It should also be remembered, however, that we are not paying any dividends at present.
In the discussion which followed the statements of Herr von Gwinner and from various channels of reliable information which I made use of in Germany, I found a serious view taken of these and other topics, of which the great body of Germans are quite unaware.
Take the labour problem, for example. For years Germany has recognised the necessity of a rapid increase of population, if a nation is to smash rivals in industry and war. Not for a moment during this struggle has Germany lost sight of this fact. Many times have I heard in the Fatherland that the assurance of milk to children is not entirely for sentimental but also for practical reasons. Official attempts are being made at present to increase the population in ways which cannot be discussed in this book. “You get yourself born and the State does all the rest” was an accurate analysis of Germany before the war; but the State looks after everything now.
When men go home on leave from the army, married or single, they are instructed in their duty of doing their part to increase the population so that Germany will have plenty of colonists for the Balkans, Turkey and Asia in the great economic development of those regions. To impress this they argue that Germany and France had nearly the same number of inhabitants in 1870. “See the difference to-day,” says the German. “This difference is one of the chief causes of our greatly superior strength.”
Working girls in Dresden have not only been encouraged but quietly advised to serve the State “by enabling Deutschland to achieve the high place in the world which God marked out for it, which can only be done if there are a sufficient number of Germans to make their influence felt in the world.” They have been told not to worry, that the State will provide for the offspring. In fact, societies of godfathers and godmothers are growing all over Germany. They do not necessarily have to bring up the child in their own home; they can pay for its maintenance. Thus the rich woman who does not care to have many children herself is made to feel in ultra-scientific Germany that she should help her poorer sister.
The Germans treat the matter very lightly. In Bremen, for example, where the quartering of Landsturmers (the oldest Germans called to military service) among the people resulted in a large batch of illegitimate children, I found it the custom, even in mixed society of the higher circles, to refer to them jokingly as “young Landsturmers.”
A serious consideration of what Germany, or any other belligerent, will do _after_ the war is usually of little value, as conditions after the war depend upon what is done _during_ the war. The amount of freedom which the German people attain in the next few years is in direct proportion to the amount of thrashing administered to their country by the Allies. Perhaps they will have something to say about the frontier regulations of Germany; but assuming that the training of centuries will prevent their hastily casting aside their docility, it is extremely probable that few, if any, Germans will be allowed to leave Germany during the first years of reconstruction.
This will disappoint several million Germans. Despite the snarling rage displayed everywhere in the fatherland, except in diplomatic circles, against the United States, I heard an ever-increasing number of malcontents declare that, immediately after the close of war, they would go to the States to escape the burden of taxation. One hears two words–_Friede_ (peace) and _Essen_ (food)–constantly. The third word I should add is _Steuern_ (taxes). It is all very well to sit by some neutral fireside reading Goethe or Schopenhauer, while listening to the _Meistersinger von Nurnberg_, or the “Melody in F,” and lull yourself into the belief that the Germans are a race of idealists. This touch is used to a considerable extent in German propaganda. Any one familiar, however, with conditions in modern Germany knows that Germans are ultra-materialistic.
I have heard them talk of the cost of the war from the very beginning. They gloated over the sweeping indemnities they would exact. After they realised the possibilities of State-organised scientific burglary in Belgium they were beside themselves in joyful anticipation of what Paris, London, and a score of other cities would yield. When the war became a temporary stalemate, I heard it said, particularly by army officers, that Germany was taking no chances with the future, but was exacting indemnities now from the occupied districts. When taxes rose and food shortage increased, the possibility that the Germans themselves would have to pay some of their own costs of the war in various forms of taxation determined a rapidly growing number to seek a way out by emigrating at the first opportunity.
As Herr Ballin said, “The world will find us as strongly organised for peace as we were organised for war.” The labour problem, however, not only now, but for the days of reconstruction, is viewed very seriously, how seriously may be gathered from the fact that there is so much apprehension that Russia may refuse to allow her workers to go to Germany for some years after the war, that nearly everyone at the secret conference mentioned above was in favour of making concessions at the peace conference, should Russia insist. Indeed one Rhinelander was of the opinion that it would be worth while giving up Courland to get an unlimited supply of labour.
In the meantime the Germans have not been idle in other directions. Until Hindenburg called up his immense levies in the late summer, Germany exported steel building materials and coal to contiguous neutral countries, but she can no longer do this. Nevertheless, she did make elaborate preparations to “dump” into Russia on a colossal scale immediately after the resumption of intercourse. Immense supplies of farming implements and other articles of steel have been stored in the Rhineland, Westphalia, and Silesia, ready for immediate shipment to Russia, thus enabling Germany to get ahead of all rivals in this field.
Germans also derive comfort from the fact that their ships will be ready at once to carry cargoes and passengers, while so many of those of the Allies will be used for the transport of troops after the close of the war, and must then rent.
With such plans for “getting the jump” on competitors it is only natural that I saw more and more irritability on the part of the financial men with each month of the war after last April.
Von Gwinner’s remark about the improbability of war between Japan and the United States in the near future would, if known to the German people, cause still another keen disappointment, since one of their solaces has been the thought that they would soon have an opportunity of reaping a munition harvest themselves.
When Germany tried to make a separate peace with Russia, Japan was also approached–how far, I do not know. The Wilhelmstrasse still maintains a Japanese department, and any possible thread, however light, which may be twisted from a Tokyo newspaper to show that perhaps Japan may be won over, is pounced upon most eagerly. Germany, Japan, and Russia was the combination whispered in Berlin at the time of the unsuccessful attempt to separate the Allies.
Absolute governments have certain advantages in war. They have also disadvantages. When things are not running smoothly in Germany the Germans worry more than do the English when things are not going well in England. When the German leaders began to disagree as to the best methods to conduct the war, the effect upon the people was demoralising. Only their gullibility saved them from complete dismay, Month after month the great struggle raged, under the surface for the most part, but occasionally boiling over. Would it be to the best interests of Germany to go the limit with the submarines or not? Not once did I hear the subject discussed on ethical grounds. Some remarks made to me by Doctor Stresemann, one of the powerful rational Liberals behind the mammoth industrial trust in Germany, and the most violent apostle of frightfulness in the Reichstag, aptly express the sentiment in favour of unrestricted submarine warfare. He and the rest of the men behind Tirpitz had fought and lost in the three Committee assemblies called to discuss U-boat policy in 1916.
As the day set for the September meeting of the Reichstag approached I noticed that Herr Stresemann was growing more and more excited. “This war is lasting too long,” he declared to me in great agitation. “The Kaiser’s most glaring fault is that of trying to fight Great Britain with one foot in the grave of chivalry. If the Chancellor continues to sway him, we will wreck the Chancellor at all costs. The only way to win this war is to publish again, and this time enforce, the decree of February 4th, 1915, warning all neutrals to keep out of the submarine zone.”
“But, according to the ‘_Sussex_ Ultimatum,’ that will cause a break with the United States,” I said.
“We cannot let that deter us,” he declared. “Britain is the keystone of our enemies. If she falls they all fall. We must attack her where she is vulnerable. _We must starve her out_. As for America, we have little to fear from her. In the first place, although she may break off diplomatic relations, she will not enter the war if we are careful not to sink _her_ ships. As American ships play a small part in the carrying trade to England, we can thus refrain from sinking them–although we naturally should not proclaim this.
“In the second place, if America does declare war upon Germany, it would have little effect. The war will be over before she can organise after the manner of Great Britain. Herr Helfferich (former Minister of Finance and now Vive-Chancellor) feels that we should do everything possible to keep America out, inasmuch as thereby we shall be in a better position to conclude commercial treaties after the war. Herr Helfferich exerted powerful influence in the meeting at Great Headquarters at the time of the Sussex Crisis. But our duty to ourselves is to win the war. If we starve out England we win, no matter how many enemies we have. If we fail, another enemy, even the United States, would not make our defeat more thorough. We are justified, for our existence is at stake. The only way we can escape defeat is by a successful U-boat war against England. That would change defeat into overwhelming victory. I am absolutely confident; that is why the slow methods of the Chancellor make me so angry. It will take at least half a year to bring England to her knees, and with our increased privations he may wait too long. But we shall compel him; we shall compel him.”
Herr Stresemann later requested me not to publish these statements–at least, not until a decision had been reached. I did, however, lay the matter before the American Embassy in London as soon as I arrived in England, since my investigations in Germany left no doubt in my mind that she would play two great cards–one, to work for peace through negotiation; the other, the last desperate recourse to the submarine.
As I write (January 21st, 1917) I am convinced that it is only a question of time until Germany is reduced to this last desperate resort. The men, who will decide that time will be Hindenburg and Batocki. The successful siege of Germany is a stupendous though not impossible task.
On the other hand, the human system is a very elastic piece of mechanism, and modern man, far from being the degenerate which some admirers of cave-man hardihood have pictured him, is able to undergo a tremendous amount of privation. Besieged cities have nearly always held out longer than the besiegers expected. In the besieged city the civilian population is for the most part a drag on the military, but in besieged Germany the civilian population, reinforced by slave labour from Belgium, France and Poland, continues working at high pressure in order to enable the military to keep the field. Fat is the vital factor. The more munitions Germany heaps up the more fat she must use for this purpose, and the less she will have for the civil population, with a consequent diminution of their output of work. Germany simply cannot burn the candle at both ends. It is my personal opinion that Verdun marks the supreme culmination of German military offensive in the West, and the West is the decisive theatre of war. If that is Hindenburg’s opinion, then he realises that another colossal German offensive in the West would not bring a victorious peace. There remains only the alternative of building up a defensive against the coming Allied attacks–an alternative depending for its success upon sufficient food for the mass of the people. Thus the U-boat decision clearly rests upon the Chief of Staff and the Food Dictator, since their advice to the Imperial Chancellor and the All Highest War Lord must be determinative. When the day comes for Germany to proclaim to the world that she will sink at sight all ships going to and from the ports of her enemies, that day will be one of the great moments of history. Germany’s last card will be on the table. It will be war to the knife. Either she will starve Great Britain or Great Britain, will starve her.
These are problems for the leaders, who have the further task of keeping the population hopeful on an alarmingly decreasing diet. Superficially, or until you want something to eat, or a ride in a taxicab, Berlin at night is gay. But you somehow feel that the gaiety is forced. London at first sight is appallingly gloomy is the evening, and foreigners hardly care to leave their hotels. But I find that behind the gloom and the darkness there is plenty of spontaneous merriment at the theatres and other places of entertainment. There is plenty of food, little peace talk, and quiet confidence.
Across the North Sea, however, great efforts are made by the German Government to keep up the spirits of the people. No public entertainer need go to the war at all, and the opera is carried on exactly as in peace time, though I confess that my material soul found it difficult to enjoy Tristan on a long and monotonous diet of sardines, potatoes, cheese and fresh-water fish–chiefly pike and carp. A humorous American friend used to laugh at the situation–the brilliantly dressed house, officers in their extremely handsome grey uniforms, ladies, some of them with too many diamonds, and–very little to eat.
At the slightest military gain the bells of victory peal wildly, and gay flags colour mile after mile of city streets, flags under which weary, silent women crawl in long lines to the shops where food is sold. A bewildering spectacle is this crawling through victory after victory ever nearer to defeat.
Early in the war a Norwegian packer, who had not had much demand for his sardines in Germany, put the picture of Hindenhurg on the tins and christened them the “Hindenburg Sardines.” When he changed the trade-mark the Germans bought them as fast as he could supply them–not because they were short of food at that time, but through the magic of a name. To-day all that is changed. Norwegians no longer have to flatter the Germans, who are anxious to buy anything in the way of food. They flood Germany now with impunity with sardines whose merits are extolled in the hated English language, sardines which had originally been intended for Britain or America, but which are now eagerly snapped up at four and five times the peace price by people who invariably bid one another good-bye with “Gott strafe England.” I saw the gem of the collection in a Friedrichstrasse window. It was entitled: “Our Allies Brand,” on a bright label which displayed the flags of Great Britain, Prance, Russia, Italy, Belgium and Japan.
In Germany you feel that the drama of the battlefield has changed to the drama of the larder. Hope and despair succeed one another in the determination to hold out economically while soldier and sailor convince the world that Germany cannot be beaten. People laugh at the blockade, sneer at the blockade and curse the blockade in the same breath. A headline of victory, a mention of the army, the army they love, and they boast again. Then a place in the food line, or a seat at table, and they whine at the long war and rage against “British treachery.” Like a cork tossing on the waves–such is the spirit of Germany.
The majority struggle on in the distorted belief that Germany was forced to defend herself from attack planned by Great Britain, while the minority are kept in check by armed patrols and “preventive arrest.”
The spirit of “all for the Fatherland” is yielding to the spirit of self-preservation of the individual. Everywhere one sees evidence of this. The cry of a little girl running out of a meat shop in Friedenau, an excellent quarter of Berlin, brought me in to find a woman, worn out with grief over the loss of her son and the long waiting in the _queue_ for food, lying on the floor in a semi-conscious condition. It is the custom to admit five or six people at a time. I was at first surprised that nobody in the line outside had stirred at the appeal of the child, but I need not have expected individual initiative even under the most extenuating circumstances from people so slavishly disciplined that they would stolidly wait their turn. But the four women inside–why did they not help the woman? The spirit of self-preservation must be the answer. For them the main event of the day was to secure the half-pound of meat which would last them for a week. They simply would not be turned from that one objective until it was reached.
And the soldiers passing through Berlin! I saw some my last afternoon in Berlin, loaded with their kit, marching silently down Unter den Linden to the troop trains, where a few relatives would tearfully bid them good-bye. There was not a sound in their ranks–only the dull thud of their heavy marching boots. They didn’t sing nor even speak. The passers-by buttoned their coats more tightly against the chill wind and hurried on their several ways, with never a thought or a look for the men in field-grey, moving, many of them for the last time, through the streets of the capital. The old man who angered the war-mad throng before the _Schloss_ on August 1st, 1914, with his discordant croak of “War is a serious business, young man,” lives in the spirit of to-day. And he did not have to go to the mountain!
CHAPTER XXVII
ACROSS THE NORTH SEA
After my last exit from Germany into Holland I was confronted by a new problem. I had found going to England very simple on my previous war-time crossings. Now, however, there were two obstacles in my path–first, to secure permission to Board a vessel bound for England; secondly, to make the actual passage safely.
The passport difficulty was the first to overcome. The passport with which I had come to Europe before the war, and which had been covered with frontier _visees_, secret service permissions and military permissions, from the Alps to the White Sea and from the Thames to the Black Sea, had been cancelled in Washington at my request during my brief visit home in the autumn of 1915. On my last passport I had limited the countries which I intended to visit to Germany and Austria-Hungary. I purposed adding to this list as I had done on my old passport, but subsequent American regulations, aimed at restricting travellers to one set of belligerents, prevented that.
I was not only anxious to return to London to continue my work with Lord Northcliffe on _The Times_ and the _Daily Mail_, but I was encouraged by two American officials in Germany and Austria-Hungary to write the truth about Germany–a feat quite impossible, as one of them said to me, for a correspondent remaining in the zone of the Central Powers. The official in Austria-Hungary had become righteously indignant at the sneering German remarks about how they could “play with Washington in the U-boat question.” He asked me to learn all possible news of submarines. The official in Germany had been impressed by my investigations among the men behind Tirpitz, men who never for a moment ceased in their efforts to turn on frightfulness in full force. When I mentioned the new American passport regulations which would delay me getting to England, he said: “In Holland fix it with the British. I hope you will do some good with all this information, for you have the big scoop of the day. Now is the time.”
I tried to “fix it” with the British authorities in Rotterdam, but as they did not know me my progress was slow for a few days. Then I went to Amsterdam to my old newspaper friend, Charles Tower, correspondent for the _Daily Mail_, a man of broad experience, and in close touch with affairs in Holland, a country which war journalists have grown to look upon as an important link in the news chain between Germany and England. I realised that this move might confirm the suspicions of von Kuhlmann’s spies who were on my trail. However, the free air of Holland was making me a little incautious, a little over-confident.
“There is the man who is following you,” said Tower, as we stepped in the evening from his home on to the brightly lighted street and made our way along the edge of the canals. The tall, round-shouldered German shadowed us through the crowded streets to the Amstel Hotel. Then we shadowed him, while he telephoned for help which came in the form of a persistent Hollander, who insisted in sitting at the table next to us, although it had just been vacated by diners and needed re-arranging, whereas many other tables were entirely free.
That is a sample of the manner in which we were systematically spied upon. In order to make arrangements it was necessary for us to travel together so that we could talk, as our time was limited. It was absolutely impossible for us to go into a restaurant or get into a railway compartment without having a satellite at our elbow. They were very persistent and very thorough; but the system in Holland has the same glaring flaw that is common to the German system everywhere–too much system and not sufficient cleverness in the individual.
Von Kuhlmann, the German Minister, certainly does not lack men. We encountered them everywhere. Travelling first class gives one more or less privacy in Holland, so that it was decidedly irritating to have a listener make for our compartment, while adjoining first-class compartments were entirely empty. If the intrusion resulted in our going to another compartment, an ever-ready _Kamerad_ would quickly join us.
In all countries Germany considers certain telephone connections to be of great strategic importance. It is practically impossible to be connected with the British Consulate at Rotterdam, until the “interpreter” is put on. Mr. Tower experiences the same annoyance. Indeed, the Germans are extremely attentive to him, Although he needs only a small flat, since he lives alone, he has to protect himself by hiring the floor above and the floor below, as the Germans are continually trying to get rooms as close to him as possible. The German Government has for years been pouring out money like water to conquer the world. If I were a German taxpayer I should feel much like the man who discovers that the Florida land which some smooth-talking combination travelling book-agent and real estate agent persuaded him to buy is several feet under water.
Tower and the British authorities finally obtained permission for me to land in England, but they insisted that it would be worse than useless for me to attempt to go on a Dutch steamer, as I should be taken off. Within a week two of these steamers had been conducted by the Germans to Zeebrugge.
After I had left word that I wished to go at the first possible opportunity, and had received some further instructions, Tower and I left for Rotterdam on our last train ride together in Holland. The little man with the book who sat beside us in the tram to the Central station turned us over to a big man with whitish eyebrows and reddish hair and moustache, who followed us into a second-class compartment, which we had entered purposely, although we had bought first-class tickets. We then pretended to discover our mistake and changed to a vacant first-class compartment. Through some rare oversight there was no _Kamerad_ on hand, whereupon the man with the reddish hair followed us with the pathetically feeble-explanation that he, too, had made the same mistake.
When Tower and I had talked _ad nauseam_ on such fiercely neutral subjects as Dutch cheese and Swiss scenery, I felt an impelling desire to “get even” with the intruder, and began to complain to Tower of the injustice of the British not allowing me to return to America via England, which I wished to see for a few days. He took the cue readily, and accused me of being “fed-up like all neutral correspondents in Berlin.” He frankly expressed his disgust at the enthusiasm which he declared that I had been showing for everything German since I met him in Holland. As the train pulled into the Hague, where I prepared to leave him, he concluded by saying, “After all, you ought not to blame the British authorities for refusing you permission to go to England. I have done my best and have failed; there is nothing more that I can do. I did get one concession for you, however. You will not be roughly handled or otherwise maltreated when your vessel touches at Falmouth.”
I had to make a serious effort to keep a straight face while leaving the train with this last realistic touch of “British brutality” ringing in my ears. Tower, I might add, had voiced the extraordinary myth one hears in the Fatherland about the terrible manner in which the British treat passengers on neutral steamers touching at their ports.
The man with the reddish hair followed me to the office of the Holland-America Line, where I made application for a reservation on the boat which would sail in a week or ten days. From there I went to a small restaurant. He seemed satisfied and left me, whereupon I followed him. He hurried to the large Cafe Central, stepped straight to a table in the front room, which is level with the street, and seated himself beside a thin, dark German of the intellectual type who appeared to be awaiting him. From my seat in the shadows of the higher room I watched with amusement the increasingly puzzled expression on the face of the intellectual German while the man with the reddish hair unfolded his tale. When they parted my curiosity caused me to trail after the thin, dark man. He went straight to the German Legation.
For two days I nervously paced up and down the sands at Scheveningen looking out upon the North Sea and waiting for the call. It came one short drizzly afternoon. The Germans, of course, knew the whereabouts of the vessel on which I should embark for England, though it is highly improbable that they knew the sailing time, and they did not know when I should go on it.
I did everything possible to throw any possible spies off the trail as I made my way in the dark to a lonely wharf on the Maas River where I gave the password to a watchman who stepped out of a black corner near the massive gates which opened to the pier.
I went aboard a little five hundred ton vessel with steam up, and stood near two other men on the narrow deck, where I watched in considerable awe the silent preparations to cast away.
A man stepped out of the cabin. “I presume, sir, that you are the American journalist,” he said. He explained that he was the steward. From the bridge came the voice of the captain, “We can give them only a few minutes more,” he said.
Two minutes of silence, broken only by the gentle throbbing of the engines. Then from the blackness near the street gate came the sound of hurrying feet. I could make out three stumbling figures, apparently urged along by a fourth. “Who are they?” I asked the steward.
“They must be the three Tommies who escaped from Germany. Brave lads they are. A couple more days and we’ll have them hack in England.”
“A couple of days?” I exclaimed. “Why, it’s only eight hours to the Thames estuary, isn’t it?”
“Eight hours in peace time; and eight hours for Dutch boats now–when the Germany don’t kidnap them away to Zeebrugge. But the course to the Thames is not our course. The old fourteen-hour trip to Hull often takes us forty now. Every passage is different, too. It isn’t only on the sea that the Germans try to bother us; they also keep after us when we are in port here. Only yesterday the Dutch inspectors did us a good turn by arresting five spies monkeying around the boat–three Germans and two Dutchmen.”
The little vessel was headed into the stream now, the three Tommies had gone inside, followed a little later by the two men who were on the deck when I arrived, men who talked French. When the steward left I was alone on the deck.
I watched the receding lights of Rotterdam till they flickered out in the distance. The night was misty and too dark to make out anything on shore. My thoughts went back to the last time, nearly a year before, when I had been on that river. I saw it then, in flood of moonlight as I stepped on the boat deck of the giant liner _Rotterdam_. The soft strains of a waltz floated up from the music room, adding enchantment to the windmills and low Dutch farmhouses strung out below the level of the water.
At that time my thoughts were full of my coming attempt to get into Germany, a Germany which was smashing through Serbia, and already planning the colossal onslaught against Verdun, the onslaught which she hoped would put France out of the war. I had got into Germany, but for a long time I had almost despaired of getting out; twice I had been turned back courteously but firmly from the frontiers, once when I tried to cross to Switzerland and again when I started for Denmark. A reliable friend had told me that the Wilhelmstrasse had suspected me but could prove nothing against me. The day before I felt Germany I was called to the Wilhelmstrasse, where I received the interesting and somewhat surprising information that the greatest good that a correspondent could do in the world be to use his influence to bring the United States and Germany to a better understanding. I made neither comment nor promise. I was well aware that the same Wilhelmstrasse, while laying the wires for an attempt to have my country play Germany’s game, was sedulously continuing its propaganda of _Gott strafe Amerika_ among the German people. As in the hatred sown against Great Britain hate against America was sown so that the Government would have a united Germany behind them in case of war.
I was at last out of Germany, but the lights of the Hook of Holland reminded me that a field of German activity lay ahead–floating mines, torpedoes, submarines, and swift destroyers operating from Ostend and Zeebrugge. They are challenging British supremacy in the southern part of the North Sea, through the waters of which we must now feel our way.
We were off the Hook running straight to the open sea. The nervous feeling of planning and delay of the last few days gave way now to the exhilaration which comes of activity in danger. If the Germans should get us, the least that would happen to me would be internment until the end of the war. I was risking everything on the skill and pluck of the man who paced the bridge above my head, and on the efficiency of the British patrol of the seas.
The little steamer suddenly began to plunge and roll with the waves washing her decks when I groped my way, hanging to the rail, to the snug cabin where six men sat about the table. The pallor of their faces made them appear wax-like in the yellow light of the smoking oil lamp which swung suspended overhead. Three of them were British, two were Belgian, and one was French, but there was a common bond which drew them together in a comradeship which transcends all harriers of nationality, for they had escaped from a common enemy.
They welcomed me to the table. It is surprising what a degree of intimacy can spring up between seven men, all with histories behind, and all with the same hope of getting to England. They were only beginning to find themselves, they were indeed still groping to pick up the threads of reality of a world from which they had been snatched two years before.
The Englishman at my right, a corporal, had been taken prisoner with a bullet in his foot at the retreat from Mons. In the summer of 1916 he had been sent to a punishment work camp near Windau in Courland. I had already heard unsavoury rumours of this camp while I was in Germany, of men forced to toil until they dropped in their tracks, of an Englishman shot simply because his guard was in bad temper. But the most damning arraignment of Windau came from a young Saxon medical student, who told me that after he had qualified, for a commission as second lieutenant he declined to accept it. This was such an unusual occurrence in a country where the army officer is a semi-deity that I was naturally curious to know why.
“I am loyal to the Fatherland,” the young Saxon said to me, “and I am not afraid to die. I was filled with enthusiasm to receive a commission, but all that enthusiasm died when I saw the way Russian prisoners were treated in East Prussia and at Windau. I saw them stripped to the waist under orders from the camp officers, tied to trees and lashed until the blood flowed. When I saw one prisoner, weak from underfeeding, cut with switches until he died in the presence of a Berlin captain, my mind was made up. My country has gone too far in making the army officer supreme. I now could see the full significance of Zabern, a significance which I could not realise at the time. During the first part of the war I became angry when outsiders called us barbarians; now I feel sad. I do not blame them. But it is our system that is at fault, and we must correct it. Therefore, although I am an insignificant individual and do not count, I shall, as I love my country, obey the dictates of my conscience. I will not be an officer in the German system.”
I thought of that sincere young student while the boat staggered under the onslaughts of heavy seas, and the corporal told of how twelve hours’ daily toil on the railway in Courland with rations entirely inadequate for such work, finally put him on the sick list, and he was sent back to Munster in western Germany.
He was then sent into the fields with two companions–the two who were in the group about the table–and with them he seized a favourable opportunity to escape. His companions had tried on previous occasions, each separately, but had been caught, sent back and put into dark cells and given only one meal a day for a long and weakening period. That did not daunt them. The Germans thought that men who had gone through that kind of punishment would not try to escape again. Yet as soon as their strength was restored through their food parcels from home they were off, but in an entirely different direction.
I asked one of them, a little Welshman, where be got the waterproof rubber bag on the floor at his feet, in which were all his earthly belongings. “That used to be the old German farmer’s tablecloth,” he said.
To-day in Europe there are millions of civilians dressed in military uniform, which fails to hide the fact that their main work of life is not that of the soldier. But the three British soldiers sitting under the smoky brass lamp were of a different sort. Twelve years of service had so indelibly stamped them as soldiers of the King that the make-shift clothing given them in Holland, could not conceal their calling. Their faces were an unnatural white from the terrible experiences which they had undergone, but, like the rest of the Old Army, they were always soldiers, every inch of them.
The two men whom, I had heard talking French on the deck were Belgians. The one had been a soldier at Liege, and had managed to scramble across a ditch after his three days’ tramp to Holland, although the sentry’s bullet whistled uncomfortably close. He said that his strongest wish was to rejoin the Belgian army so that he might do his part to avenge the death of seven civilian hostages who had been shot before his eyes.
The other Belgian was just over military age, but he wanted to reach England to volunteer. His nerve and resource are certainly all right. He knew of the electrified wire along the Belgian-Dutch frontier, so he brought two pieces of glass with him, and thus held the current of death away from his body while he wriggled through to freedom.
We talked until after midnight. The French captain, formerly an instructor of artillery at Saint Cyr–the West Point and the Sandhurst of France–taken prisoner in the first autumn of the war, was the last to tell his story.
At Torgau, Saxony, in the heart of Germany, be plunged into the Elbe in the darkness of night, stemmed the swift waters, and on landing, half-drowned, rose speedily and walked fast to avoid a fatal chill.
For twenty-nine days he struggled on towards liberty. Nothing but the tremendous impulse of the desire for freedom could have carried him on his own two feet across Germany, without money, through countless closely-policed villages and great cities, in a country where everyone carries an identity book (with which, of course, he was unprovided), without a friend or accomplice at any point of the journey, with only a map torn from a railway time-table, and no other guides than the sun, moon, and stars and direction posts. I will give the rest of the man’s story in his own words.
“I came to the conclusion that my brain would not stand the captivity. I knew some of the difficulties before me, but I doubt whether I would have started if I had known them all. I lived on unthreshed wheat and rye, apples, blackberries, bilberries, carrots, turnips and even raw potatoes. I did not taste one morsel of cooked food or anything stronger than water till I arrived in Holland. I did not speak one word to any human being. On two occasions I marched more than thirty miles in the twenty-four hours. I slept always away from the roadside, and very often by day, and as far as possible from any inhabited house. I am, as you see, weak and thin, practically only muscle and bone, and during the last three days, while waiting in Holland for the boat, I have had to eat carefully to avoid the illness that would almost certainly follow repletion.”
After I had lain down for a few hours’ sleep, I thought, as I had often thought during the past thirty months, that although this is a war of machinery there is plenty of the human element in it, too. People who tell only of the grim-drab aspect of the great struggle sometimes forget that romances just as fine as were ever spun by Victor Hugo happen around, them every day.
At dawn I hung to the rail of the wildly tossing ship, looking at the horizon from which the mists were clearing. Two specks began to grow into the long low black lines of destroyers. Our most anxious moment of the voyage had come. We waited for the shot that would show them to be German.
“They’re all right. They’re the escort!” came a voice on the winds that swept over the bridge.
They grew rapidly large, lashed the sea white as they tore along one on each side of us, diving through the waves when they could not ride them. When abreast of us they seemed almost to stop in their own length, wheel and disappear in the distance. Somehow the way they wheeled reminded me of the way the Cossacks used to pull their horses sharply at right angles when I saw them covering the rearguard in the retreat through the Bukovina.
The rough soldier at my side looked after them, with a mist in his eyes that did not come from the sea. “I’ll be able to see my wife again,” he said, more to the waves than to me. “I didn’t write, because I didn’t want to raise any false hopes. But this settles it, we’re certain to get home safe now. I suppose I’ll walk in and find her packing my food parcel for Germany–the parcel that kept me alive, while some of them poor Russian chaps with nobody to send them parcels are going under every day.”
We ran close to two masts sticking up out of the water near the mouth of the Humber, the mast of our sister ship, which had gone down with all on board when she struck a mine.
That is the sort of sight which makes some critics say, “What is the matter with the British Navy?” Those critics forget to praise the mine-sweepers that we saw all about, whose bravery, endurance and noble spirit of self-sacrifice lead them to persevere in their perilous work and enable a thousand ships to reach port to one that goes down.
On that rough voyage across the North Sea, through the destroyer and armed motor launch patrol, maintained by men who work unflinchingly in the shadow of death, I felt once again the power of the British Navy. I cast my lot with that Navy when I left Holland. I know what its protection means, for I could not have crossed on a neutral Dutch vessel.
It is all very well to complain about a few raiders that manage in thirty months to pierce the British patrols, or the hurried dash of swift destroyers into the Channel, but when you look from the white chalk cliffs of the Kentish coast at hundreds of vessels passing safely off the Downs, when you sail the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and see only neutral and Allied ships carrying on commerce, when you cross the Rhine and stand in food lines hour after hour and day after day, where men and women who gloried in war now whine at the hardships it brings, when you see a mighty nation disintegrating in the shadow of starvation, and then pass to another nation, which, though far less self-sustaining in food, has plenty to eat, you simply have to realise that there are silent victories which are often farther reaching than victories of _eclat_.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE LITTLE SHIPS
I have been particularly impressed with two misconceptions which have existed, and to some extent still exist, not only in Germany but in neutral countries. The first is that England lacks virility, is degenerate, has had her day of greatness; the second, that in the present war she is continuing what is alleged to have been her policy in the past, namely, pulling the strings and reaping the benefit while other nations do the fighting. Through personal investigation I find these contentions so thoroughly refuted that to develop the point would be to commence another book instead of finishing this one.
As I write I can look from my desk in the Alexandra Hotel, Bridlington, on to the North Sea where it washes the “Frightfulness Coast,” for Bridlington lies between Hull and Scarborough.
I see trawlers fishing and mine-sweeping whenever I raise my eyes from my writing. Their crews know that they work in the shadow of death in what they describe in the dock-side taverns as the greatest sport in the world. Praise of the big ships often causes us to forget the little ships. I admire the one and reverence the other. For if the men on the humbler craft could be intimidated, the doctrine of Frightfulness would be justified by victory.
Intimidation is a favourite weapon of the people across the Rhine. I was among them when their airmen dropped bombs on Paris early in the war. “It is really humane,” they said, “for it will frighten the civilian population into imploring the military to yield to us to save them.” They thought the same of Zeppelin raids over England. Intimidation was their guiding star in Belgium. The first I heard of the massacre of Louvain was from one of its perpetrators.
Intimidation was again their weapon in the case of Captain Fryatt. “We planned it well,” snarled a member of the Reichstag, incensed over my expression of disapproval, “Before we sent our ships to intercept the _Brussels_ we determined to capture him, try him quickly and execute him. Since our submarines will win the war we must protect them by all passible means. You see, when the next British captain thinks of ramming one of our submarines he will remember the fate of Captain Fryatt and think twice!”
Once more Germany is attempting intimidation, and seeking to make neutrals her ally in an attempt to starve Britain into defeat. The American Ambassador is leaving Berlin, hundreds of neutral vessels hug havens of safety all over the world, but the women in Grimsby and Hull still wave farewell to the little trawlers that slip down the Humber to grapple with death. Freighters, mine-sweepers, trawlers, and the rest of the unsung tollers of the sea continue their silent, all-important task. They know that for them Germany has declared the law off, that they will be slaughtered at sight. They know also that despite the Grand Fleet and the armies in France, the Allies and their cause will go down in complete defeat if Germany succeeds in blocking the routes of commerce. The insurmountable obstacle in her path is the simple, old-fashioned dogged courage of the average British seaman.
The Germans have developed to an astounding degree the quality of incorrectly diagnosing other peoples, due partly to the unbounded conceit engendered by their three wars of unification and their rapid increase of prosperity. Their mental food in recent years has been war, conquest, disparagement of others and glorification of self. They entered the struggle thinking only in army corps and siege artillery. Certain undefinable moral qualities, such as the last-ditch spirit of the old British Army on the Yser, did not come within their scope of reckoning.
British illusions of the early part of the war are gone. The average Briton fully appreciates Germany’s gigantic strength, and he coldly realises that as conditions are at present, his country must supply most of the driving force–men, guns, and shells–to break it. He thinks of the awful cost in life, and the thought makes him serious, but he is ready for any sacrifice. He welcomes help from Allies and neutrals, but whether the help be great or small, he is willing and resolved to stand on his own feet, and carry on to the end. It is this spirit which makes Britain magnificent to-day.
When losses are brought home to the Germans they generally give vent to their feelings by hurling maledictions upon their enemies. The Briton, under similar circumstances, is usually remarkably quiet, but, unlike the German, he is _individually_ more determined, in consequence of the loss, to see the thing through. Somehow the German always made me feel that his war determination had been organised for him.
Organisation is the glory and the curse of Germany. The Germans are by nature and training easily influenced, and as a mass they can be led as readily in the right path as in the wrong. Common-sense administration and co-operation have made their cities places of beauty, health, comfort and pleasure. But when you stop for a moment in your admiration of the streets, buildings, statues, bridges, in such a city as Munich and enter a crowded hall to sit among people who listen with attention, obedience and delight to a professor venomously instructing them in their duty of “hating with the whole heart and the whole mind,” and convincing them that “only through hate can the greatest obstacles be overcome,” you begin to suspect that something is wrong.
It is part of the Prussian nature to push everything to extremes, a trait which has advantages and disadvantages. It has resulted in brilliant achievements in chemical and physical laboratories, and in gout, dyspepsia and flabbiness in eating establishments. A virtue carried too far becomes a vice. In Germany patriotism becomes jingoistic hatred and contempt for others, organisation becomes the utilisation of servility, obedience becomes willingness to do wrong at command.
Americans and British are inclined to ascribe to the Germans their own qualities. In nothing is this more obvious than in the English idea that the fair treatment of Germans in England, will beget fair treatment of the English in Germany. The Prussians, who have many Oriental characteristics–and some of them, a good deal of Oriental appearance–think orientally and attribute fair, or what we call sportsmanlike, treatment to fright and a desire to curry favour.
When Maubeuge fell I heard Germans of all classes boast of how their soldiers struck the British who offered to shake hands after they surrendered to the Germans. Nearly two years later, during the Battle of the Somme, some Berlin papers copied from London papers a report of how British soldiers presented arms to the group of prisoners who had stubbornly defended Ovillers. I called the attention of several German acquaintances to this as an evidence of Anglo-Saxon sporting spirit, but I got practically the same response in every case. “Yes, they are beginning at last to see what we can do!” was the angry remark.
The Germans have become more and more “Prussianised” in recent years. State worship had advanced so far that the German people entered the conflict in the perverted belief that the German Government had used every means to avert war. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the German people entered the war reluctantly. They did not. There was perfect unity in the joyful thought of German invincibility, easy and complete victory, plenty of plunder, and such huge indemnities that the growing burden of taxation would be thrown off their shoulders.
A country where the innocent children are scientifically inoculated with the virus of hate, where force, and only force, is held to be the determinant internationally of mine and thine, where the morals of the farmyard, are preached from the professorial chair in order to manufacture human cogs for the machine of militarism, is an undesirable and a dangerous neighbour and will continue so until it accepts other standards. A victorious Germany would not accept other standards.
That is why I look on the little ships with so much admiration this morning. They sail between Germany and victory, for if they could be intimidated Britain would be starved out. Then the gospel that “only through hate can the greatest obstacles be overcome,” would be the corner-stone of the most powerful Empire of history.