Watching on the Rhine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NOTE

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

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

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

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