guide. "We are making up lists of the private and crown property, and his own
possessionswill be returned to the Kaiser." The outstanding feature of the visit
was.
Booms
BY
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VAGA B O N D I N G TH R O
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SET OUT FO R T HE NORT H A B AVA RIAN H O P FI EL D READY FO R T H E CL I M BIN G VI NES HOP POLES SET UP FOR THE WINTER O N T H E R OA D I N B AVA RIA N EA R M UNIC H A S M ALL PART OF T H E C R OWD OF S C H OOL BOYS WH O GAT H ERED AROUND M E I N A B AVA RIAN VILL A GE A T Y PI CAL B AVA RI AN G A STHAU S O R TAVERN INN A S KY B L U E PO RCEL AIN S TOVE I N T H E D RI NKIN G ROOM OF A B AVARIAN INN T H E R IP VA N WIN KLE D WARF WI T H T H E S IL VER C OIN S A S VE ST BUTTON S A B AVARIA N AM ON G H IS C RONI ES I N A G A STH AU S T H E C OW S OF B AVA R IA WE A R NOT ONL Y A B ELL BUT A W OO DEN C OLLAR LOO K I N G UP ON E OF T H E M A Y POLES T H AT A RE EREC TE D I N B AVARIAN VILL A GES ON M AY DAY SETTIN G OUT ON S ATURDAY AFTERNOON TO B UY H A MS T E RE R S FOOD IN T HE C OUNT RY " F OOD WE A SELS RETU RNIN G F ROM FO RA GIN G T H E C OUNTRY SI DE o O o o o o o o o o o o A N OUT DOO R BOWL IN G ALLEY I N A B AVA RIAN VILLAGE A H AM ST ERER RETURNIN G WI T H A P RIZE B AVARIAN WOMEN WORK I N G IN THE FIELDS B AVARIAN PEASANTS RETURNIN G F ROM CHURCH O N T H E I R WAY H OM E F ROM C H U RCH T H E C H ILD RE N C A RRY T H EI R S HOES I N TH EI R HAND S E NT RA NC E TO T H E H OM E OF WA GNER I N B AYREUTH GLEE CLUB OF B AYREUTH WITH T H E SANGERVERE IN O R WHOM I S PENT A DAY I
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I L LU ST R ATI ON S W OM E N A ND O EN— C OW S — WERE M ORE NUM EROUS T HAN M EN AND H ORSES IN TH E FI ELD S B AVARIAN PEASANT DOES HI S BAKIN G IN AN OUTDOO R OVEN T W OM E N C H OPPIN G UP T H E TOP S OF EV ERGREEN T REES F O R F U EL A N D FODD ER GREAT B REWERI ES OF K ULM BACH N EA RLY ALL STOOD IDLE T T S C H I R N T H E L A ST VILL A GE O F B AVA RIA WA S E NTI REL Y B LA C K WIT H IT S SL AT E ROOF S AN D WALLS END OF MY G ERM AN T RAM P WA S D O WN T H ROUGH T HE AVENU E T OF CHESTNUT S INTO W EIM A R A M EM B ER O F T H E B AY REUT H SA M Y L A S T G ERM AN H O ST WA S N EA RL Y AN D A HAL F F EET TALL M AN WH O FLEW M E FROM W E MAR TO B ERLIN T A WOM AN TU C K ED M E I NTO FL YIN G TO G S X
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FO R EWO R D
I D I D not g o into Germany With any foreform ed hypoth eses as a skeleton for which to seek flesh ; I went to report exactly what I found there I am satisfied that there were dastardly acts during the war and condit ions inside the country Of which no tangible proofs remained at the time of my journey ; but there are other accusations ” concerning which I am still from Missouri I am as fully convinced as any one that we have done a good deed in helping t o overthrow the nefarious dynasty of H ohen I believe z olle rni sm and its conscienceless mil itary clique ; the German peop l e often acquiesced in and sometimes app lauded the wrong doings Of their former rulers Bu t f the impression that the more voiceless I Cannot shake Of mass Of the nation were under a spell not u ne that cast by the dreadful dragons Of their own Old legends and that we shoul d t o a certain extent take that fact into considera tion in judging them under their new and more or less I propose therefore that the reader dra g onless condition free himself as much as possible from his natural rep u l sion toward its people before setting ou t on thi s journey th rough the H ungry E mpire t o the end that he may gaze about him with clear but unprejudiced eyes T here has been t o o much reporting ofhearsay evidence all ov er the world during the past few years t o make any other plan worth the paper HA RRY A F RA N CK .
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VAGA B OND I NG
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Wisconsin half Of the 3 3 d D ivision boast that ability to a man ? As t o duties those Of fighting days were soon r e placed by appallingly unbellicose tasks which carried us sti ll farther afield into the placid wilderness Of the S O S trebly distant from the scene Of real acti vity Bu t a pebble d ropped into the sea Of army routine does not always fail t o bring ripples in time to the shore S uddenly one day wh en the earthquaking roar of barrages and the insistent screams Of air raid a lertes had merged with dim memories o f the pas t the half forgotten request was unexpectedly answered The flimsy French t elegraph form languidly torn open yielded a laconic R eport Paris prepared enter ” occupied territory The change from the placidi ty Of A lps girdled Grenoble ” to Paris in those days capital ofthe world indeed was abrupt T h e city was see t hing with an intern at io nal life such as even she had never before gazed upon in her history B u t with the Rh ine at t ainable at last one was in no mood to t arry among the pampered Officers dancing attendance — least ofall those ofus who had e re nce o n the Pea c e C onf known P aris in the simpler saner days of old or in the humanizing times ofwar strain The Gare d e 1 E st was swirling with that incredible toh u boh u that headless confusion which had long reigned at all important Fren ch railway stations Even i n the six teen months S ince I had first seen Paris under war con di tions and taken train at C h au m ont t h en st em ly hidden — that confusion had under the pseudonym Of G H Q trebled S tolid Britons in khaki and packs clamped their iron shod way along the station corridors like d raft horses ” Youthful Y anks not S O unli ke the T ommies in garb as in manner fome d human Whirlpools about the almost u n attainable den O fthe A merican A P M Through compact throngs O fhori zon blue squirmed insistent poi lu s sputtering some witty b an mot at every lunge H ere and there circled ,
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eddies Of B elgian troopers their cap tassel s waving wi th the rhythm Of their march Italian soldi ers mi sfi t t e d in crum pled and patched di rty gray struggled toward a far corner where stood two haughty ca ra bi ni eri directly imported from their ow n sunny l and stubby rifles im posing thr ee cornered hats and all At every guichet or hole i n the wall waited long queues of civilians chiefly French with that u ncom plaining patience which a lifetime or at least a war tim e Of standing in line has given a race that by temperament and individual habit shoul d be least able t o di splay patience S prightly g ri settes tripp ed through every O pening i n the throng dodging collisions yet finding time to throw a co ” S ammy irrespective of qu e t t i sh smile at ev ery grinning rank Wan yet sarcastic women Of the working class buffe ted their multifarious bundles and progeny toward the platforms Flush faced dowagers upholstered in their somber best garments waddled hither and yon in generally vain attempts to get the scanty thirty kilos Of baggage to which mi litary rule had reduced civilian passengers aboard the train they hoped to take Well dressed matrons labori ou sly shoved their possessions before them o n hand trucks won after exertions that had left their hats awry and their tempers far beyond the point that speech has any meaning some with happy cynical faces at having advanced that far in the struggle only to form queue again behind the always lengt hy line o f enforced patience which awaited the good pleasure of baggage weighers baggage handlers baggage checkers baggage payment receiving clerks Now and then a begrimed and earth weary female por t er under the Of ficial cap bovinely pushed her laden truck i nto the waiting thr ongs w ith that supreme indifference t o the rights and comfort ofothers which co uples so strangely with the social and individual politeness Of the French O nce in a while there appeared a male porter also in the insignia so familiar before the war sallow and fleshless now in comparison -
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VA GA B OND I N G
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with his female competi t ors someti mes one armed or shuf fling O n a half useless leg It would have been hard to find a place where more l abor was expended for l ess actual accomp lishment At the train gate those In uni form w h o had not been called upon to stand in line for hours if not for days to get passports to have them stamped and visaed to fulfil a score of formalities that must have made the life Of a civilian without ofli ci al backing not unlike that Of a stray ou r in Old time C onstantinople were again specially favored — n O nce o the platform but alas ! there was no escaping the crush and goal less helter skelter of the half anarchy th at had befall en the railway system of France in the last — o t M z supreme lunge f he war The Nan cy et e xpress the name still seemed strange long after the signing Of the armistice— had already been taken by storm What Shall i t g ai n a man to have formed queue and paid his franc days before for a reserved pla ce if the corri dors leading to it are so packed and crammed with pillar like poi lu s laden with equipment enough to stock a hardware store wi th pack and ri fle bearing A merican doughboys with the few lucky civilians who reached the gates early enough to worm their way into the i nterstices left that nothing short of machine gun or trench mortar can clear hi m an entrance to it ? Wise however i s the man who uses his head rather than his Shoul ders even in so unintellectual a matter as b oarding a train A bout a parlor coach defended by gendarmes lounged a half dozen A merican Of ficers with that casual ” self sat i sfi know the ropes and are e d air of those who therefore able to bide their time in peace A constant stream of harried disheveled bundl e laden would b e pas se ng ers swept down upon the parlor car entrance only to be politely but forcibly balked in their design by the guards Thus R eserved for the French men with an oily -
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is disorder wont to breed intrigue The platform clock had raised its hands to strike the hour Of departure when t h e fered to S hare his preV lieutenant who had Of i ou s experience with me sidled cautiously up t o a gendarme and breathed in his ear something that ended with A merican S ecret ” The words themselves produced little more ef S ervic e fect than there was truth in the whispered assertion Bu t the crisp new fi v e franc not e deftly transferred from lieutenant to gendarme brought as quick resul ts as coul d the whisper Of bakshi sh in an A rab ear We sprang lightly up the guarded steps and along a corri dor as clear of humanity as N O Man s L and on a sunny noonday Give the French another year Of war with a few more millions of money = sowing Allies scattered through the length and breadth O f their fair land and the back handed slip Ofa coin may b e come as universal an open sesame as i n the most tourist haunted corner of Naples Another banknote as judiciously applied unlocked the door Of a compartment that S how ed quite vi sible evidence o fhaving escaped the public wear and tear of war due no doubt to the protection af forded it by those magic words Bu t when it had quickly filled to its quota French S taff one might h av e gazed in vain at the half dozen of S i x ” Am erican uniforms girdled by the exclusive S am Browne for any connection with the French staf f or otherwise than that which binds all good allies together; The train glided imperceptibly into motion yet not wi thout carrying to ou r ears the suppressed grunt Of a hundred stomachs compressed by as many hard and unwi eldy packs in the coach ahead and grou nd away into the night amid the shouts Of anger despair and pretended derision of the throng ofwould b e travelers left behind on the platform ” T roubles over said my companion as we settled down to such comfort as a night in a E uropean train compartment fords af Of course we ll be hours late and there will be .
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VA GA B ON D
I N G T HR OU GH
C H AN G I N G GERMANY
howling mob at every station as long as we are in Fran ce Bu t onc e we get to Metz the trains will have plenty Of room ; they ll be right on ti me and all this mob fi w be h t i n ill g g o ver Propaganda I mused noting that in spite Of hi s man ner as American as his uniform the lieutenant spoke wi th a hint Of Teutonic accent We had long been warned to see propaganda by the insidious Hun in any suggestion of criticism particul arly in the unfavorable compari son of anything French with anything German Di d food cost more in Paris than on the Rhine ? Propaganda ! D id some one suggest that the A merican soldiers their fighting task finished fel t the surge Of desire to see their native shores again ? P ropaganda ! Di d a French waiter growl at the inadequacy of a I o per cent tip ? The sa le B oche had surely been propag andi ng among the dish handlers The same subsidized hand that had admi tted us h ad locked the parlor car again as soon as the last staff pass — issued by the Ban que de France had been collected T hough hordes mi ght beat with enraged fists heels and sti cks on the doors and windows not even a corridor lounger coul d get aboard t o disturb ou r possible Slumbers T o the Ol d and i nfi rm—which in military jargon stands f or all — those beyond the age ofthirty even the comfortably filled compartment Of a French wag on de la xe is not an ideal place in whi ch t o pass a long night Bu t as Often as we awoke to uncramp ou r legs and cramp them again in another posi tion the solace in the thought of what that ride might have been standing rigid in a car corridor swallowi ng and reswall owing the heated breath ofa half dozen nationalities jolted and compressed by sharp cornered packs and poi la hardware unable t o disengage a hand long enough to raise handkerchief t o nose lulled us quickly to sleep again The train was hours late All trains are hours late in overcrowded overburdened France with her long unre a
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6
VA GA B OND I N G
T H ROUGH
C HAN G I N G GERM ANY
quickly though every traveler was compelled to Show his permission for entering the city The aspect ofthe place wa s still German A long the p latform were ranged those awe inspiring beings whom the uninitiated among us took to be German generals or fi eld Of fi cers instead Of mere railway employees ; wherever the eye roamed some species of Verbotea gazed sternly upon us Bu t the iron hand had lost its grip P artly for convenience sake partly in retalia tion for a closely circumscribed journey years before through the l and Ofthe K aiser I had descended from the train by a window What horror such undisciplined bar b ari sm woul d have evoked in those other years ! Now — h hea v y face under the pseudo generals caps not only t e s gave no grimace of protest presaging sterner measures ; not even a shadow ofsurprise flickered a cross them Th e grim Verboten signs remained placidly unm oved like dicta tors shorn Ofpower by some force t oo high abov e to make any Show Of feelings worth whil e The French had already come to M etz O ne recognized that at on ce In the endless queues that formed at every window O ne was doubly sure ofit at sight Ofa tempera ment harassed Official in hori zon b lue floundering in a tempest of papera sses a whirlwind ofpapers ink and u nfu l filled intentions behind the W icket earnestly bent on quickly doing his best yet somehow making nine motions where one would have sufficed Bu t most of the queues melted away more rapidly than was the Parisian custom ; and as we moved nearer to consign our baggage or to buy our tickets we noted that the quickened progress was due to a slow but methodically moving German male still in his field gray He had come to the meeting place oftem pera m ent and Ordm mg or system B oth have their value but there are times and places for both A mong the bright hopes that had gleamed before me since turning my face toward the fallen enemy was a hot ,
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8
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ON
TO TH E RH I N E
bath T o attain so unwonted a luxury in France was ” — tou te u ne hi s toi re in the words Of its inhabitants in fact an all but endless story In the first place the ex In the second t raordi nary desire must await a Satur day the heater must not hav e fallen out Of practice during its week Of disuse Thir dl y one must make sure that no other guest on the same floor had laid the same soapy plans within an hour ofone s ow n chosen ti me Fourthly o ne must have put up at a hotel that boasted a bathtub in itself no Simple feat for those forced to live on their own — honest earnings Fifthl y but life is too Short and paper too expensive t o enumerate all the incidental detail s that must be brought together in harmonious concordance before o ne actually and physically g o t a real hot bath in France after her four years and more Of struggle t o ward of f the H un — B u t in Germany Or was i t only subtle propaganda again the persistent rumor that hot baths were Of daily occurrence and withi n reach Of the popul ar purse ? At any rate I took stock enough in it to let anticipation play o n the treat in store once I were settled in Germany T hen all at once my eyes were caught by t w o magic words above an arrow pointing down the station corri dor Incredible ! S ome one had had the bright idea of providing a means ri ght here i n the station ofremovi ng the grime of travel at once A clean bathroom its h ot water actually h ot was — all ready i n a twinkling all that is except the soap T here was nothing in the decalogue rumor had it that the Germans w oul d not viol ate for a bar ofsoap Luckily the hint had reached me before our comrni ssary in Paris was out Of reach Yet soap or no soap the popul ation le managed to keep i tself as presentab le as the rank and fi Of Civilians in the l and behind us T he muscul ar young barber who kept S hop a door or two beyond was as spick .
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9
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VA GA B OND I N G
T HR OUGH
C H AN G I N G GERM ANY
and span as any t o whom I remembered intrusting my personal appearance in all France He had too that nab le something which in army S l ang is called i ndefi ” snappy and I settled down in hi s chair with the genuine relaxation that comes with the ministrations Of one w h o knows his trade He answered readily enough a question put in French but he answered it in German which brought up another query this time i n his mother tongue ” I am French through and through N em he replied way back for generations M y people have always been born in Lorraine but none Of us younger ones speak much French Y es he had been a German sol di er H e had worn the O r u m ore than two years in some f the b loo di est e ld a ; f g battles on the western front the last against A mericans It seemed uncanny to have him flourishing a razor about the throat Of a man whom a few weeks b efore he h a d been in duty bound to slay An d do y ou think the peop l e Of Metz rea lly like the ” change ? I asked striving to imply by the tone that I preferred a genuine answer to a di plomatic evasion ” i n t re w h e t t he began slowly his razor e e h a s e n S g ! My family has always looked forward I am French A a ber t o the day when France shoul d come back t o us in the slbw guttural there was a hint Of disillusionment they are a wise people the French but they have no — a t i Org ani z i ons mz so little idea o f order Of discipline They make so m uch work of simple matters And they have su ch curious rules In the house next t o me lived a man whose parents were Parisians His ancestors were all French He Speaks perfect French and very poor German ather was born by chance in Germany Bu t his grandf and they have driv en him ou t of L orraine while I who barely understand French and have always spoken Ger man may remain because my ancestors were born here ‘ .
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A T ROPHY OF
WA R
A GERM AN M AIL C A R SERVIN G TH E ARMY O F OCC UPATION -
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AM ERI C AN
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DI RECTIN G T RAFFI C IN TH E TOW N OF C OCHEM
ON
TO THE RH I N E
Yet on the whol e M etz woul d rather bel ong t o France ” than to Germany ? Li ke all perfect barber conv ersationalists he spaced his words in rhythm with his work never losing a stroke : We have much feeling for France T here was much B u t as fla g waving much singing of the Marseillaise — to W hat we would ra th er do what hav e we to say about it after all ? Atrocities ? Yes I hav e seen some thi ngs that should It Is war There are brutes in all coun no t have been tries I have at least seen a German colonel shoot one Of his own men for killing a wounded French soldier on the ” ground The recent history Of M etz was plainly visible in her architecture— ambitious extravagant Often tasteless build ings shouldering aside the humb le remnants Of a French town ofthe Middle A ges In spite ofthe floods of horizon blue in her streets the atmosphere Of the city was still — Teutonic heavy a trifle sour in no way chi c The skaters d own on a lake before the promenade not only spoke Ger man ; they had not even the L atin grace of movement Yet there were signs to remind one that the capital of L orraine had changed hands It came first in petty little alterations hastily and crudely made— a paper E ntrée ” pasted over an E ingang cut in stone ; a signboard point ing A T reves above an Ol der one reading Nach Trier A strip ofwhite cloth along the front Ofa great brownstone building that h ad always been the K aiserliches Postamt announced R épublique Fran cai se ; Postes Télégraphes T éléphones S treet names had not been changed ; they ” — had merely been translated R heinstrasse had become ” also R u e du R hin The French were making no secret Oftheir conviction that Metz had returned to them for all time T hey had already begun to make permanent changes Yet many mementoes ofthe paternal government that had ,
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II
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AGA B OND I N G T HR OUGH
C HAN G I N G GERM ANY
so hastily fled t o the eastward were still doing duty as if nothing ou t Of the ordin ary had happ ened T he dark ” blue post boxes still announced themselves as Briefkasten and bore the fatherly reminder B riefmarken und A d dre sse ” nicht vergessen ( DO not forget stamps and At least the simple public could be trusted to write the letter without its attention being called to that necessity Where crowds were wont to collect detailed directions stared them in the face instead ofleaving them to guess and scramb le as is too often the case among o u r lovable but temperamental allies A large number Of shops were C onsigné a la Troupe ” which woul d have meant O ut ofBounds to the B ritish ” or Of f Limits to our own soldiers O thers were merely branded Maison Allemande leav mg Allied men in uniform permission to trade there if they chose It migh t have paid t oo for nearly all of them had voluntarily a dded ” the confession Liquidation Totale O ne such prOpri e t or ” announced his Maison Principale a S trasbourg He ” certainly was S O L which is a rmy e se for something like S adly ou t of luck In fact the German residents were being politely but firmly crowded eastward As their clearance sales left an empty Shop a French merchant quickly mov ed in and the B oche went home to set his alarm — clock The departing Hun was forbidden to carry with him more than two thousand marks as an adult or — five hundred for each child and der Deu tsche Gott knows — a mark is not much money nowadays and he was obliged to take a train leaving at 5 A M O n the esplanade of Metz there once stood a bronze equestrian statue Of Friedrich I I I gazing haughtily down upon his serfs N ow he lay broken headed in the soil beneath under the horse that thrust stiff legs aloft as o n a battle fi SO rude and sudden had been his downfall eld that he had carri ed with him one side of the massive stone '
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12
V
A GA B ONDI NG T H R OUG H
C HANG I N G
G ERM ANY
to the fact that Germany had been obliged t o husband her every scrap of leather ; the window tackle was now Of woven hemp O ne detail suggested bad faith in fulfilling — the armistice terms the heavy red velvet stuf f covering the seats had been hastily slashed Of f leavi ng us t o sit on the burlap u ndercov e ri ng s i Probab ly some undisciplined railway emp loyee had decided to l evy on the enemy while there was yet time for the material Of a gown for his dau g h ter or his Ma dch en Later journeys showed many a seat simil arly p lundered A heavy wet snow was falling when we reached Treves —or Trier as y ou choose It was late and I planned to dodge into the nearest hotel I had all but forgotten that I was no longer among allies but in the land Of the enemy The American M P who demanded my papers at the sta tion gate as his fellows did even l ess courteously of all ” / civilians ignored the word hotel and directed me t O the billeting Offi S alutes were snapped at me wherever the ce street lamps made my right to them visib le The town was brown with Am erican khaki as well as white with the sodden snow At the baize covered desk of what had evidently once been a German court room a comm issioned Yank glanced at my orders ran his finger down a long ledger page scrawled a line on a bill eting form and tossed it toward me B eyond the Porta Nigra the ancient R oman gate that — — or t o the would b e R omans Of day yesterday have so carefully preserved I lost my way in the b linding whiteness A German civilian was approaching I caught myself wondering if he woul d refuse to answer and whether I shoul d stand on my dignity as one ofhis con querors if he did He seemed flattered that he Should have been appealed to for information He waded some distance Ou t Of his way to leave me at the door I sought and on the way he bubbled over with the excellence of the American soldier -
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TO THE
RH I N E
and then a hi nt at the good fortune ofTrier in When he not being occupied by the French or B ritish had left me I rang the door bell several times without result I decided to adopt a sterner attitude and pounded lustily At length a window above o n the massive outer door opened and a querul ous femal e voice demanded Wer ” To be sure it was near mi dnight ; but was I i st da ? rather than requesting adm it not f or once demanding tance ? I strove t o giv e my voice the peremptoriness with which a German of fi cer woul d have answered AI nerIcan lieutenant billeted here I ch komm g lei ch hi m mler came t h e qui ck rep ly in ahnost honeyed tones The househol d had not yet gone to bed It consisted of as many generations the youngest of three women Of whom had come down to let me i n Before we reached the top of the stairs she began to show solicitude for my comfort The mother hastened t o arrange the easiest chair for me before the fire ; the grandmother doddered toothl essly at me from her corner behind the stove ; the fami l y cat was alr eady caressing my boot tops cried the mother Y ou must have something t o eat ” ” D on t trouble I protested I had dinner at Metz Some milk and Y es but that was four hours ago ” eggs at l east ? ” E ggs and mi lk ? I thought there were I queri ed ” none in Germany ” Dock Sh e repli ed wi th a sage gl ance if y ou know where to look for them and can get there I have just been ou t i n the country I came on the same train you did B ut i t i s hard to get much Every one goes out scouring the country now And one must have money An egg one mark ! B efore the war they were never so ” much a dozen The eggs were fresh enough but the mi lk was decidedly with
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15
V A GA B O N D I N G
T HROUGH
C H AN G I N G GERM A NY
wat ery and In p lace Of potatoes there was some sort Of j elli e d turnip wholly tasteless Whil e I ate the daughter talked incessantly the mother now and then addi ng a word the grandm other nodding approval at intervals with a wrinkl ed smile All male members of the family had been lost in the war unless one counts the second fi ficer over in Germany a ncé of the daughter now an Of as she put it When I started at the expression she smiled Y es here we are in America you see Lucky for u s too There wi ll never be any robbery and anarchy hefe and over there it wi ll get worse A nyhow we don t f eel that the A mericans are real enemies ” ” Why not ? N O ? I broke in A ch ’ she said evasively throwing her head on One side they they Now if it had been t h e French or the Bri tish who had occupied Trier At — first the A mericans were very easy on u s too easy (One felt the German religion Of discipline in the phrase) They arrived on D ecember first at noon and by evening every soldier had a sweetheart The newspapers raged It was shameful for a girl to give herself for a box Of biscuits Bu t they or a cake of chocolate or even a bar of soap ! had been hungry for years and not even decency to Say nothing Of patriotism can stand ou t against continual — hunger B esides the war a ch! I don t know what has come over the German woman since the war ! ” B ut the Americans are stricter now sh e continued and there are new laws that forbid us to talk to the soldi ers —on the street ” German laws ? I i nterrupted thoughtlessly for, t o tell the truth my mind was wandering a bit thanks either to the heat ofthe porcelain stove or to her garrul ousness equal t o that Of any meri di ona le from southern France ” N ei n it was ordered by General Pershing (S he pronounced it Pear ,
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16
THE RH I N E
ON T O
S tupid
Of me but my change from the land Of an ally t o that Ofan enemy had been so abrupt a nd the evidence Of enmi ty so slight that I had scarcely realized it was our o w n commander i n chief who was now reigning in Trier I covered my retreat by abruptly putting a question about the K aiser D emigod that I had always found him in the popular mind in Germany I felt sure that here at least I should strike a vibrant chord To my surprise she screwed up her face into an expression ofdisgust and drew a finger across her throat ” Th a t f she snapped O f course he or the K aiser ! wasn t entirely to blame ; and he wanted to quit in nine teen sixteen Bu t the rich people the Krupps and the like hadn t made enough yet He didn t at least need to run away If he had stayed i n Germany as he should have no o ne would have hurt him ; no living man would have touched a hair of his head O ur Crown Prince ? A ch ! The Crown Prince is lei ch tsi nmg (light Of course it is natural that the B ritish and French ” Shoul d treat us worse than the Americans she went on unexpectedly harking back to an earlier theme T hey used to bomb us here in Trier the last months I have Often had t o help Grossmu t ter down into the cellar Gr ossmu tter smirked confi rm a t i on but that was nothing compared to what ou r brave airmen did to London and Paris Why in Paris they killed hun dr eds night after night and the people were so wild with fright they trampled one another to death in trying to fi nd refuge I was in Paris myself during all the big raids as well as the shelling by Grosse B ertha I protested and I a ssure y ou it w a s hardly as bad as that Ah but they cover up those things so cleverly she replied quickly not in the slightest put ou t by the con ,
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thing the A mericans do not do well I
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V
A GA B OND I N G T H ROUGH
C H AN G I N G
A
G ERM NY
attl ed on T hey do not make the rich and the influential contribute their fair share T hey make all the people (das Volk) b i llet as many as their houses will hold but the rich and the Of ficials arrange to take in very few in their big houses And it is the same as before the war ended with the food The wealthy still have plenty offood that they get through S ch lerchh arzdel tricky methods and the Ameri cans do no t search them Children and the sick are sup posed to get milk and a bit of good bread or zw i eb a ch Yet Grossmu t ter here is so ill she cannot digest the war bread and still she must eat it for the rich grab all the better bread and as we have no influ ence we cannot get her ” what the rules allow I did not then know enough Of the American a dmi ni s t rat i on of occupied territory to remind her that food rationing was still entirely in the hands of the nativ e Of fi I did know however how prone conquering armi es ci a ls are to keep up the Old inequalities ; how apt the conqueror ” is to call upon the influential citizens to take high places ” in the local administration ; and that influential citizens are not infrequently so because they have been the most grasping the most selfish even if not actually dishonest Midnight had long since struck when I was shown into ” en S i e woh l the guest room wi t h a triple Ga te N a ch t S chlaf The deep wooden bedstead was Of course a bit t oo Short and the triangular bolster and two large pillows taking the place Of the French round traversi n had to be reduced to American tastes Bu t the room was Speckless ; several minor details of comfort had been arranged with motherly care and as I slid down under the feather tick that does duty as quilt throughout Germany my feet encountered a hot fla t iron I had not fel t so Old since the day I first put on long trousers ! My last conscious reflection was a wonder whether the ” good citizens Of Trier were not perhaps stringing us a r
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18
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T H E B RID GE O F BOAT S AT C OBLE NZ
AM ERI C AN A RMY AUTOM OBILES B EF ORE T HE H EAD QUA RTERS OF T H E ARMY OF OCCUPATION ON T HE BANK OF T HE RHIN E AC RO SS T H E RIVER THE GREAT FO RT RESS OF E HRENB REIT STEI N FLYIN G T HE STARS AND ST RI PE S .
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VA GA B O ND I N G
T HR OUGH
C HA N G I N G GERM ANY
way Of an American policeman on every corner of this ancient German town In the past eight years I had been less than two in my native land yet I had a feeling O f knowing the American better than ever before ; for to take him ou t Of his environment is to se e him in close u p per E ven here he seemed to feel perfectly spe ct i v e as it w ere at home Now and then a group of school girls playfully bombarded an M P with snowballs and if he could not shout back some jest in genuine German he at least said ” T h e populace gave us ou r something that got across fair half ofthe sidewalk some making a little involuntary motion as if expecting an Of ficer to shove them of fit entirely in the orthodox Prussian manner S treet carswere free t o ” wearers of the Sam Browne ; enlisted men paid the infini tesimal fare amid much good natured joshing of the solemn conductor with his colonel s uniform and his sackful of pewter coins O n railway trains tickets were a thing of the past to wearers of khaki To the border Of Lorraine we paid the French military fare ; once in Germany proper one had only t o satisfy the M P at the gate to journey anywhere within the occupied area At the imposing building ou t of which the Germans had been chased t o give p lace to our A dvan ced G H I found orders to proceed at once to C oblenz but there w as time to transgress military rules to the extent Of bringing Grossmu tter a loaf Of white bread and a can Of condensed milk from our commissary to rep air my damage to the family larder before hurrying to the station Yank guardsmen now sustained the contentions Of t h e Verboten signs instead Of letting them waste away in impotence as at Metz A boy marched up and down the platform fer pushing a convenient little news stand on wheels and of ing for sale all the important Paris papers as Well as Ger man ones The Car I entered was reserved for Allied Offi cers yet several Boche civilians rode in it unmolested .
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20
TH E RH I N E
ON T O
I could not but wonder what woul d have happened had conditions been reversed T hey were cheerful enough in S pite Of what ought to have been a humi liating state of af fairs possibly because of an impression I heard one hoarsely whisper t o another Oh they ll go home in an ” other six months ; an American Of ficer told me so Ev i as well as re ce i v dent ly some one had been fraternizing i ng information which the heads Of the Peac e C onference had not yet gained The S chnellzu g was a real express ; the ride li ke that from Albany to New York N ow and then we crossed the winding M oselle the steep plump hills of which were planted t o their precipitous crests w ith orderly vineyards each vine carefully tied t o its stalk For mil e after mile the hills were terraced eight foot wall s ofcut stone holding up four foot patches Of earth paths for the workers snaking upward between them The system was alm ost exactly that Of the Peruvians under the Incas far apart as they were In time and place from the German peasant The t w o civilizations could scarcely have compared notes yet this was not the only S imilarity between them Bu t then hunger and over popul ation breed stern necessity the worl d over and with li ke necessity as wi th si mi lar experience it is no plagiari sm t o hav e worked ou t the problem in the same way B etween the Vineyards in stony Clefts in the hills useless for cul tivation Orderly towns were tucked away clean little towns still flecke d wi th the snow ofthe night before Even the French Of cers beside fi us marveled at the cleanliness Of the towns en B ochi e and at the extraordinary physical comforts of Mainz— I mean Mayence— the headquarters Of their area of occupation H eavy American motor trucks pounded by along the already dusty road beside us alternating now and then with a captured German one the K aiser s eagles still on its flanks but driven by a nonchalant American doughboy .
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V A GA B O N D I N G
T HR OUGH
C H AN G I N G GE RM ANY
its steel tires making an uproar that coul d be plainly heard aboard the x ra ci ng express Lang freight trains rattled past in the opposite direction With Open work wheels ” ” ” stubby little cars stencil ed Posen E ssen Breslau — B ri i sse l and the like a half dozen employees perched “ in the cubbyhol es on the car ends at regular intervals they were German from engine t o lack of caboose—except ” that here and there a huge box car lettered U S A towered above its puny Boche fellows lik e a mounted guard beside a string Of prisoners There will still be a market for Offi uniforms in Germany though their mi litary cers urge be completely emascul ated E ven the brakemen of these freight trains looked like lieutenants or captains ; a major in appearance proved to be a station guard a colonel sol d tickets and the station mast er might easily hav e been mistaken for a Feldmarscha ll S ome were, in fact For when the Yanks first occupied the region Tnany commanders comp lained that German Of ficers of their were not saluting them as required by orders ofthe A rmy of O ccupation Investigation disclosed the harml ess identity ” Of cers in question Bu t the rule was of the imposing fi amended to include any one in uniform ; we could not be wasting our time to find ou t whether the wearer ofa gen e ra l s shoul der straps was the recent comm ander of the SO that now Allied 4 t h A rmy C orps or the town crier Officers were saluted by the police the firemen the mai lmen —incl— uding the half grown ones w h o carry special delivery ” — letters and even by the white wings T hose haughty E i senbahnbeamten took their orders now ” from p lain American bucks took them unquestioningly with signs of fri endliness with a docile uncomp l aining shall I say fatalism ? The far famed German discipline had not broken down even under occupation ; it carried A conductor pass o n as persistently as doggedly as ever i ng through ou r car recalled a hobo experien ce ou t i n -
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22
GERM AN CIVIL IANS L INED UP B EFORE THE BAC K ENT RANCE TO M QUA RT ERS AWAITIN G P ERM I SSION TO EXPL AIN WHY THEY WI S H OUT S IDE OU R ZON E OF OCCUPATION A
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E R IC A N H E A D
TO T RAVEL
AM ERIC AN F ORM AL GUA RD M OUNT I N A SQUA RE OF C OBLENZ TH E GERM AN RESIDENT S AL WAYS WATCHED T H I S F UNCTION WIT H GREAT INT EREST -
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ON
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TO T HE RH I N E
West back i n the early days of the century A rmed trainm en had driven the summer time harvest offree ri ders or more than a week until so great a multi Of ftheir trains f tude Of boes had collected in a water tank town OfD akota that we took a freight one day completely by storm from cow catcher t o caboose And the bloodthi rsty fi re eating brakeman who picked hi s way along that train gently requesting the uninvited railroad guests to Give us a ” place for a foot there pal won t you please ? had the selfsame expression on his face as di d this apologetic smirking square headed Boche who sidled so gently past us My fellow Of fi ce r s found them cringin g detestably servi le ” P ut a gun in their hands said one and you d see how quick their character would change It s a whole damned — e nation crying K am rad! p l aying possum until the danger ” is over Probably it was Bu t there were times when one could not help wondering if after all there was not sincerity in the assertion Of my guide ofthe night before : We are done ; we have had enough at last ou r
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G ER MA N Y
T H E AME R ICAN
U N DE R
HE
H EE L
R esidence City Of C oblenz headquarters Of the Ameri can Army Of O ccupation is one of the finest o n the R hine Wealth has long gravitated toward the triangle Of land at its junction with the Moselle The — — or owners recent owners O fmines in Lorraine make their homes there The mother Of the late unlamented K aiser was fond ofthe place and saw to it that no factory ch im neys came to sully its skies with their smoke or its streets and her tender heart strings with the wan and sooty serfs Of industrial progress The British at Cologne had more imposing quarters ; the French at Mayence and part i cu A la rly at Wiesbaden enjoyed more artistic advantages few ofou r virile warriors still too young to distinguish real enjoyment from the fle sh pots incident to metropolitan bustle were sometimes heard t o grumble H uh ! they gave ” B u t t h e consensus Of Opinion a s third choice all right ! among the A mericans was contentment The sudden change from the mud burrows ofthe Argonne or from the war worn villages Ofthe Vosges made it natural tha t some should draw invidious comparisons between ou r long suf T hose fering ally and the apparently unscathed enemy ” who saw the bogy of propaganda in every corner accused the Germans Of preferring that the occupied territory be the R hineland rather than the interior of Germany b e cause this garden spot would make a better impression
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24
VA GA B OND I N G
T HR OUGH
C HAN G I N G GE RM A NY
some other member of the family in order t o make another bed available It means having your daughters come into constant close contact with selfassertive young men often handsome and fascinating ; it means subjecting yourself or at least your plans t o t h e rul es sometimes even to the whim s ofthe occupiers The Americans came to C oblenz wi thout any of those bombastic formalities with which the imagination i mbues an occupation One day the streets were full of sol diers a bit slow in their movements and thinking processes dressed i n bedraggled dull gray and the next with more soldiers of qui ck perception and buoyant step dressed in khaki The new— comers were just p lain fighters still dressed in what t h e shambles ofthe Argonne had left them They settled down to a shave and a bath o f clothing and such comforts as were to be had with the unassuming adaptability that marks the Am erican The Ger ans seeing no signs ofthose unpl easant things whi ch had always attended thei r occupation of a conquered land probably smil ed t o themselves and whispered that these A meri caner were strangely ignorant of military privi l eges They di d not realize that their ow n conception ofa triumphant army the rough treatment the tear i t apart and take what y ou want for— yourself style of v on Kl uck s pets was not the America n manner The doughboy might hate a German man behind a machi ne gun as effectively as any one but his hatred did not extend to the man s women and children With the l atter particularly he q uickly showed that ca ma rademe f or which the French had found hi m remarkable and the p lump little square— headed boys and the over blond little girls flocked about h i m so densely that an order had t o be issued requi ri ng parents t o keep t heir children away from Ameri can barracks B u t the Germans soon learned that the occu pi ers knew what they were about or at least learned with vertiginous w ith
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26
GERM ANY UND ER TH E
AM ER I CAN
HEE L
rapidity A burgomaster who admitted that he might be able t o accommodate four hundred men in hi s town if g iven time was informed that there woul d b e six thousand troops there in an hour and that they must be lodged b e fore nightfall E very factory every industry ofa size worth considering that produced anything ofuse to the Ar my of O ccupation was taken over We p ai d well for everything — o r rather the Germans did in the end under of the sort — the ninth article ofthe armistice but we took it S carcely a family escaped the piercing eye of the billeting of ficer ; clubs hotel s recreation halls the very schools and churches were wholly or in part filled wi th the boyish conquerors from overseas We commandeered the poor man s drinking places and transferred them into enlisted men s barracks We shooed the rich man ou t of his sumptuous club and turned it over t o our ofi i ce rs We allotted the pompous Festh a lle and many other important buildings to the Y M ” C A and jazz and rag time and burnt cork jokes took the p l ace of Li eder and Mdnnerch or While we occupied their best buildings ,the German staf f which necessity had left in C oblenz huddled into an insignificant littl e house — Promenading citizens encountered pairs on a side street of Yanks patro ll ing w ith fix ed bayonets their favorite Day after day throng s of B oches lined up S pazi erg ang e before the back door t o our head quarters waiting hours t o explain t o American li eutenants why they wished t o travel outside ou r area Though the lieutenants did not breakfast until eight that li n e formed long before daylight and those who did not get i n before noon stood on ou t w ar dly uncomplaining sometimes munching a war bread sandwich unti l the of ce opened again at two taking their fi orders from a buck private probably from Milwaukee with a red band on his arm A flicker ofthe M P s eyelid a fli p of his hand was usually the only command needed ; so ready has his li feti me of discip line made the average .
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VA GA B OND I N G
T HROUGH
C HAN G I N G GERM ANY
German t o o b ey any one who has an authoritative manner E very railway station gate even the crude little ferries across the R hine and the Moselle were subject t o the orders o fpass gathering American soldiers The Germans could not travel write l etters telephone telegraph publish newspapers without Am erican permis sion or acquiescence Meetings were no longer family af fairs ; a German speaking American sergeant in plain clothes sat in on all of them We marched whol e societies f t o jail because they were so careless as to gather about of café tables without the written permission required for such activities When they were arrested for violations ofthese and sundry other orders their fate was settled not after long medi tation by sage old gentlemen but i n the twinkling of an eye by a cocksure lieutenant w h o had reached the maturity oftwenty one or two and who after the custom of ” the A E F made it snappy got it over with a t once and lost no sleep in wondering if his judgment had been wrong In the matter of cafés we touched the German in his tenderest spot by forbidding the sale or consumption o fall joy producing beverages except beer and light wines and the A merican conception of what constitutes a strong — drink does not jibe with the German s and permitted even those to be served only fromeleven to two and from five to — seven though later we took pity on the poor Boche and extended the latter period three hours deeper into the evening Occasi ona i ncidents transcended a bit the spirit of ou r really lenient occupation We ordered the S t ars and S tripes to be flown from every building we occupied ; and there were colonels who made special trips to Paris to get — a flag that could be seen could not help being seen in fact — for fifty kilometers round about The Germans trembled with fear to see one of their most cher i shed bad customs g o by the board when a divisional order commanded them .
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GERM ANY U ND ER TH E
AMER I CAN
HEE L
to leave their windows open at night which these strange new comers considered a means of avoiding rather than abetting the flu and kindred ailm ents O ver in M ayen a band of citizens in some wi l d lark or a surge of de m oc ” racy dragged a stone statue ofthe Kaiser from its pedestal and rolled it ou t to the edge oftown There an A merican sergeant in charge of a stone quarry ordered it broken up for road material The Germans put in a claim of ” several thousand marks to replace this work of art The Am erican of ficer who surveyed the case genially — awarded them three mk fi f ty the value of the stone at current prices In another village the town crier sum m one d forth every inhabitant over the age of ten from the burgomaster down at nine each morning t o sweep the streets and M P s saw to it that no one returned i n doors until the American C O had inspected the work and pronounced it satisfactory Bu t that particular of ficer cannot necessarily be credited with originality for the idea ; he had been a prisoner in Germany We even took liber ties with the German s time O n March 1 2 t h all clocks o fof ficial standing were moved ahead to correspond to the ” summer hour ofFrance and the A E F and that auto m a t i cally forced private timepieces t o be advanced also My host declined for a day or two to conform but he had only to miss one train to be cured ofhi s obstinacy C oblenz was awakened by the insistent notes of the Am erican reveille ; it was reminded ofbedtime by that most impres sive of cradl e songs the American taps the solemn repose ful notes of which floated ou t across the Rhi ne like an invitation to wilful humanit y t o l ay away its disputes as it had its labors ofthe day In the main for all the occupation civi lian li fe proceeded normally Trains ran on time ; cinemas and music halls perpetrated their customary pi ffle on crowded and u proari o u s houses ; bare kneed football games occupied the leisure ,
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29
VA G
A B ON D I N G TH R OU GH
C HAN G I N G GE RM ANY
hours of German youths ; newspapers appeared as usual subject only to the warning to steer clear of a few spec ifi e d subjects ; cafés were filled at the pop ul ar hours in spi te of the restrictions on consumption and t he tendency of their orchestras t o degenerate into rag time Would military occupation be anything like this in say D elaware ? We often caught ourselves asking the question and striving to visualize our ow n land under a reversal of conditions B u t the imagination never carried us very far in that direction ; at least those ofu s who had left it in the early days of the war were unab le t o picture ou r native heath under any such reg i me Though we appropriated their best to ou r own purposes the Germans will find it hard to allege any such wanton treatment oftheir property their homes their castles and their government b uildings a s their ow n hordes so often committed in France and B elgium O ur offi cers and men with rare exceptions gave the habitations that had tem porari ly become theirs by right of conquest a care which they would scarcely have bestowed upon their ow n The ballroom floor of C ob le nz s most princely club was solici tously covered with canvas to protect it from offi ce rs hob nails C astle S tolzenfels a favorite place of doughboy pilgr i mage a bit farther up the Rh ine was supplied with felt slippers for heavily shod visitors The B aedekers of the future will no doubt call the tourist s attention t o the fact that such a S ch loss that this governor s palace and that colonel s residence were once occupied by American soldi ers but there will be small chance to insinuate as they have against the French of 1 689 into the description ofhalf the monuments on the R hine the charge destroyed by the Americans in 1 9 1 9 How quickly war shakes down ! U ntil we grew so accus t om e d to it that the impression faded away it was a con stant surprise to note how all the business oflife went on ,
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GERMAN OFFI CERS—
A
IN
T H E DAY S
B
EF O RE THE
BU SY TI M E ON T H E GERMAN F RONT
AR M I STI C E
A B OND I N G T HR OU GH
VA G
C HA N G I N G
G ERM
ANY
that his army has not been beaten ; that on the contrary he had all the mil itary prest ige of the war Then he knew that there was increasing scarcity of food at home and feeling that the Al lies were in mortal dread of new drives by the German army and woul d be onl y too glad to compromise he proposed an armistice Germany expected the world to supply her gladl y with all her needs as a mark of good faith and to encourage the timorous Allies she fered t o let them advance to the R hine of N ow the Ger fect to wonder why Germany is not comp l etely mans af di ou s Allies and why the garrisons supplied by the pe rfi having been allowed to see the beautiful R hine scenery do not withdraw Not only the ignorant classes but those supposedly educated take that attitude They consider apparently that the armistice was an agreement for mutual benefit and the idea that the war was anything but a draw with the prestige all on the German side has not y et pene t ra t e d to the German mind — — With the above i t was written in January and the outward show of friendliness for the American Army of O ccupation as a text I examined scores of Germans of all classes whom ou r sergeants picked ou t of the throngs that passed through our hands and pushed one by one into my little offi ce overlooking the R hine Their attitude their answers were always the same parrot— like in their sameness B efore a week had passed I coul d have set down the replies almost in their exact words the instant the man to be interviewed appeared in the doorway to click his heels resoundingly whi le holding hi s arms st itfi y at his sides As becomes a long disciplined people the German is certainl y no individualist O nce one has a key to it one can be just as sure what he is going to do and how he is going to do it as one can that duplicates of the shoes one has always worn are going to fit Yet what did they really think away down under their generations ,
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2 3
GERM ANY UND ER
T HE AMER I CAN
HEE L
discipline ? This pr ocession of men with their close cropped heads and their china blue eyes that looked at me as innocently as a Nurnberg doll who talked so glibly with apparent friendliness and perfect frankness surely has some thoughts hidden away in the depths of their souls Yet one seldom if ever caught a glim pse of them Pos s i b ly there were none there ; the iron discipline of a half centu ry may have kill ed the hidden roots as well as destroyed the plant itself In contrast with the stur di l y independent American sharply indi vidualistic still in spite of hi s year or two of army training these heel clicking automatons were e a pe ra t i ng in their garrulous taciturnity ” What most characterizes the German said M osers ” more than a century ago is obedi ence respect for force What probably struck the plain Am erican doughboy even more than mere obedience was their passive docility their immedi ate compliance with all ou r requirements They coul d have been so mean so di sobedient in petty little ways Instead they seemed to g o w ithout openly disobeying ou t of their road t o make ou r task o f occupation easy Their racial di scip line not merely di d not break down ; it permeated every nook and corner The very children never gave a gesture a whi sper of wilful ness ; the family warning found them as docile as a lifetime oftraining had left the adul ts It was easy to imagine French or American — boys under the same conditions all the bright little Hal low e e n tricks they woul d have concocted to make unpleasant the life ofthe abhorred enemy rul ers Was it not perhaps this from the German point of view criminally u ndi sci pli ne d character ofother races as much as their own native brutality that caused the armies of the K aiser to infli ct so many unfair punishments ? Any traveler who has noted the abhorrence wi th whi ch the German looks upon the sim — raction of the most insignificant order the mere ple st inf ” entering by a Verbotener E ingang —that the American of
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VA GA B OND I N G
T HR OUGH
C H AN GI N G GERM ANY
woul d disobey and pay his fine and go his way with a smile ofamusement on his face will not find it dif ficult to visualize the re d rage with which the German soldier beheld any lack of seriousness toward the stem and sacred commands of their armi es ofoccupation None ofus guessed aright as to Germany s action in case ofdefeat Talk of starvation though we will she did not fight to a standstill as our South did for example Sh e gave proof of a strong faith in the old adage beginning He who fights and runs aw ay Sh e quit when the tide turned not at the last crag of refuge and one could not but feel less respect for her people accordingly Bu t what ever remnant ofestimation may have been left after their sudden abandonment of the field might have been enhanced by an occasional lapse from their docility by a proof now and then that they were human after all Instead we got something that verged v ery closely upon cringing as a personal enemy one had just trou nced might bow hi s thanks and of fer to light his Victor s cigar It is impossible to believe that any one coul d be rendered so docile by mere orders from above It is im possible to believe they had no hatred in their hearts for the nation that finally turned the balance ofwar against them It must be habit habit formed by those with superimposed rulers as contrasted with those who have their word or at least fancy they have in their ow n government That they should take the fortunes of war philosophically was comprehensible The most chauvinistic ofthem must now and then have had an inkling that those who live by the sword might some day catch the flash of it over their own heads O r it may be that they had grown so used to military ru l e that ours did not bother them E xcept to their politicians their ex of fi cer s and the like who must have realized most keenly that some one else was holding ” the bag what real difference is there between being ruled ,
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34
G ERM A NY UN D ER T HE
A MER I CA N
HEE L
by a just and not ungentle enemy from across the sea and by an iron stem hi erarchy in distant Berlin ? Besides has not Germany long contended that the stronger peoples have absolute rights over the weaker ? Why then shoul d they contest their own argum ent when they suddenly di s covered to their astonishment that their clai m s to the position of superman were poorly based ? The weak — have no ri ghts i t is the German hi mself who has said so Was it this belief that gave their attitude toward us ou t w ardly at least a suggestion of almost A rabic fatal sm ? i It is no such anomaly as it may seem that the German and the Turk shoul d have joined forces ; they have con si de ra b le in common A llah Il Allah Thy will be done The last thing the Germans showed toward our Army of O ccupation was enmity Nothing pointed to a smoldering resentment behind their masks as for example with the Mexicans There was slight difference between an errand of liaison to a b ur eau of the German staf fof fi ce r s left in C ob lenz and simila r commissions to the French or the — Italians before the armistice an atmosphere onl y a tri fl e more strained which was natural in view of the fact that I came t o order rather than to ca jole The observation balloon that rode the sky above ou r area its immense S tars and Stripes visible even in unoccupied territory was frequently pointed ou t with interest never with any evidence of animosity There was a constant stream of people principally young men through ou r o ffices inquir ing h ow they could most easily emigrate to Am erica Inci dentally we were besieged by scores of Americans who spoke not a word of E nglish who had been caught here ” by the war an d had in many cases killed time by serving in the Germ an army but who now demanded all the priv i le g es which their citizenship was supposed to confer upon them A German major wr ote a long letter ofappli ca tion for admission into the American army with the bland -
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35
A B OND I N G T HROUGH
VA G
CH
AN G I N G
GERM A NY
complacency with which a pedagogue whose school had been abolished might apply for a position in another There was not a sign of resentment even against German Ameri — cans as the B oche was accustomed to call them until he discovered the virtual non existence ofany such anomaly for having entered the war against the old Fatherland The government oftheir adopted country had ordered them t o do so and no one understands better than the German that government orders are issued t o be obeyed Some contended that the women in particular had a deep resentment against the A merican soldiers that they were still loyal to the Kaiser and to the old order of things that they saw in us the murderers oftheir sons and husbands the jailers of their prisoners O n a few rare occasions I felt a breath of frigidity in the attitude ofsome g rande dame o fthe haughtier class Bu t whether it was a defini tepolicy o fconciliation t o win the friendship of America in the h0pe that it would soften the blow of the Treaty of Peace as a naughty boy strives to make up for his naughtiness at sight of the whip being taken down from its hook o r a ” mere mothering instinct the vast majority ofou r host esses even though war widows went ou t o f their way to make our stay with them pleasant Clothes were mended b u ttons sewed on unasked Maids and housewives alike gave o u r quarters constant att ention The mass ofAmeri cans on the R hine came with the impression that they woul d be forced to go heavily armed day and night E xcept ficer f or the established patrols and sentries the man o r of toted a weapon anywhere in the occupied area wh o could scarcely have aroused the ridicule of his comrades more had he appeared in sword and armor There was to be sure a rare case of an A merican soldier being done to death by hoodlums in some drunken brawl but for the matter of that so the re was in France N ow and then one stumbled upon the sophistry that seems .
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36
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GERM ANY UND ER
TH E
A M E RI CA N
H EE L
so established a trait i n the German character N o cor pora t i on l awy er coul d have been more clever i n finding loopholes in the proclamations issued by the Army ofOccu ” f than those adherents the scrap of paper fallacy a i o n o t p w h o set ou t t o do so My host sent up word from tim e to time for permission t o Spend an ev ening with me over a bottle ofwell aged Rhine wine with which his cellar seemed stil l t o be li berally stocked O n one occasion the conversa tion turned to several holes in the ceili ng ofmy sumptuous parlor They were the result the pompous old judge exp lained ofan air raid during the l ast A ugust of the war A bomb had carried away the window shutters portions of the granite steps beneath and had liberally pockmarked the stone facade ofthe house ” It was horrible he growl ed We all had t o g o down into the cellar and my poor little grandson cried from fright Tha t is no way to make war against the innocent ” non combatants and women and chil dren I did not trouble to ask him if he had expressed the same senti ments among hi s fell ow club members in say M ay 1 91 5 f or his sophistry was t oo well trained to be caught i n so simp l e a trap Whatever the docility the conciliatory attitude of our forced hosts however I have yet t o hear that one ofthem ever expressed repentance for the horrors thei r nation loosed upon the worl d The war they seemed t o take as the natural the unavoidab l e thi ng just a part of li fe as the gam bler takes gamb ling with no other regret than that it was their bad l uck t o lose Like the gambler they may have been sorry they made certain moves in the game ; they may have regretted enteri ng the game at all as the gambler woul d who knew i n the end that his adversary had more money on his h i p than he had given him credit for in the beginning Bu t it was never a regret for being a gambler D id not Nietzsche say that t o regret t o repent .
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VA GA B OND I N G
T HR OUGH
C HAN G I N G GERM ANY
U nless there was something under his
i s a sign of weakness ?
mask that never showed a hint ofits existence on the surface the German is still a firm disciple of Nietzschean philosophy There was much debate among American of cers as to fi just what surge of feeling passed through the veins of a German of high rank forced to salute his conquerors With rare exceptions every B oche in uniform rendered the required homage with meticulous care N ow and then one carefully averted his eyes or turned to gaze into a shop window in time to avoid the humiliation Bu t for the most part they seemed almost to go ou t oftheir way to salute some almost brazenly others with a half frien dl y li ttl e b ow I shall long remember the invariable click ofheels and the smart hand to cap of the resplendent old general with a white beard who passed me each morning on the route to o u r respective of fices That there was feeling under these brazen exteriors however was proved by the fact that most of the of ficers in the occupied area slipped quietly into Civili an clothes f or no other apparent reason than to escape the unwelcome order From the day ofou r entrance no German in uniform was permitted in our territory unless on of ficial business sanctioned by our authorities Bu t the ter uniform was liberally interpreted A discharged soldier unab le to invest i n a new wardrobe attained civilian status by ex changing his ugly round red banded fatigue bonnet for a hat or cap ; small boys were not rated soldiers simply because they wore cut down uniforms Then on March 1 st came a new order from ou r headquarters commanding all members of the German army in occupied territory never to appear in public out ofuniform always to carry ficially papers showing their presence in ou r area to b e of authoriz ed and to report to an A merican of fi cial every Monday morning The streets of C oblenz blossomed ou t that day w ith more varieties ofGerm an uniforms tha n ,
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38
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GERM ANY UND ER T HE
AMER I CAN
HEE L
most members of the A E F had ever seen outside a prisoner ofwar inclosure It was easy to understand why German s i n uniform saluted— t h ey were commanded to do so Bu t why did every ma le from childhood up in many distri cts raise ” hi s hat to us with a subservient n Ta g ; why the same words with a hint of courtesy from the women ? Was it fear respect habit design ? It could scarcely have been sarcasm ; the German peasantry barely knows the meaning Why should a section foreman whose only sug of that gestion ofa uniform was a battered old railway cap go out o fhis way to render us mili tary homage ? Personally I am incli ned to think that had conditions been reversed I should have climbed a tree or crawled into a culvert Bu t we came to wonder if they did not consider the salute a p ri vilege O nly the well dressed in the cities showed an attitude that seemed in keeping wi th the situation from ou r point ofvi ew They frequently avoided looking at us pretended no t t o see us treated us much as the C hinese take their invisible property man at the theater At the back door of ou r headquarters the pompous high priests of business and politics or those haughty well set u p young men who one could see at a glance had been army o f ficers averted their eyes to hide the rage that burned within them when forced to stand their turn behind some slat tern woman or begrimed workman In a tramway or train now and then it was amusing to watch a former captain or major weather browned with servi ce in the field still boldly di splayi ng his kai serly mustache still wearing hi s army leggings and breeches looking as ou t of place in hi s civilian coat as a cowboy with a cane as he half openly gritted his teeth at ” the undisciplined American privates who dared do as they p leased wi thout so much as asking his leave Bu t it was no less amusing t o note how superbly ob livious t o hi s wrath were the merrymaki ng doughboys .
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39
AGA B ON D I N G T HR OUG H
C H AN G I N G GERM AN Y
V
The kai serly mustache ofworld wi de fame by the way has largely disappeared at least in the American sector In fac t the over modest lip decoration made famous by ” ou r most popul ar movie star seemed t o be the vogue More camouflage ? More K a memd A gentle com pli ment t o the Americans ? O r was it merely the natural change ofstyle the passing that in time befalls all things hu man or ka i serli ch ? Speaking o f German of ficers when the first inkling leaked ou t of Paris that Germany might be required by the terms of the Treaty ofPeace t o reduce her army to a hundred thousand men there was a suggestion of panic among our German acquaintances It was not that they were eager to serve their three years as conscripts as their fathers had done There was parrot like agreement that no government woul d ever again be able to force the man hood ofthe land to that sacrifice N or was there any great fear that so small an army would be inadequate to the requirements of democratized Germany The question was What on earth can we do with all ou r of ficers if ” you allow us only fou r thousand or so ? Prohibition I believe raised the same grave problem with regard to ou r bartenders Bu t as we visualized ou r own army reduced to the same stern necessity the panic was comprehensible What would we under si milar circumstances do with many ofou r dear old colonels ? They would serve admirably — as taxi door openers along Fifth Avenue were it not for their pride They would scarcely make good grocery clerks ; they were not spry enough nor accurate en ough at figures However the predicament is one the Germans can scarcely expect the Allies to solve for them ” War said Voltaire is the business of Germany One realized more and more the fact in that assertion as new details of the thorough mil itarization of land population and industry came to light under ou r occupancy Fort i fi ca -
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40
GERM ANY UN D ER TH E
AMER I CAN
H EE L
tions labyri nths ofsecret tunnel s massi ve stores ofevery thing that could by any possibility be of use in the com plicated business ofwar ; every man up through middle age who had still t w o legs to stand on marked with hi s service in Mars s worksh op ; there was some hint ofmilitarization at every turn N ot the least striking of them was the agg re s sive propaganda i n favor ofwar and ofloyalty to the war lords N ot merely were there monum ents inscriptions martial mottoes to din the mil itary inclination into the simple Volk wherever the eye turned In the most miser able little Gastha u s with its bare floors and not hal f enough cover on the beds t o make a winter night comfortable huge framed pictures ofmartial nature stared down upon the shivering guest Here hung a life size portrait ofH i nden burg ; there was a war scene ofBlucher crossing the Rhi ne ; ” beyond an Opf erg a b en de s Volkes i n which a long line of simple l aboring people had come t o present with great — r i deference their most che shed possession a bent old — peasant a silver heirloom ; a girl her hai r on the altar of their rul ers martial ambition It is doubtful whether the Germans have any conception of h ow wi dely this harvest oftares has overspread their national li fe It may come to them years hence when grim necessi ty h as forced them t o di g up the pernicious roots B u t the old order was already begi nni ng t o show si gns of change O n a government buil ding over at Tri er the first word ofthe lettering K c mi g li ch er Hauptzollamt had been ob literated In a little town down the R hine t h e dingy ,
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H OT EL DEUT SCH ER KA I SER
Din
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mk so .
u nd
hoher
had the word Kaiser painted over though it was still visible through the whi tewash as if ready t o come back at a new turn ofevents ,
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VAGABONDING
T HR OUGH
C HAN G I N G GERM ANY
The adaptability of the German as a merchant has long since been proved by his commercial success all over the world It quickly became evident to the Army of O ccupa tion that he was not going to let his feelings — i fhe had any —interfere with business As a demand for German uni forms equipment in signia faded away behind the retreat ing armies ofthe K aiser commerce instantly adapted itself to the new conditions Women who had earned their liveli hood or their pin money for four years b y embroidering shoulder straps and knitting sword knots for the soldiers in field gray quickly turned their needles to making the ornaments for which the inquiries of the new— comers showed a demand Shop windows blossomed ou t overnight in a chaos of divisional insignia of servi ce stripes with kh aki cloth and the coveted shoulder pins from brass bars t o silver stars with anything that could appeal t o the Ameri can doughboy as a suitable souvenir of his stay om the — R hi ne and this last covers a mult itude of sins indeed Iron cros ses of both classes were dangled before his eager eyes The sale of these highest prizes of German man hood to their enemies as mere pocket pieces roused a howl of protest in the local papers but the trinkets could still be had if more or less su b rosa Spiked helmets he must be an uninventive or an absurdly truthful mem ber of the new Watch on the R h i ne who cannot show visible evidence to the a mazed folks at home of having captured at least a dozen B oche of ficers and despoiled them of their headgear Those helmets were carried of f by truck loads from a storehouse just across the Mo selle ; they loaded down the A E F mails until it is strange there were ships left with space for soldiers home ward bound A sergeant marched into his captain s billet in an outlying town with a telescoped bundle ofsix hel mets and laid them down with a snappy Nine marks each sir .
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42
GERM ANY UND ER THE
AMER I CA N
HEE L
Can y o u get me a half dozen too ? asked a visiting lieutenant Don t know sir replied t h e sergeant He made these out ofsome remnants he had left on hand but he is no t sure he can get any more material If we had not awakened to ou r peri l in time and the Germans had taken New York would ou r seamstresses have made German flags and ou r merchants have promi ne nt ly disp l ayed them in their windows tagged with the p rice ? Possibly We of the A E F have learned some thi ng of the divorce of patriotism from business since the days when the money grabbers first descended upon us in the training camps at home The merchan ts ofCoblenz at any rate were quite as ready to take an order for a or a red white and S tars and S tripes six feet by four as f b lack banner What most astoni shed perhaps the khaki clad warriors who had just escaped from France was the t e eri ng tendencies German s lack ofprofi Prices were not only mod erate ; they remained so in Spite of the influx of Americans and the constant drop in the value ofthe mark The only orders on the subject issued by the American authorities was the ruling that prices must be the same for Germans and for the soldiers of occupation ; nothing hi n dered merchants from raising their rates t o a ll yet this rarely happened even in the case of articl es of almost exclusive Am erican consumption ” shi ne parlors sometimes with the added entice Shoe— ” ment We Shine Your Hobnails sprang up in every block and were so quickly filled with Yanks intent on obey ” ing the placard to L ook Li ke a S oldier that the pro t had perforce encourage their own timid people s o r r i e t o p ” B arber by posting the notice Germans A lso Adm itted shops developed hair carpets from sheer inability to fi nd time to sweep out and at that the natives were hard put to it to get rid of their ow n facial stubble When the -
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43
VAGA BON DING
T HROUGH
C H AN G I N G GERM ANY
abhorred order against photography by members of the A E F was suddenly and unexpectedly lifted the camera shops resemb led the entrance to a ball park on the day of the deciding game between the two big leagues There was nothing timid or squeamish about German commerce Shops were quite ready to display post cards showing French ruins with chesty German ofi i cers strutting in the fore ground once they found that these appealed to the inde fatigable and all embracing American souvenir hunter D own in C ologne a German printing shop worked overtime ficial history of the American 3 d Division t o get ou t an of In the cafés men who had been shooting at us three months f our ow n popular airs and before sat placidl y sawing of struggling to perpetrate in all its native horror that i nex ” American jazz The sign c u sab le hubbub known as the ” Am erican spoken here met the eye at frequent intervals Whether the wording was from ignorance sarcasm, an attempt to b e complimentary or a sign of hatred of the E nglish has not been recorded There was not much call for the statement even when it was true for it was astounding what a high percentage ofthe Army of O ccupa tion spoke enough German to get by The French never tired of showing their surprise when a Yank addressed them in their ow n tongue ; the Germans took it as a matter of course though they often had the ill manners to insist E nglish whatever the fluency ofthe customer o n speaking in their own language a barbaric form of impoliteness which the French are usually too instinctively tactful to commit O n the banks of the Rhine in the heart of Du ddleb u g keep it dark ! It is merely the American telephone girls name for C oblenz but it would be a grievous treachery if some car eless rea der let the secret leak ou t to B erlin there stands one of the forty eight palaces that belonged to the ex K aiser Its broad lawn was covered now with .
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VAGA BONDING
T HR OU GH
C HAN G I N G GERM ANY
of
style was on the whole oppressiv e In the entire series of rooms there was a lmost nothi ng really worth l ooking at for itself except a few good paintings and an occasional insignificant little gem tucked away in some corner They were mainly filled with costly and useless bric a brac royal presents ofchiefly bad taste from Sultan Pope and poten tate all stuck about with a v ery stif fair and the customary German over ornateness The place looked far less like a residence than like a museum which the defenseless ow ner had been forced to build to house the irrelevant mass of junk that h ad been thrust upon him Costly ivory sets of dominoes chess table croquet what not showed h ow these pathetic beings kings and emperors passed their time whi ch the misfortune oi rank did not permit the m t o spend wandering the streets or grassy fiel ds like mere human beings The old caretaker had some silly little anecdot e for alm ost every article he pointed out He had taken thou sands ofvisitors through the castle i t was never inhabited more than a month or two a year even before the war and the only thing that h ad ev er been stolen was one of the carve d ivory table croquet mallets whi ch had been taken by an A merican R e d Cross nurse I was forced to adm it that we had people like that even in America In — the royal chapel now an American Protestant church the place usually taken by the pipe organ served as a half hidden balcony for the K aiser with three glaring red plush — chairs tho se ugly red plush chairs no one ofwhich looked comfortable enough actually to sit in screamed at one all — over the building with a similar simpler embrasure op servants The main or the emperor s personal posi t e f floor bel ow was fully militarized , like all Germany the pews on the right side being reserved for the army and — inscribed with large letters from front to rear Generali ” ” ” Of fizi ere und H och b eam General K ommando t at .
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46
T HE RH INE ST EAM ERS RAN A S U S UA L BUT T H EY W ERE C OMM ANDED B Y M A RINES AND C A RRI ED AM ERICAN DOU GHBOY S A S PA SSEN GERS ,
AM ERI C AN NU RSES EN T ERTAININ G AU ST RAL IAN S OL DI ERS ON AN EXC U RSION UP T HE RH IN E
GERM ANY UND ER TH E
AMER I CAN
HEE L
ter and so on in careful order ofrank R e d slip covers with a design of crowns endlessly repeated protected from dust most of the furniture in the sa lons and drawing rooms and incidentally shielded the eye for the furniture itself w as far uglier than the covering The most pompous of nou recmx ri ches coul d not have shown more evidence of self worship in their decorations Immense paintings of themselves and of their ancestors covered half the Hohenzollern walls showing them in heroic attitudes and gigantic size alone with the world at their feet or in the very thick of battles looking calm collected and unafraid amid generals and followers who from B ismarck down had an air of fear which the royal central figure disco unte nanced by contrast Huge por i i rs t eh emperors a goodly percentage traits ofprinces ku rf of them looking not quite intelligent enough to make e f fi cient night watchmen stared haughtily from all sides A picture of the old Hohenzoll ern castl e from whi ch the — — family and many of the world s woes o riginally sprang occupied a prominent pl ace as an Am erican Napoleon ” might hang in his R iverside drawing room a of finance painting ofthe old farm from whi ch he set ou t to conquer the earth Much alleged art by members of the royal — — rst family as fondly preserved as Lizzy s fi and l ast school drawing stood on easels or tables in prominent insistent positions Prese nts from the Sul tan were particul arly nu merou s among them massiv e metal tab lets with bits in Arabic from the K oran O ne of these read according t o ” the caretaker H e who talks least says most or t u Unf na t e ly the K aiser could no t read A rabic hence the part i cu larly pertinent remark was lost upon him In an obscure corner hung one of the inevitable Ger man cuckoo cl ocks placed there if my guide was not mi staken by a former empress in memory ofthe spot where she plighted her troth P oor petty little romances of royal ty ! P robably i t w as -
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A B OND I N G T HR OUGH
VA G
C H AN G I N G GERM ANY
f so much coquetry a s an ef ort to escape the pseudo ce nce of those appalling rooms that drove her into mag ni fi the corner How could any one be comfortable either i n mind or in body with such junk about them much less pass the romantic hours of life in their midst ? I should much have preferred to have my Verlobu ng sku ss in a railway station ; Only the library of the ex empress with its German French a nd E nglish novels and its works of piety showed any sign of real human individuality Her favorite picture — hung there a painting showing a half starved woman weep ing and praying over an emaciated child called The ” ficacy ofPrayer No doubt the dear empress got much Ef — sentimental solace ou t of i t just before the royal dinner w a s announced The Kaiser s private sleeping room on — the other hand was simplicity itself far less sumptuous than my own a few b locks away He had last slept there said the caretaker in the autumn of 1 9 1 4 while moving f toward the w estern front with his staf And all this belongs to the state now since Germany ” has become a republic ? I remarked ” O nly a part of it replied my guide We are making up lists of the private and crown property and his ow n ” possessions will be returned to the K aiser The outstand ing feature of the visit was not the castle i tself however but the attitude ofthis lifelong servant of the im perial owner The assertion that no man is a hero to his valet applies evidently clear up to emperors The caretaker was a former soldier in a Jager and forestry battal f i on born i n the T uri ng erw ald fi t y six years ago a man of 1nt e lli g e nce and not without education He had been one ofhundreds who applied for a position in the imperial household in 1 882 winning the coveted place because he ” came with an armful of fine references T o him t h e Kaiser and a ll his clan were just ordinary men for whom h e not
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48
GERM A NY UND ER
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AMER I CAN
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evidently felt neither reverence nor disdain Nor I am sure was he posing democracy ; he looked —t oo tired and indifferent to play a part for the benefit of my uniform The many gossipy tales ofroyalty semi nobility and i g no b i li t y with which he spiced ou r stro ll were told neither w ith ill feeling nor with boastfulness ; they were merely his every day thoughts as a printer might talk of hi s presses or a farmer ofhi s crops Wilh elm der E rste the first Kaiser was a good man in every way he asserted He had seen him die He had been called to bring him h i s last glass ofwater Bismarck and a dozen others were gathered about his bed most of them — kneeling the picture of Bismarck on his knees was not — easy to visualize someh o and the emperor died wi th — great di ffi culty my informant demonstrated his l ast moments almost t oo realistically The K aiser h e w h o — wrecked the Hohenzollern ship was a v ery ordinary man possibly something above the average in intelligence but he did not have a fair chance in life There was his useless arm and then his ear For forty years he had suf fered atrociously from an abscess in his left ear The caretaker had seen him r aging mad w ith it N o treatment ever helped him N o it was not cancer though his mother died of that after inhuman suf fering but it was getting nearer and nearer t o his brain and he coul d not l ast many years now Then there was his arm N o it was not inherited but resulted from the criminal carelessness of a midwife For years he used an apparatus in the hope ofgettin g some strength into that arm tying his left hand to a lever and working it back and forth with his right Bu t it never did any good H e never g ot t o the point where he could li ft that arm without taking hold of it with the other He grew extraordinarily clever in covering up hi s i nfi rmi ty ; when he rode he placed the reins in the useless left hand with the right and few woul d have realized that they were .
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VAGA B OND I N G
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just lying there without any grasp on them at all He kept that arm ou t ofphotographs ; he kept it turned away from the publi c with a success that was almost super human O n the whole he was a man with a good mind N 0 one of average intelligence can help being a knowing man if he has Ministers and counselors and all the wise men of the realm ” coming to him every day and telling him everything Bu t he had too much power t oo much chance to rule He dis missed Bismarck f a man such as there is only one born ” in a century when he was himself still far too young to be his own C hancellor He never could take adv ice ; when his Ministers came to him they were not allowed to tell him what they thought ; they could only salute and do what he ordered them to do And he never understood that he shoul d choose his words with care because they m ade more impression than those ofan ordinary man It was only when I chanced upon his favorite th eme we had returned to his little lodge decorated with the antlers and tusks that were the trophies of his happiest — days that the caretaker showed any actual enthusiasm f or the ex Kaiser I asked if it were true that the former emperor was a good shot he cried his A u sg ezei chnet! weary eyes lighting up ; he was a marvelous shot ! I have myself seen him kill more than eight hundred creatures in — o ne day and do not forget that he had to shoot with one arm at that ; He di d not mention how much better record than that the War Lord had made on the western front nor the precautions his long experience in t he hunt ing fi had taught him t o take against any possible eld rep risal by hi s stalked and cornered game The Crown Prince he had told me somewhere along the way in the oppressive royal museum was a very nice little b oy but his educators spoiled him S ince manhood he had bee n somewhat lei chtsi mi i g —i t was the same expres sion the old refrain that I had heard wherever the Kaiser s ,
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50
GE RM A NY UN D ER T HE
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‘
heir was mentioned and his mind runs chiefly on women In one of the rooms we had paused before a y ou t hfu l por ” trait ofQueen Victoria I have seen her often remarked Sh e came often to visit my guide in hi s colorless voice us at many of the palaces and the first thing she invari ably ” called for the moment she arrived was cognac It may have been merely a little side— slap at the hated E nglish but there was something in that particular portrait that suggested that the queen woul d have made a very lively little g ri sette had fate chanced to cast her in that role Bismarck was plainly the old servant s fav orite among the titled throng he had served and observed When the second Kaiser died h e reminisce d after his very short reign — — h e was a good man t oo though proud h e gave me a message that I was t o hand over to Bismarck himself in person The long line of courtiers were aghast when I insisted on seeing him ; they stared angrily when I was admitted ahead of them to his private study I knocked and there was a noise inside between a grunt and a growl some ofour ow n dear colonels L mu se d had at least that much Bismarckian about them and after I opened the door I had t o peer about for some time before I could see where he was the tobacco smoke was so thick He always smoked like that Bu t he was an easy man to talk to if y ou really had a good reason for coming to see him and I had When I went out all the courtiers stared at me with wonder but I just waved a hand to them and said The audience is over gentlemen ! Ah yes I have seen much ” in my day a ber he concluded re si g ne dly a s he accompanied me to the door ofh i s lodge a lle di ese gu te Z ei ten si nd lei der .
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N OT
T H O U S H A LT
FRA T E R N IZE
H E armies of occupation have been credited with the discovery of a new crime one not even implied in the Ten Commandments Indeed misinformed mortals have ” usually listed it among the virtues It is fraternization — The average American unless his habitat be New E ngland — cannot remain aloof and haughty Particularly the unsophisticated doughboy bubbling over with li fe and spirits is given to making friends with whatever branch of the human family he chances to find about him More over he was grateful for the advance in material comfort if not in friendliness of Germany as compared with the mutilated p ortion of France he had known He did no t in most cases stop to think that it was the war which had made those differences It was an every day experience to hear some simple country boy in khaki remark to his favorite of ficer in a slow puzzled voice S a ay Lieutenant you know I like these here B o sh i e s a lot better than them ” there Frogs The wrangles and jealousies wi th their neighbors on which the overcrowded peoples of E urope feed from infancy were almost unsuspected by these grown up children from the wide land of Opportunity T h e French took alarm There seemed to be danger that the sa le B och e would wi n over les A méri ca i rzs at least the sympathy o f the men in the ranks by his insidious propaganda As a matter offact I doubt whether he could have done so ,
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N OT
The Germans rather overdid their frien dli ness Particul arly when it bore any suggestion of cringing deliberate or natur al it defeated itself for simple as he may be in matters outside his familiar sphere the American soldier has an a hn ost feminine intuition in catching eventually a some what hazy but on t h e whole true conception of the real facts Bu t ou r allies were taking no chances A ca t e g ori — cal order some say it emanated from Foch himself warned the armies of occupation that there must be no ” fraternization The interpretation of the order varied As was to be expec ted the Americans carried it out more rigorously than did their thr ee allies along the Rh ine Its application also di f fered somewhat in separate regions within our own area At best complete enforcement was impossible With soldi ers billeted in every house what was to hinder a lovelorn buck from making friends with the private who was bill eted in her house and going frequently to visit hi m ? O n cold winter evenings one rarely passed a pair ofAm eri can sentries beside their little coal — fi re s without seeing a slouchy youth o r two in the ugly round cap without vizor which we had so long associated only with prisoners of war or a few shivering and hungry girls hovering in the vicinity eying t h e sol di ers with an air which suggested that they were willing to give anythi ng for a bit ofwarmth or the leavings of t h e food the sentries were gorging Whether they merely wanted company or aspired to soap and chocolate there was nothing to prevent them getting warmer when there were no offi cers in sight The sol di ers had their ow n conception of the meaning of fraternization Buying a beer for instance was not — fraternizing ; tipping the waiter who served it was unless he happened to be an attractive barmaid Taking a walk or shaking hands with a German man was to disobey the order ; strolling in the moonlight with hi s sister o r even .
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kissing her under cover ofa convenient tree tru nk w as not T h e interrelation of ou r warriors and the civilian popul ation was continually popping up in curious little details T o ” the incessant demand of children for S ch ewi ng Kum as familiar if more guttural as in France the regulation ” answer was no longer No compre e but No fraternize ” B oys shrilling Al ong the Wabash or O ver There little girls i nnocently calling ou t to a shocked passer b y in kh aki some phrase that is more comm on to a railroad construction gang than to polite society under the impression that it was a kindly word of greeting showed how the A merican i n ” flue nce w as spreading had taken the place of S nell toot swee in the sol dier vocab ul ary German sch ools of the future are likely to teach that spuds is the Am erican word for what the verda mmte E ng ld nder call s potatoes When German station guards ran along the platforms / shouting Vorsi ch t! at the approach ofa trai n American soldiers wi th a touch of the native tongue translated it ” into their lingo and added a warning Heads up ! The — adaptable B oche caught the words or thought he di d and thereafter it was no unusual experience t o hear the ” arrival of a S chh ellzu g prefaced with shouts of Hets u b l In the l ater days of the occupation the Yank was more ” apt to be wearing a Gott mi t Uns belt than the narrow web one issued by his supply company and that belt was mo re li kely than not t o be girdl ed round with buttons and metal rosettes from German uniforms as the original American wore the scalps of his defeated enemi es O ur intelligence police frequently ran down merchants or manu f a ct u rers guilty of violating the fraternization order by making or of fering f or sale articles with the German and the Am erican flags intertwined pewter rings bearing the i n si g ni a ofsome A merican division and the iron cross ; alleged meerschaum pipes decorated with some phrase expressive of Germany s deep love f or Am erica i n spite ofthe recent -
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T H E F O RM ER C ROW N P RINC E IN H I S O FFI C I AL FAC E ATT ENDIN G T H E FUN ERA L O F A G ERM AN OFFI C ER AND C OUNT WHO SE M IL ITARY O RD ERS A RE C A RRI ED ON T H E CU S HION IN F RONT ,
,
TH E
H EI R
TO T HE TOPPLED T H RON E W EA RIN G H I S CHARACTERI STI C EXPRESSION
L
UN O FFI C IA
AND
M ORE
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AGA B OND I N G T HR OUGH
C H AN G I N G GERM ANY
question Thus what of the American lieutenant whose father came over from his home in D usseldorf or Mannheim to visit his son ? By strict letter of the law they should not speak to each other What advice could one give a R ussian American soldier whose brother was a civilian in C oblenz ? What should t h e poor Yank do whose German mother wired him that she was coming f rom Leipzig to see him little guessing that for him to be seen in public with any woman no t in American uniform was an invitation to the first M P who saw him to add to the disgruntled ” human collection in the brig ? I chanced to be the goat in a curious and embarrassing situation that grew quite naturally out of the non fr at erni z ing order It was down the river at Andernach a town which in the words of the doughboy boasts the only — cold water geyser in the world except the Y M C A ” f had taken over the palace ofa family A divisional staf of the German nobility who had fled to Berlin at our approach O ne day the daughter of the house unexpectedly returned alone but for a maid Sh e happened to be not — merely young and beautiful far above the average German level in the latter regard—but she had all those outward attractions which good breeding and the unremitting care of trained guardians from birth to maturity give the fort u nate members of the human family Sh e was exactly the type the traveler i n foreign lands is always most anxious to meet and least successful in meeting O n the evening of her arrival the senior of ficer of the h ouse thought to soften the blow of her unpleasant home coming b y inviting her to dinner with her unbidden guests The little circle was charme d with her tou t ensemb le They confided t o one another that she would stand comparison with any — Ameri can girl they had ever met which was the highest tribute in their vocabulary Sh e seemed to find the com pany agreeable herself As they rose fromthe t able she .
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asked what time breakfast would be served in the morning Thank s to the uncertainty of her E nglish she had mistaken the simple courtesy for a standing invitation The off i cers looked at one another with mute appeal in their eyes Nothing would have pleased them better t han to have their grim circle permanently graced by so charm ing an addition B u t what of the new order against frat S ome day an inspector might drift in or the e rni z a t i on ? matter reach the erect ears of that mysterious and dreaded department hidden under the pseudonym of G z B ficers were all consgi ent i ou s young men who B esides the of took army orders seriously and scorned t o use any sophistry in their interpretation Furthermore though it hurt keenly to a dm it such a slanderous thought it was within the rang e ” sent here of possibilities that the young lady was a spy with the very purpose oftrying to ingratiate herself into the circle which had so nai vely opened itself to her It was known that her family had been in personal touch with the ” K aiser ; for all her American manner she made no secret What could have ofbeing German through and through been more in keeping with the methods of Wilhelmstrasse than the suggestion that she return to her ow n home and pass on to Berlin any rum ors she might chance to pick up from her unwelcome guests ? Plainly she must be gotten rid ofat once None ofthe of ficers however felt confidence enough in his German to put rt to so crucial a test Whence it being my fortune t o drop in o n a friend among the perplexed Americans just at that moment I was unanim ously appointed to the gentle task of banishing the lady from her ow n di ning room — It was at the end of a pleasant little luncheon the sixth meal whi ch the daughter of the house had graciously a t tended The conversation had been enlightening the a t mosph ere most congenial the young lady more u nost e nt a t i ou sly beautiful than ever We reduced the audience t o .
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her coming humiliation as low as possible by softly di s missing the junior members swallowed our throats and began Nothing we assured her had been more pleasant to us since our arrival in Germany than the privilege of having her as a guest at ou r simple mess Nothing we could — — o f think short of being ordered home at once would have pleased us more than to have h er permanently grace Bu t ou r board fortunately our sti f f uniform collars helped to keep ou r throats in place she had possibly heard of t he new army order a perfectly ridiculous ruling to be sure particul arly under such circumstances as these — but an army order for all t hat and no one coul d know better than she the daughter and granddaughter of German high of ficers that army orders are meant to be obeyed wherein Pershing himself commanded us to have no more relations with the civilian population than were absolutely unav oi d able Wherefore we we we trusted she would understand that this was only the of ficial requirement and in no way represented ou r ow n personal inclinations we were compelled to request that she confine herself there after to the upper floor of the house as her presence on ou r floor might easily be misunderstood Her maid no doubt could prepare her meals or there was a hotel a few yards up the street The charming little smil e of gratitude with which she had listened to the prelude had faded to a puzzled interest as the tone deepened then to a well mastered amazement at the effrontery of the climax With a constrained Is ” that all ? she rose to her feet and as we kicked our chairs from under us she passed ou t with a genuinely imperious fused wi th carriage an icy little bow her beautiful face suf a crimson that would have made a mere poppy look color less by comparison We prided ourselves on having been extremely diplomatic in our handling of the matter but no member of that mess ever again received anything ,
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better than the barest shadow ofa frigid bow from the young lady foll owed at a respectful distance by her maid whom they so often met on her way to the hotel a few yards up the street If it were not withi n the province of a soldi er t o oriti ci z e orders one might question whether it woul d not have fraternizing than t o b een better to all ow regulated attempt to suppress it entirely Our soldi ers perme ated through and through whether consciously or other wise with many of those American ideals that point of or the German Volk t o grasp view whi ch we are eager f t h a t t h ere may be no more kaisers and no more deliberately buil t u p mili tary assaults upon the world woul d have been the most ef fective propaganda in our favor that coul d have been devised t o loose upon the German nation M erely their nai ve little stories of how they live at home would in time have awakened a discontent in certain matters spiri tual rather than material that would have been most sal utary Bu t we comm itted ou r customary and familiar American error of refusing t o compromise with hum an nature of attempting impossible suppression instead of accepting possible regul ation with the result that those ineradi cable plants that might have grown erect and gay in the sunshi ne developed into pale faced groveling mon s t rosi t i e s in the cell ars and hidden corners O ur allies in the neighboring areas had the same non fraternizing order yet by not attempting to swallow i t whole they succeeded probab ly in digesting it better There was a simple little way offraternizing i n C ob lenz without ri sking the heavy hand ofan M P on your shoul der It w as t o just hav e it ha ppen by merest chance that the se at ofthe Franlei n w h o had taken your eye be next your own at the municipal theater It grew increasingly popul ar with both of cers and enlisted men that modest li ttle fi The Germans who before our arrival had S tadtth ea ter ,
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bee n able to drift in at the last moment and be sure ofa seat were forced to come early in the day and stand in line The K ronlog e or royal box, a s if before a butter shop belonged now to the general commanding the Army of — O ccupation until six each evening when its eighteen seats might be disposed of to ordinary people though the occupants even in that case were more likely than not to be girdled by the S a m Browne belt S ome observers make the encouraging assertion that there will be more devotees of opera i n America wh en the quarter million who kept the watch on the R hine return home There w as a tendency to drift more and more toward the S tadtth ea ter even on the part of some whom no one would have dared to accu se of ” aspiring t o high brow rating though it must b e admitted ” that the ra g and jazz and slap stick to which the Y and similar well meaning camp followers steeped in ” the tired business man fallacy felt obliged to cofi fi ne ” forts in entertaining their ef the boys did not play to empty houses The little S tadtth ea ter gave the principal operas not merely ofGermany but o fFrance and Italy and occasional plays chiefly from their own classics They were usually well though long drawn out after the manner oft h e s taged German who can seldom say his say in a few succinct words and be done as can the Frenchman The operas too — had a heaviness in spots such as those for instance under the feet of the diaphanous nymphs ofone hundred and sixty five pounds each who cavorted about the trembling stage which did not exactly recall the O p éra in Paris Bu t it would be unfair to compare the artistic advantages ofa city capital of the world o feighty thousand with those of the Probably the performances in Coblenz would have rivaled those in any but the two or three largest French cities and it would be a remarkable town back in little old U S A fering the best things that cou l d b oast such a theater of ,
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of
the stage at prices quite within reach of ordinary people When o ne stopped to reflect those prices were astonishing The best seat in the K ronlog e was but 5 mk so a bare half dollar then only 5 at the normal pre war exchange and accommodations graded down to quite tolerable places in whatever the Germans call their peanut gall ery at nine cents ! All ofwhich does not mean that the critical opera goer would not gladly endure the qui ntupled cost for the privilege ofattending a performance at the O péra C omique at Paris The question offraternization and the ubiquitous one of German food shortage were not without their connection Intelligence of fi cers were constantly running down rumors o ftoo much sympathy of ou r soldiers for the hungry po p The assertion that Germany had been starved u la t i o n ” to her knees however was scarcely borne ou t by observa tions in the occupied area It is true that in C ob lenz — even the authorized quantities seven pounds of potatoes two hundred grams of meat seven ounces ofsugar and so on per person each week were high in price and not always available Milk for invalids and those under seven wa s easier to order than to obtain A notice in the local papers to B ring your egg and butter tickets on Monday and get two cold storage eggs and forty grams of oleomargarine was cause for town wide rejoicing Poor old horses that had faithft served the A E F to the end oftheir strength were easily auctioned at prices averaging a thousand marks each in spite ofthe requirement that a certificate be pro du ce d within a week showing where they had been slaugh t er e d There was always a certain S ch lei chha ndel or under hand dealing , going on between the wealthy in the cities R ancid butter to be had an d the well stocked peasants o f excell ent quality before the war at two marks cost in ” underground commerce anything from fi fty marks up which the happy man who found it was in a condition to .
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y C ontrasted with this picture the wages
of
an eight hour day we re seldom over five marks for unskilled or more than ten for skilled labor The ou t ofwork insurance ” system less prevalent in ou r area than over in Germany made it almost an advantage to be unemployed A citizen fered a wanderer in the streets eight marks ofD usseldorf of Many a man would gladly f or a day s work in his stable or thr ee marks before the war The h ave done the task f wanderer cursed the citizen roundly Y o u have the audacity he cried to ask me to toil all day for t w o ” ” marks ! Two marks ? gasped the citizen ; you misun ” ” I said eight I heard y ou say eight d erst ood me shouted the workman and is not eight just t w o more than the six we get under the unemployment act ? Pest with your miserable two marks ! If y ou want to pay me ten for the day—that is si x teen in all He did not add that by going ou t into the country with his unearned six marks he coul d buy up food and return to the city to Sell it at a handsome profit but the citizen did not need to be reminded ofthat oppressive fact It was under such conditions as these that the civilians about us lived while we gorged ourselves on the ful l army ration in the hotels and restaurants we had taken over There was always a long and eager waiting line where any employment of civilians by the Americans carried with it the right to army food ; in many cases it became necessary to confine the opportunity to war wi dows or others whose breadwinners had been killed A man wh o rented his motor boat t o ou r M an ne C orps at for t y fi v e marks a day and food for himse lf brought his brother along without charge both of them living well on fered the one ration The poor undoubtedly suf Wh ere haven t they ? Where do they not evenin times ofpeace ? So di d we in fact in spite ofou r unlimited source ofsupply For the barbarous German cooking reduced ou r perfectly pa
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respectab l e fare t o something resembling in looks smell ” and taste the scow of a British forecastl e In France we had come t o look forward t o meal time as one of the pleasant oases ofexistence ; on the Rhine it became again just a necessary ordeal t o be gotten over with as soon as possible If we were at fi rst inclined to wonder what the chances were ofthe men wh o had been facing us with ma chine guns three months before poisoning us now it soon died ou t for they served us as deferentially and far more quickly wi th comparative obliviousnes s t o tips than had the gargans beyond the Vosges The newspapers complained ofa physical deteri oration and mental degeneration from lack of nourishing food that often results in a complete collapse of the nervous ” system bringing on a state of continual hysteria We saw something ofthis but there were corresponding a dv an tages D iabetes and similar disorders that are relieve d by the starv ation treatment had vastly decreased My host complained that his club a regal buil ding then open ‘ only t o American ofi i cers had lost one third ofits member shi p duri ng the war not in numbers but in weight an average of six ty pounds each Judging from his still not f had been an advantage di aphanous form the falling of B ut one t o the club s appearance if not t o its heal th cannot always gage the health and resistance ofthe German by hi s outward appearance He is racially gi fted with red cheeks and plump form The South American Indian of the hi ghl ands also looks the picture of robust health yet he is certai nly underfed and dies easily In a well to do ci ty lik e C ob lenz appearances were particul arly deceiving The bulk of t h e population was so well housed so well dressed outwardly so prosperous that it was hard to realize h ow greatly man s chief necessity food was lacking In many a mansion to open the door at meal time was to ca tch a strong scent of cheap and unsavory cooking t hat ,
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recalled the customary aroma of o u r lowest tenements Healthy as many of them looked there was no doubt that for the past year or two the Germans particularly the old and the very young succum bed with surprising rapidity to ordinarily unimportant disease s If successful mer t ee rs rotund they were chants were beefy and war profi i cer of the chemical often blue under the eyes An off division of ou r army who conducted a long investigation within the occupied area found that while the bu lk of food f i cient to keep the population in average should have been suf health the number of calories was barely one thi rd what the human engine requires The chief reason for this was that food had become more and more E rsa tz substitute articles rang ing all the way ” from something almost as good to the mere shadow of what it pretended to be We have become an E rsa tz nation wailed the German press and have lost i n con sequence many of ou r good qualities Ersa tz butter — r E s t z E s a t z bread jam clothing everything is rs t z r a E a ” becoming E rsa tz A firm down the ri ver went so far as ” to announce an E rsa tz meat called Fino which was apparently about as satisfactory as the Ersa tz beer which the new kink in the C onstitution is forcing upon Americans at home Nor was the substitution confined t o food articles though in other things the lack was more nearly amusing than serious Prisoners taken in ou r last drives nearly all wore E rsa tz shirts made of paper Envelopes b ought in Germany fell quickly apart because ofthe E rsa tz paste that failed to do its duty Painters labored with E rs a tz daubing material because the lins eed oil their trade requires had become Ersa tz lard for cooking purposes R ubber seemed to be the most consprcu ou s scarcity , at least in the occupied regions Bicycle tires gshowed a curious ingenuity ; suspenders got their stretch from the weave of the cloth ; galoshes were rarely seen Le ather .
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himself in a sad predicament What most irked his com fort loving soul however was the increasing E rsa tz ness The day o f the food on which he was forced to subsist came when he could bear it no longer He resolved t o comm it suicide E ntering a drug store he demanded an — absurdly large dose ofprussic acid and paid what under other conditions would have been a heartbreaking price for it In the dingy little single room to which fortune had reduced him he wrote a letter of farewell to the world swallowed the entire prescription and lay down to die For some time nothing happened He had always been under the impression that prussic acid di d its work quickly Possib ly he had been misinformed He could wait He lighted an E rsa tz cigarette and settled down to do so S till nothing befell him He stretched out on his sagging bed with t h e patience of despair fell asleep and woke up late next morning feeling none the worse for his action ” Look here he cried bursting in upon the druggist what sort of merchant are y ou ? I paid you a fabulous — price for a large dose ofprussic acid I am tired oflife and want t o die—and the stuff has not done me the least harm ! Donner nnd B li tzen! gasped the apothecary Why didn t y ou say so ? I would hav e warned y ou that y ou were probably wasting your money You know every thing i n the shop now is Ersa tz and I have no way of know ing whether E rsa tz prussic acid or any other poison I have fect on the human system as does in stock has any such ef ” the real article The purchaser l eft with angry words slamming the door behind him until the E rsa tz plate glass in it crinkled from the impact He marched into a shop opposite and bought a rope returned to his room and hanged hi mself Bu t at his first spasm the rope broke He cast the remnants from him and stormed back into the rope shop ” You call yourself an honest German he screamed .
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O CK I NG
A B O UT T H E O CC U PI E D A RE A
I have spoken chiefly ofCoblenz in attempting to picture the American army in Germany it is merely because things centered there My assignment carried me every where within our occupied area and several times through those of our allies The most vivid imagination could not have pictured any such Germany as this when I tramped her roads fifteen twelve and ten years before The native population dense as it is was everywhere inundated by Ameri can khaki The roads were rivers ofYankee soldiers of trucks and automobiles from the princely li mousines of fi e ld of fi cer s and generals to the plebeian Ford or side c ar — of mere lieutenants often with their chall enging insignia — B an ax through a oche helmet and the like still pain t ed on their si des The towns and villages had turned from field gray to oliv e drab R emember w e had nine divisions in our area and an Ameri can division in column covers nearly forty miles American guards with fixed bayonets patrolled the highways in pairs like the ca ra bi ni eri of Italy — and the g u ardi a s ci vi les of Spain though they were often the only armed men one met all day long unless one counts the platoons companies or battalions still diligently drilling under t h e leafl ess apple trees We made ou r own speed rules and though civilians may have ground their teeth with rage as we tore by in a cloud ofdust or a shower of mud — outwardly they chiefly ignored ou r presence except the F
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OC KING A B OUT
THE O CCU P I E D
A REA
girls the poor and the children who more often waved friendly greetings O f children there were many every where mobs of them compared with France— chubby red cheeked little boys often in cut down uniforms nearly always weari ng the red banded German fatigue bonnet far less artistic even in color than the b onnet de poli ce of French boys and accentuating the round close Cropped skul ls that have won the nation the sobriquet of square ” head The plump hearty straw b l ond little g irls were almost as numerous as their brothers ; every town surged with them ; if one of ou r favorite army correspondents had not already copyrighted the expression I should say that the villages resembled nothing so much as human hives out of which children poured like disturbed bees E very littl e way along the road a small boy thrust ou t a ” spiked helmet or a Gott mi t Uns belt buckl e for sale as we raced past The children not only were on very friendly — terms with our soldiers all children are— but they got on well even where t h e h ori zon b lue ofthe poi lu took the place o fou r kh aki Farmers were back at work in their fields now most of them sti ll i n the field gray of the trenches tu rned into civies by some si mple little change Men of military age seemed far more plentiful than along French roads H ow clean and unscathed untouched by the war it all looked in contrast to poor mutilated devastated France Many sturdy draft— horses were still seen escaped by some miracl e from the maw ofwar Goodly clumps ofAmerican and French shells for quick use should the Germans sud flashed by In one spot K a merad ! de nly cease to cry was an e norrhou s heap ofBoche munitions waiting for ou r ordnance section to find some safe means ofblowing it up ” There were Bi g B ertha shells and Z eppelin bombs among them ofparticular interest to those of us who had never s een them before but w h o knew only too well how it feel s ,
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VA GA B OND I N G
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to have them drop withi n a few yards ofus Every little whi le we sped past peasant men and women w h o were opening l ong straw and earth covered moun ds built last autumn under other conditions and l oadi ng wagons with — the huge coarse species of turnip rutabagas I believe we call them—which se emed t o form their chief crop and food In the big beech forest about the beautiful Larch erse e women and chi l dren and a few men were picki ng up beechnuts under the sepia brown carpet of last year s leaves Their vegetab l e fat makes a good E rsa tz butter Wild ducks still winged their way over the S ee or rode its choppy waves undisturbed by the rumors offood scarcity For not only did the game restrictions of the old reg i me still hol d ; the popul ation was forced t o hand over even its shotguns when we came and to get one back again w as a long and properly complicated process The Am ericans took upon themselves the repai r and widening ofthe roads which ou r heavy trucks had begun t o f ound into a condition resembling those o France in h e t p war z one—at German expense in the end of course ; that was particul arly where the shoe pinched It broke the thri fty B oche s heart t o see these extravagant warri ors from overseas t o whom t w o years offinancial carte blanch e had made money seem mere paper squandering his wealth or that ofhis children without so much as an if you please The labor was German under the supervision ofAmeric an sergeants and the recrui ting ofit absurdly simple— to the Americans An order t o the burgomaster informing him succinctly Y ou will furnish four hundred men at such a place t o morrow morning at seven for road labor ; wages ” eight marks a day covered ou r side of the transaction Where and how the burgomaster found the la borers w as no soup ou t ofou r p lates We often g ot ofcourse the poorest workmen ; men t oo young or too old for ou r purposes men either already broken on the wheel ofindustry or not yet .
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70
BA RGES O F AM ERI CAN
F Q OD
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STU FF S ON T HEI R
W AY
UP T HE RHINE
B RITI S H TOMM IE S STOWIN G TH EM SEL VES AWAY FO R T H E NI GHT ON BARGE S ANCH ORED N EAR THE H OLL AND F RONTI ER
KN
O C KING A B OUT
TH E O CCU P I E D
A REA
broken t o harness ; but there was an easy come back ficials played that game t oo frequently if the German of O nce enroll ed to labor for the Am erican army a man was vi rtually enlisted for the duration ofthe armistice—save for suitable reasons or lack of work Strikes so epidemic ” over in Germany were not permitted in our undertakings A keen young lieutenant ofengineers was in charge ofroad repairs and sawmills in a certai n divisional area O ne morning his sergeant at one ofthe mills call ed him on the Signal C orps telephone that linked all the Army ofO ccupa tion together wi th the information that the night force had struck ” S truck ! cried the lieutenant aghast at the audacity ” I ll be ou t at once ! A rri ved at the tow n i n question he dr opped in on the A P M t o re quest that a squad of M P s foll ow him wi thout del ay and hurried on to the mill fingering his 44 ” O rder that night force t o fall in here at once ! he com mande d indicating an i magi nary line along which the of fendi ng company shoul d be dr essed ” Yes sir saluted the sergeant and disappeared into the buil di ng The lieutenant waited nursing his rage A small b oy blue with cold edged forward t o see what was going on dl e shanked their T w o others a bit older thi n and spin ‘ throats and chins mu flled in soiled and ragged scarfs their gray faces testifying to l ong malnutrition idl ed into view with that yellow dog curiosity ofhookworm vi ctims Bu t the night force gave no evi dence of existence A t length the sergeant reappeared ” Well snapped the lieutenant what about it ? Where ” is that night shi ft ? replied the sergeant pointing at the All present sir three shi vering urchins Last night at midnight I ordered them to start a new pile ofl umber and the next I see ofthem -
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VA GA B OND I N G
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— they was crouching around the boiler i t was a cold night
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sir— and when I ordered them back to work they said they hadn t had anything to eat for two days but some war bread You know there s been some hold u p i n the pay vouchers A s mall banquet at the neighboring Ga sthofended that particular strike without the intervention of armed force though there were occasionally others that called for the shadow of it In taking over industries of this sort the A mericans adopted the practice of demanding t o see the receipted bills signed by the German military authorities then required the same prices O rders were issued to supply no civilian trade without written permission from the Americans After the first inevitable punishments for not taking the soft spoken new— comers at their word the pro ly pri e t ors applied the rule with a literalness that was t y pi efi German A humble old woman knocked timidly at the lieutenant s of fice door one day and upon being admitted handed the clerk a long impressive legal paper When it had been deciphered it proved to be a laboriously penned request for permission to buy lumber at the neighboring sawmill In it Frau S chmidt there present certified that she had taken over a vacant shop for the purpose of open ing a shoe store that said occupation was legal and of use to the community that there was a hole i n the floor of said shop which it was to the advantage ofthe health and safety of the community to have mended wherefore she respectfully praye d the Herr Leutnant in charge of the sawmil ls of the region t o authorize her t o buy three boards four inches wide and three feet long In witness of the truth of the above assertions of Frau Schmidt respectable and duly authorized member ofthe community the burgo master had this day signed hi s name and caused his seal to be af fixed ’
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72
VA GA B OND I N G
T HROUGH
C H AN G I N G
G ERM
A NY
entimental eyes as the famous clif f roused in them a lusty attempt t o sing of the Lorelei with her golden hair—carried the Stars and Stripes at their stern now They were stil l manned by their German crews ; a resplendent square head of fice r still majestically paced Bu t they were in comm and of Am erican the bridge Marines snappy keen eyed young fellows who had — fought their way overland how fiercely the Boche hi m self — knows onl y t oo well till they came to water again like the amphibians that they are A leatherneck at the wheel a kh aki — clad band playing airs t h e R h ine clif fs never echoed b ack in former years a compact mass of happy Yanks packing every corner they plow placidly up and down the stream which so many of their passengers never dreamed their school books dipping their flags of seeing outside ” Y man t o one another as they pass a rubber lunged pouring out megaphoned tales and legends as each cast led ” crag flying the Stars and Stripes or the Tricolor now l oomed into view rarely i f ever forgetting to add that ” B urned by unsuspected little touch of propaganda B aedeker himself never aspire d the French in 1 6 89 t o see his land so crowded with tourists and sightseers as it was i n the spri ng of 1 9 1 9 N ow and then a shipl oad of those poi lns who waved t o us from the shore as we danced and sang and megaphoned ou r way up through their terri tory came down past C oblenz thei r massed horizon b lue their band so much more tangible than ou r dr ab brown pl aying quite other tunes than ours the doughboys ashore fection shri l ling an occasional greeting to what they half af ately hal f disdainfully call the poor Fro g s There was a somewhat di f ferent atmosphere ab oard these horiz on blue excursion boats than on our own ; they seem ed to get so much more satisfaction a contentment almost too deep for words ou t ofthe sight ofthe sa le B oche in manacles B oatloads of Tomm ies came up to look us over now s
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74
KN
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and then t oo a bit di sdainful as is their nature but frien dl y fway f or a ll that their columns ofcaps punctu i n their stif Aussies a ted here and there by the cocked hat ofthe saucy and the red banded hea d gear of those other un British Bri tons from the antipodes w h o look at first glance so start li ngly li ke our own M P s O nce we were even favored wi th a call by the sea dogs whose vigil made this new Watch on the R hine possib le ; five snappy little sub marine Ch as ers that had wormed their way up through the canals and rivers of France anchored down beneath the gigantic monu ment at the mouth ofthe Moselle Y ou have three guesses as t o whether or no t the Germans l ooked at them with interest It was my good fortune to be able t o make t wo excursions i nto unoccupied Germany whil e stationed on the R hine Those w h o fancy t h e sight of an A rneri can uniform beyond our li nes was li ke shaking a red tablecl oth in a Spanish bull ri ng may be surprised t o know that these little jaunts were by no means rare We went not merely in full uni form quite without camoufl age but in army automobiles and wholly unarmed— and we came back in a condition whi ch a cockney woul d pronounce in the same way The first spin was t o Dfi sseldorf between two ofher Spa rt i ci st flurri e s N ot far abov e B onn the landscape changed sud denly from Ameri can t o British khaki with a boundary post in charge ofa circumspect E ngli sh sergeant between Be low C ologne with her swarming Tommies and her plum p motormen and comely girl street car conductors and i n their green banded B oche caps we passed scores of the apple cheeked b oy recruits E ngland was sending us to take ” the place of those who were fed up with it and who gaze d about them with that wide eyed interest in every little detail of thi s strange new l and which the traveler woul d nd fain keep t o the end ofhis days It seemed natur al to fi the B ritish here ; one had grown to associate them with the ,
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75
VA GA B OND I N G
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flat low portions of the country Far down the river a French post stopped us but the sentry was so interes ted in posing before my kodak that he forgot to mention passes and we were soon speeding on through a narrow horizo n blue belt The Belgians who turned the scene to brown again not far beyond were even less exacting than the At the farther end of the great bridge over the poi lns R hine between Neuss and Dusseldorf they had a score of sentries posted behind barbed wire entanglements t ouch i ng the very edge of the unoccupied city Bu t our only formality in passing them was to shout over o u r shoul ders that open sesame of western E urope A rmée a rneri ca i ne! for nearly two years S omewhat to our disappointment the atmosphere of ferent from that ofan occupied Dusseldorf was very little dif city The ubiquitous small boy surrounded us more densely wherever ou r car h alted ; the thronged streets st a re d a t us somewhat more searchingly but there was little other change in attitude to be noted Those we asked for di re c tions gave us the same elaborate courtesy and annoying assistance ; the shops we entered served us as alertly and at as reasonable prices ; the manufacturer we called on listened to our wants as respectfully as any ofhis fellows — in the occupied zone and was quite as willing to open a credit with the American army The motto everywhere seemed to be B usiness as usual There was next to nothing to suggest a state of war or siege anywhere within — a thousand miles of u s nothing at least except a few gaunt youths of the 1 9 class who guarded railway viaducts and governm ent buildings still wearing their ful l trench — — equipment including strange to believe their camou fl a g e d iron hats ! Postal clerks ofthe S O S supposed of course that all this brand of head gear had long since crossed the Atlantic Humanity certainly is quick to recuperate H ere on the edge ofthe greatest war in history with the ,
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76
V A GA B O N D I N G
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ornate opera house the beautiful p ark ev en the cul ture of the better class ofGerman visitors af forded O ur pass read Wiesbaden and return but that would have made a tame day of it R ejuvenated of heart i f saddened of pocketbook by the Kurhaus luncheon we rat t le d swiftly on to the eastward In due time we began t o pass French outposts indif ferent t o ou r passage at first then growing more and more inquisitive until there came one which would not be put of fwith a flip ofthe hand and a ” shouted A rmé e améri cai ne but brought us t o an abrupt stop with a long slim bayonet that came perilously near disrupting the even purr of ou r still sturdy motor The crucial moment had come If the French guard coul d read our pass we were due to tu rn back forthw ith chag rined and crestfall en B ut none of us had ever heard of a French guard w h o cou ld read an A merican pass and we presented it wi th that lofty assurance which only those have not learned w h o wantonl y wasted their time wi th the A E F in France The sentry received the pass dubiously as we expected him to ; he looked it over on both sides with an inwardly puzzled but an outwardly wise air as we knew he would ; he called his corporal as we had foreseen ; the co r poral looked at the pass with the pretended wisdom of all ” his kind handed it back w ith a courteous B i en messi eu rs as we were certain he would and we sped on int o Germany It was a bland and sunny afternoon The suburban villages ofFrank furt were waddl ing about in their S unday best the city itself was promenading its less dowdy holiday attire along the wide well swept s treets We brought up at a s quare overl ooked by a superbly proportioned bronze gentleman wh o had lost every stitch of his attire except ” his t i n hat where we left the car and mingled with the throng Passers b y directed us w urt eou sly enou gh t o ” the Goethehaus Its door bell handl e dangled loosely as it had fi fteen years before but a sign informed us that t h e -
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78
BALL GAM E O R A BOXIN G M ATCH WIT HIN T HE BARB ED WI RE INCL O SU RE OF T H E AM ERICAN C AMP AT ROTT ERDAM W A S S U RE TO ATT RACT T HE CH I EF SUNDAY AUDI ENCE
A
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OF ROTTERDAM
VA GA B OND I N G
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a gigantic heavily armed sol dier policeman The fellow had demanded to see our passes o u r permission to visit Frankfurt Now in the words of the Am erican sol dier we had no more permission to visit Frankfurt than a rabbit Bu t this was the last place i n the world to betray that fact The pass to Wiesbaden and return I had left in the car I showed great eagerness to take the policeman to see it He gave evidence ofa willingness to accept the invitation We were on the point of starting when a more dapper young soldier guard a sergeant appeared The giant clicked his heels sharply and fell into the background The sergeant spoke perfect E nglish with a strong British accent He regretted the annoyance of troubling us but had we a pass ? I showed renewed eagerness to conduct him to the car and show it Not at all Not at all he apologized As long as you have a pass it s quite all right you know quit e Ah and y ou have an automobile ? Yes yes quite the square where the bronze Hermes is It s quite all right I assure you You will pardon us for troubling you ? The Astoria ? Ah it is rather a jaunt you know Bu t here is the C afé B auer right in front of you You ll find their cakes quite as good and their music is topping you know Not at all N o t a t all It s quite all right really So sorry to have troubled you you know Good day sir It was with difficulty that we found seats in the crowded café large as it was A throng of men and women some what less buoyant than similar gatherings i n Pari s was sipping beer and wine at the marble topped tables A large orchestra played rather well in a corner Séi dels of good beer cost us less than they would have in New York two y ears before The bourgeois gathering looked at us rather fixedly a bit languidly I started to light a cigar but could not find my matches A well dressed man of middle age at the next table leaned over and lighted it -
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80
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for me Two youthful students i n their gay colored caps grinned at us rather fli ppant ly A waiter h overed about us bowing low and smi r king a bit fatuously whenever we spoke to hi m There was no outward evidence to show that we were among enemies Still there was no wisdom in playing too long with fire once the initial pleasure of f It would have been hard to explain the game had worn of to ou r own people how we came to be in Frankfurt even if nothing worse came of another demand for ou r passes ” U ncle Sam would nev er suffer for the loss of that Dodge but he woul d be quite apt to show extensive inquisitiveness The late afternoon promenade at the t o know who lost it Kurhaus back in Wiesbaden was said to be very interesting We paid ou r reckoning tipped ou r tip and wandered casually back to the square graced by the bronze young man whose equipment h a d gone astray T o say that we were n d the car waiting where we had left it the surprised to fi doughboy chauf feur dozing in his seat would be putting it too strongly Bu t we were relieved The K urhaus promenade was not what it was cracked up ” t o be at least not that afternoon Bu t we may have been somewhat late The opera beginning at six w a s excellent lacking something ofthe lightness of the same performance in Paris but ou tdoing it in some details chiefly in its fects mechanical ef One looked in vain for any suggestion ofunder no u rishment in the throng of buxom corn fe d women and stodgy men who crowded the house and the top heavily decorated foyer during the entr a ctes French men i n uniform from generals to poi lns gave col or to the rather somber audience and made no bones of fra t erni z — ing with the civilians pa rticul arly if she chanced to be ficers beautiful which was seldom the case American of “ ” B el were numerous ; there were E n glishmen Anzacs gians Italians and a Serb or two The after theater dinner at the K urhaus was sumptuous except in one detail ; -
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VA GA B O ND I NG
T HR OUGH
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neither bribery nor pleading could win us t h e tiniest slice of the black war bread that was stinti ngly served to those with bread tickets O therw ise wine women and son g were as much in evidence as if war had never come t o trouble the worldly pleasures ofWie sbaden We left after ten ofa black night O ur return trip by direct route took us through a strip of neutral territory We were startled some eight or ten times by a stentor an H a lte! a t improvi sed wooden barriers i n l onely places by soldiers in French uniforms who were not Frenchmen an d who could neither speak any tongue we could muster nor read ou r pass They were French colonials many of them bl acker than the night in whi ch they kept their shivering vigil Most of them delayed us a matter of several minutes ; all of them carried aside their clumsy barriers and let us pass at last with bad grace Nearing Coblenz we were halted t wice by our own soldi ers st ationed in pai rs beside their blazing fires and at thr ee i n the morning we scattered to ou r billets Two cartoons always come to mind when I l ook back on those months with the Am erican Watch on the Rhine One i s French It shows two poi lu s sitting on the ba nk of the famous stream the one languidly fishi ng wi th that placid indif ference of the French fisherman as t o whether or not he ever catches anything ; the other stretched at three fourths length against a wall and yawning wi th ennui as he remarks “ And they call this the Army of The other drawi ng is Am erican It shows O ccu pa ti on! Pershing in 1 9 50 He is bald with a snowy bea rd reaching to his still soldierly waist while on his lap he holds a grand son to whom he has been telling stories ofhis great years Suddenly as the erstwhile commander of the A E F is about to doze of finto hi s afternoon nap the grandson points a finger at the map deman di ng And what is that red spot ” in the center of E urope grandpa ? With one brief glance -
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82
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the old general springs to his feet crying Great C a esar ! I forgot to relieve the Army of O ccupation Those two squibs are more than mere jokes ; they sum up the point of view of the soldiers on the R hine T h e French and like them the B ritish and B elgians only too glad that the struggle that had worn into their very souls was ended at last had settled down to all the comfort and leisure consistent with doing their full duty as guardians of the strip intrusted to them The Americans like a team arriv ing at a baseball tournament so late that they could play only the last three innings had gone out on the field to bat up flies and play a prac t ice game to take some of the sting out ofthe disappointment of finding the contest over before they could make better use oftheir l ong and arduous training It was this species of military oakum picking that was the second grievance of the American soldier on the R hine ; the first was the uncertainty that surrounded his return to the land of his birth Whil e the neighboring armies were walking the necessary posts and sleeping many and long naps our soldiers had scarcely found time to wash the feet that had carried them from the trenches to the R hine much l ess cure them o f their blisters when orders swept over the Army of O ccupation calling for long hours of intensiv e training six days a week It is said that an E nglish general on an inspection tour of o u r area watched this mile after mil e o f frenzied trench digging of fake bombing parties o f sham battles the barra ges of which still made the earth tremble for a hundred mil es around ofnever ending without a S quads east and squads west word until he came to the end of the day and of his review Then he remarked : Astounding ! E xtraordinary all this upon my word ! You chaps certainly have the vim of youth B u t ah er if y ou don t: mind telling me just what are you planning to do ? Fight your way back through France ? ,
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83
GE T T IN G N E UT RA L IZE D
is an aged saying t o the ef fect that the longest way round is often the shortest way home It applies to many of the crossroads oflife Toward the end ofMarch I found myself facing such a fork in my own particular footpath My duties with the A rmy of O ccupation had slowed down to a point where I coul d only write th e word between quotation marks and speak it wi th a throaty laugh I suggested that I be sent on a walking trip through unoccupied Germany whence ou r information was not so meager as contradictory It woul d hav e been so simple to have dropped into the i nconspicuous garb ofa ci vilian right there i n C oblenz and t o have slipped noi selessly over the outer arc of ou r bridgehead Eventually I believe the army would have adopted the sug gestion There were times when it showed an almost human interest in the proj ect Bu t I am of anintensely selfish self— centered dis position ; I wanted to try the adventure myself personally B esides there was no certainty that my grandson would care for that species of sport He might be of quite the — opposite temperament a solid respectab le church going respected citizen and all that sort of thing you know Furthermore I had not yet taken the first preliminary indispensable step toward ac quiring a grandson Where fore in a l ucid moment I recalled the moth eaten adage above plagi arized and concluded that the easiest way HER E
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ag es were placidly yet diligently toiling i n their little garde n patches into the twilight of the long spring day The B ritish rating me a correspondent billeted me in a once proud hotel in the shadow of the great cathedral In the scurry of pursuing passport and visées in Paris I had found no time to change my garb to the kind that flaps about the ankles In consequence my evening stroll was several times broken by as many of E ngland s boyish new guardsmen their bayonets overtopping them by several inches in some cases who pounded their ri fle butts on the pavement in salute and stage whispered a bit tremulously Officers is not to walk about too much by theirselves si r My query at the first warning had been answered with a ” Three ofthem was badl y cut up last night sir There were no outward signs ofany such serious however ; on the contrary the populace seemed almost friendly and at the offi ce rs club guests were checking their side arms with the German doorman The tall and hearty Irish guardsman in charge ofBritish R hine traf fic readily granted my request t o go d own the river in one of t he daily steamers carrying troops back to That day s boat flou ndere d Blighty for demobilization under the simple little name of E rnst L u dwi g Gross H erzog Rh ei n! I believe the new owners von H essen u nd b ei called it L ou i e A score of German girls came down to the wharf to wave the departing Tomm ies farewell All day we passed long s t rings of barges flying the triangul ar flag of the Food C ommission bearing supplies for the Army of O ccupation and the civilian population of the occupied fwhen the arteries region The time was but a few weeks of o fthe Third Army flowing through France would be entir ely cut of f The food on board the L ou i e was not unlik e our o w n army ration ; the bunks s u pplied the of f i cers were of .
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86
GETTI N G N E UT R AL I Z E D a sort that would have moved ou r own more exacting ” wearers of the Sam B rowne to start a Congressional investigation The most noticeable dif ferences between this B lighty bound multitude and ou r own doughboys were three — in number their la ck of inventiveness in amusing them selves their lower attitude toward women and the utter lack ofcare of the teeth conspicuous even among the of fi cers We shoul d have been hard put to it however to find a higher type than the youthful captains and lieutenants in charge ofthe steamer At five we halted for t h e night beside several huge barges anchored wel l ou t in the stream their holds filled with very — passable b unks a s soldi eri ng goes While t h e Tomm ies pack l aden clambered down the half dozen narrow hatches to their light quarters I dropped i n on the families that dwelt in the stern of each Those who have never paid a simil ar call might be surprised to find what homelike com fort reigns in these floating residences O utwardly the barges are of the plainest and roughest coal carriers for the most part with all the smudge and discomfort of such occupation As the lower house door at the rear opens his eyes are prepared to behold something about as inviting as the forecastle of a W indjammer Instead they are all but dazzled by the imm aculate housewifely cleanliness the orderly comfort of the interior The Rh ine plying dwelling is a close replica ofa lower middl e class residence — ashore a half dozen rooms carpeted lace curtained the walls decorated with family portraits elaborate framed mottoes and over colored statuettes of the Catholic faith a great square bed of inviting furnishings in the parental room smaller though no less attractive ones in the other sleeping chambers easy chairs the latest thing in ld t ch e n ranges large lamps that are veritable chandeliers suspended from the ceiling— nothing was missing down t o the family cat and canary .
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87
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AGA B OND I NG
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It was noticeab l e that though the barges had been com ma ndeered by their army and they never l ost sight ofthe ” fact that their owners were the enemy the English of ficers were meticulously courteous i n requesting permis sion t o enter the family cabi ns Your B ritisher nev er for gets that a man s home i s his castle O ne coul d not but wonder just what the atti tude of a German of ficer would have been under reversed conditions for the same motto is far l ess deeply ingrained in the Teuton character The barge nea rest the steamer was occupied by a family with fiv e chi ldren t h e oldest aged fourteen all born on board at as many points ofthe vessel s constant going and coming between R otterdam and M annheim Two ofthem were at school in the town in which the fami ly was registered as residents where the p arental marriage was on record where the father reported when the order ofmobilization called him t o arms The oldest had already been entered a s ” crew and was preparing t o follow in his father s foot — steps i i the expression be all owed under the circumstances When they had arranged themselves for the night the Tommi es returned on board the steamer for a t wo hour entertainment of such caliber as coul d be aroused from their ow n midst There were several professional barn storming vaudevill e performers among them rather ou t of practice from their l ong trench vigils but willing enough t o of fer such talents as they still possessed Nor were the amateurs selfish in preserving their incogni to It was si mp le fare typi fied by such uproarious jokes as : U ngry are you ? Well ere ere s a pi ece ofCh alk ” Go draw your self a p late of am an e ggs B ut it all serv ed t o pass the endless last hours that separated the war weary veterans from the fina l ardently ” awaited return t o the old woman an the kids The tramp of hundreds of hobnailed shoes on the deck over ou r heads awoke us at dawn and by the time we had “
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88
VA GA B OND I N G
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I was conscious of a flicker of surprise when the D utch authorities welcomed me ashore without so much as open — ing my baggage particul arly as I was still in uniform The hotel I chose turned out to be German in ownership and personnel S teeped in the yarns of the past five years I looked forward to at least the excitement of having spies go through my baggage the moment I left it unguarded Possibly they did ; if so they were superhumanly clever in repacking the stuffas they found it If I had be en so foolish as to suppose that I could hurry o n at once into Germany I should have been sadly di sap pointed The first ofthe several duties before me was to apply to the police for a D utch identity card Without it no one could exist at liberty in nor leave the flat little kingdom As usually happens in such cases when one is in a hurry the next day was Sunday The chief excitement in R otterdam on the day of rest was no longer the Zo o but the American camp a barbed wire inclosure out along the wharves about which the Dutchman and his wife and progeny packed a dozen rows deep to gaze at doughboys tossing baseballs or swinging boxing gloves with about as much evidence of the amusement as they mi ght show before a R embrandt or a Van Dyck painting Naturally so hilarious a S abbath passes swiftly for a man eager to be elsewhere ! There were ofcourse the window disp l ays of the cl osed shops of unfailing interest to any one long famili ar only with warring lands No wonder these placid Dutchmen looked so full cheeked and contented Though a trades man may have found some things missing to the casual eye there were apparently none of the material good things B utter o f li fe that could not be had in superabundance eggs cakes bonbons fat bacon meat of every species sweets of all kinds soap as good and as cheap as before the war cigarettes cigars and tobacco enough to have .
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GETTI N G N E UT R A L I Z E D set all France to rioting all those little dainties which the gormands of the belligerent countries had ceased even t o sigh for were here tantalizingly spread out for block after block street after street R estaurants o st ent at e d fering anything a hungry man could pay menu cards of for ; milk was to be had every few yards at ten D utch cents a glass One had something of the sensation that would come from seeing diamonds and gold nuggets strewn along the way just around the corner from the abode ofa band of unsuccessful yeggmen With the caution bred of nineteen months in France I had filled the interstices of my baggage w ith chocolate and cigars It was like car Nothing was more abundantly ry i ng gloves to Grenoble displayed in the windows of R otterdam than those t w o articles A closer inspection however showed that Holland had no t entirely escaped the secondary eff ects ofthe war The milk that still sold so cheaply showed a di stinct evidence now oftoo close an alliance between the herd and the pump If the restaurants were fully supplied from h ors d ceu vre fee the aftermath was a very serious shock t o the t o cof financial system There seemed moreover to be no place where the average rank and file oflaboring humanity could get its wholesome fill for a reasonable portion ofits income The bonbons were a trifle pasty ; the cigars not only as — expensive as across the Atlantic which means manyfold — more than the old Dutch prices they were far more i h v i t ing behind a p late glass than when burning in front ofthe face The clothing that was offered in such abundance usually confessed frankly to membership in the shoddy class S uspenders and garters had all but lost their elas — — t i ci t y ; shoes except the more popular D utch variety had soared to the lofty realms to which all articles of leather have ascended the world over Bicycles the D utchman s chiefmeans oflocomotion however seemed as easily within ,
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91
VA GA B OND I N G THR OU GH C H AN GI N G GERM ANY “
each as if the far spread rubber crisis had never di s covered this corner of E urope Yet on the whole these happy red cheeked overfed Dutchm en did not seem to have a care in the world Their attitude toward the American uniform appeared to be cold ference though the new doughboy at best not above indif we ekly credited them with genuine friendliness O ne g ot the impression that they were pro Ally or pro B oche inter — changeably as it served their own interests which after all is quite i n keeping with human nature the world round The most serious task of the A merican detachment w as to prevent the supplies destined for hungry E urope beyond from dwindl ing under the hands of the Dutch stevedores who transhipped them It would perhaps be unfair to call the stodg y little nation a war profi t ee r yet there were suggestions on all sides that it had not always scorned to take advantage of the distress of its neighbors I may be prejudiced but I did not find the Hollanders what the Spaniards call s si mpati co not even so much as I had fifteen years before If I may so express it the kingdom left t he same impression one feels upon meeting an old classmate who has amassed wealth in some of the quicker less laborious methods ou r own land af fords One rejoices in a way at his prosperity yet one feels more in tune with the less ” successful old time friend who has been mellowed by his fair share of adversities Monday though it was the last day of April shivered under a ragged bl anket of wet snow The line u p at the police station was international and it was long Further more the lieutenants behind the extemporized wickets were genuinely Dutch ; they neither gossiped nor loafed yet they did not propose to let the haste of a disorderly outside world disturb their racial serenity or jar their superb penmanship They preserved the same sense of order amid the chaos that surrounded their ti ght little r
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92
A GA B OND I N G T HROUGH
C HAN G I N G GERM ANY
V
shoes and a Zu y der Zee cap sat on a pierhead serenely fishing Above their heads stood a road sign pointing in opposite directions to : — — PA R I S 4 kilometers ; CA LA I S 7 kilo meters Their extended quarrel on w h o started the war and why brought no evidence of pro German sympathy from the au dience It was easy to imagine the horrified protest from the German Legation which such a ski t would have brought down upon the producer s head a year before A scene that caused little less mirth showed a D utch frontier guard so hoary with service that their clothing had sprouted toadstools and their feet barnacles The more widely I inquired the more unlikely seemed the possibility of getting into Germany This was in keeping with my experiences in other lands had I stopped to think of it where it had always proved simpler to dash forward on a di f ficult trip first and make inquiries afterward Ou r fer and consulate in R otterdam had no suggestions to of advised me t o see ou r Legation at The Hague An excellent train showing no evi dence that the world had ever been at war set me down a t t h e Dutch capital an hour later ” You want to get into Germany ? queried the Legation Well all we can say is God bless with elevated eyebrows ” you ! A deeper probing howev er showed that this was only the of cial voice speaking fi ” Personally continued the particular se cret ary t o whom I had appealed with a decided accent on the word I would Offi cially of suggest that y ou se e the German L egation — I c ourse we do not know that any such place exists but — — f i cially that there is a Herr Malt z e n have heard quite unof Bu t of course you could not call on him t here w h o i n American khaki au x pa s ofasking where the Ger I came near making the f ,
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94
GE TTI N G NEUT R AL I Z E D
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man Legation was situated O f course the secretary could fi cially The first passer b y outside no t hav e known of — however readily pointed it ou t to me just around the corner By the time I had returned to R otterdam and outfitted myself in civilian garb carefully adjusted to pass muster at so exact ing a function as a German of f i cial visit and at the same time not t o suggest wealth to fellow road st e rs should I succeed in entering the Empire another day had been added t o my debit column O n the train to The Hague next morning I tested the disgui se which exceedi ngly E uropean clothing a recently acquired mustache and the remnants of a tongue I had forded by playing German once spoken rather fluently af before my fellow passengers To all outward appe arances the attempt was successful but try as I woul d I saw a German spy in every rosy cheeked prosperous D utchman who turned his bovine eyes fixedly upon me Herr Malt zen s office hours were not until five in the afternoon When at l ast I was ushered into his august presence I summ oned my best German accent and laid as much stress as was — becoming on some distant relatives who the past five — years will ing still dwel t within the E mpire ” The prim ary question of course pronounced Herr Malt ze n in the precise resonant language of hi s calling ” is are you German or a re you an Am erican ? ” I replied A merican certainly f i cul t extremely di f cult boomed Ah then it will be dif fi the immaculate Teuton solemnly Up t o nine days a g o I was permitted to pass personally on the credential s of forei gn correspondents Bu t now they must be referred to Berlin If you care t o make of ficial application ” I hereby do so Unfortunately it is not so si mp l e as that The a p plication must be in writing giving references to several p ersons of the respo nsib le cl ass in Germany with a state .
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95
VA GA B ON D I N G
THR OUGH
C H AN G I N G GERMANY
ment of your activities during the war copies of your credentials And how soon coul d I expect the answer ? With the very best ofluck in two weeks more probably ” thr ee or four I returned to R otterdam in a somewhat dazed condition having left Herr Malt zen with the impressi on that I had gone to thi nk the problem over Nor was that a fal se impression It was more of a problem than even the suave diplomat suspected It happened that I had a bare ” six weeks left for a tramp over in Germany If I frittered — away three fourths ofthem among the placid and contented D utchmen there woul d not be much left except the regret of having giving up the privilege of returning home — eventually under army pay and transportation More over rumb lings from Paris indicated that by that time a trip through Germany woul d be ofslight interest Pretired that night more nearly convinced than ever that I was more properly fitted to become a protectorate under the mandate of some benev olent league of managers for i rre sponsible persons than to attempt to continue as an auton o m o u s member ofsociety S ome time in the small hours I was rapped on the fore head with a brilliant idea So extraordinary an experience brought me to a sitting posture and full wakeful ness The Food C ommission had a steamer leaving next day for D an f zig What could be more to my purpose than to drop of there and tramp back to Holland ? Am ong my possessions — was an elaborately non com ittal l etter I had b een given — the privilege of dictating it myself from the Hoover ” crowd i n Paris ; down toward the end of which it was specifically stated that while I was not connected with the Food C ommission they would be glad if any courtesies coul d be shown me C arefully read it wo ul d have made a rather satisfactory prelude to the request of a starving ,
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VA GA B OND I N G
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least I must leave Holland and if I l eft in an easterly di re c tion there was only one place that I could bring up Bu t what of Herr Malt z en ? My dime novel conception of international espionage pictured hi m as having set a half dozen ofhis most trusted agents to dogging my footsteps I woul d outwit them ! I hastened back to the hotel and wrote the Teuton envoy an elaborate application for per mission to enter Germany with references copies of cre de n t i a ls and touching as gently as possible on my unseemly activities during the war U nfortunately I coul d recall the name and address ofonl y one ofthose distant German relatives ofwhom I had boasted ; the others I was forced to fake arousing new misgivings in my penny dreadful co nscience In conclusion I added the subtle misleader that while awaiting his reply I shoul d make the most ofmy time by journeying about Holland and possibly elsewhere Then I tossed into a straw suitcase a few i ndi spef i sab le articles the confiscation of which I felt I coul d survive and dashed for the evening train to the eastern frontier To carry out still further my mov re bred disguise I took third — class and mingled with the inconspicuous mul titude T h er e w as no use attempting to conceal myself in the coal bin or to bribe the guard to lend me his uniform for the train did not go beyond the border O n the platform I met an American lieutenant in full uniform bound for Hamburg as a courier ; but I cut our interview as short as courtesy permitted ou t of respect for Herr Malt zen s lynx eyed agents The lieutenant s suggestion that I ride boldly r st class comf with him in fi ort gave me a very poor impres sion of his subtlety E vidently he was not well read in detective and spy literature However there was comfort in the feeling of having a fellow— countryman particul arly ‘ o ne of ofli ci a l stan di ng within easy reach Holland lay dormant and featureless under a sogg y snow coverlet Many o fher hundreds of fat cat t le w ore canvas ,
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be pumped out then two other strips farther north Bu t the sections nort h and south of Stavoren were to be l eft as they were The soil was not worth the cost ofuncovering it and the river Yssel must be left an outl et to the ocean fi ci ng t o carry the railway t o the peninsula a viaduct su f oppo site It may hav e been the waving flags that turned the con v ersation to the royal family A gardener who had long worked for t hem scom fu lly branded as canards the rumors in the outside world that the German consort was not — popul ar The prince was quite democratic royalty radiates democracy nowadays the world over apparently —and was so genuinely D utch that he would no t speak German with any one w h o knew any other tongue He spoke most of the European ones himself and in addition Tamil and Hindustani He took no part whatever in the govem — ment unless he advised the Queen unof ficially in the — privacy of their own chamber but was interested chiefly in the Boy S cout movement in connection with which he hoped t o visit the U nited States after the war They were a very loving couple quite as much so as i fthey Were per f ect ly ordinary people With By this time the short northern night had fall en t w o changes ofcars I rattled on into it and brought up at O ldenzaal on the frontier at a late h our The American lieutenant put up at the same hotel with me and we dis cussed the pros and cons of my hopes ofgetting into Ger many They were chiefly cons The lieutenant was quite willing for me t o make use ofhis presence consistent with army ethics and I retired with a slightly rosier view of the situation In the morning this tint had wholly disappeared I coul d not stir up a spark of optimism anyw here in my system Army li fe has a way of sapping the springs of personal initi ative T o say that I was 99 per cent convinced ,
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I 00
GETTI N G N E UT R A L I Z E D that I would be back in Oldenzaal before the day was over would be an under statement I would have traded my chances ofpassing the frontier for a D utch cigar I bought a ticket on the shuttle train t o the first German station in much the same spirit that a poker player throws his last dollar into a game that has been going against hi m srnce the night before As a refinement of cruel ty the D utch authori ties sub mi t t ed us to a second customs examination even more searching than that at ou r arrival They relentlessly fer fs hidden away in the most unlikely r e t e d o u t the foodstuf corners of the smallest luggage and dropped them under the low counter at their feet An emaciated woman bearing an Austrian passport was thus reli eved ofseventeen parcels down to those contai ning a half pound of butter or a slice In her case not even her midday train l unch of cheese escaped No one coul d complain that the blockade require ment against Holland reshipping to Germany was being violated at O ldenzaal As we passed out the door to the platform a soldier ran his hands up and down our persons in search of suspicious lumps and bulges My D utch identity card had been taken away from me ; I no l onger had the legal right to exist anywhere O nce on the train however the food blockade proved t o have been less water ” tight than i t had seemed As usual the wise ones had found means of evading it Several experienced travelers f i cial authorization t o had provided themselves with of bring in ten or twelve pounds ofLebensrni ttel A few others aroused the envy of their fell ow passengers— once the — boundary was passed b y producing succulent odds and ends from secret linings oftheir baggage O ne loud voiced individual asserted that there was much smuggling through the forests beside us It is not likely however that the food that escapes the O ldenzaal search brought much relief to the hunger ofGermany -
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The thin faced A ustrian woman sat hunched in a far corner of the compartment noiselessly crying Two mid dl e aged Germans of the professor municipal — employee caste whispered cautiously together on the opposite cushion As we passed the swampy little stream that marks the boundary they each solemnly gave it a military sal ute and from that moment on raised their voices to a quite audible pitch O ne displayed a sausage he had wrapped i n a pair oftrousers The other produced from a vest pocket a tiny package of pape r soap leaves each the size ofa visit ing—card He pressed three or four of them upon his com panion The latter protested that he coul d not accept so serious a sacrifi ce The other insisted and the gratefu l recipient bowed low and raised his hat twice in thanks before he stowed the precious leaves away among hi s pri vate papers They passed a few remarks about the unf ai r ness ofthe food blockade particularly since the signing ofthe armistice O ne spoke scornfully of the attempt of the Allies to draw a line between the German government and — the people there was no such division he asserted B u t by this time we were grinding to a halt in Bent h ei rn in al l probability the end ofmy German journey The passengers and their hand luggage jammed toward — n o n a door flanked by several German coms and a hand some young lieutenant I pressed closely on the heels of the American courier He was received with extreme courtesy by the German lieutenant who personally saw t o it that he was unmolested by boundary or customs of ficials and conducted him t o the outgoing waiting room toward which we were all striving Meanwhile a sergeant had studied my passport quite innocent of the German visé dropped it into the receptacle of doubtful papers and motioned to me to stand back and let the ot hers pas s exactly as I had expected him to do How ridicul ous of me to fancy I coul d bluff my way through a cordon ofGer -
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102
GETTI N G N E UT R A L I Z E D man ofici als as if they had been French or Italian ! Wo ul d they shut me up or merely toss me back on the Dutch ? The last of my legitimate fellow passengers passed on into the forbidden land and left me standi ng quite alone in the little circle of German non coms O ne of them rescued my passport and handed it to the handsome young lieutenant as he returned He looked at me questioningly I addressed him in German and slipped the weak kneed — Food C omm ission letter into his hands Perhaps but alas ! my last hope gav e a last despairing gasp and died ; the lieutenant read English as easily as you or I ! ” You see I began lamely as a correspondent and more or less connected w ith the Food Commission I wished to have a glimpse ofthe distribution from Hamburg— and I can catch one of t heir shi ps back from there to R otterdam Then as the lieutenant I am with speaks no German I fered to act as interpreter f or him on the way of I ,
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I was waiting of course to hear the attentive listener bellow the German version of You poor fish ! do you ” think y ou can p ul l that kind of bull on me! Instead he bowed slightly in acknowledgment of my explanation and looked more closely at my passport You shoul d have had this stamped at the German ” Legation in The Hague he remarked softly I did not know until shortly before the train left that the lieutenant was comi ng I added hastily so there was no time for that I thought that with the letter from the Food Commi ssion also — E ither I am really very simple i n my particul ar asinine — moments I feel the certainty ofthat fact or I have been vouchsafed the gift ofputting on a very simple face The German gazed an instant into my innocent eyes then glanced again at the letter Yes ofcourse he replied turning toward an experience ,
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1 03
VA GA B ON D I N G
T HR OU GH
C H AN G I N G GERM ANY
faced ol d Feldwebel across the room Will you be kind enough to wait a moment ? This ge ntle voiced young o f fice r whom I had rather expected to kick me a few times in the ribs and perhaps knock me down once or twi ce with the butt of his side arm returned within the period specified and handed my papers back t o me I hav e not the authority myself to pass on your case he explained I am only a L eu tnant and I shall have to refer i t to the Oberleu tnant at the S chloss in town I do not ” think however that he will make the slightest dif ficulty ferently I thought dif The Ober would almost cer hard boiled old warrior who would sub t ai nly be some je ct me to a ll those brutalities his underling had for some reason seen fit to avoid S till there was nothing to do but play the game through I shall send a man with you to show the way continued the lieutenant You have plenty oftime ; the train does not leave for two hours Meanwhile you may as well finish the other formalities and be ready to go on when y ou return A customs of ficer rummaged through my hamper ” N 0 more soap ? he queried greedily as he caught sight o f the two bars I possessed E vidently he had hoped to find enough to warrant confiscation His next dig u n earthed three cakes ofcomrni ssary chocolate He carefully lifted them ou t and carried them across the room My escapade was already beginning to cost me dearly for real chocolate is the E uropean traveler s most valuable pos session i n war tim e He laid the precious st ufl on a pair ofscales filled ou t a long gr een form and handed it to me as he carefully tucked the chocolate back in my hamper ” Forty fi he sai d v e pfennigs duty At the current exchange that was nearly four cents ! A second of ficial hal ted me to inquire how much German “
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1 04
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V A GA B O N D I N G
T HR OUGH
C H AN G I N G GERM ANY
step than the Hollanders a few miles behind At the foot of an aged castle on a hi llock t h e soldier opened the door o f a former lodge and stepped in after me The military — of fice strikingly resembled one of our own little except eldg ra u instead ofkhaki was diff the f erent A half dozen soldiers and three or four non coms were lounging at several tables sprinkled w ith papers ink bottles and of ficial stamps Two typewriters sat sil ent a sheet of unfini shed business Three privates were horse dr ooping over their rolls playing in one corner ; two others were loudly engaged in a friendly argument ; the rest were reading newspapers or humorous weeklies ; and all were smoking The Feldw eb el in charge laid his cigarette on his desk and stepped toward me My guide sat down like a man who had finished a long day s journey and left me to state my ow n case I retold my story At the word American the soldiers slowly looked up then gradually gathered around me The ir faces were entirely friendl y with a touch of curiosity They asked a few simple questions chiefly on the subject of food and tobacco conditions in Allied territory O ne wished t o know h ow soon I thought it woul d be possible to emigrate to Am erica The Feldwebel l ooked at my papers sat down at his desk with them and reached for an of ficial stamp Then he seemed to change his mind rose and entered an inner of fice A middl e aged rather hard faced first lieutenant came ou t wi th him The soldiers did not even rise to their feet The Ober glanced at me then at my papers in the hands ofthe Feldwebel ” I see no objection he said then turned on his heel and disappeared When the Feldwebel had indorsed my passport I sug gested that he stamp the Food C ommi ssion also A Ger man military imprint would giv e i t the final touch within the E mpire at least for any of ficial s who did not r ead E nglish well The under of ficer carried ou t the suggestion .
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106
GETTI N G N E UT R A L I Z E D without comm ent and handed the papers back to me I had permission t o go when I chose B efore I had done so thanks to the continued curiosity of the sol diers the Oberleu tnant sent word that he wished to see me I kicked myself inwardly for not having gone while the going was good and entered his private of fice He motioned me to a chair sat down himself and fell to aski ng me questions They were fully as disconnected and trivial as many an interrogation of prisoners I had heard from t h e lips of Ameri can officers My respect for f of the German army the stern di scipline and trained staf was rapidly oozing away Like hi s soldiers the C O of Be nt h e i rn seemed chiefly interested in the p l enitude and price of food and tobacco in France and B elgium Then he inqui red what people were saying in P aris ofthe peace conditions and h ow soon they expected them t o be ready ” — e i e e i e F r d e th ey ll get no peace ! he cried S i e kri eg n k n suddenly with considerable heat when I had mum bled some sort ofanswer Then he abruptly changed the sub je ct wi thout indicating just what form the l ack of peace woul d take and returned again to food ” What will Wilson do about his Fourteen P oi nts ? he interrupted somewhat l ater ” All he can I answered evasively having had no private tip on the President s p lans ” Yes but what can he demanded the German against that other pair ? We shall all be swamped wi th B ol shevism —A merica al ong with the rest ofus ! Luckily for you the train comes 1n the morni ng he concluded rising t o i n di cate that the interview was at an end Y ou would not have found us here this afternoon May fi r st is a national holiday this year for the first time ” We are a republic now wi th soci alistic leanings he ended half savagely half sneeringly A n hour l ater I was speeding toward Berlin on a fast ,
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107
,
VA GA B OND I N G
T HR OUGH
C H AN G I N G GERM ANY
express I had always found that a dash at the heart of things was apt to be surer than a dilly dallying about the outskirts O nce in the capital I could lay my plans on a sounder foundation than by setting out o n my proposed tramp so near the border To be sure I had not ventured to buy a ticket to B erlin at a wicket surrounded by a dozen soldiers who had heard me assert that I wa s going to H am — Bu t Dame Fortune seeming to have taken me b urg — under her wing for the day a Dutch trainman with whom I fell into conversation chanced to have such a ticket in hi s pocket which he was only too glad to sell As a matter o f fact I doubt whether the open purchase of the bit of cardboard would have aroused any comm ent much less ‘ created any di fli cu lt i es L ooking back on it now from the pinnacle of weeks of travel i n all parts of the Germ an E mp i r e by every possible means oflocomotion that teapot tempest of passing the frontier seems far more t h an ri di cu lous It is possible t h at t h e combination of circumstances — — made admittance once gained seem easier than it really fthe i mpression that the dif is Bu t I cannot shake of f i culties were almost wholly within my own disordered brain di sordered because of the wild tales that had been dished It was o f course to the ou t to us by the Allied press advantage of the correspondents fluttering about the dove cote at the head ofUnter den Linden to create the impres sion that the only way to g e t into Germany was to cross the frontier on hands and knees in the darkest hour ofa dark night at the most swampy and inaccessible spot with a rabbit s foot grasped firmly in one hand and t h e last will and testament in the other The bla g u e served at least — perfectly legitimate purposes at that from t w o purposes ” — a professional point of view i t made bully good reading fcompetition in the form ofother at home and it scared of correspondents whose timorous natures precluded the possibility ofattempti ng the perilous passage .
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1 08
VA G
A B ON D I N G T H R OUGH
C H AN G I N G GERM A NY
the ribbon of the Iron C ross in the lapel of his civilian cl othing but whom a chance word informed us was still a captain accompanied by two older men They sat in expressionless silence for a time ; then one of the ol der men said test ily : Let s see if we can t find a more congenial compartment Here there is too much E nglish spoken And the trio dis appeared As a matter of fact t h e E nglish they heard was being chiefly spoken by a Dutch diplomat who had fallen in with us I could not reflect however that to have spoken German in a French train at that date woul d have been positively dangerous The lieutenants and the diplomat asserted that they had never b efore seen any such evidence of feeling among the defeated enemy and it is the only strained situation of the kind that I recall having witnessed during all my German journey When we changed cars at Lohne soldiers and civilians gazed rather coldly as well as curiously at the lieutenants yet even when people chatted and laughed with them there was no outward evi dence of protest There were very few cattle and almost no ab orers in the fields though the holiday may have accounted for the absence of the latter The landscape looked everywhere well cul tivated and there were no signs that any except purposely pasture lands had been allowed to lie fallow Near Hanover wi th its great engine works stood hundreds o frusted locomotiv es which had been refused by the Al lies A mong them were large num bers that the Germans had drawn from R ussi a and which were now useless even to the Teutons since they were naphtha burners and naphtha was no l onger to be had within the E mpire Acres upon acres of cars both passenger and freig ht fill ed another — yard cars from Posen from Breslau from M unchen and from K onigsberg from every corner of Germany At Nauen the masts of the great wi reless station from which ,
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I 10
PO STERS TELL B ERL INERS WHE N AND WHE R E TH EY C AN GET M ARM A L AD E O R A POUND OF POTATOES
AN
A PPE AL
FO R RECRUIT S TO
P ROTEC T TH E FATHERL AND OF BOLSH EVI SM "
S IX
FR O M
OUNC ES OF
T HE M E NACE
TH E
H E AR T
OF
THE
E MPIR E
H UN G R Y
N many distri cts of Germany the traveler s eye was frequently drawn during the hectic spring of 1 9 1 9 t o a large colored poster It showed two men ; the one cold gaunt and hungry huddl ed in the rags of his old uniform was shuf fl ing through the sno w with a large dism ally gray city in the background ; the other looking well n our i sh e d and cheerful weari n g a comfortable new civi l ian suit wa s emerging from a smoke belching factory and waving gai ly in the air a handful of twenty mark notes Under the picture r an the device : D O N T G O TO B E R L I N ! There every one is hungry and you will find no work In stead go to the nearest government employment of fice the address of the most convenient being added forts on the part ofthe Despite this and many simil ar ef authorities and private agencies people kept crowding into the capital Not even a personal appeal from his new E bert to the ordinarily laborious and R e i ch spre si de nt persistent German to rem arn at home and keep at work rather than to try to better h i s lot by this vain pilgrimage succeeded in shutting of f the Berli nw ard stream of dis contented humanity War and social disorders seem always t o bring this influx in to the national metropolis the worl d over It is man s nature to wander rn search of happiness when he is not happy seldom recognizing that he is carrying his unhappiness with him and that it is but ’
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112
THE HE A R T OF TH E H UN GR Y EM P I RE slightly dependent upon the particul ar spot he inhabits In this case the general misery was largely due to the gnawings ofhunger and surely B erlin in the year of grace was the last place in all Germany in which to seek 1 91 9 Yet the quest al leviation from that particular misfortune o fthe rainbow end went hopefully on until the tenements ofthe capital were gorged with famished provi ncials and her fers of substantial rewards to newspapers teemed with of any one who would furnish information of rooms apart ments or dwelling houses for rent That B erlin was hungry was all too evident so patent in fact that I feel it my duty to set down in a place apart the gruesome detail s of famine and warn the reader to peruse them only in the presence of a full course di nner B u t the overcrowding was at first glance less apparent Indeed a superficial glimpse of the heart of Prussianism showed it surprisingly like what it had been a decade before The great outdoor essentials were virtually unaltered l y as one amassed bit by bit into a convincing whole On the minor evidences of change as an experienced lawyer pieces together the scattered threads of circumstantial proof did one reach the conclusion that Berli n was no longer what she used to be Her great arteries of suburban railways her elevated and underg round pulsated regularly without even that clogging of circul ation that threatened the civic health of her great tem peramental rival to the west Her shops and business houses seemed except in one particul ar well stocked and prosperous ; her sources of amusement were many and well patronized Her street throngs certainly were not shabby in appearance and they showed no outward signs of leading a hampered existence — — True they were unusually gaunt featured but here we are encroachi ng on ground to be explored under more propitious alimentary circum stances Of the revolution real or feigned through which it had .
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1 13
VA GA B OND I N G
T HR OU GH
C H AN G I N G GERM ANY
recently passed the city bore surprisingly few scars Three or four government buildings were pockmarked with b ul let holes that carried the mind back to el ection days in the capital s of tropical Am erica ; over in Al exanderplatz the bricks and stones flau nt ed a goodly number of shrapnel and machine gun wounds But that was all or almost all the proof of violence that remained T h e palaces of the late K aiser stood like abandoned warehouses ; the R eich stag building wa s cold and si lent testifying to a change of venue for the government on trial if not ofreg i m e Yet it could not after all have been much ofa revolution that had left unscathed those thirty two immense and sometimes pot bellied images of the nob l e Hohenzollerns elaborately carved in stone which still oppressed the stroller along the Sieges Allee in the otherwi se pleasant Tiergart en The massiv e wooden Hindenburg at the end of it a veritable personification of brute strength from cropped head to well planted feet stared down upon puny mankind as of yore though to be sure he looked rather neglect ed ; the nailing had never been completed and the rare visitors passed him by now without any attempt t o hammer home their homage Farther on that other man of iron gazed away across the esplanade as i f he saw nothing in this temporary abandonment of his princip l es t o cause serious misgivings B u t perhaps all this will in time be swept away for there were signs pointing in th at direction The city council of Berlin had already decreed that all pictures and statues of the Hohenzollerns especially those of the deposed Kaiser must be removed from the public halls and schoolrooms That ofitself woul d constitute a decided change in the capital In these first days of May several hundr ed busts and countless likenesses ofWilhelm II and his family had been banished to the cellars of municipal buildings not be it noted far enough away to make rest ora ,
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1 14
T HE HE A R T
OF
TH E H UN GRY EM P I RE
tion di ficult Among the busts said one of the local — papers are some of real ar t istic value I cannot of course vouch for the esthetic sense of the editor— as for example the marble ones of K aiser Wilhelm I and of K aiser Friedrich III which for many years have adorned the ” meeting place of the M unicipal C ouncil itself For all this there was no lack of graven images of the discredited War Lord and his tribe still on exhibition ; the portraits adorning private residences alone coul d have filled many more cellars It would be dif f i cul t to eradicate in a few brief months a trade mark which had been stamped into ev ery article ofcommon or uncommon use In return for these artistic losses the city was taking on new decorations in the form of placards and posters unknown in kai serly days To begin with there were the violent representations in color of what the Bolshevists were alleged to perpetrate on the civil population that fell under their bloody misrule which stared from every con spi cu ou s wall unprotected by the stern announcement that bill posting was ver boten These all ended wi th an appeal for volunteers and money to halt the menace that ” is already knocking at the eastern gates of the Fatherland Then there were the more direct enticements to recruits for ” newly formed Frei corps — the protective home guard — their authors called i t usually named for the of ficer whose signature as commander appeared at the bottom of the poster Even the newspapers carried full page advertise ments setting forth the advantages ofenrolling in the inde pendent b attalion ofMajor B or the splendid regiment ofC olonel S a far cry indeed from the days of univer ” sal comp ul sory service If you will join my company ran these glowing promises after long wi nded appeals to f i cers patriotism you will be commanded by experienced of such as the undersigned and y ou wi ll be lodged fed and well paid by the government What better occupation “
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9
1 15
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VA GA B OND I N G
T HR OUGH
C HANGI N G GERM ANY
can y ou find ? These were the f rei wi lli ge bands that com posed the German army of 1 9 1 9 semi independent groups loosely disciplined and bearing the name of some of ficer of the old reg i me They may not constitute an overpower ing force but there is always the possibi l ity that some man of magnetism and Napoleonic ambition may gather them all together and become a mil itary dictator B esides there is still the trickery o f militaristic Germany to be rec koned with genius for subterfuge that will cover up real training under the pretense of police forces of t u m ” athl etic unions v er erns and of Thus far these omnipresent appeals did not seem t o have met with overwhelm i ng success The soldiers guarding B erlin were virtually all boys of twenty or under ; the older ” men were probably fed up with it Nor did the insolent ficer offormer days any longer lord it over the Prussian of civilian population He had laid aside his saber an d in most cases his uniform and perhaps felt safer in his semi disguise of civies as he mingled with the throng Mili fnecked genera ls or haughty tary automobiles carrying stif civilians in silk hats still occasionally blasted their way down U nter den Linden as commandingly as ever did the K aiser but they were wont t o halt and grow very quiet when the plebeian herd became dense enough t o demand its right of way B ef ore we leave t h e subject of posters however let us take a glimp se at those appealing for aid to the K ri eg s an u nd Z i oi lg ef the city T h e g enen which inundated picture showed a group of German prisoners still i n their — — red banded caps and in full uniform as if the ravages of time and their captors had not so much as spotted a shoulder — strap peering sadly ou t through a wire barricade It was plain to see that some German at home had posed for the artist the beings he depicted were so pitifully gaunt and hungry in appearance I have seen many thousand -
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1 16
VA GA B OND I N G
T HR OUGH
C HAN G I N G GERM AN Y
home along Unter den Linden as if they had been strolling down Main S treet in Des Moines Young Germans in iron hats guarded the e ntrance to the princely Adlon housing the various enemy mi ssions but any one who chose passed freely in or ou t w hatever his nationality his busi nes s or lack thereof or his garb O live drab attracted no more attention in B erlin than it did in Coblenz German feurs drove poi lu s and their of chauf ficers about the streets as nonchal antly a s if they had been taxi drivers in Paris To be sure most uniformed visitors stuck rather closely to the center of town but that was due either to false impressions of danger or to lack ofcuriosity—and perhaps also to the dread of getting ou t of to uch with their ow n food supply For as a matter of experience they were fully as safe in Berlin as in Paris or New York — possib ly a trifle more so— they seemed to run less risk of being separated legally or forcibly from their possessions The h air raising tales which correspondents poured ou t over the wires vi a Copenhagen were chiefly instigated by their clamoring editors and readers at home Let a few random shots be fired somewhere in the city and the scri bes were — at ease for another day and the worl d gasped once more at the bloody anarchy reigning in Berlin while the stodgy B erliner went on about his business total ly ob livious ofthe battle that was supposed to be seething about h i m fi In January 1 9 1 9 a group ofAmerican of cers entered one of the principal restaurants of B erlin and ordered dinner A t that date our olive drab was rare enough in the capital 7 to attract general attention A civilian? at a neighboring tab l e somewhat the worse for bottled ani mosity gave vent to his wrath at sight of the visitors I av i ng no desi re to precipitate a scene they rose to leave S everal German officers sprang to their feet and begged the m to remain assuring them that the disturber woul d be silenced or ejecte d The Americans declined to stay whereupon the .
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1 18
TH E HEA R T
OF
THE H UN GRY EM PI RE
ranking German apologized for the unseemly conduct of an i ll bred fellow countryman and invited the group to be his guests there the foll owing evening N ow I must take issue w ith most American travelers in Germany during the armistice that the general attitude ofcourtesy was either pretense bidding for favor or propa ” ganda directed by those higher up In the first place a great many Germans did not at that date admit that the upstarts who had suddenly risen to power were capable of di recting their personal conduct Moreover I have met scores of persons who were neither astute enough nor closely enough in touch with those outlining national policies to take part in any concerted plan to curry favor with their con querors I have furthermore often success fully posed as a German or as the subject of a friendly or neutral power and have found the attitude toward their enemies not one whit di fferent under those ci rcum stances than when they were knowingly speaking to an enem y There were undoubtedly many who deliberately sought to gain adv antage by wearing a mask of friendliness ; but there were ful ly as many who declined to depart from their customary politeness whatever the provocation Two national characteristics which revolution had not greatly altered were the habi t of commanding rather than requesting and of looking to the government to take a paternal attitude toward its subjects The stem Verboten still stared dow n upon the masses at every corner and angle It rem inded one of the signin some ofou r rodg h er Western towns bearing the information that Gentlemen will not ” spit on the floor ; others mu st not and carrying the i rnpli cation that the pop ul ace cannot be intrusted to its own instincts for decency If only the German could learn fectiveness the val ue of moral suasion the often greater ef ” of a Please than of an iron fi Perhaps st e d it would require a new viewpoint toward life to give full -
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I 19
T HR OUGH
VAGABONDING
C HAN G I N G GERM ANY
strength t o the gentler form among a people ong trained to listen only to the sterner admonition The great trouble with the verboten attitude is that if tho se in command ao ci d ent ally overlook verboti ng something people are almost certain to do it Their atrophied sense of right and wrong gives them no gage of personal conduct Then there is always the man to be reckoned with who does a thing — si mply because it i s verboten though he is rarely a German It is in keeping with this commanding manner that the ruling class fai l s to give the rank and file credit for common horse sense Instead of t h e Anglo Saxon custom oftrusting the individual to take care of himself German paternalism flashes constantly in his face signs and placards prof fering of fi ci ou s advice on every conceivable subject He is warned to stamp his letters before mailing them to avoid draughts if he would keep his health ; h e is ver boten to step of fa tram ca r i n motion lest he break his precious neck and so Ou through all the possibilities of earthly existence until any but a German would feel like the victi m of one of those motherly women whose extreme solicitude b ecomes in practice a constant nagging The Teuton however seems to like it and he grows so accustomed to receiving or impart ing information by means of placards that his very shop windows are ridiculously littered with them Here an en ” graved card solemnly announces This is a suit ofclothes ; there another asserts— more or less truthfully Cigars to smoke One comes to the point ofwondering whether the German does not need most of all to b e let alone until he learns to take care of himself and t o behave of his own free will Then he might in ti me recogni ze that liberty is objective as well as subjective ; that there is true ph i loso phy in the Anglo Saxon contention that every man s home 13 his castle Perhaps he 1s already o n his way to that goal There were promising signs that Germany is growing less streng than she used to be more easy going l
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1 20
,
T H ROUGH
VAGABONDING
C HAN G I N G GERM ANY
of
benzi ne made purchasers rare In t h e coll ecti ons of di lapidated outfits waiting for fares at rai lway stations and public squares it was a question whether horse coach man or carriage w as nearest to the brink of starvation The ani m al s were miserable runts that were ofno military use even before the scarcity of fodder reduced them to their resemblance to museum skeletons The sallow faced dri vers seemed to envy the beasts the han dful ofbran they were forced to grant them daily Their vagabond garb was sadly in keeping with the j unk on wheels in whi ch they rattled languidly away when a new victi m succum bed to their hollow eyed pleadi ng . Most of Berlin seeme d to prefer to walk and that not merely because the legal fares had recently been doubled Taxis might have one or two real rubber tires aged and patched b u t sti ll pum p u pab le ; the others were almost sure to be some astonishing sub st i t u t e whi ch gave t h e machine a resemblance to a war — victim with one leg or more exactly to a three legged dog The most nearly successful E rsa tz tires were iron rims with a score oflittle steel Springs within them yet even those did not make joy riding popul ar O n this subject fof E rsa tz or far fetched substitutes for the real thing many pages might be written even without trespassing for the moment on the forbidden territory of food The department stores were veritable museums of With real shoes costing about sixty dollars E rsa tz articles and real cl othing running them a cl ose race it was essential that the salesman should be able to appease the wrathful customer by of fering him something else —e r— a lmost as ” good The shoe substitutes al one made the shop windows a constant source of amazement and interest Those with fered for as frankly wooden soles and cloth tops were of little a s seven marks The more ambitious contraptions r ang m g from these simpl e corn torturers improved wi th a half dozen iron hinges in the sole to those l aboriously pieced .
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1 22
T HE
HE A R T
OF
T HE
H UN GR Y EM PI R E
together ou t of scraps ofleather that suggested the ul timate fate of the window straps missing from railway carriages ran the whole gamut of prices up to wi th in a few dollars of the genuine article Personally I have never seen a German in Ersa tz footwear with the exception of a few working in their gardens Bu t on the theory of no smoke without some fire the immense stocks displayed all over t h e country were pri mal f a d e evidence of a considerable demand Possibly the substitutes were reserved for interior — domestic us e fetching styles of carpet slippers O n the street the German still succeeded somehow in holding his sartori al own perhaps by the zeal ous husbanding of his pre war wardrobe Look where you woul d you were sure to find some new E rsa tz brazenly staring you in the face Clothing fu rni tu re toys pictures drugs tapestries bicycles tools hand bags string gal oshes the very money in your pocket were but imitations of the real thing E xamine the b ox of matches you acquir ed at last with much patience and diplomacy and you found it marked Without sul phur and without phosphorus — a sad fact that woul d soon have made itself apparent without formal announcement The wood was still genuine ; thanks to their scientific forestry the Germans have not yet run ou t ofthat B u t many of their great forests are thinned out like the hair of the middle — aged mal e and the loss as cleverly concealed There has been much Teutonic boasting on this subject of E rsa tz but si nce the armistice at least it had changed t o wailing for even i fhe ev er seri ously believed otherwi se the German had discovered that the vast majority of his laborious substitutes did not substitute A s we are carefully avoiding the mention of food the most grievous source of annoyance to the rank and file o f which we can speak here is the lack of tobacco In contrast with the rest of the country there were p lenty -
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I 23
VAGABONDING
T HR OUGH
i n B erlin-
C H AN G I N G GERM ANY
ci gars apparently until one found that the heaps of boxes adorning tobacconists windows were plac ” arded N W leere K ri sten or at best were filled with rolls ofsome species ofweed that could not claim the most distant relationship to the fragrant leaf of Virginia I indul ged one day before I had found the open sesame t o the Am erican comm issary in one of the most promising at t w o marks a throw o f those mysterious vegetables The taste is with me yet American of ficers at the Adl on sometimes ventured to leave food supplies in the drawers but their cigars they locked i n the safe o f their desks along with their secret papers and real money I n the highest priced restaurant of B erlin the shout of Waiter ” bri ng t w o cigarettes ! was sure to focus all eyes on the prosperous individual who could still subject his fortune to such extravagance Here and there along Friedrich strasse hawkers assailed passers b y with raucous cri es of ” E nglish and American tobacco ! Which proved not only that the German had lost all nati onal feeling on this pain f u l subject but that the British Tommy and t h e Am eri can doughboy had brought with them some of the tricks they had learned in France These street corner venders not merely of the only real tobacco to be publicly had in B erlin but of newspapers post cards and the like Were more apt than not to be ex soldiers in fi eld gray sometimes as high in rank as Feld w ebels Many others struggled for livelih ood by wandering like gipsies from one cheap café to another playing some form of musical instrument and taking up collections from the clients often with abashed faces Which brings us to the question of gaiety in B erlin Newspapers posters and blazing electric signs called constant attention to count less café cabaret cinema and theater entertainments E very one of them I visited was well filled if not over crowded O n the whole they were distinctly immoral of
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I 24
VAGABONDING
T HR OUGH
CHANGING GERM ANY
any special hardships The investment of a ticket at the house of song brought high interest—particul arly t o t h e foreigner for the best orchestra seats were still eig ht marks at matinées and twelve in t h e evening a mere six ty cents or a dollar at the armistice rate of exchange I remember ” with especial pleasure excellent performances of E urydice ” an The audience was a plain bourgeois d of M artha ” gatheri ng wi th evening dress as lacking as roughnecks In the foyer buf fet in contrast to Paris prices were exceedi ngly reasonab l e but the most popul ar offerings next to t h e wat ery beer were p lates ofpotatoes bologna pi ckl ed fish and hard boiled eggs for though I should not mention it here the German theater goer of these days is as constantly mun ching as an Arab In the gorgeous K aiser s box sat one lone lieutenant and h i s wife whil e a cold eyed old retainer in livery kept guard outside t h e locked door as i f he were still holding the place ferf hi s beloved emperor Though ostensibly the same German prices were vastly lower for visitors than for the native residents For the first time I had something of the sensation of being a millionaire—cost was of slight importance The marks I ft een spent in Germany I bought at an average of t w o for fi cents ; had I delayed longer in exchanging I might have had them still cheaper In some lines notably i n that we are for the moment avoiding prices of course had increased accordingly sometimes outdistancing the adv an tage s of the l ow rate of exchange Bu t the rank and file still clung to the old standards ; it was a hopeless task to try to make the man i n the street understand that the mark was no longer a mark He went so far as to accuse the A merican governmen t of profi t e eri ng because the bacon it was indirectly furnishing hi m cost marks t y seven cents a pound whi ch to h i m represented not fi f but nearly t w o dollars The net resul t of this drop in .
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1 26
,
TH E HEA R T
OF
THE H UN GRY EM PI RE
mark val ue was that the popul ace was several degrees nearer indigence Those who could spend m oney freely — t ee rs and those were of three classes foreigners war profi w h o derived their nourishment directly or indirectly at the public teat Not ofcourse that even those spent real money There was not a penny of real money in circulation in all Germany Gol d silver and copper had all long since gone the way ofother genui ne articles in war tim e Germany and in their p lace had come E rsa tz money P ewter coins did service i n the small est denomi nations ; from a half mark upward there were only shin plasters ofv arying degrees ofraggedness the small er bill s a co n stant annoyance because like most ofthe pewter coins they were ofvalue only in the vicinity o fthe municipal ity or chamber of comm erce that issued them E ven the larger notes of the R eichsbank were precarious holdings that required the constant vigil ance ofthe owner l est he wake up some mom i ng to find that they had been decreed into worthl ess paper Bu t I am getting far ahead of my story Long before I began to peer beneath the surface ofBerlin I had t o face the prob l em oflegalizing ev en my superficial exi stence there O n the very morning after my arrival I hastened t o grim sounding Wi lhelm strasse uncertain whether my next move woul d be toward some dank underground dungeon or merely a swi ft return to the Dutch border The awe inspiring ‘ Foreign Ofi i ce consisted ofseveral adult school boys and the bureaucrat mi nded underlings ofthe ol d régime A Rhodes scholar w h o spoke English somewhat better than I greeted my entrance wi th a formal heartiness thanked me for adding my services to the growing band that was attempting to tell a long deceived world the truth about Germany and di ctated an A u swei s which in the name of t he Foreign Offi ce backed by all the authority of the new national government gave me permission t o go when and where I and forbade any one large or chose within the E mpire .
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1 27
T HR OUGH
VAGABONDING
CHANGIN G GERM ANY
small to put any difficulties whatever in my way Like a sea monster killed at the body but with its tentacles still full of their po1son1ng black fluid Wi lh e hn st ra sse seemed t o have become innocuous at home long before its antenna such as the dreadful Herr Malt z en at The Hague had lost their sting If it had been a great relief t o see the eyes ofpassers b y fade inattentively away at sight ofme in my civi lian garb after two years ofbeing stared at i nuniform it was doubly pleasant to know that not even the minions of the law could now question my most erratic wandering to and fro within the Fatherland With my blanket A u swei s I was no t even required to repo rt to the police upon my arrival in a new comm unity the Poli zei li ch e A nmeldu ng that is I was of course o ne of the banes of German existence still expected to fill out the regulation blank at each hotel or lodging house I occupied but this was a far less troublesome formality than t he almost daily quest for and standing in line at police stations would have been These hotel fo rms were virtually uniform throughout the E mpire They demanded the following information of each prospective guest : Day of arrival ; given and family name ; single married or widowed ; profession ; day month year town county and land of birth ; legal resi dence with street and number ; citizenship (in German the word is S ta a tsang ehb ri g kei t which sounds much more like Property of what government ? place oflast stay with ful l address ; proposed length of present stay ; whether or not the registering guest had ever been in that particul ar city or locality before ; ifso when why and how l ong and residence while there Bu t under t h e new democracy hotelkeepers had grown somewhat more easy going than in years gone by and their exactions in this respect never became burdensome It w as soon evident that the man in the street commonly .
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I 28
VAGA BONDI NG
THR OUGH
C HAN GING
G ER MANY
journals gave a more exact cross section oflocal conditions than the more intentional news columns There were of course countless pleas for labor of any description the majority py ex soldiers Then came offers t o sell or ex change al l manner of wearing apparel A R E A L S IL K ” H A T stil l in good condition A black suit ofreal peace ; ” time cl oth ; A second hand pair of boots or shoes such a ” size of R E A L L E A T H E R ! Four dress shirts N O W A R W A R E S will be exchanged for a working man s blouse and jumper was followed by the enticement (here t eer) no doubt was the trail of the war profi A pair of or a C O W H I DE boots will be swapped f D achshund of established pedigree Farther down were extraordinary opportunities to buy L eberwu rst B lu twu rst j agdwu rs t B ri thwi i rtehen and a host of other app etizing garbage without meat tickets B u t the most persistent advertisers were those bent on recouping their fortunes by marryi ng money It is strange if any new war millionaire in G eri nany has not had his opportunity to link his family with that of some im poverished one of noble lineage In a single page o f the B erli ner Tag ebla tt which carries about one tenth the t ype ofthe same space in our ow n metropolitan daili es there were eight y — seven o ffers of marriage some of them double or more bringing the total up to at least one h undred M any of them were efforts often more pathetic than amusing by small merchants or tradesmen just returned from five years in uniform to find mates who would be of real assistance in re establishing their business Bu t a considerable number aroused amazement that the wares of fered had not been snapped up long ago I translate a few taken at random -
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M ER CH A NT , 3 8 ort une and sport s , f
yea rs of
greea ble you ng lady wi t h Pu rp ose : MA RR IA GE
a
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Chri st i an bachelor, i deali st , lover ofnat u re m arks, w i shes t o mee t a li ke mi nded ,
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di ng wealt h whi ch i s safely i nvest ed
correspon
.
VAGA BONDI N G THR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY
you ng w i dow (Jew i sh ) h appy home A
,
28
years
,
wi t
hou t propert y
,
longs f or anot h e r
.
S ome
did not care how much they spent For instan ce
on
advertising
.
ree t h inki ng Jewess , elegant woman I SEEK FOR MY FR I E N D , a f in t h e fi f t i es , looki ng mu ch you nger , w i dow owner oflu cra t i ve wholesale -
,
bu si ness a su i t able hu sband ofli ke posi t i on Th e lady i s ofbeau ti ful fi gu re lovable t emperament hi ghly cult ured d i st i ngu i shed worldl y w i se and at t h e same t i me a good manager and di li gent b u si ness w oma n !Thi s las t det ai l was pla inly a t au t ology havi ng already been st at ed i n t h e ni nt h w ord oft h e para gra ph ! T h e gent leman shou ld b e a me rchant or a governm ent of f i ci a l ofhi gh rank Chi efcondi t i on i s good ch aract er di st i ngu i shed sent i ment s affect i onat e di sposi t i on No phot ographs b u t oral i nt ervi ew soli ci t ed fers addressed et c Of ,
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This last vacancy should have found many suit able candidates if th ere was truth in the violently pink hand bills that were handed out in the streets of Berlin during ” one of the demonstrations against the peace terms For the sake ofbrevity I give only its hi gh lights /
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E ND OF MILI TAR I S M
BEG INN IN G OF t y mont hs Fi f
have
honorably and u ndefeat ed N ow w e h av e ret urned h ome i gnom i ni ou sly bet raye d by desert e rs a nd mu t i neers ! We hope d t o fi ree Germany w i t h a government oft h e nd a f peop le Wh at i s of fered u s ? we
d
! EW RU LE !
st oo
at
t h e Front
.
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A
G OVER N ME N T OF
JEWS !
part i ci pat i on oft h e J ew s in t h e fi ght sat t h e Front was almost The i r part i ci p a t i on i n t h e new government h as already reached ni l Y et t h e percent age ofJ ewi sh p opu lat i on i n Germany i s 80 per cent only 1 % per cent OPE N YOUR EYES ! Th e .
.
D D
COM RA E S , Y OU K NOW T H E B LOOD SUCK ER S ! COM RA E S, WH O WE NT T O TH E FR ON T A S VOLU NT EER S? 132
TH E H EAR T
OF
THE H UNGRY EM PI RE
WH O SA T OUT TH ERE M OST LY IN WH O CROWD E D I NTO T H E WAR TH E
WH O
WE !
T H E MUD ?
SERVI CE S A T
H OM E ?
JEWS !
COM FOR TA B LY A N D SAFE LY IN CA NTEE N S A N D OFF I CE S ? WH I CH PH Y S I C IA NS PR OTE CT E T H E I R F E LL OW RA C E FR OM T H E TRE N CH E S ? UT TH OU GH WHO A LWAYS RE PORTE D US FIT FOR WE WERE A LL SH OT T O PI E CE S ? SA T
D
-
D
These
the
are
people wh o rule u s
!H ere
.
f ollowe d
a
long li st
mes
ofna
blanket accu sat i ons ! Even i n t h e Soldi ers Councils t h e Jews ha ve t h e b i g w ord ! Fou r long ye ars t hese pe ople hung b a ck f rom t h e Front y et on N ovem ber ot h t hey h ad t h e cour age gu ns i n h and t o t ea r a wa y f rom u s soldi ers ou r cockades our sh ou lder st ra p s and ou r me d als of honor ! Comrades w e w i sh as a f ree p e op le t o de ci de f or ou rselves and b e T h e Nat i onal A ssembly mu st bri ng i nt o t h e ruled by men ofOUR race ! government only men of OUR blood and OUR opi ni ons ! Ou r mot t o ’
and
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mu st b e : GER M A NY FOR G ER MA NS ! German people ,
We
want ne i t
ple ,
rule
d by
d t h e chai ns ofJewry
ren
her Pogrom nor Burg erkr i eg ! We ree Germ an men ! f
We
d
A w ay w i t h t h em ! re e Germa n peo want a f
as u n er !
w i ll not b e t h e
slaves oft h e
Jews !
E LE CTOR S Ou t al so
oft h e
no
Jews !
Part i es
and
bapt i zed Jews ! Gi ve your vot es
Soci e t i es
Elect
y
onl
also
to
DOWN
ru n
by Jews !
none oft h e
Ele ct
sO-ca
lled
no “
Je w s !
Elect
essi onl ess conf
”
men ofgenu i ne German b lood !
WI TH J E WRY !
Though it is violating the chronological order ofmy tale it may be as well to sum up at once the attitude ofB erlin upon receipt Of the peace terms Four separate times during my stay in Germany I visited the capital by com O n the day the terms b i nat i ons of choice and necessity of the proposed treaty were made public apathy seemed to be the chi ef characteristic of the popul ace Ifone must ,
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133
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY base concl usions on visible indications the masses were far less interested in the news from Versailles than in their indi vidual struggles for existence The talk one heard was not of treaty terms but of food Not more than a dozen at a time gathered before the windows of the L oka l They read the bulletins A nzei g er o n U nter den Linden deliberately some shaking their heads and strolled on about their business as if they had been Americans scanning the latest baseball scores a trifle disappointed perhaps tha t the home team had not won There was no resemblance whatever to the excited thr ongs ofTeuton colonists who had surged about the war maps in R io de Janeiro during August 1 91 4 One could not but wonder whether this apathy had reigned in Berlin at that date S cenes of pop ul ar excitement and violence had been prophesied but for two days I wandered the streets of the capital mingling with every variety ofgroup questioning every class of inhabi tant without once hearing a violent word A few individuals asserted that their opi nIOn of A 1ner1ca had been sadly shocked ; one or two secretaries of Al lied correspondents haughtily resigned their positions Bu t the afternoon t e a at the A dlon showed the same gathering of sleek well dressed German s of both sexes by no means averse to genial chats with enemy guests in or out ofuniform There was no means of forming definite conclusions as to whether the nation had been stunned with the immensity of the tragedy that had befallen it or whether these taciturn beings had some secret cause for satisfaction hidden away in their labyrinthine minds Later I was assured that many had stayed up all night waiti ng for the first draft of the terms S udermann ex plained the apparent apathy wi th We Germans are not like the French ; we mourn in the privacy of o u r homes ” but we do not show our sorrow in public C ertainly the Boche has none of the Frenchman s sense Of the dramatic ,
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134
VE NDER
TH
E
O F TU RNIP S
MIL K MAN
ON
A B
ER
L
IN S T
REET
IN A S MALL T OW N O F TH
E
CO RN ER
INT
ERI OR
THE HEART
OF
THE H UNGRY EM PI RE
his tendency to hysteria An observer reported that the epoch making first meeting of the National Assembly at Wei rnar opened like the unfinished business ofa butchers ” lodge O nce during my absence from the capital there was a flurry of excitement but nothi ng to cause me to ” regret my presence elsewhere The demonstration against the Ally housing Adl on proved upon my return to have been serious chiefly in the foreign press At the most genuinely German restaurant the head waiter had on the same date informed an A m e ri canw oman that her guests would no longer be welcome if they came in A llied uniforms — and that E nglish would not be spoken then took her whispered order in that language behind a concealing palm D odgers were dropped f rom airplanes on the capi tal one day protesting against a half dozen articles ofthe treaty demanding the im mediate return of German prison ers and ending with the query Shall nob le Germans be judged by Serb murderers Negro states Japs Chinese B ill boards blossomed ou t with highly col Siamese ? ored maps showing the territory that was being stolen from the E mpire Bu t the populace seemed to give little f called the Allied attention to these appeals Ludendorf correspondents together and broke the record for short interviews with If this is what they mean by Wilson s ” Fourteen Points our enemies can go to hell Up to date they have not fully complied with the general s proposal Haughty R ichard Strauss declined to waste words on his O n May 9t h several of Al lied fellow guests at the Adlon ” the Berlin dail ies adm itted at last We are conquered Had their staf fs been more ef ficient they might have shared that news with their readers several months earlier O n the third Sunday in May when the subject would long since have grown cold among less phlegmatic peoples I attended a dozen meeting s of protest against the peace terms in as many parts of the city Nothing could have been nor
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135
THE HUNGRY EM PI RE
OF
T HE H EART
more l adylike sile nt orderly and funereal with the pos sible exception of the processions that formed after the meetings were over and plodded noiselessly down the shaded length ofUnter den Li n den In the first heat of despair a Trau erwoche or week of mourning was decreed throughout the E mpire with the cast iron fist of dreaded N oske to enforce it but the nation took it less seriously than its forcible language warranted : ,
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bet ween May rot h and 1 6t h i nclu si ve mu st b e post poned All pu bli c t h eat er a nd mu si ca l represent a t i ons plays and si mi lar jovi ali t i es so long as t here Is not i n t hem a hi gher i nt erest for art or f Especi ally are or sci ence and unless t h ey b e ar a seri ou s charact er f orb i dde n Rep resent at i ons i n mu si c halls cab aret s and ci rcu see mu si ca l and In t h e t i m e
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m i lar
si
m ent s i n i nns
e nt ert ai n
and
t a v erns
,
.
pu bli c dances ( T anzlu stbarkei ten) as well as soci al and pri vat e dance ent ert ainment s i n pu bli c places or t av erns Al l dram at i c rep rese nt at i ons and gai et i es i n t h e pu bli c st reet s roads squ ares a nd ot h er p u b li c p laces Ci nem at ograph i c ent ert ai nment s w hi ch do not bear wi t ness t o t h e all horse races and si mi lar pu b li c spor t i ng e arnest ness of t h e t i mes ; Al l
joyful
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-
a ct i vi t i e s
.
Gamb li ng clu b s unt il
are
f u rt her not i ce
to
close , and
to
mai n closed also af t er t h e
re
1 6t h
.
There was no clause demanding that Germany fast or reduce her consumption offood to the mini mum ; she had long been showing that evidence of national sorrow without the necessity of a formal comm and .
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING
G ERMANY
for more than a sentence or two before he also drifted back — to the subject of food how hungry he had been for months ; how he had suf fered from lack of proper nourishment during a recent convalescence ; how he had been forced to resort to S chlei chhcmdel to keep himself and his sick daughter alive Loose fi t t i ng cl othing thin sallow faces prominent ch eek bones were the rule among B erliners ; the rosy complexions and the fine teeth of former days were conspicuous by their scarcity The prevailing facial tint in the city was a ” grayish yellow Why how thin you are ! had become taboo in social circles Old acquaintance meeting old friend was almost sure to find his collar grown too large for him Old friend perhaps did not realize that sartori al change in h i s own appearance his mi r ror pictured it so gradually but he was quick to note a similar uncouthness in the garb In the schoolroom there were not o f old acquaintance red cheeks enough to make one pre war pair unless t h e fa ce ofa child recently returned from the country shining like a new moon in a fog trebled the pasty average E very whil e r ow included pitiful cases of arrested development watery eyes turned the solemn listless gaze of premature The newspapers of old age on the visitor from every side B erlin were full of complaints that pupils were stil l required to attend as many hours and otherwise strive to attain pre ” war standards It was undemocratic protested many par ents for it gave the few chi ldren of those wealthy enough to indul ge in S ehlei chhcmdel an unfair advantage over the under fed youngsters Of the masses E ven adults condoled with o ne another that their desire and ability to work had sunk to an incredib ly low level Three h ours in my Office moaned one contributor and my head is swirli ng so di zzily that I am forced to stretch out on my divan dropping most pressing af fairs Yet before the war I worked twelve and fourteen hours a day at high pressure and strode home laug hing at the i dea of fatigue .
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1
38
GIV E US FOO D !
It was perfectly good form in B erlin for a man in evening dress to wrap up a crust of black bread and carry it away E ven in the best restaurants waiters in unim w ith him — pe a ch ab le attire ate all the leavings i n the rare cases — that there were any o n thei r way back to the kitchen I have already mentioned the constant munching of wretched l u nches by theater audiences The pretense of a meal on the stage was sure t o turn the most uproarious comedy into a tear provoking melodrama Playwrights avoided such scenes in recent works ; mana gers were apt to cut ” fering the older classics them out when of The Berliner suf fered far more from the cold than in the bygone days of plenitude Two or three raw spells during the month of May whi ch I scarcely felt myself found thousands buttoned up in one and even two overcoats and wrapped to their noses in muf flers The newspapers were constantly pub ” li shi ng hunger sketches ; the jokesters found the pre vailing theme an endl ess source ofsad amusement There ” are many chil dr en offour who have never tasted butter remarked o ne paragrapher ; some hardly know what meat ” is ; no one of that age has ever tasted real bread A ” current j oke ran : How old is your sister ? I don t ” know replied the foil but she can still remember how ” bananas taste A cartoonist showe d a lean and hollow eyed individual standing aghast before a friend whose — — waistcoat still bulged like a bay window where he found — him in Berlin is a mystery with the caption Mei ri li eber K arl you must have been getting some o f that famous American bacon ! Those food supplies from America so incessantly announced were a constant source both of amusement and of wrath in Germany not wholly without reason as I shall show before I have done with th is dis tressing subject There was a suggestion of the fami ne vi ctims of India i n many German faces particul arly among the poor of large .
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139
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGIN G GERMANY cities and in factory districts In a social stampede such as that su rg 1ng through Germany for the past year or two those who get down under the hoofs of the herd are the chief suf The poor the sick whether at home or in ferers hospitals the weak the old the less hardy women and the little children showed the most definite evidence of the effi ciency of the blockade and of the decrease in home pro duction O n the streets especially of the poorer districts the majority of those one passed looked as if they ought to be in bed though many a household included invalids never seen in public Flocks of ragged unsoaped pasty skinned children swarmed in the outskirts E ven such food as was to be had by those in moderate circumstances contained slight nourishment next to none for weaklings and babies ; while the most hardy found next morning that very little of it had been taken up by the body Hasty visitors to Berlin well supplied with funds who spent a few days i n the best hotels often with the right to draw upon the American or Allied com m 1ssar1e s o r with supplies tucked away in their luggage were wont to report upon thei r ” return that the hunger of Germany was all propaganda Those who lived the unfavored life of the masses even for as short a time seldom if ever confirme d thi s complacent verdict There were of course gradations in want fromthe semi starvation of the masses to the comparative plenty o f the well to do ; b u t the only ones who could be said t o show no signs whatever of under nourishment were for eigners war profi t eers and those with a strangle hold on the public purse The scarcity of food was everywhere in evidence A lmost no appetizing things were displayed to the public gaze The windows of food dealers w ere either empty or filled w ith f i cacy of the laborious falsehoods about the taste and ef E rs a tz wares in them Slot machines no longer yielded a return for the dropping of a pewter coin Street venders .
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1 40
VAGA BONDING THR OUGH CHANGING
G ER MANY
municipalities for the sake of keeping peace in the com munity Ameri can foodstuffs reached all classes ofthe pOpu la t ion wi th the exception o fthe self providing peasants ” Bu t over in Germany Only tantalizing samples of what might come later were to be had at the time of my visit This may have been the fault of the B oche himself though he laid it to the enmity ofthe Allies whom he accused of ” purposely keeping him starved of dangling before his hun gry nose glowing false promises until he had signed ” the Peace Treaty The Hoover cr owd demanding pay ment in gold before turning over supplies to the authorities of unoccupied Germany often h ad laden ships in port long before the Germans were prepared to pay for the cargo Moreover once financially satisfied they bade the Teutons take it away and washed their hands of the matter There were rumors that large quantities were ill egally acquired b y t h e infl uential At any rate the Am erican ” food products publicly for sal e or visibly in existence inside Germany were never suf ficient during my stay there to drive famine from any door B erlin and the larger cities issued a few ounces of them per week to those who arrived early ; in the rest of the country they were as intangible as rumors of li fe i n the world to come The B rotcommi ssi orzen charged with the equal di st ri b u ti on of such food as existed were chiefly run by school teachers Their laborious system of ledgers and tickets was typically German on the whole well done though now ficiency fell down S eldom how a nd then their boasted ef ever were such swarming mobs lined up before the places of distribution as in France—which implied a better man E ach applicant carried a note a g e m e nt behind the wicket book i n which an entry Wa s made in an orderly but brief manner and w a s soon on his way again clutching his hand ” ful ofprecious tickets My own case was a problem to the particular Bread ,
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1 42
,
A
S PA R T IC I ST
S
E
H LL MAD
TH
E
E
E
R E
IT P O S S I B L F O A W ITH O UT TI C K T S
APPAL LING
EMPTINE
SS
FE W
G
ERMAN
S
TO
OF TH E MA R K E T PLA CE S -
GE T
E
M AT
VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GER MANY supply of butter I tucked easily into a safety match box and ate with that day s lunch Three coupons on an ” elaborate card entitled A merican Foo dstuf yielded fs four ounces oflard (in lieu ofbacon) two ounces ofwhat seemed t o be tallow and a half pound of white flour The price ofthe entire collection being government controlled was reasonable enough especially in V iew of the foreign rate of exchange ; a total o ftwo mk eighty or less than the ” butter alone woul d have cost from underground dealers Fortunately the meat potato and bread tickets were good anywhere sparing me the necessity of carrying these sup plies with me In fact R ei sebrotmarken or travel bread ” tickets were l egal tender throughout the E mpire and were not confined t o any particul ar date or place Those I had been furnishe d for a month to come a whole v e hundred grams sheath of them totaling twenty fi T hat sounds perhaps like a lot of bread b u t the fact 1s that f t y gram coupon represented a each elaborately engraved fi thin slice of some black concoction of bran turnip meal and perhaps sawdust which contained little more nourish ment and was far less appetizing in appearance than the ticket itself The potato tickets were invaluable ; without them one was either denied the chief substance of a Berlin meal or forced to pay a painful price for an ill egal serving of it ; with them one could obtain t w o hundred and fifty grams for a mere thirty pfennigs O ther vegetables which were just then beginning t o appear on bill s offare were not subject to ticket regulation The whi te flour left me with a probl em e qual t o that I had been to the B rotcommi ssi onen Obviously I coul d no t af ford to waste such a lu xury ; quite as obviously I coul d not eat i t raw In the end I turned it over to the head waiter ofmy hotel together with the lard and breakfasted next morning on two long enduring Pf annku chen Bu t the or his troub l e three marks g o between charged me a mark f -
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x44
GIV E US FOOD ! for two eggs without which a German pancake is a failure and a mark for the cooking ! I drifted ou t to the central market of Berlin one after noon and found it besieged by endless queues of famished people not one ofwhom showed signs of having had any thi ng fit to eat nor a suff i cient quantity of anything unfit or months Yet the only articles even of comparative f abundance were heaps of beet leaves A few fish a score or so ofeel s and certain unsavory odds and ends all against ” tickets were surrounded by clamoring throngs which onl y the miracle of the loaves and fishes could have fed even or a day with the quantity on hand Only the flow er f market showed a supply by any means in keeping with t h e demand and that only because various experiments had proved flowers of no edi ble val ue The emptiness of these great market places often of ambitious architecture and — fitted with every modern convenience e xcept food— the silence of her vast slaughterh ouse pens and the idleness ofher sometimes immense u p to date kitchens make the genuine hunger ofGermany most forcibly apparent The ef forts of the masses to keep from being crowde d over the brink into starvation had given Berli n new customs Underfed mobs besieged the trains in their attempts to get far enough ou t into the country to pick up a few vegetables among the peasants E ach evening the elevated the under ground and the suburban trains were packed with gaunt toil worn men women and children the last two classes in the majority returning from more or less successful foraging expeditions on fourth class tickets to the surrounding farms and hamlets ; the streets carried until late at night emaciated beings shuf fl ing homeward bowed double under sacks ofpotatoes or turnips Then there were the L au ben ” arbor gardens that had grown up withi n the g ci rten or past few years The outer edges of B erlin and of all the larger cities of Germany were crowded wi th these arbor ,
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I 4S
VAGA BONDING T HR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY colonists living 1n thousands of tiny wooden shacks usu ally unpainted Often buil t of Odds and ends of lu mber of drygoodsboxes of tin cans like those ofthe negro l aborers along the Panama C anal duri ng its digging About Berlin the soil is sandy and gives slig ht reward for the toil of husbandry yet not an acre escaped attempted cul tivation ” In most cases a general farmer l eased a large tract of land and parceled it ou t in tiny plots hiri ng a carpenter to build the h uts and an experienced gardener t o furnish ” vegetarian information to the city bred colonists Here the laborer or the clerk turned husbandm an after his day s work in town was done and got at least air and exercise e ven though he made no appreciable gain in his incessant struggle for food Here too he might have a goat the poor man s cow to keep him remi nded of the taste ofmilk and perhaps a pig for his winter s meat supply The great shortage 1n animal flesh and fats had made the German of the urban rank and file a vegetarian by force Theoretically every one got the allotted one hundred and twenty fi v e grams ofmeat a week ; practically many coul d not even pay for that and ev en if they had been ab l e to it would scarcely have ranked them among the carnivorous species The rich of course whether in hotels or private residences got more than the legal amount and of a some what higher quality but they paid fabulous pric es for it and they coul d not but realize that they were cheating their less fortunate fellow countrymen when they a t e it The war had not merely reduced Germany s cattle numeri cally ; the lack of fodder had made the animals scarcely fit for butchering They weighed perhaps one half what they did in time ofpeace and the meat was fi b erless and u nnourishing as so much d og fi The best steak I ever sh tasted in Berlin woul d have brought a growl of wr ath from ” the habitué of a B owery joint The passing ofa gaunt S ch la eh tkuh down a city street toward the sl aughter house ,
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1 46
GIV E US FOO D !
was sure to bring an excited crowd ofinhabitants in its wake To bread and potatoes had fallen the task of keeping the mass of the people alive and the l atter were usually the former always oflow quality The resul tant gnawings ofperpetual hunger h ad b rou g h t to light a myriad of E rsa tz foods that were in reality no food at all It was frequently asserted that this consu mp tion of unwholesome i mitations of food was responsible for the erratic conduct of many a present day German manifesting itself now in morose now in talkative moods often in more seri ous deviations from his moral character C ertainly it had made him less pugnacious Indirectly — it had made him more of a liar a t least on his bill s offare The best hotel i n Berlin made no bones of shredding turni ps o r beet roots and serving them as mashed potatoes Once in a whil e an honest waiter warned the unsuspecting client as was the case with one w h o shattered my fond hopes of an appetizing dish announced on the m enu card he had ” handed me Veni son your grandmother ! he whispered hoarsely It is horse meat soaked in vinegar Take the ” beef for at least that is genuine poor as it is Milk butter ” and all such trim mings as olives pickles sauces pre serves and the like were wholly unknown in public eating — places Pepper I saw but once in all Germany as a special luxury in a private household C offee might now and then be had but an imitation of burnt corn and similar i ng re di ents took its place in an overwhelming majority of cases and cost several times what real coffee did before the war B eechnut oil supplied only to those holding tickets did the duty of butter and lard in cooking processes The richest and most i nfluential coul d not get more than their scanty share of the atrocious indigestible stuff miscalled bread B akers naturally were mighty independent B u t those who could get bread often got cake for there was f i c in forbidden always more or less underground traf .
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11
1 47
VAGA BONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY delicacies O ne of the most dif cul t tasks of all was to fi lay in a l unch for a journey B efore my first trip out ofthe capital I tramped the streets for more than an hour in quest ofsomet hing edible to c arry along with me and finally paid six marks for an egg and sausage sandwich that went easily into a vest pocket — Good linen had almost wholly di sappeared at l east from sight It was never seen on dining tables having long since been commandeered by the government for the making — of bandages o r successfully hidden Paper napkins and tablecloths were the invariable rule even in the most expen sive establishments Personal linen was said to be in a sad state among rich and poor alik e ; the E rsa tz soap or soap powders reduced it quickly to the consistency and dura b i li t y oftissue paper Many of the proudest families had — laid away their best small clothes hoping for the return of less destructive wash days As to soap for toilet purposes among German residents it was little more than a memory ; such as still existed had absolutely no fat in it and was made almost wholly of sand Foreigners lucky or foresighted enough to have brought a supply with them might win the good will of those w ith whom they came in contact far more easily than by the distribution of mere money Bu t we are getting of f the all ab sorbing t opl c of food If the reader feels he can endure it I wish to take him t o a half dozen meals in Berlin where he may see and taste for himself The first one is in a publi c soup kitchen where it wil l be wiser just to look on or at most to pretend to eat Long lines of pitiful beings women and children pre domi nating file by the faintly steaming kettles each carrying a small receptacle into which the attendants toss a ladleful of colored water sometimes with a piece ofturnip or some still more plebeian root in i t The needy were lucky to ” get one such hot meal a day ; the rest of the time they consumed the dregs ofthe markets or things which were fed .
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1 48
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHAN GING GER MANY by a p late of mashed peas one storage egg ( t w o marks) a cold potato salad a pint of whi te beer and a pudding that would have been tasteless but for its H i mbeer sauce sickly as hair— oil The check came to seven mk seventy fi v e including the usual tip A few blocks farther o n along this same chief cross artery ” ofB erlin is a famous Tunnel restaurant below the level of the sidewalk If you have been in the German capital during this century you have no doubt passed it though you probably took care not to enter In 1 9 1 9 it was one of the chief rendezvous of lost souls Girls ofsixteen already pa ssées mingled with women of once refined instincts whom the war had driven to the streets Their male com ” panions were chiefly tough characters some ofthem still in uniform who might give you a half insolent half friendly greeting as you entered but who displayed littl e ofthat rowdyism so char acteristic oftheir class in our ow n co untry Here no attention was paid to meatless days and though fered the date was plainly wri tten on the bill offare it of even on Tuesdays and Fridays several species of beef and — veal and many kinds of game wil d duck marsh fowl rabbit mountain goat and so on all evidently the real articl e The servings were more than generous the potatoes almost too plentiful The menu asserted that Meat bread and potatoes were served only against tickets but v e pfennigs the lack or the payment of an extra twenty fi f of these was overlooked except in the case of bread A sm all glass of some sickly sweetish stuf fcalled beer cost the same amount ; in the more reputable establishments of the capital the average price for a beverage little better was about four times that Five marks sufficed t o settle the bill after the most nearly satisfying meal I had so far found in Berlin Here 1 5 per cent was reckoned in for service E vidently the waiters had scorned a mere 1 0 per cent in so low priced a resort ,
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1 50
TH
TH
E
HAND S
E
E R O OF
G OTHI C THAT C H D
WH O
E
E E R RE
S
R E
OF
ME C HL E N B U R G
RE
T O IL D IN TH MA K T GA D N TH I S T NGTH O YO UTH
R
-
W
ERE
E
N O T N OT D F O
R
VAGABONDING
T HR OU GH
CHAN G I N G GERM ANY
Holland ! Isn t that where ou r K aiser is ? Do yo u think ou r wicked enemies will do somethi ng wrong to his ” Majesty ? Ah me if onl y he woul d come back ! Like all her class she was full ofapologies for the deposed ruler and longed to bask once more in the blaze ofhis former glory however far she was personally removed from it Nor had her suf An evil ferings dimmed her patriotism faced fellow at a neighboring table spat a stream of his alleged beer on the floor and shouted above the hubbub of maudlin voices : E i n H nndeleben i st da s i n Dentsch land! A dog s life ! Mine for a better country as quick as possible ” R ats always desert a sinking ship snapped the old woman glaring at the speaker with a display of her two yellow fangs no matter how well they have once fared ” upon it The fifth meal to which the reader is invited was one ” corresponding to our business man s lunch The cli ents were wholesale merchants brokers lawyers and the like In its furnishi ngs the place was rather sumptuous but as much cannot be said of its food My own luncheon con sisted of a turnip soup roast veal (a mere shaving of it as tasteless as deteriorated ru b b e r) wi t h one potato a Ger ” man beefsteak some inedible mystery dubbed lemon ” — o pudding and a small bottle fwater beer was no longer served in this establishment The bill including the cus t om ary forced tip was nineteen mk eighty and the scornful attitude of the waiter proved that it was considerably less than the average E ven here the majority of the dishes were some species of E rsa tz and the meat itself was so under nourished that i t had virtually no nourishment t o pass on O f ten pounds of it according to the wholesale butcher who sat opposite me at least five disappeared in the cooking Finish such a meal at one and you were sure to be ragingly hungry by three Yet there was less evidence of profi t ee r ing in establishments of this kind in B erli n than I had ’
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52
GIV E US FOO D !
”
expected The ice col d bottle ofmineral water for instance cost forty fi a mere four cents to foreigners v e pfennigs The Ge rman does not seem t o go over his entire stock daily and mark it higher in price irrespective of its cost to h i m as in Paris and I fear in ou r own beloved land B ut there was one restaurant in B erlin where a real meal qui te free from E rsa tz coul d still be had by those who coul d — pay for i t the famous Borch ardt s in Franz Osi sch erst rasse Situated in the heart of the capital in the very shadow ofthe government that issues those stern decrees against under ” ground traffic i n foodstuf fs it was protected by the rich and infl uential and by the same government Of ficials whose legal duty it was t o suppress it Admi ttance was only by personal introduction as to a gambling club The only laws this establishment o beyed were in the serving of bread and the use ofpaper in place of table linen Meatless days meant nothing to its chefs ; many articles specifically for bidden in restaurants were openly served to its fortunate guests It depended of course entirely on S chlei chh a ndel for its supplies Am ong the clients on the eveni ng 1n ques tion were generals ou t ofuniform a noted dealer in muni tions a manufacturer of army cloth several hi gh govern ment of f i cials two or three Al lied correspondents and fs right hand man in several of his American Be rnsdorf — trickeries i n a silky green gown that added to the snaky ” ef fect ofher serpent like eyes It was she who fixed so thoroughly the proposed attac k on us from Mexico during the early days of 1 9 1 7 Four ofus dined together and this is a transl ation ofthe bill : Cover ( t able clot h and na pki ns or paper) T W O b ott les ofYqu em -
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H a lfbot t le Laf ant a -
T ax
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( ordi nary w i ne )
me
on sa
H ors
-
d oeu vre ( radi shes ’
,
f oi e
gras 1
53
,
et c
.
)
VAGA BONDING TH R OUGH C HANGING GER MANY Roast
vea l
( very
dinary) mark i n t h e mar ket )
or
( cost 1 A spa ra gu s ( plent i f u l i n B e rli n) Charlot t e (a t as t eless dessert ) Pot at oes
,
.
Ice
.
— e a ch black
B rea d
(one very t hi n sli ce Ci gars ( t hree horri ble ca bba ges)
B u t t er
)
.
.
10
per
ce nt
.
f or
se rvi ce
Tot al Thankf u lly
5
re ce i v e
d Ma y ,
8,
1 91 9
F RI T Z R E I C H
.
that day s rate of exchange this amounted to some thi ng over forty dollars ; at the pre war rate which was still in force so far as the German clients were concerrfe d v e dollars i t was about one hundred and twenty fi Small wonder the clientele was select and limited B efore we end thi s round ofrestaurants let us settle with the waiters About the time ofthe revolution the majority o f them refused to have their income any longer subject to the whims of clients a movement which had spread In t hr ough a ll the l arger cities o f unoccupied Germany ” most eating places a charge of 1 0 per cent for service was now added to the bill ; in a few cases it ran as high as How soon they wil l be demanding 1 00 per cent 2 5 per cent is a question I cannot answer There were suggestions that before long they will expect to get free— will tips in addi tion to the forced contribution especially after the first flock of American tourists descends upon the Fatherland ” In many hotels the bill s were stamped 1 0 per cent added so faintly that the unsuspecting new comer was often over generous by mistake At some establishments the waiter was requir ed t o inform the guest that the service fee had At
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54
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING S CH L E I CHHA N D E L
past
t wo
y
POTA TO E S
d h d dealing become far more prevalent bu t t h e p ri ces of art i cles af fect ed by i t hav e grea t ly i ncreased We now ha ve t h e comm on ci rcu mst ance t hat wares i n no fered Openly f way t o b e h ad legally ar e of or sa le i n S chlei chhandel so t hat t h e expressi on S ch lei ch (sli ppery u nderground ) i s no longer t ru e For i nst ance every one knows t o day t h e pri ce Ofbu t t er i n S chlei chh andel b u t very f fi ci al p ri ce T h e government h as sent ou t t h e ew know t h e of f ollow i ng no t i ce : Th e S chlei ckhandel i n pot at oes h as t aken on an i mpu lse t h at makes t he f urni sh i ng oft h e ab solu t e ly necessary p ot a t oes of fi ci ally very se ri ou sly t h rea t ened From many communi t i es esp eci ally i n t h e nei gh b orh ood oflarge ci t i es t hou sands ofhundre dw ei ght ofp ot at oes are ca r ri ed aw a y da i ly by h amst e rers A t present t h e au t hori t i es are ch i efly sca t i ng cont ent i ng t hemse lv es wi t h confi t h e i mproperly purchase d w ares w i t h ou t t aki ng ac t i on agai nst t h e i mproper purchasers A b et t er i ng oft h e si t u at i on can only b e hoped f or t hrou gh a sharp er enf orcement Th e p ot at o prot e ct i ve law of oft h e la w s a nd de cree s concerni ng f ood Ju ly 1 8 1 9 1 8 calls for a puni shment ofa year s im pri sonm ent and mpoo f off ne or b oth For all i llega l ca rryi ng of ood—and i n t h i s marks fi — d l i s c l h i n l t he fi r l h e i c h a n e u d e d ne mu st equ a l t went y of cou se a l Sc In t h e
mont hs
W IT H
GER MANY
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Yet for all these threats Borch ardt s and s imilar estab li sh me nt s went serenely on often feeding in a ll probability the very men who issued these notices O f ordi nary thievery Germany also had her full share E very better class hotel within the E mpire displayed the following pl acard in a prominent positi on in all rooms : ,
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honorable gu est s are warned on account oft h e const ant ly i ncreas i ng t hef t s of clot hi ng and f oot w e ar not t o lea ve t hese art i cles ou t s i d e orme rly t h e cu st om f or cleani ng b u t t o h and t hem t h e room as w as f or t h at purpose d i rect ly t o t h e emp loyees ch arged w i t h o ve r p e rsonally f or t h at se rvi ce si nce ot herwi se t h e h ot el de cli nes any responsi bi li t y f t h e loss ofsu ch art i cles Th e
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foodstuf fs thefts were constant and attended with ev ery species oftrickery some ofthem typical ly German in AS to
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56
GIVE US FOO D ! their complications Thi eves and smugglers on the large ofi d of using the wa terways about S cal e were particul arly f the capital O ne night the boat watch on the Spree detected fty hundredweight of sugar slipping a vessel loaded wi th fi The t w o brothers on al ong in the shadow of the shore board a waiter and a druggist announced that they had bought their cargo from a ship and had paid five thousand marks for it but they were unable to explain h ow the S hip had reached B erlin They planned to dispose ofthe sugar ” privately because it woul d cause fewer complications A few days later the papers announced .
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Th e poli ce of B erli n report t ha t not only nat i ve f oodst u f fs, b u t ou r f ore i gn i mp ort s, are be i ng st olen A meri can flou r d i sappears i n st art li ng .
qu ant i t i es ofi t oes
M any
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d
arrest s of r i v ers and
t
hei r helpers S how where
mu ch
It i s st olen a nd la t e r most ofi t com es i nt o S chlei oh h andel g T h e dri v ers wh o t ake t h e flou r f rom t h e boa t s t o t h e b a kers ar e t oo seldom gi ven a gu ardsman and e v en w hen t he y ar e t he y fi ri end s nd f t o a ct as su ch and help t hem i n t h e st ea li ng Eve n i n t h e fi nest w eat h e r t he dri ver pu t s a t ar p au li n over t h e loa d and h i s accomp li ce hi des h i m self under i t There h e fi lls an empt y b ag h e h as brou ght along by pawi ng a few h andfu ls ou t of each sa ck of flour and sewi ng t hem u p agai n T hen h e sli ps i nt o some t avern along t h e w ay T h e num ber of sacks re mai ns t h e same and as ou r b akers a re no t f u ll ami li ar w i t h t h e f ness ofAm eri can flou r sacks h undre d ofhundr ed wei ght offlour are lost t h i s w ay dai ly In spi t e ofmany arrest s t h e st ea li ng cont i nu es .
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The wildest rumors on the subject offood were current in Berlin O ne of the yellow sheets ofthe capital for i n stance appeared one evening with the blatant head line ” GO A T S AU S A G E O F C H I LD F LE S H ! asserting that many B erliners were unconsciously indul ging in cannibalism ” Where shri eked the frenzied article are those one hundred and sixty fi v e chi ldren who have disappeared from their homes in Berlin duri ng the past month and ofwhom the police have found no trace ? Ask the sausage makers ofone ofo ur worst sections oftown or taste more carefully .
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S7
VAGA BONDING THR OUGH ‘
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the next goat sausage y ou buy so c heaply in some ofou r less reputable shops and restaurants To my astonish ment I found no small number ofthe p opulace taking this tale seriously I have it from several officers of the American shipping board that affairs were still worse along the K iel Canal and in the northern ports than in B erlin At E mden where there were even vinegar tickets and along the canal the inhabitants were ready to sell anything particularly nautical i nstruments for which Germany has now so little — use f though not for money E ven the seagulls or food were sai d to abandon their other activities to foll ow the American flag when a food ship came into port Stevedores sent down into the hold broke Open the boxes and ate flour and lard by the han dful washing it down with condensed mil k If German guards were placed over them the only difference was that the guards ate and drank also f Set A merican sentries over them and the stevedores would stri ke and possibly shoot What remained under the circum stances but to let them battle with their share ofthe national hunger in their own indigestible manner ? ,
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three days after my arrival in Berlin I might have been detected one morning in the act of stepping o u t of a wabbly kneed Drosch ke at the S tettiner B ahnhof soon after sunrise In the northernmost corner of the — Empire there lived o r had lived at l east before the war a famil y di stantly related t o my own I had paid them a hurried visit ten years before N ow I proposed t o renew the ac quaintance not only for personal reasons but ou t of selfish professional motives The exact degree of war suf fering woul d be more easily measured in familiar scenes and faces ; moreover the German point of view woul d be laid before me frankly without any mask of propaganda o r suspicion Memories of France had suggested the possib le wi sdom of reaching the station well before train ti me I mi ght to be sure have purchased my ticket in l eisurely comfort at the Adl on but for once I proposed t o take pot luck w ith le the rank and fi First hand information is always much more satisfactory than hearsay or the dilettante Observa tion Of the mere spectator—once the bruises ofthe experience have disappeared The first glimpse Of the station interior all but wrecked my reso lution E arly as I was there were already several hundred woul d b e travelers before me From both ticket windows lines four deep Of dishev eled Germans ofboth sexes and all ages curved away into the or
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59
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VAGA BONDING T HR OUGH CHANGING GERMANY farther ends of the station wings Boy soldiers with fix ed bayonets paraded the edges of the columns attempting l anguidly and not alway s successfully to prevent selfish ” new comers from butting in out of their turn I attached myself to the end Ofthe queue that seemed by a few inches the shorter In less than a mi nute I was jamm ed into a thr ong that quickly stretched in S shape back into the central hall ofthe station We moved steadi ly b u t almost i mperceptib ly forward fl ing our feet an i nch at a time shuf The majority ofmy companions in discomfort were plainly city people of the poorer classes bound short distances into the country on foraging expeditions They bore every species of receptacle — in which to carry away their possible spoils hand bags hampers baskets grain sacks knapsacks even buckets and toy wagons In most cases there were two or three Of these t o the person and as no one dreamed ofrisking the pre cl ou s things ou t ofhis Ow n possession t h e struggle for ward suggested the wri thing Ofa miscellaneous scrap heap Women were in the maj ori t y — sallow bony faced creatures in patched and faded garments that hung about their ema The men were little less ci a t e d forms as from hat racks miserable ofaspect their deep sunk watery eyes testifying to long malnutrition ; the children who now and then shrilled protests at being trodden underfoot were gaunt and colorless as corpses Not that healthy individuals were — lacking but they were just that individuals in a throng T he which as a whole was patently weak and anemic evidence Of t he scarcity O f soap was all but Overpowering S even women and at least three chi ldren either fainted or toppl ed over from fatigue during the two hours in which feted we moved a few yards forward and they were buf out of the li ne with what seemed to be the malicious joy of their competitors behind I found my ow n head sw im ming long before I had succeeded in turning the corner .
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1 60
VAGA BONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY
rear Of the column formed a flying wedge and precipitated a free for all fracas that swirled vainly about the window When thi s closed again I was still ten feet away I con cluded that I had my fill Of pot luck and buf feting my way to the outer air purchased a ticket for the followi ng morning at the Adl on A little episode at my departure suggested that the ever obedient German ofKaiser days was changing in character The seco nd cl ass coach was already filled when I entered it except that at one end there was an empty compartment o n the windows Of which had been pasted the word Be ” s tellt In the olden days the mere announcement that it ” was engaged would have protected it as easily as bolts and bars I de cided t o test the new democracy Crowding my way past a dozen men standing obediently in the corri dor I entered the forbidden compart ment and sat down In a minute or two a seatless passenger put his head i nat the door and in quired with humble courtesy whether it was I w h o had engaged the section I shook my head and a moment later he was sea ted beside me O thers followed until the compartment was crowded with passengers and baggage O ne ofmy companions angrily tore the pasters from the windows and tossed them outside ” B estellt indeed ! he cried sneeringly P erhaps by the S oldiers C ouncil eh ? I thought we had done away wi th those Old favoritisms I A few minutes later a station porter i n his major s uni form appeared at the door with his arms full ofb aggage and foll owed by two pompous looking men in silk hats At sight Of the throng inside he began to bellow in the f amiliar Ol d before — the— war style ” This compartment is bestellt he vociferated in a crown princely v oice and it remains bestellt! Y ou will all get ou t ofthere at once NO one moved ; on the other hand no one answered back -
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1 62
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TH
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C HW ER IN C A S TL E
L E
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ERHAP
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M O S T IMP O S ING IN G
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MANY
ERMAN CITY TH E W OM E N C AM E T O GET E R AT E E FOR THEI R HU AND AT WO R
A T O B A CCO IN IN A G K TT
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHAN GING GER MANY
talk The deadl y apathy Of the compartment was quite the antithesis Of what it would have been in France ; a cargo of frozen meat could not have been more u ncom to
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The train showed a singular languor due perhaps t o its Ersa tz coal I t got there eventually but it seemed to have no reserve strength t o give it vigorous spells The station we shoul d have passed at noon was not reached until one f en masse and besieged the th irty Passengers tumbled of platform l unch room There were E rsa tz cof fee E rsa tz cheese watery beer and war bread for sale the last only ” against tickets I had not yet been supplied with bread coupons but a fellow passenger tossed me a pair of them a nd replied t o my thanks wi th a si lent nod The nauseating stuf f seemed to give the traveler a bit of surp lus energ y They talked a little for the next few miles though in dreary apathetic tones O ne had recently journeyed through the occupied area and reported every one is being treated ” fairly enough the re especially by the Americans A languid discussion Of the Allies ensued but though it was evident that no one suspected my nationality there was not a harsh word toward the enemy Another advanced the ” wisdom Of seeing Germany first insisting that the sons o fthe Fatherland had been t o o much given to running about foreign lands to the negle ct oftheir ow n Those who car ried lunches ate them without the suggestion of an Of fer t o share them with their hungry companions without even t h e apologetic pseudo invitation of the Spaniard Then one by one t hey drifted back to sl eep aga n i The engine t oo seemed to pick up after l unch—or t o — strike a down grade and the thatched Gothi c roofs Of Mechlenb urg soon began to dot the flat landscape M ore people were working in the fields ; cattle and sheep were grazing here and there Groups ofwomen came down t o the stations to parade homeward with their returni ng soldier ,
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1 64
FAMILY LIF E
IN
MECHLEN BURG
sons and brothers Yet after the fi rst greeting the u nsu c u l warriors seemed to tire Of the welcome and strode ce ssf half prou dly half defiantly ahead whi l e the women dropped sadly to the rear Where I changed cars four fell ow travel ers reached the station l unch room before me and every edible thing was With thr ee hours to wait I bes tellt when my turn came set out along the b road well kept highway A vill age hotel a nnku ch en made of real eggs served me a huge Pf a few cold potatoes and some species of preserved fruit but declined to repeat the order The bill reached the l ofty heights of ei ght marks Chi l dren playing along the w ay and frequently groups Of S unday strollers testified that there was more energy for unnecessary exertion hene in the country than in Berlin The flat well plowed land broken onl y by dark masses of forest was already giving promi se ofa plenti ful harvest The t w o women i n the compartment I entered at a station farther on gav e only one sign of life during the journey A rail way coach on a siding bore a pl acard reading Uber The women gazed at i t wi th g a be Wa g en an di e E ntente pai ned expressions on their gaunt faces ne new ca r t oo It s a fi sighed one Of them at last wi th real l eather and wi ndow curtains We don t get — i n any such to ride and to think ofgivi ng it t o E ng la nd! ” A ch ! These are sad times ! The sun w as still above the hori zon when I reached There was a si g ni f Schweri n th ough it was nearly nine i cant sign ofthe ti mes i n the dilapidated coach whi ch dr ov e me to my destination for five marks In the Ol den days one mark woul d hav e been considered a generous reward for the same journey in a spick and span outfit The mi ddl e aged woman who met me at the door was by no means the bux om matron she had been ten years before Bu t her welcome was none the l ess hearty .
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165
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY B i st da
o u ch
m
g ewesen?
she asked softly after ” her first words of greeting You t oo against us ? Yes I was with o u r army i n France I replied watch ing her expression closely There was regret in her m anner yet as I had foreseen not the faintest suspicion of resentment The German is t oo well trained in obedience t o government to dream that the individual may make a choice of h i s own international af As long as I remained in the household there was fairs never a hint from any member of it that the war had made any gulf between us They could not have been more friendly had I arrived wearing the field gray Of the Fatherl and A brief glance about the establishment suffi ced to settle once for all the query as to whether the civil population fered from the ravages Of war o f Germany had really suf and of the blockade The family had been market gardeners for generations Ten years before they had been p rosperous with the solid material prosperity of the well to do middle class In comparison with their neighbors they were sti ll so but it was a far call from the plenitude Of former days t o the scarcity that now showed its head on every hand The establishment that had once been kept up with that pride ofthe old fashioned German as for an Old family heirloom which laughs at unceasing l abor to that end was every where sadly down at heel The house was shedding its ancient paint ; the ravages of weather and years gazed down with a neglected air ; the broken panes of glass in the hotbeds had not been replaced ; farm wagons falsely sug gested that the owner was indifferent t o their upkeep ; the very tools had all b u t outlived their useful ness N ot that the habit of unceasing labor had been l ost The family sleeping — hours were still from ten to four Bu t the war had reduced the available helping hands and the b lockade had shut out materials and supp lies or forced them up to prices which none but the wealthy coul d reach e g g en u
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1 66
FAMILY LIF E IN MECH LEN BURG Inside the house particularly in the kitchen the family had been reduced to a lmost as rudimentary a life as the countrymen Of Venezuela so many were the every day fby the war applianc es that had been confiscated or shut of fs that could be time government so few the foodstuf Obtained Though other fuel was almost unattainable gas coul d only be had from six to seven eleven to twelve and seven to eight E lect ricity was turned on from dark until ten thirty which at that season of the year meant barely an hour Petroleum or candles were seldom to be had Al l the better utensils had long sin ce been turned in t o the gov ernment When I unearthed a bar of soap from my baggage the family literal ly fell on my neck ; the only piece in the house was about the size of a postage stamp and had been husbanded for weeks Vegetables were b eginning t o appear from the garden ; without them there would hav e been littl e more than water and salt to cook In theory each adul t member of the household recei ved 1 2 5 grams of beef a week ; in practice they were lucky to get that much a month What that meant in loss of energy I began to learn by experience ; for a mere th ree days without meat left me weary and ambition less Those who could bring themselves to eat it might get horse fle sh in t h e markets without tickets but even that only in very limited quantities The bread made o f potatoes turnips and God knows what all they throw ” into it was far from sufficient Though the sons and daughters spent every Sunday foraging the country side they seldom brought home enough to make one genuine meal The ef fect Of continued malnutrition seemed to have been surpri singly sli ght on those in the prime Of life The children Of ten years before men and women now were plump and hardy though the color in their cheeks was by no means equal even to that of the grandfather — sleep — ing now in the churchyard a t the time of my former vi sit ,
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1 67
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY
O f the t wo g randdaughters
the one born three years before when the b l ockade was only b eg mmng t o be felt in these backwaters Of the E mpire was stout and rosy enough ; but her sister Of ni ne months looked pitift like the waxen image ofa maltreated infant Of half that age The simple hearted p lodding head of the household nearing sixty had shru nk almost beyond recognition to those who had know n hi m in his plum p and prosperous years whil e his wife had outdistanced even him in her decline B usiness in the market gardening line had fal len of f chiefly because ofthe scarcity of seeds and fertili zers Then there was the ever more serious question Of labor Old women wh o had gladly accepted three marks for toiling from dawn until dark ten years before received eleven now for scratching languidly about the gardens a bare eight hours with their hoes and rakes Male help/ h a d begun to drift back since the armistice but it was by no means equal t o the former standard in numbers strength O n t op ofall this came a crushing burden of o r willingness taxation When all the demands of the government were reckoned up they equaled 40 per cent ofthe ever de crea s ing income The war had brought one advantage though it Was as nothi ng compared to the misfortunes For gen e rat i o ns t w o or three members of the family had spent si x mornings a week all summer long at the market place in the heart oftown Since the fall of1 9 1 4 not a sprig of produce had been carried there for sale ; clamoring women now besieged the gate Of the establishm ent itself in f ar greater numbers than the gardens could supply The hardshi p of the past four years was not the pre vai ling topic Of conversation in the household however nor when the subject was forced upon them was it t reated in a whining spirit Most ofthe family like their neighbors adroitly avoided it as a proud prize fi h t r might sidestep e g references to the bruises Of a recent beating O nly the ,
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1 68
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GERMANY
E urope Bu t then I have no ri ght to comp lain At lea st ” my dear ow n boy was not taken from me T h e son whom we wi ll call Heinrich I had last seen as a child in knickerbockers Now he was a powerful two with a man s outlook on life fi st e d fellow of twenty o ne Having enlisted as a Frei wi lli g er on his sixteenth birthday at the outbreak of the war he had seen constant service in R ussia R um ania and in all the hottest sectors of the western front had been twice wounded twice decorated with those baubles with which princes coax men t o die for them and had returned home with the hi ghest non— com missioned rank in the German army What struck one most forcibly was the lack of opportunity of fer ed such men as he by their beloved Fatherland In contrast with the positions that would have been open to so promising a youngster with long experience in the command of men in America he had found nothing better than an apprenti ce ship i n the hardware trade paying forty marks for the privilege and bound to serve three long years without pay Like nearly al l the young men i n town from grocery clerks to bankers sons he still wore his uniform stripped Of its marks of rank not ou t of pride but because civilian clothi ng was too great a lux ury t o be indulged except on Sundays I was surprised too at the lack Of haughtiness which I had fancied every soldier OfGermany felt for hi s calling When I made some casual remark about the gorgeous spiked hel met he had worn with its Prussian and Me ch lenb u rg e r cockades which I took for granted he would set great store by to the ends Of his days he tossed it toward me with : Here take the thing along ifyou want it It wi ll make a ” nice souvenir ofyour visit When I coaxed hi m outdoors to be photographed in his t w o iron crosses he woul d not put them on until we had reached a secluded corner ofthe garden because as he explained the neighbors might think he was boastful .
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1
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FAMILY LIF E IN MEC H LEN BURG I shoul d gladly have died for the Fatherland he remarked as he tossed the tri nkets back into the drawer full ofmiscell aneous junk from which he h a d fished them if onl y Germany had won the war Bu t not for this ! Not I with no other satisfaction than the poor fellows we buried out there woul d feel if they coul d sit up in their graves and look about them There were startling changes in the solemn patriarchal attitude toward life which I had found so amusing yet so charming in the simple people of rural Germany at the time The war seemed to have g iven a sad of my first visit jolt to the conservative Old customs offormer days part i cu / Perhaps the most tangible larly among the young people evidence of this fact was to see the daughters calmly light cigarettes while the sternl y reli gious father of ten years before who woul d then have flayed them for sneezing in church l ooked idl y on wi thout a sign ofprotest They were still at bottom the proper German Frdu lei ns Of the rural — middl e cl ass though as much coul d not be said ofall the — sex even i n respectab le old Schweri n but on the surface there were many of these li ttle tendencies toward the ,
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When it came to discussions of the war and Germany s conduct of it I found no way in which we coul d get together We might have argued until doomsday were it fi tting for a guest to badger his hosts without comi ng to a single point o fagreement E very one Ofthe Old fallacies was still sw al lowed hook and lin e If I had expected national di saster t o bring a change Of heart I shoul d have been grievously di sappoin t ed T o be su re Me chlenb ur g is one Of the remotest backwaters Of the E mpire and these laborious unim aginative til lers Of the soil one of its most conservative elements They woul d have considered it unseemly to make a business Of thi nking for themselves in political matters something akin t o accepting a position for whi ch ’
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1 71
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGIN G GER MANY
they had no previous t rammg There was that t o arouse pity in the success with which the governing class had made use ofthis simple unquestioning attitude for its ow n ends O ne felt certain that these honest straightforward victims ofpremeditated of ficial lies would never have lent a h elping hand had they known that the Fatherland was engaged in a war Of conquest and not a war ofdefense Here again it was the mother who was most outspoken toward what she calle d the wi cked wrecking of po or ” innocent Germany The father and the children expressed themselves more calmly if at all though it was evident that their convictions were the same Apparently they had reached the point where further defense o fwhat they regarded as the plain facts Ofthe situation seemed a waste .
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I cried when the armistice was signed the mother confided to me one day for it meant that our enemies had done what they set out to do many years ago They deliberately planned to destroy us and they succeeded Bu t they were never able to defeat ou r wonderful armies in the field E ngland starved us otherwise she would never have won Then she fostered this Bolsh ev i smu s and Spa rt aki sm u s and the wicked revolution that undermined us at the rear Bu t ou r brave soldiers at the front never gave way : they would never have retreated a yard but for ” the breakdown at home Sh e was a veritable mine of stories of atrocities by the E nglish the French and especially the R ussians but she insisted there had never been one comm itted by the Germans ” Our courageous soldiers were never like that she pro tested Th ey did not make war that way like ou r ” heartless enemies Yet in the same b reath she rambled on into anecdotes ofwhat any one Of less prejudiced viewpoint would have called atrocities but which she advanced as examples of “
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1 72
VAGA BONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY had generations oftraining i n governing S i ehst da I will give you an example We have been H andelsg ci rtner for generations Hermann knows all about the business of gardening because he was trained t o it as a b oy ni ch t wahr ? Do y ou thi nk a man who had never p lanted a cabbage could come and do Hermann s work ? A nsgeschlossen! Well it i s just as foolish for a H andarbei ter li ke E bert t o attempt to become a ruler as it woul d be for one ofou r princes to t ry to run Hermann s garden — Germany is divided into three classes the rulers the middl e class (t o which we belong) and the proletariat or hand workers which includes E bert and all these new upstarts It is ri dicul ous to be getting these di stinctions all mix ed up Lea ve t h e governing t o the princes and their army of cers and the Junkers We use the nickname fi Junker for ou r noble g entlemen von B ernstorf f for i nstance wh o is well known in America and all the others who have a real right to use the von before their names whose ancestors were first highway robbers and then bold — warriors and who are naturally very proud she evidently thought this pride quite proper and fitting Then ou r army officers are chosen from the very best families and can marry only in the g elehrten class and only then if the girl has a dowry of at least eight hundred thousand marks S O they preserve all the nobility oftheir caste down through every generation and keep themselves quite free from — middle class taint the rea l Of ficers I am speaking Of not the Res ervi sten who are just ordinary middle class men merchants and doctors and teachers and the li ke acting as officers during the war Th ose are the men w h o are trained to govern and the only ones wh o can govern I knew of course that the great g od Of class was still ruling in Germany but I confess that this bal d statement It is well o f that fact left me somewhat flabbergasted to be reminded now and again however that the Teuton .
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1
74
,
A
C OAC HMAN
OF
M U NI C H
E ADIN
R
G
TH
E EAC E T E M P
R
S
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GERMANY
light as soon as the trai n was well under way agai n A well dressed merchant beside me boastfully displayed a twenty mark sausage in the bottom of his innocent looking hand bag and his neighbors not to be outdone in proof of cleverness showed their caches Of edi bles laboriously con ce a le d in brief c ases hat bo xes and laundry bags The peasants have grown absolutely shameless it was agreed They have the audacity to demand a mark or more for a single egg and twenty for a chicken — i n other words the rascals had turned upon the bourgeois some of his ow n favorite tricks taking advantage Of conditions which these same merchants woul d have considered le g i t i mate sources Ofprofit in their own business Wrath against the conscienceless countrymen was unli mi ted but no one thought ofshaming the smugglers f or their cheating The contrast between the outward courtesy of these p u nctilious examples of the well to do class and their total lack ofreal active politeness was provoking A fi rst clas s compartment had been reserved for a sick soldi er w h o was plainl y on his last journey with a comrade in attendance Travelers visibly able to stand i n the corridor crowded in upon him until the section built for six held thirteen and forced the invalid to crouch upright in a corner Women were rudely almost brutally refused seats u nless they were pretty in whi ch case they were overwhelmed wi th faw ning attentions A discussion of Am erica broke ou t i n the compartment I occupied It resembled an exchange of opinions on the character Of some dear friend of t h e gathering who had inadvertently comm itted some slight social breach There was not a word at which the most chauvinistic of my fellow fense countrymen coul d have taken of When I had listened for some time to the inexpli cable expressions of afl ect i on f or t h e nation that had turned the scales against their beloved Fatherland I discarded my incognito My com to
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1
76
FAMI LY
LIF E IN MECH LEN BURG
panions acknowledged themselves sur prised then redoubled their assertions offrien dl iness Was their attitude a mere pose assumed on the chance Of being heard by some repre It seemed sent a t i v e ofthe country they hoped to placate ? unl ikely for they had had no reason to suspect my national ity I decided to overstep the bounds of veracity in the hope of getting at their real thoughts if those they were expressing were merely assumed ” I said I am an American I broke in but do not mis understand me We Chi lea ns are quite as truly A mericans as those grasping Yankees who have been fighting against ” you To my astonishm ent the entire group sprang instantly t o the defense Of my real countrym en as against those I had fal sely adopted All the silly slanders I had once heard in Chil e they discarded as such and advanced proofs Of Yankee integrity which even I coul d not have assembled Y ou Chileans have nothi ng to fear from American aggression ? the possessor Of the twenty mark sausage concluded reassuringly as the rumble of the train crossing the Spree set us to gathering our traps together The North Americans are a well meaning people ; but they are young and E ngland and France have led them temporarily astray though they have not succeeded in corrupting thei r si mple natures ,
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SPE A K S
T H US
G E R M A NY
E ST h e
talk all the pleasure ou t of the ramb les ahead let us get the German s opini on ofthe war cleared up b efore we start even i fwe have to reach forward now and then for Some Of t h e thi ngs we shall hear o n the way I propose therefore to give him the floor unreservedly for a half hour wi thout interruption unless it be to throw in a question now and then to m ake his position and hi s s ome times curious ment al processes clearer Th e reader who feels that the prisoner at the bar IS no t entitled t o tell his S ide ofthe story can easily skip thi s chapter — Though I did not get it all from any one person no resi dent ofthe Fatherland talked SO long in the hu ngry armistice days the German point ofview averaged about as foll ows There were plenty ofvariations from this central line and I shall attempt t o show the frontier of these devi ations as we go along We Shall probably not find this statement o f his point ofview v ery original ; most ofhis arguments we have heard before chiefly while the question Of ou r coming or not coming into the war was seething Fifteen years ago when I first visited h i m at home I did not gather the impression that every German thought ali ke T o day he seems to reach the same conclusions by the same curious trains of thought no matter what his caste profession — experience and t o some extent hi s environment for even those w h o remained far from the scene of conflict during ,
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TH U S
SPEAK S G ER MANY
all the war seem to have worked themselves into much the same mental attitude as their people at home Bu t then thi s is al so largely true Of his enemies among whom one hears alm ost as fre quently the tiresome repetition of the same stereotyped conclusions that have in some cases been deliberately manufactured for public consum ption O ne comes at times t o question whether there is real ly any gain nowadays in running about the earth gathering men s opinions for they so often bear the factory made l abel the trade mark ofone great central plant like the material commodi ti es Of our modern industrial world The press the cab le the propag andist and the printer have made a thinking machine as E dison has made a talking machine and Bu rroughs a mechanical arithm etic The first of course if not t h e burni ng question of the controversy was who started the war and why ? The German at home showed a certain impatience at this query as a politician might at a question that he had already repeatedly explained t o hi s constituents B ut wi th care and perseverance he coul d usually be drawn into the di s cu ssi on whereupon he outlined the prevailing opini on with such minor variations as his slight in di viduality per mi t t e d ; almost always without heat always without that stone blind prejudice that is SO frequent among the Al lied man in the street Then he fell into apathetic silence or Bu t harked back t o the ever present question of food let him tell it in his own way The war was started by circumstances War had b e come a necessity t o an over prosperous worl d as b leeding sometimes becomes necessary to a fat person Neither side was wholly and deliberately guil ty of beginning it but i f there is actual personal guil t it is chiefly that of the Allies especially England We understand the hatred of France It came largely from fear though to a great extent unnecessary fear The ruling party in R ussia .
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13
I
79
VAGABON DING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY wanted war wanted it as early as r 90 9 for without i t they woul d have lost their power It was a question ofinterior politics with them Bu t with E ngland there was less excuse In her case it was only envy and selfishness ; the pett y motives that sprout in a shopkeeper s soul We were making successful concu rrenz against her in all the mar — kets of the world though by ou r German word con enfrene we mean more than mere comm ercial com petition ; she saw herself in danger oflosing the hegemony of E urope her position as the most i mportant nation on the globe Sh e set out deliberately to destroy us to verni ch ten — to bring us to nothing We hate though come t o think of it I do not recall once havi ng heard a German use the word hate in describing his own feelings nor di d I run ” across any reference t o the notorious Hymn of Hate dur ing all my travels through the E mpire we dislike then we blame E ngland most for it was Sh e more t h an any other one party in the cont rdv ersy who planned and nourished it How ? By making an E ntente against u S that surroun ded us with a steel wall ; by bolstering up the re va nch e feeling in France ; b y urging on the ruling clas s in R ussia ; by playing on the dormant brutality of the R ussian masses and catering to the natural fanaticism deliberately keeping alive their desire to O f the French recover Alsace Lo rraine E dward VII set the ball rolling ” with his constant visits to Paris I had much intercourse and correspondence with French ” men before the war said a German professor ofE uropean history and I found a wi llingness among those of my ow n generation those between thi rty and fi fty to drop the matter to admit that after all Al sace Lorraine was as much German as French Then some ten years ago I began to note a change of tone The younger generation was being pumped full ofthe revanche Spirit from the day they started to school ; in foreign countries every French text— book i n ,
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1 80
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY selves for that very reason in a few years as soon as she catches her breath and disc overs you at the head of the table in the seat which she has so long arrogated to herself — You will be her next victim with Japan jumping on you r back the moment it is turned Yes in one sense Germany did want war Sh e had t o have it or die for the steel wall E ngland had been forging about her for twenty years was crushing ou r life ou t and had to be broken Then t oo there was one party the — — O ld Germans what you call the Junkers that was not averse to such a contest The munition makers wanted war ofcourse ; they always do Some ofour general s Ludendorf fw as the nam e most frequently heard i n this — connection ; Hindenburg never wanted it Bu t it is absurd to accuse the K aiser of starting it Simply because he was the fi g ureh e a d the most prominent b u g ab op a catchword for the mob The Hohenzoll erns did us much damage ; but they also brought us much good The Kaiser loved peace and did all in his power to keep it He was the — only emperor w e were the only large nation that had waged Bu t the E nglish no war or sto l en no territory since 1 8 7 1 French R ussian combination drove us into a corner We h ad to have the best army in the world just as E ngland has to have the best navy We had no world conquering ambitions ; we had no Dra ng noch Osten which our enemies have so often charged against us except for trade O ur diplomats were not what they S hould have been ; B eth mann Hollweg has as much guilt as any one in the whole affair on our side We have had no real diplomats except von Bu t the Germans as a nation Bul ow since Bismarck never wanted war The Kaiser would not have declared it even when he did had he not feared that the Social Demo flonger crat s woul d desert hi m in the crisis if it were put of We had only self protection as ou r war ai m from the begin ning but we did not dare openly say so for fear the enemy ,
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1 82
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY who took his opinions wholly and unreservedly as they had been delivered t o him without ever having opened the package How did it start ? Why let s see They killed some pri nce down in somewhere or other I never can remember these foreign names and his w i fe too if I remember and t h en R u SSi a and so on He was I don t know o f the same cl ass as those who asserted when gas w as first used or just where but it was by the wicked French — or was it the scoundrelly E nglish ? Bu t these simple swallow i t whole yokels were on the whole more rare than they would have been in many another land However much we may sneer at her K nltnr the K aiser régime brought to the most distant corners of the E mpire a certain degree ofinstruction even if it was only In the great majority of a del iberately Teutonic brand comprehensive o f cases one was astounded at the clear and within limits unprejudiced V iew of all the fi e ld o f E uropean politics of many a peasant grubbing out his existence on a remote hillside More than one of them could have exchanged minds with some of ou r national of My memory f i cials to the decided advantage ofthe latter still harks back to the tall ungainly farmer in whose lowly little inn I spent the last night of my German tramp a man who had lived almost incessantly in the trenches ” during all the war and returned home still a si m ple soldier f a sharp clear cut exposé of the politics who topped of or the past half century with : ofE urope f Wh o started it ? Listen Suppose a diligent sober hard working mechanic is engaged on the same job with an arrogant often careless and sometimes intoxicated competitor Suppose the com petitor begins to note that if things go on as they are the sober mechanic will in time be given all the work for being the more ef f i cient or that there will come a time when thanks to his diligence there will be no work left for either o f them If the rowdy suddenly strikes his rival a foul ,
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1 84
TH U S
SPEAK S
GER MANY
blow in the back when he is not looking and the hard ” worker drops his tools and strikes back w h o started it ? On the conduct ofthe war there was as nearly unanimity The R ussians and the French i nion as on its genesis ofop secretly sustained by E ngland invaded Germany first Will iam they call him that alrnost as often as the K aiser — who was the only i mportant ruler who had not now decl ared war i n more than forty years gave them twelve hours to desist from their designs ; they refused and the war went on Had we planned to go to war we should certainly have passed the tip to the millions of Germans in foreign lands in time for them to have reached Germany Y ou yourselfhav e seen how they poured down to the ports when they heard of the Fatherland s danger and how regretfully they returned to their far of f duties when it became apparent that E ngland was not going to let them come home Then we went through B elgium We should not have done so of course but any people would have done the same to protect its national existence B esides we offered to do so peacefully ; the stubborn Belgians woul d not have suf And Belgium fered in the slightest had a secret treaty with the E ntente that would have per and so o n mi t t e d them t o attack us from that Side M oral guilt ? Not the slightest A S we feel no guilt — whatever for starting the war because we did not start i t so we feel none for any of the ways in which we waged it The U boats ? What was ou r drowning ofa few silly pas seng ers who insisted on traveling compared with what the B ritish were doing in starving our women and chil dren ” our entire nation ? (The old specious argument about the warning not t o take the Lu si ta ni a was stil l frequently heard ) We had t o use U boats or star ve A hysterical world b lamed us for the more dramatic but by far the less wicked of two weapons D row ing is a pleasant death compared with starvation War is war Bu t it was a very ,
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1 85
VAGA BONDING THROUGH CHAN GING
G ER MANY
stupid mistake on the part of old fool Tirpitz ( The admiral probably had his whiskers pulled m ore often figuratively than any other man in the E mpire True he was almost the only Germ an left who felt cap able ofstill nourishing so luxurious an adornment Bu t the U boat policy had very few partizans left ) Moral guilt most certainly not B u t it was the height of asininity If he h a d had ten tim es as many U boats yes by all means Bu t not when it brought in America and still failed to break the blockade If the U boat fans had not insisted o n their program the war would have been over in 1 9 1 6 B u t Am erica woul d probably have come in anyway ; there were her loans to the Al lies and the munitions Sh e fur nished them America we suspect was chiefly interested in her interest To all charges of unfair methods ofwarfare of tyranny over the civi l ian pop ul ation ofatrocities Germany replied with an all embracing : You re another If we first ” — used gas which by no means all Germans admitted think ofthose dreadful tanks ! If we bombed L ondon and Paris see how ou r dear brethren along the R hine suf fered from your airmen If we were forced to be stem with the population of the occupied regions go hear what the R us sians did in our eastern provinces You make m artyrs o f your C a v e lls and Fry a t t s ; we can name you scores of Germans who suffered worse far more unjustly A S to accusing us ofwanton atrocities that has become one ofthe recognized weapons of modern warfare one of the tricks o fthe game this S houting ofcalumnies against your gagged enemy to a keenly listening audience not averse to feeding on such morbid morsels It was accepted as a recognized misdeal in the political poker game as far back as the Boer War when the science of photography first reached the advanced stage that made it possible to S how E nglish soldi ers ca tching on their bayonets babies that had never .
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1 86
VAGABONDING THROUGH C HANGIN G GERMANY France made skilful use of propaganda because they con trolled the great avenues of the transmission of news It looks like a Silly childish little trick for the Al lies to take our cables away from u s— along with ou r milch cows but it is really very i m portant for they keep on telling unrefuted lies about us as long as it serves their purposes Now th at they have a clear field they wi ll discolor the facts more than ever They censored doctored their pub S ee how they dare not li c pri nt s far more than we did even ye t publish the terms of the treaty that was handed us at Versailles ; yet we have had them here i n Germany for days E ven the French Chamber and the Am erican S enate got them first from our papers Open diplomacy indeed ! There never was a time during the war that French and E nglish and when we coul d get them American papers could not be bought at any kiosk in our larger cities Look at Haase who publishes daily the strongest kind of at tacks on the government quite openly while the newspapers of Paris are still sprinkled with the long white hoofprints of the censor — We admit ou r faul t and w e are now paying for it Thi s publicity was one of the perfectly legitimate moves in the crooked game of war one of the cleverest of the tri cks and we overlooked it thanks to the thick heads of our diplomats ! It was perhaps the deciding factor The E nglish with their shopkeeper souls ; the French crudely materialistic under their pretended love of art ; the traitor — ous Italians were not equal all together t o downing us Bu t when they succeeded in talking over America a great big healthy child overtopping them all na1ve inexperienced rather flattered at being let into a man s game somewhat — hysterical I am putting things a bit more baldly than I ever heard th em stated but that is what was meant w e might have known it was all over with us Now we are in a pretty predicament We have no national wealth left ,
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1 88
THU S
SPEA K S
GER MANY
except ou r l abor for we have given up everything else — We cannot even emigrate except to R ussia My chi ldren will see a great combination with them unless thi s Bol sh ev i sm sweeps all before it now while the bars are down Bu t we were never defeated militarily A nsg esch lossen! — We won the war on the field ofbattle such a war as was never before waged against a nation in all history That is what makes ou r real defeat so bitter America did it with her unlimited flood ofmaterials her endl ess resources plus the hunger blockade With the whole world against u S and starvation undermining us at the rear what was left for us ? Bu t we still held ou r front ; our line never cracked — The German army was the best in the world to day the American is— its discipline was strict but there was a rea son centuries ofexperien ce behind every command Bu t the war lasted t oo long ; we g ot overtrained went stale and N 0 German from the mouth ofthe E lbe t o the mountains of B avaria adm itted for an instant that hi s army was defeated Whatever their other opinions the B oches i n sisted on hugging to themselves the cold conviction that they were beaten from within never by a foreign enemy They seemed almost fond of boasting that it took Am erica with her boundless resources to turn the scales against them Bu t they were not always consistent in this view fen for they admitted that with the failure of the last of sive they knew the game was up ; they admitted that Hindenburg himself asserted that the Side that succeeded in bringi ng up the l ast half million fresh troops would win the war In this connection it may be ofinterest to hear what the German S taf f (American Intelligence Section ) thought of the American army The United States en listed men runs their statement were excellent soldiers They took battle as an adventure and were the best shock troops ofthe war when it ended Their officers were good ,
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1 89
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VAGABONDING THROUGH C HANGING G ERMANY
up to and sometimes through battalion commanders ; abov e that they were astonishingly wea Throughout all Germany the proposed peace terms were received in much the same spirit they had been in Berlin Outwardly they were greeted with surprising calmness almost apathy Bu t one could find protests and to spare by knowing where to listen This peace is even less open ” and fair than that of the C ongress of Vienna came the first returns We expected to lose some te rritory in the east perhaps but that Alsace Lorraine shoul d be allowed to vote which ofus she cared to join that S elf determina tion of which Wil son has spoken so much B oth of those provinces always belonged to Germany except for the hundred years between the time Lo u i s X IV stole them from us and Bismarck won them back ; they belonged t o Ger many just as much as Poland ever did to the Poles Lor raine may want to be French ; Al sace certainly does nOt ” and never did It seemed to be the old men who resented most the loss o fterritory as the women were most savage i n their expres sions Probably grandfather would miss the far corner lot more than would the young er members of the family wh o had not been accustomed to seeing it so long When o ne coul d get the Germans to specify they rated the pro posed terms about as follows : The loss ofthe Saar is the worst the losses in the east second ; the loss of ou r colonies thir d Bu t they reminded one of a man who has just — returned home and found his house wrecked the farther he looks the more damage he discovers ; at each new dis cov e ry he gasps a bit more chokingly and finally stands dumb before the immensity of the catastrophe that has befallen h i m for some time un decided just what his next move Shall be We would rather pay any amount of indemnity than lose territory ; they went on at last It is a cri m e to occupy the R hineland the richest most tax .
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1 90
,
THUS SPEAK S GER MANY ab le the most freedom lovi ng part of Germany A nd now they are trying to steal that from us i n addition ! The Allies are trying to Balkanize us They do not want money from us ; they want t o verni ch ten us to destroy us comp letely The imm ense majority ofthe peop le of the Rhineland do not want t o abandon us ; they are loyal to the E mpire B ut the French have the upper hand now ; they protect the few self seekers who are riding it over the loyal masses ; the Bri tish are willing and the Americans are si mp l e enough t o believ e that the republic that is to hav e its capital in C ob lenz represents the desires of the majority Never ! The Catholics and the capitalists combined to form the — R hine R epublic with the aid ofthe French because they ” could thus both have more power for themselves (How true this statement may be I can only judge from the fact that a very small minority ofthose I questioned on the subject whil e wi th the Army of O ccupation expressed any desire t o see the region separated from Germany and that I found virtually no sentim ent for abandoning the Empire in any portion whatever ofunoccupied Germany ) Then these new frontiers in the east were set by men w h o know the con di tions there only from books not from being on the spot or at best by men who were m1si nforme d by the stupid or biased agents they sent Thus many towns almost wholly inhabited by Germans are now t o be given t o the Pol es and vi ce versa As t o the proposed punishment ofthe Kaiser though there seemed to be very — little l ove and no great loyalty except in acquitting hi m — n the score ofbegi nning the war left for h i m among the o great mass ofthe people thi s clause aroused as great wrath as any The German saw in it a matter ofnation al honor Such anger as the peace terms aroused was of co urse ch iefly poured ou t upon President Wilson We believed ” in Wil son and he betrayed us protested a cant ankerous old man Wil son told us that if we chased the H ohenzol -
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19
I
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VAGABONDING TH R OUGH CHANGING GERMANY ‘
w e did so and now look h e woul d treat us rig ht what he has gone and done to us ! He has led us to slaughter
lerns
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and all the time we thought he was leadi ng us ou t ofthe wilderness He has grossly betrayed us People put too much faith in him I never did for I always considered his lean face the mask of hypocrisy not the countenance of justice and idealism We Germans with few exceptions believed him to be a noble character whereas he is operated by strings in the hands of the M erican capitalists l ike the puppets the chi ldren at the Gui gnol mistake for living ” people Only the capitalists cried a motorman led by Wilson had any say in this treaty Your Wil son and hi s capitalists are far worse tyrants than the K aiser ever aspired ” to be in his wildest mome nts Wilson leads the capital ists o fthe world against S ocialism against socialistic Germany which they fear far more than they ever did a mili tary ” Germany asserted the Majority Socialist papers On the other hand there were Germans who stanchly defended Wilson taking an unprejudiced scientific view o fthe entire question as they might ofthe fourth di mension of the B acon Shakespeare controversy These were or apt to bring their fell ow countrymen up with a round turn by asserting that Wilson never promised to make peace with Germany based on his Fourteen Points Ah those Four teen Points ! If they had been bayonets I shoul d have resembled a Sieve long long before my journey was ended We Germans can look at the problem from both sides insisted one such open minded professor because we are more liberal than the Allies because we travel we do business in all parts of the world We have advanced beyond the stage of melodrama ofbelieving that all right all good is on one side and the contrary on the other The Frenchman rarely leaves home the E nglishman never — changes his mind when he does h e has it set in cement The American is t oo f or sa fety s sake before he starts .
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1 92
VAGABONDING TH ROUGH C HAN GING GERMANY fallacy t o thi nk that we shall save money on ou r army The army we have to day costs us far more than the one we had when the armistice was signed If we are required to have an army ofvolunteers only and pay them as good wages as they now require t o day one soldier costs u S more than thirty did under the old system ! And what soldiers ! We shall not be able to compete with the world first ofall because the exchange on the mark will make our raw material s cost us three times what they do ou r rivals and then we have these new eight hour laws and all the rest ofthe advance socialistic program which they do not have in other countries The A llies S hould have hunted o u t the guil ty individuals not punish us all as a nation as an incompetent c aptain punishes his entire company because he is too lazy or t oo stupid to catch the actual wrong doers In twenty years Germany wi ll hav e been comp letely destroyed All the best men will have e m1 grated If we t ry t o spend anything for K nltnr—that excellent heritage of the old régime which our enemies so falsified and garbled —for working men s insurance new schools municipal theaters even for public b aths the Allies will say N 0 we want that money ourselves ; you ow e us that on the ol d war game you lost In that case — all we can do is to resort to passiv e resistance a strange German occupation indeed ! The little blond German ace of aces credited with bringing down some twoscore Allied airmen hoped to come to America and play in a circus H e put little faith in the rumor that he might not be received there and thought that if there really was any opposition it could easily be over ” come by getting one ofour large trusts t o take a financial interest in his case In fact the chief worry ofmany Ger mans seemed to be whether or not and h ow soon they woul d — be allowed to come to America North or South R ats ” desert a sinking ship One man whose intelligence and .
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1 94
TH
E RATHAU
S,
O R C ITY HAL L OF P O S E N ,
VAGABON DING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY B ut
we must be careful not to let partizan rage sour grapes obscure the prob lem There has certainly been a considerab le change of feeling in Germany ; whether a suf ficient a final change remains to be seen The Germans whatever their faults are a foresighted and a deliberate peop l e They are scanning the horizon with unprejudiced eyes in quest of a well tested theory of government that will fit their problem Though they seem for the instant t o be i nclined to the left they are really balancing on the ridge between republicanism and monarchy perhaps a more responsible monarchy than the one they have just cast of f and it will probably not take much to tip them f i ng too B olshevism definitely t o either S ide In the of is always hovering ; not so close perhaps as the Germans themselves fear or are willing to have the world believe but di stinctly menacing for all that In things poli ti cal at least the German is no idealist O f the rival systems of government he h as an eye chiefly to the material advantages Which one will bring hi m the most K nltnr in the Shape of all those things ranging from subsidized opera to municipal baths wit h whi ch the K aiser régime upholstered hi s slavery ? Above all whi ch will give him the earliest and surest oppor t u ni t y t o get back t o work and to capitalize un di stur bed his World famed dil igence ? Those are his chief questions I never heard in all Germany the hint ofa realization that a republi c may be the best form of government because it gives every citizen more or less of a chance to clim b to the topmost rung of the ladder Bu t I did now and then see encouraging signs that the masses are beginning to reali z e that a people is responsible for the actions of its government just as a business man is responsible for hi s — clerk s errors and that is alrea dy a long step forward for Germ any ,
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R
B I S MA C K
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T Y PI CAL O F
RU
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W OM
AL L
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E GERMAN
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B
S
TATU
O
E
S
IN P OZ NAN T O D AY /
E
ATTALI N O F D ATH
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GERMANY his of fice but to the fact that many of the applicants remained only long enough to hear him dismiss them with a n uncompromising No ! All men of military age— and in the Germany of 1 9 1 9 that seemed to mean every male — between puberty and senility were being refused per mission to enter the amputated province whether they were of Polish or German origin My ow n case was dif The of ficer scowled a bit as the passport I laid f e r ent before h i m revealed my nationality but he stamped it quickly as if in haste to be done with an unpleasant duty Wh ether or not this off i cial right of exit from the E mpire included perm 1ssi on to return was a question which he curtly dismissed as no af fair of hi s E vidently I was burn ing my bridges behind me Frankfurt a m O der pulsated with soldiers confirming the impression that re1g ne d in khaki clad circles at Coblenz that the German army had turned its face toward the east Food seemed somewhat less scarce than in the capital A moderately edible di nner cost me only eight marks In the market place however the stalls and bins were pat h et i cally near to emptiness A new annoyance—one that was destined to pursue me during all the rest of my travels in — Germany here first became personal It was the scarcity of ma tches In the days to come that mere hour s search for a Single box of uncertain smoke barraging S trei ch holzer grew to b e a pleasant memory Not far f rom the city was one of those many camps of R ussian prisoners rationed now by American doughboys some ofwhose inmates had nearly five years ofGerman residence to their discredit If the testimony of many constant observers was trustworthy they dreaded nothing so much as the day when they must turn their backs on American plenitude and regain their own fami shed disrupted land True they were still farmed ou t to l abor for their enemies Bu t they seldom strained themselves with toi l and in exchange were they of
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200
SE NTE NC E D T O
AMPUTATION
not growi ng ef ficient in baseball and enhancing their Tataric beauty with the silk hats and red neckties furnished by a n all providing R ed Cross ? The station platform of Frankfurt strewn pellmell with Polish refugees and their disheveled possession s recalled ” the halcyon days of Elli s Island A mixed train of leisurely temperament wandered away at last toward the trunk line to the east which I had fortunately not taken f the principal that morning E vidently one must get of arteries of travel to hear one s fellow passengers express themselves frankly and freely At any rate there was far more open discussion ofthe question ofthe hour during that jolting thi rty mi les than I had ever heard in a day on sophisticated express trains ” The idea began an old man ofSixty or more apropos o fnothing but the thought that had evidently been running through his head at sight of the fertile acres about us of expecting us to surrender this one of the richest sections of the Fatherland and to those i rnprov i de nt Poles of all — people ! They are an intelligent race I have never been B u t they can one of those who denied th em intelligence never govern themselves ; history has proved that over and over again In my twenty three years residence in Upper Sil esia I have seen how the laborers houses have improved how they have thrived and reached a far higher plane ofcul ture under German rul e A Polish government woul d only bring them down t o their natur al depths again They wi ll never treat the working man as fairly as gener o u sly as we have ” Bu t he continued suddenly with increased heat we will not see the Fatherland torn to pieces by a band of envious enemies We will fight for our rights ! sh w olfi We cannot abandon our faithful fellow countrymen our genuine German brethren to be driven from their homes o r misruled by these wretched Poles It woul d be unworthy -
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20 1
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY German blood ! There will be a B u rg erkri eg— a peasants war with every man fighting for his ow n sacred possessions before we wil l a llow German territory to be taken from us I will sacrifice my entire fami ly rather ” than all ow the Fatherland to be dismembered O ur fellow passengers listened to this tirade Of testy old age with the curious apathy of hunger or in di f ference which seemed to have settled upon the nation Now and then one o r two ofthem nodded approval ofthe sentiments expressed ; occasionally they thr ew in a few words of like tenor Bu t o n the whole there was little evidence of an enthusiasm ” for rescui ng their genuine German brethren that prom ised t o g o the length of serious personal sacrifice All Germany was in bloom chiefly with the white ofearly fruit trees giving the landscape a maidenly gaiety that contrasted strangely with the funereal gloom wi thin the car Gangs of women were to i ling with shovels along the rai l way embankment The sandy flat lands supporting little but scrubby spruce forests gave way at length to a rich black soil that heralded the broad fertile gr anary which Germany had been called upon to surrender B arefoot women and children interspersed with only a small per centage of men stood erect from their labors and gazed oxlike after the rumbling train Here and there great fron robe of a B uddh ist priest fields ofcolza yellow as the saf stretched away toward the horizon The plant furnished according to one of my fellow passengers a very tolerable Fruit trees in their whi te spring garments their E rsa tz oil trunk s carefully whi tewashed as a protection against insects lined every highway O ther trees had been trim med down to mere trunks lik e those of Brittany and L a Vendee in France as if they too had been called upon to sacri fice all but life itself to the struggle that had ended so di sastrously In the helter skelter of finding seats in the express that of our
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202
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY later cried the woman in a tone li ke that ofa reli gious fanatic Just then however the pair reached their Station and there was no opportunity to get her t o elaborate her text They shooks hands heartily wished me a Glnckllche R ei se and disappeared into the night Sunset and dusk had been followed by an alm ost full moon that made the evening only a fainter replica of the perfect cloudless day Toward nine however the Sky became overcast and the darkness impenetrable This was soon the case inside as well as out for during an unusually protracted stop at a small station a guard marched the length of the train putting out all its lights It seemed we were approaching the danger zone I had been laboring under the delusion that the armistice which Ger many had concluded with her enemies was in force on all fronts Not at all The Poles it seemed were intrench ed / from six hundre d to three thousand yards away all along this section of the line They had been there since January soon after the province of Posen had revolted against German rul e Almost every night th ey fired upon the trains now and then even with artillery Sometimes the line was impassable German troops of course were facing them Trench raids were of almost nightly occurrence ; some of them had developed into real battles Now and again as we hurled on thr ough the night the re were sounds ofdistant fi ring It was only at Nakel how ever that we seemed i n any personal danger There the Poles were barely Si x hundred yards away and between the time we halted at the station and got under way again at least a hundred Shots were fired most ofthem the rat— a tat of machine guns and all ofthem so close at hand that we unconsciously ducked our heads The train apparently escaped unscathed however and two stations farther on the guard lighted it up again with the announcement that ,
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20 4
SE NTE NC E D
TO AM PUTATION
danger was over We ru mbled on into Bromberg where I descended toward midnight S oldi ers held t h e station — gate and subjected every traveler or more exactly his — papers to a careful scrutiny before permi tting him t o pass My own credentials they accepted more readily than those of many of their fellow countrymen some of whom were herded into a place ofdetention As I stepped out through the gate another soldier thrust into my hand an A nsw ers permitting me to remain on the streets after dark for B romberg was o f ficially in a state ofsiege When I entered the nearest hotel I found that u nofi i ci ally in the same condition A drunk en army of f i cer who was the exact picture ofwhat Allied cartoonists woul d have us believe all hi s class was prancing about the hotel of fice with drawn sword roaring angrily and threatening to spit on his needle pointed saber every one in the room The pos sible victims were t w o half grown hotel clerks ridiculous in their professional evening dress and a thin mottled faced private sol dier who cowered Speechl ess in dif ferent corners I was inside before I noticed the disturbance and pride woul d not permi t me to retreat I took station near a convenient stool and st udied the exact degree ofuncertainty of the bully s legs wi th a view to future defense Bu t for some reason he took no notice ofme and at l ength lurched ou t again i nto the street cursi n g as he went I ow e it to the goddess oftruth t o state that th is was the one and only case I ever personally saw o fa German Of ficer living up to the popular A llied conception of his caste O n the contrary I found the great majority ofthem quiet courteous and gentlemanly to a high degree wi th by no ” means so large a sp rinkling of the roughneck variety as was to be found among ou r own ofli cers in E urope Which does not mean that they were not often haughty beyond reason nor that they may not sometimes have concealed brutal instincts beneath their polished exteriors Bu t .
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20 5
VAGA BONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY
while we are on the subject let me read in to the record t h e testimony of their own fellow countrymen part icul arly th at ofmany a man who serv ed under th em Our active officers would be the composite answer of all t hose I questioned on the subject were excellent — They still had something adel about them somethi ng of the genuine nobi lity o f the old knights from which the caste sprang Their first and f oremost thought was the — fatherly care of their men rendered with a more or less — haughty aloofness to be sure that was necessary to dis — but a genuine solicitude for the welfare of their ci pli ne soldiers Above all and here perhaps is the chief point n of f i cers o fthe same o fdivergence between them and our ow class they were rarely or never self seeking O ur reserve of ficers on the othe r hand were by no means of the same — mann the soul high character O ne so often felt the K a uf underneath Many of them were ju st of a merchant plain rascals who stole the presents that came addressed to their soldiers and looted for their ow n personal benefit Then there were many who though honest and well meaning enough had not the preparation requi r ed for so important an of fice They were teachers or scholars or young students who did not realize that a quiet voice is more comm anding than a noisy one The great drawback of our military system ofou r national life in fact under the monarchy was the impenetrable wall that separated us into the compartments of caste O ld Feldw ebels who had served in the army for twenty years were refused position s which they could have filled to excellent advantage i n f war time because they were not considered in the of icer ” class ; and there were set over them menhalf their own age schoo l boy of cers in some cases who were barely fi eighteen and wh o naturally could not have the t rarm ng and experience which are required of a lieutenant Sixty per cent of our active officers were Slain and many others ,
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2 06
SE NTE NC E D TO
AM PUTATION
were not ab le t o return t o the line O nly 3 0 per cent of ou r reserve Ofli ce rs were kill ed with the result t hat before the war ended a man was lucky to have a superior whom he could honor and unquestioningly obey It was in Bromberg that I came into personal contact with more ofthe class in question than I had i n any other city ofthe E mpire N ot only were soldiers more num erous here but I purposely butted in upon a half dozen military of fices ostensib ly to make sure that my papers were in order really to feel ou t the sentim ent o n the peace terms and measure the sternness of martial law Bu t though I deliberately emphasiz ed my nationality not once did an of ficer S how any resentment at my presence In fact most ofthem saw me t o the door at the end ofthe interview and bowed me ou t with all the ceremony of their exacting social code If the v erdict that had just been issued in Paris had burst like a shell among them they Showed no evidence of panic The of ficial day s work went deliber ately on and the onl y comment on the peace terms I suc uncompromising Quite ce e de d in arousing w as a quiet ” unacceptab le ofcourse The city itself was as astonishingly p lacid in the midst of what an outsider wo u ld have supposed to be ex citing times Being not only in a state ofsiege but having just heard that it was soon to transfer its allegiance t o another race one was justified in expecting a town as large as Trenton or San Antonio to S how at least some ripples on its surface I looked for them in vain It was S unday just the day for popul ar dem onstrations in Germany yet not onl y was there no S ign whatever of rejoicing among the Polish pop ulation but nothing even suggesting the u pri smg ofprotest among the German residents which had been so loudly prophesied The place resembled some New England factory town on the same day of the week Gr oups of P olish looking young men somewhat u ncom .
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207
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY fin their Sunday best lounged on the street and stif corners ogling the plump Polish girls on their way to church S trollers seemed interested only in keepi ng to the Shaded side ofthe street youths and children only i n their — games Tramways rumb led slowly along as usual and before I forget it their female conductors wore breeches ; such shops as were habitually open on Sunday seemed t o be doing their customary amount ofbusiness The whole town was as staid heavy and unenthusiastic as the German character In the face of a wide divergence of opini on among its own inhabitants it was hard for a stranger to decide which of the t wo races predominated in Bromberg The Germans asserted that only 40 per cent of t he population were Poles and that many ofthem preferred to see things remain as they were The Poles defied any one to find more t han twenty Germans among every hundred inhabitants ; of to point out a Single member of their race who sincerely wished to ke ep his allegiance to the Fatherland S treet and S hop S i gns were nearly al l in German but that may have been due to legal requirement The rank and file ofthe populace had a Polish look yet they seemed to Speak German by choice Moreover there is but scant dif ference of appearance between Teutons and Poles particularly when they have lived their entire lives together i n the same envi ronment O n t h e wall of a church I dropped into during morning service there were five columns of names forty fi v e each of the men who had Patriotically sacrificed their lives for a grateful Fatherland At least one half of them ended ” “ in ski and in one column alone I counted thirty unqu e s t i onab ly P olish names Bu t then it was a C atholic church so there you are again Perhaps the most unbiased testi mony of all was the fact that the little chil dren playing in the park virtually all spoke Polish I drifted into conversation wi th an i ntelligent young f ort a b le
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2 08
,
VAGA BONDING T HROUGH C HANGING GER MANY a
ski on the end of a name means a double sentence O ur taxes were figured far more strictly than those ofthe G erm ans In the army we are given the dirtiest jobs and most of the punishments At the front we were thrown into the most dangerous positions The Germans coul d have won the Pol es over if they ferences and treated had done away with these unfair dif f i cient people and some of us as equals They are an ef their ways are better than ou r ways but they cannot get rid of their arrogance and their selfishness They are short sighted I Spent four years at the front yet I never once fired at the enemy but into the air or into the ground The majority ofPoles did the same thi ng Y ou can imag ine the ammunition that was wasted There is not much work at home yet you will not find one Pole in a hundred of military age in the German volunteer army Y ou see — many of them in uniform on the streets here all those red — headed young fellows are Poles b u t that is because they are still illegally held under the old conscription act Short sightedness again for if trouble ever starts the garri son will eat itself up w ithout any one outside both ering with it No Pole of military age can get into the province ofPosen not even if he was born there In Berlin there are thou sands of young Poles wandering around in uniform half starved with nothing to do yet who are not all owed to come home N 0 there has been very little mixture of the t w o races Intermarriage is rare I know only one case of it among my It is not the German government o w n acquaintances — — that is opposed to i t on the contrary but the Church and Polish sentiment The C atholics are against the old order of things and want a republic ; it is the Protest ants ” — who want the K aiser restored here one detected a t e li g i ou s bias that perhaps somewhat obscured the truth The old German party wants to fight to the end If .
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2 10
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING
G ER MANY
Germans subscribing to any such doctrine as that ? I cer t a i nly cannot for I have lived all my life among them and I know how t hey worship Ordnung and Geni ntli chkei t Y es we have several Polish newspapers published here in B romberg Bu t even if you could read them it woul d not be worth your while for they do not mean what they say They are doctored and padded and censored by the German authorities until the only reason we read them is for the local gossip of ou r friends and acquaintances If it were not Sunday I would take you to meet the editor o f one of them and you would find that he speaks quite dif ferently from what he writes in his paper once he is sure he is not talking to a German spy The mechanic told me all this without once showing the slightest evidence of preju di ce or bitterness against the oppressors of his race He treated the matter with that academic aloofness that absence ofpersonal feeling wh ich I had so often been astounded to see the Germans themselves display toward the woes that had come upon them Per haps a lifelong grievance grows numb with years perhaps it is less painful when Swaddled in calm detachment per haps the temperamental Polish character takes on a ph leg matic coating in a German environment At any rate all those groups ofyouths that lounged on the str eet corn ers ogling the girls as they passed on their way homeward from church had a get along with as littl e trouble— as pos sible seeing w e can t avoid i t manner toward the still some what arrogant Germans that made Bromberg outwardl y a picture of peace and contentment The half dozen Teuton residents with whom I talked seemed rather apathetic toward the sudden change in their fortunes The Shopkeepers with o ne exception announced the1r 1nt ent i on of continuing business in Bromberg even if it became necessary to adopt Polish citizenship The excep tion was of the impression that they woul d be driven ou t ,
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2I2
AM PUTATION
SE NTE NC E D T O
and was not ye t making any plans for the future A station guard on the other hand denounced the decision of Paris with a genuine Prussian wrath E very railway employee is armed he asserted and di e Pola cken will not get any thing that belongs to the Fatherland without a struggle ” It is absurd he vociferated to expect that we will sur render a genuine German city like Bromberg to a lot of improvident wastrels Le t them keep the part about Posen and south of it ; there the Poles are in the majority — B u t here as usual it seemed the section to which they were entitled was somewhere else A lawyer whom I found sunning himself on a park bench before the fantastic bronze fountain discussed the problem more quietly but with no less heat ” the whole Allied group Y ou Americans he perorated do not understand the problem in its ful l S1g n1fi We c ance look upon the Poles very much as you do upon your negroes They have much the same Shiftlessness much the same tendency to revert to the semi savagery out of which we Germans have li fted them N ow just imagine for the moment that y ou had been starved to submission in a war with say Mexico Japan and E ngland Suppose a so call ed peace conference made up entirely of your enemies and sitting say in C anada decreed that Missis — Sippi Florida Al abama that half a dozen of your most fertile S outhern states must be turned over to the negroes to form part of a new negro nation It is possible that your people in the North whom the problem did not directly touch might consent to the arrangement Bu t do you for a moment think that your hot blooded S outherners the white men who would have to live in that negro nation or escape with what they coul d carry with them woul d accept the decision without springing to arms even though it was S i gned by a dozen Northerners ? That is exactly ou r case here and whether or not this all eged Peace Treaty is accepted .
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2 13
VAGABON DING TH RO UGH C HANGING by
G ER MANY
the government in B erlin the Germans of the E ast w ill not see themselves despoiled without a struggle That evening I attended an excellent performance of S udermann s Di e Eh re in the subsidized municipal theater Ticke ts were even cheaper than in C oblenz none of them as hig h as four marks even with war tax poor tax and ward ” rob e The house was crowded with the serious minded o fall classes Poles a s well as Ger mans ; the actors were of hi gher histrionic ability than the average Am erican town Yet equally of the size of B romberg sees once a year fered here at these slight splendi d perfo rmances were of prices all the year round As I strolled hotelward with that pleasant sensation of satisfaction that comes from an evening o fgenuine entertainment I could not but wonder whether this and those other undeniable advantages of German K nltnr whatever sin s might justly be charged a g a i nst i t would be kept up after the Poles had taken Bromberg into their own keeping As to the walking trip through these eastern provinces which I had planned fate was once more against me I might to be sure have set out on foot toward the region already amputated from the E mpire but in the course o fan hour I Should have had the priv il ege of walk ing back again The German Polish front was just Si x kilometers from Bromberg and a wandering stranger would have had exactly the same chance of crossing its succession of trenches as of entering Germany from France a year before The one and only way of reaching the province of Posen was by train from the village of Kreuz back along the railway by whi ch I had come The place had a ll the appearance of an international frontier a frontier hastily erected and not yet in effic ient running order Arrangements for examining travelers and baggage consisted only of an improvised fence along t h e station platform strewn p ellmell with a heterogeneous ,
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2
I4
SE NT E N C E D
TO AM PUTATION
throng bound in both directions and their mul tifarious cof The soldiers who patrolled the line fers and bundles Of demarkation wi th fixed bayonets were callow thin faced youths or men past middl e age who had plainly reached the stage of uselessness as combat troops All wore O n their collars the silver oak leaves of the recently formed ” frontier guard Their manner toward the harassed travelers was either brutal or cringi n gly friendly The Germans in civilian garb who examined passports and baggage were cantankerous and gruf f as if they resented the existence ofa frontier where the Fatherland had never admitted that a frontier exi sted They vented their wr ath especially against men ofmi litary age who wished to enter — Polish territory and their interpretation of thei r duties i n that respect was by no means charitable Among others ficed a wretched littl e dwarf past fifty whom a glance suf t o recognize as useless from a mil itary point ofview even f i cial Un had hi s papers not been stamped with the of t a ng li ch was wantonly turned back Many a family was left only the choice of abandoning the attempt to reach its h om e or ofleaving its adul t male members behind The churls allowed me to pass readily enough but rescinded their action a moment later O nce beyond the barrier I had paused to photograph the pandemonium that reigned about it A lieutenant bellowed and a group of soldiers and officials quickly swarmed about me Di d I not know that photography was forbidden at the front ? I protested that the station scenes of K reuz could scarcely be called military information What of that ? I knew that it was within the zone of the a rmies did I not ? R ules were rul es ; it was not the privilege of every T om D ick and Harry to interpret them to his own liking A lean hawk faced civilian who seemed to be in comm and ordered me to open my kodak and confiscated the film it contained If I set great store by the pictures on it he woul d have it ,
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21
5
VAGA BONDIN G THR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY developed by the military authorities and let me have those that proved harmless upon my return I thanked him for his leniency and strolled toward the compartment I had chosen B efore I had reached it he called me back ” L et me see your papers again he demanded in a far gr uffer tone He glanced casually at them thrust them into a pocket f and snapped angrily : Get your baggage of of his coat ” the train ! I am not going to let you through It was plainthat he was acting from personal rather than official motives Probably he considered my failure to ra1se my hat and to smile the sycophant smile with which my fellow passengers addressed him as an af front to his high Prussian caste Fortunately he was not alone in command A more even tempered of f i cial without his dyspeptic lean ness beckoned him aside and whispered in his ear Perhaps he called his attention to the importance ofmy credent ials from Wilhelmstrasse At any rate he surrendered my papers after some argument with an angry Shrug of the shoulders and his less hungry— l ooking companion brought them back to me It has all been arranged he smi rked Y ou may take ” the train This was still manned by a German crew For every car that left their territory however the Poles required that one of the same class and condition be delivered to them in exchange S everal long freight trains loaded from end to end with potatoes rumbled past us on the parallel track Two hundred thousand tons of t ubers were sent to Germany each month in exchange for coal It was at that date the only commercial intercourse between the two countries and explained why potatoes were the one foodstuff of comparative abundance even in Berlin At B iala the station guards were Polish but there was little indeed to distinguish them from those of K reuz and Brom .
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216
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GERMANY repast With every mile forward now i t was easier to understand why the l oss of the province ofPosen had been so serious a blow t o the hungry E mpire Here were no ar i d sandy stretches but an endless expanse ofrich black loam capable of feeding many times it s rather sparse ” population If it had been pumped dry by the former oppressors it was already well on the road to recovery Wheat corn and po tatoes covered the flat plains to the horizons on either hand Cattle and Sheep were by no means rare ; pigs goats ducks and chi ckens flocked about every village and farm house evidently l1v1ng In democratic equality with the human inhabitants There were other suggestions that we were approaching the easy going E ast Men in high R ussian boots sauntered behind their draft anim al s with the leisureliness ofthose who know the world was not buil t in a day nor yet in a year Churches of O riental aspect with steep roofs that were stil l not Go c broke the sameness ofthe prevailing German architecture There was something softly u n O ccidental i nthe atmosphere a city of the great city into which we rumbled at sunset which huge new sign boards on the stati on platform st ri ” dent ly announced was no longer Posen but Poznan .
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AN
A M PU T A T E D M E M B E R
(Posen u nd er
th e Poles)
same spirit th at had led the Poles to im press so forcibly upon the traveler the fact that the city in whi ch he had just arrived was now called Poznan (pro nou nce d Po z nany a ) had manifested itself in a thousand other changes In so far as ti m e had permitted every Offi cial S ign board had already been rendered into Polish and the detested German ones cast into outer darkness Only those fami l iar with the S lavi c tongue of the new rul ers could have guessed what all those glitteringly new enameled placards that adorned t h e still Boche featured station were comm anding them to do or not t o do E very street in town had been baptized into the new faith and gaily boasted that fact on every corner For a time the names had been announced in both languages as in Metz ; but a month or so before my arrival the radicals had pre vailed and the older placards had been abolished True in most cases the new ones were merely translations ofthe o ld Bu t what did it help the German resident who had neglected to learn Polish to know that the Alte Markt was still the Old Market so long as he could not recognize ” it under the new designation of S tary R ynek Imagine if y ou can the sensation of waking up some morning to fi nd that Main Street has become Ulica Gl owna or to discover that the street car you had always taken no longer runs to Forest Park but to Og rot t Lass
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2 19
VAGA BONDING TH R OUGH CHANGING GERMANY Nothing but the few things that defied quick change such as post boxes or names deeply cut into stone fa cades had escaped the all embracing renovation Indeed many of these had been deliberately defaced The cast iron Haltestelle der S trassenbahn high up on the trolley supports had been da ubed w ith red paint though they were still recogni zable to motormen and would b e pas s e ng e rs Many business houses had followed the of f i cial l ead and private signs were more apt than not to have the German words that had once called attention to the excellence of the wares within crudely ef faced or changed to the new tongue Sometimes it was not merely the l anguage that had been al tered but the whole tenor ofthe proprietor s allegiance A popular underground beer hall in the heart of town was no longer the B ismarck Tunnel ” but the Tunel Wilsona German trucks thundering by o n their iron tires bore the white eagle of Poland inst e a d German newspapers of the black Prussian bird of prey were still published but as the streets they mentioned were nowhere to be found in all Poznan their advertisements and m uch of their news were rather pointless It gave me a curi ously helpless feeling to find myself for the first time in years unable to guess a word of the language about me Fortunately all Poznan still spoke German Only once during my stay there did I find myself hampered by my ignorance of Polish— when a theater ticket of f i ce proved to be in charge ofa pair recently arrived from Warsaw O n more than one occasion my advances were received coldly someti mes with scowls Bu t a reply was always forth coming and whenever I announced myself an Am erican who spoke the less welcome of the two tongues by necessity rather than by choice apology and friendly overtures i m mediately followed Having ef faced the lingual reminders oftheir late oppre s sors the Poznani ans had proceeded to pay their respects ,
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2 20
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GERMANY Men i n civilian garb wore it on their hats or in their coat lapels ; women adorned their bodices with it ; boys and girls proudly displayed it in some conspicuous position It fluttered on a thousand banners ; it bedecked every Polish shop front ; it stared from the covers of newly appeared books pamphlets music sheets in the popular tongue ; the very church Spires had replaced their crosses with it One coul d b uy the resurrected insignia of any size or ma t eri al in almost any shop — providing one could produce ” legitimation papers or other proof that it would not be used to disguise a German as a Pole An over abundance of swords tended to give the new army a comic opera aspect but thi s detail was offset by the genuine military bearing ofall but a few of the mul titude in uniform The great majority of course had had German training Now however they put the pep of a new game into the Old forms ofsoldi erly etiquette Th ei f t w o finger salute was rendered with the precision of ambitious recruits and at the same time with the exactitude of old ” timers They sprang unfaili ngly to attention at S ight of a superior Of ficer and stood like automatons unti l he turned away Yet there seemed to be an u n German comradeship between the rank and file and the comm is si one d personnel a democracy of endeavor a feeling that they were all embarked together on the same big new adventure There were to be sure some of ficers and a few men whose sidewalk manners suggested that they had learned Prussian ways a bit t oo thoroughly but they were lost in a mass that had something of the easy going tem peram ent ofthe E ast or the South All classes of the Polish population were represented in the new army from the bulking countryman who ran after me t o say that the photogr aph I had just taken of him would not be a success because he h ad not been looking at the lens during the operation t o the major who granted _
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222
VAGABONDING T HR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY i ng testified to previous training under the exacting drill
sergeants of their former rulers Watching this new addi tion each day to the hordes in uni form that already crowded the city one could not but wonder whether the new Poland was not giving refuge perhaps unconsciously to the dis credited spirit of militarism that had so recently been expelled from its German Fatherland ” ” The revolution or Pntsch as the Poles call it that brought about all this new state of af fairs had been brief and t o the poi nt Paderewski relying perhaps on Ger many s promise to help re establish the ancient Polish K ingdom had come t o Posen for the Christmas holidays The hotel he occupied had been decorated wi th the flags of the Allies It is scarcely surprising that the Germans proceeded to tear them down in spite ofthe armistice that had recently been concluded According to several oh ” servers they might even have got away with this had they not persisted in their Prussian aggressiveness O n December 2 7t h a Polish youth paused to ask another for a light from his cigarette Matches had long been precious things in Posen A German of ficer pounced upon the pair and demanded to know what conspiracy they were hatching together The Polish youths quite properly knocked him down Their companions joined in the fracas The Polish turn vereins had long had everything prepared for just such an eventuality Word swept like prairie fire through the city French and Italian prisoners of war sprang to such arms as they coul d lay hands on and added their assistance T h e sol diers of the g arrison being chiefly Poles or of Polish sympathi es walked out almost in a body It raged for twenty four hours a nd joined the revolt In the words of the serg e ant m ajor already introduced : It was a busy day from four in the morning until the fol — S lowing dawn At least ixty ribs were broken mostly German ones There have been b loodier revolutions .
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2 24
AN AM PUTAT E D M EM BER however for the number kill ed i s set at ten The Polish leaders were soon masters of the situation In three days they had established order Their search for arms was thorough and included Polish as well as German houses The government they had already established in secret soon tautened the reins that had been struck from the hands of the Germans and by New Year s Day Poznan had already settled down t o peace and t o a contentment it had not known in more than a centur y; As far at least as outward appearances g o there was nothing particul arly oppressive about the new rul e Ci vi l ians were not permitted on the streets after midnight but those with any legitimate excuse for night hawki ng were granted S pecial passes The Poles S howed a tendency to meet half way their next door neighbor and late oppressor With the exception ofa few Polen f German resi resser d ents were not driven ou t as in Metz and S trassburg B oche merchants continued to do business at the old stand Newspapers published in Germany were refused admittance but that was a fair retaliation for simi l ar action by the new authorities ofthe l ate E mpire E ven the detested statues were not overthr own until March when the Germans de The lan cli ne d to give the Poles port facilities at D an zig guage ofthe school s as well as ofgovernment offi ces was changed to Polish ; but as soo n as B erlin consented t o a reciprocal arrangement German was restored t o the cu r ri cu lu m though it was taught only a few hours a week as a foreign tongue In short the conditions ofBromberg had bee n nicely reversed in Poznan It must t o be sure have been rather a tough li fe for the town braggart who had always espoused the German cause ; but there was appar ently nothing to be feared by those who know how to hold their tongues and confine their attention to their o wn — fairs and the German is a past master at lying low when af it is t o his interest t o do so His native tongue was almost .
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225
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GERMAN Y
never heard on the streets such arrogance as existed was confined now to the Poles and the just— let u S alone and we ll b e good role had been assumed by the Teutons There were suggestions however that t h e Poles were not yet adepts at governing nor likely soon to establish a modern Utopia Already they had succeeded in encumber ing themselves with fully as much red tape as the French A musici an as national leader and rallyi ng point seemed to be in keeping w ith the Polish temperament There was a lack of practical directness in their methods a tendency toward the erratic at the expense of orderly progress O ne of their foremost business men turned high official to whom I applied for a signature a nd the imprint of a government stamp received me with a protest that he was ” — too busy to breathe and spent two hours reciting Polish poetry to me and demonstrating how he had succeeded in photographing every secret docum ent that had reached Posen during the war without being once su spected by the Germans I am not experienced In thi s business of government he apologized when I succeeded at last in taking my leave but I am ready to sacrifice myself and ” all I have to the new Poland The statement rang true in his case but there were others whose repetiti on of it would have raised grave suspicions that they were putting the cart before the horse The rush for government jobs under the new régime had in it something of the attitude ofthe fai thful henchmen toward the periodical return to power of th eir beloved Tam many There were tender reminiscences of the A E F in the flocks ofincompetent pretty girls who encumbered govern ment ofli ce s dipping their charming noses into everything except that which concerned them as there was in the tendency on the part of both sexes to consider government transportation synonymous with opportunity for joy ” riding It wi ll be strange if the Polish servant girls and ,
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2 26
C H EE S E !
WH O
EA ANT
A P
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AI D G
ERMAN
O E
IN T H
S
H US
E
I
POL A N D
WA S
ROVIN C E
P
R
HUNG Y ?
OF O E N P S
AN
AMPUTATE D M EM BER
factory h ands who come t o us i n the future bring with them the accept anything spiri t of the past at least after the period They are oforientation to their new environment is over ” feeling their oats at home now and wi ll be apt to set their worth and their rights t o full eq uality correspondingly higher The Pol es evidently are not by nature a frolicsome ” people b u t they seemed to have thrown away the lid in Poznan and given free play to all the joy wi thin them Pianos were more in evidence than they had been during all the twenty months I had spent in war torn E urope C hi ldren appeared to have taken on a new gaiety Night life was almost Parisian except in the more reprehensible ” features of t h e City of Light It may have b een due onl y t o a temporary difference of mood in the two races but Polish Poznan struck me as a far more li va b le place than German B erlin E vidently the people of the prov i nces were not letting thi s new attractiveness ofthe restored city escape them ; the newspapers bristled with offers of reward for any one givi ng information of apartments or houses for rent U nderneath their merriness however the religious current oft h e race sti ll ran strong and swi ft The churches discharged multitudes daily at the end of morni ng mass ; no male be he coachman policeman soldier or newsboy ever passed the crucifix at the end of the principal bridge without reverently raising hi s hat There are Protestant Poles but th ey appare ntly do not live i n Poznan N ow and again too there were episodes quite the opposite ofgay to give the city pause in the midst of its revelry— the drunk en sots in uniform for instance who canvassed the shops demanding alms and prophesying ri ng squad for the fi those who declined to contribute Were they not perhaps the outposts of B olshevism ? Bu t a ll this was i mmersed in the general gaiety tinged with a mild O riental ism that S howed itself not only in the architect -
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16
227
VAGA BON DI NG THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY ure but in such leisurely customs as closing shops and office s from one to three in defiance of nearly a century and a half o fthe sterner German influence It is quite possible that the increased liveliness of the Poz nani ans was as much due t o the fact that they had plenty to eat as t o their release from Teutonic bondage The t w o things had come together B eing perhaps the richest agricultural district ofthe late E mpire the province o fPosen was quick to recover its alimentary footing once its frontiers had been closed against the all devouring German With the exception of potatoes of which the supply was well in excess of local needs the exportation of foodstuf fs toward the hungry West had absolutely ceased The result was more than noticeab l e in Poznan ; it w as conspicuous all but overpowering particul arly to those arriving from famished Germany S treet after street was lined with a constant tantalization to the new comer from the West arousing his resentment at the appetite that was so easily satisfied after its constant vociferations in days gone — Butcher shops displayed an abun b y and still to come dance of everything from frankfurters to sides of beef Cheese butter eggs by the bushel candy sugar sweet meats were heaped high behind glass fronts that would have been slight protection for them in B erlin In what were now known as resta nra cya one might order a break fast of eggs bacon milk butter and all the other things the mere mention of which would have turned a German Wi rt livid with rage without so much as exciting a ripple on t h e waiter s brow At the rathskeller of Poznan s ” artistic old city hall a steak and everything such a steak t eer could command anywhere in as no t even a war profi Germany cost a mere seven marks including the inevitable ” mug of beer and the 1 0 per cent for service that was exacted here also by the K ellners union With the low — rate Of exchange for Poznan was still using German ,
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2 28
VAGABON DING THR OUGH C HAN GIN G
G ERMANY
so short a time and amid the German shrieks of protest it was disconcerting to find that the Poles were far from satisfied with what had been granted them by the Peace Conference From high government offi cials to the man in the street they deluged me with their complaints often nai vely i mplying that I had personally had some hand in framing the terms of the proposed treaty or at least the power to have them altered before it was too late They were dissatisfied with the western frontier that had been set for them especially i n West Prussia ; they were part i cu larly disgruntled because they had not been given Danzig outright A nation of thir ty million people Should have a harbor of its ow n D anzig was essentially Polish i n its sympathies in spite of the deliberate Germanization that had been practised upon it S trangely enough they accused Am erica of having blocked their aspirations in that part ien lar They blamed Wilson personally for having shut them ou t of Danzig as well as for the annoying delay in drawing ” up the treaty The Germans had got at him through the J ews The latter had far too much power i n the Am er nano ican government as well as in Am erican fi es The impression was wide spread in Poznan that Mrs Wilson is Jewish The Germans and the Jews had always stuck together Poland had always been far too lenient with the Jews Sh e had let them in too easily ; had granted them citizenshi p too readily As they spoke either Yiddish an of fshoot of German or R ussian t hey had always lined up with the enemies of Poland Half the German S pies every one of the R ussian spies with whom Polish territory had been flooded during the war had been Jews The Poles in America had gathered money for the all eviation of suf Ger f eri ng in their home land and had given it to Jews mans and Poles irrespective of race The Jews in Am erica had collected similar funds and had expended them onl y among the J ews From whatever poi nt of vi ew one ap ,
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23 0
VAGABONDIN G THR OUGH C HANGING
G ERMANY
stole even their name ; it was originally Ba rru se n as the little corner of R ussia was called where the robbers first banded together They marauded their way westward and southward treading first little people and then little nations under their iron heel s The very word the German ” ” uses for get or obtain tells his history It is kri eg en to w i n by war— kri eg Y ou seldom hear him use the gentler bekomrnen E verything he possesses he has g ekri eg t Then he is such a hypocrite ! In 1 9 1 6 when we Poles first began t o suf fer seriously from hunger some German of f i cers came with baskets of fruit and sandwiches gathered a group of Polish urchins filled t heir hands with the food and had themselves photographed with them to Show the world h ow generous and ki nd hearted they were Bu t they did not tell the world that the moment the photographs had been taken the food was snatched away frorrr the hungry chil dren again some of the of ficers boxing their ears and sent back to the German barracks How do y ou think the Poles who have been crippled for life fighting for the Fatherland feel as they hobble about ou r streets ? What would you say to serving five years in the German army only to be interned as a dangerous enemy alien at the end ofit as is the case with thousands ofou r sons who were, not able to get across the frontier in time ? N O the Ger mans i n Poznan are not Oppressed as our people were under ” their rul e We are altogether too soft hearted with them The German residents themselves as was to be expected ferent view of the situation took a dif When the Polish authorities had decorated my passport with permission t o return to B erlin I took no chances of being held up by the cantankerous dyspeptic at K reuz and applied for a new visé by the German Volksra t of Posen It occupied a modest little dwelling house on the wide curving avenue no longer recognizable under its former title of K aiser Wilhelm R ing Barely had I established my i dentity ,
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23 2
AN AM PUTATE D M EM BER when the gloomy Germans took me t o their bosom Had I been fully informed ofthei r side ofthe S ituati on ? Would I not do them the kin dness to return at eleven when they woul d see to it that men of high standing were there to give me the real facts of the case ? My im pressions ofPosen would be wholly fal se if I left it after havi ng consorted only with Poles A S a matter offact I had already consorted wi th no small number of German residents chi efly of the small merchant class Those I had found somewhat mi x ed in their minds A few stil l prophesied a peasants war in the territory allotted to Poland ; a number of them shivered with apprehension of a general B ol shevist u p ” rising Bu t ful ly as many pooh poohed both those cheer ful bogies O ne thing only was certain— that without exception they were doing business as usual and would continue t o do so as long as the Poles permi tted it The feeling for the Fatherland did not seem strong enough among the overwhelming majority of them t o stand the strain ofpersonal sacrifice When I returned at eleven the Volksra t had been con v oke d in uno f ficial special session A half dozen of the men who had formerly held high places in the Municipal C ouncil rose ostentatiously t o their feet as I was ushered into the chief sanctum and did not sit down again until I had been comfortably seated The chief spokesman had l ong been something corresponding t o chairman of the B oard of His close cropped head glistened in the sun A ldermen shine that entered through the window at hi s elbow and his little ferret like eyes alternately sought t o bore their way into my mental processes and t o light up wi th a win some nai vete whi ch he did not really possess Most of the words I set down here are hi s though some of them were now and then thr own i n by hi s subservient but approv i ng companions .
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2 33
VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GER MANY he began it h as become a case of Vogel f ri ss oder s tarb eat crow or die We are forced for the time at least to accept what the Poles see fit t o all ow us The German residents ofPosen are not exactly oppressed but ou r lives are hemmed in by a thousand petty annoyances some of them highly discouraging Take for instance this matter of the street names Granted that the Poles had the right to put them up in their own language It was certai nly a Sign of fanaticism to tear d0wn the Ger man names More than a fourth of the residents ofPosen cannot read the new street placards There is not a Polish map of the cit y in existence When the province of Posen came back to us the Polish street names were all owed t o — remain until 1 8 79 for more than a hundred years It is a S1g n of childishness of retarded mentality to daub with red paint all the German signs they cannot remove ! It isn t much more than that to have forbidden t h e use fairs We Germans used of our tongue in governmental af both languages officially clear up to 1 8 76 We even had the Old Prussian laws translated into Poli sh It is onl y duri ng the last ten years that nothi ng but German was permitted in the public schools ; and there have always been plenty of Polish private schools I am still technically a member of the Municipal Council but I cannot understand a word of the proceedings because they are in Polish O ur lawyers cannot practise unless they use that language although the judges who pretend not to know German Yet these same lawyers S peak it as readily as you or I cannot get back into Germany A t least give us time to learn Polish before abolishi ng German ! Many a man born here cannot speak it There are German children of eighteen or twenty who have never been outside the province w h o — are now learning Polish that is to write and speak it correctly O h yes to be sure we can most of us get permrssron In With us Germans
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2 34
VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING GER MAN Y v e P o l es vill age where there are seventy Germans and fi and the five Poles run things t o suit themselves Hus ferent rights of suf bands wives and sons often have dif frage The fami ly of Baron X has lived here for a hundred and fifty years The baron himself happens t o hav e been born in Berlin because his mother went there to see a doctor So h e cannot vote though hi s Polish coachm an who h as not been here ten years has all the ri ghts of citizenship The resul t is that gov ernment af fairs are getting into a hopeless muddl e An ignorant fellow by the name of a Polish German eater has now the chief K orf ant i voice in the M unicipal C ouncil The Poles boycott German merchants They deluge the city with placards and appeals not to buy of Germans For a long tim e they refused t o trade even a miserable little Polish theater for ou r Splendid big S ta dtthea ter When the director of that finall y got permission to take over the wholly inadequate li t t le/ play house for next season he had to advertise in order to find — out how many Germans intend to stay in Posen as you have seen in ou r German paper What can the Poles do w ith our magnificent S ta dtth ea ter ? Th ey have no classics to give in it nor people of sufficient culture to make up an audience We are still allowed to giv e German opera because they know they cannot run that themselves and a few of the more educated Poles like it B ut ou r splendid spoken classics seem to be doomed Then there is their ridiculous hatred ofthe Jews The race may have its faults but the five or six thousand Jews o f Posen province play a most im portant business and financial rOle They have always understood the a dv an tages of German K nltnr far better than the Poles There is a Jewish Volksra t here that tries to keep independent of both the other elements of the population ; but the great majority ofthe Jews stand with the Germans They have — no use for this new Zionism except for the other fellow .
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23 6
AN AM PUTAT ED M EM BER unl ess y ou take seriously the aspirations ofa few i mpractical — young idealists a statement by the way which I heard from Jews of all classes i n various parts of Germany We Germans lifted the Poles ou t oftheir semi savagery We brought them K nltnr D o not be deceived by what see in Posen It is a magnificent city is it n o t ou y finer perhaps than you Am eri cans found C obl enz ? Yet everything that gives it magnificence was built by the Germans— the well paved streets the big wide boul evards the splendid parks all the government buil dings and the best ofthe private ones the street cars the electric lights even the higher state of civili za t ion y ou find among the masses There is not a Pole in the province ofPosen who cannot read and write Do not make the mistake of thinking all these things are Polish because the Poles have stolen them Before you leave go and compare Posen with the Polish cities ou tsi de Germany That wi ll tell the story In non German Poland you will be struck by the appalling lack of schools roads doctors hospital s educa tion culture by the sad condition of the workmen and the peasants— all those things that are included in the Ger man word K nltnr In Galizia where Austria vir tually allowed the Poles t o run themselves the houses are only six feet high and you coul d walk all day without finding a man who can read and write or who can even speak German Their cities are sunk in a degradation of the Middle A ges Posen will fall i nto the same state i f the present Municipal Council continues in power There are already frontier troubles between German and R ussian ferent sections that Poland and quarrels between the dif — confirm what we Germans have always known that the Poles cannot govern themselves Warsaw does not wi sh to keep up ou r splendid system of workmen and old age insurance because there is none in R ussian Poland Galizia complains that farm land is several times higher in p ri ce ,
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23 7
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY i n the province
Posen without admi tting that it is German railroads and German settlers that have made it so That advantage will soon disappear The Poles will make a mess of the whole province and will have it sunk into the degradation in which we found it by the ” time a real ruling nation takes charge ofi t again Just how much truth there was mixed in with the con si d er ab le amount Of patent nonsense In the ex chairman s declamation onl y a long stay in Poznan or tim e itself would Show The fact that the Poles allowed many of these statements particul arly the protests against t h e sud d en c hange oflanguage to be published in the local Ger man newspaper Speaks at least for their spirit of tolerance Though the new government was visibly maki ng mistakes a nd had not y e t settled down to the orderliness that shoul d come from experience no one but a prejudiced critic could have discovered imm ediate evidence that it was maki ng ” any su ch comp lete mess of matters as t h e German Even i fit had been at least the mass Volksra t testified of the population showed itself happy and contented with the change and contentment after all may in ti me resul t in more genuine and lasting progress than that which comes from the forcible feeding ofGerman K nltnr I dropped in at t h e Teatro A po ll o one evening chiefly to find ou t how it feels to see a p l ay wi thout understanding a word of it An imm ense barnlike building that l ooked as i fit had once been a skati ng rink or a dancing pavili on focation with Poles of every class and was crowded to suf variety from servant girls in their curious leg ofmutton sleeves to colonels in t h e latest cut ofPolish uniform The — actors i f they could have been dign ified with that title had recently been i m ported from Warsaw and the alleged play t hey perpetrated could scarcely have been equaled — by ou r silliest rough and tum ble comedians The herd li k e roar wi th which their inane sallies were unfailingly of
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238
AMPUTATE D M EM BER
AN
greeted testifi ed that the audi ence found them entert ai ni ng Bu t it may be that Poznan was i n a particul arly si m ple minded mood during its first months of relief from a century of bitter oppression I hope so for I Should regret to find that the startling contrast between this Polish audience and the German one at the artistic S tadtth ea ter the following ference between the two evening fairly represented the dif races I believe I am not prejudiced by the fact that the Volksra t presented me with a free ticket when I say that the latter performance was one of which any manager might have been justly proud The audience too resembled the other about as a gathering of college professors resembles a collection offactory hands T here was a well bred solemnity about it that coul d not in thi s case have been due merely t o hunger f or there was no munching whatever between the acts none even under cover of the darkened house except here and there ofcandy a lux ury so long Since for gotten in B erlin that the happy possessor woul d never have dreamed ofgiving his attention at the same time to the merely esthetic appeal of the theater There may have been Poles in the house but at least the new army was conspicuous by its absence Not a uniform was to be seen with the exception of three scattered through the ” peanut gall ery Two crown boxes destined onl y for Hohenzollern royal ty or its representatives sat empty with something ofthe solemn demeanor of the vacant chair at the head of the table the day after the funeral Who woul d occupy them when the Poles had taken over the playhouse ? What moreover would they do toward main taini ng the high standards ofthe stage before us ? For the most indefatigable enemy of the Germans must have admi tted that here was something that coul d i ll be spared If only they had been contented with bringing the masses these genuine benefits without militarism with more open competition without so much appeal t o the doctrine of “
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2 39
VAGABO NDING THR OUGH C HAN GING GER MANY
— force b u t
i t h as ever been Germany s contention that only by force can the mass ofmankind be lifted to higher levels ; ’
that only an army can protect the self appointed mis si onari e s of a loftier civilization Armed with what those who read Polish assured me was permission to do so I set out on foot one morning to the eastward Beyond the las t group of guards wearing the silver double eagle on their threadbare German uniforms I fell in with three barefooted Polish peasant women They were barely thirty yet all three were already well nigh toothl ess and their hardy forms and faces were plainly marked with the signs that testify to grueling labor and the constant bearing ofchil dren The German they spoke was far superior to the dialects ofmany regions ofpurely Teu tonic population Their demeanor was cheerful yet behind it one caught frequent glimpses of that background of patient unquestioning acceptance of life as it is which distinguishes the country people of E urope T he most energetic of the trio showed a willingness to enter into conversation ; the others confined themselves to an occasional nod of approv al as if the exertion of keeping pace with us left them no strength to expend in mere words It was plain from the beginning that they were not ent h u si a st i c on the subject then uppermost in the city behind us They greeted my first reference to it with expressions ferent had they not been that might have been called indif tinged with evidence ofa mild resentment What does it matter to us people of the fiel ds retorted the l ess taciturn of the group whether Poles or Germans sit in the comfort of government of f ices so long as they let us alone ? Things were all right as they were before the war came Why trouble us with all these changes ? N ow they are breaking our backs with new burdens as if we had not had enough of them for five years First they I have not a t ake ou r men and leave us to do their work -
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2 40
with a laughing O h la la! There was no ne e d to ask where they had picked up that expression It oriented their war experiences as definitely as it will distinguish for years to come the Am ericans in whatever garb one finds them who were members ofthe A E F in France The men were l ess indifferent to the recent change of governm ent than their wives but even they coul d not have been called enthusiastic What struck one most was the wi der outlook on life the Germans had been forced t o give them in spite of themselves Had they been left to ti ll their farms these plodding peasants woul d probably still have swall owed whole the specious propaganda of their erstwhi l e rul ers Now after four years ofmilita ry service that had carried them through all central E urope they had developed the habit of forming their own opinions on all questions ; they took any unveri fi ed statement from wh at ever sou rce with more than a grain ofsalt It woul d be a mistake nowadays to think of the E uropean peasant as the prejudiced conser vative the plaything of deliberate mis information which he was fiv e years ago In the light of his new experiences he is in many cases doi ng more indi vid ual thinking than the average city resident Yet I must admit the conclusions of this well trav eled ferent from the pair did not boil down into anything very dif consensus of opinion even though they reached them b y their Own pecul iar trains ofthought Germany they were con vi nced had the ful l guil t of the war ; not the K aiser — particul arly they call him Wilh e in Posen provi nce now and even there one detects now and again a tendency toward the old idolatry he seems personally to have enj oyed — throughout the whole E mpire but the military crowd and the capitalists They di sclai rne d any hatred oft he ” Germans until they wanted to rule the earth and sought t o make the peasants the i nstruments of their ambiti on ”
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2 42
L R
M I ITA Y D I S C IPLIN
R
T OO P S
EW
AS S
E NTERING
O
R
TILL S T I C T A M NG TH
E
MUNI C H AF T R TH
E T ROO P
E FLEE ING
S
H OL D ING MUNI C H
S PA RT IC IST S
VAGA BONDING T HR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY weak no one but boys woul d drink them If only A meri ca would send concentrated alcohol they could doctor the stock ofliquor they had on hand so that no one wo ul d know the ference di f Then if they could only get some American tobacco ! Life was not what it used to be without a real cigarette from one month s end to the other The German rul e on the whole had not been so bad as many of the Allies seemed to believe They got along though it was rath er pleasant to be relieved of the arrogant fellows or see them crawl into their shells N 0 German resident in the village had given any Sign of intending to move away T h e communal school was still teaching the German lan — guage t w o or three hours a week now No one had noticed any other change of any importance The French prisoners confi ned in the province during the war had been brutally treated There was no doubt about that ; he had seen it himself Bu t on the whole the German authori t ies had not been much harder on the Polish population than upon their own people in Prussia and elsewhere It was all part ofthe war and every one in the E mpire had to bear his Share of the burdens Happ i ly it was over now i fonly the new Polish government did not grow ambitious for military conquests also with the millions of soldiers some under its o f them patriotic to the point of self sacrifi ce command My hope ofwalki ng out of Posen province suf fered the same fate as my plan of tramping i nto it from Germany In the end I w as forced to return to Poznan and make my exit by train over the same route by which I had entered In the third class compartment I occupied there were five German resi dents who had renounced forever their right to return for the privi lege of leaving now with the more portable of their possessions Two of them had been born in the amputated province ; the others had lived there m o st of their lives All spoke Polish as readily as German .
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2 44
AN AMPUTAT E D M EM BER masterly yet scholarly youth who had served through the war as a lieutenant was a school teacher by profession as was the uncle who accompanied him They had taught six and twenty Si x years respectively but had been dis possessed oftheir positions and oftheir government dwell ings by the new rulers U p to the time we reached the frontier all five of my companions laid careful emphasis on the statement that they were going to seek re estab li shm ent in their civilian professions i n what was left ofthe Fatherland At Wronki the Polish authoriti es were far more in quisi tive than they had been toward travel ers from the other direction O ne by one each compartment group was herded together bag and baggage and strained through the sieve ofa careful search and questioning bureau The soldier who examined my kn apsack glared at the half dozen precious American cigars I had left as if nothing but the presence of hi s superiors could have prevented him from them O nl y sufficient food for the day s scat i ng c onfi j ourney was allowed t o pass In some cases this rul e was interpreted rath er liberally but no one got through with more than ten or twelve pounds to the person The amount that was c onfiscated easily sufficed t o feed the garrison of Wronk i for the twenty four hours before the next wes t bound train was due An old woman ri ding fourth class who resembled one ofIndia s famine victims was despoi led of almost the en t ire contents of her tru nk sized chest several sacks offlour a dozen huge loaves of bread and a generous supply of sausage The fact that she spoke only Polish did not seem to im press the searchers in her favor who silenced h er wai ls a t last by bundling her bodily back into the coach and tossing her empty cof fer after her When at last we were under way again the Germans in my compartment took to comparing notes O ne a doctor ” was bewailing the plain theft ofa surgical app liance of O ne
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2 45
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VAGABONDING TH R OUGH C HANGI N G
G ER MAN Y
rubber which the Poles had confiscated in spite of what seemed to be complete proof that it was his private property and not part of the German army supplies A foxy faced country youth who had carefully changed from shoes to high boots just before the arrival at Wronki changed back again now with the announcement that there were some four thousand marks concealed between the boot soles f the disguise with The younger schoolmaster threw of which he had covered his real though t s and announced vociferously You drive me ou t to work for my livelihood ! I will work for my Fatherland at the same time I will go to B romberg this very evening and j oin the army again ” We Shall see whether the Poles can ke ep Pose n The two other young men asserted that they too had left with exactly that intention An indignation meeting against the Poles raged for an hour or more I could have remained and kept my position went on the schoolmaster i f I had wanted to turn Polack Both my parents were Polish ; I spoke it before I did German ; but I shall always remain a true son of the Fatherland no matter what happens to it A few hundred yards from K reuz stati on o u r train halted for more than an hour and gave us the pleasure of watching the B erlin express go on without us Though it would have been a matter of twenty seconds to have sprinted across the delta between the two lines armed boy soldiers prevented any one from leaving his compartment To all appearances ” it was a case of pure meanness on the part of the German authorities O ur wrath at being forced to wait a half—day for a dawdling local train was soon appeased however by the announcement that we were the last travelers who would be allowed to enter Germany from the province of ” The frontier had been Posen until the war was over closed by orders from B erlin It is a long way round from -
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2 46
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AN AM PUTA T ED M EM BER Poland to Holland and am id the turmoil of gloomy men disheveled women and squalling children who had been turned back with their goal so near I found cause to be personally thankful particularly as I succeeded in eluding during all the afternoon the glassy eye of the cantankerous dyspeptic who buffeted his way now and then through the throng Some things are still cheap in Germany A twelve word — telegram from K reuz to Berlin cost me nine cents and it was delivered i n telegraphic haste The hungry passengers from farther east with whom I shared a compartment that evening eyed me greedi ly as I supped on the supplies I had brough t from Posen One man wearing several di a fee brown monds leaned toward me as I was cutting my cof loaf and sighed reminiscently What beautiful white ” bread ! When I of fered to Share it with h i m however he refused vigorously as i fhis pride woul d not permit him to accept what his appetite was so loudly demanding Unable to find a place i n the section to which my third class ticket entitled me I was riding second class The train guard on his rounds confiscated my ticket and ignored my offer to pay the difference wi th a stern It i s unl awful ” t o ride in a higher class O n the Friedrichstrasse platform however instead of conducting me to his superi ors he si dled up to me in the darkness and murmured If you have a fi Ger v e mark note with you it will be all right many is changing indeed i f her very railway employees are taking on these Latin characteristics ,
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VAGABONDIN G T HR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY
slip grantn permission to walk the street s until two in the morning A bedraggled hotel directly across the way spared me that necessity The information its registry pad required Of guests was more exacting than its interior aspect but neither here nor at the station exit was there any demand for proof ofidentity Toward midnight as I was falling asleep a score of erratically spaced shots and the brief rat a tat of a machi ne Their direction g un sounded somewhere not far away was too uncertain however to make it worth while to accept the permission granted by the red slip In the morning the city was thronged with the business bent quite as i fdisorders had never dodged i n and out of its wide streets The main hotel s however had been partly taken fs ofthe newly arrived troops and p ul sated over by the staf with field gray At the doors very young men in iron hats leaned their fixed bayonets i n the crook of an elbow whil e they examined the A u sw ei s with which each ci vilian was supposed to prove his identity I entered several of them in the vain hope that the flash of my American pass port would start something The youths in uniform handed it back each time without so much as a flicker of curiosity on their rather dull faces Inside another boy volunteer ran his hands hastily over me in quest ofconceal ed weapons ; but not even the most obviously harml ess Ba varian escaped that attention The staff evidently had no secrets from the worl d at large At any rate I wandered into a dozen hotel rooms that had been turned into of f ices and idled about undis t u rb e d while majors gave captains their orders for the day and lieutenants explained to sergeants the latest comm ands from higher up What had become ofthat stern discipline and the far famed secrecy of the German army ? The soldiers of democratic Am erica were automatons i n the presence of their officers compared with these free and .
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2 50
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GERMANY added information that M unich i s far from the sea M y fellow suf ferers constituted a trul y democratic gathering The sti ll alm ost portly mayor chuckled w ith his cronies at a table barely visible through the smoke screened fore st C ollarless laborers cli nked their mugs o f massive pill ars quite unawed by the presence of city counci lors or big ” merchants A l eather skinned old peasant sat dow n Oppo site me and opened conversation at once with no suggestion ofthat aloofness of the north From the rucksack that had slipped from his shoul ders he took a half loaf of dull brown peasant bread and a square of boil ed smoked pork ordering nothing but a half bottle of wi ne Beer he explained had fallen too low in its estate to be worthy of his patronage at least city beer In his vill age three hours away he could still endure it A ch how the fam ous beer of Munich had deteriorated ! How far away those happy days seemed ! And to think ofpaying three marks for a half bottle of wine ! Why in the good old days — And this dinner ofmine a plate of fish bones some stewed — — f potatoes grass city bread and city beer worthless stuf to be sure but not enough to keep a man s legs under h i m ' — for half the afternoon and a bill of more than ei gh t marks I restrai ned my i m pul se to tell him ofthat prize dinner i n B erlin He had not always been a peasant T wenty years before he had started a factory— roof tiles and bricks Bu t i n 1 9 1 5 he had gone back to the farm At l east a B a u er g ot something t o eat The peace terms ? What else coul d Germany do but sign ? If the shoe had been on the other foot the war lords in B erlin woul d have demanded as much or more If they hadn t wanted war i n the first place ! Wilh elm and all hi s crowd should have quit two or three years ago while the quitting was good What did it all matter anyw ay so long as order returned and the peasants coul d work wi thout being pestered with all thi s military .
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2 52
ON T H E
R OA D
IN BAVAR IA
service and the taxes not t o mention the h amst erers the pests ! Am erican was I ? He had noticed I was no t a Bavarian (So had I straining my ears to catch the mean ing of hi s atrocious dialect ) He had taken me for a man from the north a Hamburger perhaps American ? They say that is a rich country He had read somewhere that even the peasants sometim es had automobiles ! How about the bee r ? D eteriorating there too eh ? A ch this war ! Going t o abolish beer ! What an insane idea ! What They can t af ford wine and S chnapps wi ll people live on ? is not good for a man in the long run and too strong for the women and chi l dren Well he must be getting back to his beet fi Glad t o have met an American He had eld often heard ofthem Good day and a happy journey Troops were still pouring into Munich That afternoon what before the war wou ld have looked t o Americans li k e a large army marched in column offours along the bank of the swift pale blue Isar and swung in through the heart o f town There were infantry machi ne gun and light artill ery sections b oth horse and motor dr awn and from end to end they were decorated with flowers which clung even t o the horses bridl es and peered from the mouths of the cannon All the aspect of a conquerin g army was there an army that had retaken one ofits own cities after decades ofoccupation by the enemy Greetings showered upon the columns a tri fle stiff and irresponsive with pride after the manner ofpop ul ar heroes ; but it was chi efly voice less greetings the waving of hands and handkerchiefs in striki ng contrast t o simi l ar scenes among the French The Boy Scouts ofa year or two ago filled a large portion possibly a majority of the ranks The older men scattered among them bore plainly imprinted on their faces the information that they had remained chi efly for lack of ambition or opportunity to t e enter civi l life Thei r bronzed fea tures were like fram es for those of the eager ,
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2 53
VAGABONDING T HR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY
life tasting youths they surrounded not so much i n color as in their disillusioned nothing new to u s expressions All wore on their collars the gold or silver o ak leaves of volunteers for home and border protection an i n si gn ia belonging to generals only before the flight of the K ai ser R um or had it however that there were many sti ll held under the old conscription laws particularly those of Polish blood The same inarticulate voices whispered that despite the opinion of Allied staf fs Germany still had a million men under arms ; on the books they were carried as dis charged ; i n reality they were sustained by the government ” as out ofworks and housed in barracks near enough to arsenals or munition dumps to equip themselves in a twink ling What percentage of truth the assertion possessed could only have been determined by long and deliberate study for though Munich like many another city and even the country districts seemed to swarm w i th sol diers many of them were so only in outward appearance Dis charged men were permitted to use their uniforms until they were worn ou t ; the mere removal ofthe shoulder — straps made one a civilian unlik e the soldiers resident in the occupied region where civilian garb of field gray was furnished with the discharged papers— and boys of all ages in many cases large enough to have the appearance of real soldiers were as apt to wear the uni form and the red banded cap without visor as anything else The Spart i ci st uprising in Munich now crushed evidently made less trouble on the spot as usual than in foreign — newspapers All classes of the population excep t perhaps that to which the turn of events had brought the wisdom — f silence admitted that it had been a nuisance but it had o left none ofthem ashen with fear or gaunt with suf feri ng Indeed business seemed to have gone on as usual during all but the two or three days ofretaking the cit y B anks and the larger merchants had been more or less heavily -
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2 54
ON
T HE R OAD IN
BAVA R IA
levied upon ; l awyers and a few other classes whom the ” new doctrine rank ed as parasitic had found it wise to leave their offices closed ; but in the main a ll agreed that the popul ation at large was never troubled in their homes and seldom on the street The mistreatment of women with rum ors of which foreign newspapers reeked was ” asserted to have been rare and their nationalization which the cables seem to have ann ounced had not so far at least been contemp lated All in all the Bavarian capital suf fered far less than Winnipeg under a simil ar uprising of like date The moving spir it had come from R ussi a as already mentioned with a few local theorists or self seekers of higher social standing as its chief auxiliaries The rank and file of the movement were escaped R ussian prisoners and Munich s ow n out ofworks together with such dis orderly elements as always hover about any upheaval promising loot or unearned gain Bu t the city s chi ef scare seemed to have been its recapture by government troops under orders from Berlin Then for some fifty hours the center of town was no proper place for those to dally who had neglected their insurance premiums A hundred more or less of fashionable shop fronts bore witness to the ease wi th which a machine gunner can make a plate glass l ook like a transparent sieve without once cracking it ; rival f the corners of a few sharpshooters had all but rounded of o f the principal buildings The meek plaster faced Prot e st a nt church had been the worst s ufferer as so often re eating happens to the innocent bystander The most fi Munch ener adm itted that barter and business had lagged in the heart oftown during that brief period Bu t Munich s red days had already faded to a memory E ven the assassination of hostages among them some of the city s most pompous citizens by the fleeing Spart i ci st s was now mentioned in much the same impersonal tone “
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2 55
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GERMANY with which the Swiss might refer to the death of William Tell or an E nglishm an regret the loss of K itchener The blue and white flag of Bavaria fluttered again from the staf fs that had been briefly usurped by the red banner of revolt ; the dark blue uniform of the once halfautonomous kingdom again asserted its sway over local matters in the new Volksrei ch B ayem At the D eutsches Theater a large audience placidly sipping its beer set on little shelves before each seat alternately roared a nd sni ffle d at the bare kneed mountaineers in feathered hats and the buxom Mddels who bounced through a home made but well—done custom picture in the local dialect It was evident that life in Munich was not likely to afford any more excitement than had the apathetic north The atmosphere of the place only helped to confirm the ever hardening conviction that the German north or south east or west had little real sympathy for revolutions compared with the privilege of p ursuing hi s calling steadily and undisturbed It was high ti me to take to the road whil e a faint hope still remained that something might lay in wait for me along the way to put a bit of ginger into a j ourney that had thus far lamen tably failed to fulfi l its promise I breakfasted next morning with the German staf f A t least I was the only civilian in the palm decked dining room where a score of high ranking wearers ofthe iron cross munched their black bread and purple E rsa tz marmalade with punctilious formality Away from their men they seemed to cling as tenaciously to the rules of their caste as if disaster had never descended upon it E ach of f i cer who entered the room paused to click his heels twice resound i ng ly and bow low to his seated fellows none of whom gave him the slightest attention It was as trul y German a gesture as the salute with which every wearer of the horizon blue enters a public eating place is French Nine o clock had already sounded when I swung over my .
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2 56
VAGABONDING T HR OUGH C HAN GING GERMANY B avarian
inn As the ponderous but neat matron set the foaming glass before me with the never lacking May it ” taste well ! I opened preliminaries on the food question speaking gently lest so presumptive a request from a total stranger awaken the wr ath of the discharged soldiers Mine hostess had no such misgivings In a voice as loud and penetrating as my ow n had been inarticul ate she bade me explain my desires in detail I huskily whispered eggs fried eggs a plebeian dish perhaps i n the land of my birth but certainly a greater height oflux ury in Germany than I had yet attained I quail still at the audacity ofthat request which I prof fered with an elbow on the alert to protect my skull from the reply by physical force I more than half expected Instead she made not a sound after the manner of B avarian i nnk eepe sse s when taking orders and faded heavily but noiselessly away in the direction of the kitchen A few minutes later I beheld two S pi eg elezer descending upon me not merely real eggs but of that year s v intage One of them alone might have been an astonishment ; a whole pair of them trotting side by side as if the Kaiser had never dreamed how fetching the letters R ex Mu ndi s would look after his name was all but t oo much for me I caught myself clinging to the bench under me as one might t o the seat o fan airplane about to buck or whatever it is ships ofthe air do when they feel skittish A whole plate ful of boil ed potatoes bore the regal couple attendance a nd a generous slab o falmost edible bread quite unl ik e a city helping both i n size and quality brought up the rear When I reached for a fi f t y mark note and asked for the reckoning the hostess went through a laborious process in mental arithm etic and announced that including the two half liters ofbeer I was indebted to the extent ofone mk twenty seven ! In the slang of ou r school days You ” coul d have knocked me over with a feather particularly .
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2 58
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HAN GIN G GER MANY they were outwardly as cheerful as their more fortun ate fellows I had intended to l et my fellow pedestrians break the ice first ou t of curiosity to know how far from the city they would begin to do so Bu t the continued silence grew a bit Oppressive and in mid afternoon I fell into step with a curiously mated couple who had quenched their th irst in the same Ga sth au s as I a few minutes before The woman was a more than buxom Fm u of some forty summers intelligent educated and of decided personality headed her full moon face sunburnt to a Sh e was bare — rich brown her massive muscular form visibly in perspi ra tion an empty rucksack on her back Her husband at least sixty scrawny sallow faced under the cap ofa forest ranger hobbled in her wake leading two rather work broken horses He was what one might call a faint indi vidual one of those insigni ficant characters that fade qu ic kly from the memory a creature of scanty mentality ,and a veritable cesspool of ignorance prejudice and superstition thrown int o relief by the virility of his forceful spouse The man had set ou t that morning from Munich to deliver the horses to a p u rchaser a hundred miles away in the B avarian hills Poor as they were the animals had r st class horse been sold for seven thousand marks A fi w as worth six to ten thousand nowadays he asserted T imes had indeed changed A few y ears ago only an insane man would have paid as many hundred It was a hot day for the middle of May a quick change from the long unusual cold spell The crops would suf fer He didn t mind walking if only beer were not so expensive when one got thirsty Having exhausted his scant mental reservoir with these and a few as commonplace remarks he fell into the rear conversationally as well as physically and abandoned the field to his sharp witted spouse Sh e having more than her share ofall too solid flesh t o .
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2 60
THE R OAD IN
ON
BAVAR IA
carry had left the afternoon before and passed the night at a wayside inn It was not that she was fond of such excursions nor that she could not trust her husband away from home While he was delivering the horses she would ” go h amst eri ng buying up a ru cksa ckfu l offood among the peasants ofthat region if any coul d be coaxed out of them and they woul d return by train Fortunately fourth class was still cheap B efore the war she had never dreamed I broke my usual rule of of going anythi ng but second the road and mentioned my scribbling proclivities A moment later we were deeply engrossed in a discussion of German novelists and dramatists The placid bourgeois looking Fm u had read everything of importance her literary fellow countrymen had produced ; she was by no means ignorant ofthe best thi ngs in that line in the outside world Thrown into the crucib l e of her forceful mentality the characters of fiction had emerged as far more living beings than the men and women w h o passed us now and then — h i ensely more so it was evident though on e road m m t she did not say so than the husband who plodded behind us frankly admitting by his very attitude that we had entered waters hopelessly beyond his depth Of all the restrictions the war had brought none had struck her quite so directly as the decrease in quality and number of the plays at Munich s municipal theater Luckil y they were now im proving Bu t she always had to go alone H e — w ith a toss ofher head to the rear didn t care for anything but the movies He laughed himself sick over those As to opera her greatest pleasure in life he hadn t the faintest conception of what it was all about He liked h ow American ragti me ( she pronounced it rh akt e am ever S till America had opera also m ch t w a h r ? Had not many of Germany s best singers gone to my country ? There was Sléz ak for instance and S chumann Heink and Farrar ,
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26 r
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HAN GING GERMANY I might have questioned her notion of the nationalit y ofsome ofthe names she mentioned but what di d it matter ? Obviously it was a waste of breath to ask whether she w as p l eased with the change of events that had given Germany universal suf frage for both sexes Sh e had voted ofcour se at the first opportunity dragging hi m along with her ; he had so little interest in those matters Her political opinions were no less decided than her artistic Ludwig ? He was rather a harmless in di vid Sh e had often seen h i m ual but hi s position had not been harmless It was a relief to be rid of him and all his clan He would have made a much better stable boy than king He had wanted war just as much as had the K aiser whose robber knight blood had shown up in him Bu t the K aiser had not personally been so guil ty as some others Ludendorf f for instance and so on The Crown Prince ! A clo wn a disgrace to Germany Nobody had ever loved the Crown Prince—except the women ofa certain class f separated from the B avaria wo ul d be much better of E mpire Sh e was of the opinion that the majority of At least they did in her circle B avarians preferred it — though the strict C atholics she glanced halfway over her shoulder— perhaps did not R epublican Spart i ci st or i t di dn t matter which so long as they co ul d B olshevik — get good ef ficient rulers S o far they h ad been deplorably weak— no real leaders The recent uprising in Munich had been something of a nuisance to be sure They were rather glad the government troops had come Bu t the soldiers were mostly Prussians and once a Prussian gets i n you can never pry h i m o u t again We had reached the village of Hohenkammer thi r ty fi ve kil ometers out which I had chosen as my fir st stopping place My companion of an hour shook hands with what I flattered myself was a gesture of regret that our con versati on had been so brief fell back into step wi th her ,
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2 62 :
A B A A IAN H O P— FI L D R AD Y F O
VR
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R
OE
TH
H OP P L -
S
E
SET
UP FO
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E
E
WINT
CLIM B ING
ER
VINE
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TH E R OAD IN
ON
BAVAR IA
movie and ragtime minded husband and the pair di sap n around the i n that bulged into a sharp turn the o f a r e e d p -
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I entered the invitingly cool and homelike Ga sth au s pre pared to be coldl y turned away Innkeepers had often been exacting in their demands for credentials dur ing my earlier journeys in Germany With the first mug of beer — however the portly lan dl ady gave me permission o ne can scarcely use a stronger expression than that for the casual way in which guests are accepted in Bavarian public houses— to spend the night and that without so much as referring to registration or proofs of identity Then after expressi n g her placid astonishment that I wanted to see it before bedtime she sent a muscular barefoot but well scrubbed kitchen maid to show me into room No 1 above It was plainly furnished with two small wooden bedsteads and the prime necessities looked ou t on the broad highway and a patch of rolling fields beyond and was as specklessly clean as are most B avarian inns R umor had it that any stranger stopping overnight i n a German village courted trouble i f he neglected to report his presence t o the B urg erm ei st er as he is expected to do to the police in the cities I had been omitti ng the latter formality on the strength of my Wilh elmstrasse pass These literal countrymen however might not see the matter i n the same light Moreover being probably the only stranger spen di ng the night in Hohenk ammer my presence was certain to be common knowledge an hour after my arrival I decided to forestall pertinent inquir ies by taking the lead in making them The building a few yards down the highway bearing the placard Wohnung des Bur g erm ei st er s was a sim ple o ne story whitewashed cottage possibly the least imposing dwelling i n town These vil lage rul ers being chosen by popul ar vote withi n the comm unity are apt to be its l east .
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2 63
VAGA BONDING TH R OUGH C HANGING GER MANY pompous citizens both because the latter do not care t o ” accept an unpaid of fice and because the plain people hold the voting majority The woman who tried in vain to silence a howling child and a barki ng dog before she came to the door in answer to my knock was just a shade better than the servant class The husband she summoned at my request was a peasant slightly above the general level He took his time in coming and greeted me coldly a trifle sharply O ne felt the German off i cial in his attitude with its scorn for the mere petitioner the law s underling the subject class Had I reported my arrival in town in the regulation manner he would have kept that attitude I should have been treated as something between a mil d criminal and an unimportant citizen whom the l aw had required to submit him self to the Bur g erm ei st er s good pleasure Instead I assumed the upper caste myself I drew forth a visiti ng card and handed it to him wi th a regal gesture at the same time addressing him in my most haughty university circles German He glanced at my unapologetic countenance stared at the card then back into my stern face his official manner oozing slowly but steadily away like the rotundity ofa lightly punctured tire By the time I began to speak again he had shrunk to his natural place in society that of a simple hard worki ng peasant whom chance had given an of ficial standing The assertion that I was a traveling correspondent meant little more to him than did the card which he was still turning over and over in his stubby fingers lik e some child s puzzle The Germans are not accustomed to the g o andfhunt method of gathering information to satisfy popul ar curiosity concerning the ways of foreign lands I must find a better excuse for coming to H ohenkammer or I should leave h i m as puzzled as the card had A brilliant idea struck me ” O n the strength of the Hoover crowd letter in my pocket I informed him that I was walking through Germany t o ,
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2 64
VAGABONDING THROUGH C HANGING GER MANY Americans coul d have driven them back in those days More likely it would have been the opposite As I turned to go he took his leave with a mixture of deference and friendliness He had not asked to see the papers bearing out all these statements I had been making but there was a hint in the depth of his eyes that he felt it his duty t o do so if only he could venture to make such a demand of so highl y placed a personage I went far enough away to make sure he would not have the courage — to demand them which would have been his first act — had I approached him as a mere traveler then turned back drawing the documents from a pocket as if I had just thought o fthem He glanced at them in a most apologetic manner protesting the whil e that of course he had never for an instant doubted my word and returned them with a deferential bow Al l in all thi s plan of posing as an of ficial scout of the had b e ef Am erik anische L ebensmittel K ommission fa brilliant idea marked with a success that moved me to use the same innocent ruse a score of times when any other means of gathering information might have been frustrated O ne must have a reasonable excuse for traveling on foot in Germany To pretend to be doing so for lack of funds woul d be absurd since fourth class fare costs an infinitesimal su m much less than the least amount of food one could live The only weakness in my simple on for the same distance little trick was the frequent question as to why the Americans who had sent me out o n my important mission had not fur ni sh e d me a bicycl e The German roads were so good ; one coul d cover so much more ground on a Fah rrad D riven into that corner there was no other def ense but to mum ble something about how much more closely the foot traveler can get in touch with the plain people or t o take a dv a n tage of some fork in the conversation to change the subj ect ” When I returned to the inn the guest — room was crowded S tocky sun browned countrymen o f all ages .
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2 66
ON
THE R OAD IN
BAVAR IA
rather slow ofw i t chatting ofthe si mple topics ofthe farm in their misshapen Bavarian dialect were crowded around the half dozen plain wooden tables that held t heir immense beer mugs whil e the air was opaque with the smoke from their long stemmed porcelain pipes The entrance of a total stranger was evidently an event to the circle The rare guests who spent the night i n Hohenkammer were nearly always teamsters or peddl ers who traveled the same route so constantly that their faces were as familiar as those of the vill age residents As each table in turn caught sight of me the conversation died down lik e a f until the most absolute motor that had slowly been shut of silence reigned How long it might have lasted would be hard to guess It had already grown decidedl y oppressi ve when I turned t o my nearest neighbor and broke the ice wi th some comm onplace remark He answered with extreme brevi ty and an evidence of somethi ng between bashfulness S everal tim es I and a deference tinged with suspicion broke the silence whi ch foll owed each reply before these reached the dignity of full sentences It was like starting a motor on a cold morning Bi t by bit however we got under way ; others joined in and in something less than a half hour we were buzzing along full speed ahead the entire roomful addi ng their voices t o the steady hum of con versation which my appearance had interrupted Thus far I had not mentioned my nationality at the inn being i n doubt whether the resul t would be to increase our conversational speed or bri n g it to a grating and sudden hal t When I did it was ludicrously lik e the shifting of gears The talk slowed down for a minute or more while the information I had vouchsafed passed from table to table in half audible whispers then sped ahead more noisily if less swiftly than before O n the whole curiosity was chiefly in evidence There was perhaps a bit of wonder and certainly some incredulity in the simple gaping faces ,
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267
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VAGA BONDING THR OUGH C HANGING
GER MANY
but quite as surely no signs ofenmity or resentment Be fore long the table at which I sat was doubly crowded and questions as to America and her ways were pouring down upon me in a flood which it was quite beyond the power of a single voice to stem Friendly questions they certainly were without even a suggestion of the sarcasm one some times caught a hint of in more haughty German circles Yet in the gathering were at least a score ofmen who had been more or less injured for life in a struggle which they themselves admitted the nation I represented had turned against them I have been so long absent from my native land that I cannot quite picture to myself what would happen to the man who thus walk ed in upon a gathering of American farmers boldly announcing himself a German j u st ou t of the army but something tells me he would not have passed so perfectly agreeable an evening as I did in the village ru n of Hohenkammer With my third mug of beer the landlord himself sat down — — beside me N ot of course prohibition forbid that I had ordered a third pint of beer in addition t o the two that the plump matron had served me with a very satisfying supper In fact I had not once mentioned the subject of beverages Merely to take one s seat at any inn table in B avaria is equivalent to shouting No ques Gla s B i er! — tions were asked but mine host so far more often mine — hostess is as certain to set a foaming mug before the new arrival as h e—o r she— is to abhor the habit of drinking water ; and w o e betide the man who drains what he hopes is his last mug without rising instantly to his feet for some sharp eyed member of the innkeeper s family circle is sure to thrust another dripping beaker under his chin before he can catch his breath to protest O n the other hand no one is forced to gage his thirst by that of his neighbors as in many a less placid land The treating habit is slightly developed in rural Bavaria O n very special occasions .
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2 68
VAGABONDING T HROUGH CHANGING GER MANY pay for it they and the factory hands ; not the big wigs i n Berlin and E ssen w h o were so ready t o accept E ngland s challenge No it would not pay B avaria to assert her independence They did not love the northern German but when all was said and done it would be better to stick with him Suddenly the bram racking dialect in which the Wi rt and his cronies had been sharing t heir views on this and other subjects halted and died down to utter sil ence with that same curious simi larity to a shut o f fmotor that my entrance had caused I looked about me wondering what I had done to bring on this new stillness E very man in the room had removed his h a t and all but two their porcelain fed faintly and noise pipes E xcept for the latter who puf lessly now and then the whole assemb ly sat perfectly motionless For a moment or more I was puzzled ; then a light suddenly broke upon me The bell of the vi llage church was tolling the end of evening vespers Hohenkamm er like the majority of Bavarian towns The women from the w as a strictly C atholic community barefoot kitchen servant t o the highest lady ofthe vill age had slipped quietly of f to church while their husbands gathered in the Ga stha u s and the latter were now showing their respect for the ceremony they had attended by proxy They Sat erect without a bowed head among them but in ” the motionless si lence of li ving statues except that toward the end as if in protest that their good crony the village priest sho ul d take undue advantage ofhi s position and prolong their pose beyond reason with his persistent tolling several squirmed in their seats and two possibly the free thi nkers of the community hawked and spat noisily and what seemed a bit ostentatiously As the ringing ceased each clumsily crossed himself rather hastily slapped his hat back upon his head and the buzz of con versation rapidly rose again to its previous volume to
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2 70
O N TH E
A
S
L
R
MA L PA T O F TH
R OAD
E C RO WD
VR
ER
IN B A A IA N A ,
MUNI C H
O F S C H OOL B OYS W H O GATH ERE D A R O UN D M E IN A B A VA RIAN V ILLAG E -
VAGABONDING THROUGH CHAN GI NG
G ER MANY
loving Fra u insisted o n scooping ou t of her s atchel the last tiny copper to make the exact change before she wished me good day and a pleasant journey The single village street which was also the main high way was thronged with small boys slowly going to school when I stepped out into the flooding sunshine soon after seven O ne of the most striking sights in Germany is the flocks of children everywhere in spite ofthe wastage C er of more than four years of war and food scarcity square— heads showed t ai nly none of these plump littl e any evidence of having suffered from hunger ; compared with the pale anemic urchins of large cities they were i n deed pictures ofhealth They resembled the latter as ripe tomatoes resemble gnarled and half grown green apples At least half ofthem wore some portion of army uniform cut down from the war time garb oftheir elders no doubt the round red banded cap covered nearly every head and many carried their books and coarse lunches in the hairy cowhide knapsacks ofthe trenches usually with a cracked slate and the soiled rag with which they wiped their exer cises of They showed fit sw1ng i ng from a strap at the rear as much curiosity at the sight ofa stranger in town as their fathers had the night before but when I stealthily opened my kodak and strolled slowly toward them they stampeded in a body and di sappeared pellmell wi thin the school house door The sun was already high i n the cloudl ess sky It woul d have been hard to imagine more perfect weather The landscape too was entrancing ; gently rolling fields deep green with spring alternating with almost black patches through which the broad light gray of evergreen forests highroad wound and undul ated as soothingly as an immense ocean liner on a slowly pulsating sea E very few miles a small town rose above the horizon now astride the highway now gazing down upon it from a sloping hillside Wonder .
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272
INN S AND
BYWAYS
fully clean towns they were speckless from their scrubbed floors to their whitewashed church steeples all framed in velvety green meadows or the fertile fields in which their inhabitants of both sexes plodded diligently but never hurriedl y through the labors of the day It was di f f i cult to imagi ne how these simple gentle spoken folk coul d have won a world wide reputation as the most savage and brutal warriors in modern hi story Toward noon appeared the first ofB av aria s great h op fields the plants that would climb house hi gh by A ugust now barely visible In many of them the h op frames — were still being set u p vast networks ofpoles taller than the telegraph li n es along the way crisscrossed with more slender crosspieces from which hung thousands of thin strings ready for the climbing Vines The war had af fected even this bucolic industry Twine complained a peasant with whom I paused to chat had more than quadrupled in price and one was lucky at that not to find the stuf f made of paper when the time came to use it In many a field the erection of the frames had not yet begun and the poles still stood in clusters striki ngly resembling Indian wigwams where they had been stacked after the harvest ofthe S eptember before At Pfaf food controller I fenhofen still posing as a dr opped i n on a general merchant The ruse served as an opening to extended conversation here even better than it had i n the smaller town behind The K a uf ma nn was almost too eager to impress me and through me America with the necessity of replenishing his shrunk en stock He reiterated that fats soap rice soup materials milk cocoa and sugar were most lacking and in the order named Then there was tobacco more scarce than any ofthese except perhaps fats If only A merica woul d send them tobacco ! In other li nes ? Well all sorts of clothing material s were needed of course they had been hoping ,
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2 73
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VAGA BONDING THROUGH CHANGING GERMANY ever since the armistice that America wo ul d send them cotton People were wearing all manner of Ersa tz clb t h He took from his show window what looked like a very coarse cotton shirt but which had a brittle feel and spread it ou t before me It was made ofnettles Sometimes the lengthwise threads were cotton and the cross threads nettl e which made a bit more durable stuff but he coul d no t say much even f or that As to the nettle shirt before me he sold it for fourteen marks because he refused to f Bu t what good was such a accept profit on such stuf shirt to the peasants ? They wore it a few days washed it — once and ka pu t finished it crumpled together like b u rnt paper Many children could no longer go to school ; th eir clothes had been patched out ofexistence D uring the war there had been few marriages in the rural districts because the boys being away at war a fair division of the i nh eri tances could not be made even when the girls found matches Now many wanted to marry but most ofthem found it i rn possible because they coul d not get any bed linen or many of the other thi ngs that are necessary to establish a house hold No he di d not think there had been any great increase in irregul arities between t h e sexes because of war conditions at least not in such well to do farming com m u ni t i e s as the one about Pfaf He had heard fenhofen however that in the large cities The Bavarians are not merely great lovers of flowers ; they have no hesitancy in showing that fondness as is so often the case with less simple people The house window be it only that of the humblest little crossroads inn which was not gay with blossoms of a half dozen species was a curiosity About every house in every yard were great bushes of lil ac hydrangea and several other flowering shrubs ; add to this the fact that all fruit trees were just fi then in ful l bloom and it will be less di f cul t t o picture the veritable flow e r garden through which I was tramping .
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2 74
INN S AND
BYWAY S
were the inhabitants satisfied to let inanimate nature alone decorate herself with spring The sourest looki ng old peasant was almost sure to have a cluster offlowers tucked into a shirt buttonhole or the lapel ofhi s well worn jacket ; girls and women decked themselves out no more universally than did the males of all ages from the tottering urchi n not yet old enough to go to school to the doddering grand father leaning his gnarled hands on his home made cane in the shade ofthe projecting house eaves Men and boys wore them most often in the bands of their curious slouch hats beside the turkey feather or the shaving brush with which the B av arian headgear is frequently embellished the year round In each vill age a new May pole towered above everythi ng else often visible when the haml et itself was quite ou t of sight O n the first day of the month that of the year before had been cut down and the tallest pin e tree available trimmed of its branches except for a little tuft at the top had been set up before the chief Ga sthau s amid celebrations that included the emptying of many kegs of beer It s upper half encircled with wreaths streamers and winding flow er woven lianas and decorated with a dozen flags it suggested at a distance the totem pole of some chi ldl ik e tropical tribe rather than the plaything of a plodding and laborious people ofwestern E urope I set my pace in a way to bring me into the larger towns at noon and to some quaint and quiet vi l lage at nightfall nd homelike accommoda In the latter one was surer to fi tions and simpler more nai ve people with whom to chat through the evening The cities even of only a few thousand inhabitants t oo nearly resembled B erlin or Munich to prove of continued interest The constant traveler too comes t o abhor the world wide sameness of city hotels Moreover the larger the town the scantier was the food in the Germany of 1 9 1 9 The gues t who sat down to an N or
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2 75
VAGABON DING THR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY excellently cooked dinner of a thick peasant soup a man s size portion of beef veal or pork potatoes in unlimited quantity bread that was almost white and made of real wheat and a few other vegetables thrown in all for a cost might easily have imagined that all this of two marks talk of food shortage wa s mere preten se Surely this last month before the beginning of harvest in the last year of the war with the question of signing or not signing the peace terms throbbing through all Germany was the time o fall times to find a certain answer to the query of the ou t side world as to the truth of the German s cry of starvation Bu t the answer one found in the smaller vi ll ages ofBavaria would have been far from the true one of the nation at large C onditions dif N ow and then my plans went wrong even i n two towns of almost identical appearance f e re d Thus at Ingolstadt which was large enough to have b een gaunt w ith hu nger there was every evidence of plenty Here I had expected trouble also of another sort The town was heavily garrisoned as it had been even before the war Soldiers swarmed everyw here ; at the inn where my tramping appetite was so amply satisfied they surrounded me on every side I was fully prepared to be halted at any moment perhaps to be placed under arrest Instead the more openly I watched military maneuvers the more boldly I put questions to the youths in uniform the less I was suspected In R eichertshofen the night before where I had sat some time in silence reading in a smoke clouded beer hall crowded with laborers from the local mill s far more questioning glances had been cast in my direction On the other hand the hamlet I chose for the night some times proved a bit too small O ne must strike a careful average or slip from the high ridge of plenitude Denken dorf an afternoon s tramp north of the garrison city was so tiny that the waddling old landlady gasped at my placid ’
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2 76
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY not have done so had we sat there all night A s in the older sections ofour own country so in the O ld World it is not the custom to speak unnecessarily to strangers He answered my casual remark with a smile however rose and carrying his mug ofbeer with him sat down on the opposite side of my table I took pains to bring ou t my nationality at the first opportunity ” American ? he cried with the nearest imitation I had yet heard in Germany of the indignant surprise I had always expected that information to evoke and what are y ou doing here ? There was something more than mere curiosity in his voice though his tone could not quite have been called angry It was more nearly the German off i cial guttural I smiled placidl y as I answered throwing in a hint as usual about the food commission He was instantly molli fi He ed did not even suggest seei ng my papers though he announced himself the traveling police force of that region covering some ten small towns Within five minutes we were as deep in conversation as i fwe had discovered ourselves to be friends of long standi ng He was ofa naturally sociable disposition lik e all B avarians and his sociability was dis t i nct ly enhanced when I shared with h i m my last nibble split with him one ofmy rare Am erican o fchocolate and cigars He had not had a smoke in a week not even an E rsa tz one ; and it was at least a year since he had tasted chocolate In return for my appalling sacrifi ce he insisted o n presenting me with the two eggs he had been able t o ” hamster during that day s round of duty When I handed them to the caisson built landlady with instru o tions to serve us one each in the morning my relations with the police sol di er were established on a friendly basis f or life B efore bedtim e we had reached the point where he turned his revolver over to me that I might satisfy my curiosity .
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2 78
VAGABONDING T HR OUGH C HANGI NG GER MANY rulers from K aiser and princes down to his own army officers he h a d the bitterest scorn Their first and foremost i nterest in life he summed up under the head of women S ome anecdotes of the high and of his personal knowledge mighty were not fit to print His opinions of German womanhood or at least girlhood were astonishingly low for a youth of so nai ve and optimistic a character O n the other h and h elapsed every little while into childlike boast ing ofGermany s military prowess quite innocently as one might point to the fertility or the sunshine of one s native land The Germans had first used gas ; they had been the first to invent gas masks ; they had air raided the capitals of their enemies sunk them at sea long before the slow witted Allies had eVe r thought of any such weapons or contrivances S ome ten miles from our eating place we drifted into the street lanes of a huddled little village older than the G er man E mpire i n quest of the Ga sth au s Three hours of tramping are suf f i cient to recall the refreshing qualities of B avarian beer However reprehensible it may have been before the war with its dreadful eleven percentage of alcohol it was certainly a harmless beverage in 1 9 1 9 superior in attack on a roadside thirst even to nature s noblest sub water If the reader wi ll promise not to use the st i t u t e evidence against me I wi ll confess that I emptied as many as eight pint mugs ofbeer during a single day of my German tramp and was as much intoxicated at the end of it as I should have been with as many quarts of milk Nor would the natural conclu S1on that I am i m perV1ou s to strong drink be just ; the exact opposite is the bitter tru th The adult Bavarian who does not daily double if not treble my best performance is either an oddity or a com fected ple t e financial failure yet I have never seen one af by his constant li bations even to the point of increased gaiety ,
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2 80
INN S AND
BYWAYS
The justly cri t i ci z e d fe at u re s of ou r saloons are quite u n known i n the B avarian Gasthci u ser In the first place they are patronized by both sexes and all classes ; with t h e con sequent improvement in character O n Sunday evening after his sermon the vill age priest or pastor the latter accompanied by his wife drops in for a pint before retiring to his well earned rest R owdyism foul language ob sce ni t y either o f word o r act are as rare as in the family circle Never having been branded society s black sheep the Bavarian beer hall is quite as respected and self respect ing a member of the comm unity as any other business house It is the vill age club for both sexes with an atmosphere feminate than a sew quite as ladylike as if somewhat less ef ing ci rcle and it is certainly a boon t o the thirsty traveler trampin g the sun floode d hi ghways All of which is not a plea for beer drinking by those who do not care for the dreadful stuf f but merely a warning that personally I — propose to continue the wicked habit as long whenever at least I am tramping the roads of B avaria These village inns are all of the same type A quaint and placid building with the mellowed atmosphere that comes with respectable old age usually of two stories always with an exceedingly steep roof from which peer a few dormer windows like wonderi ng urchins perched i n some place of vantage is pierced through the center by a long low cool passageway that leads to the fami ly garden or back yard Just inside the s t reet entrance this hallway is flank ed by two doors on one of which i n old Gothic letters is the word Gastzimmer (guest room) Thus the new— comer is spared the embarrassment of bursting in upon the i nt i rna ci e s of the family circle that would resul t from his entering the opposite door The world has few public places as home lik e as the cool and cozy room to which the placarded door gives admittance Unpainted wooden tables polished gleaming white with sand and water fill the room without ‘
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2 81
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY suggestion of crowding At one side sits a porcelain stove square faced and high its surface broken i nto small square plaq ues the whole shining intensely with its blue blue gray or greenish tint Beyond this in a corn e r a tall old time clock with weights tick tacks with the dignified placid serenity of quiet old age Three or four pairs of antlers protrude from the walls ; several small mirrors and a number of framed pictures most of them painful to the artistic sense that has reached the first stage of development br eak the soothingly tinted surfaces between them In the corner behind the door is a small glass faced cupboard i n which hang the long hand decorated porcelain pipes o fthe loc al smoking club each with the name of its owner stencil ed upon it Far to the rear sits a middle— aged phono graph with the contrite yet defiant air of a recent comer who realizes himself rath er ou t of place and not over popular in the conservative old society upon which he has forced himself Deep window embrasures gay with flowers in dull red pots hung with snowy little lace cur tains are backed by even more i mmaculate glass in small squares This bulges outwardly in a way t o admit a maximum of light yet is quite impenetrable from the outside from where it merely throws back into the face ofthe would b e observer his ow n reflection In the afternoon a powerfully built young woman barefoot or shod only in low slippers is almost certain to be found ironing at one of the tables At the others sit a guest or two their heavy glass or stone mugs before them No fowls dogs or other domestic nuisances are permitted to enter though the placid Bavarian family cat is almost sure to look each new comer over with a more or less disapproving air from her place of vantage toward the rear It would take sharp eyes indeed to detect a fleck of dust a beer stain or the tiniest cobweb anywhere in the room Over the door is a sign as time mellowed as an ancient any
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2 82
VAGABON DING THR OUGH C HANGING
GER MANY
the mixture ofthe poetic and the religious in the native character one of the favorite names is To the Ladder of ” Heaven In the evening the interior scene changes somewhat The laundress has become a serving maid the man of the house has returned from his fields and joins his waddling spouse in carrying foaming mugs from spigots to trap — door crowded now with muscular sun browned or to tables peasants languid from the labors of the day Then is the time that a rare traveling guest may ask to be shown to The o ne of the clean and simple little chambers above wise man will always seek one of these inns of the olden days in which to spend the night even in cities large enough to boast more presumptuous quarters The establishment ” announcing itself as a Hotel is certain to be several times more expensive often less clean and comfortable superior only in outward show and always far less h ome like than the modest Ga sthau s It may have been i magination but I fanci ed I saw a considerable variation in types in different villages In some almost every inhabitant seemed broad shouldered and brawny ; in others the under sized prevailed This part i cu lar hamlet in which the police— soldier and I took our fare well glass appeared to be the gathering place of dwarfs At any rate a majority of those I caught sight of coul d have walked under my outstretched arm It may be that the war had carried of grown or they may have been fthe full— away tilling the fields The head of the inn family aged sixty or more was as exact a copy ofthe gnomes whom R ip van Winkle found playing ninepins as the most experienced stage manager could have chosen and costumed Hunched back hooked nose short legs long tasseled woolen knit cap whimsical smile and all he was the exact picture of those play people of our childhood fairy books Indeed he went them one better for the long vest that covered his of
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2 84
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INN S AND
BYWAY S
unnatural expanse of chest gleamed with a score of buttons fashioned from si lver coins of centuries ago of the size of half dollars He sold me an extra one at the instigation of my companion for the appalling price of two marks ! It proved t o date back to the days when Spain held chief sway over the continent of E urope His wi fe was his companion even in appearance and suggested some medieval gargoyle as she paddled in upon us clutching a froth topped sh hand Sh e had the fairy tale stone mug in either dw arfi kindness of heart too for when my companion suggested that his thirst was no greater than his hunger she duck footed noiselessly away and returned with a generous wedge of her own bread It was distinctly brown and would not have struck the casual Ameri can observer as a delicacy but the Nurnberger fell upon it with a smacking of the lips and a — er b r joyful : N a ! Das i st B a u n od genuine peasant s bread Y ou don t get th a t in the cities na ! He took his final leave at the top ofthe rise beyond the village deploring the fact that he could not continue wi th me to Berlin and imploring me to come again some other year when we could tramp the Bavarian hills together When I turned and looked back nearly a half mile beyond he stood in the selfsame spot and he snatched of f his red banded fatigue cap and wav ed it half gaily half sadly after me M i l es ahead over a mountainous ridge shaded by a cool and murmuring evergreen forest I descended through the fields toward B eilngries a reddish patch on the landscape ahead A glass clear brook that w as almost a river hurried away across the meadow I shed my clothes and plunged into it A thin man was wandering along its grassy —bank like a poet hunting inspiration or a victim of misfortune seeking solace for his tortured spirit I overtook him soon after I had dressed H i s garb was not that ofa Bavarian villager ; his manner and his speech suggested a Prussian ,
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2 85
VAGABON DING THR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY
at least a man from the north I expected him t oshow more curiosity at sight of a wandering stranger than had the simple countrymen of the region When I accosted him he asked if the water was cold and lapsed into silence I made a casual reference to my walk from Munich In any other country the mere recital ofthat distance on foot would have aroused astonishment He said he had himself been fo nd ofwalking in his younger days I implied in a conversational footnote that I was bound for B erlin He a ssured me the trip would take me through some pleasant scenery I emphasized my accent until a man of his class must have recognized that I was a foreigner He remarked that these days were sad days for Germany I worked carefully up to the announcement in the most dramatic manner I could command that I was an Americ an recently discharged from the army He hoped I would carry home a ” pleasant impression of German landscapes even if I did not find the country what it had once b een in other respects As we parted at the edge of the town he deplored the scarcity and high price of food shook hands li m ply and wi shed me a successful journey In other words there was no means ofarousing his interest to say nothing of surprise or resentment that the citizen of a country with which his own was still at war shoul d be wandering freely with kodak and note book through his Fatherland His attitude was that ofthe vast majority ofGermans I met on my journey and to this day I have not ceased to wonder why their a t ferent Had the whole t i t u de should have been so indif country been starved out ofthe aggressiv e suspicious man ner of the K aiser days or was there truth in the assertion that they had always considered strangers honored guests and treated them as such ? More likely the form ofgovern ment under which they had so long lived had left the i n dividual German the impression that personally it was no af fair ofhis that it was up to the of ficials who had appointed or
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2 86
INN S AND
BYWAYS
themselves over him to attend to such matters whil e the government itself had grown so weak and disjointed that it took no cognizance of wandering strangers Whatever else may be said of them the Germans cer t ai nly are a hard working diligent people even in the midst B oys of barely fourteen followed the plow of calamities from dawn to dark of these long northern summer days L aborers toiled steadily at road mending at keeping in repair the material things the K aiser régime had left them as ambitiously as if the thought had never occurred to them that a ll this labor might in the end prove ofadvantage ” only to their enemies E xcept that the letters P G ” P W were not painted on their gar ments there was or nothing to distinguish these gangs of workm en in fields and along the roads from the prisoners of war one had grown so accustomed to see at si milar tasks in France They wore the same patched and discolored field gray the same weather faded fatigue caps How those red banded caps had permeated into the utmost corners of the land ! B etween B eilngries and B ershi ng two attractive towns with more than their share of food and comfort in the Ger many ofarmistice days I left t h e hi ghway for the towpath ofthe once famous L udwig Canal that parallels it T o all appearances this had long since been abandoned as a means of transportation Nowhere i n the many miles I foll owed it did I come upon a canal boat though its many locks were still i n working order and the lock tenders dwellings still inhabited The disappearance of canal boats may have been merely temporary as was that ofautomobiles of which I remembe r seeing only three during all my tramp i n Ger many except those i n the mi litary service For a long time I trod the carpet li ke towpath without meeting or overtaking any fellow traveler It was as if I had discovered some unknown and perfect route ofmy own ,
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2 87
VAGABON DI N G THR OUGH C HANGING
G ERMANY
The mirror su rface of the canal beside me pictured my movements far m ore perfectly than any cinema film repro Now and again I du ci ng every slightest tint and color halted to stretch out on the grassy slope at the edge of the water in the all bathing sunshine Snow white cherry trees were slowly regretful ly shedding their blossoms fle cki ng the ground and here and there the edge of the canal with their cast off petals Bright pink apple trees just coming into fu ll bloom were hummi ng with myriad bees A f yet a bit drowsily falling ew birds sang gail y wholly silent now and then as i f awed by nature s lov eli ness A weather browned woman her head covered with a clean white kerchief with strands of apple blossom pink in it knelt at the edge of the waterway a bit farther on cutting the long grass with a little curved sickle her every motion too caught by the m1rror1ng canal Al ong the highway below tramped others of her species beari ng to town on their backs the green fodder similarly gathered in long cone shaped baskets or wrapped in a large cloth One had heaped her b a sket high with bright yellow mustard splashing the whitish roadway as with a splotch of paint Vehicles there were none except the little handcarts drawn by barefoot women or children and now and then a man sometimes sim i larly unshod O xen reddish against green meadows or whitish against the red soil were standing i dl e knee deep i n grass or slowly plowing the gently rolling fields Farther of f clumps of cattle ranging from dark brown to faint yellow speckled the rounded hill ocks Fields white with daisies yellow wi th buttercups lilac with some other species of small flower vied wi th one another in beautifying f the world the more distant landscape S till farther of was mottled with clum ps of forest in which mingled the black evergreen of perennial foliage with the light green ofnew leaves An owl or some member of his famil y hooted contentedly from the nearest woods Modest little houses ,
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2 88
,
FO
W E A S E LS
OD
some days past every person I met along the way young or old had bidden me good day with the all ” embracing S coot I had taken this at first to be an abbrevia tion of E s i st gu t until an innkeeper had explained it as ” a shortening of the medieval Gruss Gott ( May God s greeting go with In mi d afternoon ofthis Saturday the custom suddenly ceased as did the solitude oft h e f ow path A group of men and women bearing rucksacks baskets valises and all manner of receptacles appeared from under the flowery foliage ahead and marched past me at a more aggressive pace than that ofthe country people Their garb their manner somewhat sour and unfriendly particularly the absence of any form of greeting dis More t i ng u i sh e d them from the villagers of the region and more groups appeared some numbering a full dozen following one another so closely as to form an almost con Som e marched on the farther bank t i nu al procession o f the canal as if ou r own had become too crowded with t r afli c for comfort all hurrying by me into the sou th with set perspiring faces I took them to be residents of the larger towns beyond returning from the end of a railway spur ahead with purchases from the Saturday morning mar ket at N um berg It was some time before I discovered that quite the opposite was the case ” They were h amst erers city people setting out t o scour OR
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2 90
H A MS T E RE R S
F OOD
S
WEA S
ETTIN OUT O N
EL
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TH
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R
ATU D AY AFT COUNT Y
R
ERNOO N T O
B U Y F OOD IN
RET U R NIN G FROM F O R AGING THE C OU NT RY S I DE -
VAGABONDING T HR OUGH C HANGING
GER MANY
country people all that Saturday quite distinct from their cheery fri e ndliness of the days before Now it was ex ” plained They had taken me for a hamsterer with a knap sack ful l of the food their region could so ill spare Not fering from hunger that any of them probably was suf B u t man is a selfish creature He resents another s acquisi tion of anything which may ever by any chance be of use to him Particularly der Deu tsche B a u er ( the German ” as a “hamsterer with whom I fell in later put it is never an idealist He believes in looking out for him — self first and foremost which characteristic by the way is not confined to his class in Germany nor indeed t o any land War patriotism Fatherland have no place in his ” heart when they clash with the i nterests ofhi s purse my informant went on Hence he has taken full advantage ofthe misery of others using the keen competition to boost ” his prices far beyond all reason Many a labor weary workman of the cities with a half dozen mouths to fill many a tired emaciated woman tramps the byways of Germany all Sunday long halting at a score or two offarm houses dragging achi ng legs homeward late at night with onl y three or four eggs a few potatoes and now and then a half pound ofbutter to show for the exertion S ometimes other food seekers have completely annihilated the peasant s stock Sometimes he has only enough for his own needs Often his prices are so high that ” — the hamsterer cannot reach them the B au er knows by years of experience now that if he bides his tim e some one to whom price is a minor detail wi ll appear perhaps the agents of the rich man s hotels and restaurants of Berlin and the larger cities . Frequently he is of a miserly dis position and hoards his produce against an imagined day of complete famine or in the hope that the unreasonable prices will become even more unreasonable There are ” laws against h amst eri ng as there are against selling ,
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2 92
FOOD WEASEL S foodstuf s at more than the established price Now and f again the weary urban dweller who has tramped the country side all day sees himself held up by a gendarme and despoil ed Bu t the peasant for some reason o fall hi s meager gleanings t eeri ng is seldom molested in his profi The northern B avarian complains that the peop le of S axony outbid him among hi s own vill ages ; the S axon accuses the iron fi st e d Prussian of descending upon his f the food so badl y needed at home fields and carrying of For those with influence have little di fficulty in reaching v e ki lometer limit beyond the legal twenty fi The result is that foodstuf fs on which the government has set a maxi mum price often never reach the market but are gathered on the spot at p rices several ti mes hi gher than the law sanctions ” You see that farm over there ? asked a food canvasser wi th whom I walked an hour or more one Sunday I stopped there and tried to buy butter We haven t an ounce of butter to our names said the woman Ah said I just t o see if I coul d not catch her i n a lie but I pay as high as twenty marks a pound In that case said the Unverschamte I can let y ou hav e any amount you want up to thirty pounds I co ul d not really pay that price or nine marks ofcourse being a poor man worki n g hard f a day Bu t when I told her I woul d report her to the ” police she laughed in my face and slammed the door It was easy to understand now why so many ofthose I had interviewed in my of ficial capacity at Coble nz had expressed the opinion that sooner or later the poor of the cities would descend upon the peasants in bands and rob them of all their hoardings The countrymen themselves showed that fear of this now and then gnawed at their souls not so much by their speech as by their circum spect actions The sight of these swarms of h am st erers descended from the north lik e locusts from the desert gave .
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2 93
VAGABONDIN G THR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY the prophecy new meaning It would have been so easy for a few groups of them to join together and wreak the vengeance oftheir class on the hard hearted peasants H a d they been of a less orderly lifelong disciplined race they might have thus run amuck months before Instead they plodded on through all the hardships circumstances had woven for them with that all su ffering uncomplaining sort of fatalism with which the war seems to have inoculated the German soul Thus far the question of lodging had always been simple I h a d only to pick ou t a village ahead on the map and put up at its chief Gastha u s Bu t S aturday night and the h a m st erer s gave the situation a new twist With a leisurely twenty mi les behind me I turned aside to the pleasing little hamlet of M uhlhausen quite certain I had reached the end of that day s journey Bu t the Ga stzi mmer ented an astonishing afternoon s ight of the chief inn pres Its every table was densely surrounded by dust streaked men women and older children their rucksacks and straw cof fers strewn about the floor Instea d of the serene leisurely diligent matron whom I expected t o greet my entrance with a welcoming S coot I found a sharp tongued harassed female vainly striving to silence the constant refrain of H i er! Gla s B i er bi tte! Far from having a mug set before me almost at the instant I took my seat I was forced to remain standing and it was several minutes before I could catch her attention long enough to request da s ” ” R oom ! she snapped in a tone I had b este Z i mmer never dreamed a B avarian landlady could muster ; over ” Incredible ! I had scarcely seen a fellow fi lle d hours ago ! guest for the night during all my tramp from Munich Well I would enjoy one of those g obd Gastha u s suppers and find lodging in another public house at my leisure Again I had reckon ed without my hostes s When I suc c ee de d i n once more catching the attention of the distracted .
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2 94
FOO D WEASEL S matron she flung at me over a shoulder : Not a bite ! H am st er ers have eaten every crumb in town It was only too true The other inn ofMuhlhausen had been as thoroughl y raided Moreover its beds also were ” already ov erfi lle d The seemingly impossible had come — to pass my chosen village not only would not shelter me f o r the night ; it would not even assuage my gnawing hunger before driving me forth into the wide inhospitable world beyond Truly war has its infernal details ! As always happens in such cases the next town was at least twice as far away as t h e average distance between its neighbors Fortunately an isolated little beer arbor a few mil es farther on had laid in a Saturday stock The Wi rt not only served me bread but a generous cut ofsome mysterious species of sausage without so much as bat t ing an eyelid at my presumptuous request Weary dusty h amst ere rs of both sexes and all ages were enjoying his Spartan hospitality also their scanty fare contrasting sug g e st i v e ly with the great slabs of home smoked cold ham the hard boiled eggs B a u ernbrod and butter with which a group o f plump taciturn peasant youths and gi rls gorged them selves at another mug decorated table with the surreptitious demeanor of yeggmen enjoying their ill gotten winnings The stragglers of the human weasel army punctuated the highway for a few kilometers farther Some were war victims stumping past on crippled legs ; some were so gaunt featured and thin that one wondered how they had succeeded in entering the race at all The last one of the day was a woman past mid dl e age mountainous of form her broad expanse of ruddy face streaked with dust and perspiration who sat weightily on a roadside boul der munchi ng the remnants of a black bread and smoked pork lunch and gazing despairingly into the highway vista down which her more nimble legged competitors had long since vanished ,
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2 95
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VAGABONDING THROUGH CHANGING
GERMANY
In the end I was glad M uh lhausen had repulsed me for I had a most delight ful walk from sunset into dusk in forest fla nke d solitude along the Ludwig Canal with a swim in f Darkness had completely reflected moonshi ne to top it of fallen on the long summer day when I reached N eu m ar kt with thirty miles beh ind me Under ordinary circumstances I should have had a large choice oflodgings ; the place was important enough to call itself a city and its broad main street was lined by a continuous procession ofpeak gabled h am st e re rs Bu t it t oo was flooded with Ga s thau ser They packed every beer dispensing guest room they crowded every public lodging awaiting the dawn of Sunday t o charge forth in all directions upon the s urrounding country side I made the circuit of its cobble paved center fs before I four times suf fering a score of scornful rebuf found a man who admitted vaguely that he might be able to shelter me for the night He wa s another of those curious fairy — tale dwarfs one finds tucked away in the corners of Bavaria and his eyrie It was a disjointed b efi t t e d his personal appearance — li ttle den filled with the medieval paraphernalia and i n — that had col ci d e nt ally with much of the unsavoriness One le ct e d there during its several centuries of existence stooped to enter the beer hall and rubbed one s eyes for the astonishment of being suddenly carried back to the Middle Ages— as well as from the acrid clouds of smoke that sud de nly assailed them ; one all but crawled on hands and knees to reach the stoop shouldered dark cubbyholes miscalled sleeping chambers abov e Indeed the establishment did no t presume t o pose a s a Ga sth a u s ; it contented itself with t the more modes t title of Ga stwi rtschaf cul ties in Bu t there Were more th an mere physical diffi gaining admittance t o the so called lodgings under the eaves The dw a rfi sh Wi r t had first to be satisfied that I was a paying guest When I asked t o be shown at once ,
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2 96
VAGABONDI NG THR OU GH CHANGING GER MANY When We had paid rather reasonable bills for t h e forbidden fruits that had been set before us the Wi rt lighted what seemed to be a straw stuffed with grease and conducted ” me and three h am st eri ng workmen from Nurnberg u p a low twisting passagew ay to a garret crowded with four nests on legs whi ch he dignified with the name of beds I will spare the tender hearted reader any detai led descri p tion of ou r chamber beyond remarking that we paid eighty pfennigs each for our accommo dations and were vastly ” overcharged at that It was the only hardship of my German j ourney My companions compared notes for a half hour or more on the mi sfortunes and possibilities of their war time avocation each taking care not to give the others any inkling ofwhat corner of the landscape he hoped ” most successfully to ham ster on t h e m orrow and by mid night the overpop ul ated rendezvous of Neumarkt had ” sunk into its b ri ef pre— slumber h am st e ri ng B eing ahead of my schedule and moreover t h e day being The S unday I di d not loaf away until nine next morni ng main highway had swung westward toward N urnberg The more modest country road I followed due north led over a gently rolling region through many clumps offorest S cattered groups ofpeasants returning from church passed me in almost continual procession during the noon hour The older women stalked uncomfortably along in tight fi t t i ng black gowns that resembled the styles to be seen in paintings of a century ago holding their outer ski rts knee high and showing curiously decorated petticoats O n their heads they wore closely fitting kerchiefs of silky appearance j et black in color though on week days they were coi ffed wit h white cotton Some o st e nt a t e d light colored aprons and pale— blue embroidered cloths knotted at the back ofthe neck and held in place by a breastpin in the form of a crucifix In one hand they gripped a o r other religious design prayer book and in the other an amber or black rosary ,
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2 98
OOD WEASELS
F
boys and girls almost without exception carri ed their h eavy h ob nailed shoes in their hands and s lapped al ong joyfully in their bare feet In every village was an open air bowling alley sometimes half hi dden behind a crude lattice work and always closely connected with the beer di spensary in which the younger men joined i n their weekly sport as soon as church was over S omewhere withi n si ght ofthem hovered the grown girls big blond German Madch en with their often pretty faces and their plowm an s arms h ands ankles and feet dressed in their gay light colored Sunday best Huge lilac bushes i n fullest bloom sweetened the constant breeze with their perfum e The glassy surface ofthe canal still glistened in the near distance to the left ; a cool clear stream meandered in and ou t along the slight vall ey to the right Countrymen trundled past on bicycles that still boasted good rubber tires in contrast with the jol ting substitutes to which most city riders had been reduced A few ofthe returning h amst erers were similarly mounted though the majority trudged mournful ly on foot carrying bags and knapsacks half filled with vegetables chiefly potatoes with live geese ducks or chickens One youth pedaled past with a lamb gazing ou t of the rucksack on his back with the wondering eyes ofa country boy taki ng his first jour ney When I overtook h i m on the next long ri se the rider displ ayed his woolly treasure proudly at the same time comp laining that he had been forced to pay ” a whole seven marks for it As I turned aside for a dip in t h e inviting stream the Munich Berlin airplane express bou rdonned by overhead perhaps a thousand meters above setting a bee line through the gl orious summer sky and contrasting strangely with the medieval life underfoot about me At Gnadenberg beside the artistic ru ins ofa once famous cloister wi th a hill side forest vista an inn supplied me a Th e
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2 99
VAGA BONDING TH ROUGH CHANGING GER MANY generous dinner with luscious young roast pork as the chief ingredient The traveler in Germany during the armistice w as far more impressed by such a repast than by mere ’ The innkeeper and his wi fe had ruins ofthe M iddle Ages little in common with their competitors of the region They we re a you thful couple from Hamburg who h ad adopted this alm ost unprecedented means of assuring themselves the livelihood which the war had denied them at home Amid the distressi ng Bavar an dial ect with which my ears had been assailed since my arrival in Munich their grammatical German speech was like a flash of light in a dark corner By four I had already attained the parlor suite of the principal Gasth au s ofAl tdorf my three huge windows look ing ou t upon the broad main street of a truly picturesque town Ancient peaked gables cut the horizon with their saw edge on every hand The entire facade of t he aged church that boomed the quarter hours across the way was shaded by a mighty tree that looked like a giant green haystack A dozen other clocks in towers or scattered about the inn loudly questioned the veracity of the ch u fch bells and of one another at as frequent intervals Ti m e may be of less importance to the Bavarian than to some less tranquil people but he believes in marking it thoroughly His every room boasts a clock or two his villages resemble a h orlog eri e in the throes of anarchy with every timepiece loudly expounding its ow n personal opini on until the entire twenty four hours becomes a constant uproar of conflicting theories like the hubbub ofsome Bolshevik assembly Most ofthem are not contented with single statements but insist on repeating their quarter hourly misinformation The preoccupied guest or the uneasy sleeper refrains with di th cul ty from shouting at some insistent timepiece or church bell : Yes you said that a moment ago For Heaven s sake don t be so redundant ! B u t his protest would be sure to ,
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3 00
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH
C
HANGING GER MANY
by her constant amazement that I dared go about the coun try unarmed In all the torrent ofwords she poured forth o ne outburst still stands o u t in my memory : Fortunately she cried R oosevelt is dead He would have made it even harder for poor Germany t han Wilson has Why should that man have joined ou r enemies t oo after we had treated him like a king ? His daughter accepted a nice wedding present from our K aiser and then he turned ” against us ! O ne sensed the curi ous working of the typical German mind in that remark The K ai ser had given a frien dl y gift he had received a man with honor hence anything the K aiser chose to do thereafter should have met with that It was a most natural con ma n s unqualified approval from the German point of view D id not the clu si on K aiser and his clan rise to the height from which they fell / ” partly by the judicious distribution of honors to those who might otherwise have successful ly opposed them by the l avishing ofbadges and medals ofhonorariums and preferences ofiron crosses and costly baubles ? A young man at an adjacent table took exception t o some accusation against America by the cantankerous old me r chant and joined in the conversation From that moment forth I was not once called upon to defend my country s fectively actions ; ou r new companion did so far more ef than I coul d possibly have done He was professor of phil osophy in the ancient University of Altdorf and his power ofviewing a question from both sides with absolute impartiality without the faintest glow ofpersonal feeling attained the realms ofthe supernatural D uring the entire f i cer at the front having returned t o War he had been an of his academic duties within a month after the signing ofthe armistice As women are frequently more rabid than men in their hatred ofa warring enemy so are the men who have taken the least active part in the conflict commonly the .
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2 0 3
VAGA BONDING THR OUG H C HANGING GER MANY in which he recuperated during the useless dayli ght hours from his nightly lucubrations The professor pointed o u t to me a by w ay l eading due northward over t h e green h ills Now it strode joyfully across broad meadows and ripening wheat fi eld s about which scampered wild rabbits as I advanced ; now it climbed deliberately up into the cathedral depths of evergreen forests that stretched away for hours in any direction Bucolic little hamlets welcomed me as often as thirst suggested the attractiveness of dropping the rucksack from my shoulders to the bench ofa refreshing country inn I had struck a Protestant streak wedged in between two broad C atholic regions It may have been but a trick ofthe im agination but the local dialect seemed to have grown more German ferent pale with the change C ertainly the beer was dif yellow in contrast with the mahogany brown of the far heavier brew to the south Whether or not it was du e to feren ce in taste the two types ofthe mere chance or to a dif beverage seemed to go with their respective form ofChris Bu t alas ! none of it was the t i ani t y through all Bavaria beer of yesteryear O n the walls of one tiny Ga s tzi mmer hung large framed portraits da uby in composition offour youthful soldiers The shuf f ling old woman who served me caught my questioning glance at the largest ofthem ” My youngest she explained in her toothless mumble He has been missing since O ctober 1 9 1 4 Never a word He over there was slaughtered at Verdun My oldest he i with the cap of an Untero fzi er is a pr soner in France They will never let him come back it is said The other in the smallest picture is working in the fields out yonder f arm and he cannot do much but he h as a stif Pictures cost so now t oo ; we had to get a smaller one each year My man was in it also He still suf fers from the malady o fthe trenches He spends more than half his days in bed ” — War is schreckli ch frightful she concluded but she said it in .
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304
FOOD WEASEL S the dull dispassionate tone in which she might have deplored Indeed t h e lack of rain or the loss of a part of her herd there seemed t o be more feeling in her voice as she added : And they took all ou r horses We have only an ox left now and the cows D escendi ng into a vall ey beyond I met a score ofschool boys of about fifteen each wi th a knapsack on his back climbing slowly upward into the forest They crowded closely around a middle aged man similarly burdened who was talking as he walked and to whom the boys gave such fixed attention that they did not so much as glance at me His topic as I caught from the few words I heard was R oman hi story on which he was discoursing as deliber fy class ately as if the group had been seated in their stuf room i n the village below Yet it was mid morning of a Monday This German custom of excursion lessons might be adopted to advantage in ou r own land ; were it not that our fondness for co education would tend to distract scholarly attention Toward noon the byways descended from the hills became a highway and turned eastward along a broad river valley Hersbruck at the turning point was sur rounded on t w o sides by railways with all thei r attendant grime and clatter but the to wn itself was as peak gabled and cobble paved as Middl e Aged in appearance as i f modern science had never invaded it The popul ation left over after the all im portant brewing and serving of beer had been accomplished seemed to busy itself with supp ly ing the peasants ofthe neighboring regions I declined the valley road and climbed again into the hills t o the nort h Their first flanks on the edge ofthe town were strewn w ith impressive villas obviously new and strikingly ou t ofkeep ing with the modest old town below They reminded one o f the flashy rouge lacquered daughters of ou r simple immigrants A youth i n blouse and fi eld gray trouser s ,
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30 5
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING wh o
GER MAN Y
was setting me on my way smil ed faintly and quiz z i cally when I call ed attention to them ” R ich men ? I queried Yes indeed he answered with somethi ng curi ously like a growl in his voice ” What do they do ? I went on chiefly t o make con versation Nothing he rep lied in a tone that suggested the subject was distasteful Then how did they get rich ? I p ersisted Wise men he mumbled with a meaning side glance ” I hazarded after a moment A ll bui lt since the war ? gazing again al ong the snowy hillside He nodded silently with something faintly like a wink at the same time glancing cautiously upward as if he feared the ostentatious villas would vent their influential wrath upon him for giving their questionable pedigree to a s t rang er Farther on along a soft f ooted country road that undu lated over a l and scape blooming with fruit trees and immense lilac bushes I came upon a youthful shepherd hobbling after his grazing sheep on a crude wooden leg that seemed to have been fashioned with an ax from the trunk of a sapling I attempted to rouse h i m t o a recital ofhis war experi ences but he scowled at my first hint and preserved a moody silence A much older man tending his fat cattle a mile beyond was on the contrary eager to fight the war ” over again It suggested to him none of the bitter memo ries that assailed the one legged shepherd He had been t oo old to serv e and his two sons cultivating a field across the way had returned in full health He expressed a mild thankfulness that it was over howev er because of the restrictions it had imposed upon the peasants F or every cow he possessed he was obliged to deliver t w o liters of milk a day An of f i cial milk gatherer from the town passed each morning Any cow that habitually fell below the ,
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3 06
FOO D
WEASEL S
standard set must be reported ready for slaughter Um productive hens suf fered the s ame fate He owned ten S tuck ofthem a hundred and fifty in all wit h four roosters to keep them company and was forced to contribute four hundred and fifty eggs a week t o the town larder At good — prices ? Oh yes the prices were not bad th ree times those h am st erers ofbefore the war but by no means what the woul d gladly pay O f course he smiled contentedly there were still milk and eggs left over for his own use The coun try people did not suffer from hunger They could not af It was dif ferent ford to with thei r constant hard l abor with the city folks who put in short hours and sat down much ofthe time He had heard that all the war rest ri c tions would be over in August He certainly hoped so for life was growing very tiresome with all these regulations E very one ofhis half hundred cows wore about its neck a broad board decorated in colors with fantastic figures from which hung a large bell E ach ofthe latter was dis tinct in timbre and all offine tone The chimes produced by the grazing herd was a real music that the breeze wafted to my ears unti l I had passed the crest of the next hi llock How so much metal suitable for cannon making had escaped the K aiser s brass gatherers was a mystery whi ch the ext raor di nary influence of the peasant class only partly exp lained B eyond the medieval ruin of Hohenstein which had served me for half the afternoon as a lighthouse does the mariner the narrow road led gradually downward and brought me once more toward sunset to the river valley The railway followed the stream closely piercing the many towering crags with its tunnels Bu t the broad highroad wound in g reat curves that almost doubled the distance avoiding every slightest ridge as if the road bui l ders ofcenturies ago had been bent on making the journey through this charming region as long as possible Velden claiming the title of city was as unprogressive .
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21
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30 7
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY '
and as nearly unclean as any town I ever saw i n Bavaria A half dozen inns flashed signs of w elcom e i n the stranger s face yet declined to furnish the hospitality they seemed to of I canvassed them all only to be as many times turned fer away by females alm ost as slatternly in appearance and as resentful of would b e guests as the Indians of the Andes One might have fancied the hookworm had invaded the town so u n B avarian was the ambitionless manner of its inhabitants and the disheveled aspect of its clientless public houses Only one ofthe latter consented even to lodge me ference and that with a bad grace that was colder than indif None ofthem would so much as listen when I broached the question of food The shopkeepers treated me with equal scorn O ne after another they asserted that they had not a scrap of L ebens Three times however they mi ttel of any species to sell directed me to the Ga sth au s that had been most d eci ded in proclaiming its inability to supply my wants assuring me that the proprietor was a farmer and stock breeder who had more than enough of everything if the truth were known Bu t a second visit to the alleged fo od hoarder merely aroused the assertion that his fellow townsmen were prevaricators striving to cover up their own faul ts by slandering a poor hard working neighbor Apparently Velden had developed a case ofnerves on the food question This was natural from its size and situa — tion i t was large enough to feel something of the pinch that the blockade had brought to every German city yet nearly enough peasant like in character to make hoarding possible I did not propose however to let an excusable selfishness deprive me of my evening meal When it became certain that voluntary accommodations were not to be had I took a leaf from my Sou t h Am eri can note book and appealed my case to the local authorities The Burg erm ei st er was a miller on the river bank at the .
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3 08
VAGABONDING THROUGH C HANGING GER MANY several times over and a loaf ofgood peasant s bread of the size and shape of a grindstone The B ur g erm e i st er remained with me to the end of his second mug of beer declining to e at for reason of the supper that was awaiting him at hom e but answering my questions t t e d the ofli ci al with the over courteous deliberation that b efi part I was playing When he left the Wi rt s eemed to feel it his duty to give as constant attention as possible to so important a guest He sat down in the vacated chair opposite and except when his beer serving duties required him t o absent himself momentarily remain ed there all the evening He was of the heavy stolid type ofmost of his class a peasant by day and the chi ef assistant of h i s inn keepin g spouse during the evening For fully a half hour he stared at me unbrokenly watching my every slightest movement as an inventor might the actions of his latest contraption A group of his fellow — townsmen si ppi ng t h ei r beer at another tab l e kept simi lar vigil never once taking their eyes of fme uttering not a sound sitting as motionless as the old stone statues they somehow resembled except now and then to raise their mugs to their lips and set them noiselessly down again The rather slatternly spouse and her brood of unkempt urchins surrounded still another table eying me as fixedly as the rest I attempted several times to break the ice with no other success than to evoke a guttural monosyllable from the staring landl ord The entire assembly seemed to be du ru m beyond recovery to be stupid ity personified Unable to force oneself upon them one could only sit and wonder what was taking place inside their thick skull s Their vacant faces gave not an inkling of thought Whenever I exploded a question i n the oppressive silence the Wi rt answered it like a school boy reciting some reply learned by heart from his books The stone headed group listened motionless until long after his voice had died away and drifted back into their silent automatic beer drinking ’
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3 10
.
E NT RANCE
TH
E
S A N GE R VE RE I N ,
T O TH
OR
GL
E
H OM
E
EE CL U B
OF
W AGN
ER
IN B AY
O F B AY RE UTH A DAY ,
,
REUTH
O
WITH WH M
E
I SP N T
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY almost a farce with all the teachers at war Women ? Faugh ! How can women teach boys ? They grow up altogether too soft even under the strong es t of masters As t o food ; well being mostly peasants they probably had about a hundred pounds of fat or meat where two hundred or so were needed Bu t it was a constant struggle to keep fwhat the town required the h am st erers from carrying of for its own use That the struggle had been won was evident from the quantities of ham beef potatoes and bread which his wi fe served her habitual clients in the course of the evening Sh e seemed to have food hidden away in every nook and cranny ofthe house like a miser his gold and acknowledged its existence with the canniness of the South American Indian As she lighted me to a comfortable bedchamber above as clean as the lowe r story was disorderly she re marked apologetically : If I had known in what purpose you were here I would not have sent you away when you first came Bu t another Ameri can food commissioner was in Velden just two days ago a major who has his headquarters in Nurnberg He came with a German captain and they went fishing on the .
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In the morning she served me real coffee with milk and white loaf sugar two eggs appealingly fresh bread and — butter and an excellent cake and her bill for everything including the lodging was six marks In B erlin or Munich the food alone had it been attainable would have cost thirty to forty marks Plainly it was advantageous to fering from food scarcity Velden to pose as suf The same species of selfishness was in evidence in the region round about Not one of the several villages tucked away in the great evergr een forests of the Fr anki sch e S chweitz through which my route wound that day would exchange foodstuf fs of any species for mere money When ,
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312
FOO D
WEASELS
noon lay so far behind me that I was tempted to use physical orce to satisfy my appetite I entered the crude Ga s th a u s f of a little woodcutters haml et A family of nearly a dozen ng a dinner sat at a table occupying half the room w olfi that gave little evidence of war tim e scarcity Here too there was an abundance of meat potatoes bread and several other appetizing things Bu t strangers were wel come only to beer Could one live on that there would never be any excuse for going hun gry in Bavaria When I — asked for food also the coarse featured bedraggled female who had filled my mug snarled lik e a dog over a bone and sat down with her family again heaping her p late high with a steaming stew I persisted and she rose at last w ith a growl and served me a bowl ofsome kind ofoatmeal gruel liquid with milk For this she demanded ten pfe n ni g s or nearly three fourths ofa cent Bu t if it was cheap nothing could induce her to sell more of it My loudest appeals for a second helping for anythi ng else even for a slice of the i mmense loaf ofbread from which each member o fthe gorging family slashed him self a generous portion at frequent intervals were treated with the scornful silence with which the police sergeant might ignore the shouts o f a drunken prisoner B irds sang a bit dolefully in the imm ense forest that stretched for miles beyond Peasants were scraping up the mosslike growth that covered the ground and piling it in heaps near the road whence it was hauled away i n wagons so low on their wheels that they suggested dachshunds f served as bedding for cattle sometimes for fer The stuf t i li z er and now and then during the past year or two as fodder The tops of all trees felled were carried away and made use of i n the same manner A dozen times a day through all this region ofBavaria I passed women singly o r in groups in the villages laboriously chopping up the tops and branches o f evergreens on broad wooden blocks ,
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3 13
VAGABONDING T HR OUGH C HANGI NG GERMANY with a tool resemb ling a heavy meat cleaver Hundreds o f the larger trees had been tapped for their pitch used in the making ofturpentine the trunks being scarred with a dozen l arge V shaped gashes joined together by a single line endi ng at a receptacl e ofthe form of a sea shell Horses were almost never seen along the roads and seldom in the fields The draught animals were oxen or still more often cows gaun t and languid from their double contri bution to man s requirements At the rare blacksmith shops the combined force of two or three workmen was more likely to be found shoeing a cow than anything else O f all the signs of the paternal care t h e K aiser s government took of its peop le none perhaps was more amusing than the H emmstelle along the way A t the top ofevery grade stood — a post with a cast iron rectangle bearing that word Ger ” — man for braki ng place and for the benefit of the illiterate an image of the old fashioned wagon brake—a species of iron shoe to be placed under the hind wheel that is still widely used in the region E vidently the fatherly government coul d not even trust i t s simpl e sub ject s t o recognize a hill when they saw one Pegnitz though not much l arger was a much more pro r Its principal Gastha u s was g e ssi v e town than Velden just enough unlike a city hotel to retain all the charm of a country inn whil e boasting such improvements as table cloths and electric buttons that actually brought a servant to the same room as that occupied by the guest who pressed them Yet it retained an inne modest y of price My full day s accommodation there cost no more than had my — night i n Velden o r would not have had I had t he courage to refuse the mugs of beer that were instantly forthcoming as often as I sat down at the guest room table To be sure no meat was served being replaced by fish The day was Tuesday and for some reason Pegnitz obeyed the law com manding all Germany to go meatless twice a week A p -
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3 14
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY In M unich the bakers used potato flour and worse ; he had seen some of the rascals put i n saw du st H e had heard that A merica was sending white flour to Germany but certainly none of it had ever reached Pegnitz The vil lage milk dealer was more incensed on this subject Or perhaps ofbread than on the scarcity of his own stock a milder verb would more exactly picture his attitude ; he was too anemic and lifeless to be incensed at anything His cadaverous form gave him the appearance o fan under nourished chi ld compared to the brawny baker and anger was too strong an emotion for his weakened state Mis fortune merely left h i m sad and increased the hopeless look in his watery eyes deep sunke n in their wide frame H e had spent two years in the trenches ofblue fle sh rings and retur ned home so far gone in health that he could not even endure the war bread his wife and five small children had grown so thin on during his absence B efore t he w ar he could carry a canful ofmilk the enti r e length of the sh0p without the least di fficulty Now if he merely attempted to lift one his head swam for an hour afterw ard People were not exactly starved to death he said but they were so run down that i f they caught anything even the minor ills no one had paid any attention to before the war they were more apt to die than to get well Pegnitz had lost more o fits inhabitants at home in that way than had been kille d in the war One hundred and forty liters of mi lk was the daily supply for a population of three thousand now The town had consumed about five hundred before the war Chil dren under two were entitled to a liter a day but only those whose parents were first to arrive when the daily supply came in got that amount My visit was well timed for customers were already forming a line at the door each carrying a small pail or pitcher and clutching in one hand his precious yellow milk sheet It was five in the afternoon .
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3I6
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FOOD WEASELS The town milk gatherer dr ew up before the door in an ” ancient Dachshund wagon drawn by two emaciated horses and carried hi s four cans inside T h e dispenser introduced me to h i m and turned to help his wife dole out the precious liquid They knew ofcourse the fami ly con di t i ons of every customer and in consequence the amount to which each was entitled and clipped the corresponding cou pons from the yellow sheets without so much as glancing at them Some received as little as a small cupful ; the majority took a half liter In ten minutes the four cans stood empty and the shopkeeper slouched ou t t o join us again ” You see that woman ? he asked pointing after the retreating figure of his last customer Sh e looks about sixty ni ch t w ahr ? Sh e is really thirty six Her husband was killed at Verdun Sh e has four small children and is eu ford to buy a half titled to two full liters Bu t she can only af — liter a day milk has doubled in price in the past fou r years ; — thirty two pfennigs a liter no w so she always comes near the end when there is not t w o liters left because she is ashamed to say she cannot buy her full allowance We always save a half liter for her and if some one else comes first we tell them the cans are a u sg epu rnpt There are many like her in Pegnitz— unable t o pay for as much as their tickets all ow them That is lucky t oo for there would not be halfenough to go round If I were not in the milk business myself I don t know what I shoul d do either with ou r five children About a ll the profit we get ou t ” of the business now is our own three liters The milk — gatherer was ofa jolly temperament His smile disclosed every few seconds the two lonely yellow fangs that decorated his upper jaw Perhaps no other one thing so strikingly illustrates the deterioration whi ch the war has brought the German physique as the condition ofthe teeth In my former visits to the E mpire I had constantly adm ired -
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3I7
VAGABONDING
T HR OUGH
C HAN GING GERM ANY
the splendid strong white teeth of all classes T o day it is almost rare to find an adult with a ful l set The ma r i o j t y are as unsightly in this respect as the lower classes of E ngland When t h e prisoners who poured in upon us during the last dri ves of the war first called attention to this change for the worse I set it down as the result oflife in the trenches B ack of the lines however E rsa tz food and under nourishm ent seem t o have had as deleterious an effect Milk said the man who had brought Pegnitz its supply for years was by no means as rich as it used to be Fodder was scarce and every one used his milch cow as oxen now far more than formerly He set out at four every morning of his life covered twenty miles or more than twice what he had before the war and sometimes could not fill his four cans at that Up to a few months before he had had — an assistant a n E nglish prisoner He never tired ofsing ” ing the praises of my E nglishm an as he called him He worked some reference to hi m into every sentence each time displaying his fangs in his pleasure at the recollection ” My E nglishman had come to him in 1 9 1 5 H e was a bank clerk at home and knew no more of farming than a child Bu t he had learned quickly and to speak German — as well a sad German it must have been indeed if he had copied from the dialect of the region For months at a ” time my E nglishman had driven the milk route alone while h e remained at home to work i n the fields R un away ! Nonsense ! He had told people he had never enjoyed himself half so much in London He had promised to come back after peace He stayed unti l two months after the armistice His last words were that he knew he could never endure it to sit all day on a stool in a stuffy Office after roaming the hills of Bavaria nearly four years On Sundays he went miles away to visit other E nglishmen French prisoners went where they liked too ; no one ever -
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3 18
O
F OD
WEASEL S
bot hered them They had all left i n January in a speci al train Yes most of them had been good workmen my E nglishman especially They had labored with the women in the fields when the men were away and helped them about the house They had always been frien dl y sometimes too frien D id I see that little b oy across the street there dl y in front of the widow s cloth shop ? E very one knew he was E nglish Bu t what could you expect with husbands away sometimes for years at a time ? Pegnitz boasted a large iron foundry and a considerable population offactory hands R um or had it that this class held more enmity toward citizens of the Allied powers than the rural population that it woul d even be dangerous for me to mix with them I took pains therefore to stroll toward the foundry gate as the workmen were leaving at six They toiled eight hours a day like all their class throughout Germany now but took advantage of the change ” to sleep late like the capitalists b eginning their labors fat noon at eight and taking two hours of I picked ou t an intelligent looking workman and fell into conversation with him deliberately emphasizing the fact that I was an A m erican A considerable group of his fellows crowded around us and several joined in the conversation Bu t though two Or three scowled a bit when my nationality was whispered through the gathering it was evidently merely a sign that they were puzzling to know how I had come so far afield so soon after the signing Ofthe armistice Far from showing any enmity they evinced a most friendly curiosity tinged only once or twice with a mil d and crude attempt at sarcasm which the others at once scowled down S everal wished to know how wages were in their line in America particularly whether ou r workm en had forced ” the capitalists to grant the eight hour day and several inquired how soon I thought it woul d be possible to emigrate how soon that is that enough ships would be released .
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3I9
VAGABONDI NG THR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY from military service to bring fares down within reach of a working man s purse Not one of them seemed to suspect that there might be other dif ficulties than financial ones Then of cour se the majority deluged me with questions as to when Am erica woul d actually begin to send fats and — foodstuf s and raw materials for their factories and and f tobacco There was little suggestion ofunder nourishment in this gathering though to be sure none ofthem seemed overfed They looked hardy and fit ; the faces under the red banded visorless caps that covered a majority Of the heads showed few signs of ill health It is not so much the factory hands themselves with t h en out ofwork pen sions even when labor is lacking who suffer from the stag nation Of Germany s industries as the hangers on Of the — factory class the busy time helpers the unprovided women and children the small shopkeepers who depend on this class for their clientele; ’
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY
rounded the house on every side Something 1n his manner as he set down his watering pot and shuffled toward me plus the absence of any of the outward S igns of a public place of pilgrimage suggested that I was in the wr ong pew ” D oes some one li ve here ? I hazarded lamely ” he replied sharp ly Certainly the Wagner family glaring at me under bushy eyebrows Bu t — e r— Frau Wagner being dead I thought Frau Wagner is as alive as y ou or I he retorted staring as if he suspected me of being some harmless species of .
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Frau Cosima Wagner wife of the composer ? I per sisted smiling at what seemed to be the forgetfulness ofan why my dear fellow her death was in the papers old man ; ,
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Wa gner ja w oh l mei n
H err
he retorted As I cut flowers for her room every morning and se e her every afternoon I suppose I know as much about it as the papers It was quite another Frau Wagner who died last year ; and the fool newspapers seldom know what they are talking about anyway Then there is His voice had dropped to a whisper and I followed the gaze he had turned into the house Over the veranda b alustrade a bareheaded man stared down at us like one who had been disturbed from mental labors or an afternoon nap by our chatter He was short and slight yet rather strongly built too with iron gray hair and a smooth — shaven face A photograph I had seen somewhere suddenly rose to the surface of my memory and I recognized Siegfried Wagner So n of the musician whose existence I had for the moment forgotten Having glared us into silence he turned abruptly and re entered the house Herr Siegfried and his wi fe and hi s two chil dren live here also went on the gardener in a whisper that was still harsh and uninviting and Frau Cosi rna
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322
W OM
E N C H O PPIN
TH E
G
G
REAT
U P TH
BR
E TOP
E W RI E E
S
S
OF
OF
EVERGREE N T REE
LM
KU
B
E L
AC H N A R
S
Y
FO
R FUEL
A ND
LL T OOD IDL
A
S
F O DD
E
ER
VAGABONDIN G THR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY He had held his present position for thirty eight years Of course he had known Herr R ichard Hadn t he seen and talked with him every day for many years ? No there was nothing unusual about him He was like any other rich man except that he was alw ays making music It was plain that the gardener thought this a rather foolish hobb y He spoke of his former master with that slight tinge of scorn mingled with considerable pride at the importance o f his own posi tion which servants so Often show in dis cussing employers whom the world considers famous a n d c hanged the subject as soon as possible to the a ll engrossing scarcity of food E ven Herr Siegfried and his family suf he asserted H e was still grumbling f er e d from th at hungrily when he pocketed wha t pewter coins I had left fl ed back to his watering pots and locking the gate shuf The outwardly ugly Wagner opera house on a hillock at the farther end of town was as dismal in its aban donment as most cheap structures become that have stood five years unoccupied and unrepaired There was nothing to recall the famous singers and the international throngs from kings to scrimping sch oolm a am s from overseas who had so often gathered here for the annual Wagner festival A few convalescing soldiers lounged under the surrounding trees ; from the graveled terrace one had an all embracing view of Bayreuth and the rolling hills about it Bu t only a few twittering birds broke the silence of a spot that had so often echoed with the strident strains ofall the musical instruments known to mankind The change from a co untry town of three thousand to a city of thirty thousand emphasized once more the dis advantage i n the matter of food of the urban dweller The hotel that housed me in B ayreuth swarmed with waiters in evening dress and with a host ofuseless flu nki e s but its din ing room was no place for a tramp s appetite The scarcity was made all the more oppressive by the -
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3 24
MU SIC
STI LL HA S
C HAR M S
counting of crumbs and laboriously entering them i n a ledger which occupied an imposing personage at the door after the fashion of E urope s more expensive establishments In a Bavarian Ga sth au s a dinner of meat potatoes bread and perhaps a soup left the most robust guest at peace with the world for hours afterward I ordered the same here but when I had seen the meat I quickly concluded not to skip the fish course and the sight of that turned my attention once more to the menu card When I had made fer from top to bottom I rose with a way with all it had to of strong desire to go somewhere and get something to eat It woul d probably have been a vain quest in B ayreuth Yet my bill was more than one fourth as much as the one hundred and twenty four marks I had squandered duri ng my first week on the road in Bavaria The hotel personnel was vastly excited at the announce ment of my nationality T O them it seemed to augur the arri val ofmore of my fellow countrymen with their well filled purses to be the rebeginnin g of the good old days when tips showered upon them Moreover it gave them an opportunity to air their opinions on the peace ofvio ” lence and the Allied world in general They were typically German opinions all carefully tab ul ated un der the custom ary headi ngs The very errand boys bubbled over with impressions on those unescapable Fourteen Poi nts ; they knew by heart the reasons why the proposed treaty was ” inacceptable and unfu lfi llab le Bu t the final attitude of all was Let s stop this foolish fighting and get back to the times ofthe annual festival and its flocks oftourists The R oyal Opera House next door announced a gala performance th at evening I got my ticket early fearful o fbeing crowded away from what promised to be my first artistic treat in a fortnight I took pains to choose a seat near enough the front to catch each detail yet far enough away from the orchestra not to be deafened by its Wag ,
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32 5
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING
GER MANY
— nerian roar and when I arrived t h e orchestra seemed t o
have been dead for years ! The p lace it should have occu l led with broken chairs and music racks black pied was fi w ith age and resembled nothing so much as grandfather s garret A single light somewhat more powerful than a can dl e burned high up under the dome of the house and cast faint weird flickers over its dusty regal splendor For some reason the place was cold as an ice house though the weather outside was comfortable and the scattered audience shivered audibly in its scanty E rsa tz garments It was without doubt the most poorly dressed unprepossess ing little collection ofhearers that I h ad ever seen gathered together in such an edi fice O ne was reminded not merely that the textile mills of Bayreuth had only paper to work with now but that soap had become an unattainable lux ury in Germany Plainly das Volk had taken over the exiled king s playhouse for itself E ven the ornate old roy aflog e was occupied by a few patched soldiers and giggling girls B u t to what purpose ? o f the appearance o f w aitresses S urely such an audience as this could not find entertain ment in one ofGermany s classics ! Alas ! it was I who had been led astray ! The promising title of the play announced was mere camoufl age Who perpetrated the i ncompreh en sible inane rubbish on which the curtain finally rose and why are questions I willingly left to the howling au di ence which dodged back and forth utterly oblivious of the fact that the R oyal Opera House had been erected before theater builders discovered that it was easier to see between two heads than through one Surely German K u ltu r t h e at ri ally at least was on the down grade in B ayreuth A few miles ou t along a highway framed in app l e blos soms next morning I overtook a group of some t wenty persons The knapsacks on their backs suggested a party ” of h amst erers but as I drew nearer I noted that each carried some species of musical instrument Now and -
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3 26
R
T S CHI N TH
TH
,
E L A T VILLAGE S
O F B AV A RIA W A S E NTI REL Y B LA CK YVI T H S LAT E R OO F S AN D W ALL S ,
,
E E ND O F MY GERMAN T RAMP W
R
E VE NUE OF C HE T
D O W N TH O UGH TH A NUT S INT O W IMA R AS
E
IT S
S
MU SIC
STI LL HA S
CHAR M S
again the whole group fell to singing and playing as they marched oblivious to the stares of the peasants along the way I concluded that it was my duty t o satisfy my curiosity by joining them and did so by a simple little ruse plus the assistance ofmy kodak They were a S an E ach holiday they celebrated g erverei n from B ayreuth by an excursion to some neighboring town and this was The members ranged a h rt o r Assumption Day H i mmelsf from shy little girls oftwelve to stodgy men and women o f The leader was a blind man a veteran ofthe trenches fi fty who not only directed the playing and singing with hi s cane as a baton but marched briskly along the snaky highway w ithout a hi nt of assistance There were a halfdozen discharged soldiers in the glee club but if anything this increased the eagerness with which I was welcomed Their attitude was almost exactly what woul d be that of a football team which chanced to meet a rival player a year or so after disbanding they were glad t o compare notes and to amuse themselves by living over old tim es again For a whi le I deliberately tried to stir up some sig n of anger or resentment among them ; if they had any personal feelings during the contest they had now completely faded ou t of existence O ne dw arfi sh insignificant whole hearted little fellow a mi l l hand on week days had been in the same sector as I during the reduction of the S t Mihiel salient Unless we mi su nder stood each other s description ofit I had entered the dugout he had lived in for months a few hours after he so hastily abandoned it He laughed heartily at my description of the food we had found stil l on the stove ; he had been cook himself that morning Every one knew he asserted that the S t Mihiel attack was coming two weeks before it started but no one had expected it that cold rainy morning O n the strength of the coincidence we had discovered he proposed me as an honorary member ofthe Verei n for the ,
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327
VAGABON DING T HR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY day and the nomination was quickly and unanimously accepted We loafed on through the perfect early summer morning a soloist striking up on voice and instrument now and then the whole club joining frequently in some Old German song proposed by the blind leader halting here and there to sit in the shade of a grassy slope pouring pellmell every mile or two into a Ga sth a u s where even the shy little girls emptied their half liter mugs ofbeer without an effort One of the ex soldiers enlivened the stroll by giving me his unexpurgated opinion of the Prussians They hogged everything they could lay thei r hands on he grumbled Prussian wounded sent to B avaria had been fed like princes ; Bavarians who were so unfortunate as to be assigned to hospitals in Prussia — he had suffered that misfortun e himself had been treated like cattle and robbed even ofthe food sent them from home ” He had no use for di e verdarnrnten Pr eu ssen from any ” viewpoint ; it was their big men w h o had started the war in the first place but No indeed Bavaria could not afford to separate from Prussia Sh e had no coal Of her ow n and she had no seaport B usiness interests were too closely linked together thr ough all the E mpire to make separation possible It would be cutting their own throats Toward noon we reached the village of N e u dro ssenfeld where the Verei n had engaged for the day a rambling old country inn with a spacious dance hall above an outdoor K eg elba hn for those who bowled and a shady arbor over looking a vast stretch of rolling summ er landscape for those who did not i n the garden at the rear O ther glee clubs from K ulmbach and another neighboring city had occupied the other t w o Gasthau ser and every even se ml — public estab li sh me nt The town resounded from one end to the other with singing and playing with laughter and dancing with the clatter of ninepins and the rattle of table utensils A lone stranger without glee club standing woul d have been ,
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3 28
VAGABONDIN G T HR OUGH C HANGING
GER MANY
petition in a contest that meant so much more to others and taking my leave Ofthe S ang erverei n struck Of f again to the north A mi ddl e aged baker from K ul mbach who had b een all day with slight success fell i n with me h am st eri ng He had that pathetic uncomplaining mann er of so many seeming to lay his misfortunes at the door of of his class some power too high to be reached by mere human protest The war had left him one eye and a weakened physique Two E rsa te teeth gleamed at me dul ly whenever his wan smile disclosed them He worked nights and earned forty eight marks a week That was eighteen more than he had been paid before the war t o be sur e and the hours were a bit shorter Bu t how was a m an t o feed a wife and three chi ldren o n forty eight marks with present prices ; would f during the hours I tell him that ? He walked his legs of he wished to be sleeping and often came home w ith out so much as a potato There were a dozen or so in his ruck sack now and he had tramped more than thir ty kilometers I suggested that the apples would be large enough on the trees that bordered ou r route to be worth picking in a couple of months He gave me a startled glance as if I had proposed that we rob a bank together The apples along public highways he explained pat i ent ly w er e property Of the state N O one but those the government sent t o pick them could touch them True hunger was dr iving people to strange doings these days Guards patrolled the roads now when the apples began to get ripe Peasants had to protect their potato fi e ld s in the same manner He however would remain an honest man no matter what happened to him or to his wi fe and his three children The apparently complete absence of country police was one of the things I had often wondered at during my tramp The baker assured me that none were needed except in harvest tim e He had never seen a kodak in action He ,
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33 °
MU SIC
STI LL H A S
C HAR M S
would not at first believe that it coul d catch a picture in an instant Surely it woul d need a halfhour or so to get down all the details ! Queer people Americans must be to send men out thr ough the world just to get pictures of simple country people Still he woul dn t mind having a trade — like that hi mself ii it were not for his wife and his three children or its beer is sur K ulmbach noted the worl d over f rounded with i rnm ense breweries as with a medieval city wall Bu t the majority of them stood idle The beverages to be had in its Ga sthau ser t oo bore li ttle resemblance to the rich Kulm bacher of pre war days Thanks perhaps to its industri al character the city ofbreweries seemed t o be even shorter offood than B ayreuth ; or it may be that its customary supply had disappeared duri ng the celebration The meat tickets I had carried all the ofAssumption D ay way from Munich were required here for the first tim e S ome very appetizing little rolls were di splayed i n several shop — windows but when I attempted to stock up on them I found they were t o be had in exchange for special Marken issued t o K u lrnb a ch ers only There was a more sinister a more surly ai r about K ulmbach with its garrison ofPrus sian — mannered soldiers housed in a great fortress on a hi ll toweri ng high above the town than I had thus far found in B avaria As I sat down t o an alleged di nner in a self styled hotel my attention was drawn to a noisy group at a neighboring tab le I stared in amazement not so much because the five men opposite were Italian soldiers in the uniform with whi ch I had grown so famili ar during my ser vice on the Pado van plains the summ er before but because ofthe astonish ing contrast between them and the pale th in Germans about me The traveler grows quickly accustomed to any abnormality oftype of the people among whom he is living He soon forgets that they look di f ferent from other people -
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33
I
VAGABONDING THROUGH C HAN GI N G
G ER MANY
until suddenly the appearance ofsome really normal being in their midst brings his judgment back with a jerk to his customary standards I had grown t o think Ofthe Germans particularly the B avarians as looking quite fit a trifle under weight perhaps but healthy and strong Now all at once in comparison with these ruddy plump anim ated Italians they seemed a nation of invalids The energetic chatter o f the visitors brought out in strik ing relief the listless taciturnity of the natives ; they talked more in an hour than I had ever heard all Germany do in a day Meanwhile — m they made way with an i mense bowlful of well what woul d y ou expect Italians to be eating ? Macaroni Of course and wi th it heaping plates of meat vegetables and white hard— bread that made the scant fare before me look like a phantom meal I called the landlady aside and asked if I might not be served macaroni also She gave me a disgusted look and informed me that sh e would b e glad — to do so i i I woul d bring it with me as the Italians had When I had paid my absurd bill I broke in upon the garru lous southerners They greeted my use of their tongue with a lingual uproar particularly after I had mentioned my nationality but qui ckly cooled again with a reference to Fiume and satisfied my curi osity only to the extent of stating that they were billeted in K ulmbach on Of ficial business I sought to replenish my food tickets before setting ou t again next morning but found the municipal L ebensmi t telversorgu ng packed ten rows deep with disheveled house wives S cientists have figured it ou t that the human body loses twice as much fat standing in line the four or five hours necessary to Obtain the few ounces ofgrease products issued weekly on the German food ration as the applicant receives for his trouble The housewife they assert who remains in bed instead of enteri ng the contest gains ma t e ri ally by her conservation of energy In other words .
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VAGABON DING T HR OUGH C HANGING GER MANY correctly surmised was the family storeroom They are ” not ours exclaimed the landlady hastily ; they belong t o others who w ill not permit us to sell anything H er competitor across the street was more hospitable but t he anticipations I unwisely permitted his honeyed words to arouse were sadly wrecked when the dinner he promised stopped abruptly at a watery soup with a meager serving of real bread and butter Another village astonished me by yielding a whole half pound of cheese ; it boasted a K uh — a s e r e i what we might call a cow cheesery that was k fortunately ou t of proportion to its transportation facilitie s R odach at the bottom of a deep cleft in the hills where my route crossed the main railway line to the south had several by no means empty shops I canvassed them all without reward except that one less hard hearte d soul granted me a scoopful of the mysterious purple marmalade which with the possible exception of turnips seemed t o be t h e only Bu t has the reader ever plentiful fo odstuf f in Germany carried a pint Of marmalade wrapped in a sheet of porous paper over ten miles of mountainous byways on a warm summ er afternoon? If not may I not be permitted t o insist ou t of the ful lness ofexperience that it is far wiser to swallow the sickly stuf f on the spot without hopi ng in vain to find bread to accompany it or indeed to smear it than to undertake that o n some convenient house wall hazardous feat ? In short my travels were growing more and more a con stant foragi ng expedi tion with success never quite over hauling appetite The country indeed was changing i n charac ter and with i t the i nhabitants I had entered a region noted for its slate quarries and in place of the a t t rac tive little vil lages w ith their red tile roofs and masses of flowering bushes there came dismal slate built black hamlets ; almost treeless in setting and peopled by less progressive more slovenly citizens The only public hostess .
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334
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY his elbow t ou ch e d mi ne and entered into conversation by fering some remark i n the crippled dialect of the prof region about the close connection between crops and weather From the adjoining room rose sounds ofuntrained oratory mingled with the dull clinking of beer mugs The innkeeper and his family had by no means abandoned their service of supply ; they had merely laid ou t a new line ofcommu ni ca tion between spigots and consumers Gradually the orderly discussion became a dispute then an uproar in which a score of raucous voices joined I looked questioni ngly at my companion They are electing a new B ur g emei st er he explained ; interrupting a question he was asking about the peasants of America It is always a fight between the B urg er and — — the A rbei ter the citizens and the workers i n whi ch the workers always W i n in the end One cOuld ea sily surmise in whi ch class he claimed mem b e rsh i p by the scornful tone in which he pronounced the word citizen I live in another town he added when I expressed surprise that he remained with me in the unlighted Ga st zi mmer instead ofjoining his fellows I slipped ou t into the hall way and glanced in upon the disputants A powerful young peasant stood in an open space between the tables wavi ng his beer mug over his head with a gesture worthy of the Latin race at the same time ” A n Older man shouting some tirade against the citizens somewhat better d ressed pounded the table with his empty glass and bellowed repeatedly : N a da i s gi ene Wahrhi ed! The other twoscore electors Da i s gi ene Wa h rhi ed na ! sipped their beer placidly and added new clouds to the blue haze of tobacco smoke that already half hid the gathering only now and then adding their voices to the dispute It was evident that the youthful A rbei ter had the great majority ,
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3 36
MUSIC
STI LL HA S
C HAR MS
with hi m As I turned away my eyes caught a detail of the election that had so far escaped my attention In a corner of the hallway huddled closely together stood a score or more ofwomen dressed in the gloomy all black of church service peering curiously into the room where their husbands smoked drank and disputed and preserving the most absolute silence I mentioned the detail t o my companion Of the guest room recalli ng frequent assertions by Germans in a posi tion t o know that the women had been quick to take a d frage t o both sexes by vantage ofthe granting ofequal suf ” the new republican government ” C ertainly he replied they have the ri g ht t o vote but the German Frau has not lost her character Sh e is still satisfied to let her man speak for her Oh yes to be sure in the large cities there are women who insist on voting Bu t then in the cities there are women or themselves f ” who insist on smoking cigarettes ! In contrast wi t h thi s conservative rural viewpoint I have been assured by persons worthy of credence that in the more populous centers some 80 per cent ofthe women flocked to the polls for the first election in which su f frage was granted them An A rbei ter was eventually elected b urg mast er of Ef felter as the non resident had prophesied but not until long after I had retired to a bedroom above the place of meeting The vocal uproar intruded for some time upon my dreams and mingled fantastically with them From the dull clinki ng of mugs that continued far into the night it was easy to su rmise that the eveni ng election turned ou t to the comp lete satisfaction at l east Of the i nnkeeper and his family My route next morning lay along the t op ofa high pla teau wooded in places but by no means such an Andean wi l derness of forest and mountain as that whi ch spread ,
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337
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VAGA BON DING THROUG H C HANGING
G ER MAN Y
away to the horizon on the left across a great chasm in t h e di recti on of T eu sch ni t z f Black hi lls of slate st oOd here and th ere tumbled together in disorderly heaps Tschirri the last town of Bavaria laid out on a bare sloping hillsi de a s if on display as a curiosity in the world s museum was je t black from end t o end N o t merely were its walls and roofs covered with slate but its very foundations ahd cobblestones even the miniature lake in its outskirts were slat e black in color It was in Tschirn that I discovered I had been over ” — looking a bet on the food question experience alas ! so oft en arrives too late to be of value ! T h e i nnk ee pe ss to whom I murmured some hint about lunch shook her head without lookin g up from her ironing but a moment later she added casually Y ou passed the butcher s house a few yards down t he hill and to day 13 Satur day erin T he last day of the week I had been slow 1n dis cov g was meat day in most of the smaller towns of Germany I grasped at the hint and hastened down to the slatefaced As I thrust my hea d in at the door the Fal M etzg erei fi a n bu t cher paused with his cleaver in the air and ru st af m ” T he bled Ha ! E i n g anz Fremder! ( A total carcass of a single steer was rapidly di sappearing un der his ho experienced hands into the baskets of the citizens w formed a li ne at the home m ade counter As each recei véd ,
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY had neglected t o note on my travel sheet the tenderloin he had issued me Meat tickets were therefore furnished — with the rest and I accepted them without protest H ad all Of f i cials been as obliging as he I might have played the sam e passive tri ck in every town I passed Bu t the clerks of the Saxe Weimar municipality decorated my precious document in a thoroughly German manner with the i n formation that I had been supplied all the tickets to wh ich I was entitled for the ensuing week That Saturday how ever was a Gargantuan period and a vivid contrast t o the hungry day before ; for barely had I received this new collection ofMa rken when an innkeeper served me a gener o u s meat di nner without demanding any ofthem A tramp through the Thuringian highlands with their deep b la ckw oode d valleys and gl orious hilltops bathed in the cloudless sunshi ne of early summer their f wer o l scented breezes and pine perfum ed woodlands w ou f d con vert to pedestrianism the most sedentary ofmortals Laasen was still slate black like a village in deep mourning b u t facross a vall ey in its forest frame the next town seen far Of was gay again under the famil iar red til e roo fs With sunset I reached Saalfeld a considerable city i n a broad lowland boasting a certain grimy industrial progress and l ong accustomed to batten on tourists In these untravel ed days it was sadl y down at heel and had a grasping dis position that made it far less agreeable than the simple little towns behind that earn their own honest living Foo d of cour se was scarce and poor and as is al ways the ca se and the more one paid for it the more exacting was the dem A hawk faced hostes s charged me twi ce a s or ti ckets f much for boiling the meat I had brought with me as I h ad paid for it in Tschirn The citi es therefore were all Su nday had come again but forsak en and my h ob nails echoed resoundi ngly throug h Their i nhabitants one found t h e stone paved streets -
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3 4°
,
MU SIC
STILL HA S
CH AR M S
mil es beyond h am st eri ng the country side or holidaying wi th song dancing and beer in the little villages higher up among the hills The habitual tramp however was no where to be seen ; the Great War has driven hi m from the highways of E urope A n occasional band of g ipsies idling about their little houses on wheels in some shaded glen or peering out through their white curtained windows were the only fellow vagabonds I met during all my German tramp I talked with several of them but they were u n usually wary Oftongue taking me perhaps for a government spy ; hence there was no way of knowing whether their fi ery eyed assertion of patriotism was truth or pretense My last village host was a man of far more cul ture than the average peasant innkeeper In his youth he had attended the R ea l S chu le of Wei mar B u t Germany is not A merica in its opportunity to climb the ladder of success irrespective of caste and origin and he had drifted back to his turnip fi eld s and a slat t e m household strangely ou t o f keeping with his clear thinking mental equipment He h a d gone through the entire war as a private which fact of itself was a striking commentary on the depressing caste system of the German army Yet there was not the slightest hint in his speech or manner to suggest that he resented what would have been branded a crying injustice in a more democratic land A society of solidified strata he seemed to find natural and unavoidable The goddess o f chance had been more kind to him than had his fell ow men Four unbroken years he had served in the trenches on every front yet though he towered meters aloft o r an inch above the regulation German parapet his only wound was a ti ny nick in the lobe of an ear Gas how ever had left him hollow chested and given him during his frequent spasms of coughing a curious resemblance to a shepherd s crook The thorough ness with whi ch Germany uti li zed her -
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3 41
VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HAN GING
GER MANY
man power during the war was person ified in this human pine tree of the Wei rnar hills He had been granted just two furloughs— o f six and fourteen days respectively B oth ofthem he had spent in his fields laboring from dawn to dark for as he put it the women were never able to ” keep up with the crops His only grievance against fate however was the setback it had given the education of his chil dren Since 1 9 1 4 his boys had received only four — hours ofs chooling a week as to the gi rls he said nothing as if they did not matter The teachers had all gone to war ; the village pastor had done his best to take the place of six of them Women he admi tted might have made tolerable substitutes but i n Germany that was not the custom and they had never been prepared to teach The optimistic Am erican attitude of overlooking the lack of specific preparation wh en occasion demanded has no cham pions in the Fatherland where professions as well a st rades are taken with racial seriousness The end of the war he complained with the only suggestion of bitterness he dis played during a long evening had found him wi th a son ” going on twelve who could barely spell out the si mplest words and could not reckon up the cost of a few mugs of beer without using his fingers -
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING
GER MANY
Di d I imagine the men who served under hi m had ever
dared commit such depredations ? C ould I believe for an instant that hi s soldiers had ever passed an of icer without f saluting him ? A u sg eschlossen! He would have felled the entire company lik e cattle in a slaughter house ! Yet in the same breath he gav e vent to U topian theories that implied a human perfection fit for thrumming harps on the golden stairs of the dreary after world of the theologians Man in the mass he asserted was orderly and obedient ready to make his desires subservient to the welfare of society It was only the few evil spirits in each gathering who stirred up the rest to deeds ofcommunal misfortune The mass of workmen wished only to pursue their labors in peace ; but the evil spirits forced them t o strike S oldiers even the volunteer soldiers of the new order of things that was breaking upon the world wished nothing so much as to be real soldiers ; but they were led astray by the fi end s in human form among them These latter must be seg regated and destroyed root and branch I broke in upon his dreams to ask if he could not perhaps round up a pair ofeggs somewhere ” E ggs my dear sir ! he cried raising both arms aloft and dropping them inertly at his sides Before the National Assembly came to Weimar we bought them anywhere for thirty pfennigs or at most thirty fi ve Then came the — swarms of politicians and bureaucrats i t is the same Old — capitalistic government for all its change of coat every last little one of them with an allowance ofthirty marks a day for expenses on top of their generous salari es It is a lucky man who finds an egg in the whole dukedom now ” even if he pays two marks for it My German tramp ended at Weimar Circumstances required that I catch a steamer leaving R otterdam for the famous port of Hoboken three days later and to accom pli sh that feat meant swift movement and close connections -
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3 44
VAGABONDIN G THR OUGH C HANGING GERMANY in wings and tail The captain turned me over t o a middle aged woman in an anteroom ofthe hangar who tucked me solicitously into a fly i ng suit that service being included in the price of the trip Flying had become so comm onplace an experience that this simple jour ney warrants perhaps no more space than a train ride B eing my own first departure from the solid earth however it took on a personal interest that was enhanced by the ruthlessness with which my layman impres sions were shattered I had always supposed for instance that passengers of the air were tucked snugly into u ph ol st e re d seats and secur ed from individual mi shap by some species ofleather harness Not at all ! When my knapsack — had been tossed into the cockpit where there was room for a steamer trunk or two the pathfi nder motioned to me to climb in after it I did so and gazed about me in amaze ment U pholstered seats indeed ! Two loose boards a foot wide and rudely gnawed offon the ends by some species teetered insecurely on the two frail strips of E rsa tz saw of wood that half concealed the steerin g wires Now and fat one end or the then during the journey they slipped of other giving the ride an annoying resemblance to a jolting over country roads in a farm wagon One might at least have been furnished a cushion at two hundred and twenty fi v e mark s an hour ! The pathfinder took hi s seat on one ofthe boards and I Behind me was a stout strap attached to on the other the framework of the machi ne ” I supp ose I am to put this around me ? I remarked as casually as possible picking up the dangling strip of leather ” Oh no you won t need that replied my companion We are not going high ; no t over ofthe cockpit absently a thousand meters Or so He spoke as if a little drop of that much would do no one any harm The silly notion flashed through my head that perhaps .
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3 46
FLYING H OM EWARD these wicked Huns were planning to flip me ou t somewhere a long the way an absurdity which a second glance at the seat as insecure as my own smothered in ri di n e r s h fi d a t p cul e There was no mail and no other passenger than myself that morning R egu lar service means just that with the German and the flight wo ul d have started promptly at fset the cost of gasolene nine even had I not been there to of at two dollars a quart We roared deafeningly crawled a few yards sped faster and faster across a long fiel d the tall grass bowi ng prostrate as we passed rose i mperceptibly into the air and circling completely around sailed majesti cally over a ti ny toy house that had been a huge hangar a moment before and were away into the north Like all long imagined experiences this one was far less exciting in reali zation than in anticipation At the start I felt a slight tremor about equal to the sensation ofturn Now and i ng a corner a bit too swi ftly in an automobil e then as I peered over the side at the shrunken earth the reflection flashed upon me that there was nothing but air for thousands Offeet beneath us ; but the thought was no more terrifying than the average person feels toward water when he first sails out to sea By the time Weimar had disappeared I felt as comfortably at home as if I had — been seated on the floor of a jolting b ox car the parallel is chosen advisedly I glanced thr ough the morning paper scribbled a few belated notes and exchanged casual remarks i n sign language wi th my compani on The roar of the machine made conversation im possible Whenever a new town of any importance appeared on the animated relief map far below us the pathfinder thrust a thumb downward at it and pointed the place out on the more articul ate paper map in his hands The view was much the same as that from the brow of a high mountain I knew a dozen headlands in the Andes below which the world spread ou t in thi s same entrancing entirety except ,
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3 47
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING
GER MANY
that here the performance was continuous rather than ” stationary as a cinema film is dif ferent from a still pictu re To say that the earth lay like a carpet beneath would be no trite comparison It resembled nothing so — much as that a rich Persian carpet worked with all man ner offantastic figures ; unless it more exactly imitated the crazy quilt of ou r grandmothers day with the same curiously shaped patches of every conceivab l e form and almost every known color Here were long narrow strips of brilliant green ; there irregul ar squares of flowery purple red ; beyond mustard yellow insets of ri diculously mis f scraps of daisy — shape n outlines ; farther of white and b e tween them all velvety brown patches that only experience coul d have recognized as plowed fields I caught myself mu sing as to h ow l ong it would be before enterprising man kind took to shaping the sur face ofthe earth to comm ercial sing the airmen by the form ofthe meadows urposes ad v i p ” to Stop at M ul ler s for gas and Oil or to Se e Smith for ” wings and propellers All the scraps of the rag bag had been utilized by the thrifty quilt maker C orn fi eld s looked lik e stray bits ofgreen corduroy cloth ; wheat fi eld s like the remnants of an old khaki uniform ; the countless forests f after the like scattered pieces of the somber garb cast Of period of family mourning was over ; rivers like sections of narrow faded black tape woven fantastically through the pattern in ridicul ously snaky attempts at decorative ef fect — Here and there the carpet was moth eaten where a crop of hay had recently been gathered A forest that had lately been turned into telegraph poles seemed a handful of matches spilled by some careless smoker ; ponds and small lakes the holes burned by the sparks from his pipe We had taken a rough road Like all those inexperienced with the element I suppose I had always thought that flying through the air would be smoother than sailing the calmest sea known to the tropical doldrums “
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3 48
VAGABONDING THROUGH C HAN GING GER MANY by the score were almost constantly visible reddish gr ay specks like rosettes embroidered at irregular intervals into ” the carpet pattern It made one feel lik e a Peeping T o m to look down into their domestic activities from aloft The highways between them seemed even more erratic in their courses than on the ground and aroused still more wonder than the pedestrian would have felt as to what excuse they found for their strange deviations Gnatlike men and women were everywhere toiling in the fields and only rarely ceased their labors to glance upward as we droned by overhead Many enticing subjects for my kodak rode tantalizingly south ward into the past emphasizing at least one advantage of the tramp over the passenger of the air We landed at Leipzig girdled by its wide belt of arbor ” gardens theoretically to leave and pick up mail Bu t as there w as none 1n either direction that morning , the halt was really made only to give the pilot time to smoke a cigarette That finished we were Of f again rolling for miles across a wheat fi eld then l eaving the earth as swiftly as it had risen up to meet us ten mi nutes before Landing and departure seem to be the most serious and time losing tasks ofthe airman and once more aloft the pilot settled down with the contentment Ofa being returned again to its native element As we neared B erlin the scene below turned chiefly t o sand and forest with only ra re small villages O ne broad strip that had been an artillery prov ing— ground was pitted for miles as with the sm allpox To my disappointment we did not fly over the capital but cam e to earth on the arid plain of Johannesthal in the southernmost suburbs the sand cutting into our faces like stinging gnats as we snorted across it to the cluster o f massive hangars w hich the machi ne seemed to recognize as home My companions took their leave courteously but quickly and disappeared within their b illets Another -
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3 50
FLYING HOM EWAR D middle aged woman despoiled me of my fly i ng togs re quested me to sign a receipt that I had been duly delivered according t o the terms of the contract and a swi ft automobile set me down still half deaf from the roar of the airplane at the corner of Friedrichstrasse — and Unter den Linden as it woul d have at any other — part of B erlin I might have chosen just three hours from the time I had been picked up at my hotel in Weimar The capital was still p lodding along with that hungry placidity which I had always found there Surely it is the least exciting city ofits size in the world even in the mi dst ofwars and revo lutions ! My total expenses during thirty fi v e days within unoccupied Germany summed up t o three thousand marks a less appalling amount than it would have been t o a German since the low rate of exchange reduced it to barely two hundred and fifty dollars Of — this and the dif ference is worthy of comm ent—e ighty dollars had been spent for food and only sixteen doll ars for lodging Transportation had cost me seventy dollars and the rest had gone for theater tickets photographic supplies and the Odds and ends that the traveler customarily picks up along the way more or less necessarily There remained in my purse some five hundred marks in war tim e shin ” plasters of scant value in the world ahead even were I permi tted to carry them over the border Unfortunately the best bargains in the Germany of 1 9 1 9 were just those — things that cannot be carried away hotel rooms railway and street car tickets public baths cab and taxi rides theater and Opera seats and a few bulky commodities such as paper or books Perhaps a connoisseur might have picked up advantageously art treasures jewels or the curiosities ofmedieval households but for one without that training there was little choice but to fo llow the lead of all f Allied of icers leaving the capital and i nvest in a pair of -
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3 SI
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VAGABONDING THR OUGH C HANGING G ER MA NY
fild glasses
The lenses for which Germany is famous had greatly risen in price but by no means as much as the mark had fall en in foreign exchange Only one episode broke the monotony ofthe swift express journey to the Holland border I gained a seat in the dining car at last only to discover that the one po ssibly edibl e dish on the bill of fare cost two marks more than the few I had kept in German currency To change a French or D utch banknote would have meant to load myself down Suddenly a brill ag ain with useless B oche paper money In my b ag there was still a i ant idea burst upon me b lock or two ofthe French chocolate which I had wheedled o u t of the American commissary in Berlin I dug it up broke of ftwo inch wide sections and held them ou t toward a cheerful looking young man seated on the floor of the corridor ” Woul d that be worth two marks to you ? I asked? ” Two marks ! he shouted snatching at the chocolate with one hand while the other dived for his purse Have ” n more o f it to sell ? o u a y y At least a dozen persons ofboth sexes came to ask me the same question before my brief dinner was over Their eagerness aroused a curiosity to know just h ow much they would be willing t o pay for so rare a delicacy I opened my bag once more and taking out the unopened half pound that remained laid it tantalizingly on the corner of my table If eyes could hav e eaten it would have dis appeared more qui ckly than a scrap thrown among a flock When the likelih ood of becoming the center o f seagul l s of a riot seemed imminent I rose t o my feet ” Mei ne H errschaften I began teasingly in a few h ou rs I shall be in Holland where chocolate can be had 1n abun dance It woul d be a shame to take this last bar out of a country where it is so scarce It is genuine French choco late no war wares So many ofyou have wished to buy e
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3 52
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FLYING HOM EWAR D it that I see no just way ofdisposing ofit except to put it ” up at auction ” Ah the true American spiri t ! sneered at least a half Al ways looking for a chance to dozen in the same breath ” make money I ignored the sarcastic sa llies and asked for bids The Of fers began at ten marks rose swiftly and stopped a ve moment later at twenty fi T o a German that was still the equivalent of ten dollars I regret to report that the successful bidder was a disgus t ingly fat Jewess who seemed l east in need Of nourishment of the entire carload The cheerful looking young man w h o had bought the first a ncée morsels had been eager to carry this prize to the fi he was soon to see for the first time since demobilization but he had abandoned the race at twenty marks ” I went on Now then mei ne Da men u nd H erren haug htily when the purchaser had tucked the chocolate into her jeweled arm bag with a sybaritic leer and laid the speci fied sum before me I am no war profi t e er nor have I the soul of a merchant These twenty fi v e marks I shall hand t o this gentleman opposite h e had the appearance of one who could safely be intrusted with that amount with the understanding that he give it to the first g ra nd blessé he meets— the fi rst soldier w ho has lost an arm a ” leg or an eye The expressions of praise that arose on all sides grew maudlin The trustee I had chosen ceremoniously wrote his address on a visiting card and handed it to the Jewess requesti ng hers in return and promising to forward a receipt signed by the recipient of the noble American b enefac ” tion Then he fell i nto conv ersation with me learned the purpose that had brought me to Germany and i rn plore d me to continue to E ssen with him where he was connected with the K ru pp factories He would see to it that I was received by Herr von Krupp Bohlen himself .
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3 53
VAGA BONDING THROUGH C HANGING
GER MANY
the husband of Frau Bertha whom the Kaiser had permitted to saddle himself with the glorious family name—and that I be conducted into every corner o f the plant a priv il ege which had been accorded no All ied correspondent His pleas grew almost tearful in since the war began spite of my reminde r that time and transatlantic steamers wait for no man The world he blubbered had a wh olly false notion ofthe great K rupps of E ssen They were really overflowing with charit y Were they not paying regular w ages to almost their war time force of workmen though there was employment for only a small fraction of them ? It was high tim e a fair m inded report wiped ou t the slanders that had been heaped upon a noble famil y and establish ment by the wicked Allied propagandists E ssen at least woul d never be troubled with labor agitators and Spart i ci st uprisings We reached B entheim on the frontier at four Mos t of my companions o f the chocolate episode had been left behind with the change of cars at LOh ne and the coaches now disgorged a throng offat prosperous looking Hollanders fering after all are good for the soul one could War and suf not but reflect at the sudden change from the adversity tamed Germans to these gross red faced paunchy over fed Dutchmen who though i t be something approaching heresy to say so perhaps were far less agreeable to every sense w h o had something i n their manner that suggested that their acquaintance was not worth cul tivating My last chance for a German adventure had come U nless the frontier of f i ci al s at B entheim visited their wrath upon me in some form or other my journey through the Fatherland would forever remain like the memory of a Sunday school — picnic in the crater ofan extinct volcano a picnic to which most ofthe party had neglected t o bring their lunch baskets and where the rest had spilled their scant fare several times in the sand and ashes along the way ,
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3 54
VAGABONDING THR OUGH CHANGING GER MANY There was but one barri er left between me and freedom Judging from the disheveled appearance of the fat H ol landers who emerged after long delay in every case from the little wooden booths along the wall the personal search that awaited me would be exacting and thorough O ne coul d not expect them t o take my word for it that I h ad no German money or other forbidden valuables concealed about my pe rson Yet that was exactly what they did ” True five weeks ofknocking about in a hand me down that had been no fit costume for attending a court function in the first place had not left me the appearance ofa walking treasury Bu t frontier officials commonly put less faith in the ou t w ard aspe ct of their victims than did the courteous German soldier who dropped his hands at his sides as I mentioned my nationality and opened the door again with ou t laying a finger upon me ” Happy journey he smiled as I tur ned away and and when you get back to America tell them to send us more food My last hope of adventure had faded away and Germany lay behind me At O ldenzaal the Dutch were more exact ing in their formalities than their neighbors had been but they admitted me without any other opposition than the racial leisureliness that caused me t o miss the evening train A stroll through the frontier village was like walking through a teeming market place after escape from a desert island The shop wi ndows bul ged with every conceivable species — fs heaps of immense fat sausages suspended of foodstuf carcasses of well fed cattle calves sheep and hogs huge wooden pails ofbutter overflowi ng baskets o feggs hillocks countless of chocolate and sweets of every description cans of cocoa I had almost forgotten that nature abetted by industry supplied manki nd with such abundance and variety of appetizing things I restrained with di f f i cul ty my impulse to buy o feverything in sight .
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3 56
HOM EWAR D
FLYING
A t the h otel that evening the steak that w as casu ally M ore set b efore me woul d have instigated a ri ot in B erlin I over , i t w as surrounded by a sea of succul ent gr av y not recall ev er havi ng seen a drop of gravy could .
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Germany When I paid my bill bright silver coins were handed me as change A workman across the room lighted a fat cigar as nonchalantly as i f they grew on the trees outside the window Lux uri ous pri vate a utomobi les ro ll ed past on noiseless rubber tires In the train nex t morning the eye w as i nstantly attracted t o the w indow straps of real leather t o the perfect con A German returning t o his dition Of the seat cushi ons pre w ar residence i n B uenos A ir es with his Argentine wi fe and t w o attracti v e daughters whom I had met at tab l e the evening before insisted that I share his compartment wi th th em He had spent three months and several thousand marks t o obtain his passports and the authorities at the border had forced hi m to leave behind all but the amount barely suf f i cient t o pay hi s expenses t o his desti nati on T h e transp lanted wi fe was far more pro German i n her u tterances than her husband and flayed the wicke d ” A lli es ceas elessly i n her fiery nativ e tongu e D uri ng all the journey the youngest daughter a gir l ofsixteen whose u n quali fied beauty hi ghly sanctioned thi s particul ar mi xt ure of races sat huddl ed together i n her corner li ke a statue of bodily suffering Only once that morning did sh e open her faul tless lips At my expression ofsolicitude she turned her breath taking countenance toward me and murmured in a tone that made even German sound musical : Y ou see we hav e not been used t o rich food i n Ge rmany — i i s nce I was a ch ld and and last night I ate so much The stern days ofthe Kaiser s reg i m e with their depress ing submergence of personal liberty woul d seem to have faded away D uri ng all my weeks of wanderi ng at larg e throug hout the Fatherland not once di d a g u ardi an oft h e i n all
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3 57
VAGABON DIN G THROUGH CHAN GING GE RMANY
l aw so much as whi sper i n my car In contrast duri ng twenty four hours i n H olland I was twi ce taken i n ch a rg e ” — by detecti ves i t seems th ey were looking for a bi rd — named Vogel once i n the streets of O ldenzaa l and agai n as I descended from t h e trai n at Rotterdam .
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TH E EN D
