system, in that misty period called “after the war,” will he very completely revised. The huge sums of money mentioned in the Reichstag as having been expended on secret service have, so far as England is concerned, proved of no political value, and the topographical and personal knowledge gained would only be of service in case of actual invasion and the consequent exactions of ransoms from individuals, cities, and districts.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE IRON HAND IN ALSACE-LORRAINE
The state of affairs in Alsace-Lorraine is one of Germany’s moat carefully hidden secrets.
In the first months of the war I heard so much talk in Germany–talk based upon articles in the Press–of how the Alsatians, like the rest of the Kaiser’s subjects, “rushed to the defence of the Fatherland,” that I was filled with curiosity to go and see for myself if they had suddenly changed. I could hardly believe that they had, for I had studied conditions in the “lost provinces” before the war.
Still, the Wilhelmstrasse propaganda was convincing millions that the Alsatians received the French very coldly when they invaded the province to Mulhouse, and that they greeted the German troops most heartily when they drove back the invader. Indeed, Alsatian fathers were depicted as rushing into the streets to cheer the German colours, while their wives and daughters “were so beside themselves with joy that they hung upon the necks of the brave German Michaels, hailing them as saviours.”
A pretty picture of the appreciation of the blessings of German rule, but was it true?
Some months later in Paris, when I stood in the Place de la Concorde before the Monument of Strassburg, covered with new mourning wreaths and a British flag now added, I felt an irresistible yearning to visit the closely guarded region of secrecy and mystery.
On my subsequent trip to Germany I planned and planned day after day how I could get into Alsace and go about studying actual conditions there. When I told one American consul that I wished to go to Strassburg to see things for myself, he threw up his hands with a gesture of despair and reminded me that not an American or other consulate was allowed in Alsace-Lorraine, even in peace time. When I replied that I was determined to go he looked grave, and said earnestly: “Remember that you are going into a damn bad country, and you go at your own, risk.”
It is extremely difficult for Germans, to say nothing of foreigners, to enter the fortress-city of Strassburg. Business must be exceedingly urgent, and a military pass is required. A special pass is necessary to remain over night.
How did I get into Strassburg in war-time?
That is my own story, quite a simple one, but I do not propose to tell it now except by analogy, in order not to get anybody into trouble.
During my last voyage across the ocean, which was on the Dutch liner _Rotterdam_, I went into the fo’castle one day to talk to a stowaway, a simple young East Prussian lad, who had gone to sea and had found himself in the United States at the outbreak of war.
“How on earth did you manage to pass through the iron-clad regulations at the docks of Hoboken (New York) without a permit, and why did you do it?” I asked.
“I was home-sick,” he answered, “and I wanted to go back to Germany to see my mother. I got on board quite easily. I noticed a gentleman carrying his own baggage, and I said to him, ‘Can I carry your suitcases on board, sir?'”
Once on board his knowledge of ships told him how to hide.
Having myself stood for more than two hours on the quay in a long and growling queue of passengers, I could not but be amused by the simple device by which this country youth had outwitted the stringent war embarkation regulations of war-time New York. He was in due course taken off by the British authorities at Falmouth, and is now probably enjoying the sumptuous diet provided at the Alexandra Palace or the Isle of Man.
Well, that is not exactly how I got into Strassburg, but I got in.
Night had fallen when I crossed the Rhine from Baden. I was conscious of an indescribable thrill when my feet touched the soil so sacred to all Frenchmen, and I somehow felt as if I were walking in fairyland as I pushed on in the dark. I had good fortune, arising from the fact that a great troop movement was taking place, with consequent confusion and crowding.
On all sides from the surrounding girdle of forts the searchlights swept the sky, and columns of weary soldiers tramped past me on that four-mile road that led into Strassburg. I kept as close to them as possible with some other pedestrians, labourers returning from the great electric power plant.
Presently I was alone on the road when suddenly a soldier lurched from the shadows and accosted me. I let him do the talking. But there was no need to be alarmed; he was only a drunken straggler who had got separated from his company and wanted to know whether any more troops were coming on.
I had already passed through two cordons of functionaries outside, and felt little fear in Strassburg itself, so long as I was duly cautious. I had thought out my project carefully. I realised that I must sleep in the open; for, unprovided with a pass it was impossible for me to go to an hotel. Thankful that I was familiar with my surroundings I wended my way to the beautiful park, the Orangerie, where I made myself comfortable in a clump of bushes and watched the unceasing flash of searchlights criss-cross in the sky until I fell asleep.
Next day I continued my investigations, but in Alsace as elsewhere my personal adventures are of no importance to the world unless, as in some instances, they throw light on conditions or are necessary to support statements made, whereas the facts set down belong to the history of the war. Therefore I shall here summarise what I found in the old French province.
The Germans have treated Alsace-Lorraine ruthlessly since the outbreak of war is no part of the Empire is the iron hand so evident. In Strassburg itself all signs of the French have disappeared. Readers who know the place well will remark that they were vanishing before the war. Externally they have now gone altogether, but the hearts and spirit of the people are as before.
What I saw reminded me of the words of a Social Democrat friend in Berlin, who told me that the Prussian Government determined, at the beginning of the war that they would have no more Alsace-Lorraine problem in the future.
They have, therefore, sent the soldiers from these two provinces to the most dangerous places at the various fronts. One Alsace regiment was hurled again and again at the old British Army on the Yser in November, 1914, until at the end of a week only three officers and six men were left alive. Some of the most perilous work at Verdun, was forced upon the Alsatians.
The Prussian authorities deliberately retain with the colours Alsatians and Lorrainers unfit for military service, and wounded men are not allowed to return to their homes.
In the little circle to which I was introduced in Strassburg I talked with one sorrowing woman, who said that her son, obviously in an advanced state of tuberculosis, had been called up in spite of protests. He died within three weeks. Another young man, suffering from haemorrhage of the lungs, was called up. He was forced to stand for punishment all one winter’s day in the snow. In less than two months a merciful death in a military hospital released him from the Prussian clutch.
The town of Strassburg is a vast hospital. I do not think I have ever seen so many Red Cross flags before. They waved from the Imperial Palace, the public library, the large and excellent military hospitals, the schoolhouses, hotels, and private residences. The Orangerie is thronged with convalescent wounded, and when hunger directed my steps to the extensive Park Restaurant I found it, too, converted into a hospital. Even the large concert room was crowded with cots.
The glorious old sandstone Cathedral, with its gorgeous facade and lace-like spire, had a Red Cross flag waving over the nave while a wireless apparatus was installed on the spire. Sentries paced backwards and forwards on the uncompleted tower, which dominates the region to the Vosges.
The whole object of Prussia is to eliminate every vestige of French influence in the two provinces. The use of the French language, whether in speech or writing, is strictly forbidden. To print, sell, offer for sale, or purchase anything in French is to commit a crime. Detectives are everywhere on the alert to discover violations of the law. All French trade names have been changed to their German equivalents. For example, the sign _Guillaume Rondee, Tailleur_, has come down, and if the tradesman wants to continue in his business _Wilhelm Rondee, Schneider_, must go up. He may have a quantity of valuable business forms or letter-heads in French–even if they contain only one French word they must be destroyed. And those intimate friends who are accustomed to address him by his first name must bear in mind that it is _Wilhelm_.
Eloise was a milliner at the outbreak of the war. Today, if she desires to continue her business, she is obliged to remove the final “e” and thus Germanise her name.
After having been fed in Berlin on stories of Alsatian loyalty to the Kaiser, I was naturally puzzled by these things. If Guillaume had rushed into the street to cheer the German colours when the French were driven back, and Eloise had hung upon the neck of the German Michael, was it not rather ungrateful of the Prussians subsequently to persecute them even to the stamping out of their names? Not only that, but to be so efficient in hate that even inscriptions on tombstones may no longer be written in French?
Alsace-Lorraine is to be literally _Elsass-Lothringen_ to the last detail.
The truth of the matter is that the Alsatians greeted the French as deliverers and were depressed when they fell back. This, as might be expected, exasperated Prussia, for it was a slap in the face for her system of government by oppression. Thus, at the very time that the _Nachrichtendienst_ (News Service) connected with the Wilhelmstrasse was instructing Germans and neutrals that the Alsatians’ enthusiastic reception of German troops was evidence of their approval of German rule, the military authorities were posting quite a different kind of notice in Alsace, a notice which reveals the true story.
“During the transport of French prisoners of war a portion of the populace has given expression to a feeling of sympathy for these prisoners and for France. This is to inform all whom it may concern that such expressions of sympathy are criminal and punishable, and that, should they again, take place, the persons taking part in them will be proceeded against by court-martial, and the rest of the inhabitants will be summarily deprived of the privileges they now enjoy.
“All crowding around prisoners of war, conversations with them, cries of welcome and demonstrations of sympathy of all kinds, as well as the supply of gifts, is strictly prohibited. It is also forbidden to remain standing while prisoners are being conducted or to follow the transport.”
The result of the persecution of the French-speaking portion of the population has been a boomerang for Prussia. The Germans of the region, most of whom never cared much for Prussia, are now bitterly hostile to her, and thus it is that all citizens of Alsace, whether French or German, who go into other parts of Germany are under the same police regulations as alien enemies.
In order to permit military relentlessness to proceed smoothly without any opposition, the very members of the local Parliament, the Strassburg Diet, are absolutely muzzled. They have been compelled to promise not to criticise at any time, or in any way, the military control; otherwise their Parliament will be closed. As for the local Councils, they are not allowed to discuss any political questions whatsoever. A representative of the police is present at every meeting to enforce this rule to the letter.
The people do not even get the sugared Reichstag reports, as does the rest of Germany. These are specially re-censored at Mulhouse. The official reports of the General Staff are often days late, and sometimes do not appear at all. In no part of the war zone is there so much ignorance about what is happening at the various fronts as in the two “lost provinces.”
Those who do not sympathise with Germany in her career of conquest upon which she so joyfully and ruthlessly embarked in August, 1914, may well point to Alsace-Lorraine as an argument against the probability of other peoples delighting in the rule which she would force upon them.
She has become more intolerant, not less, in the old French provinces. It will be recalled that by the Treaty of Frankfurt, signed in March, 1871, they became a “Reichsland,” that is, an Imperial Land, not a self-governing State like Bavaria, Saxony, or Wurttemberg. As Bismarck bluntly and truly said to the Alsatian deputies in the Reichstag: “It is not for _your_ sakes nor in _your_ interests that we conquered you, but in the interests of the Empire.”
For more than forty years Prussia has employed every means but kindness to Germanise the conquered territory. But though she has hushed every syllable of French in the elementary schools and forced the children to learn the German language and history only; though freedom of speech, liberty of the Press, rights of public meeting, have been things unknown; though even the little children playing at sand castles have been arrested and fined if in their enthusiasm they raised a tiny French flag, or in the excitement of their mock contest cried “Vive la France!”; though men and women have been fined and thrown into prison for the most trifling manifestations that they had not become enthusiastic for their rulers across the Rhine; and though most of the men filling Government positions–and they are legion–are Prussians, the Alsatians preserve their individuality and remain uncowed.
Having failed in two score of years to absorb them by force, Prussia during the war has sought by scientific methods carried to any extreme to blot out for ever themselves and their spirit.
To do the German credit, I believe that he is sincere when he believes that his rule would be a benefit to others and that he is genuinely perplexed when he discovers that other people do not like his regulations. The attitude which I have found in Germany towards other nationalities was expressed by Treitschke when he said, “We Germans know better what is good for Alsace than the unhappy people themselves.”
The German idea of how she should govern other people is an anachronism. This idea, which I have heard voiced all over Germany, was aptly set forth before the war by a speaker on “The Decadence of the British Empire,” when he sought to prove such decadence by citing the fact that there was only one British soldier to every 4,000 of the people of India. “Why,” he concluded, “Germany has more soldiers in Alsace-Lorraine alone than Great Britain has in all India.”
That is a bad spirit for the world, and it is a bad spirit for Germany. She herself will receive one great blessing from the war if it is hammered out of her.
CHAPTER XIX
THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW
The handling of the always difficult question of the eternal feminine was firmly tackled by the German Government almost immediately after the outbreak of war.
To understand the differences between, the situation here and in, Germany it is necessary first to have a little understanding of the German woman and her status. With us, woman is treated as something apart, something on a pedestal. In Germany and in Austria the situation is reversed. The German man uses his home as a place to eat and sleep in, and be waited upon. The attitude of the German woman towards the man is nearly always that of the obedient humble servant to command. If a husband and wife are out shopping it is often enough the wife who carries the parcels. In entering any public place the middle-class man walks first and the wife dutifully follows. When leaving, it is the custom for the man to be helped with his coat before the woman. Indeed, she is generally left to shift for herself.
Woman is the under sex, the very much under sex, in Germany, regarded by the man as his plaything or as his cook-wife and nurse of his children; and she will continue to be the under sex until she develops pride enough to assert herself. She accepts her inferiority without murmur; indeed, she often impresses one as delighting in it.
It is no dishonour for a girl of the middle or lower class to have a liaison with some admirer, particularly if he is a student or a young officer; in fact, it is quite the proper thing for him to be welcomed by her parents, although it is perfectly well understood that he has not the slightest idea of marrying her. The girls are doing their part to help along the doctrine of free love, the preaching and practice of which are so greatly increasing in the modern German State.
After marriage the woman’s influence in the world is nearly zero. The idolatry of titles is carried to an extreme in Germany which goes from the pathetic to the ludicrous. One does not address a German lady by her surname, as Frau Schmidt, but by her husband’s title or position, as Frau Hauptmann (Mrs. Captain), Frau Doktor, Frau Professor, Frau Bakermeister (Mrs. Bakershopowner), or even Frau Schornsteinfegermeister (Mrs. Master Chimneysweep), although her husband may be master over only some occasional juvenile assistant. In military social functions, and they are of daily occurrence in garrison towns, Mrs. Colonel naturally takes precedence in all matters over the wives and daughters of other members of the regiment. Contemplate the joyful existence of a vivacious American or British girl, accustomed to the respectful consideration of the other sex, married to a young lieutenant and ruled over by all the wives of his superior officers!
To try to marry money is considered praiseworthy and correct in German military circles. In Prussia a lieutenant in peace times receives for the first three years 60 pounds a year, from the fourth to the sixth year 85 pounds, from the seventh to the ninth year 99 pounds, from the tenth to the twelfth year 110 pounds, and after the twelfth year 130 pounds a year. A captain receives from the first to the fourth year 170 pounds, from the fifth to the eighth year 230 pounds, and the ninth year and after 355 pounds.
Thus it is that no young lady, however ugly, need be without an officer husband if she has money enough to buy one. If he has not a private income, the Government forbids him to marry until his pay is sufficient. That point is seldom reached before he is thirty-five years of age. Marriage helps him out of the difficulty, and since the army is so deified in the Fatherland that the highest ambition of nearly every girl is to marry an officer, his opportunity of trading shoulder-knots for a dowry is excellent.
The efforts of some women to increase their fortune sufficiently to enable them to invest in a military better-half are pathetic from an Anglo-Saxon point of view. One woman who requested an interview with me said that as I was an American correspondent I might be able to advise her how she could dispose of a collection of autographs to some American millionaire. She explained that her financial condition was not so good as formerly, but she was desperate to better it as she was in love with an officer, who, although he loved her, would have to marry another if she could not increase her income. The autographs she showed me were from Prince Henry of Prussia, Prince Bulow and other notables, and most of them were signed to private letters.
Take the story of Marie and Fritz, both of whom I knew in a garrison city in eastern Germany. Nothing could illustrate better the difference between the German attitude and our own on certain matters. She was a charming, lovable girl of nineteen engaged to an impecunious young lieutenant a few years older. They moved in the best circle in the _Garnisonstadt_.
Two years after their engagement her father lost heavily in business and could no longer afford to settle 5,000 pounds on her to enable them to marry.
It mattered not; theirs was true love, and they would wait until his pay was sufficient,
All went well until another girl, as unattractive as Marie was charming, decided that she would try to buy Fritz as a husband. After four months of her acquaintance he found time at the end of a day’s drill to write a few lines informing the young lady, nine years of whose life he had monopolised, of his intention to marry the new rival. Life became black for Marie, the more as she realised that she and Fritz had only to wait a little longer and his pay would be sufficient.
How would Fritz be regarded in this country, and how was he regarded according to German standards? That is what makes the story worth telling. With us such a man as Fritz would have been cut socially and there would have been great sympathy for the sweet girl whose years had been wasted. But on the other side of the Rhine women exist solely for the comfort of men. In militaristic Germany Fritz lost not an iota of the esteem of his friends of either sex; as for Marie, she had failed in a fair game, that was all. The girl’s mother even excused his conduct by saying that he was ambitious to get ahead in the army. Like most of her sex in Germany she has been reared to venerate the uniform so much that anything done by the man who wears it is quite excusable. Indeed, Marie’s mother still listens with respectful approval at _Kaffeeklatsch_ to Fritz’s mother when she boasts of what her son is doing as a major over Turkish troops.
German women have many estimable qualities, but a proper amount of independence and pride is noticeably foreign to their natures. Is it surprising that the American girl of German parents requires only a very brief visit to the Fatherland to convince her that the career of the _Hausfrau_ is not attractive.
On the whole, the efforts of the German woman have almost doubled the national output of war energy. Except in Berlin few are idle, and these only among the newly-rich class. The women of the upper classes, both in Germany and Austria, are either in hospitals or are making comforts for the troops. Women have always worked harder in Germany and at more kinds of work than in Britain or the States, and what, judging by London illustrated papers, seems to be a novelty–the engagement of women in agricultural and other pursuits–is just the natural way of things in Germany. It should always be remembered, when estimating German man-power and German ability to hold out, that the bulk of the work of civil life is being done by prisoners and women. A German woman and a prisoner of war, usually a Russian, working side by side in the fields is a common sight throughout Germany.
It is the boast of the Germans that their building constructions are going on as usual. I have myself seen plenty of evidence of this, such as the grading of the Isar at Munich, the completion of the colossal railway station at Leipzig, the largest in Germany, the construction of the new railway station at Gorlitz, the complete building since the war of the palatial Hotel Astoria at Leipzig, also two gigantic new steel and concrete palaces in the same city for the semi-annual fair, the erection of a new Hamburg-America Line office building adjacent to the old one and dwarfing it. The slaughter-house annexes, contracted for in days of peace, continue their slow growth, although Berlin has no present need for such extension in these half-pound-of-meat-a-week times.
The construction of the Nord-Sud Bahn of the underground railway, for linking up the north and south sections of Berlin has proceeded right along, the women down in the pit with picks and shovels doing the heavy work of navvies. That department of the German Government whose duty it is to enlighten Neutrals is not too proud of the fact, surprisingly enough. An American kinematograph operator, Mr. Edwards, of Mr. Hearst’s papers, was desirous of taking a film of these women navvies–heavy, sad creatures they are. The Government stepped in and suggested that, although they had no objection to a personally conducted and posed picture–in which the women would no doubt smile to order–they could not permit the realities of this unwomanly task to be shown in the form of a truth-telling moving picture.
German authorities are utilising every kind of woman. The social evil, against which the Bishop of London and others are agitating in England, was effectively dealt with by the German authorities, not only for the sake of the health of the troops, but in the interests of munitions. Women of doubtful character were first told that if found in the neighbourhood of barracks or in cafes they were liable to be arrested, and when so found were immediately removed to their native places, and put into the nearest cartridge filling or other shop. The double effect has been an increased output of munitions for the army and increased health for the soldier, and such scenes as one may witness in Piccadilly or other London streets at night have been effectively squelched by the strong Prussian hand, with benefit to all concerned.
I am not speaking of German morals in general, which are notorious. I merely state the practical way the Germans turn the women of the street into useful munition makers.
The lot of the German woman has been much more difficult than the lot of her sister in the Allied countries, for upon her has fallen the great and increasing burden of the struggle to get enough to eat for her household. In practically all classes of Germany it has been the custom of the man to come home from his work, whether in a Government office, bank, or factory, for his midday meal, usually followed by an hour’s sleep.
The German man is often a greedy fellow as regards meals. For him special food is always provided, and the wife and children sit round patiently watching him eat it. He expects special food to-day. The soldier, of course, is getting it, and properly, but the stay-at-homes, who are men over forty-five or lads under nineteen, still get the best of such food as can be got. Exceptions to the nineteen to forty-five rule are very few indeed. National work in Germany means war work pure and simple, and now the women are treated exactly as the men in this respect, except that they will not be sent to the front.
In January, 1917, Germany at length began formally to organise the women of the country to help in the war. Each of the six chief army “commands” throughout the Empire now has a woman attached to it as Directress of the “Division for Women’s Service.” Hitherto, as in England, war work by women has been entirely voluntary. The Patriotic Auxiliary Service (Mass Levy) Law is not compulsory so far as female labour is concerned. German women, however, having proclaimed that they regard themselves liable for national service under the spirit if not the letter of the law, it has finally been decided to mobilise their services on a more systematic basis than in the past.
None of the countless revolutions in German life produced by the war outstrips in historical importance this official linking up of women with the military machine. Equally striking is the fact that the directresses of Women’s Service, who hold office in Berlin, Breslau, Magdeburg, Coblenz, Konigsberg, and Karlsruhe, are all feminist leaders and promoters of the women’s emancipation movement. The directress for the Mark of Brandenburg (the Berlin-Potsdam district) is an able Jewess named Dr. Alice Salomon, who is one of the pioneers of the German women’s movement. The main object of the “Women’s Service” Department is to organise female labour for munitions and other work from which men can be liberated for the fighting line.
I have nothing but praise and admiration for the way in which the German women have thrown themselves into this struggle. Believing implicitly as they have been told–and with the exception of the lower classes, after more than two years of war, they believe everything the Government tells them–that this war was carefully prepared by “Sir Grey” (Lord Grey of Fallodon), “the man without a conscience,” as he is called in Germany, they feel that they are helping to fight a war for the defence of their homes and their children, and the cynics at the German Foreign Office, who manufacture their opinions for them, rub this in in sermons from the pastors, novels, newspaper articles, faked cinema films, garbled extracts from Allied newspapers, books, and bogus photographs, Reichstag orations by Bethmann-Hollweg, and the rest of it, not forgetting the all-important lectures by the professors, who are unceasing in their efforts all over Germany.
To show how little the truth of the war is understood by the German women, I may mention an incident that occurred at the house of people of the official class at which I was visiting one day. The eldest son, who was just back from the Somme trenches, suffering from slight shell-shock, brought home a copy of a London illustrated paper, which had been thrown across the trenches by the English. In this photograph there was a picture of a long procession of German prisoners captured by the English. The daughter of the house, a well-read girl of nineteen, blazed up at the sight of this photograph, and showed it to her mother, who was equally surprised. The son of the house remarked, “Surely you know the English have taken a great many prisoners?”
His mother, realising her mistake, looked confused, and simply said, “I didn’t think.” In other words, the obvious fact that Germans were sometimes captured had never been pointed out to her by the Government, and most Germans are accustomed to think only what they are officially told to think.
While there are an increasing number of doubters among the German males as to the accuracy of statements issued by the Government, in the class with which I mostly came into contact in Germany, the women are blindfold and believe all they are told. So strong, too, is the influence of Government propaganda on the people in Germany that in a town where I met two English ladies married to Germans, they believed that Germany had Verdun in her grasp, had annihilated the British troops (mainly black) on the Somme, had defeated the British Fleet in the battle of Skagerrak (Jutland), and reduced the greater part of the fortifications, docks, and munition factories of London to ruins by Zeppelins.
Their anguish for the fate of their English relations was sincere, and they were intensely hopeful that Britain would accept any sort of terms of peace in order to prevent the invasion which some people in Germany still believe possible.
At the beginning of the war the click of the knitting needle was heard everywhere; shop-girls knitted while waiting for customers, women knitted in trams and trains, at theatres, in churches, and, of course, in the home. The knitting is ceasing now for the very practical reason that the military authorities have commandeered all the wool for the clothing of the soldiery. A further reason for the stoppage of such needlework is the fact that women are engaged in countless forms of definite war work.
Upon the whole it is beyond question that the German women are not standing the losses as well as the British women. I have been honoured in England by conversations with more than one lady who has lost many dear ones. The attitude is quieter here than in Germany, and is not followed by the peace talk which such events produce in German households.
What surprises me in England is the fact that the word “peace” is hardly ever mentioned anywhere, whereas in any German railway train or tramcar the two dominant words are Friede (peace) and Essen (food). The peace is always a German idea of peace–for the extreme grumblers do not talk freely in public–and the food talk is not always the result of the shortage, but of the great difficulty in getting what is to be obtained, together with the increasing monotony of the diet.
It must not be supposed, however, that the life of feminine Germany is entirely a gloomy round of duty and suffering. Among the women of the poor, things are as bad as they can be. They are getting higher wages than ever, but the food usury and the blockade rob them of the increase.
The middle and upper classes still devote a good deal of time to the feminine pursuits of shopping and dressing. The outbreak of war hit the fashions at a curious moment. Paris had just abandoned the tight skirt, and a comical struggle took place between the Government and those women who desired to be correctly gowned.
The Government said, “In order to avoid waste of material, you must stick to the tight skirt,” and the amount of cloth allowed was carefully prescribed. Women’s desire to be in the mode was, however, too powerful for even Prussianism. Copies of French fashion magazines were smuggled in from Paris through Switzerland, passed from dressmaker to dressmaker, and house to house, and despite the military instructions and the leather shortage, wide skirts and high boots began to appear everywhere,
This feminine ebullition was followed by an appeal from the Government to abandon all enemy example and to institute new German fashions of their own making. Models were exhibited in shop windows of what were called the “old and elegant Viennese fashions.” These, however, were found to be great consumers of material, and the women still continued to imitate Paris.
The day before I left Berlin I heard an amusing conversation in the underground railway between two women, one of whom was talking about her hat. She told her friend that she found the picture of the hat in a smuggled fashion paper, and had it made at her milliner’s and she was obviously very pleased with her taste.
The women in the munition factories, who number millions, wear a serviceable kind of uniform overall.
The venom of the German women in regard to the war is quite in contrast to the feeling expressed by English women. They have read a great deal about British and American women and they cordially detest them. Their point of view is very difficult to explain. When I have told German women that in many States in my country women have votes, their reply is, “How vulgar!” Their attitude towards the whole question of women’s franchise is that it is a form of Anglo-Saxon lack of culture and lack of authority.
The freedom accorded to English and American girls is entirely misunderstood. A Dutch girl who, in the presence of some German ladies, expressed admiration for certain aspects of English feminine life, was fiercely and venomously attacked by that never-failing weapon, the German woman’s tongue. The poor thing, who mildly expressed the view that hockey was a good game for girls, and the fine complexions and elegant walk of English women were due to outdoor sports, was reduced almost to tears.
The intolerance of German women is almost impossible to express. I know a case of one young girl, a German-American, whose parents returned to Hamburg, who declined to repeat the ridiculous German formula, “Gott strafe England,” and stuck to her point, with the result that she was not invited to that circle again.
To the cry “Gott strafe England” has been added “Gott strafe Amerika,” the latter being as popular with the German women as the German men. The pastors, professors, and the Press have told the German women that their husbands and sons and lovers are being killed by American shells. A man who ought to know better, like Prince Rupert of Bavaria, made a public statement that half of the Allies’ ammunition is American. After the British and French autumn offensive of 1915 the feeling against America on the part of German women became so intense that the American flag had to be withdrawn from the American hospital at Munich, although that hospital, supported by German-American funds, has done wonderful work for the German wounded.
Arguments with German women about the war are absolutely futile. They follow the war very closely after their own method, and believe that any defeats, such as on the Somme or Verdun, are tactical rearrangements of positions, dictated by the wisdom of the General Staff, and so long as no Allied troops are upon German soil so long will the German populace believe in the invincibility of its army. I am speaking always of the middle and upper classes, who are on the whole, but with increasing exceptions, as intensely pro-war as the lower classes are anti-war.
The modern German Bible is the _Zeitung_ (the rough translation of which is “newspaper”) and German women are even more fanatical than the men, if possible, in their worship of it.
On one occasion, when I candidly remarked that von Papen and Boy-Ed came back to the Fatherland for certain unbecoming acts, some of which I enumerated, a Frau Hauptmann jumped to her feet and, after the customary brilliant manner of German argument, shrieked that I was a liar. She declared that their _Zeitung_ had said nothing about the charges I mentioned, therefore they, were not true. She furthermore promised to report me to Colonel —— at the _Kriegsministerium_ (War Office), and she kept her word.
The neglect, and, in some cases refusal, to attend the British wounded by German nurses are a sign both of their own intensity of feeling in regard to the war and their entirely different mentality. Again and again I have heard German women say, “In the event of a successful German invasion of England the women will accompany the men, and teach the women of England that war is war.” Their remarks in regard to the women of my own country are equally offensive. Indeed, States that Germany regards as neutral, and who are treated by the officially controlled German Press with a certain amount of respect, are loathed by German women. Their attitude is that all who are not on their side are their enemies. American women who are making shells for the British, French, and Russians are just as much the enemies of Germany as the Allied soldiers and sailors. One argument often used is that to be strictly neutral America should make no munitions at all, but it would not be so bad, say the Germans, if half the American ammunition went to Germany and half to the Allies.
I lost my temper once by saying to one elderly red-faced Frau, “Since you have beaten the British at sea, why don’t you send your ships to fetch it?” “Our fleet,” she said, “is too busy choking the British Fleet in its safe hiding places to afford time to go to America. You will see enough of our fleet one day, remember that!”
Summing up this brief and very sketchy analysis of German femininity in the war, I reiterate views expressed on previous visits to Germany, that German women are not standing the anxiety of the war as well as those of France and Britain.
They have done noble work for the Fatherland, but the grumblings of the lower third of the population are now such as have not been heard since 1848. German officials in the Press Department of the Foreign Office try to explain the unrest away to foreign correspondents like myself, but many thinking Germans are surprised and troubled by this unexpected manifestation on the part of those who for generations have been almost as docile and easily managed as children.
CHAPTER XX
THE WAR SLAVES OF ESSEN
Essen, the noisiest town in the world, bulks largely in the imagination of the Entente Allies, but “Essen” is not merely one city. It is a centre or capital of a whole group of arsenal towns. Look at your map of Germany, and you will see how temptingly near they are to the Dutch frontier. Look at the proximity of Holland and Essen, and you will understand the Dutch fear of Germany. You will grasp also the German fear, real as well as pretended, that the battle of the Somme may one day be accompanied by a thrust at the real heart of Germany, which, is Westphalia–Westphalia with its coal and iron and millions of trained factory hands.
I saw when in Germany extracts from speeches by British politicians in which the bombing of Essen by air was advocated. Perhaps the task would have been easier if the bombing had come first and the speeches afterwards. Forewarned, forearmed; and Essen is now very much armed.
All German railroads seem to lead to this war monster. Attached to almost every goods train in Germany you will see wagons marked “Essen–special train.” Wagons travel from the far ends of Austria and into Switzerland, which is showing its strict neutrality by making munitions for both sides.
On the occasion of my second visit to Essen during the war I arrived at night. It was before the time of the bombing speeches, and, though it was well into the hours when the world is asleep, the sky glowed red with a glare that could be seen for full thirty miles. My German companion glowed also, as he opened the carriage window and bade me join him in a peep at what we were coming to. “This is the place where we make the stuff to blow the world to pieces,” he proudly boasted. “If our enemies could only see that the war would be over.”
I suggested that Essen was not the only arsenal. There were, for instance, Woolwich, Glasgow, Newcastle, Creusot, and in my own strictly neutral country Bethlehem, Bridgeport, and one or two other humble hamlets. He brushed aside my remarks, “But we have also here is this very region Dortmund, Bochum, Witten, Duisburg, Krefeld, Dusseldorf, Solingen, Elberfeld and Barmen.”
As we approached nearer, freight trains, military trains and passenger trains were everywhere. Officers and soldiers crowded the station platforms, and though it was night the activity of these Rhenish-Westphalian arsenal towns impressed me with the belief that unless the British blockade can strictly exclude essentials, such as copper and nickel, especially from their roaring factories, the war will be needlessly protracted.
It is not necessary to be long in Rhineland and Westphalia to realise that a shortage in these and other essentials is much more disturbing to the heads of these wonderful organisations than the fear of aerial bombs.
On the occasion of my first war-time visit to Essen it would have been easy to have bombed it. There is an old saying that a shoemaker’s children are the worst shod, and the display of anti-aircraft guns which has since manifested itself was then non-existent. The town was ablaze. It is still ablaze, but the lighting has been cunningly arranged to deceive nocturnal visitors, and any aeroplanes approaching Essen at a height of twelve or fifteen thousand feet would find it hard to discover which was Essen, and which Borbeck, and which was Steele.
Mulheim is easily found, because it is close to the River Ruhr. We had to halt a long time outside the station of Essen, so great was the pressure of traffic. The cordon surrounding the entrance to the city is some distance away, and having passed that safely I had no fear of being again interrogated.
I told the hotel manager that I was a travelling newspaper correspondent, and should like to see as many as possible, of the wonders of his town. After praise of his hostelry, which, as the sub-manager said, was too good for the Essenites, I set out on my travels to see the sights of the city, foremost among them being the regulation statue of William I.
It was easy to find Krupps, for I had only to turn my steps towards the lurid panorama in the sky. As I came nearer, not only my sense of sight but my sense of hearing told me that Germany’s great arsenal was throbbing with unwonted life. The crash and din of mighty steam hammers and giant anvils, the flame and flash of roaring blast furnaces, the rumbling of great railway trucks trundling raw and finished products in and out, chimneys of dizzy height belching forth monster coils of Cimmerian smoke, seem to transport one from the prosaic valley of the Ruhr into the deafening realm of Vulcan and Thor. The impression of Krupps by night is ineffaceable. The very air exudes iron and energy. You can almost imagine yourself in the midst of a thunderous artillery duel. You are at any rate in no doubt that the myriad of hands at work behind those carefully guarded walls are even more vital factors in the war than the men in the firing line. The blaze and roar fill one with the overpowering sense of the Kaiser’s limitless resources for war-making. For you must roll Sheffield and Newcastle-on-Tyne and Barrow-in-Furness into one clanging whole to visualise Essen-on-the-Ruhr.
In some way Essen is unlike any other town I have visited. It has its own internal network of railways, running to and from the various branches of Krupps, and as the trains pass across the streets they naturally block the traffic for some minutes. They are almost continuous and the pedestrians’ progress is slow, but it is exciting, for it is here that one realises what it means to be at war with Germany. If the resolution of the German people were as rigid as the steel in the great cranes and rolling mills, the Allied task would be impossible.
The brief noon-tide rush of the workpeople resembles our six o’clock rush in America towards Brooklyn Bridge. I can say no more than that. There is nothing like it in London. The home-going crowd round the Bank of England does not compare with the Essen crowd, because the crowd at Essen is for a few minutes more concentrated. Old and young, men and women, refugees and prisoners of several nationalities (I saw no British), Poles and Russians predominating, grimy, worn, and weary, they pour out in a solid mass, and cover the tramcars like bees in swarming time. The pedestrians gradually break up into little companies, most of them going to Kronenberg and other model colonies founded by Frau Krupp–“Bertha,” as she is affectionately called throughout Germany. The highest honour the Germans can bestow upon her is to name their 16-inch howitzer “Fat Bertha.” Frau Bertha Krupp, it may be well to recall, was the heiress to the great Krupp fortune, and on her marriage in 1906 to Herr von Bohlen und Halbach, a diplomatist, he changed his name to Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.
Though a private corporation with 12,500,000 pounds share capital owned by the “Cannon Queen” and her family, it is to all intents and purposes a Government Department just as Woolwich Arsenal is an adjunct of the British War Office. In the past, as the elaborate centenary (1910) memorial proudly recites, fifty-two Governments throughout the world have bought Krupp guns, armour, shells, and warships, with Germany by far the biggest customer.
Out of the stupendous profits of war machines the Krupps have built workpeople’s houses that, as regards material comfort, would not be easy to excel. These houses are provided with ingenious coal-saving stoves, that might well be copied elsewhere, for though Essen is in the coal centre of Germany, they are just as careful about coal as though it were imported from the other end of the world.
Frau Bertha and her husband (a simple and modest man, who is, I was informed, entirely in the hands of his specialists, and who has the wisdom to let well alone) have put up a big fight with Batocki, the food dictator. The semi-famine had not reached its height when I was in Essen, and the suffering was not great there. A munition-maker working in any of the Rhenish-Westphalian towns is regarded by Germans as a soldier. As the war has proceeded he has been subject to continuous combing out.
The amount of food allowed to those engaged in these great factories and rolling mills is, I estimate, 33 per cent. more than that allowed to the rest of the civil population. In all the notices issued throughout Germany in regard to further food restrictions, there is appended the line, “This change is necessary owing to the need for fully supplying your brothers in the army and the munition works.”
Essen is a town that before the war had a population exceeding 300,000. A conservative estimate makes the figure to-day nearly half a million. The Krupp Company employ about 120,000. A prevalent illusion is that Krupps confine their war-time effort exclusively to making war material. That is a mistake. A considerable part of Krupp’s work is the manufacture of articles which can be exchanged for food and other products in neighbouring countries, thus taking the place of gold. At Lubeck, I saw the quays crowded with the products of Essen in the shape of steel girders and other building machinery going to Sweden in exchange for oil, lime from Gotland, iron ore, paper, wood, and food products,
A mining engineer of the great mines at Kiruna, Lapland, told me that he had just given an order for steam shovels from the Westphalian manufacturers, who are also sending into Holland knives and scissors and other cutlery and tools.
Germany’s principal bargaining commodities with contiguous neutral nations are steel building materials, coal, and dye-stuffs. Coal dug in Belgium by Belgian miners is a distinct asset for Germany, when she exchanges it for Swiss cattle, Dutch cheese, and Swedish wood. When we consider that the great industrial combinations of Rhineland and Westphalia are not only reaping enormous munition profits, but supply the steel and coal which form the bulk of German war-time exports, we can easily understand why some Social Democrats grew dissatisfied because the all-powerful National Liberals resisted a war profits tax for two years. It is noteworthy that several of the more outspoken German editors have been suspended for attacking these profiteers.
I should qualify this statement of exports slightly by saying that they pertained up to November, 1916. The effort to put more than ten million men into military uniform resulted not only in the slave-raids in Belgium but in a concentration in munition output that stopped further exports of steel products and coal on a large scale.
We should always remember in this great war of machinery that Germany secured a tremendous advantage at the expense of France at the outset when she occupied the most important French iron region of Longwy-Briey. The Germans, as I previously observed, have been working the French mines to the utmost–indeed, they boast that they have installed improved machinery in them. They have, furthermore, been importing ore steadily from Sweden, some of the Swedish ore, such as Dannemora, being the best in the world for the manufacture of tool steel–so important in munition work.
Dusseldorf, probably the most attractive large manufacturing city in the world, had planned an industrial exhibition for 1915 or 1916, and the steel skeletons of many of the buildings had already been erected at the outbreak of war. But the Germans immediately set to work to tear down the steel frames to use them for more practical purposes. “We were going to call it a _German Fair_,” said a native manufacturer to me early in the war; “but we can have it later and call it a _World’s Fair_, as the terms will be synonymous.”
Isolated near the Rhine is the immense reconstructed Zeppelin shed which British airmen in November, 1914, partly destroyed, together with the nearly completed Zeppelin within it. The daring exploit evidently work up the newly appointed anti-aircraft gunners, for they subsequently annihilated two of their own machines approaching from the West.
The badly paid war slaves of Essen are working the whole twenty-four hours, seven days a week, in three shifts a day of eight hours each, under strict martial law. The town is a hotbed of extreme Social Democracy, and as a rule the Socialists of Westphalia are almost as red as those of the manufacturing districts of Saxony. But Socialists though they be, they are just as anti-British as the rest of Germany, and they like to send out their products with the familiar hall-mark of “Gott strafe England,” or “Best wishes for King George.” It is the kind of Socialism that wants more money, more votes, less work, but has no objection to plenty of war. It is a common-sense Socialism, which knows that without war Essen might shrink to its pre-war dimensions.
Essen is very jealous of the great Skoda works near Pilsen in Austria. My hotel manager spoke with some acerbity of the amount of advertising the Austrian siege howitzers were receiving. “You can accept my assurance,” he said, “that the guns for the bombardment of Dover were made here, and not at the Skoda works, as the Austrians claim.”
Every German in Essen seems to feel a personal pride in the importance of the works to the Empire at the fateful hour. The 43-centimetre gun “which conquered Belgium”–as the native puts it–is almost deified. Everybody struts about in the consciousness that he or she has had directly or indirectly something to do with the murderous weapon which has wrought such death and glory in Germany’s name. “The Empire has the men, Essen has the armour-plate, the torpedoes, the shells, the guns. It is the combination which must win.” That is the spirit in Kruppville.
CHAPTER XXI
TOMMY IN GERMANY
One day the world will be flooded with some of the most dramatic, horrible, and romantic of narratives–the life-stories of the British soldiers captured in the early days of the war, their gross ill-treatment, their escapes, and attempts at escape. I claim to be the only unofficial neutral with any large amount of eye-witness, hand-to-hand knowledge of those poor men in Germany.
One of the most difficult tasks I assumed during the war was the personal and unconducted investigation of British prisoners of war. The visitor is only allowed to talk with prisoners when visiting camps under the supervision of a guide. My tramps on foot all over Germany gave me valuable information on this as on other matters.
My task was facilitated by the Germany policy of showing the hated British captives to as many people as possible; thus the 30,000 men have been scattered into at least 600 prison camps. In the depleted state of the German Army it is not easy to find efficient guards for so many establishments. Prisoners are constantly being moved about. They are conveyed ostentatiously and shown at railway stations en route, where until recently they were allowed to be spat upon by the public, and were given coffee into which the public were allowed to spit. These are but a few of the slights and abominations heaped upon them. Much of it is quite unprintable.
Many a night did I lie awake in Berlin cogitating how to get into touch with some of these men. I learned something on a previous visit in 1914, when I saw the British prisoners at one of the camps. At that time it was impossible to get into conversation with them. They were efficiently and continually guarded by comparatively active soldiers.
On this occasion I came across my first British prisoner quite by accident, and, as so often happens in life, difficult problems settle themselves automatically. In nothing that I write shall I give any indication of the whereabouts of the sixty prisoners with whom I conversed privately, but there can be no harm in my mentioning the whereabouts of my public visit, which took place in one of the regular neutral “Cook’s tours” of the prisoners in Germany.
The strain of my work in so suspicious a place as Berlin, the constant care required to guard one’s expressions, and the anxiety as to whether one was being watched or not got on my nerves sometimes, and one Sunday I determined to take a day off and go into the country with another neutral friend. There, by accident, I came across my first private specimen of Tommy in Germany.
We were looking about for a decent Gasthaus in which to get something to eat when we saw a notice high up in large type on a wall outside an old farmhouse building, which read:–
Jeder Verkehr der Zivilbevolkerung mit den Kriegsgefangenen ist STRENG VERBOTEN,
“Any intercourse of the civil population with the prisoners of war is strictly forbidden.”
These notices, which threaten the civilian population with heavy penalties if they exchange any words with the prisoners, are familiar all over Germany, but I did not expect to find them in that small village.
My neutral friend thought it would make a nice photograph if I would stand under the notice, which I did after a cautious survey showed that the coast was clear.
As I did so a Russian came out of the barn and said, in rather bad German, “Going to have your photograph taken?” I replied, in German, “Yes.”
He heard me speaking English to my friend, and then, looking up and down the street each way to see if we were being watched, he addressed me in English with a strong Cockney accent.
“You speak English, then?” I said.
“I am English,” he replied. “I’m an English prisoner.”
“Then what are you doing in a Russian uniform?”
“It is the only thing I could get when my own clothes wore out.” Keeping a careful eye up and down the street, he told us his story. He was one of the old Expeditionary Force; was taken at Mons with five bullet wounds in him, and, after a series of unpublishable humiliations, had been drafted from camp to camp until he had arrived at this little village, where, in view of the German policy of letting all the population, see an Englishman, he was the representative of his race in that community. “The local M.P.” he called himself, in his humorous way.
Robinson Crusoe on his island was not more ignorant of the truth about the great world than that man, for, while he had learnt a few daily expressions in German, he was unable to read it. The only information he could gather was from the French, Belgian, and Russian prisoners with him, and some he got by bribing one of the Landsturm Guards with a little margarine or sugar out of his parcel from England. He was full of the battle of Mons and how badly he and his comrades in Germany felt at the way they had been left unsupported there. None the less, though alone, with no Englishman for miles, living almost entirely on his parcels, absolutely cut off from the real facts of the war, hearing little but lies, he was as calmly confident of the ultimate victory of the Allies as I am.
I asked him if he heard from home.
“Yes,” he said, “now and then, but the folks tell me nothing and I can tell them nothing. If you get back to England you tell the people there not to believe a word that comes from English prisoners. Those who write favourably do so because they have to. Every truthful letter is burned by the military censor. Tell the people to arrange the parcels better and see that every man gets a parcel at least once a week–not send five parcels to one man and no parcels to some poor bloke like me who is alone. How is the war going on, guv’nor?” he asked. I gave him my views. “I think it’s going badly for the Germans–not by what they tell me here or what I gets in that awful _Continental Times_ paper, but from what I notice in the people round about, and the officers who visit us. The people are not so abusive to the English as they used to be. The superior officers do not treat us like dogs, as they did, and as for the Landsturmers–well, look at old Heinrich here.”
At that moment a heavy, shabby old Landsturm soldier came round the corner, and the Cockney prisoner treated him almost as though he were a performing bear.
“You’re all right, ain’t you, Heiny, so long as I give you a bit of sugar now and then?” he said to his decrepit old guardian in his German gibberish.
This state of affairs was a revelation to me, but I was soon to find that if the British prisoners are weary of their captivity their old German guardians are much more weary of their task. These high-spirited British lads, whom two years of cruelty have not cowed, are an intense puzzle to the German authorities.
“You see,” remarked a very decent German official connected with the military censorship department, “everyone of these Britishers is different. Every one of them sticks up for what he calls his ‘rights’: many of them decline to work on Sunday, and short of taking them out on Sunday morning at the point of the bayonet we cannot get them to do it. We have to be careful, too, with these Englishmen now. As a man of the world, you will realise that though our general public here do not know that the English have captured many Germans lately, and the fact is never mentioned in the _communiques_, we have had a hint from Headquarters that the British prisoners may one day balance ours, and that hardship for these _verfluchte Englander_ may result in hardship for our men in England.”
That incident was long ago. It is important to relate that since the beginning of the battle of the Somme there is, if I was correctly informed, a marked improvement in the condition of English prisoners all over Germany–not as regards food supplied by the authorities, because the food squeeze naturally affects the prisoners as it does their guardians, but in other ways.
In addition to the British capturing numbers of German hostages on the Somme to hold against the treatment of their men in Germany, I think I may claim without undue pride that much good work has been done by the American Ambassador and his staff of attaches, who work as sedulously on behalf of the prisoners as though those prisoners had been American.
The German authorities hate and respect publicity and force in matters not to their liking, and Mr. Gerard’s fearlessness in reports of conditions and urgent pleas for improvement have been of great service. All the threats and bluster of Germany have failed to cow him.
To continue my narrative of the Cockney soldier in Russian uniform. So many Englishmen are in Russian uniform, Belgian uniform, French uniform, or a mix-up uniform that there is no possibility of my Cockney Russian being recognised by the authorities, and the photograph which my neutral friend took of him and me was taken under the very eyes of his Landsturmer.
“Heiny,” said the Russian Cockney, “is fed up with the war. Aren’t you, old Heiny? During the last few weeks a fresh call for more men has cleared the district of everything on two legs. We have had to work fourteen hours a day, and I wonder what my mates at home would think of 3 shillings pay for ten days’ work?”
I was able to comfort him by giving him some cigars, and a great deal of really true and good news about the war, all of which he repeated to Landsturmer Heinrich. I suggested that this might be unwise. “Not a bit of it,” he said. “Lots of these old Germans are only too anxious to hear bad news, because they think that bad news will bring the thing to a stop.”
How true that remark was I knew from my minute investigations. The incident was closed by the distant appearence of a _Feldwebel_ (sergeant-major). My Cockney vanished, and Heinrich patrolled onward.
This particular incident is not typical of the life of a British prisoner in Germany, but it is indicative of the position many of the 30,000 prisoners have taken up by reason of their strong individuality and extraordinary cheerfulness and confidence. My impression of them is of alert, resourceful men (their escapes have been wonderful)–men who never know when they are beaten. If Britain has sufficient of these people she cannot possibly lose the war.
* * * * *
The world does not need reminders such as that of Wittenberg or of such singularly accurate narratives as several in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ to know what _has_ happened to British prisoners in Germany.
It is common knowledge throughout the German Empire that the most loathsome tasks of the war in connection, with every camp or cage are given to the British. They have had to clean the latrines of negro prisoners, and were in some cases forced to work with implements which would make their task the more disgusting. One man told me that his lunch was served to him where he was working, and when he protested he was told to eat it there, or go without.
Conversations that I have had here in London about prisoners give me the impression that the British public does not exactly apprehend what a prisoner stands for in German eyes.
First, he is a hostage. If he be an officer his exact social value is estimated by the authorities in Berlin, who have a complete card index of all their officer prisoners, showing to what British families they belong and whether they have social or political connections in Britain. Thus when someone in England mistakenly, and before sufficient German prisoners were in their hands, treated certain submarine marauders differently from other prisoners, the German Government speedily referred to this card-index, picked out a number of officers with connections in the House of Lords and House of Commons, and treated them as convicts.
The other German view of the prisoner is his cash value as a labourer. I invite my readers to realise the enormous pecuniary worth of the two million prisoner slaves now reclaiming swamps, tilling the soil, building roads and railways, and working in factories for their German taskmasters.
The most numerous body of prisoners in Germany are the Russians. They are to be seen everywhere. In some cases they have greater freedom than any other prisoners, and often, in isolated cases, travel unguarded by rail or tramway to and from their work. If they are not provided with good Russian uniforms, in which, of course, they would not be able to escape, they are made conspicuous by a wide stripe down the trouser or on the back. They are easy, docile, physically strong, and accustomed to a lower grade of food than any other prisoners, except the Serbs.
The British, of course, are much the smallest number in Germany, but much the most highly prized for hate propaganda purposes.
“More difficult to manage,” said one _Unteroffizier_ to me, “than the whole of the rest of our two million.” It is, indeed, a fact that the 30,000 British prisoners, though the worst treated, are the gayest, most outspoken, and rebellious against tyranny of the whole collection.
There is, however, a brighter side to prison life in Germany, I am happy to record. A number of really excellent camps have been arranged to which neutral visitors are taken. When I told the German Foreign Office that I would like to see the good side of prison life, I was given permission by the _Kriegsministerium_ (War Office) to visit the great camp at Soltau, with its 31,000 inmates with Halil Halid Bey (formerly Turkish Consul in Berlin) and Herr Muller (interested in Germany’s Far Eastern developments).
Five hours away from Berlin, on the monotonous _Luneberger Heide_ (Luneberg Heath), has sprung up this great town with the speed of a boom mining town in Colorado.
On arrival at the little old town of Soltau we were met by a military automobile and driven out on a road made by the prisoners to the largest collection of huts I have ever seen.
There is nothing wrong that I could detect in the camp, and I should say that the 300 British prisoners there are as well treated as any in Germany. The Commandant seems to be a good fellow. His task of ruling so great an assemblage of men is a large and difficult one, rendered the easier by the good spirit engendered by his tact and kindness.
I had confirmation of my own views of him later, when I came across a Belgian who had escaped from Germany, and who had been in this camp. He said:–“The little captain at Soltau was a good fellow, and if I am with the force that releases the prisoners there after we get into Germany, I will do my best to see that he gets extra good treatment.”
Our inspection occupied six hours. Halil Halid Bey, who talks English perfectly, and looks like an Irishman, was taken for an American by the prisoners. In fact, one Belgian, believing him to be an American official, rushed up to him and with arms outstretched pleaded: “Do you save poor Belgians, too, as well as British?”
The physical comfort of the prisoners is well looked after in the neat and perfectly clean dormitories. The men were packed rather closely, I thought, but not more than on board ship.
One became almost dazed in passing through these miles of huts, arranged in blocks like the streets of an American town.
We visited the hospital, which was as good as many civilian hospitals in other countries. There I heard the first complaint, from a little red-headed Irishman, his voice wheezing with asthma, whose grievance was not against the camp itself, but against a medical order which had reversed, what he called his promise to be sent to Switzerland. He raised his voice without any fear, as our little group, accompanied by the Commandant and the interpreter, went round, and I was allowed to speak to him freely. I am not a medical man, but I should think his was a case for release. His lungs were obviously in a bad state.
We were also accompanied by an English sergeant, one Saxton–a magnificent type of the old Army, so many of whom are eating out their days in Germany. He spoke freely and frankly about the arrangements, and had no complaint to make except the food shortage and the quality of the food.
The British section reminded one now and then of England. Portraits of wives, children, and sweethearts were over the beds; there was no lack of footballs, and the British and Belgians play football practically every day after the daily work of reclaiming the land, erecting new huts, making new roads, and looking after the farms and market gardens has been accomplished.
An attempt has been made to raise certain kinds of live stock, such as pigs, poultry, and Belgian hares–a large kind of rabbit. There were a few pet dogs about–one had been trained by a Belgian to perform tricks equal to any of those displayed at variety theatres.
Apparently there is no lack of amusement. I visited the cinematograph theatre, and the operator asked, “What would you like to see–something funny?” He showed us a rather familiar old film. The reels are those that have been passed out of service of the German moving picture shows. In the large theatre, which would hold, I should think, seven hundred to a thousand people, there was a good acrobatic act and the performing dog, to which I have referred, with an orchestra of twenty-five instruments, almost all prisoners, but a couple of German Landsturmers helped out. The guarding of the prisoners is effected by plenty of barbed wire and a comparatively small number of oldish Landsturmers.
A special cruelty of the Germans towards prisoners is the provision of a lying newspaper in French for the Frenchmen, called the _Gazette des Ardennes_. The _Gazette des Ardennes_ publishes every imaginable kind of lie about the French and French Army, with garbled quotations from English newspapers, and particularly _The Times_, calculated to disturb the relations of the French and English prisoners in Germany. For the British there is a paper in English which is quite as bad, to which I have already referred, called the _Continental Times_, doled out three times a week. The _Continental Times_ is, I regret to say, largely written by renegade Englishmen in Berlin employed by the German Government, notably Aubrey Stanhope, who for well-known reasons was unable to enter England at the outbreak of war, and so remains and must remain in Germany, where, for a very humble pittance, he conducts this campaign against his own country.
For the Russians a special prevaricating sheet, called the _Russki Visnik_, is issued. All these newspapers pretend to print the official French, British, and Russian communiques.
For a long time the effect on the British prisoners was bad, but little by little events revealed to them that the _Continental Times_, which makes a specialty of attacks on the English Press, was anti-British.
The arrival of letters and parcels is, of course, the great event for the prisoners and, so far as the large camps are concerned, I do not think that there are now any British prisoners unprovided with parcels. It is the isolated and scattered men, moved often from place to place for exhibition purposes, who miss parcels.
Soltau, although a model camp, is bleak and dreary and isolated. At the outset cases of typhus occurred there, and in a neat, secluded corner of the camp long lines of wooden crosses tell the tale of sadness. The first cross marked a Russian from far-away Vilna, the next a Tommy from London. East had met West in the bleak and silent graveyard on the heather. Close to them slept a soldier from some obscure village in Normandy, and beside him lay a Belgian, whose life had been the penalty of his country’s determination to defend her neutrality. Here in the heart of Germany the Allies were united even in death.
As I made the long journey back to Berlin I reflected with some content on the good things I had seen at Soltau, and I felt convinced that the men in charge of the camp do everything within their power to make the life of the prisoners happy. But as the train pounded along in the darkness I seemed to see a face before me which I could not banish. It was the face of a Belgian, kneeling at the altar in the Catholic chapel, his eyes riveted on his Saviour on the Cross, his whole being tense in fervent supplication, his lips quivering in prayer. My companions had gone, but I was held spellbound, feeling “How long! How long!” was the anguish of his mind. He must have been a man who had a home and loved it, and his whole expression told unmistakably that he was imploring for strength to hold out till the end in that dreary, cheerless region of brown and grey.
His captors had given him a chapel, to be sure, but why was he in Germany at all?
* * * * *
Soltau and other camps are satisfactory–but there are others, many others, such as unvisited punishment camps. The average Britisher in confinement in Germany is under the care of an oldish guard, such as Heiny of the Landsturm, but the immediate authority is often a man of the notorious _Unteroffizier_ type, whose cruelty to the _German_ private is well known, and whose treatment of the most hated enemy can be imagined.
The petty forms of tyranny meted out to German soldiers such as making a man walk for hours up and down stairs in order to fill a bath with a wineglass; making him shine and soil then again shine and soil hour after hour a pair of boots; making him chew and swallow his own socks have been described in suppressed German books.
I believe that publicity, rigorous blockade and big shells are the only arguments that have any effect on the Prussians at present. It is publicity and the fear of opinion of certain neutrals that has produced such camps as Soltau. It is difficult for the comfortable sit-at-homes to visualise the condition of men who have been in the enemy atmosphere of hate for a long period. All the British soldiers whom I met in Germany were captured in the early part of the war when their shell-less Army had to face machine-guns and high explosives often with the shield of their own breasts and a rifle.
Herded like cattle many of the wounded dying, they travelled eastwards to be subject to the insults and vilifications of the German population. That they should retain their cheery confidence in surroundings and among a people so ferociously hostile so entirely un-British, so devoid of chivalry or sporting instinct, is a monument to the character of their race.
CHAPTER XXII
HOW THE PRUSSIAN GUARD CAME HOME FROM THE SOMME
Early in August, 1916, I was in Berlin. The British and French offensive had commenced on July 1st. Outwardly it appeared to attract very little notice on the part of Germany and I do not believe that it attracted sufficient attention even in the highest military quarters. It was considered to be Great Britain’s final “bluff.” The great maps in the shop windows in every street and on the walls in every German house showed no change, and still show no change worth noticing. “Maps speak,” say the Germans.
One hot evening in Berlin I met a young officer whom I had known on a previous visit to Germany, and who was home on ten days’ furlough. I noticed that he was ill or out of sorts, and he told me that he had been unexpectedly called back to his regiment on the Western front. “How is that?” I said. He made that curious and indescribable German gesture which shows discontent and dissatisfaction. “These —— English are putting every man they have got into a final and ridiculous attempt to make us listen to peace terms. My leave is cut short, and I am off this evening.” We had a glass of beer at the Bavaria Restaurant in the Friedrichstrasse.
“You have been in England, haven’t you?” he inquired. I told him that I had been there last year. “They seem to have more soldiers than we thought,” he said. “They seem to be learning the business; my battalion has suffered terribly.”
Within the next day or two there were other rumours in Berlin–rumours quite unknown to the mass. How and where I heard these rumours it would be unfair to certain Germans, who were extremely kind to me, to say, but it was suggested to me by a friend–a member of the Extreme Left of the Social Democratic Party–that if I wanted to learn the truth I should go out to Potsdam and see the arrival of the wounded men of the famous Prussian Guard, who had, he said, had a terrible experience at the hands of the English at Contalmaison on July 10th.
He drew me aside in the Tiergarten and told me, for he is, I am sure, a real German patriot, that the state of things in the Somme, if known throughout Germany, would effectively destroy the pretensions of the annexationist party, who believed that Germany has won the war and will hold Belgium and the conquered portion of France and Poland.
He told me to go out to Potsdam with caution, and he warned me that I should have the utmost difficulty in getting anywhere near the military sidings of the railway station there.
I asked another usually extremely well-informed friend if there was anything particular happening in the war, and told him that I thought of going to Potsdam, and he said, “What for? There is nothing to be seen there–the same old drilling, drilling, drilling.” So well are secrets kept in Germany.
The 4th of August is the anniversary of what is known in Germany as “England’s treachery”–the day that Britain entered the war in what the German Government tells the people is “a base and cowardly attempt to try and beat her by starving innocent women and children.”
On that sunny and fresh morning I looked out of the railway carriage window some quarter of a mile before we arrived at Potsdam and saw numerous brown trains marked with the Ked Cross, trains that usually travel by night in Germany.
There were a couple of officers of the Guard Cavalry in the same carriage with me. They also looked out. “_Ach, noch ‘mal_” (“What, again?”) discontentedly remarked the elder. They were a gloomy pair and they had reason to be. The German public has begun to know a great deal about the wounded. They do not yet know all the facts, because wounded men are, as far as possible, hidden in Germany and never sent to Socialist centres unless it is absolutely unavoidable. The official figures which are increasing in an enormous ratio since the development of Britain’s war machine, are falsified by manipulation.
And if easy proof be needed of the truth of my assertion I point to the monstrous official misstatement involved in the announcement that over ninety per cent. of German wounded return to the firing line! Of the great crush of wounded at Potsdam I doubt whether any appreciable portion of the serious cases will return to anything except permanent invalidism. They are suffering from shell wounds, not shrapnel, for the most part, I gathered.
As our train emptied it was obvious that some great spectacle was in progress. The exit to the station became blocked with staring peasant women returning from the early market in Berlin, their high fruit and vegetable baskets empty on their backs. When I eventually got through the crowd into the outer air and paused at the top of the short flight of steps I beheld a scene that will never pass from my memory. Filmed and circulated in Germany it would evoke inconceivable astonishment to this deluded nation and would swell the malcontents, already a formidable mass, into a united and dangerous army of angry, eye-opened dupes. This is not the mere expression of a neutral view, but is also the opinion of a sober and patriotic German statesman.
I saw the British wounded arrive from Neuve Chapelle at Boulogne; I saw the Russian wounded in the retreat from the Bukovina; I saw the Belgian wounded in the Antwerp retreat, and the German wounded in East Prussia, but the wounded of the Prussian Guard at Potsdam surpassed in sadness anything I have witnessed in the last two bloody years.
The British Neuve Chapelle wounded were, if not gay, many of them blithe and smiling–their bodies were hurt but their minds were cheerful; but the wounded of the Prussian Guard–the proudest military force in the world–who had come back to their home town decimated and humbled–these Guards formed the most amazing agglomeration of broken men I have ever encountered. As to the numbers of them, of these five Reserve regiments but few are believed to be unhurt. Vast numbers were killed, and most of the rest are back at Potsdam in the ever growing streets of hospitals that are being built on the Bornstadterfeld.
One of the trains had just stopped. The square was blocked with vehicles of every description. I was surprised to find the great German furniture vans, which by comparison with those used in England and the United States look almost like houses on wheels, were drawn up in rows with military precision. As if these were not enough, the whole of the wheeled traffic of Potsdam seemed to be commandeered by the military for the lightly wounded–cabs, tradesmen’s wagons, private carriages–everything on wheels except, of course, motor-cars, which are non-existent owing to the rubber shortage. Endless tiers of stretchers lay along the low embankment sloping up to the line. Doctors, nurses, and bearers were waiting in quiet readiness.
The passengers coming out of the station, including the women with the tall baskets, stopped, but only for a moment. They did not tarry, for the police, of which there will never be any dearth if the war lasts thirty years, motioned them on, a slight movement of the hand being sufficient.
I was so absorbed that I failed to notice the big constable near me until he laid his heavy paw upon my shoulder and told me to move on. A schoolmaster and his wife, his _Rucksack_ full of lunch, who had taken advantage of the glorious sunshine to get away from Berlin to spend a day amidst the woods along the Havel, asked the policeman what the matter was.
The reply was “_Nichts hier zu sehen_” (“Nothing to be seen here. Get along!”). The great “Hush! Hush! Hush!” machinery of Germany was at work.
Determined not to be baffled, I moved out of the square into the shelter of a roadside tree, on the principle that a distant view would be better than none at all, but the police were on the alert, and a police lieutenant tackled me at once. I decided to act on the German military theory that attack is the best defence, and, stepping up to him, I stated, that I was a newspaper correspondent. “Might I not see the wounded taken from the train?” I requested. He very courteously replied that I might not, unless I had a special pass for that purpose from the _Kriegsministerium_ in Berlin.
I hit upon a plan.
I regretfully sighed that I would go back to Berlin and get a pass, and retracing my steps to the station I bought a ticket.
A soldier and an Unteroffizier were stationed near the box in which stood the uniformed woman who punches tickets.
The Unteroffizier looked at me sharply, “No train for an hour and a half,” he said.
“That doesn’t disturb me in the least when I have plenty to read,” I answered pleasantly, at the same time pointing to the bundle of morning papers which I carried, the _Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_ of the Foreign Office, on the outside.
I knew Potsdam thoroughly, and was perfectly familiar with every foot of the station. I knew that there was a large window in the first and second-class dining-room which was even closer to the ambulances in the square than were the exit steps.
I did not go directly to the dining-room, but sat on one of the high-backed benches on the platform and began to read the papers. The Unteroffizier looked out and found me fairly buried in them. He returned a little later and saw me asleep–or thought he did.
When he had gone I sauntered along the platform into the dining-room, to find it vacant save for a youthful waiter and a barmaid. I walked straight to the window–where the light would be better for reading–and ordered bread and Edam cheese, tearing off a fifty gram amount from my Berlin bread ticket, which was fortunately good in Potsdam.
My position enabled me to look right out upon the square below, but rendered me inconspicuous from the street.
By this time the wounded were being moved from the train. The slightly wounded were drawn up in double ranks, their clean white arm- and head-bandages gleaming in the noonday light. They stood dazed and dejected, looking on at the real work which was just beginning–the removal of the severely wounded.
Then it was that I learned the use of those mammoth furniture vans. Then it was I realised that these vans are part of Germany’s plans by which her wounded are carried–I will not say secretly, but as unobtrusively as possible. In some of the mammoths were put twelve, into others fourteen; others held as many as twenty.
The Prussian Guard had come home. The steel corps of the army of Germany had met near Contalmaison the light-hearted boys I had seen drilling in Hyde Park last year, and in a furious counter-attack, in which they had attempted to regain the village, had been wiped out.
These were not merely wounded, but dejected wounded. The whole atmosphere of the scene was that of intense surprise and depression. Tradition going back to Frederick the Great, nearly two hundred years ago, had been smashed–by amateur soldiers. The callow youth of sixteen who served my lunch was muttering something to the barmaid, who replied that he was lucky to be in a class that was not likely to be called up yet.
The extreme cases were carried at a snail’s pace by bearers, who put their feet down as carefully as if they were testing very thin ice, and who placed the comfortable spring stretchers in the very few vehicles which had rubber or imitation rubber tyres. The work was done with military precision and great celerity. The evacuation of this train was no sooner finished than another took its place, and the same scene was repeated. Presently the great furniture vans returned from having deposited their terrible loads, and were again filled. One van was reserved for those who had expired on the journey, and it was full.
This, then, was the battered remnant of the five Reserve regiments of the Prussian Guard which had charged the British lines at Contalmaison three weeks before in a desperate German counter-attack to wrest the village from the enemy, who had just occupied it. Each train discharged between six and seven hundred maimed passengers. Nor was this the last day of the influx.
The Guard had its garrisons chiefly in Potsdam, but also partly in Berlin, and represents the physical flower of German manhood. On parade it was inspiring to look at, and no military officer in the world ever doubted its prowess. Nor has it failed in the war to show splendid courage and fighting qualities. English people simply do not understand its prestige at home and among neutrals.
The Guard is sent only where there is supreme work to be done. If you hear that it has been hurled into a charge you may rest assured that it is striving to gain something on which Germany sets the highest price–for the life-blood of the Guard is the dearest that she can pay.
In the battle of the Marne the active regiments of the Guard forming a link between the armies of von Bulow and von Hausen were dashed like spray on jagged cliffs when they surged in wave after wave against the army of Foch at Sezanne and Fere Champenoise.
Germany was willing to sacrifice those superb troops during the early part of the battle because she knew that von Kluck had only to hold his army together, even though he did not advance, and the overthrow of Foch would mean a Teuton wedge driven between Verdun and Paris.
One year and ten months later she hurled the Guard Reserve at Contalmaison because she was determined that this important link in the chain of concrete and steel that coiled back and forth before Bapaume-Peronne must remain unbroken. The newly-formed lines of Britain’s sons bent but did not break under the shock. They were outnumbered, but, like all the rest of the British that the back-from-the-front German soldiers have told me about, these fought on and on, never thinking of surrender.
I know from one of these that in a first onslaught the Guard lost heavily, but was reinforced and again advanced. Another desperate encounter and the men from Potsdam withered in the hand-to-hand carnage. The Germans could not hold what they had won back, and the khaki succeeded the field grey at Contalmaison.
The evacuation of the wounded occupied hours. I purposely missed my train, for I knew that I was probably the only foreign civilian to see the historic picture of the proudest soldiery of Prussia return to its garrison town from the greatest battle in history.
Empty trains were pulled out of the way, to be succeeded by more trains full of wounded, and again more. Doctors and nurses were attentive and always busy, and the stretcher-bearers moved back and forth until their faces grew red with exertion.
But it was the visages of the men on the stretchers that riveted my attention. I never saw so many men so completely exhausted. Not one pair of lips relaxed into a smile, and not an eye lit up with the glad recognition of former surroundings.
It was not, however, the lines of suffering in those faces that impressed me, but that uncanny sameness of expression, an expression of hopeless gloom so deep that it made me forget that the sun was shining from an unclouded sky. The dejection of the police, of the soldier onlookers, of the walking wounded, and those upturned faces on the white pillows told as plainly as words could ever tell that the Guard had at last met a force superior to themselves and their war machine. They knew well that they were the idol of their Fatherland, and that they had fought with every ounce of their great physical strength, backed by their long traditions. They had been vanquished by an army of mere sportsmen.
My thoughts went back to Berlin and the uninformed scoffings at the British Army and its futile efforts to push back the troops of Rupprecht on the Somme. Yet here on the actual outskirts of the German capital was a grim tribute to the machine that Great Britain had built up under the protection of her Navy.
In Berlin at that moment the afternoon editions were fluttering their daily headlines of victory to the crowds on the Linden and the Friedrichstrasse, but here the mammoth vans were moving slowly through the streets of Potsdam.
To the women who stood in the long lines waiting with the potato and butter tickets for food on the other side of the old stone bridge that spans the Havel they were merely ordinary cumbersome furniture wagons.
How were they to know that these tumbrils contained the bloody story of Contalmaison?
CHAPTER XXIII
HOW GERMANY DENIES
Germany, according to Reichstag statements, is spending millions of pounds upon German propaganda throughout the universe. The trend of that propaganda is:–
1. To attempt to convince the neutral world that Germany cannot be beaten; and
2. Above all, to convince Great Britain (the chief enemy) that Germany cannot be beaten.
The only factors really feared by the Germans of the governing class are the Western front and the blockade.
I went into Germany determined to try to find out the truth, and to tell the truth. I had an added incentive to be thorough and work on original lines, since I was fortunate enough to secure possession of an official letter which advised those whom it concerned to give no information of value to Americans in general. I also got accurate information that the Wilhelmstrasse had singled me out as one American in particular to whom nothing of value was to be imparted.
The German, with his cast-in-a-mould mind, does not understand the trait developed among other peoples of seeing things for themselves. He is unacquainted with originality in human beings. He thinks a correspondent does not observe anything unless it is pointed out to him.
Last summer, for example, one could learn in the Wilhelmstrasse that the potato crop was a glittering success. By walking through the country and pulling up an occasional plant, also talking to the farmers, I concluded that it was a dismal failure, which conclusion I announced in one of the first newspaper articles I wrote after I had left Germany. Recent reports from that country show that I was right, which increases my conviction that the _confidential tips_ given by Germany’s professional experts, who instruct neutral visitors, do very well to make Germany’s position seem better than it actually is, but they seldom stand the acid test of history.
Seeking to invent excuses is not peculiar to the Germans, but it is more prevalent among them than among any other people that I know. In this one respect the German Government is a Government of the people. Some of the diplomatic explanations which have emanated from Berlin during the war have been weird in their absurdity and an insult to the intelligence of those to whom they were addressed.
President Wilson did not accept the official lie concerning the sinking of the _Arabic_, in view of the positive proof against Germany, and Germany backed down. President Wilson did not accept the official lie concerning the sinking of the _Sussex_. Incomprehensible as it is to the Teutonic mind, he attached greater weight to the first-hand evidence of reliable eye-witnesses, plus fragments of the torpedo which struck the vessel, than to the sacred words of the German Foreign Office, which had the impertinence to base its case on a sketch, or alleged sketch, hastily made by a U-boat manipulator whose artistic temperament should have led him to Munich rather than to Kiel. The crime and the lie were so glaring that Germany once more backed down.
Germany lied about the Dutch liner _Tubantia_. As in the case of the _Sussex_, the evidence of the fragments of torpedo was so incontrovertible that Berlin had to admit that a German torpedo sank the _Tubantia_. Indeed, one fragment contained the number of the torpedo. During my travels in the Fatherland at that time I found no doubt in the minds of those with whom I discussed the matter that a German submarine sank the vessel, though many were of the opinion that it was a mistake.
The Wilhelmstrasse is tenacious, however, and we awoke one morning to read, what was probably its most remarkable excuse. To be sure, a German torpedo sank the _Tubantia_, but it was not fired by the Germans. The expert accountant who was in charge of the U-boat learned upon consulting his books that he fired that torpedo on March 6. It did not strike the _Tubantia_ until March 16. So that it had either been floating about aimlessly and had encountered the liner, or perhaps the cunning British had corraled it and made use of it. At any rate, Berlin disclaimed all responsibility for its acts subsequent to the day it parted company with the German submarine.
The path of the torpedo, however, had been observed from the bridge of the Tubantia.
I remarked to one of my well-informed confidants among the Social Democratic politicians that although it is perfectly true that a rolling stone gathers no moss, it is equally true that a moving torpedo leaves no wake.
“Yes,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “our Foreign Office is well aware of that. Have you not noticed the significance of the two dates, March 6, when the torpedo is said to have been fired, and March 16, when it struck? Do you not see that our diplomats have still one more loop-hole in case they are pressed? Is it not clear that they could find a way out of their absurd explanation by shifting the responsibility to the man or the men who jotted down the date and transferred it? The question in my mind is: Who lost the 1 from the 16?”
Be that as it may, little Holland, enraged at the wanton destruction of one of her largest vessels, was not in a position to enforce her demands. Therefore Germany did not back down–that is, not publicly.
My description of the return of the Prussian Guard to Potsdam naturally aroused the wrath of a Government which strives incessantly, to hide so much from its own people and the outside world.
Directly the article reached Germany the Government flashed a wireless to America that no members of the _Potsdam_ Guard returned to Potsdam from Contalmaison. This is a typical German denial trick. I never mentioned the _Potsdam_ Guard.
I had referred to the _Prussian_ Guard.
If any reader of this chapter cares to look into the files of English newspapers at the time of the Contalmaison battle, for such it was, they will find confirmation of my statements as to the presence of the Prussian Guard in the English despatches published in the second week in July.
The Contalmaison article has in whole or in part been circulated in the United States, and also in the South-American Republics, and probably in other neutral countries. This has now called forth a semi-official detailed denial, which I print herewith.
It is signed by the Head Staff Doctor at Potsdam, one Geronne, by name. He divides his contradiction into ten clauses. Each of the first nine contains an absolute untruth.
The last is a mere comment on a well-known, German statesman, who told me that as I was seeking the truth in Germany I had better go and find it at Potsdam.
I wish to deal with the denials one by one, as each is a revelation of German psychology.
1. The hospital train, This says “Hospital which reached Potsdam on train” (singular). I August 4, and was there described hospital trains unloaded, brought wounded (plural). It may be true men from various troop that one train did not divisions. There were no contain any Prussian Guards. Prussian Guards among them. I did not happen to see that train. All the trains that I saw unloaded Prussian Guard Reserves.
2. No wounded man is I have never said that kept concealed in Germany. any wounded man was All are consigned to kept concealed in Germany. public hospitals or I have pointed out lazarets, where they may that the whole system of at any time be visited the German placing of the by their relatives and wounded is to hide from friends. the German population, and especially in Social Democrat districts, the extent of their wounded.
3. Hospital trains travel This is absolutely untrue. by day as well as by night, The number of wounded arriving and, in accordance with at the depots in Germany is instructions, are unloaded now so great that the trains only in the daytime. In are obliged to be unloaded case they reach their whenever they arrive, by day destination during the or by night. I have witnessed night, the regulations both.
provide that they are to
wait until the following
morning before unloading.
4. In order that the loading The whole of this paragraph or unloading of the vehicles is a transparent distortion which transport the wounded of fact. What happens at to the lazarets may proceed Potsdam and what happens as rapidly as possible, it everywhere else is that a is necessary to keep the cordon of police surrounds surroundings of the train the scene and, drives the clear. The wounded must public by force in the usual also be spared all annoyance Prussian way, if necessary, and curiosity on the part from the scene. I described of the public. the method by which I witnessed what was going on at the railway station from the railway station
refreshment room itself.
5. Dead men have never been I saw the dead men removed. unloaded from the lazaret
trains at Potsdam–therefore
there could have been none on
August 4, 1916. The
principle of transporting
the wounded is based upon
the ability of the wounded
to bear transportation.
All those who suffer during