LETTERS OF TRAVEL
VIII. FROM VIENNA
At Budapest you begin to suspect that you are in Europe; at Vienna you are sure of it—with its great array of fine shops, full of elegancies and delectable grandeur which leave Paris and New York in the shade. The whole press of Europe seems to have "written up" Vienna as "the ruined city" and "the end of a great capital," and even at Constantinople where terrible affliction was constantly before the eyes, the fiction held that Vienna was even worse. You are, therefore agreeably surprised to find the wheels of modern civilization running smoothly—a well-dressed, easy-going people on the streets and in the cafés, every business house working to full capacity, and all at first glance going well. The children, and especially those of the working class, look healthy and full of life. Starving Vienna seems somewhat of a myth.
Vienna is not like Petrograd where the thousands of eyes of the Nevski Prospect have been put out and squads of dead shops stare at one from smashed windows and gutted interiors. And it is not a vast caravanserai for sufferers like Constantinople. Something, however, is wrong and has been wrong and will be worse, and this something has power to strike the imagination of every one who visits the great city of Vienna. It is perhaps the contrast of luxury on the one hand and black bread on the other, and the almost fabulous descent of the crown. Wrangel's officers use hundred-rouble notes for shaving-papers, and Americans in Vienna behave as unceremoniously with crowns. The lower denominations of the rouble are much cheaper than the price of paper, and the Austrian crown is going that way.[1]
This depreciation of the currency strikes the mind of the visitor to Vienna, and from it he deduces the general ruin of the country. He sees the shabby condition into which imperial palaces and State houses are falling, and talks with the aristocratic or cultured nouveau pauvre carrying his lunch of sausage and black bread to a gloomy apartment at the back of a fourth floor, and he feels the calamity that has fallen upon Austria. Austria with a nominal 2800 crowns to the pound sterling cannot last. How then about Poland with 4000 marks to the pound—an Allied country with a close understanding with France? But nobody in Vienna can understand how Poland lives.
The true inwardness of Vienna's calamity seems to lie in the fact that she is the capital of a very badly governed country. Much could obviously be done in little Austria by an honest, intelligent, and industrious administrative staff. But they prefer to stand in the way and beg, the giant Vienna and the dwarf Austria, staggering the imagination of pilgrims, and whining for alms to passers-by.
By all accounts there is not even the will to govern well and make the new Austria into a going concern. Hence arises the economic problem of Austria, which is certainly grave. Here is a State which persistently refuses to live on its income, and prints off paper money to make up its deficiency. A highly expensive bureaucracy five times as large as is needed for little Austria pays itself first, and as for the rest of the population the devil can take the hindmost. The money-printing press works night and day. No loans, no foreign dole, will stop the operation of this machinery; what is necessary is a change of heart.
The expression "starving Austria" is a propaganda phrase. She may starve, she probably will, but the time is not yet. Individual classes of workers starve until they get their wages raised. There have been many moments of struggle between the time when the tram-conductor earned forty crowns a week to the time when he earned several thousand. Ten-thousand-crown notes are not uncommon among the working classes, and 10,000 crowns will purchase more than you could buy in England for five pounds, or in America for thirty dollars. A working-man's dinner with a glass of beer costs about a hundred crowns, a city man's lunch of three courses, a hundred and twenty. The working class is accused of constantly holding up the community for money by means of strikes. The truth is that here the organization of Labour and the strike-weapon proved a highly convenient method for getting level with the money-printing press. Labour has been more fortunate than the professional and clerical classes, who, not being organized, have been left badly in the background. There are now many professors at the University of Vienna earning less than one-third of the wages of skilled artisans. There are teachers, clerks, doctors, journalists, and the like, in a most pitiable plight because they have not the means of forcing the community to pay them higher salaries as the crown depreciates. As for the condition of pensioned teachers and professors and officers, of the half-pay widows and the incapacitated of the war, it is a shame to all European ideals. When the Government halves the value of the crown overnight by printing double the number in circulation—it robs first of all the educated class and the pensioners. It is among these that one must search for the heart-burning sorrows of Vienna—and these are not paraded on the streets.
The most characteristic places of Vienna to-day are the new Wechselstuben or exchange offices, which have sprung up everywhere. Here are such crowds waiting to change their money that you have to wait in a line for your turn. Some of the large banks give a much better exchange than the little ones—and the better the exchange given the longer the queue. The large banks stop public business at half-past twelve, and after that hour is the opportunity of the bucket-shop. If you have little time, or if you lose patience, you run into one of the greedy little bureaus and help to make some one's fortune, not your own. This would not be of much importance for Austria if the people one met waiting in these banks were mostly American, British, French. The sad fact is that the people who are changing their money thus are nearly all Austrian or at least ex-Austrian subjects. The old Austrian empire has been divided into five parts, and each part has a different money which has to be exchanged whenever you come into another part. And there is a great difference in the values of the various moneys. Thus the Hungarian money is worth more than double that of Austria. The twenty, the hundred, the thousand-crown notes are almost identical in appearance and printing—a small imprint of a rubber stamp being in many cases the only distinguishing mark—but even from a waiter in a hotel you can get two thousand Austrian crowns for one thousand Hungarian ones. Roumanian lei are also much the same in appearance. Czech crowns and Serbo-Croat crowns are certainly different. But when your home is in Czecho-Slovakia and your place of business in Austria, and your aged father and mother in Hungary and your uncles and cousins in Croatia, you have a lively time with your money. And it plays prodigiously into the hands of those who have started changing-shops upon the public ways.
An interest in the rate of exchange has developed among the masses of the people, who turn to the financial column of the morning paper as Westerners do to football news or baseball results. There is considerable fluctuation in the values, and it is no doubt possible to make a living by speculation alone, and many people do so. In the banks are, therefore, crowds, both of speculators and of people who have just crossed the frontier and must get their money changed.
The Financial Committee of the League of Nations issuing its report in June foreshadowed the substitution at an early date of a new currency of definite value in gold. The Austrian crowns which are now in use will then suddenly appear in a new light to the deluded Austrian masses. They are probably worth nothing at all, and those who have become rich in them will prove to be rich in nothing. If, however, the peasant is paid for his wheat in the new gold-backed currency he will quickly go ahead in wealth. But if he is paid in gold value, how the cities will starve with their paper!
Between the money-changers in the great streets are the fine Vienna shops exposing elegant craftsmanship of many kinds. Here you can buy rich glass, leather-work, enamelled silver, worked ivory, lace, beautiful bindings, fans, house-ornaments of every conceivable kind in ultra-perfect taste. All that is for sale suggests a luxurious way of life—aristocratic and cultured existence, and certainly not the showy splendour of the parvenu. You will hear it said in other parts of Europe you have still to go to Vienna to buy certain things. As long as the skilled craftsmen and clever workers of many kinds remain, these objects of luxury will be for sale. Besides these, there are, of course, many more ordinary things for which Vienna is noted—velour hats, bronze shoes, and the rest. These, reckoned at world-price figures, are sold at one-third of their value. But there is little market for them.
The next most characteristic things of the city must be the thousands of cafés, where you sit at your coffee surrounded by animated crowds of men reading papers, discussing politics and business, the whole press of Europe at their disposal. Your waiter brings your coffee and automatically at the same time the "Daily Telegraph," or "Figaro," or the "Chicago Tribune," or the "Berliner Tageblatt," or "Obshy Delo," according to your accent and appearance. Time seems to cease to have real value in a café; it is easy to spend hours over one cup of coffee and the newspapers—the difficulty is at last to pay and go.
The restaurants also are full. Though the bread is of rye the meat and potatoes are of the usual quality. Waiters give you white bread surreptitiously. Your hand is below the level of the table and suddenly you find that it is holding a soft roll of white bread. For this you will not be charged in your bill, as it is illegal to sell it you. You pay the waiter when he helps you on with your coat. You can get milk and butter and sugar in this way if you are ready to forget that someone's children may have to do without somewhere in Vienna.
There is an extraordinary diversity of styles and prices at restaurants. A lunch for yourself and three friends will cost three to four thousand crowns at the "Bristol," but the same lunch round the corner goes for five hundred. Going in with a certain M—— to a fashionable restaurant, one could see that the waiters knew him perfectly well, and the head waiter was most affable. But he averred as he looked round the restaurant that there was not an Austrian in the place. None of those who could have been seen there formerly could afford it now. The best cuisine in Vienna was now only at the service of the foreigner.
Hotels, like restaurants, are speculative institutions. But it is difficult to find a room on any terms. Vienna has increased in population and not decreased. She also is crowded with homeless people and refugees. Here are many whose houses are in detached parts of old Austria, now in other States, and they will not go back, or cannot, or are afraid. There are also the Russians once more in great numbers. At the Stadt-theatre, the Moscow Theatre of Art was giving nightly from its repertoire, and it was instructive to see that great theatre packed with Russians, from the stalls to the standing-room at the back of the gallery, all listening intently to "The Three Sisters" of Chekhof; many demonstrations at the end of the performance, too, and making the building resound with Russian cheers and plaudits.
At Vienna you naturally spend some evenings at the theatre and the opera. It is famous for its stage. There, however, you do realize how Vienna has fallen. The theatres are all full, but not full of the sort of people who demand excellence. Perhaps it would be unfair to judge the opera by a performance of "Parsifal," that heavily over-dressed story of sentimental religiosity and pedestrian symbolism, but it was done in the most slatternly perfunctory style. The theatre was crowded. But it was a strangely mixed crowd. In lonely grandeur in one of the boxes were three Englishmen in evening dress. In the fifth row of the stalls was a servant-girl who kept asking her neighbours the time in the midst of Parsifal's mystical moments. It was her night out, but she had to be home by ten. She looked at the play with her mouth, and lolled to and fro. Occasionally some people down below set about clapping, but were silenced by hisses from the people up above, who hissed down all claps: the theme was too holy. However, in the entr'acts, how the beer flowed in the buffet. It was not too holy to drink beer.
"The profiteers have all the seats in the theatres," say the cultivated Austrians. "They don't understand opera and serious drama, but it has the name, and they could not afford to go before, so they go now. It is only the people in the gallery who know what is good."
"The people in the gallery always know that," said I. "It is the people in the circles who are not sure."
"What I mean is, the people who used to have stalls are now in the gallery, and the people who formerly never came to a theatre are now in the stalls," said the Austrian solemnly.
The intelligent Austrians are in a very gloomy frame of mind. Although the Government is nominally Christian-Socialist, it is very weak and practically unable to cope with the Communist and extreme Radical elements. It is a common opinion that Austria lies almost as low as Russia. "The social destruction of Russia is being done bloodlessly in Austria. The working class is well-off; every one else, except the speculators, is in poverty," said Dr. B.
"We have the officials for a first-class State, and the need for the number of a third-class one," said Capt. S. "Our army now, the new army which we have obtained, is the worst army ever known in any country. I have been in Haiti, and the Haitians are splendid fellows compared with them. Our soldiers are merely a bodyguard for the Socialists, and robbers all. The true army, that went through the unspeakable sufferings of the war, was turned on the streets to starve. Austria may have been serving a bad case, but the army was not to blame—it was doing its duty. But there is one humble consolation now; we have a condition of affairs in Austria which cannot continue. Austria has become an economic plague-spot in Europe."
"It would interest me to have your opinion," I asked. "Has Austria a national spirit? Does the heart respond to its name?"
Capt. S. thought not. "I favour union with Germany as the only issue. Few would grieve if 'Austria' were no more. We are German, and the idea of union with Germany has now made considerable progress with the people. But it is possible that the idea is not so popular in Germany. It would be a grave responsibility to unite any country with the financial and political wreck which we have here."
I put this question of the future of Austria to a Monarchist. He did not favour the idea of a union with Germany, but of a renewed union with Hungary. He still believed the Hapsburgs could return.
I put it to a working man, but he favoured the State as it was. If only the cost of living could be brought down it would be a very fine State, as wages were so high.
The Petite Entente of Czecho-Slovakia, Serbia, and Roumania, is strongly opposed to a reunion of Austria and Hungary, and would stop it by force of arms. The Czechs are equally opposed to union with Germany.
"So what do you say?" I asked of a Czech. "Do you think that what is left of Austria ought to be divided up between her neighbours?"
"God forbid!" said he. "We've got enough Germans in Czecho-Slovakia already. Austria can very well exist by herself. Does not Switzerland exist by herself, and do very well, without half the natural advantages of the new Austria?"
The French solution for the problem is known to lie in the possible detachment of Bavaria from Germany, and the setting up of a new South-German State in union with Austria. Only on such terms would France agree to Austria joining part of Germany. The Bavarians, however, show no signs of desiring to cut loose from the still great German confederation. A purely deliberative plebiscite taken in the Austrian Tyrol is all for union with Germany. A similar plebiscite in the province of Salzburg shows the same tendency, another in Styria is certain to go the same way. These plebiscites are called passive propaganda by the French, and they for their part egg on the Petite Entente to stop them. But there seems little doubt that were Austria free to choose she would now give up her name and fame, and merge herself in the German whole of which, ethnographically, she is a natural part.
How strange that all the luxury and glamour of Vienna, as you see it at this moment, is the concomitant of complete decline and mortal peril. In arriving in the city one felt at last that one was in Europe, but it proves to be not the Europe of the future. Vienna in 1921 is part of the sunset of that old radiant, peaceful Europe we knew before the war. Night has to swallow it up, and the future lies on other horizons, in Prague and Belgrade and Budapest, in the capitals of that new Europe which arises from the defeat and ruin of the war.
N.B.—By Article 10 of the Treaty of Versailles, "Germany recognises and respects strictly the independence of Austria, and recognises that this independence is inalienable unless the League of Nations gives consent to change." And by Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain Austria engages "to abstain from all acts calculated to prejudice her independence either directly or indirectly."
[1] Travellers to Austria are seldom warned beforehand that there is an internal and external rate of exchange, and they frequently lose 50% on the exchange of their money.
EXTRA LEAVES
(iii) On Money and League of Nations Currency
In the course of this little tour of Europe I bought 1,000 francs and 4,000 liras, and 1,500 drachmas, 3,000 dinars, and the same number of levas, some lei and 20,000 piastres, 7,000 Hungarian crowns and 32,000 Austrian crowns, 3,000 Czech crowns, 10,000 German marks, 15,000 odd Polish marks, 500 Belgian francs, and some paper money of the principality of Monaco.
You have to be somewhat of an arithmetician to think one week in piastres and the next in dinars, and the next in crowns, and the next in marks. You are always losing but you always think you are winning. You afford pleasure to strangers whenever you go because you can be robbed so easily and safely. In each country you can be robbed coming in and robbed going out and generally robbed in between. You do not mind very much, it is part of the legitimate expense of modern travel.
You accumulate great wads of paper. See the people of Vienna and Warsaw, their inside pockets are all misshapen by the bulge of the money. The pockets of an international traveller are worse. He holds his unnegotiable accumulation of the money which is not worth changing nor yet worth throwing away.
"How much do you expect to get for this?" said a Hungarian banker surveying a bulky packet of Turkish piastres. I mentioned a likely sum.
"Grande erreur!" he exclaimed, and lifted his hands in horror. In Budapest they were marketable only for a tenth of what I gave for them.
So the piastres remained together with provincial French notes and small denominations of dinars and what-not, nominally worth something somewhere, but in fact unsaleable.
The Germans have just now a very popular word for a nouveau-riche, it is a schieber, one who exchanges. Getting your money changed is one of the most wasteful processes for you and one of the most gainful for him.
A certain man had 10 pounds which he exchanged for 450 francs. Then he exchanged the francs for 600 lira; he journeyed by Fiume to Serbia and changed again for 900 dinars. At Belgrade he bought 6,000 Hungarian crowns. He carried the money to Budapest and then to Vienna, where he had some luck and got 15,000 Austrian crowns. However, at Prague the bankers said they did not encourage the sale of Austrian money as they did not know what it was worth. He got 1,000 Czech crowns, which in turn he changed to 10,000 Polish marks. He then changed those for 500 Roumanian lei, returned to Poland again and only received 8,000 marks at the re-exchange. At Berlin they looked very disparagingly at the Polish money and offered him 280 German marks for the lot. He changed this for 11 florins in Amsterdam, for which when he reached Antwerp he received 40 Belgian francs. His 10 pounds lingered tentatively over the abyss of a nothing.
The title of this story should be "Exchange is no robbery."
A golden or at least a paper rule for merchants dealing with foreign firms is "pay them when the exchange is most in your favour." But the foreign firm under these circumstances, having expected to get so much, gets in reality so much less. It is not surprising then that trade is sticky.
We hear much of the efforts of Governments and financiers to regulate
the exchanges, but nothing comes of it. The only obvious cure is a
Utopian one: institute one currency for Europe in the name of the
League of Nations.
Let us have "League of Nations gold currency." But to have that the resources of Europe must be pooled. We are not ready for that.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
IX. FROM PRAGUE
Czecho-slovakia is the watchdog of the new peace in Central Europe. She is the strongest new power, and is manifestly the best governed State which has arisen out of the ruins of the old. The new Bohemia (for Czecho-Slovakia is truly Bohemia) is a much more credible resurrection than the new Poland. One London daily refused to believe in the existence of Czecho-Slovakia for a long while. "Unless I see it," said the editor, "I will not be convinced." But Czecho-Slovakia is quite convincing—and is much less of a Frankenstein than Jugo-slavia. The Czechs are no doubt obscurely placed in Europe, but the traveller when he gets to their country—not the "seacoast of Bohemia"—will find that they make good showing.
Prague is a fine old city on the rolling Moldau—what a fine name, suggestive of rolling boulders down from the hills! Ancient Prague has this river for its moat. It rises on heights from old bridges to the royal palace and cathedral of the old kings of Bohemia. The new city has yet to be built. It will be on the level ground below, where there is to-day an agglomeration of shops and hotels as yet unworthy of the capital of a great new State. Here up above is all that is worth while, though seen from the battlements, the new below, especially on a cloudy day with lowering skies, is a very fine view. Here lie the old kings of Bohemia—one of them apparently "Good King Wenceslas." Here at a little distance are the mysterious walls with sentries posted at the gates—walls curiously and accidentally associated in the minds of thousands of children with Longfellow's lines:
I have read in some old, marvellous tale
That a midnight host of spectres pale
Beleaguered the walls of Prague.
Not a good place in which to lose yourself at night—outside these walls—as a party of us found on our first expedition there.
In the royal palace and offices are now accommodated the various ministeries of the new republic. Up in this purer air live also the President, M. Masaryk, and some of the diplomatic representatives of foreign powers. It is no doubt rare in this lazy age to find a new State administered and governed from the top of a crag, a steep climb on foot. But Czecho-Slovakia and Prague are governed from a mountain, and have the mountain point of view, which is the view of youth and vision.
The new State has some thirteen millions of inhabitants, and the majority of the people speak both Czech and German. German is naturally discouraged as being anti-national, and it is now only used in emergencies. All names of places have been Slavonized. Even Carlsbad and Marienbad are now Carlovivari and Mariansky Laznie. Where names of places have to be printed both in German and in Czech—German goes into small letters and Czech into large. After the armistice was declared in 1918, it only took a few hundred Czechs to overthrow the Austrian power and proclaim a new national republic. It was a bloodless revolution.
France and England were benevolently disposed toward a Czech republic, but America, thanks to the influence of the Slavophile millionaire, Charles Crane, with Wilson, and to the personal prestige of Masaryk, did most to confirm and strengthen Czecho-Slovakia. Gratitude to America is expressed everywhere, and Prague, in 1921, is perhaps the one capital in the world where Wilson's name and fame are still undimmed. Is not Wilson's face in bas-relief on the wall of the main station, "Gare Wilson," supported, curiously enough, by the admiring figures of two Bacchantes wreathed in the vine? It counts more to be an American in Prague than to be English. Crane's son is Minister for the United States; Crane's daughter-in-law, as painted by Mucha, is engraved on the new hundred-crown note. American relief-work and Mr. Hoover enjoy great prestige, and altogether there is for the time being the atmosphere of an enduring friendship.
The Czechs adopted a Parliamentary system, but finding that "one man one vote" brought to power new revolutionary elements, the system was quickly defunctionized. The administration is now appointed by the President, and he, having been elected by acclamation, "President for life," is in the nature of elective autocrat. However, after Masaryk, the term is to be limited to seven years, and a president may not serve two terms. The largest parties in the Parliament are the "Germans" and the "Social Democrats," each of which has seventy-two deputies and about forty senators. The National Democrats, who might be called the Masaryk party, are in the minority of nineteen deputies and ten senators. This party, nevertheless, is likely to maintain and hold the intellectual leadership of the nation. Czecho-Slovakia is not a peasant State like Bulgaria and Jugo-Slavia, but ex-Austrian bourgeois, with a large proportion of educated people.
It is a thick-set, burly, rather obstinate people, with imperturbable eyes. It is difficult to persuade one of the Czechs to do a thing against his will, or to compromise between his opinion and yours. Much more difficult to persuade than a Russian. And they are not as obedient as the Germans, or as amenable to splitting a difference as the British. It has been said they are Russian translated into German. Not polite or charming, but matter-of-fact, and a trifle on the rude side. There is in them a good deal of moderateness of gift, but they seem far more practical than the rest of the Slavs, and more virile. They have been Germanized and dullened by Austria, but in many respects they are more capable than the Germans. They seem to be the most capable people in their part of the world.
I met Dr. Benes, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, deputy-President in Masaryk's absence. It was on his initiative that the Little Alliance of Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia was founded, with the support of Italy and eventually including Roumania. Whilst this was nominally to prevent the return of the Hapsburgs or the reuniting of Austria and Hungary, it has also had another function—that of drawing together all the States deriving territory from the break up of Austria—even uniting Italy and Serbia, up till recently preoccupied with mortal enmity over the Dalmatic. It is a great service to unity to have this group of powers with a common understanding, and will perhaps be more highly appreciated in the future than it is now.
Dr. Benes is a spare, pinched-faced man of the people, not a typical Czech in appearance, a nervous type, of probably tireless energy. Not one of those that "sleep o' nights." He had, however, an agreeable smile of acquiescence when complimented on his work for unity. "I do not believe in the war after the war," said he. "All the nations that composed Austria-Hungary were exasperated, and have been in a bad mental state greatly aggravated by the war. We want to get rid of the war-mind. With that in view we are developing a policy which should make for stability in Central Europe. The most dangerous word used in propaganda against us in 'Balkanization'—as if to suggest that all these regions had become unstable and liable to Balkan quarrels. But, in truth, in three years we have made great progress towards a settled state of affairs.
"Germany will fall. If she agrees to pay she will fall, and equally if the sanctions are applied she will fall. She will not go so low as Austria because she is a much stronger national organism, but her export trade will be ruined, and the mark will become almost of no value. The application of the export duty on German goods is not popular, but we are applying it. It will raise the cost of living, and be a great inconvenience to many businesses which depend on Germany, but on the other hand some of our younger industries may be helped by such a measure of protection——"
Regarding the Little Alliance Dr. Benes was clearly enthusiastic, but he could not see it developing into a customs-union. "We shall have treaties regarding tariffs according to our mutual needs." He hoped the Alliance might develop to take in Poland, but at present Poland was in a difficult frame of mind, very readily jealous and not generally benevolent.
The Slavs are vociferous believers in unity. They invented the word "pan-humanity." It is the most vital idea in Russia. But is it not strange that the peoples who are the strongest believers in human unity are the most quarrelsome amongst themselves. The greatest weakness of the Slav nations lies in national vanity, egoism, and lack of solidarity. They have not the sense for discipline obtaining among Latins and Teutons. Perhaps in this respect the Czechs are wiser than Poles, Russians, and Serbs. But the fact remains that the Slavs do not readily co-operate, and as nations have little of the modern sense for "team-work."
Take the case of Poland, Czecho-Slovakia's obstreporous northern neighbour. Both have been raised from the dead at the same time, and are brothers in resurrection. Both have great capacity to help one another. But one finds an almost complete detachment, as if the frontier line were an ocean.
"We send goods into Poland—and the Polish Government sequesters them," say the Czechs. "We load our trains with stuff for them, and then our trains never come back. Many whole trains have disappeared in Poland, and we get no satisfaction."
A new type of crime—train-stealing! "No," says Dr. Benes; "we must wait patiently till it occurs to the Poles that a close brotherly relationship between the two countries is better than suspicion and jealousy."
"Why do you not take the step yourself?"
"It would be suspected of having some hidden motive, or we should be thought to be in terrible need of Poland's help," said Bohemia's minister.
As regards the interior troubles of Czecho-Slovakia, much is made of the Slovak separatist movement, and the Germans exploit the supposed racial animosities of the two Slav tribes. The Slovaks also obtain some sympathy from our "Save the children" missionaries, who naturally prefer unspoiled peasants to educated foreigners of any kind. If the Slovak hates the Czech he hates the Magyar also, but whether he hates or not he is not very important in Europe, and is bound to find himself in a subordinate national position. The enmity of the German elements is more menacing, and it is not to be denied that the new State holds a million or so people who, by the accident of habitat, have to be called Czecho-Slovaks, though they are no more Czecho-Slovaks than Lot and his wife.
I met among others Dr. Isidor Muller, first assistant at the University of Vienna, but living at Carlovivari (Carlsbad), and naturally enough unable to speak Czech and unacquainted with Czechs, but written down as Czecho-Slovak now. Still, it has its advantages. He told me that he was once being rudely treated by a French officer who took him for a Boche. The Frenchman was disinclined to shake hands.
"But I am a Czecho-Slovak," said Dr. Muller, inspirationally.
"Oh!" The Frenchman's face lighted up. He extended his hand. "We are brothers and allies."
Still some German Czecho-Slovaks think they will ultimately overthrow the new State and get into the saddle again. And they make a solid and dangerous political bloc. Benes said they were much more amenable than a year ago, but in the Parliament House—an adapted concert-hall—I saw all the carpenters at work in a litter of shavings and broken wood. "The German benches," said the editor of the "Narodni Listi," who was showing me round the institutions of Prague.
Czecho-Slovakia holds now, besides her natural constituent races, a considerable number of Russian exiles, and these have their Russian daily paper at Prague and a number of local Russian enterprises. With the calming down of Soviet Russia, some of these Russians would naturally return home, but a few have taken root and will remain. It is not an uncongenial soil for the average Russian. Then the Government has agreed to take ten thousand of General Wrangel's soldiers, and will endeavour to settle them on the land. There are already too many non-Slavonic elements in Czecho-Slovakia, and Russians will help to neutralize some of the Magyar and German influences. At least, such is the hope. As a step in this direction, there has developed also an important Church movement. A large portion of the Roman Catholic clergy have split from Rome and founded a Czech National Church. They have left the Pope, and have in return been excommunicated. Apparently excommunication has not a great terror, however. National Catholicism without an infallible Pope is not far removed from Greek Catholicism and even Anglicanism. Austria and Hungary are Roman Catholic, but Czecho-Slovakia will remain either Protestant or National Catholic.
The abandonment of the German language is also a remarkable phenomenon. The common will is to abandon it. Unfortunately, the Czech language is of limited use, but there is now a remarkable passion for learning English, and there are thousands of students at the University classes. This boom is due to President Wilson. The Russian language is also extensively known among the ex-soldiers who sojourned so many years as prisoners or as legionaries in Russia. The French language having lost much of its value has not so many students. The "Narodni Listi," which is the principal Czech newspaper in Prague, prints two columns in French every day for the convenience of foreigners who do not understand Bohemian. This idea is being extended, and a daily supplement in English is to be issued soon.
Two evenings spent at the theatre at Prague were curiously in contrast: one at the German National Theatre, to hear "The Blue Mazurka," by Lehar, author of "The Merry Widow," and other less entertaining operettas. The imposing building of the Deutsche Theatre was crammed with Germans who took pleasure in a characteristic sentimental operetta. The other evening was at the Czech National Theatre to see a performance of "Coriolanus," and was more interesting. The Czechs had great difficulties under the Austro-Hungarian regime in obtaining a national theatre. The Imperial Government was not anxious to encourage Czech language and literature, and therefore refused to grant the State subsidy on which national theatres usually depend. This, however, did not deter the Czechs. It made them only the more determined to have a national theatre. It should be remembered that drama has a much greater national importance in the continental countries of Europe than it has in England or America. Excitement over such a matter might seem incredible to Anglo-Saxons, not so to Slavs or to Germans. The proposed deprivation of the Czechs of a national stage stirred the people to the depths, and it was not long before men and women were busy collecting the money to build and sustain a Czech theatre at Prague. The funds were raised, and the place was built, and the Bohemian people inscribed over the proscenium the challenging words: "Narod Sobe"—The people for itself.
"Coriolanus" was conceived of rather as a struggle with the proletariat. Hillar, the producer, has effectually disenchanted the footlights by putting steps down to the audience in the position of the prompter's box. The characters frequently make their entrances as it were from the body of the audience. This is especially striking in the crowding up of the Roman Bolsheviks on to the stage in the opening scene—a remarkable piece of life and action. However, though one naturally thought of the Bolsheviks, there was nothing of the guise of Lenin or Liebknecht in the appearance of the popular tribunes, who, together with the rest of the citizens, were reduced to the level of Dogberry, whilst the noble Coriolanus was perhaps exaggerated in his nobility and his disdain. Menenius Agrippa was a Balfourian old fellow who told the story of the Belly and its members well. What a story for Europe to learn now: it ought to be put in the reading-books of every tongue.
What struck me about the Czech performance of "Coriolanus" was the dignity of personality and height of conception which the Slavs bring to the interpretation of Shakespeare. It was the same in Moscow in the old days. Hamlet was more interestingly conceived and better performed than anywhere else in the world.
An interesting play reflecting in itself the world-drama, was lately produced at Prague under the title "R.U.R.," or "Rasum's Universal Rabots." A scientist named Dr. Rasum succeeded in inventing a human automaton, a human being except for the fact that it had no soul and no power of reproducing itself. They were excellent for use in factories and in armies, and the firm of Rasum, Ltd., supplied them in hundreds and thousands to companies and States. Eventually the Rabots, as they are called, combine and make war against the real people with the souls, and they destroy Dr. Rasum and his factory, and even the plan and the secret whereby the Rabots are made. They also destroy the real people, all but one, and a great sadness comes upon the world as it is realized that man must die out. At the end of the play, however, a soul is born in one of the Rabots, and he is touched to love, and so he obtains the power to reproduce the species, and the human story recommences. A striking idea for a drama, and capable of arousing much excitement in Labour's literary circles. I heard that the rights had been bought for almost every country of Europe. In the drama, as in music and art, the Slavs are always passing Teuton and Latin, backward though they may be in other matters.
Enough has been said to register the opinion that the new State of Bohemia is very promising, and that it is a redeeming case in the welter of New Europe. As far as Prague is concerned it leaves behind its provincial recent-past, recovers its ancient-past, and looks towards a great future. New buildings will arise worthy of a capital, new administrative offices and a new Parliament House are to be built. Around the Parliament House it is designed to place the cycle of Mucha's mystical paintings lately exhibited in New York. These traverse the whole story of the Slavs, and especially that of the Czechs, but not, however, omitting the story of Russia, from the baptism of Vladimir to the emancipation of the serfs. Czecho-Slovakia will raise the banner of a new Pan-Slavism and Slav unity. The faith is kindled here that whilst many other nations are going mad, Czecho-Slovakia may keep her head and be one of those who by her example and leadership will save Europe from disruption and chaos.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
X. FROM WARSAW
As at Constantinople, there is great over-crowding. There are three times as many people on the pavements as on the pavements of Vienna or Prague. The Marshalkowsky is a-flocking from end to end. Finding a room for the night is a hard task. You will see a great deal of Warsaw before you find a room. It is not a bad way to obtain a first impression. I arrived at one in the afternoon and found a place for myself only at ten at night. The once luxurious Hotel Bristol was full to-day, no hope for to-morrow, no, nor for to-morrow week. At the Royal Hotel a lugubrious porter says "l'hotel n'existe plus." The Victoria, which was the first hotel I ever stayed at in Russia, knew me no more. At the Metropole a preoccupied clerk said "Nima" without looking up from the news from the Silesian front which was engrossing him. I went into a terribly shabby and dirty hotel called the Amerikansky, and hoped they'd say "No," which they certainly did. Another doubtful establishment with girls on the stairs was also gorged and replete with visitors. The Y.M.C.A. said they'd enough trouble finding rooms for their own people. The Hotel de Rome was occupied by the Red Cross. The Kowiensky was alles besetst; the Hotel de Saxe had not even a hope.
These efforts were naturally punctuated by visits to the Polish "bar" and café. At these it came as somewhat of a surprise to have tips refused. I paid for my dinner and added the customary ten per cent. The waiter drew himself up and waved his hand in deprecation.
"No, no," said he, proudly; "I'm Polish."
"What, no tips now?"
"No."
"That is certainly an improvement," I reflected. In Warsaw, in Russian days, most waiters fawned disgustingly for tips. But it seems now as if there were an entirely new population. However, I resumed my quest of a lodging. At the Imperial Hotel they kindly relieved me of my knapsack and overcoat, and advised me to come back at eight or nine at night—there might be a room then. Meanwhile I should continue seeking. So the Cracowsky was tried, and the Lipsky, once Leipzig, and the Adlon and the Pretoria, and many another haunt of mice and men. Then I returned to the Imperial for the second time. No, there was no room. It had been a lovely day, only too hot, and the evening was warm. I thought pleasantly of the Saxon Gardens and its seats.
Then Poland revealed itself. "You want a room very badly, don't you?" said the Imperial Hotel porter. "I'll arrange it for you. But it will cost you something. You take my card to a certain hotel, which I will mention to you, hand it to the porter and give him a thousand marks, and he'll fix you up at once."
So I repaired to the Hotel Vienna, opposite the Vienna station. The night porter was very pessimistic, wouldn't take the thousand marks. "Come back in an hour," said he in a loud voice; "if there is a room then you'll have it; if not, you can't."
I went out to an orchestral "bar" near by and supped. When I came back the porter asked quietly for the thousand, and gave me the key of "Number Five." "At your service," said he, demurely.
Warsaw has greatly changed during the time I have known it, from the days of panic and police-assassinations in 1906, when the miserable green waggons of open horse-trams woggled along the main ways, and it seemed a city of endless cobbled stones. Warsaw was being governed by Russia much as we govern Ireland now, and murders of constabulary alternated with reprisals in which the innocent suffered more than the guilty. Strangely enough, the relentless methods of official Russia succeeded in subduing the revolutionaries, and in a few years was seen a calm and prosperous condition of affairs which lasted until the outbreak of the late war. A handsome service of electric trams and a great new bridge over the Vistula raised Warsaw's level from an external point of view, and made it something like a modern city. Then came the war, the German aeroplanes and their bombs, the violent attacks and the panics, shell-fire, the blowing-up of bridges, wild exodus of Warsaw people and entry of the Germans. Of the people who fled into Russia in 1915 few seem to have returned. Their places have been filled by Poles from German and Austrian Poland. The German-speaking Pole has displaced the Pole who knew Russian.
The Germans, of course, held the city from the summer of 1915 until the armistice, and they repaired the bridges and instituted German order in the city. The miracle of the armistice raised Poland from death, and now we have Warsaw as capital of a large new State. The maps of Poland in the streets, Poland as she is plus Poland as she believes she will be, show a country considerably larger than Germany.
It used to seem rather amusing in the drinking scene in "The Brothers Karamazof," when the Pole Vrublevsky, in proposing the health of Russia, inserted the proviso: "To Russia, with the boundaries she had before 1772." But it is serious matter to-day. For Poland has not only reached most of the boundaries of 1772 but some of them she has even transgressed, and still she asks more.
Poland is at enmity with all her neighbours, and by some of them is hated, loathed, and despised. And as an offset to the surrounding nations she has one open and rather noisy friendship, and that is with France. England she considered to be her enemy even before the British Government stated its view on the question of Silesia. She had decided to help France, and France had promised to help Poland, and England stood in the way of all manner of injustice and aggression. It is pathetic to think now of the work done for Poland by England during the war: the meetings that were held, the encouragement given to Padarewski, Dmowski and others, the immense sums subscribed to the Great Britain to Poland fund, and to the Polish Relief fund. These latter "charities" printed the woes of Poland in the advertisement columns of the British press for years, and collected the shillings and pounds of the benevolent everywhere. But you did not see such work being done for Poland in France. The Frenchman is more careful of his franc than the Englishman of his pound. But perhaps it is not easy to find now the Poles who benefited by British "charity." How much Great Britain subscribed and how the money was distributed is not generally known to the Pole. And, in any case, who cares?
The Germans disdain the Poles wordlessly. It is not easy to get a German to discuss the Polish people. The Russians do not like the Poles, but they are indulgent towards them and wait the day when Russia will wipe out insults. "Russia has plenty of time," is the formula. It must be a little galling to the Russian refugees, of whom General Wrangel estimates there are 100,000 in Poland, to see every public notice in the Russian language blued out as if there were no Russian-speaking people, to see Russian monuments cast down, and churches despoiled of their golden domes. But they bear it with equanimity, biding their time. Some, on the other hand, forgive the Poles because they recognize that Russians would have done the same in like case. The people of the other neighbouring States are distrustful or aloof. In a friendship with France, however, Poland would make up for all other enmities. Marshal Pilsudsky, with the glory of having defeated the Russians and won a victorious peace, is now pictured with Napoleon. He is even represented on picture post-cards pinning an order of merit on the breast of Napoleon—the occasion being the centenary of Napoleon's death. Pilsudsky is a man of sentiment, and when he made his important diplomatic journey to Paris last February, he bore with him a picture of Joan of Arc by Jan Mateiks, in order to express the gratitude of the Polish people to France. In Pilsudsky's honour a lesson in Polish geography and history was ordered to be given in all the schools of France on the 5th of February, 1921.
Prince Sapieha and Marshal Pilsudsky negotiated a secret treaty with France on that occasion—not with the Allies as a whole, but with France. As a seasonal fruit of that treaty came the Silesian adventure supported by France. The disarming of the population in Upper Silesia, conducted under French auspices, had taken the arms away from the Germans but left arms with the Poles. Added to that, guns, machine-guns, rifles, and ammunition, were run over into the plebiscite area, and a mercenary "insurrectionary" army was raised, partly from the local Polish population and partly from Poland proper. An army which the French Government held to be capable of intimidating the League of Nations garrison of ten thousand fully equipped men, was thus improvised. The supposition is that interested parties connived at its improvisation. It could not otherwise have sprung spontaneously into being. After the first week of the rising, many of the insurgents began to desert the leader Korfanty on the ground that their wages were not high enough. Much money had to be spent in the affair. It might be asked what interest has France to support Poland—is it sentiment? Many will attribute it to a French quixoticism, which in truth does not exist. France will be ready to drop Pilsudsky, as she has dropped Wrangel, when it suits her. But the French programme for Europe includes the complete dismantling of the German Empire, and by taking away Upper Silesia from Germany another great victory would be won in the war after the war. Therefore it has been worth while. And to this end France proceeds not openly but in the old-fashioned channels of secret intrigue. The favourite device is the arranging of a coup and then the presentation of the fait accompli, accompanied by a manipulation of the press. It is almost unnecessary to say in English that this sort of procedure has greatly damaged international understanding and good-will.
The Franco-Polish intrigue was only too manifest this May in Warsaw's streets. Ascension and the centenary of the death of Napoleon were on the same day. It was made into Napoleon Day and was a great festival. One of the principal squares had its name changed to Place Napoleon. There was a public Mass for the repose of Napoleon's soul. A statue of Napoleon was unveiled. There were military processions and the fêting of the French military mission, special honours for General du Moriez, who brought "les precieuses reliques de Napoleon" to Poland, and of General Niessel, and of M. de Panalieu, France's Minister Plenipotentiary in Poland. The street crowds stopped the cars and lifted the Frenchman on to their shoulders and carried them to plaudits and joy-shrieks and brass bands. It was amusing to see a diminutive French officer with grey head and beard, sprawling thus on a moving couch of Polish hands whilst he waved his hat and was pelted from all hands with cowslips and lilac. "Vive la France! Vive la France!" Polish Cossacks with white pennants on their lances come trotting through and break the crowds, and then come artillerymen and their guns, and then French diplomatic personalities protected by mounted guards with flashing sabres. The surging populace intervenes, and sways, and gives, and closes again. Here comes a great banner on which is embroidered the ominous white vulture of risen Poland, the ghostly bird that has sojourned a hundred years in the death kingdoms, and on the reverse side of the banner is depicted the Madonna and Child. The crowd becomes instantly bareheaded, and the Germans in it wisely take off their hats, too. Polish patriots follow, dressed in white and bearing aloft notice-boards wreathed in coloured cloths; on the notice-boards are watchwords: "We will not give up our Silesia," on others maps of the integral Poland showing the province of "Szlazk" in red. Specimens of insurrectionaries follow these sign-bearers, and they are dressed-up peasants and miners carrying scythes on poles; more crowds, more cheers! The Polish Press leaps its headlines in jingoism. Street politicians with bells bawl declamations across the many-headed. Windows open on third-floors, and clouds of political leaflets are scattered to the wind.
The same demonstrations with the same banners parade for days. On Sunday there is a review in front of the Russian Cathedral, and a French General pins decorations on Polish heroes. Great throngs in the streets sing the Marseillaise bareheaded. Warsaw breathes in and breathes out—hot air. Not all the Poles, however, share in this excitement. There were many in Warsaw who looked on coldly at the proceedings. "There is a Governmental claque that starts all these demonstrations" said one of them. "You ought not to be deceived by that any more than by the new posters on the walls every day. Bill-stickers are sent out by the Government each night. The people do not paste up these posters themselves. Most of us are in a desperate plight trying to earn an honest living. The only way to get rich is to work in with the administration and share in the spoil."
It is a common opinion that the low value of the mark (over 8,000 to the pound sterling) is due to the Government printing it ad libitum to meet its private ends. It is a gross scandal that the exchange value should have so fallen. With such a currency it is doubtful whether the present constitution of Poland can last. It already isolates Poland economically from the rest of Europe, and she cannot import goods even from Germany at such a rate. There is a vast, poor, seedy, underfed population. Food is comparatively cheap, and the peasant is evidently being quietly robbed, by giving him only a fifth of the money-value of his products, but even so a tiny loaf of bread costs twenty marks. There is butter. There is no sugar (at cafés there is liquid saccharine and you pass the saccharine bottle from one to another). An obligatory seventy-five mark dinner of two courses is served at the restaurants, but the mass of the people live on bread and sausage.
There has been a great exodus from the Ghetto to Russia, and Warsaw can no longer be said to be a predominantly Jewish city. The dignified Semite in his black gaberdine and low-crowned hat is now only an occasional figure on the Jerozolimska and Nowy Swiat. And the poor Jews of the slums are not multitudinous as they were. On the main street various trans-Atlantic shipping companies have opened offices and offer to book emigrants right through to the United States. These offices from morning till evening are crammed with people trying to get away from Poland. Here may be found, in addition to the local population, a certain number of people from Soviet Russia who have bribed the Polish officials and are trying to get to the land of opportunity as Poles. The United States, however, looks very coldly on these would-be citizens, be they Poles or Russians or Ukrainians or Letts or Lithuanians, or any other nationality of these suspected parts of Europe. The number of visas granted is now being cut down to a three per cent of previous emigration basis.
An interesting diversion from politics was provided by a visit to the Polish Theatre, where Shakespeare's "Kuplec Wenecki" was being performed. The main interest was naturally in Shylock. The Polish actors made very attractive Italian signors. Portia was a full-bosomed Polish beauty, who, with a male voice, made a fine effect as Doctor of Law. The Prince of Morocco and Shylock were, however, ethnographical studies. The Moor roared and barked and cut about in the air with his scimitar, and made the ladies scream and the audience laugh. Shylock was deliciously over-studied. The daily life of Warsaw was added to the grandeur of a rich Oriental merchant. Shylock's cleverness and intellectual assurance were obscured by funniosities such as a sing-song Potash-and-Perlmutter speech breaking into gabble, finger-counting, and beard-stroking, lying flat in the street and howling. But the audience appreciated this highly, and clapped only Shylock.
It was otherwise an old-fashioned performance. The Polish stage seems not to have developed very much. Polish literature has, however, increased considerably, and there are many shops well stocked with new Polish books. You seldom see a foreign book in a shop window. Russian books seem almost entirely to have disappeared. Owing to the exchange situation French and English books cost enormous numbers of marks.
A remarkable feature of the city's architecture today is the Russian Cathedral, with its slate-coloured domes divested of gold and divested of crosses, a mighty white stone building in the pride of place in the city. Who is responsible for the damage it would be difficult to say. Probably both Poles and Germans had something to do with it. The Kolokolnaya is blown up. The walls of the cathedral stream externally with pitch. Many of the frescoes inside have been damaged and the gold ornaments taken away. It is a grand Orthodox interior, breathing the spirit of Russia from every wall. It was regarded rather as a calculated affront to Poland in the old days—as the Russian population in Warsaw was not large. Now, however, a Roman Catholic altar has been erected, chairs have been brought in. There is a holy-water basin at the main entrance, an organ sounds forth from the choir's gallery, and a Polish priest drones the Latin liturgy. Multitudes of Poles flock in on Sunday morning, smiling, untroubled, unselfconscious; bowing, kneeling on one knee, piously crossing themselves in Latin style. If there are Russians in the congregation they make no sign. But what they must be feeling!
The appropriation of the cathedral is, no doubt, justified. But there is something in the coolness of it, in the hate of it and lack of tact which breeds the opposite of Christian charity in human hearts. The Slavs have much to learn. By the stealing of trains, the purloining of cathedrals, and false pretensions to their neighbours' lands, the Poles are showing that there is yet national tragedy ahead for them. They will be deceived by some nations and slaughtered by others. What have we raised her from the dead for—but to live again, to live and let live. All have rejoiced in the risen Poland, even the old destroyers of Poland—Germany, Russia, and Austria, all rejoiced until they realized the nature of the phantom. The beautiful white eagle that leapt from the tomb is a more sinister bird to-day, blood-ravenous, and scanning far horizons.
EXTRA LEAVES
(iv) On Nationality and an Armistice Baby
The personal idea of nationality suffered some heavy blows in the war and even heavier ones in the peace which followed. A mature Austrian suddenly becomes a Czech, a Hungarian who knows only Magyar becomes a Roumanian, a self-conscious Prussian is written into a Pole, and their hearts are supposed to respond to new loyalties. The famous lines: "Breathes there a man with soul so dead" have now a comical effect when recited in some parts of Europe. Men are saying such absurd things as "I am a German Czecho-Slovak," "I am a Polish Austrian Jew," "I am a Russian Armenian Greek." A relief from the imbroglio of nationalism might be found in the name of European with a higher loyalty to Europe as a whole, but few have reached that stage of knowledge and feeling.
Asked at Ellis Island what his nationality was a gloomy gentleman from Upper Silesia recently answered, "Plebiscite." And have there not been many babies born whose nationality has remained long in doubt, pending plebiscites and decisions of the Supreme Council? The plight of the plebiscite baby is, however, eclipsed by that of the Armistice one.
The following true story was told me by H.M. Consul at Munich. He had to decide the point at issue, or at least to take a decision upon it. The difficulty was that of stating the nationality of a child born on a ship at the time of the Armistice. The ship was a German one which had been captured by the British. It had a British crew, but it was bringing refugees from Murmansk, the Arctic port of Russia, to Reval on the Baltic. It was flying the Neutrality flag. The ship, however, was wrecked off the coast of Norway and was towed by a Danish boat into the harbour of Stavanger. None of the refugees were allowed ashore but the baby was born in the ship whilst it lay in the harbour. The parents were Russian, but an attempt was made to get the British Consul at Stavanger to register it as British. He refused. The English law is that the flag decides nationality and in this case the flag was neutral.
A neutral baby has, therefore, appeared on the scene. It is a case for the League of Nations to decide, We can only hope they will find it possible to give it the status of a "good European."
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
XI. FROM MUNICH
The first day in Munich was marked by police inspection in bed. The police come early to the hotels so as to catch people before they have got up and gone out. The only people who are immune are Bavarians. If you are a foreigner, even if you are a German from another part of Germany—a Saxon, a Prussian, a Westphalian, it is all the same, you must present yourself at the police-station and obtain permission to reside in Munich. This means some hours in a stuffy room. You must write a request for the permission in German and bring it some hours later and answer the usual set of questions and be charged 150 marks. I said I had not come to Germany to study the police system, and so by dint of perseverance cut through half the formalities and the waiting time and got away. An official wrote the request and even signed it for me himself. Nowhere is red-tape more absurd than when it is being wound by a defeated nation after a great war.
Bavaria is encouraged to think of herself as a separate country. French policy foreshadows an independent State of Southern Catholics. With that in view a French minister plenipotentiary has been sent to Munich, and we British have just followed the French suit by appointing our diplomatic representative also. Bavaria is not supposed to enter into foreign relationships except through the Reich. To this Bavaria has remained loyal. She has stood by the Reich even when the Reich has protested an inability to control her. The appointment of the French plenipotentiary was, therefore, taken as a calculated provocation and the minister was accorded a very hostile greeting in the Press. This annoyed him much, and he put it down, not to the general unpopularity of French policy, but to the secret intrigue of the British who, as it happens, are unusually intimate with Munich editors. The rivalry of English and French in diplomatic action is as marked here as it is in other capitals of Europe. Here, also, the natural antipathy which French chauvinism arouses locally is thought to be aggravated by British Intrigue. Our diplomats are given credit for being much more active than they are.
As I have already intimated, France favours a mergence of Austria and Bavaria in one State as a solution of Austria's economic problem. Bavaria would like Austria to be added to Germany as a whole. It would give the Catholic party a stronger voice in the Reich. But Bavaria has up till now steadfastly refused to sacrifice the advantages of belonging to the German confederation. British policy is not averse from Austria joining Germany, but no active steps have been taken to facilitate such an amalgamation. The treaty of Versailles practically inhibits it, and Britain remains passively loyal to that inhibition. The time may come when the French rivalry may enkindle our people to action, but it will be because the questions at issue are not brought forward into the light of ordinary publicity and discussed openly and frankly. Secret diplomacy among allies means secret quarreling. Open diplomacy, when both sides are open, is much more conducive to lasting loyalty and friendship.
I met in Munich several influential Bavarians, thanks to the hospitality and keenness of our Consul-General there, Mr. Smallbones. There was no ill-feeling of any kind towards English people, and, indeed, I met with no insult or cold treatment either from the working class or upper classes in Bavaria—only some surprise as at a rare visitor. For there are extremely few English people there now. The famous picture-galleries are still powerless to attract the American art pilgrim, though that is due more to the difficulty of obtaining permission to reside than to lack of interest in the collections. Possibly next year the police may relent. The food shortage is not so menacing. Moreover, the village of Ober-Ammergau proposes once more to have its religious fête and stage the "Life of Christ." "Whether we can have the play depends almost entirely on the Americans," say the villagers. "The money of visitors alone makes the performance possible to-day." There is talk, however, of an American film corporation financing the "Passion-Spiel" if exclusive cinema rights can be obtained. The war made a dire defeat of village talent, however. Several sure to have been billed for sacred parts were killed or crippled. Other prospective saints who served the Fatherland and came through whole are letting their beards grow now. If the difficulties are overcome and the play is performed, the sound of English will be no longer unfamiliar in Bavaria's capital.
Before this possibly Munich will have been for a few weeks Europe's storm-centre. The storm which broke in Budapest and then broke in Poland and Silesia will surely break again in Munich. For it is there, perhaps, that the destiny of Austria will be decided. For Bavaria is the centre of the intrigue for the unification of Austria and Germany. Concurrently the French are intriguing for their plan of an independent Bavaria.
I was at pains to inquire the general opinion of educated people and there seemed to be no separatism in Bavaria, no sentiment of the kind, and there was apparently no Roman Catholic propaganda in favour of Bavarian separatism. It is curious that whilst Slav States are ravaged by all sorts of local Sinn-Feinism, the for-ourselves-alone-ism of Slovaks, Croats, Montenegrins, Little Russians, and so forth, the instinct of all the constituent Germanic nations is to stand together. Teutonic solidarity is giving witness of itself in these days.
The grievances of the Tyrol were very strongly stated at a Munich dinner-party, a Bavarian count averring that that part of the Tyrol which had fallen to the dole of Italy was too strongly affiliated to the part which remained in Austria. It was recognized, however, that Italy was now friendly to Germany, and that no good part was likely to be achieved by doing anything to alienate Italian sympathy. The French, however, begin to count on some Italian support when the Austro-German idea is put to the test. The experimental plebiscite taken in the Tyrol was said to have been arranged from Munich. Its astonishing success from a German point of view at once encouraged the intrigue.
There was not much alarm on the subject of the "sanctions" which France threatened to apply. The Bavarian is too lethargic, slow, and easy-going to be readily frightened—in temperament he has little in common with the high-spirited, nervous Prussian. Bavarians spoke of Germany and Germany's war-debt with an aloofness as of neutrals. It did not trouble them deeply. They were sceptical as to France's ability to collect a huge indemnity. The fifty per cent tax they regarded as an absurdity. "It is possible to ruin Germany, but it is not possible to enslave her," was the common opinion.
"But in the event of the complete ruin of the rest of Germany, would it not be to the advantage of Bavaria to accept the idea of a separate State?" I argued.
"If France deprived Germany of coal by occupying the Ruhr basin and by allowing the Poles to hold Upper Silesia, Bavaria would have to look out for herself and make what arrangements she could," I was told. But it was an unwilling admission.
In the French scheme of things that is when Bavaria's moment comes. At one stage this May it seemed as if that moment were near, but now that Germany has accepted the alternative plans of payment of reparations, and the British Prime Minister has intervened on her behalf to stop the Polish annexation, the moment does not seem so near. But a great effort will doubtless yet be made to detach Bavaria from the rest.
Meanwhile, Bavaria took advantage of the intrigue to keep a territorial army of a kind undemobilized. The reich could demobilize it at will, but allows itself to appear helpless through Bavaria's independence. The situation was not helped by the arrival of a young British staff-officer, who said that the British Government sympathized with Bavaria, believing that she needed what troops she had to keep off Bolshevism. Eventually the pressure in Germany became so great that Bavaria gave a verbal promise to disarm—though to what extent that promise will be carried out must remain doubtful. Her militia is some protection for herself in case of a political conspiracy such as that of Korfanty in Silesia, but is no menace to any other neighbouring power.
Bavaria affects to be in deadly, daily fear of Bolshevism. "Under the shadow of the sanctions, Communism was developing strongly," said one. Speaking of the Russians, "Perhaps we shall all come to it," said another.
A rich Munich Jew, a cinema merchant, wanted to adopt a Vienna orphan. He wrote to Vienna for a Jewish male child, well-authenticated as an orphan; he did not want the parents to come and sponge on him in later years. The child was brought to Munich. Presently application was made to the police for an extra milk ration on account of the boy. Then the police discovered the new arrival. "What!" said they, "living here without a permit! Application for permission to reside must be made at once."
Application was made and permission was refused. The reason given was that the housing shortage in Munich was too great. But some one was at pains to find out the real reason. It was that the boy was a Jew, and who could say—in twenty years, educated in the best institutions of Munich—he might become a Trotsky or a Bela Kun or Bavarian Eisner.
"But why not a Disraeli?" said some one who listened to the story.
Permission was eventually granted.
One attempt has been made to seize Munich for the proletariat, and the comfortable Bavarian realized that whilst he has a never-failing stomach for good brown beer he has no stomach for revolution. The great city is a monument of bourgeois enterprise. Business is more than politics, and social conviviality than either.
S—— drove me out to the valley of the Iser, "Iser rolling rapidly." We went to Grunewald, we passed Ludendorf's villa, curious credulous Ludendorf, who took Winston Churchill at his word when the later penned his appeal to Germany in the "Evening News" to save Europe by fighting the Bolsheviks, and prepared a plan whereby the German army was reconstituted in the strength at which in 1918 it was dissolved. We surveyed from the hurrying car a fine park-like country, rich and calm, and sensibly remote from Europe's centre. It was a lovely springtide, and new hope fallaciously decked Southern Germany, as if all trouble were over and all had been forgiven. We walked, too, in the gardens of the Nymphenburg Palace where the mad king used to play. We visited the State Theatre, where Wagnerian opera still holds the patient ear, and there we heard, not Wagner, but Shakespeare's "Lear," done in a jog-trot, uninspired, later-Victorian style. One felt as if the theatre had slept for thirty years and then, awakening, had resumed in the same style as before. It is often said reproachfully in Germany that Queen Victoria would never have made the late war, and that Victorian England was much nearer to Germany. It was nearer to the Germany of Queen Victoria's time. That is quite true.
England has gone on and become more European; her passion for individual freedom and self-expression has steadily developed, whilst Germany has remained submissively under the yoke of authority and discipline. Germany, with all her learning and her industry, her unstinted application, and her good parts, has become dull. There was an enormous amount of dulness, genuine uninspired dulness, in the Germans in the war. You can identify it now when you visit Germany in peace.