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Title: Watching on the Rhine

Author: Violet R. Markham

Release date: December 30, 2022 [eBook #69662]
                Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: George H. Doran Company

Credits: David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WATCHING ON THE RHINE ***

WATCHING ON THE RHINE

VIOLET R. MARKHAM




“_That which was to be done by war and arms in Latium has now been
fully accomplished by the bounty of the gods and the valour of the
soldiers. The armies of the enemy have been cut down.... It now remains
to be considered how we may keep them in the observance of perpetual
peace.... Ye can therefore ensure to yourselves perpetual peace so far
as the Latins are concerned, either by adopting severe or conciliatory
measures. Do ye choose to take harsh measures against people who have
surrendered and who have been conquered? Ye may destroy all Latium....
Do ye wish to follow the example of your forefathers and augment the
power of Rome by conferring the citizenship on the people you have
beaten? Materials for extending your power by the highest glory are at
hand.... But whatever determination ye wish to come to, it is necessary
that it be speedy. So many states have ye in a condition of suspense
between hope and fear._”

                                                       _Livy viii. 13._




  WATCHING ON THE
  RHINE

  BY

  VIOLET R. MARKHAM

  AUTHOR OF “SOUTH AFRICA PAST AND PRESENT,”
  “THE SOUTH AFRICAN SCENE,” ETC.

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




  COPYRIGHT, 1921,
  BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




FOREWORD


“Here then will we begin the story: only adding thus much to that which
hath been said, that it is a foolish thing to make a long prologue and
to be short in the story itself.”




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER I
                                        PAGE

  THE APPROACH                            11


  CHAPTER II

  COLOGNE AND THE OCCUPATION              20


  CHAPTER III

  THE KÖLNER DOM                          42


  CHAPTER IV

  ON THE DOM PLATZ                        54


  CHAPTER V

  BILLETS                                 65


  CHAPTER VI

  CHRISTMAS IN COLOGNE                    76


  CHAPTER VII

  THE BERGISCHE LAND                      83


  CHAPTER VIII

  IN SEARCH OF A FISHING                  95


  CHAPTER IX

  WHO PAYS?                              104


  CHAPTER X

  CERTAIN CITIES AND THE SAAR BASIN      119


  CHAPTER XI

  FROM METZ TO VERDUN                    139


  CHAPTER XII

  IN ALSACE                              156


  CHAPTER XIII

  SOME ELECTIONEERING IMPRESSIONS        172


  CHAPTER XIV

  HATRED                                 206


  CHAPTER XV

  THE GERMAN VIEW OF ENGLAND             223


  CHAPTER XVI

  WATCHMAN--WHAT OF THE NIGHT?           247




WATCHING ON THE RHINE




WATCHING ON THE RHINE




CHAPTER I

THE APPROACH

_July 1919_


Four A.M.: the slowly moving engine comes to a standstill with a jolt
which wakes me from the uneasy half-sleep of a train journey. I lift a
corner of the blind and look out. It is the grey hour before the dawn,
when night still wrestles with morning for the possession of the coming
day. A ruined building lit up by a station flare stares at me stark and
desolate. In the quarter light a long street of battered houses is also
dimly visible. Lille! We have come through the worst of the devastated
area in the night, but the hall-mark of the invader lies stamped on the
big industrial town, the very name of which is associated henceforth
with suspense, with anguish, with triumph. The military train begins
to move again cautiously over temporary bridges and a permanent way
not as yet permanently repaired. We are far removed from the days when
continental expresses and sleeping-cars swept in a few hours from one
capital to another. The miracle is to be in this slow-moving train at
all which links the British base in France with the occupied German
area. Ruined houses look in through the window, phantom buildings of
which nothing but the outer walls remain. Yet, as I strain my eyes in
the dim light, I see something else; something which was not visible
when I last visited a devastated area in March--here and there a house
already rebuilt, stacks of bricks neatly piled, rubbish sifted and
cleared, stones laid in order for the mason’s hand. Yes, there has been
“cleaning up” during the last five months--the most tragic cleaning up
which can ever befall a nation. And clearly France, with her amazing
energy and recuperative powers, has already flung herself into the task
of repairing the desolate places. It is a grim and mighty task which
awaits our Ally.

Stricken though the towns, the land, desolate, barren, uncultivated,
has a pathos all its own. As we move ever eastwards and the dawn comes
up in the sky, the nakedness of the fields invaded by coarse grass
and weeds symbolises the sufferings of France. But in the growing
light evidences appear in the fields of the same brave spirit which is
reclaiming the towns. Here and there a half-destroyed farmhouse has
been patched up, and a thin cloud of smoke rises from the battered
chimney. Across the silent fields a team of horses is being led out to
work; a woman drives out her cows or is seen surrounded by clamorous
poultry. France may be sorely wounded, but the spirit of France cannot
be destroyed. France, for all her losses, has hope in her heart, and
amid the desolation of war, hope, like some beautiful flower, blossoms
once again.

Eastward, always eastward, for we are bound through the lands of the
conquering victim to those of the humbled oppressor. With every mile
the visible signs of war grow less, though houses and buildings along
the railway show marks of gunfire long after the land has regained its
normal aspect. First and last, districts through which the railways
pass have suffered most both in advance and retreat; a fact to which
the scarred stations bear witness.

By the time the sun is shining brightly we have passed beyond the
outer fringes of desolation and are again in a prosperous-looking
land. The sight of Maubeuge recalled many an anxious moment during the
great German invasion of 1914. Outwardly the town appeared to have
suffered but little. As we crossed the Belgian frontier a general view
of the country as seen from the carriage windows conveyed the same
impression. The soil was well cultivated, the houses in good order.
There are no evidences of the presence of a hostile army beyond the
occasional destruction of a bridge blown up during the German retreat.
The spiritual yoke of an enemy occupation for four and a half years
must have been intolerable, but material damage was clearly confined to
the first and last days of the war. And Belgium has the matter in hand.
She is at work, working, working all the time. From countless buildings
the Belgian flag waving in the sunshine proclaimed the glad tidings
of a land released from its invaders and restored to its original
place among nations. The little valleys of the Ardennes, the factory
chimneys of Liège, seem at one in telling the same tale of liberty
regained. There is an indescribable air of gaiety among the people on
the roadside, a sense of laughter and merry-making. Aerschot, Dinant,
Louvain would, of course, tell a different tale, but in southern
Belgium it would seem that the grip of the invader was of a different
quality from his strangle-hold on France.

Still eastward, and now with a thrill of indescribable emotion we find
ourselves at Herbesthal, the German frontier. Before us in the sunshine
lie the broad fertile plains of the people whose rulers have deluged
the world with blood and tears. One remembers with bowed head the
many million lives laid down before we handful of British folk could
journey thus far into the country of the enemy who had challenged our
very existence. With the memory of shattered and devastated France
before our eyes, we think with sternness no punishment can be too
severe in expiation of the crime under whose consequences the world is
staggering to-day. A train-load of German prisoners, homeward bound,
runs into the station. They cheer, not very loudly or energetically,
it is true, but nevertheless they cheer as once again they touch the
soil of the Fatherland. From the windows we catch sight of eager,
excited faces among the shabby men in their faded uniforms. Insensibly
the heart softens. They too have gone through hardship and suffering,
just ordinary men glad to be home again, eager to see wife and child
and sweetheart. And then, as the train rolls forward, suddenly on the
threshold of the enemy’s land comes the remembrance of those noble
words, one of the few great utterances which illumine the darkness and
the passions of war, “Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred
or bitterness in my heart.”

The hands of brutal men could not touch the serenity of Edith Cavell’s
soul. On the threshold of a cruel death her spirit had soared above
the hideous welter of passion and brutality all around. She saw these
things in the light of eternity; saw also the ultimate good of life
express itself, not in the narrow terms of race, but in abiding
spiritual values. The demand for vengeance which followed on her
death has to a large extent obscured the greatness of her message.
Yet Edith Cavell indicated expressly that vengeance was not the way.
No individual during the war has thrown a ray of light more clear on
the turmoil of the struggle. But the path she trod is not an easy one,
and many who honour her name shrink from a task of self-conquest so
great as what she indicates.... No hatred and no bitterness: and we are
English people crossing the German frontier for the first time after
the war.... What has Edith Cavell to say to each one of us?

Aix-la-Chapelle--Aachen--with its memories of Charlemagne, King of the
Franks, lies some ten miles within the German frontier. Few outward
signs of its venerable history survive in the busy manufacturing centre
of to-day. The cathedral, founded by Charlemagne, where the ashes of
the great monarch lie buried, rises--an incongruous and protesting
relic--among factories, tall chimneys, and all the ugly apparatus of
modern industry. Aachen is in Belgian occupation, and we stare from
our carriage windows at a mixed throng of Belgian soldiers, British
Tommies, and German civilians, with whom the station is crowded.

It is a little difficult to express in words the conflict of feelings
in your mind as you enter Germany. You are certainly prepared for
something dramatic. It is almost with a shock you realise that German
civilians are not equipped with hoofs and horns or other attributes
of a Satanic character. After all, they look just like any one else:
tidy, well-dressed, self-respecting people--the typical German crowd of
old days. But certainly you expected to see some outward and visible
signs of military occupation, apart from the familiar sight of khaki
soldiers; visions of a Germany bristling with guns; of burgomasters
and high officials walking about with halters, actual or metaphorical,
round their necks; of a sullen, conquered people casting looks of
hatred on conquerors who move among them in no small peril of their
lives. If such is the anticipation, it proves to be ludicrously remote
from the reality. The outstanding fact in the occupied territory,
and one which fills an English visitor with ever-growing amazement,
is the complete acquiescence of the Germans in the situation. Life
is astonishingly normal. Khaki soldiers have replaced grey-coated
soldiers. Otherwise everything seems to go on exactly as before. These
amazing people, outwardly at least, do not appear to mind that their
country is occupied by hostile armies. The Germans on the Aachen
platform were moving about and talking in a placid, undisturbed manner.
Their indifference to the British and Belgian soldiers appeared to be
absolute. A picture rose before my eyes of an English station occupied
by German troops: would equal apathy and indifference have been shown
under such conditions? In this as in many other respects the German
psychology is a riddle to which no answer seems forthcoming, and it is
a riddle the perplexity of which will be found to deepen with every
hour spent in the occupied territory.

Between Aachen and Cologne the train runs through a district rich in
natural resources, both mineral and agricultural. We pass many large
factories of modern construction in which, thanks to smoke-saving
apparatus, the dirt of our own industrial districts has been avoided.
Those factories are not idle. It is true not every large chimney is
smoking, but some chimneys in every group show that work is going on.
The Rhineland industries are to a large extent independent of imported
material, and the activities in this district cannot be taken as an
index to the rest of Germany. Similarly with the soil. Agricultural
experts tell us that taken as a whole the soil of Germany is naturally
poor. Only immense scientific care and attention made it possible in
pre-war days for the land to yield 85 per cent. of the nation’s food.
But here in the Rhineland the quality of the crops must strike the most
casual traveller. With the thin English harvest in mind, I can only
marvel at these bumper crops--the thick yellow corn, the potatoes, the
roots, the mealies, the general impression of agricultural prosperity.
The land is in perfect order. Every twig looks as though it had been
put in splints. Whatever else has suffered, prisoners’ labour, or
labour of some kind, has kept the land clean and in order. Compare the
large areas of devastation in France with this fat, smiling country
bearing no visible signs of any kind of war, and the bitterness in many
French hearts seems very natural. It is difficult to associate stories
of want and starvation with a rich country like this. Yet it was quite
clear that at the last Germany was brought to her knees by hunger.
The surface impression of prosperity in one particular district may
be misleading--the reality may prove on closer acquaintance to be of
grimmer stuff!

Already a hundred questions beset my mind as Cologne Cathedral comes
into sight. There is something typically German about the unwieldy
appearance of the Kölner Dom crowned with its preposterous spires. Many
years had passed since I was last in Cologne. As the line ran through
the clean, well-built suburbs, I remembered vaguely an hotel on the
Dom Platz, and a general impression of tall, robust men drinking beer
and eating large meals. From a dusty shelf in memory’s cupboard came
the recollection of some careless remark made to an English friend--I
hoped there would never be war between England and Germany, because
judging by the physique of the men, war with them would be no trifling
affair....

The train has drawn up in the fine Haupt Bahnhof. Two W.A.A.C.
administrators, courteous and businesslike, examine tickets and visas.
A large German standing meekly, hat in hand, before the fair-haired
English girl stamping his pass is eloquent as to some lessons taught by
the Occupation. Amazing is the scene which breaks on the traveller on
emerging from the railway station. Khaki-clad soldiers swarm in every
direction. Soldiers, soldiers; they overflow the railway station, the
square, the Hohenzollern bridge. The Dom rises grim and protesting
from a sea of khaki. Government lorries lumber down the streets; the
square in front of the Excelsior Hotel, where a modest Union Jack
over the door proclaims the presence of G.H.Q., is crowded with cars.
Every branch of the service is here in force. Uniformed women on whom
the Boche gazes with peculiar annoyance are common. Selected W.A.A.C.
administrators are carrying on responsible work of various kinds.
Searching German women passengers whose clothes are found to be
stuffed with sausages must have its humours as well as its drawbacks.

The W.R.A.F. is here as a force. Army nurses in red and grey and the
blue of the V.A.D.’s vary the monotony of the prevalent mustard colour.
Here and there one sees the blue headdress of a British Empire Leave
Club worker, the girls who do much for the entertainment of Thomas
Atkins in a foreign town. Y.M.C.A., Church Army, and half a dozen other
organisations are all to the fore. Atkins must be a much-amused man
with so many willing workers to cater for his needs. This is the Army
of Occupation as it came up from the fields of victory over 200,000
strong. Large numbers of troops are quartered, not only in Cologne, but
throughout the occupied area and the bridgehead. But demobilisation
has already laid its hand on this great force. The sluices are drawn
and civilian life will shortly reclaim the lads who crowd the town
and area. It is a wonderful sight to have seen, a wonderful moment
in history to have experienced. The German goes about his work in
the middle of this English crowd apparently as unconcerned as his
fellow-countrymen at Aachen and Düren. But what at heart is he thinking
of it all? What actions and reactions are likely to result from this
strange assembly of people thrown together by the compelling force of
the sword on the banks of the Rhine?




CHAPTER II

COLOGNE AND THE OCCUPATION


During the war we thought and talked with anguish daily of that line of
trenches stretching from Switzerland to the sea where men suffered and
died. Even the most unimaginative were stirred to emotion by stories
of the strange semi-subterranean existence which modern conditions
of warfare had imposed on the armies of Europe. To-day another line
stretches for a distance nearly as great along the banks of the
Rhine, but the men composing it are no longer compelled to dwell
as troglodytes. The German word for Armistice, “Waffenstillstand,”
literally “the standing still of the weapons,” expresses very
graphically the conditions under which the Armies of Occupation live.
The line has moved east from the horrors and desolation of devastated
France to the rich provinces of the left bank of the Rhine. Cannons are
silent; bombs drop no more. But the weapons, though standing still, are
there, and determine the strange existence which we Allies lead among a
conquered people.

Along the line of the Rhine, therefore, lie the armies of the
conquering powers in a peace their guns have ensured and maintain. The
French hold the southern end with their headquarters at Mainz, and
Wiesbaden, most attractive of spas, as a centre of refreshment in the
lighter moments of life. Next come the Americans at Coblenz, then the
English at Cologne, finally the Belgians in the north. As time has
gone on the English occupation has become smaller and smaller, while
the French has increased proportionately. Nobody quite knows what
position the Americans hold at Coblenz, for America has not signed the
Peace Treaty, and her forces remain in theory entirely independent of
obligations which apply to the signatory powers. But, thanks to the
wise and statesmanlike guidance of the American Commander-in-Chief,
General Allen, an anomalous position has in practice worked without
friction.

As for the life we lead in Occupied Germany, certainly during the early
days very few people at home were able to appreciate the measure of its
comfort and security. On returning to England for the first time on a
visit from Cologne, I was met by many anxious inquiries from friends
and relatives. Was it really safe for me to be in such a place? Of
course I never walked about the town alone? Did the Germans spit at
me? Perhaps out of fear they repressed that natural inclination, but
of course they were as insolent as they dared under the circumstances?
Had we machine guns at every street corner ready to fire? Others in the
same breath, both militant and inconsequent--of course I never spoke
to the brutes, but naturally I laid it across them if I did ... it was
to be hoped I had lost no opportunity of rubbing in their enormities.
Two pictures out of many rose before my mind as I listened to these
remarks....

A hot August evening in Cologne. A large crowd fills the Zoological
Gardens, where an open-air concert is being held. Singers from Cologne
and other opera houses have given us selections of German, French, and
Italian music in a spirit entirely catholic. Equally catholic is their
reception by the large and appreciative cosmopolitan crowd. In front of
the open-air stage, Germans, French, English, and Americans sit side
by side at little tables drinking beer or Rhine wine. The music is
heard in complete silence, even Thomas Atkins compelled thereto by the
_genius loci_. On the terrace of the neighbouring restaurant dinner is
proceeding. Numerous German families, the girls in muslin frocks and
summer hats, are out together for the evening. At a table next to ours
a small group of men, unmistakably soldiers, are dining together. They
are all in plain clothes, but two of them wear in their buttonholes the
minute, scarcely visible black-and-white ribbon of the Iron Cross. The
German prima-donna sings the well-known air from _La Bohème_. She is
loudly applauded by all present, by no one more energetically than by
a French officer sitting near me. As darkness comes on, illuminations
add their gaiety to the scene, pink and white lights shining among the
dark leaves. A peaceful, happy gathering, with laughter, and music, and
beer--the music and the beer both of excellent quality. Forget for a
moment that the uniforms are khaki, not grey, put back the clock five
years, and who would suspect the tragic bonds of blood and strife in
which the company are united? Is the war a dream or a nightmare? Is
Europe white with the bones of the millions who have died; is Germany
itself staggering on the edge of ruin and starvation? If so, how can
this musical fête, this peaceful bourgeois gathering, be possible; the
enemies of yesterday eating and drinking and applauding side by side as
though nothing had happened? What does it all mean? What is one doing
there oneself?...

Again: near the house in which we live a chronic fair goes on every
afternoon. Swing-boats, roundabouts, shooting-galleries, all the
various side-shows of an English country feast are here. Drinks,
ice-cream, and refreshments are no less to the fore. Music, that
monotonous braying music which always accompanies a merry-go-round,
goes on mechanically for many hours. Here Thomas Atkins gathers in
force. The thrifty Boche, in fact, has created the whole fair for his
entertainment at a modest price. It is characteristic of the race that
they not only accept the British Occupation with entire acquiescence,
but endeavour by every means in their power to turn it to good account.
Notices in English explain the nature of the side-shows. All prices are
marked in plain figures. Reprehensible though it may be, Gretchen not
infrequently is to be seen on the roundabouts and in the swing-boats
with the said Thomas. Picture-postcards, trinkets, souvenirs, are all
for sale. The shooting-galleries are crowded by soldiers still anxious
to let off their piece in a more harmless fashion than on the scarred
battle-line far away to the west. The Germans are out to amuse, the
English to be amused. Perfect good temper animates both buyers and
sellers. Introspection is hardly the hall-mark of the soldier in the
ranks, and the English lads who lounge about from booth to booth never
give a thought to the amazing situation in which they find themselves.
Many of them on demobilisation leave Cologne with real regret. It is
a clean, decent place, with more than decent beer. After all Fritz is
not such a bad fellow.... In the long and varied history of Britain’s
rule overseas has the Pax Britannica ever held sway under conditions
so strange as these? As darkness falls the fair is lit up by great
flares, and the scene grows more and more animated. Cologne, with
large resources in the shape of a cheap fuel supply in its immediate
neighbourhood, is well off both as regards light and heat. But at last
all is silent. Curfew has rung for the Germans, the Last Post for the
English. That desperate tune repeated for hours by the merry-go-round
is mercifully at an end for the night. To-morrow it will all begin
again, and so on day after day....

What are we to make of the civility of these people among whom we
live as conquerors? How can it be reconciled with their arrogance and
brutality when they had the upper hand in France and Belgium? These
middle-class families, these quiet, respectable working-class people
enjoying their simple pleasures, what part did they take in the insults
heaped on prisoners and captives? Did these parents and children
rejoice and cheer when submarines sent other women and children to
their deaths? What kind of conscience do they carry for the war? How
can they outwardly at least bear so little grudge against the people
who have beaten them? With whom does the responsibility for the war
rest? During the struggle many of us would have vowed Burke was at
fault in his great axiom that you cannot indict a nation. Germany
seemed to us then to be the very spirit of wickedness incarnate. Here
face to face it seems more difficult. What baffling chameleon-like
quality do these people possess, that they can outrage the conscience
of the whole world and yet give one the impression that as individuals
many of them are kindly, decent folk?

The riddle seems insoluble, and I do not pretend to have any key to it.
German mentality is so constituted that it is violent and arrogant
in success, chastened and polite in defeat. That the whole nation is
consciously playing a part seems hard to believe. They are too clumsy
in mind and body for so continuous an effort of deception, too thick
about the ankles and too thick about the wits. Some of the English in
Cologne call them servile. Personally the adjective hardly seems to
me to meet the case. But they are curiously correct, even courteous.
I went about Cologne, on arrival, Baedeker in hand, as any pre-war
tourist might have done. Both in trams and trains I received, more than
once, small civilities from Germans who put me on my way seeing that I
was a stranger. As an English woman I marvelled at their civility. It
was the same in the shops. The family in whose house we were billeted
on my first arrival, were, I am sure, far less embarrassed by my advent
than I was at the prospect of using their rooms. I was haunted by a
sense of the rage with which I should have endured the presence of
a German woman in my house. But after a day or two I ceased to have
scruples about a situation which apparently did not trouble them.
It was a relief to accept their attitude to us, as it might be, of
hosts and paying guests to whose comfort they desired to contribute.
Daily we exchanged small civilities. Naturally we were careful to
leave no ragged edges in such a situation. Often I speculated on
the transformation scene which might have resulted from a change in
our respective positions. The old housekeeper had the hall-mark of
the Prussian on her. I should be sorry to be within her reach as a
prisoner. But the lady of the house, who had lost two sons in the war,
appeared to be a kindly soul. She was a good musician, and I furtively
and unsuccessfully ransacked the music she put at my disposal to find
a copy of the Hymn of Hate.

A pleasant Fräulein comes to talk German with me daily, and from her,
directly and indirectly, I have learnt much which interests me about
the German attitude. I was fortunate in the chance which threw us
together, for she is an attractive, broad-minded girl, singularly free
from prejudice and bitterness. During an acquaintance extending over
many months we have learnt to know and like each other, and have long
since forgotten we are technically enemies. My Fräulein has lived both
in England and France and has friends in both countries. Her lover and
her brother were killed in the war. Another brother survives, more dead
than alive. The hunger pinch was severe in the Rhineland, which was
always better off than other parts of Germany. Of air raids she spoke
with unmistakable horror. Bombs had fallen in her near neighbourhood
on one occasion, so she told me; it was a case of spending every night
in the cellar. All this came as a surprise to me, because not a brick
seems out of place in Cologne. Still more was I interested by her
denunciations of evils which sounded strangely familiar. Profiteering,
it was scandalous what had gone on! All the horrible people who had
made money out of the war and the sufferings of the nation. The new
rich were a disgrace. The Government had been very slack in dealing
with them. And then the skulkers, the shameful young men who went to
earth in reserved occupations and offices and did not go to fight.
Food? They had starved in the towns, so ineffective was the system
of distribution. The country people who grew the food took care not
to part with it. The new Government? She shrugged her shoulders in
despair. Since the Revolution things had gone from bad to worse. Every
one was discontented, especially all the work-people, who spend their
time demanding higher wages and shorter hours. And servants, there were
none left. No girls would go out to work; they had all been spoilt by
high wages in munition works.

As I listened I rubbed my eyes, and wondered if I were sitting in
London or Cologne. How often at home had one listened to complaints
of this very type about the shortcomings of the working-classes,
always pointed by the remark that, however wicked, the efficient
Hun Government managed these things much better in Germany. And yet
apparently every complaint with which we were familiar in England was
also in full blast here. Always with one great difference, to which I
must refer again in another chapter: the Germans for years were hungry,
and they fought the war with starvation slowly eating out their hearts.

A remark current in England, and sometimes heard even on the Rhine, is
to the effect that the Germans do not know they are beaten. Do not know
they are beaten? Should we know we were beaten if great districts of
our country were occupied by enemy armies; if we had German officers
and their wives and families quartered in our houses; if our officials
had to take their orders from occupying Prussians; if all our barracks
and public buildings and places of amusement were taken over; if the
opera and theatre had to conform to German rules; if the tennis courts,
the golf club, the polo ground, the racecourse were all monopolised
by Germans, and we obtained by an act of grace on the part of our
conquerors such privileges as they might think well to bestow on us? If
that were our fate, should we labour under much doubt as to the hard
facts of the situation?

Superficially it is true that life seems to flow in very normal
channels in Cologne. But, in fact, the country is beaten flat
and cannot at the moment stand alone. However bitter the cup of
humiliation, better the presence of a conqueror who has kept order,
provided food, administered even-handed justice, and dealt fairly
between man and man, than the horrors of hunger and revolution. As for
the French, it cannot be expected that France with the memories of 1870
and 1914 burnt deep into her very marrow, France dragged twice through
the fire, can approach the tasks of occupation in the same spirit as
the more detached Britons who have less to forget. Set an Englishman
to administer the country of his worst enemy, and that country at once
becomes an administrative problem, to be run on the best possible
lines. The Watch on the Rhine yet again has proved the half-unconscious
genius of our race for government, which is at one and the same time
just, firm, and sensible.

We have been very fortunate in our military administration. Those in
command are able, far-sighted men, who have known how to take a broad
view and a long view of Germany’s present position. The blood-thirsty
old women of both sexes whose one object in life is to perpetuate the
hatreds and violences of the war are civilian products. The fighting
soldiers are at one and the same time more generous, and in the true
sense more pacific. They realise the chasm on the brink of which
Germany stands shivering. They also realise the truth, still but dimly
grasped in England, that a general collapse on the part of Germany
will be disastrous, not only for her, but for the rest of the world.
No one will benefit by a spread of anarchy through Central Europe,
least of all ourselves. The men who have smashed the German war-machine
have taken the measure of their foe. No nonsense of any kind would
be tolerated. When an order is given it has to be obeyed. They are
equally devoid of sentimentality and false illusions. But they realise
the appalling task with which the new German Government is struggling,
and the importance of a successful outcome to that struggle. And it is
their aim to make it possible for the country to stagger to its feet
again, to put an end to starvation, to set industry going, to preserve
law and order. Also they will admit frankly they have found many of the
Germans with whom they have had to deal capable and amenable.

The German civilian officials and the police work under the military
authorities, and have worked without difficulty or friction. The
Occupation has a fine and honourable record. The behaviour of the
troops has been good. Soldiers have won real popularity in the country
districts. Incidents and brawls will of course occur from time to time
among large bodies of men, but they have had no racial or political
significance. The forces on the Rhine are at present one of the great
factors making for peace and order in Europe. Not for the purposes of
military adventure or conquest, but as a constructive administrative
machine, the present British régime in the Occupied Area is an
admirable instrument.

To an island race like ourselves, dwelling in a land long inviolate,
there is something peculiarly humiliating in the thought of an enemy
occupation. But it must be remembered that the German, in this as in
many other respects, is made of tougher stuff. Invasion is to him an
old and familiar story. The Rhineland in particular has been overrun
time after time. Neither is it any novelty for the French to find
themselves again in provinces on which in the past French armies have
left their mark repeatedly. It is an old story, this quarrel between
France and Germany, and to date it from 1870 is to err in historical
perspective.

Yet disciplined and submissive though the German is to the harsh
verdicts of war--never harsher than when applied by himself--there must
be some peculiar sting in the presence of the enemy on the banks of the
Rhine. For every national sentiment the nation possesses centres round
the river famed in song and story. German patriotic literature of the
“Wacht am Rhein” type is mediocre in quality, but it is eloquent of the
spirit of the people. Even Heine, cynic and often anti-patriot, sings
proudly of “der heilige Strom.” In periods of defeat and oppression
Germans of an older date have found in the cleansing waters of the
great stream a symbol of hope and regeneration. Few foreigners even can
resist the spell of the Rhine. Mighty rivers have a message to give to
the restless heart of man as their waters sweep by, eternal yet ever
changing. Cradled in mountain snows virginal and remote, destined in
the end to know the final purification and joyousness of the ocean,
the course of any famous river as it flows from mountain to plain,
from village to town, becomes an image of the flight of time and the
vicissitudes of human life.

The romantic stretches of the Rhine lie south of Bonn. Here are castles
and vineyards, and scenes of many a legendary exploit. At Bonn the long
gorge beginning at Bingen comes to an end, and the Rhine enters the
broad plain in which Cologne is situated. Often sullied and defiled by
the factories on its banks, nothing can destroy the sense of grandeur
as the great volume of water sweeps forward to its fate. A hard lot for
such a river to be caught in the end by the mud shallows and flats of
Holland, and to make its final way to the sea broken up into countless
minor streams!

At Cologne the Rhine is still untroubled by any sense of the doom which
awaits it. The river takes a wide bend as it approaches the town, a
lucky chance which is admirable from the aesthetic point of view. The
traffic is very considerable. Huge barges bearing coal, iron, and all
manner of merchandise are dragged up stream by powerful tugs. At night
the view from the banks is mysterious and beautiful. A great net of
twinkling lights cast over town and quays is reflected a hundredfold in
the dark waters. Lights from the barges, anchored alongside the banks
after the day’s work, twinkle back in reply to the messages from the
shore. Everything seems astir, as though town and river were moved by
some dim half-earthly emotion. When morning comes it will reveal that
many of these fairy lights only mark the presence of factories and
workshops. But night with her indigo mantle has given another and more
mysterious turn to the scene. The massive Hohenzollern bridge which
spans the river exactly opposite the Dom is a typical expression of the
spirit of modern Germany--strong, powerful, practical. It is a fine
bridge, and I have so much to say in criticism of German taste that I
am glad for once in a way to note the entire success with which they
have handled an architectural problem concerned with the carrying, at
one and the same time, of railway lines, trams, and passenger traffic.
Especially fine is the bridge at night, when it hangs like a chain of
light across the river; trams and trains passing like swift-moving
constellations among the firmament of the illuminated spans and
pillars. The awkward mass of the Dom lies in close proximity to the
bridge, but they do not interfere with one another.

The bronze equestrian figures of the four Hohenzollern kings which
guard the two ends of the bridge are among the few satisfactory
examples of modern monuments which I have seen in Germany. Generally
speaking, the country is bespattered with statues of the Hohenzollerns,
the artistic merit of which is nil. Never did a reigning house impose
itself so mercilessly, in bronze, stone, and iron, on a docile people.
Cologne, needless to say, has an ample share of imperial statues. The
Emperor William I. had a head which in particular did not lend itself
to plastic treatment; his whiskers, which jump at one from innumerable
squares, have a tendency to rouse my worst passions. There is little
humorous in the state of Germany to-day, but the onlooker can extract
some minor entertainment from the squabbles which rage in official
and unofficial German circles as to the fate of the Hohenzollern
statues. The Socialists, in fiery language, complain that the mind
of young Germany is being corrupted by these flaunting images of an
oppressive autocracy, and demand that the statues be consigned to the
decent obscurity of the cellars of the local museum. The bourgeoisie
are equally loud in the demand that the statues should be treated as
historical relics and left where they are. The topic bids fair to
become the hardy annual of Socialist perorations. Meanwhile there is
other work to be done and the Hohenzollerns remain.

Life in Cologne is very pleasant for the occupying army. As with the
Hohenzollern bridge, so with the town itself--it is typical of the
material excellence which before the war marked the German organisation
of practical life. German local authorities throughout the country
have kept a firm and admirable grasp on the town-planning of their
large modern cities. The individualism of the speculative builder
is not allowed to run riot here. Not only are the new quarters in
Cologne well and solidly built, but open spaces abound. Fortifications
can have their sanitary uses, for near the antiquated forts in the
suburbs stretches a broad belt of open country devoted to allotments
and market gardens. There are no signs of the jerry-builder running up
shoddy houses to the detriment of future generations. Except in the
old quarters of the town along the Rhine there are no obvious slums.
Yet Germany, like all the rest of the world, is feeling the shortage
of houses which has been an economic consequence of the war, and
complaints of overcrowding are common.

But the real interest of Cologne lies elsewhere than in the prosperous
latter-day development of the town. The wide streets and boulevards
encircle the kernel of a famous mediaeval city. And mediaeval Cologne
goes back to a still older foundation. The modern buildings and opulent
dwelling-houses of the Ring smother, but cannot wholly obliterate, the
memories of the Empress Agrippina and the settlement, called after her,
Colonia Agrippina--subsequently Colonia--Köln.

My friend, Mr. John Buchan, always declares that countries which
have been romanised stand in a wholly different category from savage
lands, such as Prussia, which have never known that great civilising
influence. The Rhineland, with its more liberal culture and gentler
manners than Germany east of the Elbe, is a good illustration of this
theory. Rome has been here, and where Rome has passed some element of
quality abides. Famous among the Roman settlements, Cologne played
a part no less important in mediaeval history. A leading member of
the Hanseatic League, the relations between Cologne and London in
the fifteenth century were close. If we rule Cologne to-day, Cologne
at an earlier date has dictated to us. In the reign of Edward III,
foreign trade in the city of London was largely conducted through
the corporation of Cologne merchants established in the Steelyard.
The internal life of Cologne was torn in mediaeval times by fierce
dissensions. Nevertheless, mediaeval German art owed much of its
development in painting and architecture to the artists and master
builders of the lower Rhine.

After the sixteenth century Cologne, like other cities of the Hanseatic
League, lost much of its importance, and the place fell to a low ebb
for more than two centuries. Its rise into new prosperity during the
nineteenth century registers various phases in the great national
revival which took place throughout Germany, and also the considerable
social improvements which, it must be admitted, followed on Prussian
rule.

The traces of mediaeval Cologne are sadly obliterated. Of the Roman
period practically nothing remains. The Germans are desperate people in
all matters concerning the upkeep and restoration of ancient buildings.
They are terribly painstaking and have the best intentions, unhappily
with dire results. No words in Baedeker lay so cold a hand on my heart
as the frequent phrase, “the church has in recent times undergone a
thorough restoration.” Thorough in their vandalism such efforts are.
Meagrely endowed with artistic taste, no nation in the world lays
hands so heavy and so obliterating on the monuments of the past. The
one idea apparently is to make everything clean and tidy. To this end
interiors of ancient Romanesque churches are covered with a pitiless
layer of reinforced concrete on which lines are scratched to represent
stones. German taste further revels in modern mosaics of a gross and
gaudy character sprawling over wall and vault. Church after church in
the Rhineland have I seen ruined in such fashion. In Cologne the noble
proportions of ancient Romanesque buildings, such as the Apostelkirche,
the Gereonskirche, Santa Maria im Capitol, stagger under the weight of
the artistic atrocities they are forced to carry.

The ex-Emperor was one of the worst offenders in these matters. His
vain and restless spirit exacted incense as connoisseur and art critic
no less than as war lord. An entourage of docile snobs hastened to
encourage him in this view, and he was allowed to destroy at will the
beauty of various churches which, thanks to his fiat, have lost all
their essential quality. The Altenberger Dom in the Bergische Land, a
model in miniature of Cologne Cathedral and an exquisite example of
early Gothic, was immolated in this way thanks to a visit from the
Emperor. He declared that the church must be restored, as it did not
look clean. To-day the interior presents the appearance of a bathroom.

This being the typical German spirit in matters artistic, it is hardly
surprising that many precious relics of the past have gone under in
Cologne. The fine old Rathhaus still remains, but the mediaeval town
walls have inevitably succumbed to the needs of modern traffic and
expansion. At several points the old gates have been left standing,
forlorn-looking objects marooned among the substantial buildings of
the last twenty years. Broad though the highway of the Ring, beyond
which modern Cologne spreads outwards, the principal streets in the
neighbourhood of the Dom Platz are unusually narrow. The mediaeval
houses have vanished; the cramped space of the mediaeval street remains.

The Höhe Strasse, the principal thoroughfare, is crowded with people
throughout the day. In the evening it is almost impossible to elbow
your way through the dense mass of sightseers. A pedestrian must make
up his mind to float along with the great stream of traffic and reach
his destination when borne there on the current. Here are the principal
shops, and shopping and bargains have played a considerable part in
the life of the Army of Occupation. Bargains were certainly to be had
in the early days before old stocks were exhausted, but their elusive
delights have long since vanished from the scene. Prices have soared
as the mark fell in value, and did not fall in turn when the mark
improved. They stand to-day at a high level even for the English, who
benefit by the exchange. How the German population can afford to buy
anything at figures so exaggerated in marks is a mystery.

The fluctuation of the exchange is another matter in which the Army
of Occupation takes a deep interest. We inquire with real concern
daily as to the health of the mark, the caprices of which baffle most
forecasts. These constant fluctuations in the value of money are very
demoralising for every one concerned. Naturally such a situation is a
premium on speculation, and for the German merchant and shopkeeper the
lack of stability has disastrous consequences.

The real necessities of Germany to-day lie below the surface, and it
is very difficult to associate at first sight any ideas of poverty or
disaster with the crowds of well-dressed people in the streets. The
overflowing population of the big German towns is very striking. It is
hard to believe they have had any real losses in the war. Men, women,
and children; children, women, and men: it is always the same story.
The Germans are a very plain race; few of them have any pretensions
to good looks. But, men and women alike, they are tall and powerfully
built, and convey an outstanding impression of physical strength and
vigour.

And what have they done with their wounded? That is a perpetual puzzle
to the English. It is a matter of very rare exception to see a lamed,
or maimed, or blinded man. One poor wreck without arms or legs who
frequented the Höhe Strasse in a little trolley was a familiar figure.
But the injured lads who have become too sad a feature of our town
and village life seem to be non-existent here. Yet the heavy German
casualties must have left their mark on the people. Why, therefore,
are there so few signs of wounded men? I have heard it said that
with the removal of the German military hospitals following on the
Occupation, other arrangements had to be made for the disabled, and
that many left the district. Whether this is true or not I cannot say.
Germans are proverbially skilful at tucking out of sight all signs of
their drunken and disreputable classes. Something of the same kind has
happened apparently with the wounded. When one comes to the children,
the toll of the war becomes apparent in a very different way. As
regards adults, the superficial impression received is that neither
physique nor population has suffered. I should add that all superficial
impressions of German life to-day require to be discounted heavily. All
the evidence goes to prove that the very real suffering in the country
lies beneath the surface, and that the rich people and the profiteers
who crowd shops and cafés give no true measure of the condition of the
masses.

Overwhelmingly military though the aspect of Cologne in the early
days of the Allied victory, the civilian character of the town has
re-emerged, as during the course of months the great Army of the
original Occupation has shrunk to a moderate garrison. To-day the
impression is merely that of an English reserve in a foreign land.
The garrison conducts itself, officers and ranks alike, after the
ordinary fashion of garrisons all the world over. Work is done and done
thoroughly; for the rest there are the normal amusements, dancing,
sports, and games.

The Deutsches Theater, which is in English hands, has made a spirited
and successful attempt to bring first-rate English drama within
reach of the Occupying Army. But the greatest factor in recreation
undoubtedly has been the Opera. The opportunity of hearing night after
night the best music of all schools, classical and modern, is one for
which we have had much cause to be thankful. The repertoire is not
only large, but wholly catholic in spirit. No foolish demand exists to
place French and Italian music under a ban: the Germans have the good
sense to recognise that genius transcends all boundaries of race. The
great classical masterpieces of Beethoven, Mozart, Gluck can be heard
as well as those of Wagner, Strauss, and the lighter works of Puccini,
Bizet, Massenet, Mascagni, Offenbach, Gounod. The performances of the
Ring are particularly fine; and the passion of the Kapellmeister, Herr
Klemperer, for Mozart makes the production of these exquisite operas
specially interesting. If the Germans have not eyes to see, no nation
in the world have ears so fine to hear. In matters musical they are
doubly and trebly gifted--the whole artistic expression of the race
appears to have found an outlet in this direction. The Cologne Opera
House lives up to the best pre-war standards. There are no stars, but,
what is infinitely preferable, a high level of ensemble and a unity of
artistic expression between the singers and the instrumentalists which
can never exist in scratch companies held together by celebrities. The
scenery and staging are excellent and show real artistic merit of a
kind unusual in Germany. The orchestra too is first-rate--a fine and
flexible instrument in the hands of its conductor.

It is unfortunate that the English have to no small extent imported
the bad English habit of talking during orchestral passages. In the
early days of the Occupation not a sound was ever heard in the body
of the house. As time went on a familiar and unpleasant murmur became
from time to time more noticeable. Explanations as to the involved
relationships of the Wagner heroes and heroines when sought and given
in the course of a performance are peculiarly exasperating to other
people in the near vicinity of the earnest inquirer. It is a curious
sight during the intervals to see the German audience in couples
promenading solemnly round the large “foyer” while the English and
French look on. But even casual meeting-places between the two races
are rare. Life in Cologne flows in two distinct channels, between
which there is no communication of any kind. For the large majority of
the English, Germans have no existence--what’s Hecuba to them or they
to Hecuba? There is nothing aggressive about the British Occupation.
The Army goes about its business, acts justly, and avoids unnecessary
pinpricks and irritations. The bitterness of the war has left a
considerable aftermath which colours conversation, but the inherent
British sense of decency and fair play rules the situation in practice.
It would offend that sense of fair play to keep kicking a man, however
much disliked, when he was down and out.

The Germans on their side have learnt fully to appreciate the merits
of the British rule. Well-to-do people have a lively sense of the
protection and security afforded by the Occupying Army. The German
bourgeoisie live in terror of the new might of the working-classes.
Though the first impression on arrival may be one of comfort and
prosperity, there is in fact but a very thin veneer of order covering
anarchy below. Germans speak with dismay of the appalling increase
in crime and theft since the war. Hunger is responsible for much of
the petty pilfering which goes on, but it is clear that all manner
of violent elements hide their heads out of fear and fear alone. The
German police are responsible for the normal daily life of the town and
area, but Thomas Atkins, good-natured and indifferent, is the power
behind the throne, and it is thanks to his presence that the German
writ runs and is obeyed among the Rhinelanders.

At the same time I am sceptical as to the spread of Bolshevist ideas
on any large scale among the German nation outside certain industrial
circles. The genius of the race is essentially law-abiding and orderly.
If it is allowed to eat and to work, and is not kept artificially in a
state of hunger and unemployment, the country will, I believe, in time
settle down. Bolshevism is a disease drawing its strength from hunger
and despair. It is only dangerous when such conditions exist or are
provoked by a short-sighted policy of fear and reprisals. “Oh, I should
like to see Germany go Bolshevist for a time and all the people killing
one another,” was the genial remark I overheard once in England, the
speaker being an English civilian. I do not think this wish will be
gratified, but what the speaker and his kind forget is that Bolshevism
is a disease which can be treated by no _cordon sanitaire_, and that
the spread of ruin and confusion in Central Europe means that the same
evil spectres will knock assuredly at our own doors. The fatal habit
of “thinking war” still dominates whole classes of people throughout
the Allied countries. But the business of the hour is peace, and to be
a laggard about peace to-day is as criminal as to have been a laggard
about war when Europe and civilisation stood menaced.




CHAPTER III

THE KÖLNER DOM


In the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, where, after the manner of German
collections, pictures and antiques, both good and bad, jostle each
other with small regard to quality, a series of modern frescoes
execrable in colour and design decorate the main staircase. The
artist has been at pains to cover the walls with various incidents,
allegorical and otherwise, in the long history of Cologne. The
final fresco is the most entertaining of the series. It represents
the scene in 1842 when Frederick William IV. visited Cologne on a
memorable occasion. In this year work was resumed on the ruined and
neglected shell of the cathedral, and the citizens of Cologne dedicated
themselves anew to the task of making a success of the failure of
centuries. The King attended in person to inaugurate the great effort.
Frederick William had many of the showy and histrionic qualities for
which his great-nephew was conspicuous, and like William II. was by way
of having a great deal of taste in artistic matters--most of it bad.
Blessed with the gift of fluent speech, he adored ceremonial occasions,
especially those on which he could pose before Europe as a patron of
the Muses.

In the Wallraf-Richartz Museum fresco the foundation stone of the new
building has been well and truly laid. Brawny workmen in the foreground
haul about imposing blocks of stone and deal purposefully with a huge
floral decoration. Frederick William, on a platform raised above the
assembled company, is looking heavenwards with rapt expression, as
though following through the clouds the flight of some fiery chariot.
Particularly impressive is a row of city fathers in full evening dress,
wearing decorations, who with hands tightly clasped across their
stomachs stand meek and simpering in the royal presence.

This ludicrous painting is an unworthy memorial of what was in fact
a high and spirited adventure. The completion of the Dom after
centuries of failure and decay was a great task, finely conceived and
finely carried through. The wave of national feeling and national
self-consciousness, which developed and spread through Germany, from
the middle of the last century onwards, found a practical symbol to
which it could rally in this work of reconstruction. As year by year
columns and towers rose higher on the banks of the Rhine, and the great
neglected fane began to assume the lines dreamt of centuries before by
its long-dead architect, the German saw in this miracle an image of the
resurrection of his own country. Germany had been a ruin, destroyed and
at the feet of a conqueror. Germany too had triumphed over destruction
and failure. Through her new-found unity she was rising, like the
walls of the cathedral, to a position of power and authority undreamt
of before. Little wonder that the rejoicings held in honour of the
final completion of the work in 1880, a date following closely on the
Franco-Prussian War, assumed a national character and were invested
with considerable pomp and circumstance.

No cathedral in the world has had so strange and chequered a history
as that of Cologne. The hearts of many master builders were broken
over it. The mediaeval difficulties of construction were enormous.
The building even of the beautiful thirteenth-century choir suffered
severely from the fierce civic and ecclesiastical feuds which raged
at that time between the town and the archbishops. Many legends are
connected with the name of Meister Gerhard, the architect whose
main ideas are embodied in the Dom as it stands to-day. Germany is
under debt to France for the greatest of her Gothic churches. To
Amiens, where Gerhard lived and studied, Cologne Cathedral owes its
inspiration. The thirteenth-century choir, an architectural gem of
the first order, follows closely the lines of Amiens Cathedral. Few
examples of early Gothic are more pure or more perfect. Meister
Gerhard, in despair at the delays which beset his work, entered, so
the story runs, into a very unsuccessful wager with the devil as
regards the completion of the cathedral. When the bet was lost he flung
himself, to save his soul, from the scaffolding. There is no evidence
to show that Meister Gerhard came to a violent end, but the story is
significant as a testimony to the difficulties from which the building
of the Dom suffered. These difficulties became accentuated in the
time of Meister Gerhard’s successors. The choir fortunately struggled
to completion, and in 1322 the bones of the Three Kings, the most
precious of all Cologne relics, were deposited with great pomp in their
new shrine. But the noble design of the nave fell on evil days, and
after the varying vicissitudes of several generations work was finally
abandoned, leaving a great torso instead of the church as originally
planned. For centuries the half-completed aisles mocked the vision of
the early master builders. Little by little the nave, which was shut
off by a wall from the choir, fell into complete decay. In 1796 it
was used by the occupying French Army as a magazine and stable. Some
progress had been made with the south tower before work was finally
abandoned. But in modern times trees were growing in the ruins of the
tower, and a derelict crane, stranded high aloft on a pile of stones
and rubbish, was an object of interest to casual visitors.

Withal a vague hope persisted through the centuries that some day,
somehow, Cologne Cathedral would stand on the banks of the Rhine in the
majesty of the completed design of which Meister Gerhard had dreamt.
For centuries the hope seemed vain indeed. When some years after the
War of Liberation the architect Zwirner championed the idea of a
completed Dom, the response of popular enthusiasm was immediate and
complete. The building as finished follows faithfully the ideas of the
mediaeval architect, a fact for which we have to thank an extraordinary
chapter of accidents.

The story of the original plans, which were recovered in the loft of
an inn, reads like a fairy tale. Before the Napoleonic wars the plans
of the cathedral were kept in the chapter-house. During the French
occupation, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they were
removed for greater safety to a Benedictine monastery. The monastery
was broken up and the forgotten and neglected designs came eventually
into the possession of a private family, who used the great sheets of
parchment for drying beans. Subsequently the son of the house went to
Darmstadt for educational purposes. His anxious mother thought the
young man’s clothes would be kept clean and dry if his box were lined
with the stout parchment sheets which had rendered useful service in
the case of the beans. The youth took up his residence in Darmstadt at
the Gasthaus zur Traube. Internal evidence shows that, once away from
the vigilant maternal eye, the care of his clothes must have suffered.
The coverings intended to protect his garments from dust and damp were
cast aside with youthful recklessness. The scrolls, still carrying
their hidden treasure of the great design of the west end of the
cathedral, were thrown away and consigned as litter to the loft of the
inn. There they were discovered by a carpenter sufficiently intelligent
to appreciate their importance. From his hands they passed into those
of a painter, and eventually after a journey via Paris were returned to
Cologne. They hang to-day in a chapel of the choir.

The stone from which the cathedral is built is quarried in the
Drachenfels. Unfortunately it is soft and perishable, and constant
repairs are necessary. Nearly a million sterling was spent on
completing the building, a modest sum for so considerable a work judged
by the spacious standards of our own spendthrift time. The funds were
raised from pious founders, from state help, and from lotteries.
Whether or not you admire the exterior of the cathedral--personally
the answer is in the negative--there can be nothing but praise for
the enterprise which made a success of the failure of the centuries
and the fine solid work to which the completed Dom bears witness. In
1880, six hundred years after the original founding of the cathedral by
Archbishop Conrad, the final stone of the giant blossom crowning the
south tower was swung into place in the presence of the Emperor William
I.

Not only in Cologne, but throughout the whole of Germany, the
completion of the cathedral was a signal for an outburst of pride
and joy. National enthusiasm knew no bounds. There were festivals
and feastings and pageants. Looking back on the rejoicings from our
own standpoint of a stricken world, we can recognise of what tragic
events they were the starting point. To keep a cool head when steering
on a full tide of success is a test of character more severe in its
searching than the patient bearing of adversity. Under that test the
new-made German Empire broke down rapidly. By 1880 Germany was launched
on the career which, soon transcending all that is legitimate in
national virility and self-consciousness, was to bring her ultimately,
through pride and aggression, to defeat and downfall.

From the cannon captured in the French war a bell known as the
Kaiser-Glocke was cast, which became in a special sense the tutelary
genius of the cathedral. Only on rare and solemn occasions was the
Kaiser-Glocke heard. Then as its deep note boomed across the waters
of the Rhine, the citizens of Cologne thrilled with proud memories of
conquest and restored national life. The cannon of a conquered foe are
symbols of death, destruction, and defeat. To convert them as trophies
of victory into bells which call men and women to the service of God
and the worship of the Prince of Peace, is an act of paganism removed
as by the poles from rudimentary Christian ethic. But though the mills
of God grind slowly they grind exceeding small, as the fate of the
great bell was to prove.

In the spring of 1918, owing to the acute shortage of metal, the
Kaiser-Glocke shared the doom of many other of the fine Cologne church
bells. To-day its great chamber stands bare and empty. The people of
the town were in despair. The passing of the bell was to them a symbol
of the passing of victory. But the grim needs of the hour in the matter
of munitions had to be met at any cost. Born of the things of death, to
the things of death the bell returned. Reconverted into a gun, and lost
on the Western Front--was ever warning more sombre as to the vanity of
human desires and the perils which wait on human arrogance?

As to the architectural merits of the cathedral, opinion is and is
likely to remain divided. To me at least the exterior is thoroughly
unsatisfactory. Especially when viewed from a distance the proportions
though massive are ungainly. It dominates the plain by its size, an
unwieldy colossus too high for its length. The openwork spires sit
heavily on the towers, and lack the great élan and heavenward spring
of buildings such as Chartres or Salisbury. But the interior is a
different matter. I cannot explain why proportions which externally
fail to satisfy are harmonious and beautiful within. The choir, the
apse, the long forest of columns carrying the nave, the spring of
the vast western arch between the towers--all this is Gothic in its
strength and beauty. The splendid glass of the north aisle has vanished
temporarily. It was taken down during the air-raids period, and the
hour of its restoration is likely to tarry. Much of the remaining glass
is poor and modern, and the general effect of the nave suffers severely
from this fact.

In the course of months I have learnt to know Cologne Cathedral
intimately and under many different aspects. It is what a cathedral
should be, the central pulse of the religious life of the town. Unlike
the barren preaching houses to which Protestantism has reduced the old
Gothic churches, the great building has warmth and atmosphere. Before
the shrines and altars, at all hours throughout the day, rich and poor
alike may be found at prayer. Sometimes I have seen three or four
little children come in shyly, hand in hand, and kneel down before the
High Altar. Then, having fulfilled the duty with which they have been
clearly charged by their elders, they may be found outside a moment
later, chattering and playing, on the great flight of steps leading
down to the square. Sometimes peasant women with their market baskets
will come in for a moment and bend low before the Mother of God. Under
the coloured scarves are humble patient faces, lined with care and
want. The heavy baskets rest for a brief space on the broad pavement of
the aisle as these poor children of the soil, kneeling among the fruits
of their labours, raise inarticulate prayers to heaven.

At no point can the German character produce contradictions so supreme
as over the question of religion. The extent to which the practice of
religion, however exact and devout, can remain external to a man’s life
is an unhappy fact with which all religious systems and creeds are too
familiar. Germany perhaps supplies the supreme example. But to any one
like myself who has seen a good deal of Catholic worship in Germany,
the puzzle is necessarily acute. In no country of the world, certainly
in no Catholic country, have I ever found myself among congregations
so earnest and so devout. Catholicism in the Rhineland has a touch of
almost Protestant austerity, thanks to which its services are wholly
devoid of the tawdry fripperies which will often make the hearing
of Mass, say in Italy or in parts of France, seem perfunctory and
insincere. In Catholic Germany the services strike a note of great
dignity and reverence. There is no talking, no moving about, no coming
and going. Among the thousands of English people who have passed
through Cologne since the Occupation, few have any knowledge of the
extraordinary congregations which, Sunday after Sunday, fill the
cathedral to overflowing; congregations three parts composed of men of
all ages and conditions. A Franciscan monk, Father Dionysius, whose
fame is widely spread throughout the Rhineland, holds these great
congregations spellbound week by week.

Men of God, those sons of the Spirit who arise wherever the Spirit
listeth, transcend all limits of race and creed and clime. To that rare
company this German monk belongs. An orator of the first rank, it is
not his oratory which compels, but the nobility of his personality and
the purely spiritual appeal of his doctrine. The face is not typically
ecclesiastical--it is too broad, too fine, too human. It has humour
also, for the Father can use at will the lash of a fine irony.

It may not be popular to attribute such qualities to a German. “How can
you go and listen to one of these brutes?” is a remark more than once
addressed to me in Cologne. But in putting on record my impressions
of Germany, it is not my object to minister to race hatreds, but to
describe things good and bad alike as I saw them. The riddle of the
German at prayer is difficult indeed. We write him off as a brute and a
materialist. Yet will our own countrymen, artisans, professional men,
shopkeepers, stand for hours and listen to doctrines dealing with the
first principles of faith and of the things which concern a man’s soul?
What would be the feelings of the average Church of England clergyman
if, instead of a thin and depressing congregation mainly composed of
elderly ladies, men in the prime of life crowded out his church? For
great though the reputation of Father Dionysius, there is nothing
peculiar in the Dom services. Other churches are equally well attended
and equally full. The atmosphere is perfectly genuine and sincere.
There is nothing hypocritical about it. The people mean what they are
saying at the time they say it. And then before one’s eyes rises the
memory of a whole series of evil and ugly deeds--cruelty to prisoners,
callousness to suffering, arrogance, brutality, a cynical disregard of
the first principles which in any decent society regulate the relations
between man and man. Where has the application of religion gone wrong?
I have often wondered what the services in the Dom must have been
during the weeks when the full agony of defeat and surrender fell upon
the Germans--black hours for preacher and for congregation alike.

The service at which Father Dionysius preaches on Sunday morning is
a short sung mass following on High Mass. There is no choir, but the
congregation themselves sing old German chorales while mass is going
on. Every seat in the nave is filled nearly an hour before the service
begins: to obtain standing room in the neighbourhood of the pulpit it
is necessary to be there at least twenty minutes beforehand. By the
time mass begins, the vast nave and side aisles of the cathedral are
crowded from the doors to the altar. The effect of the thousands of
voices singing the fine old German music in unison is without parallel
in my experience. No act of congregational worship in which I have ever
taken part can be compared with it. The music, soaring under the great
vaulted roof, seems to be caught up in the forest of arches and to
echo back again to earth.

  “Hier liegt vor Deiner Majestät
  Im Staub die Christenschaar,
  Das Herz zu Dir, o Gott, erhöht,
  Die Augen zum Altar.”

The service begins with this ancient chorale, and as voice after voice
joins in the effect is indescribable. During the solemn moments of
the mass practically the whole congregation kneels. Often as I have
watched some fat square-headed German singing the words of petition
and penitence, or bending humbly before the Host, I have asked myself
in utter bewilderment what it all means. How are we to reconcile the
discrepancy between the sincerity and devotion of such worshippers, and
the darker, more sinister sides of the German character? The Rhineland,
a Catholic country civilised originally by ancient Rome, is not
Prussia. But it is thoroughly German in sentiment and outlook. “Pious
Cologne” had a bad reputation for the treatment of our prisoners. I
have known personally two officers who were spat upon by well-dressed
women in the railway station. Stories well attested were told me of
wounded prisoners who were insulted when marched through the streets.
Many cases of cruelty, often of gross cruelty, are proved. To shut our
eyes to such facts, or to minimise them, is as foolish as to write
off the whole German people as bred of Beelzebub. The passions roused
by years of bitter warfare do not subside with any formal signing of
peace. Yet to see things steadily, and to see them whole, is of all
difficult principles the most essential in our relations with Germany.

The future of Europe and of Western civilisation largely turns on
our power to place these discrepant facts side by side, to recognise
that both are true and then to strike some balance between them. It
is extraordinarily difficult to judge what the incidence of brutality
was among the Germans during the war; how far it was natural, how
far deliberately stimulated by those in authority. Our own gallant
Hun hunters, who glowed with patriotic pride and satisfaction over
the persecution of some wretched hairdresser or inoffensive nursery
governess, are a sorry proof as to the ease with which vile instincts
can be cultivated and spread. The overwhelming majority of the English
in Cologne arrive with rigid ready-made ideas about the country and
people, and they do not part from them willingly. They feel it below
their dignity to study the Boche dispassionately, to watch him at work,
at play, at prayer. But if we are concerned in this distracted world
not to rest perpetually in the barren measures of strife, then it may
be worth while to consider dispassionately what qualities the Germans
possess which hold out some hope for the future. From this aspect it
seems to me that Cologne Cathedral and its congregations are worthy of
attention. The heart of every man is an altar, neglected, desecrated
perhaps, but never forfeiting its right to serve the divine purpose.
The sacred fire may burn low, but so long as one votary remains, holden
though his eyes may be, the fire can never know extinction. A spark
from heaven may fall again upon the ashes so that they blaze upwards
into a pure light of truth and knowledge. Is it for us to say that no
such spark can fall, that the shrine must remain forever unworthy?




CHAPTER IV

ON THE DOM PLATZ


If the Dom is the central point of the religious life of Cologne, the
Dom Platz is no less the central point of official and ceremonial
life in the town. During the last eighteen months the massive towers
of the cathedral have looked down on strange and, to German eyes,
unwelcome scenes. It is all part of the German temperament to have a
great affection for reviews, and parades, and processions. What is
obvious and pompous makes a real appeal. When in old days the Uhlans
clattered down the street and sabres were rattled, the average German
standing meekly on the pavement was filled with pride at this visible
demonstration of “Weltmacht.” Among the minor trials of the Occupation,
the absence of the great military displays common under the old régime
has been a sorrow to the natives of Cologne. One morning a military
band struck up under the windows where I was talking with my Fräulein.
She nearly jumped from her seat and I saw her eyes fill with tears: “We
had such wonderful bands in old days,” she said sadly. But the large
majority of her fellow-citizens are less sensitive. “Quand on n’a pas
ce que l’on aime il faut aimer ce que l’on a”--a sensible doctrine on
which apparently the Boche acts. For his habit of turning up in large
numbers at every function held by the English on the cathedral square
is sufficiently surprising.

Can we imagine a German parade held in front of Buckingham Palace
to which the inhabitants of London would flock? We should, full of
rage and mortification, be burying our heads and ears in the remotest
quarters of the suburbs. But the Germans, in this as in other respects
so strangely constituted, have apparently no feelings on the subject.
They attend in large numbers and follow the proceedings with deep
interest. On occasions when I have been among the crowd myself, I have
not seen or heard any signs of hostility. In early days the conscript
Army of the Occupation was hardly up to the standard which Prussianism
had exacted of its legions. But criticism at least was never audible.
There have been reviews in later times on the Dom Platz which could
hold their own with any of the past. Often have I longed to see what
was going on inside the shaved square heads of the spectators as
the British troops marched by. What were the Germans thinking about
these trained and disciplined men belonging to the conquering Army
they had been taught to despise? For how great a gamut of failure and
disillusion these khaki-clad ranks must stand!

The Tanks are always impressive as they lumber along, menacing as
some prehistoric monster. They must be unpleasant objects to meet on
the battlefield if your side does not happen to hold the counter to
them. Many German eyes follow them as they waddle about the square. In
lighter vein, the Highlanders, as always abroad, excite a great deal
of interest. “We saw your Scottish troops,” is the invariable remark
after a review, and then follow endless inquiries as to the why and
wherefore of such extraordinary clothes. A ring of Germans at a race
meeting collected round the very excellent band of the Black Watch and
applauding the music is a memory which survives. In the early days of
the Occupation it was an order to salute the colours and remove hats
when God Save the King was played. But though the order has long since
been repealed the habit persists. The large majority of German hats
come off when the National Anthem begins. With a different government
and ideals a people so tractable might have been led in a direction
widely different from that which has overwhelmed themselves and others
in ruin.

Many striking ceremonies have been held in the Dom Platz under English
rule. Great figures and great names concerned with the making of
history have played their parts in them. We have welcomed the generals
to whom France owes her salvation--Joffre, who came unofficially and
seemed a little bored at being shown off; Foch, the conqueror, who
arrived early one cold spring morning only to find Germans, anxious
to have a look at him, clinging figuratively to every crocket of the
cathedral. Photographers are busy on these occasions; very interesting
is a picture of Marshal Joffre and Sir William Robertson standing alone
together on the north terrace of the cathedral. The steps were strewn
at the moment with unhewn blocks of stone brought there for restoration
purposes. The stone, solid and rugged, seemed to symbolise the
characters of both men--soldiers not easily moved from their purpose
or their duty. We have received the Army Council in state, and the
politicians have looked at the crowd and the crowd at the politicians.
Mr. Winston Churchill--grey frock coat and top hat to match--has been
duly admired. We have commemorated great events and decorated our
brothers in arms among the Allied Armies. Then on the morrow, in
sharp contrast to the military display; may follow some great Catholic
ceremonial, wholly German in character.

Religious processions lend much variety and colour to street life in
Cologne. Throughout the summer months each parish has a procession
every Sunday morning; long rows of priests, nuns, children, and
parishioners walk through the streets carrying banners, flowers, and
emblems. The central point of the procession is the canopy under which
the priest carries the Host. Red-robed acolytes swing censers as they
move slowly along. Altars are erected at convenient halting points in
the streets, where prayers are said and hymns chanted. The pavement
is strewn with green boughs, houses are decorated, and the faithful
erect shrines with crucifixes, sacred images, candles, flowers, etc.
These local festivals culminate in the most famous of all Cologne
processions--that of Corpus Christi. On that day every ecclesiastic,
great and small, from the Archbishop downwards, as well as every
Catholic guild and society, take part in an elaborate and impressive
tour of the town. The vestments are of a gorgeous character. The
uniforms worn by the guilds are of quaint design and many-coloured.
The centuries roll backwards, and for a brief space the finger of the
Middle Ages touches the modern city. The procession concludes with
a service in the cathedral, and the great company of people winding
across the square with banners and emblems and passing up the steps
suggests some mediaeval picture. Religious processions are the only
German pageants which survive to-day on the Dom Platz. One event alone
on the square, brief but memorable, has concerned conquerors and
conquered alike--the first commemoration of the Armistice on 11th
November 1919. Yet of all my recollections of the square it remains the
most impressive.

       *       *       *       *       *

A bitter morning with a blizzard driving across the river; snowflakes
drift disconsolately over the square, as though doubtful of trying
conclusions with the sombre pile of the cathedral surveying the scene
with gloomy aloofness. Under foot dirt and slush. From every corner of
the square whistles a wind which pierces through furs and coats. Yet
the usual crowd of German spectators are there, pressing as is their
wont on the ranks of the men in khaki who line the square. No less
crowded are the cathedral steps, on which stand a row of trumpeters.
I came late, to find to my surprise that my neighbours are nearly all
Germans. In spite of the dreadful weather there is little movement
among the crowd. People speak under their breath, as though in the
presence of some great solemnity. English and Germans alike, we are
thinking of our dead. For a moment we draw near to one another in the
consciousness of common sorrow, common loss, common pride. The snow
drives in our faces, the merciless wind searches out the shivering
crowd cowering under its umbrellas.

Then the hour strikes, and a word of command rings out from the
half-obliterated square, where the khaki lines can be seen dimly
through the driving snow. Umbrellas are lowered; cruel though the
weather, German hats are all removed. A lad standing near me, obviously
cold and shivering, shows signs of keeping his cap on; an older
German man has it off in a moment. The trumpeters step forward on the
cathedral steps, and in a silence broken only by the moaning of the
wind the Last Post is heard. For most British folks those familiar
notes, which salute the sinking sun and say farewell to the dead, are
at all times full of poignant memory. But never surely have they been
heard under conditions more poignant than in the heart of an enemy town
on the first anniversary of the Armistice. Is it two minutes or two
hours that we stand in that unbroken silence--no sound, no murmur, no
movement from the dense crowd? For the men and women on the square,
be they British or German, what memories are packed into those tense
moments! The snow falls fitfully: again a word of command is heard: the
brief ceremony is over.

So we salute our glorious dead, and who is ungenerous enough in such an
hour to withhold respect from the brave men among our foes who fell in
the service of their country doing their duty as simply as those whose
names and memories we cherish? “So long as men are doing their duty,
even if it be greatly under a misapprehension, they are leading pattern
lives,” writes Robert Louis Stevenson. Strife and bitterness belong to
the things temporal. We may rest assured that the heroes of all races
who meet and greet each other in Valhalla will drink without hatred in
their hearts from the cup of reconciliation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Felix von Hartmann, Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne, is dead. For a week
he has lain in state in the crypt of the Gereonskirche, watched by day
and by night by monks and nuns who pray unceasingly for the repose of
his soul. Round the bier ablaze with candles pours a steady stream of
spectators and mourners. The faithful have come in their thousands to
bid farewell to the chief shepherd of the flock. For the Archbishop of
Cologne is the greatest ecclesiastical dignitary in Germany. Cologne
is the premier See, and in old days the rank of its Archbishop stood
second only to that of the Emperor; Cardinal von Hartmann’s death must
have stirred some painful memories in the breast of the Amerongen
exile. Emperor and Cardinal, despite their differences of faith, were
firm friends. Felix von Hartmann was a Prussian of the Prussians, and
united by many personal ties to the Kaiser. Even in death the face had
lost nothing of its pride and haughtiness. He looked every inch of a
Prince of the Church and a ruler of men as he lay at the last on his
bier. The gorgeous vestments, the pastoral staff, the great ring worn
on the red gloves covering the nerveless hands: all this was impressive
and dignified. But it was not a countenance even in the great calm of
death which bore much trace of the milder Christian virtues.

Cardinal von Hartmann took a violently pro-national line about the
war. Race hatreds and animosities were fanned, not discouraged by him.
His correspondence with Cardinal Mercier shows how perfunctory were
his efforts as regards any alleviation of the lot of prisoners or the
civilian victims of the struggle. Bitterly anti-English, the proud
Prussian Cardinal must have suffered a full measure of humiliation when
he lived to see his cathedral city in British Occupation. Some Tommies
unacquainted with Catholic ritual, who saw him in the street one day
wearing a mitre and greeted him as Father Christmas, roused his special
ire. A man of war rather than a man of peace, the British authorities
were under no obligations to him as regards any assistance with their
task. Now he lies dead it falls to their lot, by an irony specially
cruel in the Archbishop’s case, to keep order at his funeral.

In old days, so my Fräulein tells me, the funeral of an Archbishop
of Cologne was a tremendous event. The Emperor in all probability
would have attended in person. The occasion would have lent itself
to a great military display, soldiers lining the route, the Prussian
Guard adding lustre to the scene. Shorn of all its pomp and ceremony
must the occasion necessarily be in view of the Occupation. But it
was the weather which conspired to make a melancholy event still more
depressing. Never have I seen a more dismal ceremony than that of
the Archbishop’s funeral, which was held, of course, within the Dom.
Rain and sleet descended mercilessly, while squalls of wind swept
the square. The long procession of priests, monks, nuns, students,
and children was wet and draggled. The white-robed choristers and
the acolytes carrying ineffectual candles were no less dripping.
Particularly miserable looked a detachment of unfortunate orphan
children whose thin clothes and shoes were soaked by the penetrating
rain. The monks and nuns and other ecclesiastics had provided
themselves sensibly with umbrellas, but withal the wonderful vestments
with their lace and embroidery must have suffered severely. There is
always a wind on the Dom Platz, and to-day the angry gusts led to many
struggles between umbrellas and their holders. In default of soldiers
the numerous student guilds in their many-coloured uniforms had turned
out in force. They alone with their banners struck a note which varied
the drabness of the scene. But the pitiless rain beat down on them and
caused the gay flags to hang faded and colourless. It was as though
some wind devil had established itself opposite the main entrance
of the cathedral and was bent on plaguing the Archbishop’s mourners.
Banner after banner was caught by the wind and overthrown at that
point; portly ecclesiastics were swept off their feet; nuns held on
despairingly to their great white caps which threatened to fly away.
Despite the leaden sky and pouring rain the square was crowded with
spectators.

Keeping the line were a few British Military Police mounted on their
fine grey horses. England is not given to pompous advertisements
of her strength, and the might of the Empire is symbolised rather
than represented by this handful of men. At the head of the whole
procession, as it wound its way singing solemn chants from the
Gereonskirche to the cathedral, rode a detachment of the same mounted
police. As the familiar grey horses appeared, who could fail to
reflect on the ironical staging of events in which Fate so often seems
to delight? It is not only that the accounts are balanced. A spirit
of fine mockery appears not infrequently over the audit. That the
police of the detested enemy power should clear the way when Cardinal
von Hartmann of all men was carried to his last resting-place, is a
circumstance to give pause to the proud when life flows apparently in
prosperous channels.

At last came the modest black bier, drawn by two decrepit-looking
horses, in which the coffin of the Cardinal was placed. As was becoming
in a Prince of the Church, there were no flowers or decorations of
any kind. A group of high ecclesiastics surrounded the bier, and the
melancholy chanting of the choristers, together with the prayers
of the priests, rose like incense to the grey unfriendly heaven.
Everything was wet and cold and drab and shabby. Perhaps the most
dismal touch in a dismal ceremonial was the unusual sight of two German
officers in full uniform who walked behind the coffin. They had come
by permission from the Bridgehead to do honour to the Archbishop.
These forlorn-looking representatives of the broken military power,
what bitter memories the situation must hold for them as they find
themselves face to face with the khaki police keeping order in Cologne!

The bier halted before the west door of the Dom. Black-robed monks
carried the coffin swiftly up the steps. As it passed within the great
main portal the thick black line of the spectators broke at last,
and a vast crowd of people poured across the square and followed the
procession through the open doors into the cathedral. The crowd was
so dense that you might have thought all Cologne was on the square.
Yet the vast Dom had no difficulty in absorbing the mass of men and
women who flocked up the steps and disappeared within. When shortly
afterwards I made my own way across to the cathedral, there was still
ample room in the nave to move about freely. The choir was hung in
black and silver and myriad electric lights defined the exquisite
outlines of the pointed arches. The coffin rested under a black and
silver catafalque. Everything was severe and dignified without one
tawdry note. The solemn funeral mass was very lengthy. A brother bishop
preached about the virtues and qualities of the dead Cardinal. Then at
a given moment all the bells--those that remain of the cathedral--were
tolled, and from every church in Cologne bells tolled in reply. The
coffin had been lowered to its resting-place near the High Altar; Felix
von Hartmann had vanished forever from the scene of his labours. The
weather, whimsical to the last, had changed its mind while the service
was going on. I came out into bright sunshine on the cathedral steps.
Having ruined the procession and soaked the pious, it was now pleased
to be fine.

Unfortunately I was not in Cologne for the more cheerful ceremony
of the enthronement of the new Archbishop, Dr. Schultz. Cardinal
von Hartmann’s successor is at present a somewhat unknown quantity
in public affairs. But if he lacks the commanding appearance and
aristocratic features of his predecessor, Dr. Schultz is in many ways
a more attractive personality. His face is wise and benevolent; a face
which gives the impression not only of goodness but of good sense.
Republican rule in Germany must result in many changes in the relations
of the Church and State. Hot controversy already rages about various
points, in particular the burning question of religious education
in the schools. That men of wisdom and moderation should hold high
positions in Germany is a matter of importance, not only to their own
country but to the Allies as well. Honesty and goodwill on the part of
all concerned are essential to the growth of a better understanding. If
the new Archbishop of Cologne can make some contribution to this end,
he will have deserved well of his country and his church.




CHAPTER V

BILLETS


Every billet has its crab. To that rule there is, I believe, no
exception. The crab may be physical or moral, but the crab exists.
Conquerors and conquered come up against each other in a peculiarly
intimate way when sheltered by the same roof. Stop and reflect on the
conditions under which we English live in German houses, and the marvel
is not that friction sometimes arises, but that friction is not chronic.

Under the terms of the Peace Treaty the German authorities in the
Occupied Areas are bound to provide housing, light, and firing,
together with service, plate, and house linen, for Allied officers and
their families. The number of rooms allotted varies according to rank,
additional rooms if wanted must be paid for by the officer in question.
Into the middle of these German families, therefore, we arrive bag and
baggage, occupy by rights the principal rooms, while the owners squeeze
into the remainder as best they may. All of which is _la guerre_, and
when we reflect on the behaviour of the German armies in France and
Belgium, we can only feel that Cologne and the Rhineland have little
to grumble about. The war was not of our making, and between the two
alternatives of sitting in the German houses or the Germans sitting in
ours, naturally we prefer the former.

German houses reveal a great deal about the German character.
The spirit of a people is bound to impress itself on their daily
surroundings, and German virtues and German faults are writ large
over the residential quarters of Cologne. On the material side the
houses are admirable. They are sound, well-built, excellent examples
of good solid workmanship. Excellent too are all the material
appointments. Hot and cold water, baths, electric light, first-rate
kitchen apparatus--every practical comfort and convenience exists which
simplifies life for the housewife. Central heating is the rule. There
are no fires or fireplaces, though some houses have an open grate in
the principal room for auxiliary gas, or wood. At first the hearthless
rooms are very cheerless, but by degrees you discover virtue in the
even temperature of the house. Also the saving in dirt and the saving
in labour are considerable. No less excellent are all the fittings,
window sashes, doors, floors, etc. Everything dovetails perfectly;
there are no draughts, no signs of jerry-building. All that is material
is handled with complete efficiency.

But beauty--here we come to the ground with a crash. Never were houses,
taking them all round, so ugly and so devoid of taste. The furniture
and pictures give one a pain across the eyes. _Objets d’art_, costly
and incongruous, are jumbled together in the wildest confusion. I have
been in drawing-rooms in which Flemish tapestries, Japanese lacquer,
Louis XV. chairs, Meshrebiya work from Cairo, Indian embroideries,
bastard Jacobean chairs, Chinese dragons, and modern Dresden
shepherdesses were locked together in a deadly conflict to which the
Hindenburg line must have been child’s play. Robust oil paintings
usually look down on the struggle. Admirable though the German taste
in music, the race appears to be without eyes as regards the plastic
arts. The degree to which the things of the spirit have atrophied in
modern Germany is writ large across these dwelling-places. In their
material excellence, as in their aesthetic failures, they are a true
touchstone of the race.

Meanwhile, surely no Army of Occupation was ever so well housed or
so comfortable as we are. Human nature being what it is, competition
about billets is naturally keen. _Beati possidentes_ is the happy
state of those who have secured the best accommodation in the palaces
of the local plutocracy. Yet withal some of us never shake off a
sense of discomfort and oppression as regards conditions of life so
radically artificial. There is something very depressing in the general
atmosphere of a conquered people. Even when your personal relations
with the German household are pleasant, the feeling remains. Too
great a stream of blood and tears has flowed between the Germans and
ourselves. It is impossible to forget the sufferings and trials which
have led up to our presence on the Rhine, even though the sufferings
are not confined to one side. A very small grain of imagination is
necessary in order to realise what a military occupation would have
meant to us. Admittedly, if the war had come to a different end, we
should have felt to the full the weight of the Prussian jackboot. The
Boche as a conqueror can be intolerable--swollen-headed, swaggering,
brutal. Victory would have intensified tenfold every bad quality the
race possesses. But leaving aside any question of personal outrage
and indignity, what should we have felt as to the hard fact of the
conqueror established on our hearths, even though the conqueror
brought with him standards of justice and decent behaviour?

Let us imagine our houses invaded by Prussian officers who would have
demanded as by right the best rooms and the best appointments. Let
us further imagine they bring German servants, who are installed in
the basement and have to work somehow with our English maids. I often
ponder the situation in the terms of my own household. What I always
feel is that, hard though it would have been to endure the presence
of the officers, the final straw would have been the arrival of their
womenkind and children. The invasion of one’s home by fat German Fraus
would have proved the final and most bitter filling up of the cup. As
a race we should have taken the inevitable billeting consequences of
an occupation ill indeed. Conflicts would have been numerous, and the
heavy Prussian hand would have driven us down into even lower depths of
misery.

Now nothing of this sort exists in Cologne. Primarily the English are
not Germans, and cordially though many of them detest the Boche, the
English sense of decency and fair play checks any furtive growths of
Prussianism among our own people. The average English person in Cologne
is not concerned to ruffle it as a conqueror, but to enjoy life as much
as possible under conditions so pleasant and so comfortable. But also
the Germans are not English, and it is all part of the mental equipment
of these people that they accept, quite as a matter of course,
conditions which would drive us frantic. Nothing has surprised me more
than the philosophy with which they endure our presence. Detestable
as conquerors, they behave exceedingly well as conquered. I can only
conclude this attitude is all part of the war game to which they have
been trained. They play to win and are ruthless when the prizes fall to
their lot. But equally they are taught to take defeat without whining,
and to accept its trials as a matter of course. The Germans of the
Occupied Area have been, generally speaking, correct and dignified in
their attitude. They are neither subservient nor aggressive. Their lack
of imagination as a race, and the three extra skins of which I have
spoken elsewhere, no doubt help them over situations which would be
unendurable to more sensitive people.

But I must repeat every billet has its crab. English society in Cologne
is provided with two standing subjects of small talk unknown to us at
home. The hard-worked weather is able to have a rest while we discuss
in detail the shortcomings and idiosyncrasies of our Fraus or the
hideousness of the furniture in our billets. “What a trial for you to
have to live with these dreadful pictures,” is a common gambit when you
go out to tea. As I have said before, the utter lack of taste of the
average German house is apt to hit you between the eyes, and not only
do we examine each other’s billets with care, but criticism is audible.

It is to be hoped that the habit will not become chronic. Otherwise
some of us who are absent-minded will be in difficulties when we return
home. I can see myself looking round the ugly house of a dear friend
and remarking genially, “What shocking taste the people who live here
must have--did you ever see such ghastly furniture?”

But if we on our side discuss our Fraus, assuredly the Fraus at
their various Kaffee-Klatsches discuss their English lodgers just as
thoroughly. Much shaking of heads and mutual commiseration must take
place as the cups go round. I have no doubt that one story caps another
as regards the enormities of the batmen, the dirt and breakages in
the kitchen, and the general fecklessness and irresponsibility of the
English women whose days are spent not in housework but in pleasure.

Our personal billeting experiences have been fortunate. The house in
which we have lived for many months is small as Cologne houses go, but
very comfortable. As I have said before, the German house may fail in
taste, but it does not fail in the practical advantages of electric
light and bathrooms. Our Frau is a widow, a slight, dark, nervous
woman more French than German in appearance. She knows her Europe,
and travelled annually before the war in Italy and France. French is
the language in which we converse. Her attitude towards us was from
the first entirely correct and civil; as time went on it has become
friendly and pleasant. Insensibly human and personal relations grow
up when people live together month after month under the same roof.
I shall be sorry to say good-bye, and I hope her recollections of us
will not be unpleasant. But despite her politeness and self-control,
I have always felt that few women in Cologne can be more tried by the
fact of having strangers billeted on her. A housewife with an almost
fanatical sense of cleanliness and order, engaged from morning till
night in cleaning and tidying, the advent of the English soldiery must
have been a burthen hard to bear. Yet like all her race, she accepts
the situation outwardly with calm whatever her inner feelings. She was
inclined to welcome our advent as we succeeded a mess, and to have a
mess in your house is to the German Hausfrau a circle of Inferno to
which there is only one lower stage--having black troops put in.

But if our relations with Madame have always been pleasant, and I am
indebted to her for many small acts of kindness, heavy weather has
obtained not infrequently below stairs. The crab of our billet is
Gertrude, the cross cook who has lived with Madame for many years,
and has great weight with her. Gertrude is a lump of respectability,
virtue, and disagreeableness. She hates the English with a complete
and deadly hatred, and she leaves no stone unturned to make things
uncomfortable in the basement. Hence a series of fierce feuds with
a succession of soldier servants. I admit the soldier servant is
apt to be a trial. How can he be otherwise? Domestic service is a
skilled art, and the Army can hardly be regarded as a school for house
parlourmaids. I am grieved to say that there is no guile or deception
to which an officer will not stoop to secure, by fair means or foul,
a batman trained in a pantry. One pearl of great price have I known,
an exception to all rules. But good fellows though many of them are,
the average batman is apt to be casual and inefficient. His execution
among glass and crockery is deadly. I have often wondered, judging from
the weekly holocaust, whether it is a rule among soldier servants to
play Aunt Sally in the basement with the tall thin-stemmed German wine
glasses whose days are so brief and evil. Withal they are generally
good-tempered fellows, and in many houses get on quite well with the
German servants.

But naturally no Englishman is prepared to receive back-chat from
a cross Hun. Consequently in the basement sector of our own house
skirmishing is chronic. For some time Gertrude cooked for us, but
as her culinary performances were very moderate, it was no sorrow
when one day, after a pitched battle below stairs--a battle of such
intensity that murmurs of the strife floated up to us even through the
well-fitting doors--she flung down her pots and pans and declared she
would roast and boil no more. Since then we have had our own German
cook, who has played the part of buffer state between the contending
camps, and a far greater measure of peace has prevailed. But all this
makes an undercurrent of unpleasantness which reveals how thin is
the crust of conventionality on the top of which we live. Gertrude,
when the storms were at their worst, never failed to us personally in
respect and good manners, but her unfriendly face, sour and virtuous,
is a trial about the house. She comes from Düren, which was heavily
bombed during the war. Though the Germans initiated air raids, the
return of these particular chickens to roost filled them with panic and
disgust. Perhaps life has been embittered for Gertrude by the numerous
evenings spent in the cellar. Anyway she is an example of the German
character in its most unpleasant aspect.

But even in our billet the housemaid, Clara, shows how impossible it
is to generalise about the Germans. Clara, a great strapping wench
twenty-three years old, is as amiable and as good-tempered as Gertrude
is the reverse. Friendly and pleasant, her beaming face puts a smile
on the morning. No trouble is too great for her. First-rate at her
work--she never stops all day--she is at any time prepared to do all
manner of extraneous jobs for me quite outside her duties. A girl of
better disposition I have never come across, simple and sincere. Clara
has just become engaged to a carpenter, and naturally the household
has been in a state of sympathetic flutter over this affair of the
heart. Clara has confided to me many of her doubts and fears on the
subject of matrimony. Apparently her own parents were not a united
couple, a fact which gave her pause. However, her sister had made a
happy marriage, and the numerous perfections of Hermann at last won the
day.

The ceremony of being “verlobt” was carried out recently at Essen--the
home of the married sister. One wedding day is enough for most people.
Not so the German, who manages to wring two ceremonies out of the
event. The wedding day is preceded by a family gathering, when the
couple are formally betrothed. The wedding ring is solemnly placed
on the left hand, to be worn there throughout the engagement, till
on marriage it is transferred to the right hand. To break off an
engagement once “verlobt” is almost as disgraceful as a divorce. Clara
must have looked like a rainbow on this great occasion, judging by the
description she gave me of the various colours in her hat and gown.
In thoroughly German fashion, food figured prominently in her account
of this wonderful day. I suspect that a wish to get two copious meals
instead of one out of a marriage lies at the root of the betrothal
customs. “Wir haben so gut gegessen und getrunken,” she said with a
sigh of happy recollection.

Prices are too high, household effects too costly to admit of immediate
matrimony, a fact for which Madame is very thankful. Madame thoroughly
appreciates Clara’s good qualities, and views the worthy Hermann with
nothing but hostility. If only some brave man would carry off Gertrude!
But there are limits to human courage, and Gertrude’s face is a
barrier to adventures of the heart on the part of the stoutest would-be
Bräutigam.

When living in a German household it is very necessary to lay down
quite firm and definite rules as to your relations with the family.
It is unfortunately true that the average German would misunderstand
kindness and consideration, unless it is also made perfectly clear that
certain things must be done and one will tolerate no nonsense. A great
deal of “trying on” takes place in various billets, and it never does
to give way. Frontiers should be marked out with exactness, and adhered
to no less exactly. A race trained to obedience, the Germans understand
an order when they would take advantage of a hesitating request. It is
necessary in self-defence to accept their mentality in this respect.
The British point of scruple arises in putting forward nothing that
is unfair or unjust. On this basis it is possible to live on pleasant
terms with the German occupiers. People’s billeting experiences vary,
of course, considerably. In many cases they are the reflection of their
own temperament. Some people adapt themselves to the new conditions
and handle them sensibly. Others are always in trouble and are full of
grievances about the incivility of their Fraus.

The Germans for whom I have the least sympathy in billeting matters
are the owners of the really large houses. Very few members of the
former governing class are to be found in the Occupied Area, but the
few who remain are disagreeable people. The working-classes speak
bitterly of their selfishness during the war and class arrogance under
the old régime. These are the people who fostered and fomented all
that was arrogant and offensive in latter-day German policy, and it
is entirely just and seemly that the British Army should enjoy the
comforts of their luxurious mansions. In an encounter of which I heard
between a batman and a German baroness lies the whole philosophy of
the Occupation. The baroness was discovered by the officer’s wife
billeted in her house speechless with rage. Never in her life, so she
declared, had she been so insulted. Inquiries were made--batmen and
English servants are not allowed to be rude to German householders. It
then transpired that the lady, who after the manner of German Fraus
was in the habit of haunting her basement at odd hours, found one
afternoon two English soldiers belonging to the household sliding on
the back stairs and whistling. The lady spoke sharply and told them
that whistling and sliding on the banisters were “verboten.” Whereupon
Thomas Atkins, genial and undefeated, his hand on the stair rail,
turned to the angry baroness and remarked pleasantly, “Aye, missus, but
yer should have won the war, and then yer could have come and slid down
our back stairs and whistled.”




CHAPTER VI

CHRISTMAS IN COLOGNE

_Xmas 1919_


Christmas-time in Germany! I am haunted by the recollection of the
beautiful passage in Mr. Clutton Brock’s _Thoughts on the War_, a book
which many of us read when no improbability seemed greater than that
of spending Christmas in Cologne in the wake of a British Army of
Occupation: “Forget for a moment the war and wasted Belgium and the
ruins of Rheims Cathedral, and think of Germany and all that she means
to the mind among the nations of Europe. She means cradle songs and
fairy stories and Christmas in old moonlit towns, and a queer, simple
tenderness always childish and musical with philosophers who could
forget the world in thought like children that play, and musicians who
could laugh suddenly like children through all their profundities of
sound.”

In this same essay Mr. Clutton Brock goes on to say how these Germans
of the past were always spoken of as “the good Germans,” and the world
admired their innocence and imposed upon it. Finally they grew tired of
being imposed upon, so they determined to put off their childishness
and take their place among the strong nations of the world. What the
consequences of that change of attitude have been we all know too
well. The good Germans--the simple people who were bullied by their
neighbours till they made up their minds to be clever and worldly! If
this be the right reading of history, what an immeasurable weight is
added to the whole tragedy of the war.

It is to that older, more homely Germany one’s thoughts turn at
Christmastide. Our Christmas customs are largely German in origin.
Christmas trees and candles, Santa Claus with his bag of gifts--all
these things are in full swing here. Which of us as a child has not
thrilled over _Grimm’s Fairy Tales_? And German toys! Not for a moment
would patriotism allow us to confess it, but at heart we know we have
missed, and continue to miss very badly, the tin soldiers and other
varied delights which in old days reached us from the Fatherland.
Cologne before Christmas was placarded by a German peace society,
begging parents not to rouse military instincts in their children by
giving them tin soldiers. The notice was a curious illustration of the
many varied opinions surging upwards in Germany to-day, none of which
would have dared to find expression under the old régime. But Germany
has certainly not disowned its militarism up to the point of perfection
aimed at by the enthusiasts of the peace society in question. The
Cologne community as a whole made merry over this appeal, and certainly
the sale of tin soldiers in the shops did not seem to be affected by
it. Never were toy shops so enchanting and fascinating as those of
the Höhe Strasse and the Breite Strasse in their Christmas finery.
I flattened my nose forlornly against the plate-glass windows, and
mourned over the fact that the total of summers and winters standing to
my account removed these delights beyond my reach. Troops of excited
children flocked in and round the shops, but for many a German child
the matter ended there. Whatever benefits we English may gain by a low
exchange, the price of toys in marks this winter makes them prohibitive
to all except the well-to-do and the “Schiebers,” the expressive name
for profiteers.

The German child normally is in a stronger position about Christmas
than the English child, for in this country there are two great
days for presents and festivities. Early in December arrives St.
Nicholas, bringing with him cakes and nuts and sweets. His visits are
paid, of course, during the night, and shoes and stockings are, with
the hopefulness of youth, left by the bedside for him to fill. On
Christmas Day is the Christmas tree with further cakes and presents and
delights. German brutality is always difficult to understand in view
of the position held by the children and the obvious wealth of care
and affection lavished on them. For in even greater measure than in
England is Christmas the children’s feast. During the holiday season
the affairs of their elders are temporarily suspended, while the
latter devote themselves to a round of juvenile gaiety and amusement.
Children’s plays appear at the theatre, even the Opera House abandons
Mozart and Wagner and gives special performances of _Hänsel und Gretel_
for the benefit of juvenile audiences.

I have no recollection of Germany more pleasant than that of the Opera
House filled in Christmas week with a crowd of excited children come
to listen to Humperdinck’s delightful play. The white frocks filled
stalls and boxes like petals of a great bouquet. Large bows of ribbon
on the fair heads fluttered like banners in a breeze as the adventures
of Hänsel and Gretel and the witch were followed with shrieks of
excitement. On one side of me sat a little English girl, holding on
tight to her chair so as not to spring out of it altogether; on the
other, a little German girl, with a hand thrust firmly into her mouth
in order to secure some measure of silence. But as the adventures
of the play deepened, the situation proved too much for my small
neighbour, who flung herself finally with cries of excitement into
her mother’s arms. I envied the actors their audience. It must have
been a joy to play in an atmosphere of such entire appreciation. When
the culminating moment is reached, and clever Hänsel pops the wicked
witch into the oven destined for the children, squeals of joy broke
out all over the theatre: squeals only to be renewed in intensity
when the oven door was reopened and the witch brought out cooked and
browned in the shape of an enormous gingerbread. Let us be thankful
for the unconsciousness of childhood, keeping alive in the world great
treasures of joy and laughter, when the grim realities of post-war
Europe oppress our souls.

But if the toy shops and the theatres and the excitement of the
children leave nothing to be desired, the weather has refused to play.
Never can I remember so damp and dripping and sodden a Christmas.
Our cold snap came in November. Then for a brief space we had frosts
and red sunsets: those pre-Christmas sunsets when the German mother
with a quaint materialism tells her children that “das Christ-kind
bäckt”--the Christ Child is baking cakes for Christmas. But there was
little baking this year on the part of the Christ Child. Fog and rain
enveloped Cologne for days beforehand in a damp and dripping mantle. In
a foreign land I found myself missing the hundred and one small duties
which at home have to be carried out at Christmas. It is dull work
ordering your presents by post. Even so it was all done, and unless
I went out in the wet and looked at the toy shops there was nothing
to show Christmas was at hand. Finally I was struck by a bright idea.
Why shouldn’t we have a Christmas tree? Yes, and presents for the
household, including the cross cook. Peace has been signed, and it is
the season of peace and goodwill: so why not?

First of all I sounded Maria--this was before the days of the
good-tempered Clara. Why shouldn’t we have a Christmas tree--every
other house in the street was getting ready for one? Maria’s eyes
glistened: she had had no Christmas tree since the war, to see one
again would be a joy indeed. Yes, most certainly she would undertake to
buy a suitable tree if I wanted one. My next business was to sound our
Frau. She too lent a favourable ear to my proposal. No, they had had no
Christmas tree since the war, but it would be pleasant to begin again.
She had plenty of decorations and candle-holders and would be glad to
lend them to me. Madame was as good as her word, and produced boxes of
crystal balls and coloured tinsels and a solid wood block into which
the tree could be fixed. Throughout a wet and gloomy afternoon Maria
and I saw to the decorations, and on Christmas Eve the tree was lit
up and our mixed household held a short and curious gathering in the
dining-room.

Whatever faults may be urged against the Germans, they are certainly
not lacking in a considerable measure of personal dignity. The
attitude of our Frau and her maids was everything that was correct.
They received their small gifts with pleasure and praised the English
Christmas cake, slices of which were handed round. We exchanged
greetings and good wishes for Christmas and the coming year, and
the tree with its candles and tinsel bravery was an object of much
admiration. But could the inner thoughts of any one of us in the room
have been revealed, how strange and painful must the texture have
proved!

Of one thing I am certain: the surface of courtesy and amenity
between us and our foes has to be restored little by little if we are
aiming at a future, however distant, purged of hatred and revenge.
The first tentative experiments can only be made between individuals
whose circumstances have flung them, like our Madame and ourselves,
into a personal relationship which is not unfriendly. As I have said
elsewhere, it is easy to hate the abstraction called Germany, but for
individual Germans one feels either like, dislike, or indifference the
same as for other people. But the growth of a better understanding is
likely to be slow and laborious. Even when individuals as individuals
do not hate each other, events have dug a chasm between the two
nations. The Germans are so curiously insensitive, it is always
difficult to realise if they feel things as we should feel them
ourselves. But the three German women who had had no Christmas tree
since the war and now were looking at a Christmas tree provided by an
English woman--what did the situation mean for them? Though obviously
pleased with their gifts and the little ceremony, the khaki uniforms
in the room spoke of conquest, defeat, overthrow. And for us too there
came a flood of memories, memories of friends lost, of young lives cut
down in their prime, of homes in England left stricken and empty this
Christmastide because the monstrous ambitions of Germany’s rulers would
have it so. And even as we talked and exchanged the old Christmas
messages of peace and drank each other’s health, the room and the tree
and the candles all seemed to vanish, and in their place I saw the grey
desolation and havoc of Flanders, lines of dim figures advancing to
attack, rows of graves, silent, mournful.

But if these things are not to have their repetition in a future still
more awful than the present we have known, somehow, some way, men must
learn the message of Christmas, hard though it be in our distracted
world, “Peace on earth, goodwill towards men.” But for once in a way
the Revised Version has stepped in with a deeper, more beautiful
meaning than that of the old familiar words, “Peace on earth to men
of good will.” Peace is not a casual condition. It does not arise
automatically when the roar of cannon dies away. It implies effort,
sacrifice, and consistent spiritual purpose. Treaties and protocols
cannot secure it; without goodwill peace is stillborn. We went through
the trials of the war with a high heart and a great endurance. Are our
hearts high enough for the final adventure of goodwill?




CHAPTER VII

THE BERGISCHE LAND


One of the real advantages of life in Cologne is the charm of the
surrounding neighbourhood. Not that the neighbourhood to which I refer
is near at hand or very accessible except by train or by motor car.
Cologne lies in the centre of a great fertile plain, through which the
Rhine flows nobly in that last stage of its career before entering the
mud flats of Holland. At a distance varying from ten to fifteen miles
the plain east and west is bounded by a chain of low hills broken up,
especially on the eastern side, by delicious valleys. Here are woods
and trout streams, meadows and flowers. No district with which I am
acquainted is more adapted to walks, delightful without being arduous,
or to longer expeditions by motor. These low hills commanding the plain
abound in views of extraordinary vastness and extent. The hills are so
easily climbed! Yet from their summits the wanderer has the impression
that the kingdoms of the earth lie spread at his feet. For very little
real exertion, therefore, he has the impression of having mastered some
Alpine peak--an observation for which I hope I may be pardoned by any
member of the Alpine Club.

From the eastern ridge, known as the Bergische Land, the sunset view
is one of special beauty. The cultivated slopes and pasture lands fall
away gently to the plain below, in spring fresh with the vivid green
of young grass or corn, in autumn rich with harvest gold. In the
distance, chimneys stretching north and south reveal the course of the
Rhine, whose waters are hidden from view. Far away to the left is the
outline of the Siebengebirge mounting guard over Bonn and the entrance
to the romantic reach of the stream known as the Rheingau. Above the
chimneys and the remote huddle of houses and factories, the twin spires
of Cologne Cathedral, their clumsiness softened by distance, raise
their symbol of man’s hope and aspiration to heaven.

The low range lying on the west side of Cologne known as the
Vorgebirge is less attractive than the Bergische Land to the east.
Industry preponderates on this side, for the Vorgebirge is of special
importance owing to the famous black coal extracted from the hills.
Here is dug, without any apparatus of shafts or sinking, a special
brown deposit which, pressed and pounded, turns into the briquettes on
which Cologne relies for its light and heat. The presence in the near
neighbourhood of this ample supply of cheap fuel has been a factor of
the utmost importance in the commercial development of Cologne. We of
the Occupation have learnt to bless the black briquettes, which feed
the central heating in winter and give us abundant electric light
throughout the year.

How well these people manage their industrialism! That is a reflection
borne in upon me time and again in the Rhineland. Prussianism, however
bad for the soul, was very efficient in the organisation of daily life.
Wages in Germany before the war were not high; the liberty and rights
of the worker were restricted in many directions. On the other hand, no
country in the world could approach Germany in the excellence of its
municipal organisation and the many advantages of the population as
regards public services. German authorities excelled in arrangements
concerned with health, communication, and amusement. Town planning and
building operations were controlled; cities were laid out and houses
built on lines destined to promote the welfare of the whole community.
The speculative builder was not allowed to wax fat at the expense of
his neighbours. Electric light is supplied even in small villages, and
an admirable service of trams and light railways brings the amenities
of life within reach of the poorest.

Amusements are dealt with in a rational spirit, which makes for
happiness and self-respect. Cafés, beer gardens with concert rooms
attached, are decent places, where a man does not drink furtively but
takes his glass of wine or beer in the company of his family. Not
only have large towns a first-rate opera house and theatre, but good
music and good drama can be heard in quite small places. Industry in
particular has been brought to heel. Factory chimneys are not allowed
to pollute a district at will or to poison the air with noxious fumes.
A modern school of painters has taught us to see qualities of strength
and even beauty in certain aspects of industry. But those qualities
cannot be obvious to the working-class wife who has to struggle with
the intolerable grime and dirt produced. The strength of a nation
is rooted in the homes of a nation, and there are many districts in
England where no man can be proud of his home. Men and women whose lot
in life is cast in the Black Country, or who are forced to dwell in
the long, mean street of dirty houses which extends from Nottingham to
Leeds, might well envy the better conditions of existence which obtain
in Germany.

I have never seen any information as to the stages of the Industrial
Revolution in Germany. Naturally it came at a later date than our own
and was able to benefit by our mistakes. But to what influence does it
owe a character so different? Here in the lower Rhineland there are big
industrial towns and great factories. These places are not beautiful,
but they lack the overpowering dirt and ugliness of the manufacturing
districts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. All along the lower Rhine one
factory succeeds another, but they consume their own smoke and fumes
and are not allowed to tyrannise over the district. Düsseldorf even
more than Cologne is a great manufacturing centre, and among other
industries has large machine and puddling works in its suburbs. But
the public gardens of the town, which are of great extent and beauty,
might be a hundred miles removed from a factory. Leverkusen, the great
dyeworks near Cologne, has the appearance of a model village. It is
all to the credit of Germany that she has not allowed herself to be
obsessed by that spirit of helpless fatalism which has descended on
too many of the manufacturing districts and towns in England. Men and
women’s lives are spent amid this grime, to the detriment of soul as
well as body. It is a valuable object lesson to learn that, granted
energy and a will to be clean, some of the drawbacks of an ugly
industrialism can be avoided for the workers.

Lancashire and Yorkshire have one feature in common with the German
industrial centres on the lower Rhine. Both have their own beautiful
hinterland. The German hinterland in question has nothing so grand and
so austere to show as the great heather-clad moors and rugged dales
of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. But withal the rural districts of this
smiling Bergische Land, with its wooded valleys and running streams and
black and white houses buried deep among orchards, lie, so it seems,
within a stone’s throw of factories and workshops. Full of charm are
these little valleys, divided one from another by narrow watersheds.
All of a family, yet each possesses its own features and has the
impress of its own personality. A trout stream almost invariably
meanders along the valley, sometimes finding its way through meadows
of long lush grass, Alpine in its greenness, sometimes flowing among
overhanging woods where the murmur of the waters mingles with the
rustling of the leaves or the deeper, more melancholy note of the fir
boughs. It is a smiling, almost park-like land, richly cultivated and
well populated. There are no wild or desert places. Everything perhaps
is a trifle sophisticated. Many of the black and white cottages, gabled
and romantic, might have stepped off the light-comedy stage. Here and
there the moated tower of some ruined Burg or an eighteenth-century
country house set back in a walled garden strikes the same note.
This is not Nature in her strength and power, but Nature laughing,
gay, forthcoming, a sylvan goddess of woods and streams and meadows.
“Intime” is the word which best expresses her charm. Last, but not
least, Nature in the Bergische Land is a goddess of the fruits of the
earth.

Spring is a season of wonder and beauty in the Rhineland. The villages
disappear in a cloud of pink and white blossom. White and pink too
are the country roads lined with fruit trees. Beech trees abound; and
has Nature in her great spectacle of the changing year any sight more
beautiful than the first shy unfolding of the young beech leaves? A
little later come the chestnuts, stately and self-important, carrying
their white candles on broad green candlesticks and lighting up the
countryside with so brave an illumination. Then follows the deep-red
blossom of the thorn, mingled with the purple and yellow of lilac and
laburnum. Under foot the emerald green of the meadows is flecked yellow
with cowslips. Yellow too are the great fields of mustard, which in
turn yield place to carmine stretches of clover. It is a riot of colour
and beauty throughout the Bergische Land. The high midsummer pomps find
the cottage gardens a mass of roses and other homely flowers. Finally
the white promise of spring gives way to the golden fulfilment of
autumn. The orchards bend low under the weight of pear and apple and
plum. And winter is no harsh thing in the valleys, where the delicate
tracery of the leafless woods, detached against a frosty sky, has a
charm as great as the young foliage of spring.

Though so little removed from the neighbourhood of industry, there
is practically neither grime nor contamination about the Bergische
Land. The German housewife, as I have said, is happily spared that
hand-to-hand struggle with dirt which embitters existence for many
an English working woman. The decentralisation of industry is much
practised in Germany, and frequently isolated factories will be
found in country surroundings which give employment to the immediate
neighbourhood. It is perhaps for this reason that the game is not a
hopeless one, that the extraordinary cleanliness of the German village
is due. It is quite an experience to walk or motor through the
villages on a Saturday evening when cleaning operations are in full
swing. The whole population is out in the street tidying up. The oldest
and the youngest inhabitant alike are hard at work with buckets and
besoms. I am now able to appreciate why the Besom Binder always figures
so largely in German fairy tales. As soon as a child can stagger it is
provided with a besom three times the size of itself and turned out to
sweep. Tiny children flourishing brooms will remain one of my permanent
impressions of Germany.

Not only the doorstep of each individual house and the strip of
pavement in front of the door, but the street itself is cleaned up
thoroughly on Saturday night. There are rinsings and scrubbings and
washings and sweepings. The midden is tidied and made as neat and trim
as a haystack. The woodstack is similarly squared, the blocks piled
with mathematical exactness one on the top of the other. From the
street itself every vestige of dirt and dust is removed. You are almost
afraid to breathe lest anything should be disturbed. As for a motor
car, its intrusion on the scene is little short of a sacrilege. Until
dusk and after, the Saturday cleaning lasts. Then on Sunday the village
in its best clothes sits about at ease on doorsteps and contemplates
the fruits of its labours.

Sunday in this Catholic land is a true feast day. It is impossible
not to admire the simple, wholesome way in which the people, town
and country alike, take their pleasures. Churches are crowded in
the morning, and it is clear that the Catholic hierarchy keeps in
very close touch with its flock. But religious festivals, which are
frequent, have a pleasant social aspect and the population from
oldest to youngest clearly enjoy them. Sometimes in the valleys of
the Bergische Land you may meet a long procession going on pilgrimage
to a neighbouring shrine. The sound of chanting and music is borne
on the wind as the company wind up the hillside. It is like a scene
in a play as you watch the distant view of banners and crucifixes
and white-robed acolytes. Especially attractive are the children’s
processions held on White Sunday--the Sunday following Easter--when
the ceremony of first communion takes place. No steps are omitted to
make the occasion impressive. Every little child in Cologne down to
the poorest wears a white frock and a wreath of white roses. They come
with their parents in large numbers during the morning to say a prayer
in the cathedral--tiny children, so they seem, to be struggling with
the great mysteries of faith. We passed a small hillside church in the
Bergische Land on the afternoon of White Sunday at the moment when a
procession of children was coming out. It was a pretty sight: the fair
heads crowned with flowers and every child carrying a gold-and-white
lily in its hand; fond and anxious parents shepherding their lambs, and
provided with cloaks and umbrellas in the event of rain.

These simple ceremonies give warmth and character to the countryside,
but quite apart from religious exercises of the nature I have
described, the whole of Cologne pours into the Bergische Land in
the course of a fine Sunday afternoon. Various light railways issue
from the city and, running across the plain, penetrate the valleys
at various points. From the Dom Platz at Cologne you may, if fired
by the spirit of adventure, take your choice of three trams to the
Bergische Land. One will carry you in some forty minutes to the
Königsförst, formerly a royal forest at the foot of the hills;
another in fifty minutes to Bensberg, a charming old town crowned by
an eighteenth-century castle in the Palladian style. The castle with
its domes has dignity and character; it is now used as a barracks for
French coloured troops. From the tiny acropolis to which the city
clings--in spring half smothered by the white and pink of its cherry
and plum and apple orchards--is the finest of all the views over the
plain. Or you may journey for an hour northwards along the Rhine,
passing through Mülheim--a widely scattered district of factories--till
you come to the pleasant little town of Berg Gladbach. Here through a
third gateway you may enter the wooded hills and valleys stretching to
the east.

Only there will be certain disadvantages if you conduct these
explorations on the Sabbath, for the Boche in his best clothes is of
the same mind, and the trams are crowded to a point of suffocation hard
to endure on a hot summer’s day. But all the same the experience of
a Sunday excursion is by no means to be missed, for then you see the
life of the people as it is. What light-hearted, cheerful crowds they
are! Families, father, mother, and children, out for the day together,
troops of young people with knapsacks and mandolines tramping for miles
through the woods, singing as they march, and as often as not waving
their hands and calling out “Good day” in English.

The group instinct of the German is very noticeable in his
holiday-making. Picnic parties abound, clatches of children in the
care of nuns and priests; more prosperous families out for the day in
wonderful chars-à-bancs and wagonettes which are covered with green
boughs and wreaths of flowers. In summer it is a point of honour for
picnic parties to decorate their carriages in this way. I have often
seen horses drawn up by the roadside in the neighbourhood of the
Königsförst or Bensberg while the occupants were employed in cutting
down branches and converting the conveyance into a green bower.

Village feasts are common, and great is the excitement when a Kermess
is held. The village is decorated from end to end, and the principal
street is lined with booths and stalls. Merry-go-rounds, swing-boats,
shooting-galleries cater for the amusement of the spectators, while
dancing goes on in the inns and cafés. May-day festivities are a
feature of the countryside, and the village belle may find her house
decorated on May morning with a may-bush hung on a tall pole by an
admiring suitor. If there is competition between suitors, more than
one bush may be hung on the house, and the various lovers under such
circumstances endeavour each to carry his bush into the air at a higher
point than that of his rival or rivals. One fair lady this last year,
so the story runs, found her may-bush decorated with a miniature figure
in khaki hanging head downwards. Intimacy with British soldiers was
frowned upon in the locality, and the village applauded the reproof
thus administered to an erring beauty who had fraternised with the
enemy.

One-horse cabs of archaic design survive in the more remote villages,
and on Sunday afternoons the elderly local plutocrats may be seen
solemnly taking the air in a conveyance of this character. The
aged horse does his work in leisurely fashion, and if the rate of
progression is slow, the dignity of the passengers loses nothing by
the fact. No village is really remote, owing to the network of light
railways spread about the country. Yet despite the proximity of Cologne
and the constant influx from the industrial districts on the Rhine,
the village people appear to retain their simple habits and rustic
outlook on life. They work hard, but they also enjoy life thoroughly in
a simple way. It is this high standard of simple enjoyment among town
and country people alike with which any traveller must be struck in the
Rhineland, a better state of affairs surely than the enforced gloom of
many an English village, where feasts and dancing would be regarded
as a desecration of the Sabbath, and men are forced to drink and loaf
for lack of something better to do. German education is open to grave
indictment as regards the spirit and temper it has bred, but withal the
Germans are an educated people, and an educated people knows how to
employ its leisure.

The longer you live in the Occupied Area, the more sphinx-like the
riddle it presents--the riddle of reconciling the behaviour of these
decent, self-respecting people among whom you find yourself with the
actions of that collective entity, Germany, who figures as the outcast
of Europe. “It’s all put on,” some people say. But this theory of
sustained hypocrisy becomes ridiculous over a period of many months,
especially when you have mixed unknown in the crowd and seen the
Germans at work and play among themselves. Some other explanation must
be found for a psychology so bewildering. Love of God’s out-of-doors is
always a redeeming element in every human being, and it is an element
which can in no sense be denied to our late enemies. The town folk
enjoy the beauties of the country in a quiet, self-respecting way with
a minimum of rowdiness. It is not a question just of hanging about
cafés and beerhouses. These places on a fine day are crowded, but
they are crowded with parties whose dusty boots and draggled clothes
show they have been far afield. The children carry bunches of flowers
or green boughs. Sometimes a tired little one rides on a father’s
shoulder. Knapsacks are produced, from which a meal sadly frugal in
quality and quantity emerges. Coffee or beer is ordered, and the party
sit down to eat and take a rest.

As at every other point in German life, children play a great part in
these excursions. Hard though the times, parents pinch and save to see
the children are well and neatly dressed. A white frock in summer for
the girls--a bit of fur round the collar of the coat in Winter for
the boys--these things are a point of honour. But boots have become a
terrible problem to most working-class homes, as many a peasant has
told us. It is certainly not easy to associate ideas of hunger and
defeat with these respectable Sunday pleasure-seekers. But as I have
said before, superficial impressions must be discounted in Germany, and
there are always the thin legs and pasty faces of the children to pull
you up short if you try to thrust aside ugly memories of reports and
statistics and official inquiries.

Often as I have sat among the Sunday crowds in the little hill towns
have I reflected on the worldly wisdom of Machiavelli, who, like
Bismarck, if bad was long-headed. Machiavelli took the view that you
must either destroy your enemy or so behave that you may turn him
into a good neighbour. One thing is very clear: Germany will never be
destroyed. What steps, if any, are we taking to turn her into a good
neighbour?




CHAPTER VIII

IN SEARCH OF A FISHING


Long ago in Winnipeg I remember finding two young French girls in the
immigrants’ reception camp. I inquired if they had come to Canada
alone. Whereat the elder with a fine gesture replied, “O non, nous
ne sommes pas seules, mais mon père est allé en ville acheter des
terres.” In a spirit no less spacious and confident we set out one fine
afternoon to find a fishing. The Army of Occupation is desperately
interested in fishing; so, like the “terres” of which my Winnipeg
friend spoke, good fishing is hard to come by. Consequently much
reticence on the subject exists, not to say craft. The trout streams of
the Bergische Land or in the Eiffel are set in ideal surroundings from
the fisherman’s point of view. All that is lacking on many occasions is
the trout. The country folk are fond of talking of miraculous draughts
of fishes which existed in the days before the war. The old gentleman
who hires out rods by the day, when confronted with an empty bag, will
explain elaborately that this unfortunate result is due to the fact
that the British soldiers have caught so many trout; things are not
what they used to be. Personally I am a little sceptical about these
disclaimers and the shifting of the responsibility on to the broad back
of the Occupation. Not that any feeling exists against Thomas Atkins
in the British bridgehead. It is pleasant throughout our area to talk
to the villagers and to hear their friendly remarks about the troops.
Of course there were some bad characters and some bad behaviour. But
Atkins, kindly and easygoing, has been a missionary of reconciliation
in many a German village. Women will tell you that they helped with the
house and were kind to the children; “any English person is sure of a
welcome in a village where English soldiers have been.”

So despite some lapses on the part of the Army over trout--there are
stories of hand grenades used in streams--we set out with confidence to
explore some valleys on the back side of Söllingen, where, according to
rumour, trout of large size and merit abounded in ideal streams. Our
chauffeur had a German friend who knew of a fishing. The afternoon was
before us, so we set out to find the friend.

For a time we went north along the Rhine, past the great factory
of Leverkusen--famous for its dyes, and during the war one of the
most important of German munition works. Our way lay amid the many
industrial establishments which mark the high road to Düsseldorf,
and I looked with envy on their smokeless chimneys. Beyond Opladen
we turned off to the right and, with the bewildering rapidity which
happens in this district, found ourselves in a few minutes in a purely
rural valley. Here were orchards and open meadows and black and white
houses. We twisted in and out along various side-roads, till the road
itself showed signs of ending in a secluded valley where a mill-pond,
a mill, and a miller came into view. The miller was the chauffeur’s
friend. They shook hands solemnly and exchanged greetings. Then we were
introduced--was there any fishing to let? He, the chauffeur, knew from
previous experience that the stream was well thought of. The miller was
friendly but could give us little help. The proprietor was just dead,
the upper stream was let, there were no trout now in the lower pond.
But he had a friend, Herr Hermann Hollweg, who owned a Bade-anstalt in
a neighbouring village. Herr Hollweg most certainly would put us in the
way of getting a fine trout stream.

Back again we went, therefore, to hunt up the Bade-anstalt and Herr
Hermann Hollweg. We ran him to earth without much difficulty--a
second polite and courteous gentleman, but again full of regrets that
he had no fishing to let. Herr Hollweg produced a large map of the
countryside. At Nägelsbaum he had a friend, Herr Holbach, who assuredly
would be able to produce trout. Would we kindly mention his name and
Herr Holbach would do his best for us? Before we left would we like to
see his Bade-anstalt? Certainly, we replied, and so we were led through
a scrupulously clean kitchen, to emerge in an open-air swimming bath
of extraordinary size and appointments for a small village. A group
of boys and girls were swimming and splashing about in the water. On
a terrace above the bath was a café where various people were having
refreshments. Behind that was a large concert hall where, according
to Herr Hollweg, the company danced on Sundays. Nothing has struck me
more in Germany than the excellent and wholesome way in which popular
amusements are arranged. Probably the industrial workers from the
surrounding district pour out to Herr Hollweg’s bath and café and
concert hall on Sundays. But why, one asks, is it impossible to secure
similar amenities for an English town and village, where loafing and
drinking are often the dismal alternative amusements of the Sabbath?

We complimented Herr Hollweg on his establishment and then set out
in pursuit of Herr Holbach. Our road lay through the characteristic
scenery of the Bergische Land: little villages set deep in their
orchards; rich pastures, wheat fields already turning golden under the
summer sun. Woods of beech and oak and lime covered the low hills. In
the early days of the Occupation, British troops had been quartered
in this part of the perimeter, a point about which we were left in no
doubt. The inhabitants from whom we stopped to ask the way countered my
German by a fine flow of English. Small compliments about their prowess
in this respect causes the Boche face to be wreathed in smiles. One
young woman knew all about Herr Holbach. Yes, he had a large pond with
“much fish”--a form of words of which I was growing a trifle tired.
Down the hill we went again till a large dam came into view--that
part of the story at least was true. Also there must be some earnest
expectation or hope of fish, judging by the depressing number of rods
which were dangling over the bank. We walked on to the damhead, and
there encountered a hero in charge of two rods. He had lived in America
and spoke English fluently. No, we had come to the wrong place for
trout; this was carp-fishing--witness the rods. Were there any carp? Oh
yes. Upon which he plunged down to the water’s edge and produced a net
with two large fish in it. Herr Holbach, who lived in a house across
the dam, might have some trout-fishing, but he was doubtful about this.

Our latest friend had served in the Navy, and we fell into general
conversation with him. As is usual when talking to German working-men,
I was struck by a sense of weariness and horror in all he said about
the war. Their rulers had been mad, that was his view; the war had
brought nothing but utter misery, there ought never to be another one;
they were happy and prosperous before, now they were ruined. Our talk
on the damhead was yet another proof that if the League of Nations ever
becomes a going concern, it will draw its strength, not from the upper
classes, many of whom are rooted in the ways of the old diplomacy, but
from the humble folk like our fisherman whose souls have been branded
in the furnace of war.

But the afternoon was going on, and though we had had much pleasant
conversation, the fishing still eluded us. Herr Holbach’s house, or
rather farm, stood on the bank of another lake, and there, apparently,
in addition to agriculture he turned an honest penny by letting out
boats or arranging facilities for swimming.

Herr Holbach proved as pleasant as his predecessors, but equally
elusive on the subject of trout. No, he dealt solely in carp; then came
the familiar leitmotiv for which I was waiting--the English soldiers
had taken all the trout. But he had a friend, Herr Richard Klassen,
at Witzhelden, who had fishing to let and enormous trout. It was very
expensive, but the trout were of a size and vigour under which any
ordinary rod would bend to breaking point. His advice to us was to go
and interview Herr Klassen, recommended to that end by Herr Holbach.
The sun was drawing to the west and long shadows were beginning to fall
over the hills and glades. If indeed it was to be our fate perpetually
to chase trout from one valley to another in this smiling land,
there might be a worse lot. We turned our car, and once again, hope
triumphing over experience, we set out in search of Herr Klassen.

Herr Klassen, so our instructions ran, lived near the church in
Witzhelden. We found the house in possession of a girl, who to our
surprise showed signs of alarm at the sight of a uniform. However,
her face cleared up when we explained we had come about fishing.
Herr Klassen was in the hayfield; she would fetch him. Meanwhile, a
neatly-dressed elderly man with a lump of putrid meat in his hand came
up the road and took off his hat politely. This was Herr Klassen’s
brother. The gentleman was, like his niece, a trifle nervous at seeing
us, but became garrulous when our errand was revealed. We came from
Cologne did we--then of course we knew of the most regrettable incident
which had overtaken the Klassen family last week. No? Was it possible
we had not heard--they had been fined five thousand marks for having
firearms in the house;--the whole family were devoted to sport and they
had various shooting guns they had not given up.

Hence these tears. We expressed sympathy with the family troubles, but
said it was foolish not to have mentioned the various fowling-pieces
of whose innocent intentions Herr Klassen spoke with such conviction.
However, he showed no resentment that the long arm of British law had
touched him in his remote village, though, as the hero of the hour, his
feelings were clearly a little hurt that we had no knowledge of his
fame. At this moment up came Herr Richard Klassen, hot and perspiring
from the hayfield.

Yes, he had a pond, and he had a lot of trout. They were not very big
as yet, but they would soon grow; was he not feeding them on lumps
of the dead cow whose remains had caused me to get to windward of
his brother. Would we like to see the pond? Nothing was easier. Down
another small valley, therefore, we plunged again till the road came to
an end, and a pretty path through a wood brought us out on the shore
of a secluded pond. It was a peaceful scene, with the warm sunlight on
the wood and the water, and the sweet smell of new-cut hay reaching
us from a neighbouring meadow. As we walked we admired the beauty of
the country. This moved Herr Klassen to a flow of words: the country
was beautiful, but men were bad; since the war there was no honour,
no goodness, no morality. It was all greed and grab, “Wucher” and
“Schieber.” And the end would be Bolshevism. Herr Klassen’s lack of
faith in human nature was demonstrated practically by the barbed-wire
entanglements which surrounded his trout pond. Along the narrow track
by the water’s edge were various, almost invisible, contrivances
destined to show whether any trespasser had come that way. Here at last
were some trout, if only little ones. But little trout grow, and Herr
Klassen was emphatic that if we would come back in a fortnight or three
weeks we should have good sport. As for payment, it was to be strictly
by results--no fish, no cash. All fish caught were paid for at so much
a pound--a very fair arrangement.

It was pleasant to linger by the water-side in the evening sunshine,
and, pipes and cigarettes being produced, the talk slid east and west
over matters of greater moment than the trout. We had been joined by a
friend of Herr Klassen’s, a wag with red hair and freckled face who
poked fun at his neighbour with great vigour. Freckles had been to the
war, Herr Klassen had not--the women and the Church would not let him
go, declared the former; at which Herr Klassen raised protesting hands
to heaven. Both men spoke with evident alarm of Bolshevism. Another
war was bound to come, only next time it would be a Bolshevist war.
It must be remembered this pleasant Bergische Land is not so very far
removed from the Ruhr district, and that at Remscheid only a few miles
away there had been shootings and murders. The spectre of anarchy and
red revolution has come very near homes such as Herr Klassen’s, and
for revolution a small farmer of his type has nothing but horror. We
asked about the new Republican Government. It moved neither man to
much enthusiasm. Weakness can never inspire enthusiasm, and the policy
pursued by the Allies towards Germany has made it impossible for any
government to be strong. Herr Klassen said what they wanted was a
constitutional monarchy like England. They were doubtful of Republics.
France was a Republic and they did not want to be like France.

We talked of the war and the peace and the threatening condition of
affairs in Eastern Europe. Both men called down fire from heaven on
the Poles. No German can speak of a Pole in measured language. Soon
there would be a Bolshevist army in Warsaw, and then what was going to
happen to Germany? Freckles, who had fought on the Eastern Front, spoke
well of the Russians. They were brave men, so he said, and if properly
armed and properly led would fight as well as the Germans. They had no
chance in the war; men could not fight with spades and hayforks. They
were mown down like sheep because they had often neither rifles nor
guns. Klassen had had a Russian prisoner working on his farm and had
found him a good fellow. Freckles, who was, I gathered, not a man of
property, was rather attracted by some of the anti-capitalist ideas of
the Bolsheviks. Klassen was talking bitterly of the Schiebers and the
terrific price of food and goods in Germany--capitalism was a curse.
“What are you but a capitalist,” retorted Freckles with a grin; “you
have four cows and some land and a pond full of trout”--before which
sally Klassen, who was clearly at the mercy of his more nimble-witted
friend, collapsed entirely. “What about the arms, too,” said Freckles
with another grin and a wink in our direction. Klassen turned to us as
eagerly as his brother. Of course we had heard of the law proceedings
in Cologne at which he had been fined? No? His face fell on realising
the limited span of his fame; it was a terrible affair; he did not know
how he should get the money for the fine.

We packed both men into the car and took them back to the village,
where we parted with mutual goodwill. “In a fortnight, then,” said
Klassen, “you will come again when the fish are bigger. Yes, you can
bring a friend too if you wish.”

So we said good evening and, consoled by the discovery of a secret pond
if we had failed to secure a length of stream, travelled westwards
towards the setting sun and Cologne.




CHAPTER IX

WHO PAYS?


To the traveller passing from the devastated regions of France to
the hills and valleys of the Rhineland, there is something almost
scandalous in the impression of wealth and solidity conveyed by the
latter country. “These people have not suffered in the war at all,”
said an English woman in Cologne to me indignantly; “look at the
worldwide misery they have provoked; look at the state of France, and
then see how lightly the Germans themselves have escaped: everything
intact and their country untouched.”

But has Germany really escaped so lightly? Untouched her country may
be; intact in one vital particular it certainly is not. Bricks and
mortar can in time be replaced, shell holes can be filled in, and the
plough pass again over the devastated fields. But at a date when the
material destruction of France will be, let us hope, to a large extent
repaired, Germany will still be paying for the sins of her rulers
in the bodies of a generation a large proportion of which will be
enfeebled and diseased. It is an insidious form of payment, lacking in
obviousness or dramatic quality. But its ultimate thoroughness ought
to satisfy even the moralists who demand that an entity called Germany
should be punished, quite irrespective of the guilt or innocence of
the actual person on whom the punishment falls.

       *       *       *       *       *

A mile or more below the Hohenzollern bridge, where four kings of
Prussia on their bronze horses survey a world fashioned now on other
lines than those contemplated by Prussian arrogance, the Rhine flows
along a ribbon of green strand which serves as a recreation ground for
the children of the district. Here on a summer evening we sometimes
walk and watch young Germany at play: children of all ages bathing,
paddling, shouting, laughing, amusing themselves in a hundred different
ways, while their parents sit in little groups, the women sewing or
knitting, the men with their pipes.

Children abound in Germany. They swarm in droves in every direction.
Surely, you say, these hunger stories must have been exaggerated!
The rising generation does not appear to be much affected, judging
by its numbers. To the casual observer there seems to be very little
amiss with these Rhineland children. My first impression was that they
compared favourably with many children in our own industrial centres.
The German working-classes are self-respecting folk, and however
slender their resources in food and clothing during the war, they made
the most of them. Also it must be remembered the Rhineland is one of
the richest provinces, agriculturally no less than commercially, in the
Empire, and that the British Occupation had resulted in nine months of
adequate feeding before I saw Cologne.

Nevertheless, after a time I found myself modifying my first favourable
impression. The clothes of the poorest children are neat and tidy.
But large numbers of the children, trim though their appearance, are
pinched and pasty-faced. Under the short skirts bare legs are seen
often thin and rickety. Little by little my attention was arrested by
two facts: first, that these crowds of children were all apparently
very much of an age; secondly, that the proportion of babies to
children seemed extraordinarily small. Below the age of two and a half
to three the juvenile population comes to an abrupt halt. After a time,
intrigued during my walks by the relative absence of babies, I took to
counting perambulators or babies in arms. The numbers were strikingly
small. Motoring through Bonn one Sunday afternoon in 1919 when the
family life of the town had turned out into the streets and gardens, I
counted six babies in all. The explanation is simple. Statistics show
that there has been a rise in the death rate of German children between
two and six of over 49 per cent. during the years 1913-1917. Among
school children from six to fifteen the death rate rose 55 per cent. in
1918 as compared with 1913. As for the older children, their apparent
uniformity of age is largely due to arrested development. Many of them
are much older than they seem. Of course there is no general rule.
Some children look astonishingly well and plump if others are thin and
pasty-faced.

Coming home one evening along the banks of the river, we passed two
typical working-class families, each supplied with a perambulator. One
held the fattest and rosiest baby imaginable. I admired Heinrich, and
was told he was nine months old--born at the time of the Armistice.
Whatever the prenatal conditions of the mother, the baby had not
suffered. But the other child--a little girl of eighteen months--its
memory haunts me still. A tiny shrivelled face looked up at me under
the bravery of a blue-and-white bonnet; tragic haunting eyes set in an
emaciated body. My mind harked back, as I looked, to the devastated
areas and to the cruel sufferings and losses of France. But here, on
the frail body of this unhappy German child, war had set its seal as
unmistakably as among the crater holes and shattered buildings of the
line. Conqueror and conquered we looked at each other, till I the
conqueror could look no more. Do any robust spirits still survive, I
wonder, who take the view that an occasional war is a good thing--that
it freshens every one up and makes for briskness and efficiency? Is it
possible, after all we have endured and are still enduring, that large
numbers of people in a mood of helpless fatalism are already talking
about “the next war”; while many of them are actively encouraging
policies and popular sentiments, the logical outcome of which is a
future conflict even more ghastly than the last one?

Meanwhile, the martyred child life of Europe cries to heaven against
this theory. The sufferings of the Central Empires in this respect have
been heaviest. “Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin.” Germany, in pulling
down the pillars of Europe, has involved all this for her own people.
But why, one asks, should the heaviest toll be paid by those who have
least measure of responsibility? Why should the Junkers and horrid
old gentlemen covered with decorations, who made the war, be living
comfortably on their estates while the children of the working-classes
have perished? It is the natural instinct of every decent person to
shield a child from suffering, and as I watch the boys and girls
playing on the banks of the Rhine, the whole question of the war
takes on an aspect from which every vestige of glamour and chivalry
and romance has vanished. These merry children at their games: it is
on them that the hand of Britain’s sea-power, however unwittingly,
has rested in its heaviest form. The British people would repudiate
with anger any idea of making war on children. But war has a horrible
vitality of its own and goes its own way, moulding men more than it is
moulded by them. These things follow inexorably from the very character
of modern warfare, which is no more a struggle between armies, but
between nations. Noncombatants have ceased to exist, and those who make
wars must reckon on babies as cannon fodder.

So long as there are wars, the weapon of the blockade is inevitable.
We were fighting for our lives and had no choice but to use it. The
German submarine campaign was directed to the starvation of England,
and bitterly though they complain of our blockade, their own minds
were set on identical ends so far as we were concerned. But blockade
means infant mortality on an appalling scale, and if statesmen and
militarists are indifferent to such things, it is to be hoped the
democracies of the world will view matters differently. So far as
Germany is concerned it is through her children she is hit.

The Occupied Areas have suffered the least of any in Germany. Yet even
in this relatively favoured land the state of affairs is bad enough.
In Bonn, for some reason, things seem to have been worse than in
Cologne. I shall never forget the feeling of utter helplessness with
which I saw a group of rickety-looking Bonn children staring hungrily
into the windows of a chocolate shop. We took them in and gave them
sweets; there were no cakes or buns to be had, and bread is rationed.
Poor children, they gathered round us in a state of frantic excitement
when we produced slabs of chocolate. The fatuity of our own action was
miserably apparent. For these children were only typical of hundreds
of thousands of cases all over Europe, and even so their circumstances
were far better than what obtains in many other countries. Children,
of course, cannot grow up and be healthy without milk, and milk is
unobtainable in the towns. The municipality doles out a limited supply
to invalids, nursing mothers, and babies, but children above a certain
age never see fresh milk, and tinned milk is too expensive a luxury
to figure in the daily dietary of the working-classes. Most German
children have nothing but “ersatz” coffee to drink in its unqualified
nastiness. The distribution of food on fair lines has proved a great
failure in Germany, and the prolonged malnourishment of the children is
likely to have consequences of the gravest character.

A shattered house, a ruined village tell their own very obvious tale.
Physical deterioration is a subtle thing far less easy to recognize or
to estimate. It is only little by little that one realises the state of
affairs produced by the blockade and the degree to which the morale of
the whole nation has been undermined by starvation. It is true that the
Germans cling desperately to what sorry comfort they can derive from
the theory that their armies in the field were never defeated--that
they were brought down at the last by hunger. They still assure you
their armies were magnificent--never were there such soldiers. But
towards the end rations failed, and morale broke through stories of
starvation at home. “We had not plenty of bully beef like you,” said
a German soldier to us; “you did not get letters saying your wife and
children had nothing to eat. We could have gone on fighting if we
had had food.” He spoke with that curious lack of resentment which is
a constant puzzle among these people. Consistent and growing hunger
spread over a term of years is not a pleasant experience. Germany,
unlike France, has been spared the horrors of the invader on her soil.
But no mistake could be greater than to imagine that the war she
provoked has proved a frolic for her, while all the rest of the world
suffered.

A Report by Professor Starling and two British colleagues, on “Food and
Agricultural Conditions in Germany,” gives the results of an official
inquiry made by the British Government as to food and health questions
in the spring of 1919. The Report shows an increased number of deaths
among the civilian population, from 1915 to 1918, of more than
three-quarters of a million persons as compared with normal pre-war
estimates. In plain language, three-quarters of a million people have
died from starvation or the consequences of underfeeding. In the last
year of the war the civilian death rate was up 37 per cent. The infant
and child mortality figures quoted above are taken from this Report.
To the number of deaths must be added the very much larger proportion
of children and adults who survive with constitutions permanently
impaired. Discoursing learnedly of the number of calories required
to keep a normal man in normal health, Professor Starling shows that
the Germans were living on just half the necessary amount. There were
great inequalities between town and country, owing to the reluctance of
the country districts to surrender the food they produced. The urban
populations, of course, suffered most.

The three British investigators give a sorry account of the children
they examined in the schools, hospitals, public kitchens. Some
people may say that the fewer German babies in the world the better.
I feel certain, however, that no theoretical holder of that view
would act upon it when brought face to face with some of these
hollow-eyed children you see in the streets. Professor Starling and
his colleagues visited Berlin and Upper Silesia, as well as the
Occupied Territories. Everywhere they found the same condition of
mental and moral prostration, of apathy, and lowered vitality. Disease
has flourished, of course, in the wake of starvation. The statistics
of consumption show an alarming increase in the percentage of people
attacked. Enfeebled bodies, young and old, cannot resist the inroads
of infectious complaints. Matters grow steadily worse as the eastern
frontiers are approached. Beyond, in Poland and Russia, a state of
affairs exists about which most people, happily for themselves, have
not sufficient imagination to form a clear picture.

German conditions have not sunk to levels of misery so profound as
those which exist elsewhere, but they are bad enough to afford a useful
standard as to the situation in Austria, Russia, and other countries.
That luxury and great extravagance exist side by side with dire want
and starvation is a feature of the fatal coil which is throttling
the economic life of Europe. Thoughtless travellers are often misled
by a superficial appearance of prosperity in the main streets of big
towns. Newspaper correspondents seek from time to time to decry the
existing misery by giving accounts of the gay life in some cities and
the excellent food obtainable at a price in large restaurants. The
fact that food of such a kind can be had does not prove the unreality
of starvation. All that it proves is a complete breakdown in rationing,
and failures in distribution operating most unfairly in favour of the
rich. The good dinner paid for at a fancy price is only a link in the
chain. At the other end are families whose destitution is the greater
because the inefficiency of control has made the serving of such a
dinner possible.

When the history of the war comes to be written, the question of food
production and distribution in Germany will prove a suggestive no less
than a tragic page. The German machine, admirable for carrying out a
carefully devised military policy, was useless for meeting unforeseen
contingencies which call for public spirit rather than for regulation.
The failure to grapple with the food question was complete. German
officialism seems to have collapsed helplessly before the problem
of distribution and rationing. Though fresh milk is unobtainable
in Cologne to-day--except the special supplies rationed by the
municipality--it can be had in the country ten miles out. Considerable
efforts were made during the war to provide a limited amount of milk
for children and nursing mothers. But with better distribution the
supplies available might have gone much further. The Government of a
country cannot have it both ways, as the Prussian autocrats found to
their cost. It cannot at one and the same time exact and obtain docile
obedience to a machine and simultaneously develop that free spirit of
public co-operation which was the salvation of England during the war.
In our own country public opinion rose to the occasion with a will. All
classes worked together to make rationing a success, and the brilliant
improvisations of the Ministry of Food carried the nation over a
crisis of unparalleled magnitude in a manner highly creditable to every
one concerned.

Let us admit at once that our food problem did not approach that of the
Germans in difficulty. For one thing, the problem of distribution was
largely solved for us by the fact that we relied mainly on imported
supplies on which the Food authorities could lay their hands at the
ports. In Germany, on the contrary, 85 per cent. of the food was
produced within her own borders. Self-producers firmly determined
to be self-consumers are not easy to deal with. Then again, though
there was shortage and inconvenience, we were never really hungry.
Greedy and selfish people exist among all classes and nations, and
we had our share of both. But making the largest allowance for the
greater difficulties of the Germans, the moral is, I think, striking
as regards the spirit which a free people can show in a time of stress
as against the dragooned temper of a military nation. Military rules
could not deal with the food question. In a matter which necessarily
was independent of sabre-rattling, no pressure of an independent public
opinion seems to have filled the gap.

The struggle between town and country to get possession of the food
supplies was severe. Every German is full of complaints about the
selfishness of the country people. Not only did they keep enough
food for themselves--which, after all, was natural--but they lived
in plenty while the towns starved. It may be said broadly that there
was no hunger or any particular suffering among the people on the
land. Among the industrial classes, estimated at from twenty-eight to
thirty millions of the population, the suffering on the other hand
was severe. But even to this rule there were many exceptions. Wealth,
always a weapon of dominant value, is of supreme importance when hunger
is abroad, and this weapon was used mercilessly by the prosperous
classes. The working-classes who were earning large wages were in many
cases able to pay for additional food; the people who bit the dust were
primarily the minor professional and official classes.

Among the words added to the German vocabulary by the war is that of
Schleichhandel--illicit trading. Schleichhandel permeated the whole
national life. The Schleichhändlers--the little brothers of the
Schiebers or profiteers--were rampant. The Schiebers and other wealthy
families had Schleichhändlers in their pay whose business it was to
find them food. From highest to lowest the same spirit obtained. All
accounts agree as to the extraordinarily demoralising consequences of
illicit trading on the morale of the race. Professor Starling states
that, had the existing food supplies been distributed on a fair and
equitable basis, there would have been enough to go round, and the
effects of the blockade might to a large extent have been countered.
If the attempt was made, it failed lamentably. The terrible winter
of 1916-1917, known as the “swede winter”--owing to the failure of
potatoes--will never be forgotten by the present generation of Germans.

Matters have improved somewhat during the year 1919-1920. But the
prices of food and necessaries of life are still so high that, despite
the considerable rise in wages, many working-people cannot afford to
pay for adequate nourishment. The present food shortage is still great
and, owing to the absence of feeding stuffs and manures, stock and
land have both deteriorated. Supplies remain, therefore, at a level
far below that of pre-war production, a circumstance aggravated by the
world shortage and the financial chaos of the country.

Three special consequences have resulted from this state of affairs.
There has been, in the first place, an extraordinary embitterment
of feeling between town and country; the urban classes bear the
agriculturists a deep grudge for the part they played in the war and
the prosperity they acquired by exploiting their neighbours.

Secondly, there has been a great intensification of class hatred as
between rich and poor. The ordinary German artisan or shopkeeper speaks
with intense bitterness of the upper classes. They were selfish, they
were hard, they were greedy, they did nothing for the poor, they lived
in comfort while others starved. The well-to-do classes apparently
were shameless at grabbing at all they could get. The average German
does not believe any rich person could or would act otherwise. Talking
to Germans about our respective war shortages, I have mentioned more
than once that I had various friends in England who, having farms and
producing food, kept their own households on the rationed allowance
and sent the rest to market. The look of absolute incredulity on their
faces made me realise they thought I was pitching a fine but wholly
preposterous tale to the credit of my own country. It was obvious
they did not believe a word I said. The behaviour of the German upper
classes in this time of testing has had, and is likely to have, very
considerable reactions on the political situation. That the Junkers
and militarists have brought this particular form of discredit on
themselves is all to the good. It will tell heavily against such
doubtful chances as exist of their achieving even a measure of
political rehabilitation.

An English person brought in contact with these melancholy facts can
only reflect with legitimate pride on the different spirit shown in
our own country. No aristocracy in Europe has come through the war
with credit so high as that of the British upper classes. From the
throne downwards, men and women alike, they pulled their weight in the
boat as good citizens, bore their full share of death and suffering,
and contributed an adequate quota to the united effort of the nation.
I have found no evidence in Germany of that mutual goodwill between
classes which was a hopeful and encouraging feature in our own land.
German life in this, as in many other respects, has to be reconstituted
from the foundations upwards.

The third outstanding social reaction of the war is the degree to which
ordinary standards of honesty and fair dealing have broken down between
man and man. The food shortage, and the cheating to which it led,
appears to have entered largely into the matter. Thoughtful Germans
deplore the moral debacle which has overtaken the country. Profiteering
has been quite shameless. The “Schiebers” have exploited a disastrous
economic situation, and many large fortunes were made during the war.
The strange paradox of extremes of wealth and poverty goes on side by
side. Even the official classes have shown themselves on occasions as
selfish as the landowners and the profiteers, and no less unscrupulous
in exploiting the advantages of their position. So late as August
1920 ugly charges were brought by the Socialists against the Mayor of
Cologne and other City Fathers with reference to the milk and butter
supply of the town. The facts which came to light proved that there
had been, at the very lowest, culpable slackness in administration
and gross favouritism in the distribution of available supplies. City
councillors had milk while sick children had none. The anger created by
these revelations is easily understood.

While corruption permeates the upper and middle levels, robbery and
crime are widespread among the working-classes. Thieving has become
a normal quantity in daily life; crimes of all kinds are common.
Official figures were published in Cologne during July 1920, showing
the large increase in criminality throughout the district as compared
with the previous year. Serious crimes had increased by 45 per cent.,
housebreaking 44 per cent., robberies in shops, warehouses, etc., 95
per cent., minor robberies 85 per cent. Every man’s hand is against
his neighbour; suspicion and fear poison the whole spirit of communal
life. Hunger, and the general sense of demoralisation born of defeat
and downfall, are responsible in the main for the increase in petty
thefts. Railway wagons and warehouses containing food are robbed
systematically. War is not a good school for enforcing the catechismal
injunction about keeping your hands from picking and stealing. An
invading army takes what it wants where it can find it, and the habit
once acquired is not easily lost.

Every class of society in Germany to-day feels that, bad as things
are, much worse probably has yet to come. A sentiment akin to despair
is widespread. The business community, confronted with an economic
situation quite hopeless in its outlook, give way in many cases to
helpless fatalism about the future. Restraints are thrown off, and
despair expresses itself frequently in wild extravagance. With the
sword of an indefinite indemnity hanging over them, wealthy Germans
feel that a spell of riotous living in which their capital disappears
is preferable to handing over the latter to their enemies. The
working-people, confronted not only with food shortage, but with the
abnormal cost of clothing and other necessaries, grow more and more
restless. All this is a dangerous temper, not only hostile to economic
and social recovery, but a premium on revolution. If Allied policy
is directed to creating this temper, then it must be congratulated
on a success not always conspicuous as regards its efforts in other
fields. The policy pursued, however, has its dangers. A hungry country,
balancing the possible advantages of revolution, can pay no indemnity
nor make reparation for damage done. One or two axioms in this matter
are self-evident. If Germany is to pay her indemnity, she must work;
she cannot work unless food and raw materials are forthcoming in
adequate quantities; with her finances in ruins she cannot begin to
reorganise them unless told what definite charges she has to meet;
if she is to carry out her obligations, she must have a stable
government which commands confidence at home and is treated with some
consideration abroad. It is quite easy to pursue a policy which will
make the fulfilment of all or any of these conditions impossible.
But how far a deepening of the present confusion will serve the ends
of the Allies, let alone promote the cause of peace, is a mark of
interrogation hung in menacing fashion to-day over the welter of
Europe.




CHAPTER X

CERTAIN CITIES AND THE SAAR BASIN


A fine spring morning, ten days’ leave, a motor car, the open road
calling us to new sights and fresh adventures--in such good case we
left Cologne one April forenoon for Wiesbaden. The plum blossom was
over, but the apple blossom was in great beauty all the way. Why, one
asks, cannot English roads be planted with trees whose shade is a
blessing to the traveller in the summer months? And again, what happens
to the fruit on the myriad trees which grow along the highways of
Germany? Are German little boys endowed with virtue of such abnormal
quality that they survive the chronic temptations to which they must
be subjected in the matter of pears, and apples, and plums? Even the
ingenious theory that the apples are cooking ones, designed if stolen
to inflict adequate punishment on youthful stomachs, cannot explain
away these innumerable orchards and long avenues of fruit trees. The
Rhineland is a garden of enchantment when the blossom is in flower. It
is a hard saying that any sight on earth can be more beautiful than an
English spring at its best. And yet, with memories of an April in the
Rhineland, I am bound at least to hesitate.

Thanks to the absence of smoke, there is nothing to sully the purity of
the air. The vivid green of the fields, the yellow splashes of mustard,
the varied tints of tree, and bush, and blossom--all this melts and
glows together in the clear sunlight. Wherever the road touches the
great river, the beauty of deep flowing waters is added to the scene.
The Rhine maidens themselves must surely be at play in the sunshine as
the Rhine sweeps by hill and vineyard. Their laughter and joyous song
can be heard by fancy’s ear. Forget the presence of road, railway, and
villa, and on that piece of jutting rock Siegfried must have talked
with the three sisters and mocked their entreaties about the ring. The
great world of Wagner’s music is connected in a special sense with
the Rhine. The elemental beings with whom he peopled its banks and
waters are more in the picture than prosaic tourists of our own type.
Withal, who are we to grumble at the latter-day comforts of motor cars
and broad highways which bring these delights within our reach? So
we picnicked by the roadside in great contentment of spirits while a
lark sang overhead. Wisely was it once written, “there will always be
something to live for so long as there are shimmery afternoons.”

Coblenz, which we reached in due course, is a shabby city magnificently
situated at the junction of the Rhine and the Mosel. No town in the
Rhineland lies so nobly, overlooked as it is by the great rock of
Ehrenbreitstein. The river front of Coblenz is second to none in
the whole course of the stream. Yet the town itself is cramped and
curiously dirty for a German city. It gives the impression of a poor
place which has dropped behindhand in the race. Even the American
occupation and the presence of the Rhineland High Commission have not
galvanised it into life. Since the ratification of peace the Rhineland
High Commission, one of the costly bodies set up by the Treaty, is
technically the governing authority in occupied Germany. England,
France, and Belgium are all represented on it, but by one of the
ironies of the situation, though the Commission has its headquarters
at Coblenz in the American area, America, being independent of the
Peace Treaty, holds aloof. The wish to provide Germany with a civilian
administration was no doubt excellent in theory, but the Germans
are somewhat puzzled by the anomalous position of a body of this
character alongside armies of occupation, and still more suspicious as
to the flavour of permanence which civilian administration suggests.
The Commission produces large numbers of ordinances, of which it is
very proud, but it is not paper regulations, however excellent, but
the power to enforce them which matters in a country under military
occupation. That power rests not with the Rhineland High Commission,
but with the armies. To the armies the Commission must turn when it
wants anything done.

Administration, to be satisfactory, must correspond with the real facts
of any given situation. The Allied Armies are in Germany as conquerors,
and by right of conquest only. No civilian government set up under
such conditions can be in a sound position, for civilian government is
rooted in the consent of the governed--a consent which is certainly not
forthcoming in this case. The long term of military occupation imposed
by the Peace Treaty is open to very grave objection. Five years coupled
with conditions under which Germany could have made a real effort to
pay her indemnity would have been reasonable. Fifteen years, the period
provided for in the French area, is very like an attempt at annexation.
Security is never achieved through a régime of alien domination,
and the temper bred in turn by alien domination destroys all hope of
security. Occupation for a short period was not only inevitable but
desirable. Prolonged for years, it is oppressive and mischievous. This
being the case, the presence of foreign gentlemen in frock coats and
top hats will not sweeten the unpalatable fact of occupation to the
Boche. The officials of the Rhineland High Commission, many of whom are
soldiers, appear sometimes in uniform, sometimes in civilian clothes; a
blending of garments typical perhaps of the anomalies which beset the
Commission in doing its work.

Meanwhile, Coblenz must benefit by the foreign influx into the town.
The Americans fly a colossal flag over the famous fortress which crowns
the summit of Ehrenbreitstein. It is quite the largest flag in the
Occupation. The Stars and Stripes are no less conspicuous over every
public building in American occupation. If the technical position of
the United States in Europe is a little uncertain at the moment, at
least there is no doubt about her flag. We English adopt a different
policy, and are not given to making our flag too cheap--a fact for
which some of us are grateful. There is a great deal to be said for the
Zulu custom of not allowing your most sacred things to be spoken about.

At Coblenz we left the river to attack the high land lying between the
Rhine and Wiesbaden. We first went up the valley of the Lahn through
Ems and Nassau. Both towns, watering-places of a conventional and
familiar type, were at that season of the year deserted, but Ems, with
its memories of the Franco-Prussian War and the intrigues of Bismarck,
has a painful interest of its own. The Germans, with their mania for
monuments, had commemorated the spot where the French Ambassador in
1870 received an answer from the Emperor William which was the prelude
to hostilities. Is this slab one, I wonder, that Republican Germany
will care to preserve when ridding itself of other souvenirs of the
Hohenzollerns?

Beyond Nassau we struck up a great plateau with wonderful views, and so
along what is known as the Bader Strasse to Schwalbach and Wiesbaden.
The high land we crossed was a continuation of the Taunus mountains, at
the feet of which Wiesbaden lies. The colouring was wonderful in the
evening light as we motored along the ridge of the hills. Field and
forest were bathed in a bath of blue; blue mist like some enchanter’s
garment hung over the far distance. The rolling country at our feet was
fertile and well cultivated, but the sense of space and distance and
of mountains beyond redeemed any sense of sophistication which must
result from a too obvious agriculture. Beech woods abounded, woods just
caught by that moment of the spring when the delicate green buds begin
to open on the lower branches of the trees, while all is brown above,
and under foot lies the old gold carpet of last year’s leaves. Spring
that week was in the brief but exquisite phase when she resembles a
primitive Italian picture; all the coming beauty foreshadowed but none
of it clearly expressed. Only here and there was the brown of the buds
touched by the green of the young leaves. The call had, however, gone
forth. Up every hillside, among the russet company of the woods, April
waved her white ensign of cherry and blackthorn. I am glad to have
travelled along the Bader Strasse on such a day in the fourth month of
the year.

From the beauties of nature to the elegances of man was an inevitable
step on dropping into Wiesbaden. There seems something very suitable in
the French occupation of this attractive city. The French temperament,
the French genius, are more at home here than in any other German town
I know. Wiesbaden is less “echt Deutsch,” more international in its
atmosphere, than what is usual in the Fatherland. It is a fine town
with broad boulevards and a good many shops. The large Kur Haus is
surrounded by beautiful gardens. German taste frolics, after its usual
fashion, within doors where gilt and plush abound and everything is
costly, vulgar, and comfortable. But apart from this lapse it is a very
attractive town, and the French are fortunate to be housed in it. The
Occupation seems to work smoothly, and there were no obvious signs of
discontent among the German population.

Diplomatic relations were a trifle strained between the Allies on the
occasion of our visit, Frankfurt having been occupied by the French
the week before. Over this step the English had shaken their heads.
There had been a collision between the French troops and the people
in the town; some shooting had taken place. We had neither passes nor
permits, but we bluffed our way into Frankfurt on the Sunday afternoon
by the simple expedient of going there. It was no one’s business
apparently to stop a car in which British officers were driving. We
passed through the French sentries without being challenged, and found
ourselves in the town. Frankfurt is a large ugly city with wide streets
and solid-looking buildings. The population was out promenading in its
best Sunday clothes. The streets were crowded, and everything appeared
quite normal. French soldiers of course abounded, and here and there
a stray Belgian was to be seen, Belgium having sent up a few men as
a sign of moral support to France in her enterprise. We were clearly
the only English in the place. I wondered if these Frankfurters would
take the view that we were the advance guard of an English detachment.
However, the attitude of the populace was quite polite. We went to tea
at the Carlton Hotel, which sounded homelike. The big hall was filled
with Germans who surveyed us with some curiosity. But the waiters and
the management tumbled over each other in their anxiety to be civil.
We drove round the town before returning to Wiesbaden and paid a
pilgrimage to Goethe’s house, which unfortunately was closed. At the
Opera House we found a curious state of affairs: French soldiers with
machine guns crowding the steps of the main entrance, while people were
going into some performance through a side-door.

A feature of the afternoon’s run, and not a pleasant one, was the
presence of the French coloured troops in the district. Technically the
coloured troops had been withdrawn from the town itself, but they were
in force in the suburbs. Frankfurt is a large city, and its outskirts
stretch for a long distance into a thickly populated industrial area.
A Moroccan battalion in brown jibbahs with red trimming and yellow
tarbouches were hardly soldiers whose presence we should have welcomed
in Birmingham or Manchester had they been introduced by an occupying
enemy power. Large numbers of colonial troops are used by France in her
Army of Occupation. That their presence causes great resentment among
the Germans is understandable. France’s case is that her population has
suffered heavily owing to a war forced upon her by Germany, and that,
with a French man-power depleted and weary, a large colonial army is a
necessity. Whatever the necessity, it is very unfortunate that coloured
troops should be introduced into a country where the complications of
black and yellow races are unknown. White men do not take kindly in
European towns to being policed by Africans or Asiatics. An occupying
army presents moral problems of sufficient difficulty without any
gratuitous additions caused by the introduction of Senegalese and
Moroccans.

At the same time, so far as outrages are concerned, a great deal of
exaggeration has taken place about the French employment of these
troops. Undesirable though the presence of black or coloured men in the
cities of Central Europe, I have no reason to think that they have been
conspicuous for bad or immoral behaviour. Germans have admitted as much
to me. They hate the use of the black troops, but the objection is one
based on general principle, not on specific crimes. Naturally pressmen
and publicists work the black-troops question for all it is worth,
and feeling on the subject runs high. The Germans lose no opportunity
of exploiting any opening presented by mistakes in Allied policy. But
exaggeration is always a boomerang and recoils on the head of those who
use it.

The following day in dripping rain we motored through Mainz to Bingen,
and then across the slate mountains of the Hunsrück and the Hochwald to
Trier and the valley of the Mosel. The fine Roman remains, especially
the Porta Nigra, lend great dignity and character to latter-day Trier.
The cathedral, one of the oldest churches in Germany, has succumbed to
the common disease, fatal to its type, of “a thorough restoration.”
Its interior presents the ordinary bathroom appearance, with concrete
walls painted to represent stones, plus vile modern frescoes, which is
the hard latter-day lot of many fine old Romanesque churches throughout
the Rhineland. One could weep over the destruction of these ancient
monuments and the clumsy unseeing hands which have been laid on them at
such obvious expenditure, not only of money, but of a most misguided
care.

After Trier our troubles began. We were making our way to Metz via
Saarbrücken. Crossing the hills into the Saar basin our car developed
trouble with a bearing, and at Mettlach, some miles from Saarbrücken,
it was clear our journey was temporarily at an end. Saarbrücken is
not an ideal spot in which to be marooned for several days. But all
situations have their compensations, and to this accident, irritating
as it was, I owe my acquaintance with the Saar valley and the peculiar
state of affairs existing there.

The situation in the Saar raises in concrete form certain general
criticisms of the Peace Treaty of which I have spoken more in detail
in a later chapter. The Saar provisions of the Treaty[1] gave rise to
a good deal of misgiving at the time among some of the most staunch
supporters of Allied policy. Such misgivings are not likely to be
dissipated by any visit to the area itself. The wicked destruction
of the French coal mines is regarded, and regarded rightly, as a
demonstration of Prussian militarism at its worst. Particularly
infamous were the efforts of the German military authorities during the
last weeks of the war. Surface destruction of the mines was inevitable
owing to the colliery area lying across the line of battle. But the
worst damage was done in a spirit of pure wantonness and without any
military justification during the retreat of the German Army in the
autumn of 1918. It was the last kick of the militarists, and they did
their work thoroughly.

I am glad to think that I heard Herr Sollman, a Socialist leader in
Cologne, denounce this action in the strongest possible terms amid the
applause of a large audience. But the havoc done cannot be made good by
words of regret, however genuine. That France has the right to exact
the very fullest material compensation from Germany for damage done
during the war, especially in this matter of coal, is a proposition so
self-evident as hardly to require statement. Not only the mind of the
Allies but the moral opinion of the whole world was ranged behind the
claim. The German Social Democrats are equally prepared to admit the
claim. Herr Sollman, in the speech delivered after the Spa Conference
to which I have referred above, stated that in view of the wanton
destruction of the French mines, Germany should regard it as a debt of
honour to deliver all the coal she could spare to France.

A Peace, however, which was aiming, not merely at exacting
punishment--punishment which must necessarily fall on shoulders quite
different from those responsible for the original crime--but at the
ultimate amelioration of racial and national animosities, would have
kept two principles steadily in mind. First, that reparation though
adequate should be as prompt as circumstances allowed; secondly,
that reparation should have as few ragged and irritating edges as
possible--that it should be organised strictly on business lines and
not on lines calculated to exasperate and inflame national feeling.
The end in view should be adequate material payments. If, however,
reparation is to be used as an instrument of punishment and diverted
from economic to political ends, general confusion is bound to result.
What punishes does not pay; payment means to a large extent the waiving
of punishment. It is impossible to have it both ways.

The Saar situation throws both of these principles in relief. In order
to meet the just claims of France, was it necessary to annex a purely
German district for fifteen years, to set up a separate government
wholly alien to the wishes and spirit of the people, and then to
call in the League of Nations to bless the sorry business? Are these
provisions of the Peace Treaty likely to further the ostensible end
in view, namely, the delivery of so many tons of coal annually from
the Saar to France? On the other hand, if the occupation of the Saar
is intended to punish Germany for her sins, has France any reason to
think, after her own experience in Alsace-Lorraine, that provinces
governed against their will are likely to be a source of comfort
and pleasure to the power in possession? The Saar has been a solid
German block for centuries. The district is strongly German in feeling
and sentiment. A less encouraging centre for an experiment in alien
government could not well have been found. With a mixed population the
dubious game of playing off one element against another can at least
be attempted. Even that consolation is lacking in the Saar. Out of a
population of over 600,000, the French element is practically nil.
Further, as a method of popularising the League of Nations with the
Germans, the mutual introduction via the Saar hardly seems a happy one.

I have been in every portion of the Occupied Area and have had
various opportunities of studying the temper of the people. Generally
speaking, that temper is good in the Rhineland proper, and a visitor
is not conscious of any obvious friction. A straightforward military
occupation, disagreeable though it may be for the conquered race, is
laid down in precise terms. Every one knows what to expect, and the
situation is for the most part accepted with philosophy. Very different
were matters in the Saar. You could not walk down the main street of
Saarbrücken without feeling the atmosphere charged with hostility.
The spirit of the town was angry and disgruntled. Every German to
whom we spoke seemed on the verge of an outburst. We found ourselves
not a little embarrassed by the obvious desire to confide grievances
to us about the French--grievances naturally which we had no desire
to hear. Hotel waiters are beings who usually float with the times
and are not concerned to challenge authority. But without one word of
warning a Saarbrücken waiter, who knew England well, broke into words
of angry declamation. How should we English like a foreign commission
to come and take a piece out of Yorkshire and hand it over to an alien
government? Should we accept such a state of affairs without protest:
should we be worth anything if we did? I retorted sharply with some
remark about Alsace-Lorraine, but I knew the ground was unsound.
Until two wrongs make a right, the Saar occupation must lead to many
searchings of heart among Allied nations who have any regard for
consistency in political professions of faith.

Why has the League of Nations undertaken this task? Thankless tasks the
League has no right to shirk; a false position such as this is another
matter. The Treaty provides for two Commissions under the League: one a
Boundary Commission of which a British officer is Chairman; the other
a Governing Commission over which a Frenchman presides. The Boundary
Commission has to delimitate the frontiers of the temporary state,
and in separating towns and villages, all purely German, one from
another to make the economic division between friends and relations
as little harsh as possible. It is not desired, for example, that a
village should be cut off from its water supply, or that workmen should
be forced to cross a frontier in the course of their daily toil. The
Commission hears the views of the inhabitants, and has shown them every
consideration in its power. Even so, very hard cases are bound to
arise owing to the homogeneous character of the country. The frontier
line is necessarily arbitrary and artificial. Friends and kinsmen find
themselves separated one from another; villages divided from their
natural markets by the barrier of a French customs system.

For the whole directing power in the area is France; everything else
is camouflage. France supplies the occupying troops, France controls
the customs and the railways; a Frenchman is head of the Governing
Commission. Though there are practically no Frenchmen in the Saar,
French names are being given in some cases to the towns and villages.
The mines have been handed over absolutely to France for fifteen
years. At the end of fifteen years the Saar inhabitants may decide by
plebiscite whether they desire to be French, to be German, or to remain
under the League of Nations. If they elect to be German, Germany must
repurchase the mines on a gold basis. The whole arrangement is an
admirable illustration of the “heads I win, tails you lose” principle.
But a few brief years ago we were very insistent that we were fighting
for justice and right, and again I ask what is the League of Nations
doing in this galley?

The various members of the two Commissions are clearly desirous of
dealing justly with the inhabitants, but it hardly seems possible for
a body of men, however honourable and well intentioned, to overtake a
position so radically unsound in itself. The lines of government for
the Saar, laid down by the Peace Treaty, are a premium on friction and
intrigue. Also it is very unlikely that this fancy occupation is going
to result in a large output of coal. Colliers are kittle cattle, as we
all know, and they do not like being irritated. Nothing and no one can
make them work unless they choose. The occupation of an enemy country
is a military act which a war may render inevitable. But military
occupation as a means to economic ends is a clumsy weapon. Effective
as a threat in the event of non-fulfilment of contract, as an agent
of production it is the worst of instruments. The cussedness of human
nature comes into full play, and people who will work hard to avoid an
occupation become sulky and inactive when handed over to a conqueror.

The effort to create a Saar state, definitely separated from Germany
for a term of years, cannot be justified by any of our own professions
during the war. We have yet to reap the full fruits of the mistake. The
new conditions have mobilised, of course, the passionate resentment of
the inhabitants, and friction exists at every turn. The Germans lose
no opportunity of giving all the trouble they can. Whatever grit they
can throw into the machine they throw with a will. His words frequently
pass between the Governing Commission and the German Government in
Berlin. The whole atmosphere is one of moral ca’ canny and obstruction.
It is idle to blame the Germans for making the most of the ready-made
grievances with which they have been presented. Those to blame are the
short-sighted politicians of Versailles who could imagine that such an
apple of discord as the Saar could be flung down in Europe without the
further embitterment of every passion which it was the first duty of
statesmanship to allay.

Could not the coal to which France has a clear right be obtained under
simpler and better conditions than those of temporary annexation,
however much disguised? Would France herself not have benefited by
more coal and less friction? When the Boundary Commission has done its
work there will be only one British representative left in the Saar,
and there are no British permanent officials. The country is penned in
between Lorraine and French occupied territory. Censorship of news is
strict, and the inhabitants are wholly in the hands of the Governing
Commission. Unless members of the League of Nations bestir themselves
so that the control of the League shall not be an empty phrase, a great
deal may go on in this remote district which if realized would be
highly distasteful to the best mind of the Allies themselves.

Our personal experiences in Saarbrücken were quite pleasant. During
our troubles with the car we received a good deal of helpfulness from
a variety of stray people. The erring machine had been put on a truck
at Mettlach and was to come by train to Saarbrücken. We met the train
in due course, but there was no car. We met other trains, but nothing
happened. At 10 P.M. we invaded the signalman’s box and unfolded our
tale of woe. I can never say enough for the real courtesy and kindness
shown us by the operator in charge. For two solid hours till midnight
he telephoned up and down the line trying to discover the whereabouts
of the truck. One station after another was rung up. “I have here
an English colonel whose motor car broke down at Mettlach and who
arranged for it to come on by the evening train.” Over and over again
the opening phrase was repeated till I knew it by heart. In intervals
of ringing up the various stations our new friend conversed with us
amiably. He was a demobilized sailor, had been in the Scarborough
and Hartlepool raids and had fought at Jutland. He spoke regretfully
of the pleasant times in old days spent with the British Navy,
especially at Kiel, just before the outbreak of war. “You met them in
different fashion at Jutland, did you not?” I suggested. He raised his
shoulders deprecatingly. He told us that during the Scarborough raid
the attacking ships had been saved by the fog. He had also fought in
a U-boat, but was not to be drawn on that subject, of which he was
clearly shy. “We had to do our duty,” he said briefly. In between our
conversations the telephone bell tinkled gaily, but the night was going
on and there was still no trace of the missing truck. Then at last
a satisfied “So” from the telephone raised our spirits. A train had
just come in. The car was in the goods yard; we could get it in the
morning. We parted from our good Samaritan with real gratitude. Railway
servants are not an overpaid class in Germany, but not one penny
would he accept for the pains and trouble taken on our account. He was
a true gentleman, our Saarbrücken signalman, and when Germany rears
a few more of his type and kind she will have less trouble with her
neighbors and find life more pleasant for herself. At the motor repair
shop the men worked with a will and repaired the car in what seemed a
surprisingly short time. Whatever the German upper classes may be, the
German working-man is a very decent fellow, civil, well educated, hard
working. Over and over again the same moral is driven home. There are
good and bad elements in Germany. What has the Peace Treaty done to
reinforce the better elements?

The Saar basin in the upper waters is highly industrialized. The
manufacturing areas lie near the source, a fact which is uncommon in
the case of most rivers. The lower waters, as they approach their
junction with the Mosel near Trier, flow through a hilly and beautiful
country purely agricultural in character. Saargemünd, Saarbrücken,
Saarlouis are all manufacturing and colliery centers. Saarbrücken
itself, a dirty, unattractive town of one hundred thousand inhabitants,
is the centre of the coal area, which before the war had an annual
output of eleven million tons. Crossing the hills from Trier and
journeying up stream to Saarbrücken, all the grimy apparatus of mines,
furnaces, slag heaps, etc., make their appearance from Saarlouis
onwards. Even so, the small collieries, towns, and villages compared
favorably with our own. They are not overcrowded, and open spaces,
fields, and even orchards are to be found breaking up the sordid
paraphernalia of dumps and pitheads. The natural features of the
river valley are beautiful, and even on the upper waters have not
been wholly destroyed. Woods are preserved at many points. Here, as
elsewhere in Germany, industrial life has not been allowed to get
thoroughly out of hand.

One feature at least of the Saar valley impressed us painfully as we
motored back to Trier--the miserable condition of the children and
the appalling proportion of bandy legs. As I have said elsewhere, the
effects of underfeeding during the war are distributed very unevenly
throughout Germany. Some districts seem to have suffered little or
none at all. Not so the Saar, where, judging by that unfailing test,
the children, the population must have gone through very hard times. I
heard of an innocent inquiry of an English child made in the Saar area:
“Mother, why do the children’s feet here turn in the wrong way?” In the
answer to that question lies the tragedy which has overtaken the child
life of our enemies.


NOTE

Since writing the above impressions of the Saar in April 1920, there
has been serious trouble in that area. A dispute arose at the end
of July between the Governing Commission and the German permanent
officials, as to the conditions of service under which these officials
should be taken over. Security of tenure is a matter of jealous concern
to the Germans, for it is no secret that France is very anxious to
see the last of some of the existing Prussian officials. The latter
are no less determined to resist any doors being opened through which
foreigners might enter. In the opinion of the officials, the new
regulations rendered their position much less secure than formerly
and offered wider scope for dismissal on other grounds than those of
efficiency. The right of combination was also restricted. Further, they
were required to take an oath of fidelity.

The officials objected to these provisions, and demanded that they
should be confirmed in all rights and privileges in which they were
possessed on November 11, 1918. No satisfactory settlement of the
dispute was forthcoming, and the officials went on strike. Railways,
posts, telegraphs were paralysed throughout the area. This action was
followed by a general strike of the whole community. The French hurried
up troops. Saarbrücken was patrolled by cavalry, infantry, machine
guns, and tanks. House-to-house searchings took place. Many people
were arrested, others left the district. The Governing Commission in
a proclamation openly accused the Berlin Government of inciting the
whole trouble, and of spending large sums of money for purposes of
disloyal agitation. The Berlin Government retorted by a Note no less
acrimonious. Each side charged the other with intrigue and breaches of
the Peace Treaty. It must always be remembered the Governing Commission
represents the League of Nations and that the League is involved in
these proceedings. The strike dragged on for a time and then came to an
end.

The position as I write is obscure. The censorship in the Saar is
very severe. English papers publish little or no news from the area.
A silence on the subject no less profound envelops periodically the
German Press. It is difficult, therefore, to form any judgment as to
the rights and wrongs of the dispute in view of the limited material
available. But the strike itself is a symptom of the ugly spirit
ruling in the Saar district, the dangers of which were obvious when
we were in Saarbrücken. Probably both sides are right in their charges
of mutual intrigue. It is clear that each Government has only one
desire, namely, to exasperate and hinder the other. Germany protests
loudly against the French attempt to change the German character of
the district. France retorts that perfidy and bad faith are the true
hall-marks of the Prussian. All this is inherent in the situation
actually created, and if it causes surprise to the creators of that
situation they must be simple-minded folk. The plan evolved is one that
not only asks for but demands trouble, and the trouble is there.

Practical administration becomes a nightmare under such conditions, and
that this particular nightmare should persist for the fifteen years
contemplated by the Peace Treaty is a prospect sufficiently dismal for
all who have to face the waking realities.




CHAPTER XI

FROM METZ TO VERDUN


There is something grim and forbidding about the name of Metz. The
tragedy of shame and defeat with which it was connected during the
Franco-Prussian War hangs round it like a sombre garment. I for one
associated it always in my thoughts with a dark menacing fortress, the
very stones of which cried aloud the tale of France’s humiliation and
the ruthless might of her conquering foe. Historical events have the
power of lending their own colour to the names of localities where
great dramas have played themselves out. Sometimes the very nature of
a place--I take three at random, Mycenae, Blois, Glencoe--harmonises
completely with the sense of tragedy. No one could associate the
shores of Lake Trasimene with the idea of trippers on the beach, or
the plains of Borodino with swings and roundabouts. Yet to this rule,
if it be a rule, Metz is a complete exception. Instead of a gloomy
fortress it is a delightful French town, ideally situated in the
basin of the Mosel. The Mosel breaks up at this point into several
channels, and Metz disposes of itself in somewhat Venetian fashion
among the various branches. The main portion of the town is situated
on a low crest overlooking the stream. The crest falls away to the
river below, gardens, houses, and terraces clinging to the slopes. To
the west across the plain rises a range of hills. From the vantage
point of the Esplanade--the beautiful public gardens on the terraces
above the Mosel--the view of the surrounding country is very fine. The
fortifications of Metz, being of the latest type, are naturally not in
evidence. But the distant hills which rise in such calm beauty from
the plain are honeycombed with everything that is deadly in modern
military equipment. Villages and vineyards may be on their surface, but
the hand of man has been concerned there with other matters than those
of the plough or winepress. No traveller surely can look at the hills
beyond Metz without a catch in the throat? For through them runs the
road to Gravelotte and Mars-la-Tour, and so beyond to a place of glory
and endurance greater than theirs--Verdun, shattered and destroyed, but
inviolate and unconquered in the midst of her ruins.

Few districts in Europe are so important in military history as the
country which lies in the neighbourhood of Metz. We came by train from
Saarbrücken, our car being under repair, and nearly every mile of the
way had been a path of destiny for France in 1870. A French customs
official, not a genial specimen of his kind, charged us roundly with
having contraband concealed under the maps spread about the carriage.
We assured him our business at the moment was concerned with history
and geography and not illicit trading, and after shaking the offending
sheets he disappeared with an unfriendly grunt.

The heights of Spicheren are within sight of Saarbrücken. Here
on August 6, 1870, was fought one of the early battles in the
Franco-Prussian War--an indecisive action which was to prove, however,
a strand in the great coil spread round the French armies. To the
east of Metz lies the fateful battlefield of August 14, when after a
desperate struggle centring in particular round Colombey and Nouilly,
the French were forced to give way and the German pincers began to
close in on the doomed city. The history of the 1870 war, that tale
of heroism and mismanagement, is painful beyond bearing to read. It
moves with the precision and inevitableness of a Greek tragedy--France,
so sound at heart, yet superficially so rotten, matched against the
supreme technical skill of a painstaking people guided by the wholly
non-moral purpose of a Bismarck. From the conflict, as it was then, of
the iron with the earthenware pot, only one end could result. Yet

  “Nor kind nor coinage buys
  Aught above its rate.”

Germany in the person of her rulers bartered in 1870 the first
principles of justice and morality between states. To-day she is paying
the price of that moral treachery on a level of humiliation to which
1870 held no parallel, while a ruined world also bears its testimony to
the eternal truth that, as members one of another, the sin and failure
of the one involves confusion and disaster for all.

Lorraine is a smiling land with rolling plains and hills. Villages,
solid and well-built, lie among their orchards in the folds of
the undulating fields. Important though the mineral wealth of the
province, agriculture plays a part hardly second in value as regards
its resources. The rich red soil is highly cultivated, and farming is
carried on with the thoroughness one associates, alas, with continental
methods alone. The red-tiled roofs of the farmhouses lend a sense
of warmth and colour to the landscape. Especially beautiful is the
contrast when the warm madder-coloured gables rise out of a foam of
fruit blossom. Truly a land to win and to hold the affections of its
children. To see it for the first time, no longer under alien rule but
liberated and restored to the Motherland, was a glad experience of
travel. Indefensible though the German rape of the protesting provinces
in 1870, the case of Lorraine, predominantly and overwhelmingly French
in population and sentiment, was perhaps the greater outrage. A people
annexed against their will are not easy citizens to handle, as for
over forty years French resistance passive and active taught Prussian
officialism.

Thiers fought desperately for the retention of Metz in the peace
negotiations following on the 1870 war. Bismarck, whose ends were
attained by the war itself, was not implacable on the subject.
Personally he favoured the payment of a larger indemnity in lieu of
the city. Military opinion was violently hostile to this proposal, and
with cynical indifference the Chancellor let the soldiers have their
way. To visit Metz in 1920 is to realise how the soul of the city
kept itself free and aloof, heavy though the material yoke imposed
on it. The town is French in every respect. The Germans have added
solid public buildings of practical value in the shape of an excellent
railway station, post office, banks, etc. As a material proposition,
Metz returns to France much richer than when torn away. But the purely
French character of the streets and houses defied all efforts of the
conqueror at any true absorption within the German Reich. The new
buildings lie, like scorned and wealthy parvenus, on the outskirts.
Within are narrow streets, tall houses and shuttered windows--all
the indefinable genre and elegance which French taste and French
architecture bring with them. When the hour of liberation came, Metz
reverted to her natural allegiance with as little difficulty as a
prisoner casts off some hated garment of servitude.

Sign painters must have driven a brisk trade after the Armistice. Not
only have all the names of the streets become French again, but the
names of shops have undergone a similar transformation. So hastily
has the work been done in many cases that the half-obliterated German
letters may be seen under the new paint. Business was clearly urgent
in those early days and the transfer of names to the winning side
permitted of no delay.

The fine fourteenth-century Gothic cathedral is a great adornment to
Metz. The lofty windows, slender and austere, and the splendid glass
still speak of the soul of the Middle Ages no less than of the skill
and cunning hand of the mediaeval builder and craftsman. Yet not
these abiding beauties but a freak decoration of the exterior is what
attracts the average traveller to Metz Cathedral to-day. Under German
rule the church had undergone a “thorough restoration,” ominous words
which, as I have said elsewhere, are the knell of doom to many a fine
building in Germany. French skill was apparently successful in staving
off the barbarisms common in the Rhineland, and the interior has not
suffered. But the addition of a Gothic west portal in 1903 gave William
II. a priceless opportunity of masquerading among saints and holy men
on the new façade. Such a chance possibly did not often come his way.
Certainly he availed himself of it eagerly. He appears, therefore,
on the façade in the guise of the prophet Daniel. The statue is well
executed, though the sculptor, whether or not intentionally, has
endowed the prophet with a sinister expression, especially when viewed
from certain angles. The statue has been allowed to remain, but after
the Armistice the hands were fettered with chains, and in that felon’s
guise William II. still surveys the cathedral square from under the
cowl of his prophet’s cloak.

I have referred in another chapter to the problem presented to
Republican Germany by the redundance of Hohenzollern statues. Metz had
been endowed with more than its fair share of Prussian effigies. “If
you do not like your conquerors, you shall at least have plenty of them
too look at” seems to have been the principle adopted. Hohenzollerns
major and minor abounded therefore in every public place. A huge
equestrian statue of William I. had been erected in the centre of the
Esplanade. The Emperor, with whiskers of a particularly bristling and
aggressive order, flourished a baton in the direction of the French
border. It was certainly not by accident that the statue was designed
to look across the hills to the west, and to convey a challenge to
which France on her side was not slow to reply.

Whatever the embarrassments of a reformed Germany as regards its
former reigning house, naturally they did not weigh with the people of
Metz. The inhabitants after the Armistice rose _en masse_, tore down
the statues of the Hohenzollerns, and generally destroyed every outer
symbol of Prussian domination. The effigy of William I. was overthrown
by an excited crowd, and pictures of the event show the monarch on
the ground while men, women, and children shake their fists at the
prostrate form. The plinth, stripped of its ornaments and inscriptions,
was allowed to remain, and with every possible haste the temporary
figure of a victorious poilu was erected in order to replace that of
the Kaiser. This figure was no longer _in situ_ at the time of our
visit, and the plinth awaits its permanent memorial. The hard-worked
German phrase, “Von seinem dankbaren Volk,” is still visible though
half effaced on the plinth, but on the west side looking towards Verdun
the Hohenzollern devices have been replaced by the three electric words
crisp with victory, “On les a.”

We English, who for centuries have never known the bitterness of
alien conquest--among whom no tradition even survives of its sting
and misery--can enter very faintly either into the anguish or the joy
of countries conquered and then subsequently redeemed. Few stories of
the war are more moving than the tales told of the entry of the French
troops into Metz and Strasbourg. Indescribable enthusiasm prevailed
among the French population. Not only were the liberating legions
greeted with garlands and banners, but weeping men and women followed
the French generals and prayed to be allowed to kiss their hands or
touch the hem of their garments. On the Porte Serpinoise, the ancient
gateway of the city, a long inscription has recently been erected which
tells the tale of Metz in recent times from the treachery of Bazaine
to the reunion with France in 1918. About this inscription there is
little of the calm and measured language of the message usually carved
in stone. The words are burning and passionate, torn from the heart of
suffering, turned though it be at the last to joy. That the years of
“separation cruelle” to which the gateway bears testimony were bitter
indeed no one could doubt who has stood by the Porte Serpinoise and
read its record of both defeat and victory. But has the world even
yet laid to heart the moral of the German seizure of these provinces?
Has France herself, greatest of all sufferers, applied the lesson to
her own circumstances? Coming to Metz from Saarbrücken with a vivid
recollection of all we had seen and heard there, I turned from the
Porte Serpinoise with an uneasy question in my mind. When the first
enthusiasms subside and the flowers and the garlands have faded,
the practical business of life remains. The government of a mixed
population is never an easy task, and the redeemed provinces will make
heavy demands on the wisdom and generosity of France.

Alsace-Lorraine was in fact indulging in all the joys of a general
strike at the time of our visit. Post, telegraph, railway service,
everything was at a standstill the day after our arrival. The trouble
had arisen apparently over the replacement of German employés, now
French subjects, by other French workmen. The long and stubborn
resistance offered by the provinces to German rule is sufficient proof
of the healthy spirit of independence which inspires the population.
But even under the new order, the people of Alsace-Lorraine are likely
to show a spirit no less vigorous in all that concerns their local
affairs. Bureaucratic interference even with the German side of the
population may easily give rise to resentment throughout the whole
community. German bureaucracy, heavy handed though it was, had the
merit of being efficient. French administration would do well to avoid
situations in which irritated citizens begin to make comparisons not
always favourable to those at present in authority.

We hired a car which took us, or rather shook us, to Verdun. The road
crosses some of the most famous of the 1870 battlefields, especially
Gravelotte and Mars-la-Tour. The road first climbs the lofty ridge of
hills lying to the west of Metz, on the top of which lies an open
plateau. Fortifications and defences were obvious everywhere. It was
clear, from the masses of barbed-wire entanglements which we passed
at various points, that the Germans had intended to defend Metz if
necessary in the last war. Further, the road along which we travelled
must have been their main artery of supply to Verdun. We saw the
remains of their light railways running in various directions. Dumps
of wire still remained and traces of dumps of ammunition. The light
railways had been ploughed up by the returning peasantry. Yet as we
approached the area of devastation an obvious question arose--why were
these railways not preserved for the task of reconstruction and the
demands on transport reconstruction involves?

We halted at the famous ravine of Gravelotte, where on August 18, 1870,
the terrible struggle took place which decided the fate of Metz. Here,
as everywhere else on the 1870 battlefields, all traces of the German
monuments to the dead have disappeared. The graves in the cemeteries
were untouched, but the eagles had been knocked off the monuments.
Unquestionably the presence of these German memorials on land robbed
from France presented the French Government with a difficult problem.
No doubt many of the “Denkmals” were boastful and vainglorious, after
the usual German fashion in these matters. Clearly they had no place on
redeemed French soil. I could not feel, however, the situation had been
handled very wisely as regards the memorials to the fallen soldiers.
Nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have pulled at
the rope which dragged William I. from his plinth. The ignominious
overthrow of statues of kings and princes of a ruling house so
directly responsible for the miseries of Europe is a symbol of victory
over the evil principles for which they stood.

But the soldiers who died doing their duty do not belong to the same
category as the men who plotted the war. Many of the monuments blown
up were merely records of regiments who fought and fell, and had their
historical value. Their destruction has caused great bitterness among
the German section in the province, and no end is served by the further
creation of bad blood between people who are forced to live together.
The 1870 war and its terrible consequences are not to be wiped out by
blowing up a few obelisks. The man who dies fighting bravely for his
country, however much duped as to the righteousness of the cause for
which he gives his life, has a claim to consideration at the hands of a
generous foe. The dignified way out of the difficulty would have been
for the French to call upon the Germans to remove their monuments.
We felt this the more on reaching Mars-la-Tour, the scene of another
fierce battle. The frontier fixed after 1870 ran between Gravelotte
and Mars-la-Tour. On the Mars-la-Tour side of the frontier stands a
wonderful French monument which commemorates the heroism and tragedy
of 1870. A woman symbolising France holds in her arms a dying soldier,
whose head she crowns with laurel. But she is in no way concerned with
the agony gathered next her heart. Her eyes are fixed, not on the dying
man, but grimly, steadily across the frontier. She looks across the
hills of her own lost province, and the fixity of her gaze conveys
a spiritual challenge to that other statue on the crest above the
Mosel--the statue of William I. conquering and insolent. Further, from
the hand of the dying man falls a musket. But two babes playing at the
woman’s feet catch the musket before it lies in the dust and raise it
once more in the air.

This monument, a striking example of its class, is executed with a full
measure of French skill and artistic power. But there cannot be the
least misunderstanding as to its meaning. Every line breathes revenge
and a day of reckoning to come. Mars-la-Tour was occupied by the
Germans in the first days of the recent war. It must, I think, be put
to the credit of the military authorities that, during the four and a
half years that this memorial was in their power, no damage of any kind
was done to it.

Gravelotte and Mars-la-Tour are both dirty ramshackle villages, with
middens out in the street blocking the entrance to the houses. Perhaps
the inhabitants of frontier villages are inspired by a justifiable
pessimism as to the futility of building decent dwelling-houses.
Certainly the standard of life seems unusually low. Shortly after
leaving Mars-la-Tour we began to pick up occasional signs of war, signs
which, of course, multiplied as we entered the plain of the Woevre,
and began to draw near the ridge of hills to the west on the far side
of which Verdun lies. One battlefield is painfully like another. The
destroyed villages and desolate fields told the same tale of death and
suffering which is impressed on the long belt of devastation running
across the Continent. Yet to me in future a cowslip field will always
bring with it memories of Verdun. The familiar yellow flowers were
growing in sheets by the roadside, striving, as it were, pathetically
to throw the cover of their freshness and grace across the stricken
land.

The interest of Verdun, apart from its heroic defence, lies in the fact
that the line of attack being very intensive was relatively small,
and owing to the hilly and varied nature of the ground it is possible
to visualise more or less accurately the various attacks and counter
attacks. We approached Verdun from the south-west, a point from which
the damage was relatively small. The whole of the Verdun ridge on which
the forts are situated runs north and south, and commands the plain of
the Woevre to the east and the valley of the Meuse to the west. All
this district was formerly a great forest. On the southern slopes we
found the trees practically intact. We turned to the right and, keeping
along the top of the ridge, had our first view of the valley of the
Meuse, and Verdun with its twin towers lying far below us in the plain.

Verdun, never a considerable city, has nevertheless emerged into fame
on more than one occasion in the course of its long history. It gives
its name to the one event of capital importance in the evolution of
modern Europe. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 may be taken as the starting
point of the long struggle between France and Germany. Under this
Treaty the united empire of Charlemagne was broken up between his three
grandsons. France and Germany parted company, never to meet again
during the course of the next thousand years but on terms of fire and
sword. Revolutionary France offered its own example of frightfulness
at Verdun. The city was taken by the Prussians in 1792. The struggle
was not of an embittered character, and some young ladies of the city
not only welcomed the conquerors but presented them with sweets.
Fraternising with the enemy was not included apparently in the then
revolutionary interpretation of fraternity, and three of the girls were
sent to the scaffold when the French retook Verdun after Valmy. The
little place sustained a siege of three weeks in 1870, and surrendered
with the full honours of war after a gallant resistance.

But at Verdun as elsewhere the scale of events has been flung utterly
out of focus by the recent struggle, to which history has no parallel.
The town itself has suffered cruelly. Every other house is a ruin.
But at least it never yielded, never bowed the head to the conqueror.
How near, terribly near, the Germans came to complete success, we
appreciated better on the spot than anything we had been led to believe
by the official communiqués issued at the time. A discreet veil was
flung over the German capture of Fort Douaumont. As a matter of fact
not only was the fort taken, but the Germans penetrated for a mile and
a half further westward beyond that point. One remaining fort alone
lay between them and their prey. Heroic though the defence, it is
clear that but for the Somme offensive and the diversion of forces it
entailed, Verdun itself must have fallen.

Fort Vaux and Fort Douaumont are the central points of interest in the
defence, but every yard of the district is full of poignant and tragic
association. Trees and vegetation had disappeared before we reached
Fort Vaux. The ground had become a mere crater field. It was almost
impossible to believe that this blasted hillside and neighbouring
ravines had once formed part of a beautiful forest. As to Douaumont,
little of the fort remains beyond a heap of rubble and rubbish.
Imagination stumbles and halts as to what the bombardment must have
been which could blast fortress and land alike out of being. Still
more impossible is it to gauge the human endurance which could survive
any experience so hideous as the fighting which raged round these key
points. Just below Douaumont is a trench where a French platoon was
overwhelmed and enfiladed by German fire. The ground fell in, burying
the men where they stood. The bodies have not been removed, and the
tops of the rifles can still be seen sticking out of the ground. The
trench is enclosed by barbed wire to keep the tourist at bay, but I
hope that this gruesome sight may not be perpetuated for the benefit of
the tripper. The tourist invasion of the battlefields is inevitable,
but it is intolerable if they bring with them to soil which is sacred
anything of the orange peel and ginger-beer bottle atmosphere. Two or
three chars-à-bancs filled with visitors were already on the ground,
early though the season. However, they were mercifully cowed into
silence by the all-pervading desolation.

All the hillsides round Verdun are scarred with the marks of trenches.
Every name, every ridge in the district is famous. We looked on a
given heap of ruins and remembered with what anxiety and suspense
the name of this or that obscure village filled half the world a few
years since. There was a tangle of wire in many places, though much
clearance of the battlefield has gone on. Here and there the roots of
the unconquerable trees had begun to throw up a sort of scrub. Here and
there coarse grass and coarser brambles were hiding the shell holes.
But on the hillsides about Vaux and Douaumont, Froide Terre, Poivre,
and Haudromont, there was no sign of life. The subsoil had been blasted
out of existence, and vegetation had not been able up till then to
reassert itself.

The area of destruction round Verdun extends for a long distance,
and the general impression left by the ruined villages is painful in
the extreme. In the area of moving battle the land is not destroyed,
but the houses are mostly in ruins. The task of reconstruction is
formidable indeed, and there were few signs in April 1920 that it was
being grappled with on adequate lines. People were beginning to creep
back, it is true, to their ruined homes, but under circumstances which
seemed very undesirable. The ruins had been patched up in some places,
and the owners were living among them in a state of indescribable and
insanitary squalor. There were no signs of a big scheme of reparation,
which should have aimed first and foremost at the scrapping of these
small dirty centres and starting new villages on fresh sites. The
average French village is apt to be a dirty place. The sanitary
conditions left by a bombardment are better imagined than described.

I cannot help feeling that the inhabitants of the devastated areas have
a most real grievance as regards this question of reconstruction. The
French Government has wholly failed to deal with it up to the present
on a big scale. Progress has been made with areas in the north; other
districts, of which Verdun is an example, remain practically untouched.
The French complain that they cannot get work-people or materials. I
cannot say from what causes the deadlock springs, but the evidences
of deadlock in the Verdun district are complete. One feels this state
of affairs to be a terrible hardship for the poor people concerned.
One of the reparation proposals put forward by the German Government
is a scheme for rebuilding and re-equipping the devastated areas. It
excites, naturally, a chorus of disapproval from greedy contractors and
other people who would like the money allocated for houses, furniture,
and implements to go into their pockets. But in the interests of the
inhabitants--surely the paramount interest--any scheme which would deal
promptly with the problems concerned with the return to normal life
among the ruined villages should be examined closely.

Further, England and America ought not to miss their opportunities
in this respect. The movement for the adoption by English centres of
French towns and villages is wise and generous, and if widely spread
through the United States as well as our own country should result
in substantial assistance to the victims of the war. The basis of
any adequate reparation scheme must be national. But destruction so
great leaves ample scope for additional voluntary assistance. It is
often whispered--one of the unfriendly whispers which circulate in
corners--that the French are over-willing to let other people shoulder
the burthen of the devastated areas. Whether or not the wealthy French
could have made greater efforts on behalf of their compatriots, the
position of England and America in this matter remains unaffected. They
cannot err on the side of over-generosity. The sufferings of the poor
and humble in the devastated areas have been atrocious. In so far as we
render France every material assistance within our power, our position
is the stronger if from time to time we are forced to cry halt about
matters concerning her general policy. Between the Allies there may be,
indeed there must be at times, differences which are fundamental as
regards their outlook on post-war problems. But on one point there can
only be complete unity of feeling and idea--sympathy for the innocent
victims on whom the material brunt of the war has fallen in its most
acute form; whole-hearted desire to make good the losses endured.




CHAPTER XII

IN ALSACE


Never have I appreciated more fully than during the months I have lived
in Germany the many advantages of an island people. No more detestable
fate can exist than to be a border state of mixed population, snatched
as the chances of fate and history may dictate from one domination to
another. With the unhappy example of Ireland before our eyes, we are
not lacking in experience of the difficulties which arise from the
presence of two races and two religions in one country. When to these
internal differences are added the ambitions and intrigues of warring
Powers, each hungrily desirous of increasing its coast at the expense
of its neighbors, the lot of the inhabitants of the debatable zone is
seen to be unenviable indeed. National self-aggressiveness is always
accentuated when unhappily yoked with the rival claims of another
stock. Temperaments and points of view may be irreconcilable, but
each side is forced to contend for its daily bread in the same area
and to clash hourly or daily over the task. The problem in government
presented by such a situation is at the best of times distracting. When
inflamed by old memories of grievances and suffering, of wrongs given,
wrongs endured, it becomes almost insoluble. Only a being from another
planet endowed with infinite wisdom might be able to deal justly and
impartially with so great a tangle. But the very fact that such a
being would be remote from the passions surging round him, would rob
him of knowledge essential to their understanding. The hard-worked
phrase, self-determination, beloved by the sloppy-minded, never touches
the root of real bi-racial difficulties. When two sets of people in
one place wish to self-determine themselves in opposite senses, what
then? Only along the lines, not of self-aggression, but of loyalty to
a common ideal of justice and fair play, can reasonable men on both
sides grope towards some sort of compromise. But almost invariably the
actual course of events has been to destroy the very possibility of
mutual forbearance. Hatred, sinister child of arrogance and injustice,
stifles men and women within the evil circle it has forged. And the
circle continues pitilessly to revolve, the oppressors of to-day being
sometimes the oppressed of yesterday, but, whichever side is uppermost,
the bond of hatred remaining close and unbroken.

The German wrong done to France in 1870 was at the same time a
supreme political blunder. At the time of the Franco-Prussian War,
Alsace-Lorraine had been French for nearly two hundred years and was
strongly French in sentiment. There was no real case for restitution
to Germany on geographical or historical grounds. For generations
life in the border provinces touching the Rhine had been in a state
of flux. The rigid territorial demarcations of our own time were then
non-existent. Frontiers and population were both fluid. Baedeker, whose
national bias in matters both of art and history makes the Handbook on
Germany often very unreliable, writes of the “seizing” of Strasbourg
by Louis XIV. and the “restoration” of the city after 1870. Cities and
provinces, according to our modern ideas, were tossed about ruthlessly
in the seventeenth century, but Alsace-Lorraine having become
thoroughly French had no wish to find itself restored to the Fatherland
and brought within the circle of Prussian philanthropic effort. Even
Alsace, more predominantly German in origin than Lorraine, had in 1870
no desire for other allegiance but that of France. The provinces were
torn, protesting and unhappy, from the motherland of their adoption.
Bismarck, great and unscrupulous genius, whose clear-sighted vision in
matters of practical statecraft was only equalled by his entire lack
of moral sense, knew that a bad mistake had been made. “I do not like
the idea of so many Frenchmen being in our house against their will,”
he remarked uneasily. But Bismarck, whose time and thoughts had been
devoted with devilish ingenuity and success to manœuvering France into
war and putting her in the wrong over the process, had at the critical
point, so it would seem, not sufficient energy left to resist the
annexationist clamour of the Prussian generals. He yielded to military
pressure, thus leaving an open sore in the side of Europe, which in the
end was to involve his own creation of the new-made German Empire in
ruin.

To-day the provinces are French again, while the conscience of the
world applauds a righteous act of restitution. It would be foolish,
however, to deny that the return of Alsace-Lorraine after forty-seven
years of German rule, with a German population very largely increased,
does not present an administrative problem to France of exceptional
difficulty. Lorraine, as I have said elsewhere, has kept its French
character very much intact throughout the years of oppression. The
problem of Alsace is harder to solve.

My first vivid recollection of Paris as a child is being taken to the
Place de la Concorde to see the figure of Strasbourg draped in her
mourning weeds. It was with real emotion that after the Armistice I
saw the statue, all symbols of loss and servitude removed, throned
equally with her sister cities who encircle the great square. A visit
to Strasbourg itself in the dawn of its liberation is a satisfactory
and stimulating experience. The many vicissitudes of its history have
left a clear architectural mark on the town. Strasbourg lies, a little
way removed from the left bank of the Rhine, in the centre of a fertile
plain. Looking southwards, the line of the Vosges mountains stretches
far away to the right; equally far to the left across the river runs
the line of the Black Forest. So near the borders of Switzerland,
it is something of a surprise to find the Rhine flowing tranquilly
through this wide flat land already far removed from the mountains of
its birth. Before railways and modern methods of communication had
made light of rivers and mountains, Strasbourg, commanding the gap of
Belfort between the Vosges and the Jura, was a key point of the highest
importance. Here lay the broad and easy highway from France to Germany.
Along this path swept Napoleon in his invasions of the Rhineland. The
strategical value of the position was recognised by the Romans, who
had a camp at this point. No less important was it commercially in the
Middle Ages, for thanks to its position, Strasbourg was a necessary
centre of exchange for the trade of France, Germany, and Switzerland.
Manufactures have been developed on some scale by the Germans since
1870, but it is as one of the great marts of Central Europe that
Strasbourg has achieved its fame.

The mediaeval character of the buildings survives to an unexpected
extent in many of the narrow streets. A small canalised stream, the
Ill, encloses the centre of the town, and the gabled houses which
cluster on the water’s edge, sadly insanitary though they must be, are
wholly satisfying to the eye. May health experts and social reformers
long be kept at bay from the old quarters of Strasbourg! The type of
house which lends unique character to the city has a deep-pitched
slanting roof broken by small dormer windows. The red tiles, flecked
with green, have been mellowed by age into a subdued colour of great
beauty. The houses, with wide lattice windows, are often decorated
with wood carvings, sometimes old, often restored. The gables which
lend so much character to this class of architecture are treated with
considerable freedom and variety; the crow’s-foot gable introduced by
the Dutch to South Africa is not uncommon here. The beautiful colour
of the tiles which glow and shimmer in the sunshine is like a warm and
rosy cloak flung over the town. Flowers not infrequently decorate the
broad window ledges, and give life and colour to the narrow streets
and passages. Striking indeed is the framework of such a house for
an Alsatian woman wearing the national headdress with its voluminous
black bows, when she appears at the window to tend her geraniums and
marguerites, or to pass the time of day with neighbours in the street
below.

The influence of mediaeval Germany on the old streets and buildings of
Strasbourg can be seen at a glance. Superimposed on this foundation
is a town essentially French in character and architecture.
Eighteenth-century France has left behind it the type of high French
house, elegant and well-proportioned, characteristic of a period at
once correct and dignified. It is curious to notice how Strasbourg and
Metz adopted a similar attitude to the architectural improvements of
the conqueror. The spirit of both cities is identical in this respect.
Like Metz, pre-1870, Strasbourg keeps itself to itself, aloof and
reserved, within the confines of the surrounding Ill. On the further
banks, the modern German buildings encircle the old kernel with all
the material comfort and ugliness of the latter-day German town.
The solid reinforced-concrete houses, the large public buildings,
the wide streets and squares breathe a spirit from which the older
Strasbourg seems to remove the hem of her garment with fastidious
contempt--“What mean ye by these stones?”--and it is not fantastic to
read the moral and political struggles of this oft-disputed city of the
marches in the vivid contrasts of its architecture. Between mediaeval
and seventeenth-century Strasbourg there is no strife. But pre-1870
Strasbourg, humiliated, aristocratic, reveals a passionate antagonism
towards the conquering parvenu to whom the city owes its present
material prosperity. The Kaiser’s palace, a building, monotonous and
vulgar, of the type which reproduces itself in a dozen German cities,
adorns one of the modern squares. As at Metz, the empty plinths
of destroyed statues testify to the passing of the Hohenzollerns.
Allegorical figures on one or two modern buildings, bereft of their
heads, were something of a puzzle. I could only conclude that the
former reigning house, with its mania for self-portraiture, had
disguised themselves in such cases as Virtues or Graces.

I have spoken of the beauty of the tiled roofs. The famous cathedral
built of red sandstone strikes a similar note of warmth and colour.
Incredibly fine and delicate is the work on arch and buttress;
too fine, too delicate perhaps, for ornament is surely at its best
in that wonderful moment of Gothic at once austere and noble when
ornament serves a strictly architectural end. The famous west front of
Strasbourg Cathedral, for all the individual beauty of its carving--the
Wise and the Foolish Virgins alone well repay a long journey--is
a decorative façade entirely divorced from any architectural end.
Similarly with the gossamer-like tracery of the spire. The lines
are beautiful, but somehow you feel that the Kingdom of Heaven must
be stormed by more violent means than those of so fairy-like an
inspiration. Can such a structure really survive the next storm? The
question springs involuntarily to the mind, and in it lies a point
of reproach. It is one you would never ask yourself when looking at
the spires at Chartres. The fine apse of the minster testifies to the
Romanesque plan on which the building was begun. Then it was captured
by Gothic in its most airy and fantastic mood. It ranks, and ranks
rightly, among the great cathedrals of Europe. Yet, since buildings
and human beings tend to reproduce each other’s characteristics in a
strange and intimate way, it leaves the impression that, as may happen
with some character of real value and worth, its feet are a little off
the ground, and so the quality of the whole suffers. Ruskin, who first
saw Strasbourg when a boy of fourteen, writes in _Præterita_ that with
all its “miracles of building” he was “already wise enough to feel the
Cathedral stiff and ironworky.” But the high roofs and rich wooden
fronts of the houses excited and impressed him greatly.

With the great astronomical clock, beloved of sightseers, I was frankly
a little bored. The cathedral is carefully closed at 11.30, so that
you are forced to pay for a ticket to come in at 12 o’clock when the
twelve apostles and the cock perform. A series of little figures creak
in and out, while two rather aggressive Suisses shout explanations
and thrust picture-postcards on the spectators. More satisfactory is
the museum, where a small collection of pictures, admirable for a
provincial town, can be visited. A delightful park called the Orangerie
ministers to those social amenities of life the secret of which is
so much better understood on the Continent than in Great Britain.
The numerous cafés and beer gardens of the continental town make the
partaking of food and drink--especially of drink--a simple respectable
affair, wholly robbed of the vicious and degrading associations which
invest the liquor trade at home.

The crowds gathered in the cafés on a Sunday afternoon gave us a good
opportunity of studying the men and women of Strasbourg. I had the
impression of a mixed type special to itself and largely independent
of its parent stocks. It is wholly different from that of the tall
blond men and women we see in Cologne. Neither is it entirely French.
The Alsatians tend to be dark and short, somewhat solid too in build,
though the unmistakable elegance of French clothes lends a frequent
touch of distinction to passers-by in the streets. Such elegance is
unknown in Germany proper. Appalling too in its confusion of tongues
is the language spoken: a bastard jumble of French and German which
has ceased to have any resemblance to either. You speak in French,
the people reply in German; you try German, only to be countered in
the vilest of patois. In the end I fell back on English as the least
unintelligible of the three languages. As regards the difficult
bilingual question, I do not know on what ultimate policy the French
have decided. For the moment both French and German names appear in
the streets, and public places such as the railway station. It is
to be hoped there will be no departure from this policy. Suppress a
language, and it flourishes with that zest and vigour derived from
persecution alone. The Germans, being stupid people, never learnt this
lesson either in Poland or Alsace-Lorraine. The French, as a really
intelligent race, are in a better position to avoid what is at all
times a gross mistake. The lessons of history are usually disregarded,
and it would appear that politicians as a body are singularly inept as
regards the application of past precedents to present events. Yet the
great moral of the pacification of South Africa and the principles it
illustrates is one on which Europe in its present chaos would do well
to reflect.

The general appearance of the town throughout Sunday was merry and
light-hearted. Bands and processions were the order of the day. A
parade of ancient firemen during the morning must have included all the
surviving heroes of 1870. Young Alsace was bringing itself up no less
vigorously on Boy Scout lines. Every organisation which could march was
marching to a fanfare of trumpets and a flying of flags. Strasbourg
is the stronghold of the German section of Alsace, yet even among
individuals I did not notice any appearance of discontent or hostility.
The sullen black looks we had seen in the Saar were absent here.

The proposition in government, however, with which the French find
themselves confronted is a difficult one. The problem of population is
specially intricate. The German element preponderates considerably in
Alsace, but a German name may often conceal French sympathies. Every
effort was made by the conquerors after 1870 to stimulate immigration
from German stocks of whose loyalty there could be no doubt. Many
Germans have come into the country during the last forty years, but the
line of demarcation between them and the German Alsatians proper is
an impossible one to draw administratively. The type of shrill voice
which on all and every occasion clamours for policies which would
aggravate the existing confusion of Europe is loud in its demands
that the Germans should be turned out. The French Government have had
the good sense up to the present not to pursue so mad a course. The
friction which has arisen over the inevitable replacement of German by
French officials has been a warning, no doubt, as to the consequences
likely to follow from any attempt at wholesale expulsion. During the
spring changes in personnel on the Alsace-Lorraine railways led, as I
have mentioned in the previous chapter, to a general strike in both
provinces.

The question of military service is tangled and difficult. Germany is
now free from conscription, a blessing whole-heartedly appreciated
by her working population. Alsace-Lorraine, on the contrary, has to
contribute its quota to the French armies. Thousands of ex-German
soldiers have already been called upon to serve with the French
colours. The cruel fate of French Alsatians, conscripted by Germany
and forced to fight against France, has harrowed the conscience of
European public opinion for many years past. France must see to it that
she does not pursue a policy towards the German Alsatians which will
sooner or later alienate the sympathy of Europe from her as surely
as it was alienated from Prussia. At the moment she holds all the
cards in her hand. She can afford to play the big game, the generous
game, which is the only one capable of meeting the present situation.
Forty-seven years of German bullying and efficiency left the sentiment
of Alsace-Lorraine predominantly French. The rape of the provinces
had long been regarded as an injury to the comity of nations. Outside
the Central Empires and their adherents the whole world rejoiced with
France in the hour of restitution. Now she has exchanged the position
of the person wronged, to that of the person in possession, something
of romance and sympathy evaporates inevitably. The test is no longer
that of sentiment and feeling, but of the hard facts of government,
well or ill handled.

Under the heel of the oppressor, France taught the world how firm
and enduring national sentiment can become. No material benefits of
Prussian rule, considerable though they were, could reconcile the
Alsatians to the injury done to their rights as free people. Now that
a large German population passes under French control, France will be
wise to give no opportunity for the cultivation of a national sentiment
among the German Alsatians as bitter as that of the last forty years
among the French. In all that concerns the practical and material
organisation of life, German efficiency is much greater than French.
They understand the gas and water affairs of life thoroughly. France’s
advantage lies in the keenness and admirable clarity of her spirit, her
powers of wit and of intuition, her fine sense in all that concerns the
heart and mind of man. Wholly devoid of sentimentality, no nation can
approach the French clearness of vision and touch when at their best.
But on the administrative side the Frenchman is often less happy. The
German is painstaking and very thorough; the Englishmen has a natural
instinct for finding a way out of serious difficulties through the
application of a rough-and-ready code of behaving decently to decent
people. The Frenchman is apt to tie himself up in red tape. A French
bank in Metz refused to give us any money on a French draft especially
arranged for our tour. We were told to call again in a fortnight. A
German bank in Saarbrücken gave us all the money we wanted on the draft
scorned by the Metz gentlemen, six of whom were brought to look at us
before we were turned down. As a method of conducting business the
proceedings did not strike us as efficient.

The administrative problem of Alsace-Lorraine can only be a difficult
one. French bureaucrats admittedly can be both corrupt and unwise, and
it is on the enduring qualities of the French spirit that France must
draw if she is to make a success of the government of her restored
provinces. A true pacification of the German elements resulting in
a general loyalty to France would be a signal victory for French
statesmanship.

The question of the compensating advantages presented by
Alsace-Lorraine as against the devastations in Northern France,
raises an issue about which French opinion is peculiarly sensitive.
On this delicate ground any English writer is bound to tread warily.
France will never admit, or permit it to be said, that any element of
compensation enters into the case. The provinces were stolen from her;
now they have been restored at the cost of over a million French lives
and untold sufferings. From the point of view of abstract justice and
ideal right this contention is doubtless true. But it breaks down
before the humdrum questions presented by population, trade, revenue.
The provinces were irretrievably lost to France and could only be
regained at the price of a successful war. It must be a considerable
satisfaction to any friend of France to feel that the crater holes
of the devastated areas are at least set off by the recovery of two
rich and prosperous provinces, 5605 square miles in extent, with a
population of 1,874,014 people. The case of France otherwise would
have been aggravated to a desperate degree. She at least enters here
and now into possession of an undevastated area, bringing with it
considerable compensations in population, minerals, agriculture, and
all that these imply as regards trade and taxation. The provinces
return vastly improved in their material equipment, thanks to the
German capital spent on them. The asset restored is far richer than the
asset lost. The set-off, of course, is in no sense equal to what has
been destroyed, but it is a substantial element in the case, and one to
which, frankly, too little attention is ever paid when questions of war
losses are discussed.

It is an interesting experience to motor through the Vosges at a point
where the line, so fiercely contended in the north, peters out, so to
speak, under conditions which by contrast seem mild if not actually
ladylike. We motored to St. Dié by way of the Odilienberg and Saales,
returning over the Col de Schlücht to Münster and Colmar, and so back
to Strasbourg. Our chauffeur, an Alsatian, warned us we must expect
terrible scenes on reaching Saales: since 1870 the French frontier. The
warning proved how little experience he had had of the grim business
of war on the main lines of attack and defence.

The rampart of the Vosges falls away sharply to the plain on its
eastern side, and from the convent crowning the heights of the
Odilienberg a wonderful bird’s-eye view exists of the mountains and
the plain: Strasbourg and the silver streak of the Rhine dimly visible
in the distance, far, far away beyond, the still dimmer line of the
Black Forest mountains. The convent itself, a favourite “viewpoint”
for trippers to the Vosges, has, thanks to its restaurant and café, a
curiously secular appearance. The good nuns apparently drive a brisk
trade in souvenirs and picture-postcards, the restaurant catering as
much for the needs of the body as the prayers of the faithful for the
soul. The wooded heights of the Vosges, sometimes beech, sometimes
pine, varied by splendid scarlet patches of mountain-ash berries at
their best, are threaded by excellent roads. In the neighbourhood of
Saales we braced ourselves, thanks to the exhortations of the driver,
to resume our acquaintance with the horrors of the line. But a few
damaged houses, and here and there a shattered tree, proved how lightly
by comparison this district had escaped. Woods and fields were in a
normal condition, and vigorous efforts had clearly been made to deal
with the shattered houses.

The scenery of the Col de Schlücht is very fine. A country to be really
appreciated must be seen on foot, and motoring is at best but an
unsatisfactory makeshift for the busy. To the true vagabond, as Borrow
and Robert Louis Stevenson understood the term, the friendly hills of
the Vosges must offer many attractions as a wandering ground. Our time
being limited, we were grateful to the motor for the cinematograph
impression we were able to carry away. Fighting of a more serious
character had taken place on the Col de Schlücht than at Saales. It
was along this road the French made their original thrust into Alsace
at the beginning of the war, when for a brief period they occupied
Colmar in the plain below. Driven back by the Germans with heavy
losses, the line was stabilised for some years at a point near the head
of the pass. Even so the unfailing test of the trees showed that the
destruction had not been complete. Münster at the foot of the pass was
a heap of ruins. Here for a time artillery fire must have been heavy.
But we passed rapidly out of the zone of battle; a great contrast in
this respect to the plain of the Woevre where, mile after mile before
Verdun is reached, the aspect of the landscape along the road from Metz
is desolate and desolating in the extreme.

The agricultural value of the great plain of Alsace must be
considerable. The land is rich and well cultivated. Corn, potatoes,
and beetroot flourish. Crops of maize and fields of tobacco point to
the warmth of the climate. Hops and vines are grown on a scale which
does not indicate much enthusiasm for the Pussyfoot movement. Hops are
trained on rather a different principle from that usual in Kent, and
the long trailing festoons of leaves and flowers languish one towards
another like so many elegant and swooning beauties. Tobacco factories
and breweries have been established in Strasbourg by the Germans;
engine works and foundries also contribute to its wealth. But despite
the commercial and manufacturing activities which have turned a city
of 78,000 people in 1870 to one of 170,000 in 1911, the strength
of Alsace remains rooted in its agriculture and its agricultural
population. Except Strasbourg, and in a lesser degree Mülhausen,
there are no big towns. From the land has come in the main the brave
spirit which carried the people through years of gloom and foreign
domination. That the same spirit will triumph over the difficulties of
reconstruction must be the hope of all friends of France.




CHAPTER XIII

SOME ELECTIONEERING IMPRESSIONS


I

German political life is in the main a sealed book to the British
public. Many people take but a tepid interest in the politics of their
own country. To grapple with the intricacies of parties and programmes
in a foreign land is an effort quite beyond the will or the power of
the average citizen. Yet Germany plays, and is bound to play for years
to come, so dominant a part in every calculation and forecast made
by her neighbours, that it is of considerable importance to try and
realise what forces are at work among her own people.

Constitutional life in Germany has had many vicissitudes. When the
tragic history of our own times comes to be written, future historians
will probably regard the failure of the Frankfurt deputies in 1848
to solve the problem of German unity on a democratic basis as the
most fatal date in modern history. The unity which the “Professors’
Parliament” failed to achieve was welded together triumphantly by
Bismarck, twenty-three years later, through blood and iron. To the cult
of blood and iron Germany henceforth dedicated itself, and for many
years, with striking success. But even within the Empire the system had
its challengers, as the spread of Socialist doctrines and the successes
of the Social Democrats proved. When the military régime collapsed
in defeat and confusion in the autumn of 1918, it was to the despised
democratic elements that Germany owed her escape from utter ruin.

Little or no attention has ever been paid to the astonishing feat of
constitutional reorganisation which was carried through after the
flight of the Emperor. Complete military disaster had overtaken the
country; revolution and anarchy were abroad in the land. Yet on the
morrow of these events not only was a Republic proclaimed, but a German
Government came into being which worked out a democratic constitution
based on universal suffrage and full ministerial responsibility of the
cabinet to the elected representatives of the people. The history of
parliaments contains no more surprising page. Women were enfranchised,
lists of voters prepared, and within a few weeks of the Armistice,
elections were held which brought into existence a provisional National
Assembly whose business it was to carry on the hard task of government
till the first Reichstag of the new Republic could subsequently be
elected. How all this was done in the time is a mystery, especially
having in mind the endless delays to which our own last Franchise Bill
gave rise, and the difficulties pleaded as regards the revision of
voters’ lists. The temper of the hour and the mood of the conquering
Allies did not permit of one word of praise for a constitutional _tour
de force_ carried through under conditions of overwhelming difficulty.
But it would be unjust and ungenerous not to recognise to-day with
what dogged determination the German democrats, inexperienced and
untried as they were in government, handled the half-foundering ship
they were called upon to save. To make a success of the task was an
impossibility under the circumstances for them or for any set of men.
But that they kept the ship afloat, in view of the seas breaking over
it, is little short of a marvel.

The man who played a thoroughly creditable part in the hour of collapse
was Hindenburg. Unlike other distinguished members of the ruling class
he did not run away when the game was up, but stood by his country
through the grim business of defeat and surrender. Without a shred of
sympathy for the Republican Government, he gave that government loyal
assistance as regards the withdrawal of the armies. No man in Germany
to-day commands more universal respect than the old Field-Marshall.
Amid the flood of recriminations which German statesmen, generals, and
admirals have poured on each other, Hindenburg has displayed reticence
and generosity which do him entire credit. The inclusion of his name in
the list of War Criminals is of all Allied ineptitudes since the Peace
perhaps the greatest.

The National Assembly lasted for about fifteen months. In June 1920
Germany went to the polls to elect the first Reichstag of the Republic.
Not the faintest interest in the event was taken by the British public.
Yet whatever the result, it could only react on the whole future of
European reconstruction.

Current conceptions at home remain astonishingly crude as to the
position in Central Europe. The man in the street, brought up in the
true milk of the word as preached by the Yellow Press, is still of
opinion that Germany is as militant and as threatening as ever, and
that, should we be so foolish as to stop sitting on her head, she
would promptly overrun Europe again. Suggest that Germany with her
fleet sunk, her merchant shipping confiscated, her colonies lost, her
army disbanded, her war material surrendered, her railway system in
ruins, her food shortage considerable, is hardly in a position at the
moment to make an unprovoked attack on any one, and the said person
hints darkly in reply at hidden divisions on the Eastern Frontier;
at an alliance between the Bolshevists and the German Government;
at a military menace little less serious than what existed in 1914.
It is surprising that people of this type are not more in conceit
with themselves after the Allied victory, and fail so completely in
appreciation of what the conquering armies have done. The German
legions, perfectly trained and equipped after years of preparation,
and with the whole resources of the German Empire behind them, could
not achieve the preliminary pounce on Paris in 1914. Is the present
Republican Government in any better position to succeed where they
failed? A nation broken by hunger and defeat may become a centre of
disease, dangerous to its neighbours owing to the poison spread through
the whole international system. But any talk of external military
adventure, apart from sporadic insurrections, is absurd.

The old united Germany with its strong centralised military government
is a thing of the past. Instead of which we have a Germany, weak,
disorganised, distracted, split into various factions each at mortal
strife with the other. The position is full of danger and grave
internal crisis; it may menace the foundations of European society, but
the danger is disruptive and from within, not the menace of external
legions. Political parties in Germany are split up into numerous and
bewildering subdivisions. The Independent Socialists and Communists
form a group to the extreme left, with more or less Bolshevist ideals.
But, broadly speaking, there are two main sections, the democratically
minded people who desire the evolution of a peaceful and constitutional
republic, and the reactionaries who, while paying a certain lip-service
to democratic principles, at heart detest the whole business.

It will be the eternal reproach to Allied policy that it has done
nothing whatever to help the better elements in Germany to consolidate
their position. On the contrary, by the intolerable economic penalties
of the Peace it has pushed German democracy into a slough of despond
and handed over all the vantage points to its enemies. The measure
of the vast blunder committed in this respect is clear enough to any
one who, like myself, has had the opportunity of attending political
meetings held in Germany. To be living in a country torn by a fierce
election campaign and to be taking no part in the fray was a novel
experience for me. The placards with which Cologne was covered and
the heated articles in the German newspapers made me, like an old
war-horse, sniff battle from afar. At least I was anxious to try to
gather as a spectator how German men and women were really feeling and
thinking on this critical occasion. Political meetings have their own
atmosphere and tell their own tale, and the opportunity of hearing and
judging for myself was too good a one to miss.

I confess it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I made my
way for the first time into a German public meeting. Naturally I had no
desire to be recognised as an English woman, and, the conditions being
wholly novel, I was not clear beforehand how far I should be able to
lie low and conceal the fact of my nationality. However, seeing that
the Social Democrats advertised a meeting to which women were specially
invited, I plucked up my courage, reflected on the not infrequent and
slightly chastening occasions when I have been addressed by Germans in
German, bought a Socialist paper which I displayed conspicuously, and
walked into the gathering. Neither then nor on any subsequent occasion,
let me say, did I experience the smallest difficulty in slipping in
amongst the crowd and hearing the proceedings in entire comfort.

It was a warm evening, and the great hall of the Gürzenich, the
old banqueting-room of mediaeval Cologne, was only half full. The
audience--about equal numbers of men and women--were well-dressed,
entirely decorous folk. The long hair and red ties of orthodox
Socialism were absent. German meetings are detestably unpunctual.
Advertised generally for 8 P.M., they seldom start till twenty
minutes later, and the audience meekly accepts conditions of delay
which would rouse an English meeting to fury. The principal speaker
of the evening was Fräulein S., of Hamburg, a member of the National
Assembly. At 8.20 a procession of earnest-looking women slowly mounted
the platform. They wore coloured blouses and dark skirts, and their
hair was scratched back tightly off their heads--a true hall-mark of
feminine virtue in all climes and among all nations. The chairwoman had
fortified herself with a large dinner-bell, and rang a peal, apparently
to give herself courage, on opening the proceedings. Restoration of
order was unnecessary, for the audience sat in stolid silence on the
appearance of the speakers, not even extending to them the perfunctory
greeting with which an English audience heartens the platform victims
before the sacrifice. No encouraging cheers greeted the advent of a
pleasant-looking lady who, armed with a folio of MS., made her way to
the reading-desk. Fräulein S. spoke, or rather read, for an hour in a
clear, cultivated voice. She outlined the constructive policy of the
Social Democrats or Majority Socialists, whose platform approximates to
what was known as the Liberal-Labour position in English politics. The
party is, however, definitely pledged to nationalisation. The speaker
led off with the blockade, which is the King Charles’s Head of every
political meeting in Germany. Their enemies, she declared, accused
the Social Democrats of bringing Germany into her present desperate
straits. Not the revolution, however, but the dire consequences of the
blockade were responsible for the troubles of the people. Fräulein
S.’s chief interests lay obviously in the field of social reform. She
outlined a programme which was strangely familiar in many respects.
The unmarried mother and the question of religious education in the
schools were in the forefront of the battle. The temper of the meeting,
it must be owned, was very tepid, but the depressing silence was broken
by a few cheers when these subjects were handled. Another old friend
appeared with Fräulein S.’s emphatic assertion that no school teacher
should be compelled to resign her appointment on marriage. The lady
then dealt at some length with finance and the incidence of taxation. A
thoughtful, well-expressed speech--withal a trifle dull.

The reading of manuscript in a large hall has a curiously deadening
effect on an audience, and judging by what I have heard, the women
politicians of Germany--and be it also said many of the men--have not
as yet learnt to emancipate themselves from the tyranny of elaborately
prepared lectures. This was noticeable in the case of the speakers who
followed Fräulein S. She was succeeded at the reading-desk by a dark,
heavy-browed, energetic-looking girl, who infused a welcome note of
vigour, not to say violence, into the proceedings. This young woman
was a school teacher of obviously advanced views, and spoke well and
fluently. She made short shrift of religious education in schools.
Priests and catechisms vanished under her touch as she flourished the
Socialist banner and belaboured her political adversaries with a series
of witticisms which evoked rounds of applause. Yet she too had a folio
of notes, and now and again when a word failed, a sudden pause in the
flow of oratory, a hasty turning of sheets showed that the thunder,
effective as it was, had been carefully prepared.

These little difficulties were still more noticeable in the case of
the next speaker, an old lady wearing spectacles and a black bonnet,
whose witticisms (the drift of which I was quite unable to follow)
delighted the audience. Her notes had got mixed, and when she lost her
thread--which happened frequently--some moments were spent hunting it.
Quite undismayed, however, by these interruptions, the old lady held
to her task gallantly. She was clearly a favourite, and the carefully
prepared jokes resulted in loud laughter. I was sorry to miss the point
of these jests, but I was left with the impression that public meetings
in Germany, as in England, are ready to be amused with very small beer.
The ladies were succeeded by one or two men speakers, who all chanted
the praises of the Social Democrats and introduced variants of another
familiar theme--poll early and poll straight. After this the chairwoman
performed energetically again on the dinner-bell--did any member of
the audience desire to speak? Hardly had the sounds died away when
she declared the meeting over. I was waiting for the real fun of the
fair to begin with questions, but found myself, with the rest of the
company, in the street.

Encouraged by this first attempt, I made a round of the meetings
held by the leading parties, gatherings at which night after night I
listened to views as wide asunder as the poles. The proceedings were
considerably more lively than at the women’s meeting, and on more than
one occasion feeling ran high. Yet the proceedings were astonishingly
orderly as compared with the uproarious election meetings which are
common enough at home. Interruptions were not of a sustained character,
and during the campaign I saw no meeting broken up. I can only marvel,
however, at the easy lot of a German candidate, for questions and
heckling play a very small part in the campaign. The carefully prepared
conundrums which harass the existence of the British Parliamentary
candidate, the game of thrust and tierce, are unknown here. I was
disappointed by the absence of the familiar figure in the back row who
rises, waggling a minatory forefinger, and the words, “I want to ask
the candidate,” etc. The odds are against the heckler in Germany, for
what is called the “discussion” consists of objectors coming on to the
platform and making speeches of protest, surrounded by the candidate or
candidates and their supporters. As I have already remarked, meetings
begin late, speeches are very lengthy, and by the time the party
candidates sitting in a row on the platform have each said his say the
hour stands long after 10 P.M., and the audience begins to go home.

Naturally I was specially interested in the women speakers and the
general bearing of women at these gatherings. The impression made upon
me was that if German women attained full political emancipation at
a bound through the revolution in November 1918, they have already
laid a firm hand on their new rights. Large numbers of women were
present at every meeting I attended--a fact which made my own presence
possible. A fair proportion of women had sat in the National Assembly
(the first provisional Parliament elected after the revolution), and
were candidates for the new Reichstag. It is a satisfactory feature
that, though the progressive feminist spirits are naturally more
numerous among the Social Democrats and Minority Socialists, the
various Conservative parties also support women candidates. If the
British voters at the last General Election showed no mind of any kind
to return women to Parliament, German women have fared better. But the
difference in the electoral system probably tells in their favour.


II

German political organisation differs widely from anything with which
we are familiar. The small constituencies represented by one or two
members have no existence here. The country is divided into large
electoral areas, and each party has a list of candidates qualified for
the position by the votes of their respective supporters. On polling
day you are implored to vote, therefore, not for a person but for a
list, the list being headed by the name of the leading candidate. A
definite quota of votes given to a party elects a member automatically.
The personal element in elections which is so conspicuous a feature
of our own public life has practically no existence in Germany. The
struggle is one of principles far more than of personalities. This
state of affairs tells against a candidate of special gifts, but on the
other hand it neutralises the unfair influence of the purse, and gets
rid of much of the polite bribery which enters into political life at
home. There is no question here as at Eatonswill of kissing the babies
or shaking hands specially washed for the occasion. Further, areas are
too large to make handsome subscriptions to local charities a factor
in success. A millionaire could not stand the strain of subsidising
portions of a province.

Another curious feature of a General Election in Germany is the
inadequacy of the Press arrangements. The papers supporting the various
factions give the list of their own candidates, and these lists
appear on the electioneering placards which are in great evidence.
But I wholly failed to obtain any general list of the candidates in
the Cologne area, let alone a list for the whole country. Equally
difficult was it after the poll to get a detailed list of the losses
and gains. Totals appeared but no names. It was necessary to hunt
through a variety of party organs to find which of the candidates had
been qualified as members by the quota of votes given to the party.
Though I spent my time buying newspapers, I was never able to find a
list setting out the new Reichstag in tabular form, with parties and
localities attached to the various names. Electioneering literature
was poor stuff, and the occasional picture posters not inspiring.
The Deutschnationale had a dramatic placard of a drowning man sinking
beneath heavy seas, to whom a lifebuoy with D.N.P. is being thrown
as his one chance of salvation. But the subject of the placard could
hardly have thrilled the electors. Posters devoted to the general
turpitude of the other man’s views were common, and followed familiar
lines. But certainly neither Press nor posters could compare with the
organisation of the written and printed word which exists during a
General Election in the United Kingdom.

It was an interesting experience night after night to watch a country
groping its way along political paths but recently opened. The
multiplicity of parties into which Germany is split is very confusing
to a foreigner. The lines of demarcation in some cases are hard to
grasp, and the political life of the Republic would gain in vigour and
directness if certain of the groups were combined under one banner.

The two main groups, right and left, into which German political life
falls are split up into various factions. The Socialist Party is
divided into a constitutional right wing, the Social Democrats, and a
revolutionary left wing, the “Unabhängige” or Independent Socialists.
Since the revolution, various parties have been busily engaged changing
their names, a fact which does not simplify the situation, as the old
ones still survive in current conversation. The former Liberals--whose
views have nothing in common with Liberalism in the English sense--are
included to-day in a variety of Capitalist and Conservative groups from
the Demokraten (mildly Liberal in our sense of the word) on the left to
the Deutschnationale Partei on the right. This last-named tabernacle
shelters the Junker and Agrarian elements, and is reactionary to the
core. But it is less dangerous than the party which has risen into
power of late and bids fair to be thoroughly mischievous, namely, the
Deutsche Volkspartei. This is the party of Herr Stinnes and the “schwer
Industrie.” It includes the great manufacturers and capitalists,
as well as large sections of the Bourgeoisie, has ample funds at
its command, and despite some perfunctory patter about democracy,
is bitterly anti-democratic in feeling and outlook. These two main
divisions of the Socialists and the Bourgeoisie face each other with
uncompromising hostility. But the situation is further complicated by
a clerical element standing between them, with which happily our own
politics are untroubled.

The fervour and depth of Catholicism on the Rhineland has been one
of the many surprises of Germany to me. In the Rhineland, therefore,
questions affecting Church and State are much to the fore, especially
the burning question of religious education in the schools. But the
cross-correspondences between the Zentrum, the orthodox Catholic
party, and the other groups are most bewildering. There are Christian
Socialists and Socialists who are very much the reverse. The Zentrum
has cooperated for certain purposes with the Social Democrats, which
has resulted in a split in its own ranks and the formation of a new
party of clerical extremists known as the Christliche Volkspartei.

Amid the welter of parties two conclusions force themselves on the
observer. First, the orderly democratic elements in Germany are having
a hard struggle to survive; second, it is essential for the Allies to
have a responsible Government in Germany with principles approximating
to those of the democratic peoples. To such a Government alone can
they look for the execution of Germany’s Treaty obligations. Yet they
have taken no steps to secure this end. I often think that Europe will
make final shipwreck over the mistaken idea of German military unity
still so firmly screwed into popular imagination at home. Could we but
grasp the profound internal cleavage of ideas and ideals in Germany
itself, common-sense, if no higher consideration, might suggest the
importance of strengthening the hands of the only party from which we
have anything to hope.

The democratic Government which came into existence at the time of the
revolution has had an impossible task. It was confronted by hunger,
defeat, despair, and the miseries which resulted from the blockade.
It was not a strong Government--how could it be? Democracy is but a
plant of struggling growth in Germany. The nation has had no training
in self-government, and the efficient bureaucracy which still more or
less survives is steeped in the old bad traditions. That under these
circumstances the new Government was open to suspicion at every turn
is natural enough. A more far-sighted policy, however, inspired by
some faith and hope for the future would have realised that these
struggling democratic ideals, if feeble, were sincere and would not
have withheld all help from them. Also that the powerful internal
enemies, the revolutionaries on the one hand, the reactionaries on the
other, were waiting their opportunity to destroy them. Such a policy,
could it have illumined the councils of Versailles, might at least
have seen the folly of associating the first efforts in democratic
government in Germany with rebuffs and humiliations of all kinds. The
German working-man means to stand by the revolution, but hunger and
general demoralisation are openings on which the reactionaries and
revolutionaries are not slow to seize.

These reflections were driven home to me in a most emphatic way
at a meeting of the Deutsche Volkspartei which was addressed by a
distinguished professor from Berlin. The Deutsche Volkspartei excites
peculiar wrath in Socialist circles. The Junkers and the Right Wing
extremists, left to themselves, are not dangerous. But this great
Conservative capitalist block, fortified? by the funds of the big
business men and the “schwer Industrie,” is considered, and rightly, a
formidable adversary.

The Professor’s speech was in its own way first-rate. From premises
which personally I detested he developed his theme with extraordinary
ability, piling argument upon argument with a cumulative force which
swept everything before it. Personally I was very thankful it did not
fall to my lot to answer some of the points scored.

The Gürzenich Hall was crowded on this occasion, and the fashionable
ladies who sat on the platform belonged to a different world from
that of the Social Democratic women of an earlier meeting. As regards
the masculine supporters of the Volkspartei, I was reminded of Mr.
Keynes’s famous description of the present House of Commons, “a lot
of hard-faced men who looked as though they had done very well out of
the war.” This was particularly the case with the chairman, who had
“schwer Industrie” written all over him. The Professor’s personality
was more attractive than that of many of his supporters--a grey-haired,
grey-bearded man, with a fine head and full strong voice. He spoke
without a note of any kind, never once hesitating for a word. He
dealt skilfully with occasional interruptions, for the meeting was not
composed of unanimous supporters.

The speech began characteristically with a eulogy of Bismarck.
Bismarck had been reproached for a policy of blood and iron and force.
But blood and iron and force, not the pratings of the democratic
visionaries of the National Assembly at Frankfurt in 1848, had created
and sustained modern Germany. It was the absence of blood and iron
which was responsible for their present downfall. Not that the armies
in the field were ever defeated; Germany’s downfall sprang from the
blockade and the fanatical hatred of England. Yet not from the blockade
alone: all might have been saved but for the revolution which had
brought about their final undoing. It was the traitors from within,
not the enemies from without, who had finally wrecked and destroyed
Bismarck’s work. Social Democracy had been the ruin of the country.
It had delivered the nation tied and bound into the hands of their
enemies. Democracy, what was democracy? The firstfruits of German
democracy had been the Treaty of Versailles with its intolerable
burdens. Belief in democratic principles; trust in the professions of
democratic leaders? The speaker laughed bitterly. Had not President
Wilson proclaimed that America was fighting German militarism, not the
German people? Had not Lloyd George said the same thing, and that no
yard of German soil was desired by the Alliance? The Social Democrats
might believe these fables, on the strength of which they sold the pass
to the bitter enemies of the Fatherland. The result was the Treaty of
Versailles. The Socialists talked of a peace of reconciliation, of
international relations, of stretching out hands to the democracies
in other countries. What folly to trust to such shifting sands, which
had resulted in the German people being swallowed up in misery. The
Social Democrats had promised them freedom. “Freedom,” said the speaker
with bitter scorn; “are you free in the Rhineland?” No; there was only
one way by which a happier future could be reached--the re-creation
of Germany on strong nationalist lines; a Germany resting on force,
purged of democratic and international follies, with her eyes fixed
on herself and the principles of Bismarck well to the fore again. To
do this the defeat of Social Democracy and Socialism at the polls was
the first essential. A Government must be returned which would know
how to safeguard the welfare of the Fatherland. Unceasing work was an
essential of reconstruction; the eight hours’ day was another colossal
blunder recently made. Here and there the speaker threw an occasional
sop to the democratic Cerberus. Perhaps it was true that they had
relied a little too much on force alone in the past, and had forgotten
the old idealistic teaching of the poets and philosophers. And again
the rule of bayonets was over; government now rested on the will of the
people--a good old tag which appeared towards the end of the speech.
If the Volkspartei have their way, how much will shortly remain of the
will of the people in Germany?

Now for an English woman sitting unperceived and unrecognised among a
German audience this speech was not pleasant hearing. Naturally, the
speaker glided easily over the rotten ice of Germany’s responsibility
for the war. He had nothing to say as to the original crime of German
militarism, the real starting point of his tale of woe. For him
history began with the Peace, an indefensible position. Nevertheless
all he had to say on that subject drove home every doubt people like
myself have felt as to the scrapping by the Peace of the fundamental
principles for which we fought the war. The speech was a practical
illustration of how the Treaty itself has played straight into the
hands of the German reactionaries, how it has brought democratic
professions into utter contempt, how it has made the lot of a German
democratic Government practically impossible.

The speech of the evening was received with rapturous applause, though
elements of dissent were not unrepresented. But, as I have said before,
German political meetings are not arranged with a view to helping the
heckler. It is one thing to fire off questions from the body of the
hall, quite another to go upon the platform and make a reasoned speech
of protest surrounded by your enemies. Even so the “discussions” are
at times sufficiently lively. A nice old working-man, with clothes so
patched that the original pattern had almost disappeared, sat next
me in my corner. He was obviously full of protest at the speech, and
obviously anxious to explain his objections to me. But the necessities
of my incognito demanded strict silence, for my speech I knew would
betray me if I became involved in conversation however interesting. So
I was forced to assume an attitude of haughty aloofness, much though I
regretted the latter.

When the Berlin gentleman sat down, another prop of the Volkspartei,
an elderly and spectacled lady, advanced to the reading-desk fairly
staggering under a load of MS. “Lieber Gott!” said two young men
sitting in front of me when she had said half a dozen words. Seizing
their hats, they fled forthwith. I bore with the portentous dullness
of the lady for a few minutes and then fled in my turn. The evening
though interesting had not been agreeable. There had been too much
truth in many of the taunts hurled by the Professor at the democratic
professors of the Allies and their “faithful guardianship” of the
principles of liberty and justice. The miserable state of confusion to
which the pundits of the Peace Conference have reduced Europe is only
too apparent to any one living on the Continent. But to have the moral
enforced and adorned by a German is poor work for an English woman.


III

One outstanding impression which I have carried away from political
meetings in Germany is the easy life of a German parliamentary
candidate. So far as I could judge, these happy individuals saunter
through a campaign with relative ease and leisure. Instead of a hectic
evening spent in rushing from one meeting to another, candidates sit
for hours listening to one another’s oratory. The absence of heckling
and questions makes the delivery of long political treatises, which are
but mildly challenged, a simple task. There are of course exceptions,
and some meetings, notably Socialist ones, announce a “discussion,”
at which feeling runs high. But the average German audience is very
long-suffering, and tolerates bores and speeches of inordinate length
which would empty an English gathering. The whole spirit of a German
meeting is hostile to interruptions. I have heard a man who interjected
a harmless remark torn to pieces by the speaker, with the obvious
approval of the audience.

All of which is perhaps a mark of the political inexperience of the
people and that despairing German habit of taking for granted what
is told them. Nowhere more than in Germany does one thank heaven for
the intractability and argumentativeness of the British democracy.
Intellectual docility lies at the root of many German crimes, and along
the path of criticism probably lies the way of political regeneration.

Liberal and Conservative principles are much the same all the world
over, and the German political parties which embody them are easy to
recognize whatever their names. But the clerical element which cuts
across political life in Catholic Germany has no parallel in English
politics, and produces some curious eddies in the stream. The Zentrum,
the orthodox Catholic Party, cannot be reproached with clericalism
in the bad sense of the word. German Catholicism includes mildly
Socialistic elements, and the Zentrum joined with the Social Democrats
in forming the present Government. It is largely a working-class party,
and stands for what we should call moderate Liberal views. But at the
same time it is grounded in principles of religious education and that
religious view of the State to which modern democratic feeling is
increasingly hostile. Joint makers of the Coalition, no two parties
at the moment abuse each other more heartily than the Zentrum and the
Majority Socialists. Despite its present influence, it is difficult,
therefore, to judge what the future holds for the Zentrum. Meanwhile,
a certain section of zealots and intriguers have broken away from the
original Catholic Party to form the Christliche Volkspartei. The
seceders declare that by holding any traffic with the Social Democrats
the Zentrum has been faithless to the first principles of religious
education. It was incumbent on them, therefore, however heart-breaking
the task, to withdraw the hem of their garments from the accursed thing
and stand for Christian fundamentals in their original purity. Behind
all of which professions lurks a very pretty intrigue.

I was favourably impressed at a Zentrum meeting both by the audience
and the speakers. I came away feeling that they were decent people
holding moderate views with honesty and a certain liberality of view.
Unlike the Deutschnationale and the Volkspartei, they do not desire the
destruction of the Republic, while paying it perfunctory lip-service.
One speaker, a priest, declared emphatically against any restoration of
the monarchy, and his remarks were received with cheers. The capitalist
element was clearly unrepresented on the platform. The body of the hall
was filled with the same working-class element largely represented in
the crowds which flock on Sunday mornings to Cologne Cathedral. The
Zentrum is a strong party, and whatever electoral successes it may win
at the polls are not likely to be hostile to social reform on cautious
lines.

Very different is the position as regards the seceding body, that of
the Christliche Volkspartei. I attended a meeting of the new party, and
fell among proceedings which were refreshingly lively. It was a curious
audience, generally speaking on a plane just above working-class level,
but including more well-to-do and moneyed interests. They were not a
pleasant set of people. Some looked fanatics; others undiluted scamps.
A large number of women were present who cheered with great vigour.
Enthusiasm was boundless, but was countered at the back of the hall by
very definite opposition.

When the speakers and candidates took their place on the platform,
cheers greeted the appearance of a sinister-looking priest with
intrigue written all over him. This was the celebrated Father Kastert,
whose political activities of late have made no small stir in the
Rhineland. The various candidates got to work, and I have never heard
texts and Christian ideals hurled about a platform with such vigour,
and, according to English standards, with such entire lack of reserve.
Several of the speakers, judging by their appearance, might have
engaged in shady commerce, which made their declamations about the
supreme importance of religious education the more interesting.

Shortly after the meeting began, a blind gentleman, venerable
in appearance and with a large white beard, was shepherded with
ostentatious care on to the platform. I suspected a trophy, judging
by the exaggerated marks of respect with which he was received by
Father Kastert and his friends. He was, in fact, a leading supporter of
the Zentrum, who had seceded to the new party. The old gentleman was
propped up, and when he began to speak, despite his tottering steps and
shaking hands, proved a veritable Bull of Bashan. The Sermon on the
Mount and the Temptation in the Wilderness formed part of a political
pot-pourri mixed up with the misdeeds of the Social Democrats. I was
sitting by chance among a nest of zealots, who greeted these remarks
with hysterical applause. A youth, still wearing field grey, suddenly
jumped up in emphatic protest. General uproar resulted. “Aus mit
dem Kerl!” shouted several ladies round me. My spirits rose at the
prospect of seeing some one turned out with German thoroughness, but
the young man thought better of it, and sat down again hastily. The
chairman rang his bell, and after a time the meeting proceeded. Among
this curious company of hypocrites applauding principles clearly remote
from their practice I was struck by one working-man candidate, who
spoke with obvious sincerity as well as simplicity. No workman, he
said, could look for joy in his work unless that work were grounded in
Christ. Christ was the root, Christ was the foundation, Christ was the
workman’s stay and support. Happily in England we do not discuss the
Founder of Christianity on political platforms after the manner of this
meeting. But in this solitary case the note of sincerity rang true, and
I was grateful for it.

The candidates said their say, and then the real “turn” of the
evening began with a lengthy discourse from Father Kastert. Father
Kastert, despite all disclaimers to the contrary, is regarded as the
protagonist of the Rhineland Republic, a matter about which there are
many mutterings and murmurings in the Occupied Area. As such he is
an object of abhorrence to all patriotic Germans. Various elements
enter into the Rhineland Republic intrigue. The annexationist party
in France are naturally in favour of it; good Catholics are told that
self-determination for the Rhineland means getting rid of Prussian
Protestant officials; clericals are promised more power in a State
dominated by clerical influences; greedy financiers are heartened
by the prospect of escaping any way from the full burdens of the
indemnity. Every decent German looks on the movement as one of supreme
treachery to the Fatherland in its hour of defeat and overthrow, and on
Father Kastert as the arch-traitor.

That Father Kastert and his following are violently assailed is only
natural. His lengthy speech on this occasion took the form of an
apologia. His visit to General Mangin was only concerned with securing
a greater measure of liberty for the Rhineland during the Occupation,
and in hastening the close of the Occupation itself; away with the
abominable lie that he was in French pay and serving French ends; all
that he sought was to free the Rhineland from the Jewish influences
rampant both in Prussia and Berlin and to secure the fullest measure of
self-determination. On the whole the Father, though like all priests
a good speaker, proved less of a personality than I expected. I am
quite unable to judge how far the charges brought against him are just.
The Christliche Volkspartei is the political instrument formed by him
for carrying out his projects, whatever they may be. Father Kastert
would appear to draw his support from singularly unworthy elements in
German public life; people who are ready to traffic with the enemies of
yesterday for the sake of such bread-and-butter advantages as may be
obtained from the intercourse. A bad peace opens the door to intrigues
of many kinds. But the security of Europe or France is not to be
achieved by buffer states of the type contemplated by the supporters of
the Rhineland Republic.

The French Chauvinists who air schemes for the annexation of the
left bank of the Rhine are mischievous people. It is hard to believe
that one French person endowed with a grain of good sense could lend
an ear to so mad a proposal. Where Germany failed ignominiously
in Alsace-Lorraine, the French are hardly likely to succeed in the
Rhineland. But foolish talk of this character tends very appreciably
to exasperate and embitter German public opinion, and brings new
elements of hatred and unrest into a situation which was bad enough
already. Many Germans are convinced that France intends to spring some
annexationist coup upon them, and is only waiting for an opportunity
to strike again. Suspicions of this kind destroy any hope of improved
relations between the two countries. Goodwill can be at the best a
plant of very slow and painful growth between the nations. Intrigue
makes its existence impossible. The Rhine is German to the core in
race, language, and sentiment. Even a whisper as to the possibility
of detaching it from the rest of the country is a premium on a fresh
outbreak of anger and exasperation. The unhappy situation existing
in the Saar Basin may have its compensations if it provides an
anti-annexationist moral too strong to be disregarded.


IV

Polling day came and went. Despite a certain amount of nervous chatter
beforehand of disturbances and riots, the elections took place in
complete tranquillity. Not a dog barked through the length and breadth
of Germany. In Cologne, at least, no one would have suspected that
any event of importance was taking place. The ordinary Sunday crowds
promenaded peacefully, as is their habit, to and fro along the Rhine.
The Independent Socialists, with singular delicacy and nice feeling,
plastered the outer walls of the cathedral during the night with their
electioneering placards, and in gigantic red letters painted the
words “Wahlt Liste Fries” on the threshold of the west door. Otherwise
everything about the town was quiet and normal.

As for the result of the Election, it was very much what was to be
expected under the circumstances--a result in the highest degree
unsatisfactory, if they but knew it, to the British democracy. The
reactionaries and the extreme Socialists gained at the expense of the
moderate men. The Independent Socialists--the Unabhängige--negligible
at the last election, increased their strength four-fold, and instead
of twenty-two hold eighty-one seats in the new Reichstag. They swept
the great industrial districts of the west, an ironical commentary
on the hysterics of the English papers which insisted that the Ruhr
disturbances were a put-up job by the German Government destined to
veil a new attack on France. No less striking were the gains of the
Deutsche Volkspartei, who increased their numbers from twenty-one to
sixty-two seats. The Zentrum with sixty-eight instead of eighty-eight
seats lost substantially, but while yielding ground was not routed.
The Christliche Volkspartei was beaten off the field. The discomfiture
of Father Kastert and the upholders of the Rhineland Republic was
complete. The serious feature of the Elections was the downfall of the
Social Democrats, the largest and most influential of the three parties
forming the Müller Government. Their numbers fell from one hundred
and sixty-three to one hundred and twelve. No less complete was the
discomfiture of the Demokraten or Moderate Radicals--the left wing of
the Bourgeois parties--who at the best lived cramped and uncomfortable
lives between the Social Democrats on the one hand and the
Conservative groups on the other. Their numbers fell from seventy-five
to forty-five seats. Secrecy of the ballot does not in Germany prohibit
analysis of the totals polled, and the women’s vote taken as a whole
was clearly thrown on the reactionary side. Gratitude is not a factor
which counts in political life, and the Social Democrats to whom the
women owe their enfranchisement suffered severely at their hands.

On the morrow of the poll, therefore, the Müller Government then in
power found that its majority had disappeared, and that the Bourgeois
groups reckoned together were in a majority as compared with the two
Socialist parties. In the good old days for which many Germans sigh,
nothing would have happened in the seats of the mighty, whatever the
complexion of a Reichstag returned at a General Election. But under
the new constitution established by the revolution, a Government in
power must hold its authority from the elected representatives of the
people. Since, however, both the Zentrum and the Demokraten had been
associated with the Müller Government, a political deadlock of great
difficulty at once arose. For some days the hitherings and thitherings
between the various groups kept political Germany on the tiptoe of
excitement. The Independent Socialists held aloof and refused entirely
to be associated in any Government with the Majority Socialists. The
Majority Socialists refused with equal firmness to have anything to
do with a Cabinet in which their deadly enemies the Volkspartei would
necessarily play a leading part. The Zentrum with its sixty-eight
seats and Liberal leanings clearly held the balance of power between
the conflicting parties. The political crisis lasted for a fortnight,
during which period Germany was practically without a Government.
This state of affairs was considerably aggravated by the approach
of the Spa Conference and the necessity to have a German Cabinet in
existence with whom negotiations could be carried on. Finally, after
many days of uncertainty, a new Coalition Government emerged with Herr
Fehrenbach, the Zentrum leader, as Chancellor. The new Government is
largely Zentrum with a dash of Demokraten, but the sinister influence
of the Volkspartei is dominant in its counsels. The Government can
command no clear majority. It is confronted with a solid block of
Socialist opposition. The Social Democrats, whatever the attitude of
the Independents, are not likely to hamper the new Cabinet in vital
questions of external politics. But in daily life it will be forced to
lead the uneasy existence of playing off the various groups against
each other. It is a weak Government at a moment when strength is
essential, and such strength as it possesses is largely of the wrong
kind.

This upshot, as I see it, is wholly devoid of comfort to any one who
desires the rehabilitation of Germany on right lines. The election is
the writing on the wall which even at the eleventh hour should command
the attention of the little ring of politicians who control the Entente
policy. This shifting of German opinion to the right and to the left is
an ominous sign. The party standing for ordered democratic development
has been knocked out. The British public should try to realise it has
been killed by the Allied policy. That it was worth supporting is
proved by the fact that, despite heavy losses, the Social Democrats
still remain the largest individual group in the new Reichstag. We
have refused to discriminate between the good and bad elements in
political Germany. Our hand has rested as heavily on a democratic as
it would rightly have done on a Junker Government. The shackles forged
by the Allies have in the first place reduced the only administration
to impotence to which they could look for the fulfilment of the just
demands of a revised Treaty. Economic and political recovery has
been made an impossibility owing to the policy pursued. As a result,
hunger, despair, and general misery have driven large sections of the
working-classes into the arms of the Communists. They have lost faith
and hope in a constitutional party whose weakness has been so great.
They are out for the short cut of violent means in order to better
conditions which they regard as intolerable.

Meanwhile the Deutsche Volkspartei and all the wealthy and reactionary
elements in the country have been no less eager to stamp upon the
smoking flax of a democratic Germany. On the Friday and Saturday
before the poll I attended meetings respectively of the Volkspartei
and the Social Democrats. In each case speeches were made typical of
the two sets of ideas at war in Germany to-day. On this occasion the
Volkspartei speakers hardly took the trouble to camouflage their real
opinions, though one pastor spoke eloquently of the “Liberalisms”
of which they were the guardians--a claim which moved me to secret
mirth. The arguments were developed on the same lines as those I have
described above, only on this occasion the cloven hoof was still
more obvious. The revolution and the Republic were the root causes
of Germany’s present misery. The view of the Volkspartei that a
Constitutional Monarchy was the best form of government was unchanged,
though they “accepted” the Republic. Soon they hoped the old red and
white and black colours would wave over them again--a remark which
roused frantic applause from the large and enthusiastic audience.
Internationalism and the League of Nations were condemned in unsparing
terms. Who were the Allies to advance these principles? Let them cease
to boycott Germans in all parts of the world, and let France bring to
an end the scandal of her black troops in the Occupied Areas. Then they
might begin to talk about internationalism. As for England, no country
pursued its policy with more consistent and single-eyed devotion to its
own interests. Germany could only be remade on the basis of a strong
and efficient nationalism. A new spirit was abroad in the land and,
granted the defeat of the Socialists and Social Democrats, all that had
been lost might be regained.

Very different was the tone and temper of the meeting of the Social
Democrats on the following night. From first to last not one word was
said with which I, as an English Liberal, was out of harmony. Any
democratic audience in Great Britain would have found itself in entire
sympathy with the general views expressed. The audience was typically
working-class; quiet, orderly people, who made on me an unmistakable
impression of underfeeding and suffering. The shabby field-grey
uniforms converted to civilian use served to heighten the curious
earthen look noticeable on so many faces here. Food is plentiful now
in the Occupied Area, but the cost of living is so high, many families
remain ill-nourished. Fresh milk is unobtainable; during the many
months I have been in Cologne I have never seen a drop. Over and over
again the same question is driven home with overwhelming force: can
even the most volatile and opportunist of politicians imagine that the
unspecified millions of the indemnity, or, indeed, any indemnity at
all, can be collected from a nation which is not in a position to eat
or work?

Herr Meerfeld, the leader of the Social Democrats in Cologne, and Frau
Röhl were the principal speakers at this final gathering. Both were
members of the National Assembly; Frau Röhl unfortunately has not
survived the deluge which has overwhelmed many of her colleagues. A
capable-looking woman with golden hair, she reminded me a little of
Mary Macarthur, though lacking in the magnetism and stature, moral no
less than physical, of the English trade-union leader. Herr Meerfeld’s
speech was a merciless indictment of the former militarist Government
and its colossal blunders in connection with the war. In his first
words he struck the keynote of all that followed: “We will have no more
war. What we want in future is a ‘Peace-Kultur’”--that untranslatable
word which in so many varied forms finds its place in the political
utterances of all parties--“we seek a revision of the Treaty of
Versailles, but we seek it through a policy of reconciliation and
understanding with the democracies in other countries.” The failures
of the military party to make peace when an honourable peace was still
possible, the rejection of President Wilson’s offers of mediation,
the folly and crime of the unrestricted U-boat campaign--all these
subjects were handled in a spirit which astonished me. A pamphlet on
sale at the meeting, “Wer trägt die Schuld an unserem Elend?” (Who
bears the responsibility for our misery?), of which I bought a copy,
was packed with a damning array of facts, many of them unknown to me,
as to the part played by the Kaiser’s Government during the war. “The
German people have been lied to, and deceived, and betrayed,” cried the
speaker. “We were told that the U-boat campaign would bring England
to her knees in three months!” German mentality is a baffling thing,
but I hardly expected that this remark would be received with shouts
of good-natured laughter. The long arm of England’s sea-power has been
no laughing matter for Germany, but throughout this campaign I was
specially struck with the absence of hostility shown to England. Even
at the Volkspartei meetings I listened in vain for the note which shows
itself unmistakable when an audience is deeply roused. The justice and
fair dealing which have marked the British Occupation have contributed
primarily to this end.

A quaint little woman dressed in black came on to the platform to make
a few remarks during the discussion. At first she was almost inaudible,
but her voice gathered force and courage as she proceeded. She had
been a Red Cross nurse during the war, so she said. Nothing could have
been more scandalous than the pilfering by the officers in charge of
stores and comforts destined for wounded men. She had to stand by
helplessly and watch robbery and corruption of all kinds going on at
the expense of the sufferers. “These heroes who filled their pockets,”
she concluded naïvely, “always declared they were great patriots.
Please vote to-morrow for the patriotism of the Social Democrats, which
won’t rob sick men.” Even more pathetic was the appeal of a working-man
on whom disease had clearly laid a fatal hand. He addressed the meeting
as “dear brothers and sisters,” which raised a laugh. But there was
nothing comic about the few words spoken. He had starved, so he said,
during the war. Wars meant nothing but misery and starvation. Let them
support the Social Democrats and then there would be no more war. He
was followed by a Communist youth, who in languid and superior tones
struck the first note of dissent by adjuring those present at the
meeting not to vote at all. If, however, they felt irresistibly driven
to the polls, the only mitigation of a bad act would be to vote for
the Independent Socialists. General uproar resulted from this advice,
a fat man near me rising from his seat and shouting with fury, “I know
how you’ll vote. You’re the sort that votes Zentrum.” The Communist
highbrow did not stop to see the end of the storm he had provoked, but,
having said his say, discreetly fled before Herr Meerfeld could deliver
a highly chastening reply. He left the hall pursued by the execrations
of my neighbour, who showed signs of vaulting over the chairs and
continuing the argument in more forcible fashion in the street. The
general tone of the meeting, apart from this incident, was serious and
appreciative, but it lacked any of that electric quality which thrills
a party on the eve of victory. I came away uneasy as to the result--an
uneasiness more than justified by the issue.

As for the future, it lies, as I write, on the knees of dark and
doubtful gods. The British people found it hard to acquire the habit
of war and to make war thoroughly. To-day it seems as hard a task to
recover the habit of peace and make peace thoroughly. As I have said
before, so long as we persist in regarding Germany as a political
unit solidly inspired by the old military spirit, and of using a
sledge-hammer to it on all occasions, the resettlement of Europe
becomes an impossibility. The moral of the Kapp Putsch has been
completely ignored in Allied countries. Yet it was highly suggestive as
to the changed conditions which now rule. A militarist plot was nipped
in the bud by the German working-classes who retaliated with the weapon
of a general strike. I do not know what better proof of good faith the
German democrats could have given as to their determination to have no
more to do with the old régime. The cry of “give us back our Junkers”
will never arise unless democracy itself is wholly discredited. We can
take no risks with Germany, and there is no question of her escape
from the penalties of the war she provoked, and the burdens which in
consequence she must bear. Common-sense points, however, to the Allies
giving a fair chance to the democratic elements from whom, and from
whom alone, we have anything to hope as regards the future. We may make
Germany’s burden impossible, in which case, sooner or later, general
collapse and chaos must follow--chaos and collapse which will certainly
not be confined within the borders of this country. Or we may make the
burden possible, and not deny a place for repentance to the men and
women who are struggling against heavy odds to remake their country on
principles which are the basis of our own freedom.




CHAPTER XIV

HATRED


It is, I fear, true that national hatreds are in the main created and
kept alive by the educated and upper classes. Working men and women
throughout the world, absorbed as they are in daily toil and often
preoccupied about the next meal, have no leisure for the cultivation
of abstract sentiments. With a greater simplicity of outlook they
take people and things as they find them and do not theorise about
their faults. The scholastic attitude as regards hatred is an ironical
commentary on some of the byways into which education is apt to stray.
Professors--German professors in particular--are notorious for their
bloodthirstiness. The ordinary fighting soldier, who has been over
the top half a dozen times, is a man of peace compared with certain
ferocious persons of academic distinction. The brandishing of quills
has apparently a more permanently disturbing effect on character than
the hurling of hand grenades. The man in the trench has, after all,
a certain tie of fellowship with the man in the trench opposite.
They are linked together by a common sense of duty fulfilled and of
horrors equally endured. Each knows that the other is a man very much
like himself, sick with the misery and dirt of the whole business,
whose heart in all probability is yearning just in the same way for a
wife, and home, and child. Men under these circumstances do not give
themselves up to abstract hatreds.

But among civilians, a man or woman’s gift of warlike talk is often
in inverse ratio to any sort of personal capacity to shoulder the
responsibilities of battle. Women are always apt to be more bitter than
men because their measure of personal sacrifice in the war has been
invariably less. They have seen their loved ones perish and the light
of happiness quenched in their own lives. It is not easy for them to
think steadily of the great ideals for which men died, and to realise
that bitterness breeds a spirit which makes the fulfilment of such
ends impossible. The case of the professors is even worse. In Germany
the subservience of high academic authorities to the most abominable
doctrines of the militarists was a grave and sinister feature in the
history of the years preceding the war. The beating of tom-toms by men
presumably of education goes a long way to justify the jibe of the “New
Ignorance” applied to education by Mr. James Stephens. Education left
to itself is just a force, and if it throws off the right sort of moral
controls, becomes, as the whole history of latter-day Germany proves, a
very dangerous force. Probably in Germany to-day there is no class more
bitter, no class more full of hatred and the desire for revenge, than
that of the professors. But a similar attitude may often be found among
well-to-do people of all races, people who, whether or not they have
been educated in the real sense of the term, have had the opportunities
and advantages which spring from worldly status and prosperity.

No side of the Occupation has been more interesting than the points of
contact it has provided between the English and the Germans. Social
intercourse on the upper levels is non-existent. Germany and England
were at war when the Rhineland was occupied, and the relations then
inevitable between conqueror and conquered have remained unaltered.
Many of the English families now living in Cologne can hardly be
conscious that they are in a foreign country. The English military
community lives a life apart. At hardly any point, except in the shops,
do they come in contact with the Germans. The large majority of English
people, men and women alike, do not speak the language, and few make
any effort to learn it.

It is not easy to say what impressions of Germany and the Germans
many of these people will bring away. Opinion on the subject varies
considerably, and the views expressed are as wide asunder as the
poles. Some people admit frankly that their judgment and outlook have
been modified considerably by all they have seen and heard. Others
brought a stock-in-trade of prejudices from England and have guarded
it jealously from any contact with facts. If an Occupation following
on a war has any moral value, it is that necessarily it brings the
enemies of yesterday in touch, and so helps to break down a certain
amount of prejudice and to soften bitter feeling. Thus the way is paved
to the resumption, sooner or later, of normal relations. It is easy to
hate the abstract entity Germany. It is less easy to hate individual
Germans who may prove on acquaintance to be estimable people. Little
of this modifying influence has made itself felt on the Occupation.
Many women, and some officers, declare that the behaviour of the Boche
is rude and insolent; that he jostles English women in the streets,
and is generally lying and dishonest in all his ways. Circumstantial
stories are related in this sense. It has been stated in my presence
that a certain lady could not use the trams owing to the gross
incivility of the conductors. I am left wondering how far people who
have these experiences provoke them by trailing their coats. Obviously,
English women who talk loudly in a tram about “the beastly Boche” may
find themselves in trouble with their fellow-passengers, the German
ignorance of foreign languages not being as great as their own.

Speaking for myself, I have never received one rude or uncivil word
from man, woman, or child during the year I spent in Germany. I went
about sometimes wearing the official arm-band, and therefore obviously
English; sometimes not. I have never noticed the smallest difference
in the behaviour of the people on the pavements or in the street cars.
Tram conductors I have found almost without exception a polite and
efficient body of men. All great cities contain a proportion of gross
and undesirable people. Cologne is no exception to this rule, but the
particular elements are not more conspicuous here than elsewhere. So
far from hostility, I have received much courtesy and consideration
from Germans with whom I came into casual touch. I am not denying
the reality of other people’s contrary experiences. I can only state
my own. Temperament is a mirror which deflects the passage of facts,
and some of the English in Cologne have arrived at fixed judgments
about Germany before setting foot in the country. If they find the
inhabitants civil they at once call them servile, if they show spirit
they denounce them as insolent. In Cologne drawing-rooms English
women will sometimes discuss the Germans much in the spirit of the
Mohammedans who sat in a circle and spat at a ham. I have never been
able to understand on what grounds they founded that extreme view.
Upper-class Germany has vanished from the Occupied Areas, and no
one regrets their disappearance. But as regards the humbler classes
with whom we of the Occupation come in touch, the working-men and
country-folks, the shopkeepers, small business people and minor
bureaucracy, I have no hesitation in saying that they are, generally
speaking, hard-working civil people, correct in their attitude and
bearing. Reasonable people should find no difficulty in maintaining
the superficial amenities of life with them, even under the abnormal
conditions which have thrown us together.

However varied the views among the officer class, the rank and file of
the Army have settled down to friendly relations with the Germans--too
friendly many people think. Men who have never understood the French
temperament or outlook find themselves very much at home in Germany.
From time to time agitated articles appear in the English papers
deploring the fact that English soldiers are “getting to like Germans,”
and calling on some one to do something drastic. The fact that the
bow of hatred does not remain tense and strung, as desired by some
people, will certainly cause no regret to those who are appalled by the
perils of the present state of Europe. Better relations between nations
will, I believe, be built up ultimately on working-class levels. The
diplomacy of the politicians in power is too bitter and too tortuous
to further the cause of European reconstruction. From this point of
view the Occupation has been wholly to the good, inasmuch as tens of
thousands of Englishmen who have passed through the country have gone
home with a saner appreciation of the situation.

German households, on whom many of these men were quartered, found
to their amazement that instead of proving, as they feared, demons
incarnate, the British soldiers were good-hearted, good-tempered
fellows who shared the family life, peeled potatoes, and played with
the children. The soldiers on their side appreciated the kindly
treatment they received and were touched by the many evidences of
hunger and suffering among the working-classes. Some day I hope we
shall have a “Book of Decent Deeds” showing that among all belligerents
there is another side to war besides that of atrocities. We may smile
at the true story of the British Tommy writing home to his mother to
send him a feeding-bottle, with tubes and apparatus complete, for a
German baby in his billet who was in a poor way owing to the lack of
these things. The German mother burst into tears when she was given the
bottle which meant the difference between life and death to the child.
But such an act and the Spirit it breathes is a ray of light in the
darkness.

Loud protests are sometimes made by well-fed, well-to-do people as to
the impropriety of helping the starving children of Central Europe.
Very different was the attitude of the soldiers who had overthrown the
German military power. It is to the eternal honour of the conquering
army which marched into the Rhineland, that its first act was one of
pity and mercy to the hungry women and children of Cologne. It was
necessary for the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Plumer, to telegraph to
the Peace Conference that, unless supplies were forthcoming for the
underfed German civilians, he could not be responsible for the effect
on the discipline of the Army. The soldiers were up in arms at the
spectacle of starvation, and nothing could prevent them, contrary to
orders, from sharing their rations with the enemy.

I think the question of hatred is one which calls for clear thinking
at the present crisis in the world’s history. Many people imagine that
when they have abused the Boche in round terms they have “done their
bit” towards squaring the accounts of devastated France or Belgium. All
that they have done is to feed and sustain the spirit which led in the
first place to the devastations. Whatever enormities Germany may have
committed during the war, the task of punishment is not the problem of
supreme urgency which here and now confronts us all. What we are face
to face with is the question as to whether civilisation as a whole
can survive the blows rained on it. The responsibility of Germany for
this state of affairs is at the moment less important than the rescue
of civilisation from the brink of the chasm on which it is trembling.
It is useless to go on saying that Germany must be punished or that
Germany must pay, if in fact the actual policy pursued is calculated to
involve conquerors and conquered alike in common ruin. At times it is
difficult to avoid the gloomy conclusion that we are approaching the
end of a cycle of history, and that a period of darkness and chaos bids
fair to overwhelm a world incapable of saving itself. The economic and
political condition of Europe is grave in the extreme. In every country
wild forces are surging upwards, the peril of which lies in the absence
of any powers of moral and spiritual counteraction. The strain of the
war has swallowed up the spiritual reserves of the world, and its
moral credit is not only exhausted but overdrawn.

No nation ever went to war in a spirit more grave and more responsible
than that in which the British people accepted the German challenge.
The call to arms is invariably a great and inspiring moment. At such a
time men and women realise that they are caught up and raised on the
wing of ideals greater than themselves. But it is part of the evil of
war that the longer it lasts the more black and the more bitter the
spirit it breeds. From August 1914 and the hush of consecration which
fell on the nation, to December 1918 and what was well described by a
distinguished publicist as the “organized blackguardism” of the General
Election, is a falling away in temper and standard almost unbearable to
contemplate.

I have often wondered whether the men and women who lent themselves
casually to “hatred stunts” during the war ever realised what cruel
suffering was caused to a large number of humble and obscure folk. Now
that the spirit of sanity and moderation is making itself heard again,
English people must surely look back with shame on the treatment meted
out to inoffensive enemy aliens. Busybodies obsessed by spy mania were
merely a source of nuisance and ridicule to the Secret Service. That
Service was highly efficient, and its agents were quite capable of
doing their work without the interference of officious amateurs. The
German wife and the English woman with a German husband were in many
cases treated as outcasts. Years of residence in England, even the fact
of children fighting with the British Army, did not serve in many cases
to mitigate the violence and hatred of their neighbours. The German
wives of English subjects, and the English wives of Germans, were
naturally in a painful and trying position and one which was bound to
excite prejudice. The degree, however, to which a group of men within
Parliament, and a section of the Press without, sought deliberately
to inflame the lowest passions of the mob in this matter, is the most
sordid page in the history of the war. Helpless, friendless, without
money, unable to make their voices heard, these unhappy people, treated
as pariahs both in the land of their birth and in that of their
adoption, were hunted from pillar to post.

Periodically “intern-them-all” campaigns were worked up which led to
obscure Germans of proved respectability being locked up. Many of these
people had English wives and families, who suffered severely through
the removal of the breadwinner. English women were forced to take
refuge in Germany from the persecutions of their own countrymen. What
are we to think of the spirit and policy which could drive from the
shores of England--England the home of Liberty, England the safe asylum
of the oppressed--women of our own race who found the treatment meted
out to them too hard to be endured?

Wives and families landed in Germany not speaking one word of the
language, to be welcomed naturally by a spirit as hard and bitter as
any they had left. The lot of English wives resident in Germany was
unenviable. But I do not gather that enemy aliens were treated with
a greater measure of harshness in Germany during the war than what
occurred in England. Many English women living in Germany throughout
the war did not suffer in any marked degree from the hostility of their
neighbours. Naturally these would-be pogroms never catch the right
person. Rich people who may be really mischievous escape; the poor man
is hunted. The Junkers whom it would be satisfactory to punish are
living in comfort and prosperity on their estates. The poor starve and
are driven down into inconceivable depths of misery both of body and
soul.

Even to-day the position of many English women in Germany who are
married to Germans is most pitiful. Under the Peace Treaty the Allies
reserved the power to retain and liquidate all property belonging
to German nationals. I am not concerned at this point to raise the
question as to how far this precedent of confiscation may prove a
double-edged weapon in the capitalist world. But again, it is not
the rich man who suffers. Large fortunes can always take care of
themselves. The people who have been ground to powder by this provision
are women with tiny incomes or annuities, the complete stopping
of which has meant literal starvation. Most painful cases of this
character came to my notice in the Rhineland. In some instances women
are told that if they leave their husbands and return to England
the money will be paid. Is a war fought for “truth and justice” to
eventuate in alternatives of such a character? Are women, at the end
of an agonising experience, to choose between husbands they may love
and the stark fact of starvation? I heard of one English woman, too
proud to beg or receive alms, who came by stealth and searched the
swill-tubs of a mess in order to pick out food from it. The British
military authorities have shown invariable sympathy and kindness to
these unfortunates. They have done what lay in their power to mitigate
the circumstances. Soldiers do not fail in compassion to the poor
and needy. The little group of politicians conspicuous for their
Hun-hunting activities have not served with the colours. The British
Army fights its enemies in the field. It does not persecute women
and decrepit old men. But the soldiers cannot alter the confiscation
clauses of the Treaty which press with such peculiar hardship on people
of small incomes. If these clauses are directed to searching the
pockets of the Stinnes and the Krupps, let exceptions at least be made
on the lower levels. The Treaty of Versailles in many of its provisions
merely reflects the current hatreds of the hour. Modification of these
clauses is inevitable when the wave of passion has subsided.

Not sorrow, loss, and suffering, but the temper born and bred of war,
is its real and essential evil. The ruthless and cruel spirit which
dominated the German war-machine and the many crimes committed are
mainly responsible for the bitterness which was developed among the
British peoples during the struggle. However natural the growth of
this temper, its survival to-day is a menace to the future of the
world. Hatred when it takes possession of the soul of a man or woman
is a wholly corroding and destructive force. Where hatred abides the
powers of darkness have their being, ready to sally forth and work
havoc anew. Meanwhile the breaking of this coil promises to be no easy
task. The war let loose in every country a new and evil force called
propaganda--in plain language, organised lying. It is one of the
foibles of propagandists that they insist on speaking of themselves as
super-George Washingtons. But during the war any fiction which came to
hand was good enough so long as it served to inflame national hatreds.
Propaganda during the last years of the struggle did a great deal to
obscure the moral issues for which we were fighting. It corrupted both
character and temper. But the propaganda genie, having emerged from its
bottle in clouds of smoke and dirt, entirely refuses to subside now the
struggle is over. It is one of the horrid forces with vitality derived
from the war which continues to pursue an independent existence. It is
the weapon-in-chief for keeping open sores and exasperating passions
which good sense would try to allay. Nations catch sight of each
other dimly through mists of misrepresentation and bitterness. Truth
and justice disappear in the welter, and without truth and justice
the practical affairs of the world drift daily towards an ultimate
whirlpool of chaos.

Great, therefore, as I see it is the responsibility of all who to-day
throw their careless offerings on the altars of hatred, so that the
flames of discord flare up anew. The men and women who talk and act
thus must try to realise that the world is reaching its limit of
endurance, and the situation calls not for any post-war fomenting of
the terrible legacy of strife, but for a truce of God between victors
and vanquished. No prejudices are harder to shift than those which
ignorance has exalted into moral principles of the first order. Thought
is apt to be an unpleasant and disturbing process; the clichés of
hatred are easy to use--why alter them when they round off a sentence
so well? But unless some movement can develop between nations, unless
the forces of destruction can be checked, then civilisation in the form
we know it would appear to be doomed.

Germany has still a whole volume of bitter truth to learn as to the
part she has played in the world catastrophe provoked by her rulers.
Until she recognises and admits the evil done she cannot regain her
place in the fellowship of nations. But after the great bartering of
ideals represented by the Treaty of Versailles, the Allies are hardly
in a position to preach sermons to her day in and day out on moral
failures. The practical fact which confronts us all is that the world
is in ruin, and that where the politicians have failed hopelessly the
decent people of all nations have to get together and make it habitable
again. To dismiss the German nation as a gang of criminals unfit for
human intercourse may be a magnificent gesture on the part of the
thoughtless. But it is not business. There are good Germans and bad
Germans, Germans animated by a quite detestable spirit, others who are
conscientious and high-minded. The wholesale indictment of a nation is
as absurd as the wholesale indictment of a class. Human nature falls
into types of character far more than into social and racial divisions.
In the ultimate issue society is divided into two sets of people: those
who behave decently and those who do not. People of the first type
have a common kinship whatever their race or colour, and the need for
asserting that kinship was never more urgent than at present.

If the world is to survive, tolerable social, economic, and political
relations must be resumed sooner or later between enemy countries. It
is of the first importance that the better elements in Germany should
be encouraged and strengthened, so that through their influence a new
spirit should animate the general German outlook on life. When no
effort is made to discriminate, when good and bad are branded alike in
one sweeping condemnation, hope of improvement vanishes. A nation to
whom all place for repentance is denied loses heart and ceases to try.
Reasonable men cannot make their voices heard under such conditions.
Anger and bitterness at what is considered unfair treatment surge
upwards again, and from them the desire for revenge is born anew. It is
foolish to kick a man repeatedly in the face and then to complain that
he does not behave like a gentleman. If the spirit of hatred is to rule
in Europe we are heading straight for another war. This eventuality
should, I think, be recognised clearly by the hotheads of all nations.

Germany cannot continue indefinitely to fulfil the function of the
whipping-boy of Europe. The Junkers and soldiers who made the war, and
were responsible for all that was cruel and brutal in its conduct,
have disappeared. Owing to gross mismanagement in connection with the
war criminals, many Germans guilty of specific acts of cruelty who
should have been dealt with severely have slipped through the net. But
where statesmanship has blundered inexcusably, it is unjust to visit
vicariously on a whole community the sins of a class or of individuals.
To do so is to destroy any chance of the growth of a better spirit
among the German people as a whole. I recall the words of farewell
addressed to me by a saleswoman in a Cologne shop to whom I was saying
good-bye: “When you go back to England, tell your countrymen that
we are not such dreadful people as they think, and ask them also to
remember that we too have our pride and our self-respect.”

Many Germans are as much blinded by hatred as to our actions and
motives as we are about theirs. We recognise with angry exasperation
the measure of their misconceptions about ourselves. Is it not possible
that misconceptions may exist on our side as to the character and
attitude of, anyway, some Germans? We are sore, and sad, and bitter.
So are countless Germans who are convinced that their lives have
been ruined by our jealousy and ambition. Is it humanly possible to
carry on the business of life in a nightmare world, where millions of
human beings view each other through glasses so distorted? The moral
deadlock at the moment is complete. It can only be solved by the
spread of a new spirit of truth and charity. That cannot arise till
reasonable men and women of all nations, realising the perils which
confront us one and all, try and form unbiassed judgments, not only
of each other’s actions, but what is perhaps even more important, of
each other’s motives and principles. In all this there is no question
of slurring over evil where evil exists, or condoning wrong where
wrong has been done. It is a question of seeing these things in their
true scale and right proportion. Righteous anger may rouse a sense of
repentance where hatred only hardens and embitters. The wrath of man
has had its full play through years of strife and horror. Judged as a
constructive force, its fruits up to the present have been meagre. Is
it possible that, after all, Paul of Tarsus was right, and that the
fruits of the spirit, joy, peace, and righteousness, do not lie along
this particular path? In so far as the spirit of hatred is cultivated
and encouraged, it perpetuates all that is worst in war, without any of
the redeeming qualities of heroism and self-sacrifice which make war
tolerable. Hatred breeds hatred, strife further strife, violence yet
more violence. From this vicious circle, so long as we allow ourselves
to turn in it, there is no escape. Faith, hope, and charity alone can
break the wheel of torment in which at present we revolve, and bring
about the necessary moral and spiritual _détente_ without which the
world must surely perish.

Peace is not a question of documents and treaties. The world is still
in a condition of bitter strife, because the spiritual values which
make peace in the real sense possible are at present wholly lacking in
the relations of the respective nations. I am driven to the conclusion
that in this, as in other respects, the instinct of the great mass of
the people throughout Europe is sounder and better than that of their
rulers. Whatever the schemes and intrigues of a tortuous diplomacy,
it is already clear that the working-classes are determined not to be
made pawns in any fresh war of aggression. The German working-man is
saturated with the misery of war. He will have no more of it unless
some policy of oppression, suicidal in its character, re-creates the
temper and spirit of the post-Jena period. Among my memories of Germany
I dwell on none with more hope than an incident which befell us one
spring evening in the Eifel. We were spending Sunday at Nideggen, a
village perched high on its red volcanic cliffs above the valley of a
delectable trout stream. We stopped in the course of our walk to admire
a cottage garden where peas and beans were growing with mathematical
diligence and regularity. Care had obviously been lavished on every
plant and flower of the little plot, which lay on a sunny slope facing
south. The owner who was hard at work among the peas, seeing our
interest, asked if we would like to go over his garden. We accepted the
invitation willingly, and he conducted us with pride from one end to
the other of his tiny kingdom. He was an admirable type of peasant, a
tall grave man with honest eyes and courteous manners. He combined some
market-gardening with his business of stone-mason. The conversation
drifted as usual to the war. He had served in a pioneer corps but
had come through, “Gott sei dank,” unscathed. Of war or the possible
recurrence of war he spoke with that intense horror which marks all
the German working-classes. Never must such a thing happen again, he
said; never must there be another war. My mind fled across the seas to
a corner of Kent where I was well assured on this fine spring evening,
another friend of mine, one William Catt, a son of the soil, just as
honest and simple, just as devoted to his home and family, was also
attending to peas and runner beans. William Catt too had served in the
war. What crazy system could send those two good men with rifles in
their hands to shoot each other? The Nideggen peasant had reflected to
some purpose on “Earth’s return for whole centuries of folly, noise,
and sin.” Spade in hand he looked across the fair landscape at our
feet, where the river lay like a silver streak winding among woods and
meadows. Then he turned to me and said very seriously, “For a thousand
years men have been mad; now we must all learn to be more reasonable.”

Would that the diplomatists of all countries could take to heart words
so true and so wise! Here was the spirit which alone can create and
sustain the League of Nations. While the political wire-pullers of
Europe seek to make of the League the unhappy pushball of their own
intrigues, this German working-man had the root of the matter in him.
May his vision of a world in which men are learning to be “reasonable”
wax from dim hope into full and perfect realisation.




CHAPTER XV

THE GERMAN VIEW OF ENGLAND


Personally I am under considerable obligations to August Lomberg,
Rektor in Elberfeld. His _Präparationen zu deutschen Gedichten_ for
the purposes of instruction in schools has been a lantern to my way
and a light unto my path on the somewhat rugged slopes of the German
Parnassus. August Lomberg’s is the hand which has stayed my often
stumbling feet when I first aspired to Goethe and Schiller, deities
sitting enthroned aloft and remote. Guides to poetry are irritating
books in one’s own language. What a poet has to say, and what he means,
are strictly private matters between the reader and himself. The views
of a third person may even be regarded as an intrusion, not to say an
impertinence. But when you are struggling with the verbal intricacies
of a new tongue, guides to knowledge assume a very different light.
So, I repeat, I am under many obligations to August Lomberg, Rektor in
Elberfeld. As so often happens with German authors, he has taught me
more incidentally than the surface content of his works. The Rektor has
clearly a complete and painstaking acquaintance with the whole range of
German literature. But his observations concerning the poets were, to
me at least, of less value than the revelation of his own type of mind
and general outlook on life.

August Lomberg is a garrulous writer. His explanations are largely
historical as well as literary. Every line breathes a narrow and
aggressive patriotism of the type which has made the name of Germany
detested. The great poets of the Liberation period have sung both of
freedom and oppression on a note which rings clear and true to any
lover of liberty. The Elberfeld Rektor, commenting on this verse long
before 1914, can only do so in terms of abuse of France. To him a poet
is really important, not for some immortal gift to the sum-total of
the world’s truth and beauty, but for the degree to which he may have
added new stops to the full-sounding organ swelling the note of German
excellence. The ironical anti-patriotic strain in Heine fills the
Rektor with undisguised horror. So great is his reprobation of Heine
as a world citizen, that he can with difficulty begin to do justice to
him as a poet. And though like Wordsworth’s Nun he is breathless with
adoration before the genius of Goethe, I more than suspect that at
heart Goethe’s indifference to patriotic questions is a sore trial to
him.

These volumes of Lomberg’s are well-known school-books in Germany.
Hence their value as indicating a certain trend of thought. If the
English are ever to form a reasoned judgment of the Germans, it is
essential to understand something of that peculiar herbage on which the
minds of teachers and pupils alike have been pastured. But Herr Lomberg
has not been content to rest on his laurels as regards a critical study
of the German classics. War poetry has also claimed his attention and
his explanations. One afternoon in a bookshop I stumbled by chance on a
volume of German war poetry. I bought it and went on my way rejoicing.
I knew something by then of the general outlook of my friend the
Rektor’s mind, and felt sure that his observations on the World-War
would be worth reading. So indeed they proved.

The poems themselves were of very poor quality. Nothing remotely
comparable to the verse of Rupert Brooke or Julian Grenfell or of
half a dozen other English writers adorned these drab pages. Unless
Germany has produced something better than the mediocre collection
brought together by the Rektor, her inferiority in one respect at least
to England is outstanding. Leaving literary values aside, the normal
note struck was one of a boastful and irritating patriotism. The early
poems, written in the days when Germany was still flushed by hopes of a
speedy and overwhelming victory, are noisy and aggressive. One writer
exults over the air raids. “We have flying ships, they have none,”
he shouts stridently. No less great is the enthusiasm for the U-boat
exploits. The limits of degradation were reached by a poem about a
pro-German fish in the North Sea. The fish kept company with a U-boat
and followed the various sinkings with great interest. One day the
U-boat sank first a cargo of sugar, next of lemons, thirdly of rum.
The fish brewed a toddy of these various ingredients, and drank tipsy
toasts to the U-boat. I suppose the poem was intended to be funny. Of
humour it had none. The mentality it revealed was amazing.

As the first hopes of easy victory evaporated, a note of stress and
anguish replaces that of the original bluster. A poem on Ypres was
noticeable in this respect. But the particular interest of the book lay
to me in the Rektor’s explanations about the English. A fount of venom
overflows whenever the name of Britain is mentioned. He sets forth in
his own inimitable way how England, owing to her acute jealousy of
Germany, had deliberately provoked the war. England’s sordid anxieties
about her menaced commercial supremacy lay at the root of this action.
Having plotted war and declared it at her own time, she then proceeded
to wage it on the most barbarous lines. English soldiers murdered
the wounded, concealed machine guns in their Red Cross wagons, and
immolated whole platoons of innocent German soldiers by an abominable
misuse of the white flag. The wickedness, the perfidy, the treachery
of England, the outrages committed by her against every law of God and
man--the Rektor lashes himself into a white heat on these themes. No
less fulsome and subservient is the writer in his praise of the Kaiser
and the Crown Prince. Germany’s passion for peace, a peace destroyed
only by the intrigues of a jealous and wicked world, is enlarged on
over and over again.

This book, like its predecessors, is intended for use in schools. We
can form some judgment, therefore, of the facts and fancies which
writers of the Lomberg type thrust as historical truth on the rising
generation. The influence of such statements can hardly be exaggerated,
and much similar poison has flowed through the whole German school
system. German school literature is a real mine of information to any
one who wants to study the root causes of latter-day German mentality.
Little wonder that animosities and misunderstandings rend nations in
twain when truth is subordinated to the worst purposes of political
and interested propaganda. Children are malleable stuff, and certain
long-sighted Teutons realised perfectly that what is driven into a
child in the first impressionable years abides through life.

The accident of improving my limited knowledge of the German
language brought me in contact with primers and readers covering all
standards and classes. In making my way from the Child’s First Reader
to the volumes in use in High Schools, I learnt a good deal more
than the actual study of words and grammar. From the Infants’ to the
Upper Standards one note was struck again and again with monotonous
regularity--praise of the Army, glorification of the Hohenzollerns. I
came into rapid conflict with my Child’s First Reader when on the first
page I was confronted with a little poem saying that, though a tiny
child, my great aim in life should be to shoot straight and grow up
into a fine soldier. Then came a fulsome hymn to the Kaiser swearing
lifelong fidelity to that noble man. Then followed a series of short
stories, no less fulsome, about the goodness and greatness of the Royal
Family. The book of course included other material, but glorification
of the Hohenzollerns permeated its pages, and the same thing repeated
itself exactly in all the following standards.

Thoroughly bored with the Child’s Reader, I tried some of the more
advanced books only to find an elaborated edition of the same theme.
One priceless story in a middle-standard book told a marvellous tale
about the adventures of a humble family in Berlin, the Empress, the
Emperor’s daughter, and a cow. The curtain rises on a child weeping
bitterly in a Berlin park. The beautiful and tender-hearted Princess
drives by in a glittering phaëton lined with plush and drawn by two
spanking ponies. Flinging the reins to a groom, she hastens to the
assistance of poverty in distress. A tale of woe is in due course
unfolded. A family, humble but virtuous, have lost a cow on which the
entire prosperity of the household pivoted. The Princess comforts the
weeping child, gives her money, and says that though the matter lies
beyond her powers, her mother will certainly call and deal with the cow
situation. The Princess is as good as her word. To the stupefaction of
the district, a royal carriage containing the Empress visits the humble
home the next day. The Empress administers more consolation; virtue
is to be upheld in the hour of trial. A cow is following immediately
from the royal farm; indeed it is on its way, lowing, so to speak,
at the moment in the streets of Berlin. The anxieties of the family
consequently will be at an end. The paralysed couple, falling flat on
their faces, stammer suitable words of gratitude and praise. Thanks to
the cow and the prestige attaching to it, the family fortunes prosper
exceedingly. The whole district tumbles over itself in the effort to
drink a glass of Imperial milk. But unhappily one day the woman is
knocked down and mortally hurt in a street accident. Lying in the
hospital at the point of death, the matron sees there is something on
her mind. On inquiry the patient replies that if only once again she
could see her benefactress, the Empress, and hold her hand, she would
die content. The matron, being apparently a person of ample leisure,
sets off at once to the palace to find the Empress. She is interviewed
by a lady-in-waiting, who declares it is impossible for her to see the
august one. Unfortunately it happens to be Prince Joachim’s birthday
and the festivities in connection with it are about to begin; the
Empress cannot possibly be disturbed. But the stout-hearted matron
is not to be daunted by any lady-in-waiting or any birthday party.
She gives battle vigorously on behalf of her dying patient. “Who are
you,” she says reprovingly, “to stand between the mother of her country
and the humblest of her children.” The lady-in-waiting, routed and
overwhelmed, retires hastily to tell the Empress. Her discomfiture is
completed by grave reprimands from the august one that any time should
have been wasted at so critical a moment in bringing the facts to her
knowledge. Poor Prince Joachim is caught in the backwash of these
events. His birthday party is wrecked. The Empress hurries off to the
bedside of the dying woman, but not before the table groaning under
the weight of Joachim’s birthday cakes and flowers has been stripped
of half its adornments. With her arms full of roses the Empress enters
the hospital ward. The expiring patient gives a cry of joy and, after
an exchange of suitable sentiments, dies, holding the Kaiserin’s
hand. Even after death the connection of the humble family with the
Hohenzollerns is maintained. Even more permanent than the prestige
conferred by the cow is the prestige of the tombstone, erected in the
cemetery at the Imperial expense, with an inscription bearing the
Empress’s name.

Other stories no less grotesque redound to the credit of the Emperor or
the gallantry of the Crown Prince. Home workers were marked down as the
special preserve of the Crown Princess. Sweated industries in Berlin
might in fact exist to afford a channel for the altruistic impulses of
the royal lady. One by one the various key points of the Hohenzollern
family were dealt with in this fashion. The glorification of the Army
went on as steadily side by side.

All this, of course, is systematic propaganda carried out with
characteristic thoroughness and, be it added, clumsiness. For even
among the Germans it failed in many cases to carry conviction. I
remonstrated with my Fräulein--herself a school teacher: “How can you
bring your children up on this wretched stuff; with a country like
yours so rich in history and legend, surely there is something more
inspiring to teach than this nonsense about cows and sweated workers?”
Fräulein shrugged her shoulders. The ferment of the revolution was
working in her naturally liberal mind, and the unaccustomed liberty
of thought and action which the revolution had brought in its wake
moved her not a little. But she found it difficult to part with the
sheet anchors of the past, and respect for the Imperial family was
screwed very tightly into the average professional German. She admitted
the stories were stupid, but said that the Kaiser was the symbol of
Germany’s greatness and they had always been taught to revere him.
Since the revolution the Social Democrats have made an end of Kaiser
worship in the schools. Pictures and portraits have vanished. All
totems of the faith have disappeared. Apparently the children were
very much upset when they were first forbidden to sing hymns to the
Kaiser. There were tears when the portraits were removed. The German
mind, naturally docile, yearns for some concrete expression of faith
to which it can rally. Of all fields schools offer the greatest scope
to the corrupting influence of propaganda. And through the schools
Imperial Germany twisted and distorted the spirit of the people with
consequences no less dire to themselves than to the rest of the world.

One of the irritating facts about Germany to-day is that she refuses
to say she is sorry. We English are outraged by the fact that no
sense of guilt or of moral responsibility appears to have touched
the spirit of the people. It is not a question of dragging Germany
about in a white sheet and a candle from shrine to shrine, but of some
guarantee that there shall be no repetition of events so lamentable.
The best guarantee for the future is a clear recognition of what
was wrong in the past. Truth permeates very slowly through German
mentality, and few Germans seem to realise that they or their rulers
have brought the world to the very brink of ruin; that millions of
lives have perished as the result of their insensate ambitions. They
are conscious, painfully conscious of the miseries of Germany to-day.
But that civilisation as a whole is staggering under the blow they
dealt it--this aspect of the situation apparently never strikes them.
Facts which jump to our eyes as English people make no more impression
on them than they would on a blind man. Over and over again I have
been baffled by coming up against a blank wall of non-comprehension as
regards circumstances about which there is no dispute.

A personal experience in this sense, at once exasperating and amusing,
overtook me on a journey between Cologne and Paris. I shared my
cabin in the sleeping-car with a German lady from Cassel, a typical
fair-haired, solid-looking Prussian. We exchanged the ordinary
politenesses of travellers thrown together on the road. I was
interested to hear that not only did the lady conduct a large business
enterprise in Cassel, but that she was a prop of the Volkspartei
and took a keen interest in politics. She spoke of Bolshevism and
the Red Peril with the fear and disgust always noticeable in the
German Bourgeoisie. The train by which we were travelling crossed the
devastated area in the night. Before going to bed my companion asked
me whether we should see anything of the ravaged districts. I replied
that I thought it would be too dark for any view of the country. It
happened, however, that I woke up at 3 A.M. and, drawing the blind,
found we were just moving out of Péronne. It was a grey July dawn,
with driving rain, which intensified the unspeakable desolation of the
Somme. Tragic beyond words were the massacred orchards. In some cases
the stumps of trees not wholly cut through were throwing up fresh
leaves in a painful effort after new life. My heart was stirred at the
thought of my Prussian stable companion slumbering peacefully in the
bunk above. She had wanted to see devastations; devastations she should
see.

“Gnädige Frau,” I said in a firm loud voice, “wake up. We are in the
middle of the devastated area, you had better look at it.” Sounds as
though a person had been disturbed from deep sleep issued from the
top berth. Personally I do not like to think what I should have said
or done had a strange woman in the train woke me up at 3 A.M. But
Prussian docility responded to an order. Gnädige Frau got down meekly
from her berth and established herself at the window. A suitable
flow of exclamations and adjectives then took place: “entsetzlich,”
“furchtbar,” “schrecklich,” “böse,” and so on. Comfortably wrapped up
in my bunk I surveyed the scene with virtuous satisfaction, feeling
that I was bringing home the war to one Prussian at least in an
entirely right spirit and manner. Gnädige Frau, however, turned my
flank with the military efficiency of her race. To my intense disgust
I found that the text I had provided by this view of the Somme only
led to an elaborate sermon on the devastations of the Russians in
East Prussia. “You cannot imagine what awful things were done by
those terrible Cossacks,” said the lady, “and how our poor cities
were ruined. The rich German towns have had to become godparents
to whole districts in the devastated area.” She rattled on in this
sense as though the German legions had never set foot in France. I
replied tartly that I hoped the trifling inconveniences experienced
in East Prussia might afford some scale by which she could measure
the sufferings of France, but I could only feel my moral lesson had
miscarried sadly. Still, I got her out of her bunk at 3 A.M. and the
morning was not only wet but chilly.

I have mentioned this story because it is very typical of the average
German obtuseness which has an exasperating effect on their former
enemies. We are bound, however, to try and study patiently the root
causes of this vast moral myopia, because in it lies the key to the
whole German attitude to the war. This myopia cannot be appreciated
without some grasp of the real points of failure in the German
character. During the war they haunted our imaginations as wily and
strenuous children of the devil. In fact they are a very stupid,
very insensitive, very docile people. Their ideas are as limited and
often as absurd as those which people the nursery. Still worse, they
are incapable apparently of understanding what other races think and
feel. They have many excellent qualities, and an admirable capacity
for hard work and patient research. But they do, I believe, possess
three more skins than the ordinary man. Mixed up with the docility and
unlimited power for submission to authority, runs a considerable strain
of brutality which throws back to the unpleasant habits of the remote
Germanic tribes. They can be and are very brutal to each other, as
well as to their enemies. People so constituted were doomed to become
the tools of miscreants in high places.

The average German, for all his powers of hard work and his marvels of
applied science, is at bottom little better than a stupid child. His
docility, his credulity, his lack of any real subtlety of spirit have
left him at the mercy of the monstrous theories preached and practised
by the ruling military class. Like a child he believed all he was
told; like a child he was immensely proud of the vainglorious bombast
of military trappings. Children too, it must be remembered, can be
both cruel and callous. Unless this attitude of mind is realised, the
riddle of German mentality appears as insoluble. But granted a docile
and stupid people, governed by a ruthless military class endowed with
the same practical diligence and ability as the mass of the nation, and
no less insensitive to the finer issues of the spirit, all that has
happened falls into place.

For years past a certain view of England as a sinister and aggressive
power was preached steadily for their own ends by the military party.
On the outbreak of war the German people were told that England was
bent on the destruction of their country. They were fed on tales of
atrocities and horrors. It was represented to them that Germany was
fighting for her life a war of defence. Even in a country like our own,
in which liberty is an old-established principle, the censorship and
other conditions imposed by war resulted in a great darkening of truth
and knowledge. But in a country like Germany, with no representative
government, with no freedom, with a Press wholly subservient to the
ruling junta, it is not astonishing that the people as a whole
blundered on to ever lower depths of ignorance and prejudice.

I have described the sort of food on which the German school child is
reared. No less instructive are the German memoirs which have been
published recently, for they show in turn the view impressed on the
adult population. Bethmann-Hollweg, Admiral von Tirpitz, Ludendorff,
Bernstorff, Hindenburg, have all had their say on the war. With the
exception of Hindenburg, who observes a generous reticence about his
colleagues, the general tone of these memoirs is one of acrimonious
controversy. One is reminded of a group of naughty schoolboys caught
out in some misdeed, each saying, “Please, teacher, it was the other
fellow.” Admiral von Tirpitz’s _Recollections_ is the longest and most
garrulous of these volumes. It is a book of absorbing interest, and
throws a flood of light on the origins of the war. Here we see laid
bare the whole spirit which provoked the conflict. Here, too, we see
that even among the German governing class, this spirit in the extreme
form represented by Admiral Tirpitz himself met in some quarters with
opposition. If one person deserves to be hanged in connection with the
war, then the halter should surely be placed round the neck of the old
Admiral.

Von Tirpitz reveals himself in these pages as an able but most
unsympathetic figure. He lays the lash generously about his colleagues,
and the Emperor in particular is not spared. Creator of the German
Navy, he lays bare the whole ruthless spirit animating the German
war lords. English readers will notice with interest, and perhaps
some surprise, the view of themselves and their country on which
the Admiral enlarges. According to Von Tirpitz, the growth of the
German Navy was not only directed towards making any English attack on
German trade risky, but served the philanthropic purpose of supporting
the non-Anglo-Saxon races in their struggle for freedom against the
intolerable dictatorship of British sea-power. It was, in fact, the
special mission of the German Empire to free the world from the
strangling tyranny of the Anglo-Saxons. The English reader learns with
surprise as he makes his way through these volumes how ruthless was the
spirit in which England marked Germany down for destruction. Finally,
through craft and Machiavellian principles of the worst kind, she
accomplished her end. While German statesmen were weak, vacillating,
and hopelessly pacific, a succession of English Governments, Radical no
less than Conservative, animated one and all by the same fell purpose,
only waited for the appropriate moment to fall on the European Simon
Pure.

Lord Haldane during his visit to Berlin in 1912 figures as a skilled
and determined mock negotiator, adamant as to concessions on the
English side, but bent on sowing discord among German statesmen and
reducing the fleet to impotence. Tirpitz accuses him of an evil
conscience. Did not Lord Haldane shut his eyes to the wholly pacific
intentions of Germany and invent a Berlin war party with which to
inflame public opinion in England?

The Admiral speaks feelingly of the “armed battue” against Germany.
He lays his hand on his heart and declares that in 1914 the German
Empire was “the least preoccupied of all the Great Powers with
possibilities of war.” Yet in spite of “our suicidal love of peace”
the world would persist in laying the guilt of all that had happened
on Germany. “It is really extraordinary how unpopular we are,” cries
the Admiral naïvely in one of his letters. But he sticks to his point.
The historical guilt of England is irrefutably clear. The “old pirate
state” has once again torn Europe to pieces. Thanks to the most brutal
methods she has secured a victory, and liberty and independence have
perished. But the Admiral is not only concerned to abuse England. He
deals faithfully with his own countrymen. If on the one hand English
readers obtain a fresh insight through German eyes into their own
villainies, they obtain information possibly less fantastic as to the
discord which raged inside the German war-machine. If in the interests
of truth we are compelled to say that the Germans overrated our powers
of conducting a war with supreme efficiency, it is clear that we were
no less at fault in attributing super qualities to our enemies.

When these various memoirs are read side by side and compared, they
reveal strife, division, and hesitation of a remarkable kind in the
higher direction of the war. Tirpitz, as head of the war party, writes
with extraordinary bitterness of Bethmann-Hollweg the Chancellor. No
words are bad enough for the man who had struggled sincerely enough,
according to his lights, for the preservation of peace between England
and Germany. His hesitations, vacillations, errors of policy are dealt
with in a ferocious spirit. But the Army and even the Navy do not
escape severe criticism. “The end of July 1914 found us in a state of
chaos,” writes the Admiral. The generals made “frightful mistakes,” the
war was one of “missed opportunities,” the Navy in particular was never
allowed to do its work. The troops were heroic, but “the hereditary
faults of the German people and the destructive elements among them”
led to the downfall of the whole nation.

The popular view of Germany, which most English people held during
the war, was that for forty years the German nation from the
Emperor downwards had pursued the definite and determined end of
the destruction of England. The real situation appears to have been
far more complex. To credit the Emperor and his entourage with an
inflexibility of purpose so great is to rate their capacity far too
high. The mediocre statesmen of our own generation were not Bismarcks.
They were incapable of the far vision, the sinister purpose, the iron
will of the old Chancellor. Unlike him they did not know when to stop.
An influential section among the soldiers was certainly bent on a war
of aggression and pursued this end with unfaltering determination. They
had considerable influence both among the Press and the professors.
Consequently they loomed large in the public eye. But even among the
governing class, as Tirpitz’s angry complaints reveal, there were
certain weak-kneed statesmen who were anxious to pursue a pacific
policy. As for the German nation as a whole, the unparalleled growth
of the Socialist party during recent years proves that the views of
the German militarists were meeting with considerable opposition among
sections of their own countrymen.

The militarists largely controlled the machine and were therefore
in the stronger position. An autocratic form of government and an
Executive divorced from all control by Parliament made the Socialist
vote, large though it was, of no practical value in determining policy.
The General Election of 1912, when the Socialists and Progressives
who had definitely challenged the Chauvinism of the Government secured
considerable gains in the Reichstag, caused dismay in military circles.
It is clear that the dread of democratic control was one of the causes
which impelled the soldiers to bring matters to a head. A shadow had
fallen on their power which a successful war, so they thought, would
dispel. Had Germany possessed a democratic constitution which would
have given due weight and place to the anti-military elements, it
is difficult to believe that the war would ever have occurred. It
was a race between the forces making respectively for peace and for
aggression, and time was on the side of the former.

The military party consequently forced the pace and precipitated
the conflict. That on the outbreak of war the whole German nation,
Socialists included, closed its ranks and presented a united front
to the enemy is natural enough. The view of the defensive war was
widespread, and German myopia could not see straight about the
threatening character of the armaments which had been piled up. But
between the guilt of the rulers, which is black indeed, and the guilt
of the nation as a whole, wide discriminations should in justice be
made. If it were not so the future outlook, dark as it is at the
moment, would be quite hopeless.

The part played in the middle of this welter by the arrogant and
inferior figure on the throne is not easy to determine. The Emperor
was not necessarily insincere when he expressed his abstract desire
for peace. But his vanity was flattered by the vision of himself as
Supreme War Lord ashore and afloat of a submissive Europe. He did not
necessarily want to fight. He wanted very much to be in a position
which enabled him to bully. Probably the governing classes in Germany
held much the same view. The Emperor lent himself to the creation
of huge armies and a threatening fleet, and then expressed surprise
that his perpetual sabre-rattling and histrionic performances created
anger and alarm throughout Europe. Other nations refused to think
that Dreadnoughts were built as pets, or that armaments were piled
up for the purposes of ceremonial salutes. Having surrounded himself
with material of this character, he was in all probability genuinely
appalled when the inevitable explosion occurred. He had no real wish to
trade with the devil, but he was always in and out of the shop, turning
over the wares and listening to the flatteries of the salesman. A man
of his type was bound, sooner or later, to become the tool of villains
with a purpose clearer than his own.

Lord Haldane in his book _Before the War_ has given an account, both
sane and dispassionate, of the causes and forces which led up to
the struggle. He analyses with admirable clarity the weakness and
the strength of the German machine. In a striking passage he draws
attention to a fact too little realised by the vast majority of English
people, namely, that highly organised though the German nation might
be on its lower levels, on the top storey not only confusion but chaos
existed. Instead of a Cabinet representing the majority of an elected
Parliament to whom it was bound to submit its policy, the governing
body in Germany was an irresponsible group of men animated by wholly
divergent ideas.

In the centre of this group was a vain, feather-headed monarch, not
devoid of good impulses, and at times of generous feeling, but cursed
with an instability of character which made him lend an ear first to
the promptings of one counsellor and then of another. The Emperor
swayed from side to side according to the fancy of the moment; at one
time drawing close to the war party, at another inclining to the more
sober counsels of the peace party. Such a temperament does not improve
with the flight of years. Time only deepened in the Emperor’s mind the
sense of his own importance in the eyes of God and man. His unstable
brain was more and more bemused with ideas of power and infallibility.
Already in 1891 he had caused deep resentment throughout working-class
Germany by a speech to young recruits at Potsdam. He referred in
acrimonious terms to the Socialist agitations, and went on to say: “I
may have to order you to shoot down your relations, your brothers,
even your parents--which God forbid!--but even then you must obey my
commands without murmuring.” Criticism was treasonable; criticism was
therefore not audible, but the words were never forgotten nor forgiven.
Vanity and megalomania steer an erratic course, and the consequent
vagaries of German high diplomacy kept Europe in a chronic state of
nerves which deepened the general sense of anxiety and suspicion.

Since the revolution the diplomatic documents in the Berlin archives
relating to the plot against Serbia, together with the Emperor’s
marginal notes, have been published by order of the new German
Government. The war has produced no volume more painful than that of
Karl Kautsky in which these documents are set forth. The revelation
is of the blackest, so far as the Emperor is concerned. His personal
responsibility for creating the situation which led to the war is
established beyond question. His marginal notes, always foolish and
often vulgar, are almost incredible in their criminal levity. The
Emperor comments, for instance, on the most solemn and impressive of
Sir Edward Grey’s warnings to the German Ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky,
in the words “the low cur!” We watch this vain unstable figure flitting
with a lighted torch round the powder magazine of Europe. With the
lives of millions in his hand, the mediocre intelligence of the Emperor
seemed unable to forecast the elementary consequences of his own acts.
At the start his sole object in view was the dismemberment of Serbia
and the creation of a new Balkan situation. The German Ambassador in
Vienna, who counselled moderation in the demands made on the Serbian
Government, was reprimanded severely. William was concerned to stir
up his more sluggish ally, Austria, to warlike purpose. If Russia
objected--well, never mind about Russia. The implications of a general
European war do not seem to have occurred to him. When as huntsman he
laid on the hounds, the magnitude of the quarry was not apparent. Later
on, when the chasm into which he had dragged the world dawned before
him in its appalling immensity, he shrank back aghast on the brink.
But too late. The terrible vitality of deeds had taken charge of the
situation and hurried on the tragedy to its final consummation.

A curious point arises not only from the study of the Kautsky
documents, but of the various German memoirs which have appeared. The
primary responsibility of the Emperor for staging the scene is proved
beyond doubt. But he was away yachting in the weeks before the war,
and it is not clear with whom the further responsibility rests for
converting the Serbian intrigue into the wider act of world aggression.
At this point history has further secrets to reveal. The Great General
Staff were in all probability determined not to let slip so golden an
opportunity, and engineered matters in the sense of war during the
Emperor’s absence.

Strangely enough, Tirpitz, though ultimately more responsible for the
war than any one else in Germany, did not want to fight in August
1914. His fleet was not ready and had yet to attain its maximum
strength. He denounces Bethmann-Hollweg’s refusal of Sir Edward
Grey’s proposed conference as a capital blunder. War at that moment
should in his opinion have been averted. Germany was not sufficiently
prepared. Further, the old Admiral with great shrewdness deplores the
sabre-rattling against England on various occasions. Do not irritate
your enemy until you are ready to fight him, was his principle.

It is a strange fact that Bethmann-Hollweg, who had always desired
peace, seems to have lost his head completely in the crisis and showed
a fatal obduracy which might have been expected from Tirpitz. The
conference for which Sir Edward Grey pressed would in all probability
have avoided the war. Bethmann-Hollweg wanted peace, yet he banged
the door on the one possibility of maintaining it. One gathers the
impression of a group of men groping blindly on the edge of a precipice
over which finally they hurl themselves. But the hand which pushed them
into decisions, certainly unwelcome to some of the actors, has yet to
be revealed. We know it must in effect have come from a man or group
of men among the military party. The exact personalities are not at
present clear.

The German memoirs written by statesmen of the old régime, which throw
so much light incidentally on the tragedy of Europe, must be read in
detail in order to obtain any real appreciation of their atmosphere.
Their great value lies in the fact that they make the German view of
England more intelligible. We are able to measure the vast distortion
of truth as it has reached the average German, and the profound
misconceptions under which he labours. Exasperated though we may feel
by such aberrations, we begin to understand why the rank and file of
the German nation, trained from their youth in subservience to the
ruling house, still believe they were the attacked, not the attackers,
in the war. I have heard recently of Germans meeting pre-war English
friends with personal feelings quite unchanged. The English found,
however, to their bewilderment that the Germans, out of delicacy to
their feelings, would not discuss the war--it must be, so they hinted,
terrible for them to realise the crimes England had committed both in
her unjustifiable attack on Germany and in her practical conduct of the
war. Naturally as English they would desire to avoid any reference to
so painful a subject.

Hence Germany’s reluctance to say she is sorry. So far she will not
admit there is anything to be sorry for. Never was there a nation more
exasperatingly devoid of the spirit of self-criticism. Everything
German is perfect in the eyes of a German. In the crash which has
overtaken the nation little realisation exists of the moral issues
involved. Among the Socialist party alone would much difficult
and unpalatable truth appear to be permeating. At the meeting of
the Second International held in Geneva during August 1920, the
responsibility of the Kaiser’s Government for the outbreak of the war
was admitted in precise terms by the German Socialists. The wrong
done to France in 1870 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, the wrong
done to Belgium in 1914 and the just claims of reparation, were all
acknowledged and incorporated into a formal resolution. Though the
Bourgeoisie may clasp their hands tightly over eyes and ears, the
Socialists at least have no illusions as to the crimes and follies of
the Imperial Government. But, crushed as they are by the heavy burthens
of the Peace, they are more concerned to dwell on the trials of the
present than the failures of the past.

What we should remember, I think, is that the bulk of the German
nation did its duty in the war just as we did ourselves. Alongside
the organised atrocities and brutalities which disgraced the higher
direction of the military machine, must be set the courage and
self-sacrifice of large numbers of humble people. The average German
fought for his Fatherland with a conviction just as great as that of
the average Frenchman or Englishman. In view of the rigid censorship
which ruled, it is clear that the rank and file knew little or nothing
of many deeds which outraged the conscience of the civilised world.
They served a bad cause with a fortitude from which it would be
ungenerous to withhold praise. The future peace of the world lies in
the hope that their powers of loyalty and service may be turned to
other and better ends.

Meanwhile the existing veils of ignorance and misconception can only be
raised by a frank and free contact of men and women of both nations
who are not afraid to come together and face facts however unpalatable.
These distorted values can only be redressed through a determined
effort to seek truth for itself undeterred by false conceptions of
national honour. A nation which claims to be great should be great
enough to admit the wrong she has done. Germany must learn to see
straight about herself before peace in the real sense can be restored
between her and nations who have suffered grievously through her
action. Peace is here and now the urgent need of the world, but peace
cannot live if perpetually pelted by prejudices and ignorances. The
Supreme Charity has not left us without guidance in this matter, and as
on another famous occasion, let the man or woman in the happy position
of having no fault come forward to cast the first stone.




CHAPTER XVI

WATCHMAN--WHAT OF THE NIGHT?


It is probable that at no moment in the history of the world has a
spirit of disillusion been so widespread and so profound as at the
present time. Not only apparently have the high ideals which sustained
us during the war evaporated completely, but they have yielded place to
a sullen exasperation and ill-will dangerous in its temper and purpose.
Moral war-weariness has sapped mind and body to such an extent that no
powers of resilience remain. Suspicion as between class and class and
nation and nation corrodes the foundations of life. Surly ill-will and
a wholly anti-helpful attitude permeates the grudging performance of
essential social services. People and classes pursue their own ends
with complete disregard as to their reactions on other sections of
society. Self-interest reigns supreme. The joy as of comrades of the
open road faring together in a spirit of common service and brotherhood
appears to have vanished. In England unrest and discontent wholly
refuse to yield to the opportunist devices of a Government to whom all
principles are mere questions of expediency. But England, mercifully
for herself, whatever her spiritual sickness, knows nothing of the
stark levels of practical misery and starvation on to which millions
of continental people have been driven. We have no standard with which
to gauge misery and hunger on a scale so appalling as that which has
overtaken the dwellers of Eastern Europe. At times one wonders how
it is that England, so great, so generous, so magnanimous in her
traditional policy, has apparently neither eyes to see nor ears to hear
what is going on. The voice of Gladstone could once rouse the country
to a white flame of indignation over the sufferings of an oppressed
people. But with the tragedy of Europe before our eyes; with women and
children perishing by the thousand; with a volume of discontent growing
and surging among every nationality, England, always the world’s hope
in matters of practical justice, seems incapable of rousing herself
to action worthy of her own great tradition. Instead of some fine and
generous appreciation of the world’s woes, she looks on dully and from
afar.

America has for the moment withdrawn from the European chaos. Her
reasons for doing so are intelligible, but the result has been a
disaster for the rest of the world. It is not a question, as so many
Americans think, of a desire to exploit the better financial position
of the United States. It is because America with many faults and
crudities has a driving power of idealism behind her--the same motive
force which brought her into the war. Some American business men and
supporters of the great financial interests have sought--as is the
habit of their kind--to exploit the post-war situation to their own
profit. As against this must be set qualities of a very different
character among the mass of the people. America’s absence from the
European council-chamber involves the loss of a great influence
at once restraining and constructive. We cannot measure fully as
yet the infinite damage caused by her withdrawal from the task of
Reconstruction. We know, however, that no blow since the Peace has
been so severe. America was particularly fortunate in some of the
representatives sent to Europe during the war--men of the highest
capacity and honour. Through her absence every undesirable force or
principle has gathered weight. Conversely every force working for good
has been weakened.

The rest of the world looks on in an attitude as helpless as that
of the former combatants, as month by month the shattered fabric of
European life sags yet wider. The post-war chaos appears so complete
that men turn from it in despair. Moral disillusion and weariness have
their counterparts in recklessness and wild extravagance. There is a
sense of an approaching Twilight of the Gods; of a collapse of the
foundations of society. Therefore let us eat, drink, and be merry, on
the brink of the chasm though it be, before the darkness swallows us up.

How is it that a war fought for principles and ideals so clear and so
noble as those which animated us at the outset of the struggle can have
resulted in a condition of practical moral bankruptcy? Of that moral
bankruptcy the Treaty of Versailles is the sign and witness. On the
plane of practical politics it may be said that the world could have
survived the war, but it is doubtful whether it can survive the Peace.
Yet the Peace only registers the sickness which has invaded our souls.
Indeed, from one aspect it may be asserted that the present situation,
dark and threatening though it be, is not devoid of consolation of a
lofty and austere character. The moral bankruptcy which has overtaken
the world is in itself the most august testimony to the inexorable
truth of moral principle. Because the light in the spirit of man has
burned so low, we are able to estimate what darkness falls when the
lamp is untrimmed. The very chaos we deplore is the result of outraged
moral laws, neglect of which brings a sure Nemesis in its train. Just
in so far as the world has forsaken abiding standards of justice,
truth, and mercy, the world has been stricken down. We are perishing
to-day owing to failures in principle, and health can only return
when principle is no longer flouted but resumes its reign over men’s
souls. The tricks and turns of an opportunist policy cannot stem the
rising flood of restlessness and disgust. The world grows daily more
sick of men who have not sufficient character to make their cleverness
tolerable. Thus viewed, our present confusion is fraught with profound
spiritual significance.

In this, despite grave present peril, lies the chance of salvation.
History has never known so great and so terrible a testimony to the
inexorable character of moral law, and the reality of Divine Truth
which it is death to challenge. _Docet umbra_, and in the darkness
which has fallen, we who stand in the shadow may learn anew of the
vision which shines behind all earth-drawn clouds; and so, may be, lay
firmer hold on those forgotten truths which, alike to men and nations,
bring peace at the last. If even now the better side of human nature
will rally to the task of rescue, the future may yet be saved. The
terrible sufferings of those who have fallen by the way cannot be made
good. But if the nations will rouse themselves to make a determined
moral effort, any repetition of such sufferings may be checked.

The greatest and gravest charge which can be brought against Germany is
not so much that she killed men’s bodies and laid waste their houses
and lands, as that she has poisoned the soul of Europe. The evil spirit
let loose by the Prussian theory of life has reacted throughout the
world. It has darkened counsel and silenced the voice of charity and
moderation. Not to be dragged down to the level of the person who has
wronged you is the hardest of all moral tests. It was one which proved
too hard for the conquerors in this war. The Peace was bound to have
been very stern towards Germany and very exacting in its demands.
Severity was inherent in the situation. Wrongs had been committed which
called for judgment; balances had to be redressed. The more necessary
was it, in view of these stern measures, to adhere strictly to
principles of justice and honour in our treatment of Germany; to give
neither history nor a defeated foe any justification for the charge
that in the hour of victory we cast behind us principles for which we
fought.

The degree to which the Terms of Peace violated both the letter and
spirit of conditions laid down in the Armistice is a blot on the Treaty
which must be painful to all honourable men. The Allies would have been
within their rights in insisting on the unconditional surrender of
Germany. But conditions having been permitted, they should have been
adhered to. Mr. Lloyd George and President Wilson had indicated on
various occasions that peace made with a democratic Germany would be of
a different character from a peace made with the Hohenzollerns still in
power. But Germany, having rid herself of her Emperor and of her former
Government, found that the treatment meted out to the new Republic
differed in no particular from what would have been justifiable had the
Emperor remained on the throne. The conscience of the world has been
troubled by these things, and by an uneasy sense of undertakings given
but not fulfilled.

Those of us who see in the Peace a supreme failure in constructive
statesmanship do not take that view because we are pacifists or have
some sentimental wish “to be kind to Germany.” So long as the issue of
the war hung in doubt it was our duty to make war to the last man and
the last shilling. With the evil spirit dominating Imperial Germany,
neither truce nor parley was possible. The effort frequently made in
pacifist circles to represent the war as a general dog-fight, for which
all the nations involved have a common responsibility, is not only
bad history but bad morality. Victory creates, however, a wholly new
situation. War, in certain terrible cases, is the necessary prelude
to a settlement. But of itself it settles nothing, any more than an
operation essential to check the spread of disease is a natural or
healthy process. The surgeon’s knife is merely a means to an end--the
recovery of normal life by a normal and healthy body. The knife is
not kept flourished permanently over the patient’s head or turned
periodically in the wound.

The great charge against the Peace is its failure to envisage a normal
and healthy life for Europe. Our quarrel against its provisions is
that they are in many cases fully as short-sighted and as lacking
in imagination as what Prussians themselves might have evolved.
The precedents of Brest-Litovsk, at which we raised our hands in
justifiable horror, are not agreeable ones to follow. The fatal flaw
of the Peace is that it does not look beyond the period of punishment
and reparation to an ultimate pacification of Europe. It lays down no
principles for the establishment of good relations between nations. Its
economic provisions are a nightmare calculated to lay a strangle-hold
on any possible recovery of European trade and commerce. With a world
crying out for goods and that increased production which can alone
bring about a drop in prices, the Peace Treaty is directed to keeping
one of the greatest producers, namely Germany, in chains, while a
group of little states, erected as military buffers of the most futile
character, are allowed to distract themselves and their neighbours by
the erection of tariff walls behind which they carry on crazy forms of
economic guerilla warfare.

Let us admit that the difficulties of the Peace were quite enormous and
that mistakes and blunders were inevitable. Criticism is roused not
so much by the practical provisions of the Treaty as by the general
spirit animating it. It is, in effect, a peace of revenge uninspired
by one generous gesture as regards the future. It is a peace of tired
old men with their eyes fixed on the hatreds and animosities of the
past, and their minds obsessed by the territorial jealousies of the
old diplomacy. Consequently it has outraged and disgusted the young
generation just stepping from school and college into the political
arena. Youth is generous and impulsive; it is the age of chivalry and
high ideals. The younger men and women ask what this Treaty is doing
for the future, at what point it is binding up the wounds of Europe,
what contribution it makes towards creating that “new world” of which
politicians discoursed so eloquently. The rising generation has a right
to demand an answer to these questions. It is their future which is
at stake in the matter. The provisions of the Peace are burthens laid
upon their shoulders. Naturally they are concerned with the contents
of the load. But from no direction comes any satisfactory reply to
these inquiries, only the dull echo returned by barriers of hatred and
negation.

Yet another consequence results from this state of affairs, the
seriousness of which has not, I think, been fully grasped. The failures
of democratic statesmen, so called, in this matter of the Peace have
jeopardised the whole principle of democratic government. “If this is
the best that the statesmen of the three great democracies can produce,
then away with such a sham and failure as democracy has proved itself
to be. Let us try something else.” This spirit is stirring in many
quarters. It leads young minds, at once eager and disappointed, to
explore the alternatives of anarchism, direct action, Bolshevism, and
the rest. We may deplore the direction in which their ideas are moving.
Let politicians in power recognise, however, that this spirit of revolt
is rooted in the vast failures of the old diplomacy. Is there yet time
to recognise the hopeless dead end into which we have blundered and to
retrace our steps along a better way? The first condition is to purge
our minds from some of the illusions which run riot among the men who
control the machine. The peace of Europe cannot be secured by any
variation of the old tortuous adjustments concerned with the balance of
power. Strategical frontiers, military dispositions, the creation of
buffer states, leave the problem exactly where it stood. Neither will
the effort to reduce a feared and hated enemy to a condition perilously
akin to that of economic servitude dispel the menace of a future appeal
to arms. No nation can lay enduring shackles on the life of another, as
the history of Germany from Jena to Leipzig proves conclusively. But as
that suggestive period also shows, the effort to oppress and dominate,
so far from crushing the spirit of a people, rouses it to the highest
point of effort and endeavour. The German poets of the Liberation
period have sung in vain if they have not taught that lesson to an
unheeding world.

The peaceful relations of nations cannot be achieved through the
strategy of force and the tactics of hatred. A change of heart, a new
moral orientation are essential if the world is not once again to
become a shambles. Such a spirit can only permeate the existing welter
little by little. We cannot afford to take risks with the ruthless
and wicked people who in many instances control the destinies of
nations. But the touchstone of statesmanship at the present time is
the degree to which it is helping or it is hindering the forces which
make for sanity and reconciliation; the degree to which it clears away
barriers or helps to erect them. Nations, like individuals, can only
live and grow through what is highest and best in themselves. Further,
unless nations are prepared to treat each other with some measure of
confidence and goodwill, and to have some sort of faith in each other’s
good intentions, the moral chaos remains insoluble.

It is my earnest wish in this matter to write with complete
understanding and sympathy of the position of France. French fears
regarding the future are largely responsible for the tone and temper
of the Peace. The fact is so well known that I cannot feel any useful
purpose is served by a refusal frankly to face the issues involved.
The Entente, if it is to flourish, must draw its strength from truth
and candour. It cannot live on shams and make-believes. The better
mind of England is disturbed increasingly over the policy pursued
by the Entente, and feels that the influence of France is dragging
us along a path remote from the traditional views of the British
democracy. We must recognise this fact and face its implications, if
sooner or later a point of sharp collision is to be avoided between the
two countries. France and England are united by ties of a sacred and
abiding character. Side by side have they upheld the torch of liberty
while the foundations of the world rocked. The blood of their sons has
been poured out on hundreds of battlefields in a common defence of
liberty. The courage and the fortitude of France during the struggle
was an example and an inspiration to the whole Alliance. Why are we
conscious, therefore, to-day of so heavy a fall in all those values
which made France heroic during the war? Again we must bring patience
and understanding to a situation fraught with possibilities so grave of
future trouble.

France to-day is dominated by two sentiments, one is hatred, the other
is fear. Both are evil counsellors, both are destroyers of life. France
through fear is pursuing a policy the only result of which can be to
make the confirmation of her fears inevitable. Now, it is not for us
English while recognising these facts to pass any sort of censorious
judgment on them. Had we suffered like France, had we endured what she
has been called upon to endure, in all probability our own spirit would
have been even more black and more bitter. Such powers of detachment
as we may possess do not imply the least merit on our part. It is only
because relatively we have suffered less that we can afford possibly
to be more broad and more generous in our outlook. France for the
last fifty years has lived under the shadow of a nightmare. Enticed
into war in 1870 by the devilish skill of Bismarck, she was forced
to drink to the full of the German cup of humiliation. Marvellous
though her economic and political recovery after the war, she could
feel no security about her eastern frontier. The aggressive character
of German diplomacy cast a deepening shadow on her life. Periodically
she was threatened; periodically she was insulted. Finally came a
climax of horror--the invasion of her soil, the devastation of town and
country, the agony of four and a half years of a war unparalleled in
its ghastliness. Little wonder, therefore, that France sees red all the
time and that she demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

I often think that if in the course of the war it had so happened that
a strip of German soil near the Rhine had been laid waste, it might in
the long run have promoted the peace of Europe. I do not say this from
any desire to destroy German homes or cause suffering to German women
and children. But one of the difficulties in dealing with France to-day
is that she feels that her wounds gape wider than those of any other
nation. She is haunted by the horror of her own experience, to which no
enemy country affords a parallel. Her devastated areas do not, so to
speak, cancel out. Had they cancelled out, even in a limited measure,
she would have lost something of the sense of unique and peculiar
outrage which fills France to-day with a bitterness as of death. Let
me repeat it is not for us to pass any censorious judgment on this
attitude. Unlike France, we are not up against the fence of a land
frontier with an hereditary foe on the other side. But we fail in our
duty if in a spirit of entire friendliness and understanding we do not
urge her to consider where this policy is leading.

The quarrel between Germany and France is a very old story. It did not
start, as many people imagine carelessly, in 1870. Long before that
date a barrier of bitter memories had already been piled up between the
two countries. Germany too has had her grievances, heavy grievances,
in the past against France. Louis XIV. carried fire and sword through
the Rhineland and Palatinate during the wars of the Spanish Succession.
His generals left an imperishable memory of outrage. The Napoleonic
occupation laid a hand of iron subsequently on the German people.
Read the poets of the Liberation period, Arndt, Rückert, Körner,
Schenkendorf, and realise how deep that iron bit into the soul of the
nation. Travel among the Rhineland towns and study their history. It
is one long record of French occupation and destruction either in the
seventeenth or early nineteenth century--Mainz, the cathedral used as a
magazine and barracks; Cologne, horses stabled in the cathedral nave;
Speyer, town and cathedral ravaged with fire and sword by the generals
of Louis XIV., ruffians who exhumed and scattered to the winds the
bones of eight German emperors; Worms, reduced in 1689 to a smouldering
heap of ruins; Aachen, Bonn, Coblenz, Baden, all with bitter memories
of military conquest and occupation.

If I draw attention to these old unhappy far-off things it is not from
any desire to rake gratuitously among painful memories of the past.
But the German attitude towards France can never be understood unless
due weight is given to these black and bitter pages in their earlier
relations. France must face candidly the historical truth that Prussian
militarism came into being as a reply to the aggressions first of Louis
XIV., then of Napoleon. The sins of older generations of French rulers
have been visited on innocent heads, but the sins were there. The
memory of French tyranny in former years was the driving force which
welded the German states together. To the average German 1870 appeared
the vindication of his national honour, the signal proof that the
humiliations of the Napoleonic period were wiped out. Once again the
old coil of evil is seen unfolding itself in a monotonous succession of
wrongs done and revenge exacted, the revenge creating new wrongs which
in turn lead to further strife.

Are we prepared to weave yet further sequences of this disastrous
character? Or shall the spirit of man rise up and say the coil must be
broken?

It is this problem that has to be faced with both tact and candour
so far as the French are concerned. We sympathise to the full with
their sufferings and their wrongs. All that is best, however, in the
British democracy will neither sympathise with nor support policies
which if pursued to their logical ends can only work fresh havoc for
Europe. It is strange that the French, after their bitter experience
of 1870, seem unable to apply lessons wholly learnt by themselves as
to the strength of national feeling. It is impossible to stifle the
spirit of a people whatever it may be. Germany failed completely in
her effort to crush France. It is no less hopeless for France to think
that she can crush Germany. Yet at bottom the destruction of Germany
is the aim of the Chauvinists, who have considerable influence at the
moment in the direction of French policy. For people of this type
the European situation is the same to-day as it was in 1912. It is
as though the years 1914-1918 had not happened. The German nightmare
oppresses them as much as it has ever done. They still envisage Germany
as a great military power whose existence is one long menace to the
security of France. They want to see Germany crippled beyond the hope
of restoration, though with an entire lack of logic they also want
Germany to pay them large sums of money. Many French soldiers and
politicians feel it is a great mistake to miss the present golden
opportunity for making, as they think, a complete end of a formidable
enemy. Among them are men who would welcome any pretext which might
justify the further crushing of Germany. Theory reacts of course on
practice. The actual policy pursued in the Occupied Area is often
irritating and exasperating in the highest degree. Feeling between
the Germans and the French has to my knowledge grown more sore and
more bitter during the last year. But pinpricks will not produce the
indemnity, and an atmosphere of general exasperation does not promote
the best interests of France. Judged by rough-and-ready standards of
expediency, it ought to be clear that less than forty millions of
people cannot coerce indefinitely more than sixty millions of tough,
hard-working men and women. This blunt truth governs the present
situation. Such a policy if pursued is bound to fail. But before it
breaks down in the turmoil of another war it may extinguish the last
hope of saving European civilisation. Europe presents to-day common
needs and common problems. It will recover as a whole or collapse as a
whole. No illusion can be more fatal than the theory that the safety
and prosperity of one member of the European family can be secured by
the dismemberment and destruction of another. Statesmanship, while
securing for France necessary material guarantees of safety, should
have sought to win her round to a wiser appreciation of the principles
on which her future security must rest. Similarly as regards Germany;
while exacting adequate reparation and reducing her militarists to
impotence, statesmanship should no less seek to encourage the growth
of a new temper among her people which will, by making them decent and
responsible members of the European family, render any repetition of
past horrors impossible.

Lamentable indeed was the failure of the Peace Conference to make
any contribution to these fundamental principles. The Peace Treaty
registers accurately the violences and hatreds of the war. To the
creation of a better state of affairs in the future it makes no
contribution of any kind. Whatever the attitude of France, the
moral failure of England and America as regards the exercise of any
restraining influence is far more culpable. The collapse of President
Wilson, a man of high ideals but without the power of dealing with
facts needful to give them practical effect, is one of the most tragic
chapters in history. Mr. Lloyd George, gifted as he is with vision and
imagination, could have thrown the light of his indisputable qualities
had he so willed over the chaos of Europe. Unhappily he became involved
in a sordid chapter of domestic politics, the consequences of which
hung round his neck like a millstone. The present chaos of Europe is
in no small degree a consequence of the General Election of December
1918 and the temper and policies it inculcated. The British nation was
rushed on that occasion with fatal results to the cause of permanent
peace. The Peace Conference met at Paris in an atmosphere charged with
passion, and passion weighted the scales at every critical issue.
Meanwhile the democracies of the world, impotent to control peace
negotiations the spirit and policy of which became increasingly
unacceptable to all thinking people, looked on helplessly while the
unwieldy vessel of the Conference, buffeted first by one influence and
then by another, drifted on a stormy sea of opportunism towards the
rocks of strife. As for the result, it was well denounced as the Peace
of Dragon’s Teeth by Mr. J. L. Garvin, who throughout the tests of war
and peace devoted his eloquence and great powers of idealism to the
cause first of victory and then of European appeasement.

The Treaty as it stands has sown the world with fresh discord, and
ultimately can lead to nothing but repudiation and revenge. Still
further, the Treaty as it stands is unworkable. Already it shows
signs of breaking down under the weight of its own contradictions. By
demanding too much it bids fair to create a situation in which nothing
will be obtainable. It is not business to tell a bankrupt he must
pay thirty shillings in the pound, and at the same time sit on his
head so as to make it impossible for him to earn thirty pence. If a
bankrupt is to discharge his debts, he must be put into a position to
earn. If he is to be loaded with chains, that spectacle may have its
own satisfaction, but it will not produce money on the credit side.
A hungry bankrupt Germany cannot work to pay off the indemnity on
which France has just claim. If Europe crumbles further; if Bolshevism
finds a new recruiting ground in the anger and despair of a whole
people--where is France likely to stand in this matter of payment?

We must in common fairness recognise how serious are the difficulties
even of a well-intentioned German Government in carrying out the
demands it has to meet. The people as a whole are inexperienced
politically. The nation has had no training in self-government. It
has been run in the past by a highly efficient bureaucracy saturated
in autocratic and Bismarckian traditions. To-day the old machinery of
government is in ruins. We cannot expect that Germany with a wave of
the wand can suddenly produce public men and civil servants of the type
with which we are familiar. The cry that the government is in the hands
of men “steeped in militarism” is far from untrue. The real problem,
however, is to find men of any sort of training or experience in
government work outside the close ring of Prussianism. Inevitably the
public has to rely, anyway for the present, on officials trained in the
old theory that a lie was a virtue so long as it served the State.

From this grave disadvantage there is no immediate escape, and the
circumstance calls for special vigilance and care in our relations with
the German official classes. We can, however, help or hinder the growth
of another spirit. In so far as we support a democratically constituted
German Government and give it some encouragement and consideration, we
shall tend to produce men of a new type. But if these early steps in
democratic government are at each stage to be associated with rebuffs
and humiliations, we play straight, as I have pointed out in an earlier
chapter, into the hands of the military party. The old gang, though
they dare not raise their heads at the moment, are a compact body
among themselves, and desire nothing so ardently as the failure of
constitutional government in Germany. We cannot expect German mentality
to be changed in a night. The new forces must be given time and space
in which to develop.

Further, they must be given encouragement. The situation in Germany
to-day is in many respects dark and difficult. The reactionary forces
are entrenched strongly in more than one direction. We must not
ignore the evil influence of some tens of thousands of embittered and
irreconcilable soldiers and of certain officials of the old régime,
whose careers have been broken and who have nothing to hope from any
constitution acceptable to the democratic mind of Europe. Again, the
old fire-eating doctrines are still to the fore at many centres of
education and have an unfortunate influence on the student life--a
serious fact borne out by much evidence. Thirdly, there is the
danger of the irrecoverable rifle in the back garden--an impossible
administrative problem, as we have found to our cost in Ireland.
Undesirable factors of this character will have proportionate weight
in Germany just so far as the spirit of unrest and despair spreads
through the people. They can only be reduced to insignificance through
the establishment of an ordered and settled government which is in a
position to maintain a decent level of life for the nation, and a life
consistent with a fair measure of national self-respect.

The revision of the Peace Treaty on lines which will bring it into
harmony with enduring principles of justice and right is the crying
need of the hour. A practical point in connection with the present
situation should not be overlooked. The Germans know as well as we do
that modifications of the Treaty are inevitable. So long, however, as
the present unhappy instrument holds the field, the doubtful clauses
offer a most undesirable scope for duplicity and intrigue. The men
of the old tradition to whom I have just referred are experts in
fishing in troubled waters. They have sufficient skill to play off
Allied scruples and hesitations one against another. What we should
aim at is a Treaty just and reasonable in its demands, stripped of
provisions which involve exasperating administrative problems. Above
all, the Treaty should be revised to command the moral assent of the
Allied democracies, an assent wholly lacking in the case of the Treaty
of Versailles. Then the provisions should be enforced rigidly, and
the German Government made plainly to understand that there is to be
neither humbug nor shirking about their fulfilment. There cannot be two
opinions about Germany making the fullest material restitution in her
power for injuries done. Opinions may and do differ fundamentally as to
the manner and spirit in which these claims should be put forward.

If politicians and statesmen turn a deaf ear to the cry of a world
in distress and to a growing demand that the policies pursued should
be reasonable and constructive, the voice of the people themselves
swelling in volume bids fair to overwhelm all triflers with peace. For
despite the bluster of the fire-eaters and a Press which encourages
their empty violence, the world is sick of blood and strife. Germany
has suffered such a defeat as history has never known. Sixty millions
of people, however, virile, disciplined, hard-working, cannot be
obliterated from the map. Greatly though certain zealots may desire the
complete annihilation of the German tribes, vapourings of this kind are
remote from the realm of practical politics. The statesmanship which at
the moment haunts the Chancellories of Europe would not appear to be
of very high quality. But statesmanship of an order infinitely higher
might well recoil appalled from such problems as would result from any
general collapse of the German Government and people.

A far-sighted policy, which while never failing in fairness is withal
generous and reasonable, is as the poles removed from that of a weak
sentimentality which refuses to face the difficult facts of the present
situation. The withdrawal of any great nation from the urgent task of
work and production means loss and detriment to the world at large.
Hence the need to let Germany both eat and work; more, the need to
help her start afresh. She lies a beaten and prostrate nation to-day.
We may push her over the brink and so precipitate new catastrophes. Or
without sentiment and without illusion we may take a longer view; we
may direct our policy towards ultimate ends of appeasement, towards the
establishment of a saner and a better Europe unhaunted by the menace
of vast aggressive forces, towards the recovery by Germany herself of
her old birthright of music, poetry, and philosophy bartered by her
for evil dreams of world power and domination. That new order cannot
be founded on any basis of enduring hatred. We cannot offer the ideal
of the League of Nations with the one hand, and policies which resolve
themselves into starvation and oppression with the other. The policies
are incompatible, and we must choose between them.

The miserable suggestion frequently advanced, that as a victorious
Germany would have ground us to powder, we should do to her as she
would have done to us, cannot be sustained for a moment. Is our policy
to be directed by German standards and influenced by German principles?
All along we have proclaimed loudly that the war was fought so that the
spirit and the principles of Germany should no longer terrorise the
world. To adopt her principles, even in some modified form, is to give
her in defeat a victory lost by her in the field. Our moral pretensions
in this struggle have been very high ones, and moral pretensions are
intolerable unless some effort is made to live up to them.

Not all the dark and sordid happenings which wait inevitably on five
years of world conflagration, not all the dragging in the mire of many
a noble idea, should make us forget the great principles of liberty
and justice which drew us originally into the war. It was no idle
phrase that England staked everything for an ideal when the wrong done
to Belgium brought her into the field. At no moment in her history
has she risen to moral heights so great as when she stepped forth in
August 1914 to vindicate the cause of the oppressed. The principles to
which she consecrated herself in that supreme moment of testing demand
a service no less inexorable from us to-day, though to hold by them
steadily in the dark and stony ways of peace is proving, as we all know
to our cost, a test of endurance greater far than that of the actual
conflict. Yet surely failure at this point is to fail our dead most
miserably--the men who died with the light of a great vision in their
eyes: that vision of a world purged from evil through their sacrifice.
No miracles of leadership won the war. It was won by the grit and by
the endurance of the great mass of the British peoples. And where
statesmanship has failed, we look to the rank and file of the nation
to win the peace. It rests with our countrymen to see that there is no
further deepening of the ruts of hatred and mutual ignorance, for what
England wills in this matter is decisive as regards the future.

And France--France who was in such a special sense the soul of the
war? Is it too much to ask that France, despite her sufferings and
sacrifices, should brace herself for one supreme effort, nobler than
all which have gone before--the effort to make herself greater than the
wrong done to her? Then would her triumph over the dark and evil forces
which brought about the war be supreme indeed. France who means so much
to the mind of Europe, who has given to it eternal principles of truth
and liberty--will not France in this matter rise to the level of her
own heroic stature?

The established democracies of the world have in these troubled times
to hold up each others arms. So long as the great Republic of the West
stands aloof, the chain of brotherhood and common effort is broken
at a vital point. The darkness is greater, the task infinitely more
hard, because she has withdrawn her companionship from what should
have been a united purpose. The intervention of America led to the
complete overthrow of Germany. Without her great resources flung on
the Allied side the war must have had a very different end resulting
in compromise, not victory. We appreciate her difficulties; we do not
presume to dictate. We would, however, beg her to remember she too
has responsibilities as regards the burthen of Europe. But though
the action of the United States may have made the goal of European
appeasement more remote, more difficult to attain, the goal itself is
clear.

The Watch on the Rhine is of value just so far as it helps to clear our
minds as to the true objectives that we are seeking. The soldiers have
done their work well and truly in the war. Their task accomplished, its
results have now passed largely into other hands. Our unworthiness
and unfitness to carry so great a responsibility are but too painfully
apparent. Yet the responsibility is there. The dead have in special
measure left a sacrifice to be perfected. The torch fell lighted from
their hands. Supreme shame would it be if it suffers extinction through
the sordid ambitions and mean desires of men who live because other men
have died. The threat of moral bankruptcy, real as it is, can only be
averted through a steady devotion to ideal ends. Those ideal ends have
been sung by one of our younger poets in words which, to me at least,
sum up the faith I have endeavoured haltingly to express as regards the
future:

  “This then is yours; to build exultingly
  High and yet more high
  The knowledgeable towers above base wars
  And sinful surges, reaching up to lay
  Dishonouring hands upon your work, and drag
  From their uprightness your desires to lag
  Among low places with a common gait.
  That so Man’s mind not conquered by his clay,
  May sit above his fate
  Inhabiting the purpose of the stars,
  And trade with his Eternity.”


THE END




FOOTNOTE:


[1] Section iv. Part iii.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

  The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber using
    the original cover and is entered into the public domain.



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