There is a celebrated and pro-Ally newspaper in New York whose motto is "All the news that's fit to print." The motto of the German War Press Bureau is "All the news that's safe to print."
CHAPTER IX
ANTON LANG OF OBERAMMERGAU
While I was at home on a few weeks' visit in October, 1915, I read in the newspapers a simple announcement cabled from Europe that Anton Lang of Oberammergau had been killed in the great French offensive in Champagne. This came as a shock to many Americans, for the name of this wonderful character who had inspired people of all shades of opinion and religious belief in his masterful impersonation of Christ in the decennial Passion Play was almost as well known in the United States and in England as in his native Bavaria, and better, I found than in Prussia.
British and American tourist agencies had put Oberammergau on the map of the world. The interest in America after the Passion Play of 1910 was so great, in fact, that some newspapers ran extensive series of illustrated articles describing it. The man who played the part of Christ was idealised, everybody who had seen him liked him, respected him and admired him. Thousands had said that somehow a person felt better after he had seen Anton Lang. As a supreme test of his popularity, American vaudeville managers asked him to name his own terms for a theatrical tour.
And now the man who had imbued his life with that of the Prince of Peace had thrown the past aside, and with the spiked helmet in place of the Crown of Thorns had gone to his death trying not to save but to slaughter his fellow-men.
Truly, the changes wrought by war are great!
* * * * *
In Berlin I inquired into the circumstances of Anton Lang's death. Nobody knew anything definite. Berlin knew little of him in life, much less than London, New York or Montreal.
Munich is different. There his name is a household word. Herr von
Meinl, then Director of the Bavarian Ministry, now member of the
Bundesrat, told me that he believed that there was a mistake in the
report that Anton had been killed.
Later, when tramping through the Bavarian Highlands, I walked one winter day from Partenkirchen to Oberammergau, for I had a whim to know the truth of the matter.
On the lonely mountain road that winds sharply up from Oberau I overtook a Benedictine monk who was walking to the monastery at Ettal. We talked of the war in general and of the Russian prisoners we had seen in the saw-mills at Untermberg. I was curious to hear his views upon the war, and I soon saw that not even the thick walls of a monastery are proof against the idea-machine in the Wilhelmstrasse. Despite Cardinal Mercier's denunciation of German methods in Belgium, this monk's views were the same as the rest of the Kaiser's subjects. He did, however, admit that he was sorry for the Belgians, although, in true German fashion, he did not consider Germany to blame. He sighed to think that "the Belgian King had so treacherously betrayed his people by abandoning his neutrality and entering into a secret agreement with France and Great Britain." He recited the regular story of the secret military letters found by the Germans after they had invaded Belgium, the all-important marginal notes of which were maliciously left untranslated in the German Press.
We parted at Ettal, and I pushed on down the narrow valley to Oberammergau. The road ahead was now in shadow, but behind me the mountain mass was dazzling white in the rays of the setting sun. "What a pity," I thought, "that the peasant must depart from these beautiful mountains and valleys to die in the slime of the trenches."
The day was closing in quiet and grandeur, yet all the time the shadow of death was darkening the peaceful valley of the Ammer. I became aware of it first as I passed the silent churchyard with its grey stones rising from the snow. For there, on the other side of the old stone wall that marks the road, was a monument on which the Reaper hacks the toll of death. The list for 1870 was small, indeed, compared with that of die grosse Zeit. I looked for Lang and found it, for Hans had died, as had also Richard.
I passed groups of men cutting wood and hauling ice and grading roads, men with rounder faces and flatter noses than the Bavarians, still wearing the yellowish-brown uniform of Russia. That is, most of them wore it. Some, whose uniforms had long since gone to tatters, were dressed in ordinary clothing, with flaming red R's painted on trousers and jackets.
An old woman with a heavy basket on her back was trudging past a group of these. "How do you like them?" I asked. "We shall really miss them when they go," she said. "They seem part of the village now. The poor fellows, it must be sad for them so far from home."
Evidently the spirit of new Germany had not saturated her.
I went through crooked streets, bordered with houses brightly frescoed with biblical scenes, to the Pension Dahein, the home of the man I wished to see. As he rose from his pottery bench to welcome me, I felt that beneath his great blue apron and rough garb of the working man was true nobility. I did not need to ask if he was Anton Lang. I had seen his picture and had often been told that his face was the image of His Who died on the Cross. I expected much, but found infinitely more. I felt that life had been breathed into a Rubens masterpiece. No photograph can do him justice, for no lens can catch the wondrous light in his clear blue eyes.
I was the only guest at the Pension Daheim; indeed, I was the only stranger in Oberammergau. I sat beside Anton Lang in his work room as his steady hands fashioned things of clay, I ate at table with him, and in the evening we pulled up our chairs to the comfortable fireside, where we talked of his country and of my country, of the Passion Play and of the war.
I had been sceptical about him until I met him. I wondered if he was self-conscious about his goodness, or if he was a dreamer who could not get down to the realities of this world, or if he had been spoiled by flattery, or if piety was part of his profession.
When I finally went from there I felt that I really understood him. His life has been without an atom of reproach, yet he never poses as pious. He does not preach, or stand aloof, or try to make you feel that he is better than you, but down in your heart you know that he is. He has been honoured by royalty and men of state, yet he remains simple and unaffected, though quietly dignified in manner. He is truly Nature's Nobleman, with a mind that is pure and a face the mirror of his mind.
To play well his role of Christus is the dominating passion of his life. Not the make-up box, but his own thoughts must mould his features for the role, which has been his in 1890, 1900 and 1910.
His travels include journeys to Rome and to the Holy Land. He is well read, an interesting talker, and an interested listener. He commented upon the great change in the spirit of the people, a change from the intoxicating enthusiasm of victory to a war-weary feeling of trying to hold out through a sense of duty. To my question as to when he thought the war would end, he answered: "When Great Britain and Germany both realise that each must make concessions. Neither can crush the other."
The doctrine that "only through hate can the greatest obstacles in life be overcome" has not reached his home, nor was there hanging on the wall, as in so many German homes, the famous order of the day of Crown Prince Rupert of Bavaria, which commences with "Soldiers of the army! Before you are the English!" in which he exhorts his troops with all the tricky sophistry of hate.
Anton Lang has worked long hard hours to bring up his family, rather than accept fabulous offers for a theatrical tour of America. He refused these offers through no mere caprice.
"I admit that the temptation is great," he said to me. "Here I must always work hard and remain poor; there I quickly could have grown rich. But the Passion Play is not a business," he continued earnestly. "Nearly three hundred years ago, when a terrible plague raged over the land, the people of Oberammergau vowed to Almighty God that if He would save their village, they would perform every ten years in His glory the Passion of His Divine Son. The village was saved and Oberammergau has kept its promise. You see, if I had accepted those theatrical offers I could never again live in my native village, and that would break my heart."
There is carefully preserved in the town hall at Oberammergau an old chronicle which tells of the plague. There will undoubtedly be preserved in the family of Lang a new chronicle, a product of the war, printed in another country, a chronicle which did not rest content with a notice of Anton's obituary, but told the details of his death in battle.
Frau Lang showed me this chronicle. She seemed to have something on her mind of which she wished to speak, after I told her that I was an American journalist. At length one evening, after the three younger children bad gone to bed, and the eldest was industriously studying his lessons for the next day, she ventured. "American newspapers tell stories which are not at all true, don't they?" she half stated, half asked.
My natural inclination was to defend American journalism by attacking that of Germany, but something restrained me, I did not know what. "Of course," I explained, "in a country such as ours where the Press is free, evils sometimes arise. We have all kinds of newspapers. A few are very yellow, but the vast majority seek to be accurate, for accuracy pays in the long run in self-respecting journalism." I thought that perhaps she was referring to the announcement of the death of the man who was sitting with us in the room. We both agreed, however, that such a mistake was perfectly natural since two Langs of Oberammergau had already been killed. In fact, Anton had read of his own death notice in a Munich paper. The American correspondent who had cabled the news on two occasions had presumably simply "lifted" the announcement from the German papers. Frau Lang could understand that very well when I explained, but how about the stories that Anton had been serving a machine-gun, and other details which were pure fiction?
She had trump cards which she played at this point. Two gaudily coloured "Sunday Supplements" of a certain newspaper combination in the United States were spread before me. The first told of how Anton Lang had become a machine-gunner of marked ability, and that he served his deadly weapon with determination. Could the Oberammergau Passion Play ever exert the old influence again, after this? was the query at the end of the article.
A second had all the details of Anton's death and was profusely illustrated. The story started with Anton going years ago into the mountains to try out his voice in order to develop it for his histrionic task. There was a brief account of how he had followed in the path of the Prince of Peace, and of the tremendous effect he had upon his audiences.
Then came the war, which tore him from his humble home. The battle raged, the Bavarians charged the French lines, and the spot-light of the story was played upon a soldier from Oberammergau who lay wounded in "No-Man's Land." Another charging wave swept by this soldier, and as he looked up he saw the face of the man he had respected and loved more than all other men, the face of Anton Lang, the Christus of Oberammergau. The soldier covered his eyes with his hands, for never had Anton Lang looked as he did then. The eyes which had always been so beautiful, so compassionate, had murder in them now.
The scene shifted. A French sergeant and private crouched by their machine-gun ready to repel the charge, the mutual relationship being apparently somewhat that of a plumber and his assistant. They sprayed the oncoming Bavarians with a shower of steel and piled the dead high outside the French trenches. The charge had failed, and the sergeant began to act strangely. At length he broke the silence. "Did you see that last boche, Jean?" he asked. "Did you see that face?" Jean confessed that he did not. "You are fortunate, Jean," said the sergeant. "Never have I seen such a face before. I felt as if there was something supernatural about it. I felt that it was wrong to kill that man. I hated to do it, Jean.—But then the butcher was coming at us with a knife two feet long."
I finished reading and looked up at the questioning eyes of Frau Lang and at the wonderful, indescribable blue eyes of the "butcher" across the table, who, I may add, is fifty-two years of age, and has not had a day's military training in his life.
"And look," said Frau Lang, "these men are not even
Oberammergauers."
She pointed to one of the illustrations which depicted a small group of rather vicious-looking Prussians, with rifles ready peering over the rim of a trench. The picture was labelled "Four apostles now serving at the Front."
"And see," continued the perplexed woman, "there is Johann Zwinck, the Judas in the play. It says that he is at the front. Why, he is sixty-nine years old, and is still the village painter. Only yesterday I heard him complain that the war was making it difficult for him to get sufficient oil to mix his paint."
I was at a loss for words. "When one compares such terrible untruths with our German White Book," declared Frau Lang, "it is indeed difficult for the American people to understand the true situation."
I felt that it would be useless for me at that moment to explain certain very important omissions in the German White Book. Anything would look white in comparison with the yellow journal I had just read. But I knew, and tried to explain that the particular newspaper combination which printed such rubbish was well known in America for its inaccuracies and fabrications, and although it was pro-German, it would sacrifice anything for sensation. But the good woman, being a German, and consequently accustomed to standardisation, could not dissociate this newspaper from the real Press.
CHAPTER X
SUBMARINE MOTIVES
The German submarines are standardised. The draughts and blue prints of the most important machinery are multiplied and sent, if necessary, to twenty different factories, while all the minor stampings are produced at one or other main factory. The "assembling" of the submarines, therefore, is not difficult. During the war submarine parts have been assembled at Trieste, Zeebrugge, Kiel, Bremerhaven, Stettin, and half a dozen other places in Germany unnecessary to relate. With commendable foresight, Germany sent submarine parts packed as machinery to South America, where they are being assembled somewhere on the west coast.
The improvement, enlargement, and simplification of the submarine has progressed with great rapidity.
When I was in England after a former visit to Germany I met a number of seafolk who pooh-poohed extensive future submarining, by saying that, no matter how many submarines the Germans might be able to produce, the training of submarine officers and crew was such a difficult task that the "submarine menace," as it was then called in England, need not be taken too seriously.
The difficulty is not so great. German submarine officers and men are trained by the simple process of double or treble banking of the crews of submarines on more or less active service. Submarine crews are therefore multiplied probably a great deal faster than the war destroys them. These double or treble crews, who rarely go far away from German waters, and are mostly trained in the safe Baltic, are generally composed of young but experienced seamen. There are, however, an increasing number of cases of soldiers being transferred abruptly to the U-boat service.
The education of submarine officers and crew begins in thorough German fashion on land or in docks, in dummy or disused submarines, accompanied by much lecture work and drill. Submarine life is not so uncomfortable as we think. With the exception of the deprivation of his beer, which is not allowed in submarines, or, indeed, any form of alcohol, except a small quantity of brandy, which is kept under the captain's lock and key, Hans in his submarine is quite as comfortable as Johann in his destroyer.
Extra comforts are forwarded to submarine men, which consist of gramophone records (mostly Viennese waltzes), chocolate, sausages, smoked eels, margarine, cigars, cigarettes, and tobacco, a small and treasured quantity of real coffee, jam, marmalade, and sugar. All these, I was proudly told, were extras. There is no shortage in the German Navy.
I learned nothing of value about the largest German submarines, except that everybody in Germany knew they were being built, and by the time the gossip of them reached Berlin the impression there was that they were at least as large as Atlantic liners.
Now as to German submarine policies. The part that has to do with winning the war will be dealt with in the next chapter. But there is also a definite policy in connection with the use of submarines for winning the "war after the war."
The National Liberal Party, of which Tirpitz is the god, is at the head of the vast, gradually solidifying mammoth trust, which embraces Krupps, the mines, shipbuilding yards, and the manufactures. Now and then a little of its growth leaks out, such as the linking up of Krupps with the new shipbuilding.
The scheme is brutally simple and is going on under the eyes of the British every day. These people believe that by building ships themselves and destroying enemy and neutral shipping, they will be the world's shipping masters at the termination of the war. In their attitude towards Norwegian shipping, you will notice that they make the flimsiest excuse for the destruction of as much tonnage as they can sink. It was confidently stated to me by a member of the National Liberal Party, and by no means an unimportant one, that Germany is building ships as rapidly as she is sinking them. That I do not believe; but that a great part of her effort is devoted to the construction of mercantile vessels I ascertained beyond the shadow of a doubt.
I have met people in England who refuse to believe that Germany, battling on long lines east and west, and constructing with feverish haste war vessels of every description, can find sufficient surplus energy to build ships which will not be of the slightest use until after the war is finished. I can only say that I personally have seen the recently completed Hamburg-America liners Cap Polonio and Cap Finisterre anchored in the Elbe off Altona. They are beautiful boats of 20,000 and 16,000 tons, a credit to the German shipbuilding industry, which has made such phenomenal strides in recent years. At Stettin I passed almost under the stem of the brand new 21,000 ton Hamburg-South America liner, Tirpitz—which for obvious business reasons may be re-named after the war.
Both at Hamburg and Lubeck, where the rattle of the pneumatic riveter was as incessant as in any American city in course of construction, I was amazed at the number of vessels of five or six thousand tons which I saw being built. Furthermore, the giant North German, Lloyd liner, Hindenburg, is nearing completion, while the Bismarck, of the Hamburg-America Line will be ready for her maiden trip in the early days of peace.
Another part of the National Liberals' policy is the keeping alive of all German businesses, banks and others, in enemy countries. Some people in England seem to think that the Germans are anxious to keep these businesses alive in order to make money. Many Germans regard John Bull as extremely simple, but not so simple as to allow them to do that. So long as the businesses are kept going until after the war, when they can again start out with redoubled energy, the Germans desire nothing more. The Deutsche Bank, for example, which bears no comparison to an English or American bank, but which is an institution for promoting both political and industrial enterprise, is entrenched behind so powerful an Anglo-German backing in London, I was informed on many occasions, that the British Government dare not close it down. The mixture of spying and propaganda with banking, with export, with manufacture, seems so foreign to Anglo-Saxon ways as to be almost inconceivable.
Coincident with the destruction of foreign shipping, and the maintenance of their businesses in enemy countries (England and Italy especially) is the exploitation of the coal and other mines, oil wells, and forests in occupied enemy territory. The French and Belgian coalfields are being worked to the utmost, together with the iron mines at Longwy and Brieux. Poland is being deforested to such an extent that the climate is actually altering.
It is a vast and definite scheme, with such able leaders as Herr Bassermann, the real leader of the National Liberal Party, Herr Stresemann, and Herr Hirsch, of Essen. "We have powerful friends, not only in London, Milan, Rome, Madrid, New York, and Montreal, but throughout the whole of South America, and everywhere except in Australia where that verdammter Hooges (Hughes) played into the hands of our feeble, so-called leader, von Bethmann-Hollweg, by warning the people that the British people would follow Hughes' lead."
So much for the commercial part of submarining.
U-boating close to England has long ceased to be a popular amusement with the German submarine flotilla, who have a thoroughly healthy appreciation of the various devices by which so many of them have been destroyed. The National Liberals believe that the British will not be able to tackle long-distance submarines operating in the Atlantic and elsewhere. Their radius of action is undoubtedly increasing almost month by month. From remarks made to me I do not believe that these submarines have many land bases at great distances—certainly none in the United States. They may have floating bases; but this I do know—that their petrol-carrying capacity altogether exceeds that of any earlier type of submarine, and that their surface speed, at any rate in official tests, runs up to nearly 20 knots.
The trip of the Deutschland was not only for the purpose of bringing a few tons of nickel and rubber, but for thoroughly testing the new engines (designed by Maybach), for bringing back a hundred reports of the effects of submersion in such cold waters as are to be found off the banks of Newfoundland, for ascertaining how many days' submerged or surface travelling is likely to be experienced, and, indeed, for making such a trial trip across the Atlantic and back as was usual in the early days of steamships.
CHAPTER XI
THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE
AS enthusiastic, war-mad crowd had gathered about an impromptu speaker in the Ringstrasse, not far from the Hotel Bristol, in Vienna, one pleasant August evening in 1914. His theme was the military prowess of Austria-Hungary and Germany.
"And now," he concluded, "Japan has treacherously joined our enemies. Yet we should not be disturbed, for her entrance will but serve to bring us another ally too. You all know of the ill-feeling between the United States and Japan. At any moment we may hear that the great Republic has declared war." He called for cheers, and the Ringstrasse echoed with Hoch! Hoch! Hoch! for the United States of America.
That was my introduction to European opinion of my country during the war. During my four weeks in the Austro-Serbian zone of hostilities, I had heard no mention of anything but the purely military business at hand.
The following evening from the window of an "American-Tourist-Special Train" I looked down on the happy Austrians who jammed the platform, determined to give the Americans a grand send-off, which they did with flag-waving and cheers. A stranger on the platform thrust a lengthy typewritten document into my hands, with the urgent request that I should give it to the Press in New York. It was a stirring appeal to Americans to "witness the righteousness of the cause of the Central Powers in this war which had been forced upon them." Three prominent citizens of Vienna had signed it, one of whom was the famous Doctor Lorenz.
Berlin, in an ecstasy of joyful anticipation of the rapid and triumphal entrance into Paris, was a repetition of Vienna. True, in the beginning, Americans, mistaken for Englishmen by some of the undiscerning, had been roughly treated, but a hint from those in high authority changed that. In like manner, well-meaning patriots who persisted in indiscriminately mobbing all members of the yellow race were urged to differentiate between Chinese and Japanese.
So I found festive Berlin patting Americans on the back, cheering Americans in German-American meetings, and prettily intertwining the Stars and Stripes and the German flag.
"Now is your opportunity to take Canada," said the man in the street. In fact, it was utterly incomprehensible to the average German that we should not indulge in some neighbouring land-grabbing while Britain was so busy with affairs in Europe.
The German Foreign Office was, of course, under no such delusion, although it had cherished the equally absurd belief that England's colonies would rebel at the first opportunity. The Wilhelmstrasse was, however, hard at work taking the propaganda which it had so successfully crammed down the throats of the German citizen and translating it into English to be crammed down the throats of the people in America. This was simply one of the Wilhelmstrasse's numerous mistakes in the psychological analysis of other people. But the Wilhelmstrasse possesses the two estimable qualities of perseverance and willingness to learn, with the result that its recent propaganda in the United States has been much more subtle and very much more effective.
The American newspapers which reached Germany after the outbreak of war gave that country its first intimation that her rush through Belgium was decidedly unpopular on the other side of the Atlantic. Furthermore, many American newspapers depicted the Kaiser and the Crown Prince in a light quite new to German readers, who with their heads full of Divine Right ideas considered the slightest caricature of their imperial family as brutally sacrilegious.
But the vast majority of Germans never saw an American newspaper. How is it, then, that they began to hate the United States so intensely? The answer is simple. In the early winter of 1914-15, the German Government with its centralised control of public opinion turned on the current of hatred against everything American as it had already done against everything British, for the war had come to a temporary stalemate on both fronts, and the Wilhelmstrasse had to excuse their failure to win the short, sharp pleasant war into which the people had jumped with anticipation of easy victory. "If it were not for American ammunition the war would have been finished long ago!" became the key-note of the new gospel of hate, a gospel which has been preached down to the present.
Just before I left Germany the "Reklam Book Company" of Leipzig issued an anti-American circular which flooded the country. The request that people should enclose it in all their private letters was slavishly followed with the same zest with which the Germans had previously attached Gott strafe England stickers to their correspondence.
The circular represented a 7000-ton steamer ready to take on board the cargo of ammunition which was arranged neatly on the pier in the foreground. The background was occupied by German troops, black lines dividing them into three parts, tagged respectively—30,000 killed, 40,000 slightly wounded, 40,000 seriously wounded. This, then, is the graphic illustration of the casualties inflicted upon the German Army by a single cargo of one moderate-sized liner.
Since at such a rate, it would take less than two hundred cargoes of this astoundingly effective ammunition to put the entire German Army out of action, one wonders why Britain troubles herself to convert her industries.
Ere the first winter of war drew to a close the official manipulators of the public opinion battery had successfully electrified the nation into a hate against the United States second only to that bestowed on Great Britain. And so it came about that the Government had the solid support of the people when the original submarine manifesto of February 4th, 1915, warning neutral vessels to keep out of the war zone, threatened a rupture with the United States. When two weeks later Washington sent a sharp note of protest to Berlin, the Germans became choleric every time they spoke of America or met an American.
"Why should we let America interfere with our plan to starve England?" was the question I heard repeatedly. Their belief that they could starve England was absolute. What could be simpler than putting a ring of U-boats round the British Isles and cutting off all trade until the pangs of hunger should compel Britain to yield? I heard no talk then about the "base crime of starving women and children," which became their whine a year later when the knife began to cut the other way.
In 1915 it was immaterial to the mass of Germans whether America joined their enemies or not. Their training had led them to think in army corps, and they frankly and sneeringly asked us, "What could you do?" They were still in the stage where they freely applied to enemies and possible enemies the expression, "They are afraid of us." "The more enemies, the more glory," was the inane motto so popular early in the war that it was even printed on post cards.
The Gulflight, flying the Stars and Stripes, was torpedoed in the reign of submarine anarchy immediately inaugurated. But two can play most games, and when the British Navy made it increasingly difficult for U-boats to operate in the waters near the British Isles, the German Foreign Office and the German Admiralty began to entertain divergent opinions concerning the advisability of pushing the submarine campaign to a point which would drag the United States into the war.
Only a few people in Germany know that von Bethmann-Hollweg strenuously opposed the plan to sink the Lusitania. That is, he opposed it up to a point. The advertisement from the German Embassy at Washington which appeared in American newspapers warning Americans could not have appeared without his sanction. In the last days of July, 1914, backed by the Kaiser, he had opposed the mobilisation order sufficient to cause a three days' delay—which his military opponents in German politics claim was the chief cause of the failure to take Paris—but in the case of the Lusitania he was even more powerless against rampant militarism.
For nearly a year after the colossal blunder of the Lusitania, there existed in the deep undercurrents of German politics a most remarkable whirlpool of discord, in which the policy of von Tirpitz was a severe tax on the patience of von Bethmann-Hollweg and the Foreign Office, for it was they who had to invent all sorts of plausible excuses to placate various neutral Powers.
The Kaiser after disastrously meddling with the General Staff during the first month of the war, subsequently took no active hand in military, naval and political policies unless conflicts between his chosen chieftains forced him to do so.
One striking instance of this occurred when the Wilhelmstrasse discovered that Washington was in possession of information in the "Arabic incident" which made the official excuses palpably too thin. After the German authorities became convinced that their failure to guarantee that unresisting merchantmen would not be sunk until passengers and crew were removed to a place of safety would cause a break with the United States, Tirpitz asserted that the disadvantages to Germany from America as an enemy would be slight in comparison with the advantages from the relentless submarining which in his opinion would defeat Britain. He therefore advocated that no concessions be made to Washington. Von Bethmann-Hollweg was of the opposite opinion. A deadlock resulted, which was broken when the Kaiser summoned both men to separate and secret conferences. He decided in favour of the Chancellor, whereupon Washington received the famous "Arabic Guarantees." It is highly significant that these were never made known to the German people.
Then followed six months of "frightfulness," broken pledges, notes, crises, semi-crises, and finally the great crisis de luxe in the case of the Sussex. When, a few days after my return to England from Germany, I used the expression "Sussex Crisis" to a leading Englishman, he expressed surprise at the term "crisis." "We did not get the impression in England that the affair was a real crisis," he said.
My experiences in Germany during the last week in April and the first four days in May, 1916, left no doubt in my mind that I was living through a crisis, the outcome of which would have a tremendous effect upon the subsequent course of the war. Previous dealings with Washington had convinced the German Government as well as the German people that the American Government would stand for anything. Thus the extraordinary explanation of the German Foreign Office that the Sussex was not torpedoed by a German submarine, since the only U-boat commander who had fired a torpedo in the channel waters on the fateful day had made a sketch of the vessel which he had attacked, which, according to the sketch, was not the Sussex.
The German people were so supremely satisfied with this explanation that they displayed chagrin which quickly changed to ugliness when the German Press was allowed to print enough of the news from Washington to prepare the public mind for something sharp from across the Atlantic. I have seen Berlin joyful, serious, and sad during the war; I have seen it on many memorable days; but never have I seen it exactly as on Saturday, April 22nd, the day when the Sussex Ultimatum was made known through the Press. The news was headlined in the afternoon editions. The eager crowds snapped them up, stood still in their tracks, and then one and all expressed their amazement to anybody near them, "President Wilson began by shaking his fist at Germany, and ended by shaking his finger," was the way one of the President's political opponents summarised his Notes. That was the opinion in Germany. And now he had "pulled a gun." The Germans could not understand it. When they encountered any of the few Americans left in their country they either foamed in rage at them, or, in blank amazement, asked them what it was all about.
It was extremely interesting to the student of the war to see that the people really did not understand what it was all about. Theodor Wolff, the brilliant editor of the Berliner Tageblatt, with great daring for a German editor, raised this point in the edition in which the Ultimatum was printed. He asserted that the German people did not understand the case because they purposely had been left in the dark by the Government. He said, among other things, that his countrymen were in no position to understand the feeling of resentment in the United States, because the meagre reports permitted in the German Press never described such details as the death agonies of women and children struggling helplessly in the water.
This article in the Tageblatt was the striking exception to the rest of the Press comment throughout Germany, for the German Government made one of its typical moves at this point. "To climb down or not to climb down," was a question which would take several days to decide. Public opinion was already sufficiently enraged against America to give the Government united support in case of a break, but it must be made more enraged and consequently more united. Thus on Easter Sunday the full current of hate was turned on in the German Press. President Wilson was violently attacked for working in the interest of the Allies, whom he wished to save. Germany would not bow to this injustice, she would fight, and America, too, would be made to feel what it means to go to war with Germany. The German Press did its part to inflame a united German sentiment, and the Foreign Office, which believes in playing the game both ways when it is of advantage to do so, with characteristic thoroughness did not permit the American correspondents to cable to their papers the virulent lies, such as those in the Tagliche Rundschau, about the affair in general and President Wilson in particular. These papers were furthermore not allowed to leave Germany.
On the evening preceding the publication of the Ultimatum, Maximilian Harden's most famous number of the Zukunft appeared with the title "If I Were Wilson." On Saturday morning it was advertised on yellow and black posters throughout Berlin, and was quickly bought by a feverish public to whom anything pertaining to German-American relations was of the sharpest interest. The remarkable article was directly at variance with all the manufactured ideas which had been storming in German brains for more than a year. The British sea policy was represented in a light quite different from the officially incubated German conception of it. President Wilson was correctly portrayed as strictly neutral in all his official acts. This staggered Harden's readers quite as much as his attacks on the brutal submarine policy of his country.
A careless censor had allowed "If I Were Wilson," to appear. But a vigilant Government, ever watchful of the food for the minds of its children, hastened with the usual police methods to correct the mistake. The Zukunft was beschlagnahmt, which means that the police hastily gathered up all unsold copies at the publishers, kiosks, and wherever else they were to be found. If a policeman saw one in a man's pocket he took it away.
Why did the Government do everything in its power to suppress this article? The Government fully understood that there was nothing in it that was not true, nothing in it of a revolutionary character. It divulged no military or naval secrets. It was a simple statement of political truths. But the German great Idea Factory in the Wilhelmstrasse does not judge printed matter from its truth or falsity. The forming of the public mind in the mould in which it will best serve the interests of the State is the sole consideration. While the Directors of Thought were deliberating on the relative disadvantages of a curtailment of submarine activity and America as an enemy, and the order of the day was to instill hatred, no matter how, they decided that it would be inadvisable for the people to read the true statements of Harden.
One American correspondent began to cable five thousand words of "If I Were Wilson" to his paper. The Censor stopped him after he had sent thirteen hundred. A rival correspondent, when he glanced at the article immediately after it had appeared, decided that it was more suitable for mail matter than cable matter, put it in an envelope, and actually scored a scoop over all opponents.
During the following days, when the leaders of Germany were in conference at the Headquarters of the General Staff, I travelled as much as possible to find out German sentiment. The people were intoxicated with the successes against Verdun, and were angrily in favour of a break. One German editor said to me "The Government has educated them to believe that the U-boat can win the war. Their belief is so firm that it will be difficult for the authorities to explain a backdown to Wilson."
It was not. The Government can explain anything to the German people. The back-down came, causing sentiments which can be divided into three groups. One, "We were very good to give in to America. England would not be so good." Two, "Americans put us in a bad position. To curtail our submarine weapon means a lengthening of the war. On the other hand, to add America to the list of our enemies would lengthen the war still more." Three, "We shall wait our opportunity and pay back America for what she has done to us." I heard the latter expression everywhere, particularly among the upper classes. It was the expression of Doctor Drechsler, head of the Amerika-Institut in Berlin, and one of the powerful propaganda triumvirate composed of himself, Doctor Bertling, and the late Professor Munsterberg.
With the increasing deterioration inside the German Empire the resolve of the Chancellor to avoid a clash with the United States strengthened daily. His opponents, however, most of the great Agrarians and National Liberals, the men behind Tirpitz, continue to work for a new submarine campaign in which all neutrals will be warned that their vessels will be sunk without notice if bound to or from the ports of Germany's enemies. They are practical men, who believe that only through the unrestricted use of the submarine can Britain, whom they call the keystone of the opposition, be beaten. The Chancellor is also a practical man, who believes that the entrance of America on the side of the Entente would seal the fate of Germany. He is supported by Herr Helfferich, the Vice-Chancellor, and Herr Zimmermann, the foreign Secretary, men with a deep insight into the questions of trade and treaties. They believe that peace will be made across the table and not at the point of the sword, and they realise that it is much better for Germany not to have the United States at the table as an enemy.
In September, 1916, the Chancellor began to lay the wires for a new campaign, a campaign to enlist the services of Uncle Sam in a move for peace. It is significant, however, that he and his Government continue to play the game both ways. While Germany presses her official friendship on the United States, and conducts propaganda there to bring the two nations closer together, she at the same time keeps up the propaganda of hate at home against America, in order to have the support of the people in case of emergency.
The attacks against Washington in the Continental Times show which way the wind blows, for this paper is subsidised by the German Foreign Office through the simple device of buying 30,000 copies of each issue—it appears three times weekly—at 2 1/2d. per copy. The editors are Aubrey Stanhope, an Englishman who even before the war could not return to his native country for reasons of his own, and R. L. Orchelle, whose real name is Hermann Scheffauer, who claims to be an American, but is not known as such at the American Embassy in Berlin. He has specialised in attacks against Great Britain in the United States. Some of the vicious onslaughts against Washington in Germany were made by him.
American flags are scarce in Berlin to-day, but one always waves from the window of 48, Potsdamerstrasse. It is a snare for the unwary, but the League uses it here as in countless other instances as a cloak for its warfare against the U.S.A.
The League started early in the war by issuing booklets by the ton for distribution in Germany and America. Subscription blanks were scattered broadcast for contributions for the cause of light and truth. Donations soon poured in, some of them very large, from Germans and German-Americans who wished, many of them sincerely, to have what they considered the truth told about Germany.
The ways of the League, however, being crooked, some of the charter members began to fall away from one another and many of the doings of the ringleaders are now coming to light.
The League must be doing well financially, as William Martin, the chief of the Potsdamerstrasse office, jubilantly declared that no matter how the war ended he would come out of it with a million.
Any real American, whether at home or abroad, deeply resents the degradation of his flag. Yet the League of Truth in Berlin has consistently dragged the Stars and Stripes in the mire, and that in a country which boasts that the police are not only omniscient but omnipotent.
A constant attempt, in accordance with the policy of most German newspapers, I may add, is made to depict us as a spineless jelly-fish nation. They have regarded principles of international custom as little as the manipulators of submarines under the reign of Tirpitz.
Last fourth of July, Charles Mueller, a pseudo-American, hung from his home in the busy Kurfurstendamm a huge American flag with a deep border of black that Berlin might see a "real American's" symbol of humiliation. On the same day, dear to the hearts of Americans, a four-page flyer was spread broadcast through the German capital with a black border on the front page enclosing a black cross. The Declaration of Independence was bordered with black inside and an ode to American degradation by John L. Stoddard completed the slap in the face.
The League selected January 27th, 1916, the Kaiser's birthday, as a suitable occasion for Mueller and Marten, not even hyphenates, solemnly and in the presence of a great crowd to place an immense wreath at the base of the statue of Frederick the Great on the Linden, with the inscription "Wilson and his Press are not America."
The stern Police Department of Berlin does not permit the promiscuous scattering of floral decorations and advertising matter on the statues of German gods, and the fact that the wreath remained there month after month proved that somebody high up was sanctioning the methods of the League.
The protests of the American Ambassador were of no avail, until he determined to make an end of the humiliation, after three months, by threatening to go down to this busy section of Berlin, near the Royal Palace, and remove the wreath himself. Force is the only argument which impresses the Prussians, and we are extremely fortunate that our Ambassador to Germany is a man of force.
The League, however, had printed a picture of the wreath in its issue of Light and Truth, which it endeavours to circulate everywhere.
Stoddard, mentioned above, is the famous lecturer. He has written booklets for the League, one of which I read in America. His last pamphlet, however, is a most scurrilous attack against his country. He raves against America, and, after throwing the facts of international law to the winds, he shrieks for the impeachment of Wilson to stop this slaughter for which he has sold himself.
It is no secret in Berlin that the League have systematically hounded Mr. Gerard. I do not know why they hate him, unless it is because he is a member of the American Government. I have heard it said that one way to get at Wilson was through his Ambassador. Their threats and abuse became so great that he and one of the American newspaper correspondents went to 48, Potsdamerstrasse during the Sussex crisis to warn the leaders. They answered by swearing out a warrant against Mr. Gerard with the Berlin police—paying no heed to international customs in such matters—and circulating copies of the charge broadcast.
Readers who are familiar with Germany know that if a man does not instantly defend himself against Beleidigung society judges him guilty. Thus this and countless other printed circulations of falsehood against Mr. Gerard have cruelly hurt him throughout Germany, as I know from personal investigation. Next to Mr. Wilson and a few men in England he is the most hated man among the German people. He finally felt obliged to deny in the German Press some of the absurd stories circulated about him, such as that of Mrs. Gerard putting a German decoration he received on her dog.
Mueller, however, was not content with mere printed attacks, but has made threats against the life of the American Ambassador. A prominent American has sworn an affidavit to this effect, but Mueller still pursues his easy way. On the night that the farewell dinner was being given to a departing secretary at our Embassy, Mueller and a German officer went about Berlin seeking Mr. Gerard for the professed purpose of picking a fight with him. They went to Richards' Restaurant, where the dinner was being given, but fortunately missed the Ambassador.
The trickery of the League would fill a volume, for Marten especially is particularly clever. He leapt into fame in Berlin by going to Belgium "at his own risk," as he says, to refute the charges of German cruelty there. His book on Belgium, and a later one claiming to refute the Bryce report, are unimpressive since they fail to introduce facts, and the writer contents himself for the main part with soliloquies on Belgian battlefields, in which he attacks Russian aggression and Britain's perfidy in entering the war. The Belgians, we gather, are more or less delighted with the change from Albert to Wilhelm.
Marten prints testimonials of the book from leading Germans, most of whom, such as General Falkenhayn, content themselves with acknowledgment of receipt with thanks and statement of having read the work. Count Zeppelin goes further, and hopes that the volume will find a wide circulation, particularly in neutral countries.
And now for the vice-president of this anti-American organisation. He is St. John Gaffney, former American Consul-General to Munich. He belongs to the modern martyr series of the German of to-day. All over Germany I was told that he was dismissed by Mr. Wilson because he sympathised with Germany. The Germans as a mass know nothing further, but I can state from unimpeachable authority that he used rooms of the American Hospital in Munich, while a member of the board of that hospital and an officer in the consular service of the United States, for propaganda purposes. His presence became so objectionable to the heads of the hospital, excellent people whose sole aim is to aid suffering humanity, that he was ousted.
He returned from his American trip after his dismissal last year and gave a widely quoted interview upon arrival in Germany which sought to discredit America—through hitting Mr. Wilson and the Press—in the most tense point of our last altercation in February with Germany over the Lusitania. Such men as Gaffney are greatly to blame for many German delusions.
Mr. Gerard is not the only official whose path has not been strewn with roses in Germany. Our military attache has not been permitted to go to the German front for nearly a year, and the snub is apparent in the newspaper and Government circles of Berlin. He is probably the only one left behind.
The big Press does not use League of Truth material and certain other anti-American copy which would be bad for Germany, to reach foreign critics' attacks. Many provincial papers, however, furiously protested against the recent trip of the American military attache through industrial Germany. It was only the American, not other foreign attaches, to whom they objected.
All this is useful to the German Government, for it keeps the populace in the right frame of mind for two purposes. In the first place, a hatred of America inspired by the belief that she is really an enemy, gives the German Government greater power over the people. Secondly, should the Wilhelmstrasse decide to play the relentless submarine warfare as its last hand it will have practically united support.
CHAPTER XII
IN THE GRIP OF THE FLEET
There is only one way to realise the distress in Germany, and that is to go there and travel as widely as possible—preferably on foot. The truth about the food situation and the growing discontent cannot be told by the neutral correspondent in Germany. It must be memorised and carried across the frontier in the brain, for the searching process extends to the very skin of the traveller. If he has an umbrella or a stick it is likely to be broken for examination. The heels are taken from his boots lest they may conceal writings. This does not happen in every case, but it takes place frequently. Many travellers are in addition given an acid bath to develop any possible writing in invisible ink.
In Germany, as it is no longer possible to conceal the actual state of affairs from any but highly placed and carefully attended neutrals travelling therein, the utmost pains are being taken to mislead the outside world. The foreign correspondents are not allowed to send anything the Government does not wish to get out. They are, moreover, regularly dosed with propaganda distributed by the Nachrichtendienst (Publicity Service of the Foreign Office).
One of the books handed round to the neutrals when I was in Berlin was a treatise on the German industrial and economic situation by Professor Cassell, of the University of Upsala, Sweden.
He came upon the invitation of the German authorities for a three weeks' study of conditions. In his preface he artlessly mentions that he was enabled to accomplish so much in three weeks owing to the praiseworthy way in which everything was arranged for him. He compiled his work from information discreetly imparted at interviews with officials, from printed statistics, and from observations made on carefully shepherded expeditions. Neutral correspondents are expected to use this sort of thing, which is turned out by the hundredweight, as the basis of their communications to their newspapers. We were supplied with a similar volume on the "Great German naval victory of Jutland."
One feels in Germany that the great drama of the war is the drama of the food supply—the struggle of a whole nation to prevent itself being exhausted through hunger and shortage of raw materials.
After six months of war the bread ticket was introduced, which guaranteed thirty-eight ordinary sized rolls or equivalent each week to everybody throughout the Empire. In the autumn of 1915 Tuesday and Friday became meatless days. The butter lines had become an institution towards the close of the year. There was little discomfort, however.
For seventeen months Germany laughed at the attempt to starve her out. Then, early in 1916 came a change. An economic decline was noticeable, a decline which was rapid and continuous during each succeeding month. Pork disappeared from the menu, beef became scarcer and scarcer, but veal was plentiful until April. In March, sugar could be obtained in only small quantities, six months later the unnutritious saccharine had almost completely replaced it. Fish continued in abundance, but became increasingly expensive. A shortage in meat caused a run on eggs. In September egg cards limited each person to two eggs per week, in December the maximum became one egg in two weeks. Vegetables, particularly cabbage and turnips, were plentiful enough to be of great help.
In Berlin the meat shortage became so acute in April, 1916, that for five days in the week preceding Easter most butchers' shops did not open their doors. This made it imperative that the city should extend the ticket rationing system to meat. The police issued cards to the residents of their districts, permitting them to purchase one-half pound of meat per week from a butcher to whom they were arbitrarily assigned in order to facilitate distribution. The butchers buy through the municipal authorities, who contract for the entire supply of the city. The tickets are in strips, each of which represents a week, and each strip is subdivided into five sections for the convenience of diners in restaurants.
Since the supply in each butcher's shop was seldom sufficient to let everybody be served in one day, the custom of posting in the windows or advertising in the local papers "Thursday, Nos. 1-500," and later, "Saturday, Nos. 501-1000," was introduced. A few butchers went still further and announced at what hours certain numbers could be served, thus doing away with the long queues.
Most of the competent authorities with whom I discussed the matter agreed that the great flaw in the meat regulations was that, unlike those of bread, they were only local and thus there were great differences and correspondinng discontent all over Germany.
One factor which contributed to Germany's shortage of meat was the indiscriminate killing of the livestock, especially pigs, when the price of fodder first rose in the last months of 1914. Most of this excess killing was done by the small owners. Our plates were heaped unnecessarily. Some of the dressing was done so hurriedly and carelessly that there were numerous cases of pork becoming so full of worms that it had to be destroyed.
The great agrarian Junkers were not forced by lack of fodder to kill; consequently they own a still larger proportion of the live-stock than they did at the beginning of the war.
On October 1st, 1916, the regulation of meat was taken out of the hands of the local authorities so far as their power to regulate the amount for each person was concerned, and this amount was made practically the same throughout Germany.
First and foremost in the welfare of the people, whatever may be said by the vegetarians, is the vital question of the meat supply. Involved in the question of cattle is milk, leather, other products, and of course, meat itself.
One German statistician told me he believed that the conquest of Roumania would add between nine and ten months to Germany's capacity to hold out, during which time, no doubt, one or other of the Allies would succumb.
At the beginning of 1917 the actual number of cattle in Germany does not seem to be so greatly depreciated as one would expect. After a very thorough investigation I am convinced that there are in Germany to-day from three-fourths to four-fifths as many head of cattle as there were before the war.
In the spring and summer these cattle did very well, but with the passing of the grazing season new difficulties are arising. Cattle must be fed, and unless sufficient grain comes from Roumania to supply the bread for the people and the fodder for the cattle it is obvious that there must be a wholesale slaughtering, and consequent reduction of milk, butter, and cheese.
All these details may seem tiresome, but they directly concern the length of the war.
To add to the shortage, the present stock of cattle in Germany was, when I left, being largely drawn upon for the supply of the German armies in the occupied parts of Prance, Belgium, and Russia, and the winter prospect for Germany, therefore, is one of obviously increased privation, provided always that the blockade is drastic.
Cattle are, of course, not the only food supply. There is game. Venison is a much commoner food in Germany than in England, especially now there is much of it left. Hares, rabbits, partridges are in some parts of Germany much more numerous even than in England. A friend of mine recently arrived from Hungary told me that he had been present at a shoot over driven partridges at which, on three successive days, over 400 brace fell to the guns. Wherever I went in Germany, however, game was being netted.
Before the war, pork, ham, and bacon were the most popular German food, but owing to the mistake of killing pigs in what I heard called the "pork panic" the Germans are to-day facing a remarkable shortage of their favourite meat. I am convinced that they began 1917 with less than one-fourth as many pigs as they had before the war.
The Berlin stockyards slaughtered over 25,000 pigs weekly before August, 1914. During the first 10 months of the war the figure actually rose to 50,000 pigs per week in that one city alone. In one week in September last the figure had fallen to 350 pigs!
The great slaughter early in the war gave a false optimism not only to Germans, but also to visitors. If you have the curiosity to look back at newspapers of that time you will find that the great plenty of pork was dilated upon by travelling neutrals.
To-day the most tremendous efforts are being made to increase the number of pigs. You will not find much about this in the German newspapers—in fact what the German newspapers do not print is often more important than what they do print. In the rural districts you can learn much more of Germany's food secrets than in the newspapers.
In one small village which I went to I counted no fewer than thirty public notices on various topics. Hers is one:—
FATTEN PIGS.
Fat is an essential for soldiers and hard workers.
Not to keep and fatten pigs
if you are able to do so is treason to the Fatherland.
No pen empty—every pen full.
These food notices may be necessary, but they are bringing about intense class hatred in Germany. They are directed at the small farmer, who in many cases has killed all his pigs and most of his cows, because of his difficulty in getting fodder. As I have said, the great agrarian junkers, the wealthy landowners of Prussia, have in many cases more cows, more pigs, more poultry than before the war.
The facts of these great disparities of life are well known, and if there were more individuality in the German character they would lead to something more serious than the very tame riots, at several of which I have been present.
That the food question is the dominating topic in Germany among all except the very rich, and that this winter will add to the intensity of the conversations on the subject, is not difficult to understand. Most of the shopping of the world is done by women, and the German woman of the middle class, whose maidservant has gone off to a munition factory, has to spend at least half her day waiting in a long line for potatoes, butter, or meat.
There is a curious belief in England and in the United States in the perfection of German organisation. My experience of their organisation is that it is absolutely marvellous—when there are no unexpected difficulties in the way. When the Germans first put the nation on rations as to certain commodities, the outside world said, "Ah, they are beginning to starve!" or "What wonderful organisers!"
As a matter of fact, they were not beginning to starve, and they were not wonderful organisers. The rationing was done about as badly as it could be done. It was arranged in such a fashion as to produce plenty in some places and dearth in others. It was done so that wealthy men made fortunes and poor men were made still poorer. The inordinate greed and lack of real patriotism on the part of influential parties in both Germany and Austria-Hungary have added to the bad state of affairs. As if to make matters worse, the whole vast machine of rationing by ticket was based on the expectation of a comparatively quick and decisive victory for Germany. This led to reckless consumption and a great rise in prices. The fight that is now going on between the masses in the towns and the wealthy land-owning farmers has been denounced in public by food dictator Batocki (pronounced Batoski), who, in words almost of despair, complained of the selfish landed proprietor, who would only disgorge to the suffering millions in the great manufacturing centres at a price greatly exceeding that fixed by the food authorities.
All manner of earnest public men are endeavouring to cope with the coming distress, and at this point I can do no better than quote from an interview given me by Dr. Sudekum, Social Democratic member of the Reichstag for Nuremberg, Bavaria. He is a sincere patriot, and a prominent worker in food organisation.
"More than a year ago," he explained, "I worked out a plan for the distribution of food, which provided for uniform food-cards throughout the entire empire. For example, everyone, whether he lived in a Bavarian village or in a Prussian city, would receive, say, half a pound of meat a week. I presented my plan to the Government, with whose approval it met. Nevertheless, they did not see fit to adopt it for three reasons. In the first place because they believed that the people might become unnecessarily alarmed. Secondly, because our enemies might make capital out of such measures. Thirdly, because our leaders at that time believed that the war might be over before the end of 1915.
"But the war dragged on, and we were somewhat extravagant with our supplies—I except bread, for which we introduced cards in February, 1915—and instead of the whole Empire husbanding the distribution of meat, for example, various sections here and there introduced purely local measures, with the inevitable resulting confusion.
"Hunger has been a cause of revolution in the past," Dr. Sudekum continued thoughtfully. "We should take lessons from history, and do everything in our power to provide for the poor. I have worked hard in the development of the 'People's Kitchens' in Berlin. We started in the suburbs early in 1916, in some great central kitchens in which we cook a nourishing meat and vegetable stew. From these kitchens distributing vehicles—Gulasch-kanonen (stew cannons) as they are jocularly called—are sent through, the city, and from them one may purchase enough for a meal at less than the cost of production. We have added a new central kitchen each week until we now have 30, each of which supplies 10,000 people a day with a meal, or, more correctly, a meal and a half. In July, however, the work assumed greater proportions, for the municipal authorities also created great central kitchens. Most of the dinners are taken to the homes and eaten there.
"The People's Kitchen idea is now spreading throughout Germany. But I believe in going further, I believe in putting every German—I make no exception—upon rations. That is what is done in a besieged city, and our position is sufficiently analogous to a besieged city to warrant the same measures. All our food would then be available for equal distribution, and each person would get his allowance."
This earnest Social Democrat's idea is, of course, perfect in theory. Even the able, hard-working Batocki, however, cannot make it practicable. Why not? The Agrarian, the great Junker of Prussia, not only will not make sacrifices, but stubbornly insists upon wringing every pfennig of misery money from the nation which has boasted to the world that its patriotism was unselfish and unrivalled.
The most important German crop of all at this juncture is potatoes, for potatoes are an integral part of German and Austrian bread. The handling of the crop, to which all Germany was looking forward so eagerly, exhibits in its most naked form the horrid profiteering to which the German poor are being subjected by the German rich.
It was a wet summer in Germany. Wherever I went in my rural excursions I heard that the potatoes were poor. The people in the towns knew little of this, and were told that the harvests were good.
An abominable deception was practised upon the public with the first potato supply. For many months tickets had been in use for this food, which is called the "German staff of life." Suddenly official notices appeared that potatoes could be had for a few days without tickets, and the unsuspecting public at once ordered great quantities.
The Agrarians thus got rid of all their bad potatoes to the mass of the people. In many cases they were rotting so fast that the purchaser had to bury them. It was found that they produced illness when given to swine.
What other people in the world than the Germans would stand that? But they did stand it. "These are only the early potatoes—the main crop will be all right," said the profiteers right and left, and gradually the masses began to echo them, as is usual in Germany.
Well, the main crop has been gathered, and Food Dictator von Batocki is, according to the latest reports I hear from Germany, unable to make the Agrarians put their potatoes upon the market even at the maximum price set by the Food Commission.
They are holding back their supplies until they have forced up the maximum price, just as a year ago many of them allowed their potatoes to rot rather than sell them to the millions in the cities at the price set by law.
Some Germans, mostly Social Democratic leaders, declare that since their country is in a state of siege, the Government should, beyond question, commandeer the supplies and distribute them, but just as the industrial classes have, until quite recently, resisted war taxes, so do the Prussian Junkers, by reason of their power in the Reichstag, snap their fingers at any suggested fair laws for food distribution.
The Burgomaster—usually a powerful person in Germany—is helpless. When on September 1 the great house-to-house inventory of food supplies was taken, burgomasters of the various sections of Greater Berlin took orders from the people for the whole winter supply of potatoes on special forms delivered at every house. Up to the time I left, the burgomasters were unable to deliver the potatoes,
Any dupes of German propaganda who imagine that there is much self-sacrifice among the wealthy class in Germany in this war should disabuse their minds of that theory at once. While the poor are being deprived of what they have, the purchases of pearls, diamonds, and other gems by the profiteers are on a scale never before known in Germany.
One of the paradoxes of the situation, both in Austria and in Germany, is the coincidence of the great gold hunt, which is clearing out the trinkets of the humblest, with the roaring trade in jewelry in Berlin and Vienna. As an instance I can vouch for the veracity of the following story:—
A Berlin woman went to Werner's, the well-known jewellers in the Unter den Linden, and asked to be shown some pearl necklaces. After very little examination she selected one that cost 40,000 marks (2,000 pounds). The manager, who knew the purchaser as a regular customer for small articles of jewelry, ventured to express his surprise, remarking, "I well remember, madam, that you have been coming here for many years, and that you have never bought anything exceeding in value 100 marks. Naturally I am somewhat surprised at the purchase of this necklace." "Oh, it is very simple," she replied. "My husband is in the leather business, and our war profits have made us rich beyond our fondest hopes."
Throughout Austria and Germany in every village and townlet are appearing notices to bring in gold.
The following notice is to be met with in all parts of Germany:—
LET EVERY ONE WORTHY OF THE NAME OF GERMAN DO HIS DUTY NOW.
Our enemies, after realising that they cannot defeat us on the field of battle, are striving to defeat us economically. But here they will also fail.
OUT WITH YOUR GOLD.
Out with your gold! What is the value of a trinket to the life of the dear one that gave it? By giving now you may save the life of a husband, brother, or son.
Bring your gold to the places designated below. If the value of the gold you bring exceeds five marks, you will receive an iron memento of "Die grosse Zeit."
Iron chains will be given for gold chains. Wedding rings of those still living will not be accepted.