PART II BEESKOW--BERLIN

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VIII BEESKOW LAGER

The journey from Carlsruhe, in Baden, to Beeskow in der Mark presented a marked contrast to the nightmare, the shivering and sleepless progression between Le Cateau and Carlsruhe in mid-winter. We occupied second-class carriages, well and warmly upholstered, and these we held without change throughout the journey of thirty odd hours.

The people encountered _en route_ were entirely civil, and not over-curious. Every second woman seemed to bear upon her back--besides the apparent burden of the war--a basket; every third man a rucksack. Everywhere were visible evidences of intensive agriculture; the making the most of a possibly not too opulent soil. Tillage right up the hillslopes; potato patches almost up to the six-foot way. Continually we alternated field and wood; brown boles of fir and pine, with, hidden in their duskiness, the white stems of the silver birch, like flashes of summer lightning.

We had just a glimpse of Heidelberg, with its castle on the hill, and arrived at Frankfurt towards six o’clock in the evening. We marched through the crowded station--which in one of its wings bore evidence of a recent air raid--to a hall where we had a meal of macaroni and rissoles served by a pert and self-possessed boy of eleven clothed in a precocious suit of evening dress.

Next morning Weimar, with its quiet memories of Goethe and Schiller; Merseburg, with its vast and unquiet Krupp works, springing up here in precaution against possible air raids on Essen. And so, about nine of the clock on Saturday evening, after a divergence from the main line, the train pulled up at Beeskow, where it became at once apparent that practically all the youngsters, and a large number of the grown-ups of the town, had turned out to witness our arrival.

It was the nearest thing to taking part on the wrong side at a spectacle or victory that I had yet experienced--of being “butcher’d to make a Roman holiday”--and yet it was soon evident that there was not a sufficiency of “hate” in the whole crowd to cover a 50-pfennig piece. To most of the children this was the first sight of the _Engländer_, and they had obviously expected much more of monstrosity and oddity than was forthcoming, and were disposed to be mirthful on very easy provocation.

A Lieutenant of the Cameron Highlanders, dressed in an arrangement of the garb of old Gaul, which permitted of carpet slippers, puttees, and an orderly’s peaked cap, consequently received most of the attention.

Presently we came to a red-brick building of grim and ancient aspect, with still visible evidences of an ancient moat. Turning up a rudely cobbled way, we passed through an old wooden gateway, which, opened for our admittance, closed immediately again, making a welcome shutting-out of the noise of the rabble. We were in a sloping courtyard of circumscribed appearance, with a square old red-brick tower standing up in the dusk, and a surrounding of other buildings, with rolling roofs, having rounded dormer windows in them.

Most of the other officers were disappointed at a first impression of the place. “Lee’s happy,” said one, “because he’s got an old castle to sketch!”

Before we could presume on bed--for which, having spent a sleepless night in the train, we were more than ready--there had to be a searching of baggage. This brought me no little searching of heart, my impedimenta, as an old-timer, being easily the heaviest, and containing sketches and journals which I desired to preserve. I was busily explaining the multitude of these note-books by hinting at my theatrical activities at Carlsruhe, when another of the examining officers produced from one of my portfolios what at first sight might have seemed to be a somewhat incriminating sketch of that camp. Beyond a rather flattering interest in my artistic efforts generally, however, the drawings were passed without trouble, but the _Oberleutnant_ said that it would be necessary to retain for perusal one book of my journal.

I found that my dormitory was located in what had been a bishop’s palace, the arms still being visible on either side of one of the windows. Passing up a very old and dirty, but not uninteresting staircase, and through a somewhat dingy and dilapidated dining-hall, I obtained sanctuary with eleven other officers in an equally dingy and disreputable room, the ancient oaken cross-rafters of which had been painted to a ridiculous imitation of marble! Notwithstanding, there was small likelihood of my dreaming “that I dwelt in marble halls.” Lights, for this night only, were not turned out until midnight, though I have it on my conscience that I endeavoured to mislead the _Feldwebel_ into the belief that this was the customary hour at Carlsruhe.

Hot coffee--_Ersatz_--made from acorns, was served at eight o’clock next morning; at nine, to the sound of hammer-blows struck upon the old, red-rusted coulter of a plough swung from a wooden frame, we mustered in the court for roll-call. There were three officers--the Commandant, an elderly gentleman, with an obviously explosive temper, and a decidedly unmilitary stoop; the _Oberleutnant_, portly and complacent-looking; and the Lieutenant, a young man, and the only one of the trio to have seen service in this war. He was here, indeed, because he had been very badly wounded. The orders of the camp were read by the interpreter, who would doubtless have looked rather _distingué_ in evening dress, but whom a private soldier’s uniform rendered stiff and gauche.

He was sufficiently gracious to give me some details as to the history of our new domicile, the _altes Amt_, and the squat old _Turm_. The place was erected in 1252 by Barons or Knights, in whose hands it remained for a couple of centuries. These Barons becoming financially indebted to the Bishops of Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, and Lebus, the buildings ultimately passed into their possession, and were used as an ecclesiastical residence. About the beginning of last century they reverted to the Crown, and finally to the Corporation of Beeskow. It was looked upon as a punishment camp, and we were the first British prisoners to be held there.

THE KANTINE AND THE CATERING

We had a _Kantine_, run by a civilian named Herr Solomon, who, however, because of his dilatoriness, and an easy deferring until to-morrow of what should have been ordered to-day, was always known as “Morgen, Morgen!” The _Kantine_, which was open daily from 11 to 1, and 5 to 7 evening, contained a selection of commodities ranging from a lager beer--which was very essentially a _Lager_ beer--to a solitary example of a variation of Sandow’s chest-expander, for which no purchaser was ever forthcoming. Something to expand a still lower compartment of our anatomy was what we were in continual search of.

The catering here, however, which was also in Herr “Morgen, Morgen’s” hands, marked a great advance on the Carlsruhe kitchen. The finer hand of femininity was quite apparent in the cooking, a number of women from the country being employed, and we usually were served with a soup which we could eat without loss of self-respect. Being in the centre of an agricultural district, we had a good supply of potatoes and certain vegetables, and when we were able to supplement these with a slice of bully, we did not do too badly.

“MUCH READING----!”

Immediately on our arrival at Beeskow I was appointed to the enviable post of librarian, but found myself in the unenviable position of having no library. I accordingly placed upon the notice board the following urgent appeal:

This rather tickled the camp, including the German officers, who immediately responded with a gift of some twenty volumes. Unfortunately, these were entirely in German, through which only one or two of the officers could even spell their way, but they were in the nature of a godsend to M. Bloch, a Russian dentist, who was the only foreign officer in camp, and who spoke German as fluently as one may speak that influent tongue. _Pro tem._, then, I considered myself as acting to him in the not onerous capacity of private librarian.

A few fragments of Tauchnitz editions were very literally “fluttering” around the camp, and on these I affixed wherever possible the seal of my office--and a touch of seccotine. I also sent out appeals to the Christlichen Vereine Junger Männer, Berlin; to Sir Alfred Davies, and the Camp Libraries Committee, London; while I made ordering of a formidable list of Tauchnitz publications. Berlin responded almost immediately with thirty volumes of varied sort, mostly the gift apparently of private citizens.

In several of the works I observed a bookplate, inscribed “Sophie, Mein Buch,” and representing a very green and very flourishing Tree of Knowledge, bearing five apples of a more than tempting redness, a rising sun, and an open volume. Somehow the bookplate conjured up before me a vision of the gentle Sophie, fresh as the dawn, and rosy and ripe as the pictured apples.

With this collection and the odds and ends floating about the camp I decided to open shop, though my shelves would only afford a fraction of a book per man. Accordingly at nine o’clock in the morning, immediately after roll-call, I headed a regular rush and stampede to the library; undid the padlock, swung wide the door of the book cupboard, and declared the library indeed open.

As senior officer of the camp, the Colonel had choice of the first volume, after which it was a case of first come first served. For a few minutes the floor space in front of my cupboard presented something of the appearance of a football field with a “rugger” scrum on, and then I closed the door upon only two books--and these the second volumes of two-volume novels. In less than a month, however, I had several hundred books under my charge.

One day the German interpreter handed me a note of four volumes which he was desirous of having on loan. These were: “The Poems of Robert Burns”; “The Adventures of Tom Sawyers”; “An Ideal Husband,” by Oscar Wilde; and “East Lynne,” by----Carlyle! This last rather nonplussed me until I recalled that the name of the greatly-wronged and long-suffering solicitor in the novel--which one might say had solved the problem of perpetual emotion--was Carlyle.

It was this same interpreter who, donating to the library a small guide book of Beeskow, first tore off the cover which carried a map of the town and environs. “As a good German,” he said, “it is my duty to prevent you from escaping.”

WE WALK ABROAD

Having adhibited our signatures to a form of parole stipulating that we should not make effort to escape, under penalty of death, during such time as we were out for exercise, on the third or fourth day after our arrival we went out for a walk under conduct of Lieut. Kruggel.

Beeskow is a country town of four or five thousand inhabitants, and possesses certain streets picturesque and paintable. There is a red-brick church, with a steeple and a great sloping roof. On the old walls, which still stand, are a series of towers, on the largest of which, as if presiding over the town, were two storks, who gazed at us as if with curiosity over the edge of their nest.

On this first morning we elected to visit the playing-field allotted to the camp, which is situated about a mile distant from it. To the professional eye of one of our number, an old internationalist, it will serve for football, but not for cricket.

On the other side of the road, behind a _Gasthof_, and just on the edge of a strip of forest, there was a tennis court, but it had obviously not been played on for many a day. We at once commenced clearing the ground, a task in which we were soon being aided by _mein Herr_ of the _Gasthof_--who is proprietor of the court--his wife, and his daughters.

One of the girls has a rake, which she playfully aims at Lieutenant Kruggel, who promptly throws up his arms and cries, “_Kamarad!_”

As we returned, a bald-headed, elderly gentleman standing behind the gate of a villa garden spat upon the ground, and treated us to a mouthful or two of morning hate. Lieutenant Kruggel apologized profusely. Strange that the civilian should be uncivil--the soldier never.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

In the little courtyard three or four white fan-tailed pigeons fluttered about the roofs, like peace birds prematurely arrived from oversea, while on the other side of the barbed wire was a small colony of rabbits and poultry and pigs, the property of the German guard. Then there was Jacob, a ferocious and fearless jackdaw with clipped wings, who was not indisposed to be friendly, however. Certainly we were companions in misfortune, my wings not less thoroughly clipped than his. Ultimately, while I read, or even sketched, he would lie on his back in my hand with his legs in the air, ever and anon opening a drowsy eye. Long before I had seen them, however, he would have greeted several of his own kind, if not his own kin, wheeling round the old tower, and they would return answer.

Sometimes of a morning I would pick Jacob up as I passed to the bath, and, perched upon my finger, he would participate with me in the rigorous joys of the cold douche, the water rattling off his back like rain from an umbrella. Latterly there were two jackdaws, and I have watched a German sentry feeding them with spiders collected in a matchbox, swinging them out on their own thread as an angler would cast a baited line. After the Armistice these two delightful vagabonds suddenly and mysteriously vanished. Rumour had it that they appeared on a German table in a German pie!

IX ESCAPES AND ESCAPADES

Only one officer ever escaped from Beeskow Camp, and he only by the dusty and tenebrous passage of Death. He was a Rumanian, and he actually succeeded in scaling the high wall encircling the _Lager_, but fell off into the dried moat and broke his neck.

Tunnelling under the ancient wall was the method that seemed to hold out most promise of success, and a number of efforts were made in this direction. These were all detected, however, at various stages of the mining operations. One such discovery led to a regular hue and cry and the hunt up for possible “holes.” Three or four _Posten_, one of whom put a facetious finger to the side of his nose, came clattering into the reading-room on this errand, when we all held up our feet to facilitate matters! In explanation of the gaping hole found behind a cupboard in one of the dormitories “rats” were suggested.

A new _Feldwebel_ who came to the camp seemed to have received strict injunction to look daily at the bars of the windows to make certain that there had been no tampering with them overnight. Thus he had a habit of dropping in at unexpected moments to the library, the dining-hall, or the dormitories, but always with an air of looking for some one or something else. Assuredly he did not wish to impute to us the using upon the windows of anything so unfriendly as a file.

One morning he came suddenly into our room, walked awkwardly and self-consciously to the window, by which was standing a deck chair; then, casting a quick, sidelong glance at the barred pane, he said smilingly in German, “A very good chair,” and so departed.

This _Feldwebel_, by the way, although he arrived in July, came in like a lion, and went out like a lamb, turning out to be the gentlest German of them all. He was black-bearded as Thor or Odin, and at his first parade, on the appearance of the Commandant and staff, he bellowed “_Ach-tung!_” in a stentorian voice, which, if it did not make us shake in our shoes, certainly caused us to smile in our sleeves. Even the camp officers were amused, and Lieut. Kruggel laughed outright. Next morning the poor _Feldwebel’s_ “_Ach-tung!_” was so subdued and so robbed of its virility, that it was more stimulating to our risible faculties than that of the day before. He had obviously been requested to modify his powerful “word of command.”

THE FLIGHT THAT FAILED

One day I had been sketching the interior of the Marienkirche at Beeskow, a sentry with loaded rifle sitting by me in the silent church. He informed me that he also was an artist, but with his feet and not his hands, and that he had danced at the London Hippodrome. That night, after roll-call, the German, Lieutenant Stark, expressed a desire to see the drawing.

As it was dark, I practically impelled him for a few paces to the arc-lamp at the gate, at the very moment when three Captains courageously made an effort to pass through the building used as an office, which gives on to the garden, from whence access to the road would have been comparatively easy. A further diversion was created by a Lieutenant falling down in the court as if in a fit, though this was nothing but a feint. The office was occupied by Germans, however, and, softly and politely closing the door behind them, the trio turned back. Captain Brown, by reason of his great stature--he was six feet six inches--was readily recognized, and next morning the three officers were brought up for attempting to escape, and sentenced to three days’ confinement in the “Tower.”

Imprisonment in this old strong place, by the way, was not looked upon as a very grievous punishment. In fact, but for the disability of being deprived of the daily walk, it was an improvement on our ordinary condition. The prisoner had a room, a bed, a table, and a chair to himself; a lamp, which he could keep burning long after “lights out,” and meals sent up to him by a member of his mess punctually at the appointed times. Then, as librarian, I allowed certain latitudes in the supply of literature. To Captain Brown, as appropriate to his position, I sent Tighe Hopkins’ “Dungeons of Old Paris”; then, relenting, and remembering that he was a Scot and an Edinburgh man, I followed this up immediately by Stevenson’s “The Master of Ballantrae.”

Another bid for freedom was made by Captain R., to whom for the purpose I lent a red neckerchief and a civilian cap, which had somehow escaped the authoritative eye and got through to me. R.’s scheme was to secrete himself under a table covered with a blanket, at which a quartette was playing a belated game of “Bridge” in the court under one of the lamps and in close proximity to the barbed fence, cut the wire, and lie hid in the shrubbery until such time as he might find opportunity of passing out of the gate.

We had just sat down to dinner, when the violent ringing of the _Appell_ bell announced to us that the plot had been detected. Next morning I met a German soldier carrying a yard or two of barbed wire--like a line newly baited--with which to replace the cutting made by the Captain, and at parade a camp order was read notifying all concerned that no more tables or chairs would be permitted in the courtyard. Almost immediately thereafter, amid the groans of the British officers, began a ruthless cutting down of the few shrubs and saplings which adorned the yard and which could conceivably afford us any hiding.

Even Lieut. Kruggel’s sunflowers and creepers, which provided a hedge of privacy for his little cottage, had to be sacrificed, to his great distress and disgust. In the afternoon three pumpkins sat forlornly upon the three steps of the Lieutenant’s cottage, all that had been left to him of horticultural adornment!

On another evening in October an officer, disguised as a German _Posten_, boldly approached the gate with the somewhat optimistic hope that he would be permitted to pass out unchallenged. He was detected by the sentry, however, and came running back, taking off his disguise as he fled. When the guards ultimately reached his room for a search, he was playing “Patience.” Before making his venture he returned me his library book, which, I observed with interest, was the Iliad. Unhappily, there was to be no Odyssey for him on this occasion.

One morning at breakfast a civilian arrived in the dining-hall, accompanied by a sentry, to execute some repairs upon the gas stoves. He turned his back for a moment; the _Posten_ is reported to have looked lovingly and longingly into a pot of rice, and lo, presto! a couple of pairs of pincers belonging to the plumber had disappeared. No trace of what they called the “tongs” being forthcoming before morning roll-call, a search was instituted, during which time, except for the senior officer of each room, we were excluded from our quarters. The pincers were discovered next day, but for two mornings we were deprived of our walks abroad.

RAGGING THE COMMANDANT

There is a piece of music of amazing eccentricity and extravagance, yclept “By Heck,” by Henri. It is what is known as a “Fox Trot,” and, as recorded for the gramophone, is played by the Metropolitan Band. We were sufficiently mischievous one morning to arrange that it commence its erratic riot at an open window immediately the word “_Achtung!_” from the _Feldwebel_ announced the arrival of the Commandant on parade.

The scheme worked beyond wildest imaginings. One blow from the hammer upon the old coulter, and we tumbled out--and fell in. Simultaneously with the second stroke the door of the Commandant’s room opened, and he emerged, for all the world after the fashion of the little male figure which used to issue from the old-fashioned weather-house when the day promised fine, or foul, I forget which. It was certainly to be foul this morning.

“_Achtung!_” We came to the salute, and simultaneously there came a burst of mirthful music from the window. The effect on the Commandant was electrical. He shook his fist at the open window, and in two or three seconds had as many convulsed sentries tearing up the stairs to stop the ribald strains. Meanwhile, with thumping of timpani, drum-tap, cat-call, cock-crow, whistle, and motor-horn, the gramophone ground out its litany, until at last it was pulled up with a jerk. The Commandant had the instrument commandeered and sequestered in the tower, but later, yielding to the plausibilities of Lieut. D., he returned it. “I think I like theatre better in the morning,” was the new interpreter’s comment.

The mere sight of our somewhat careless parade seemed sometimes sufficient to throw the Commandant into a frenzy. One morning a Lieutenant was caught smoking by the old man, who swung his arms furiously, and passed sentence of three days’ confinement in the tower. To relieve the tedium the prisoner must have taken a flute with him, for towards evening melancholy notes floated from the barred window, the air being “The Close of a Perfect Day!”

“HIS EXCELLENCY WISHES”

On a certain day in August, the result doubtless of our continual complaint as to conditions in the _Lager_, His Excellency General Waldhausen, Inspector of Prisoner of War Camps, paid us a visit. Rather a soldierly type this old General, with gruffness and kindliness apparently continually contending for the mastery. He shook hands with the Colonel and some of the senior officers, and asked the name of each of the others--to what purpose I cannot conceive, as most of these names could convey nothing to him.

“His Excellency wishes that you are to gather round!” Thus the interpreter. We gathered round very intimately, something to His Excellency’s dismay, who had not anticipated such an encircling movement.

Then His Excellency opened his mouth and spoke to us, and signalled with his hand to the interpreter. The interpreter looked more than usually pallid, and more than usually uncomfortable. He began in trembling tones: “His Excellency wishes--His Excellency wishes--His Excellency wishes you to know that we consider you no longer our enemies.”

His Excellency casts glances, first at the interpreter, then at us, to see whether his magnanimity has been rightly understood.

Then he talks again, and the interpreter, with knocking at the knees and dismay in the eyes, essays to interpret.

“His Excellency wishes--His Excellency wishes--that you do obey strictly the prescriptions of the camp.” The staff smile; His Excellency looks suspicious. “Have they rightly understood?” One of the staff suggests to him that some of the English officers are laughing. Gruffness predominates at once.

The interpreter, more visibly nervous than ever, is incited to try again. “His Excellency wishes--His Excellency wishes--His Excellency wishes that----”

His Excellency fumes; His Excellency wishes that the poor interpreter--now almost in a state of collapse--commit his message to paper before he commit further indiscretions. There is a lengthy confabulation and concoction of phrase, and ultimately the interpreter reads stammeringly:

“His Excellency wishes you to know that he considers you as no longer our enemies. His Excellency wishes you to know that he will do everything he can possibly for your comforts. His Excellency wishes you to strictly observe the prescriptions of the camp.” Thereafter His Excellency gives audience, and, as a result, it is understood that a card system of parole will be adopted; that an effort will be made to combat the plague of fleas, and that otherwise there will be immediate reform.

X IN CHURCH--A POLISH BAPTISM

Once a month we were privileged to attend the ancient Marienkirche, where a service modelled as nearly as might be on the English Church evensong was conducted by the German Lutheran pastor. The service, including the sermon, which only lasted three minutes--a model brevity for homilies--was sympathetic, simple, and not difficult to follow for anyone with a slight knowledge of German.

As not infrequently, I probably received most benefit and benediction from matters extraneous to the ritual. My ears would be assailed by the sharp, almost metallic, tapping upon the windows of the leaves of the elm tree outside, which may have sported thus to the winds of a century or more. My roving eyes sought the Last Supper upon the reredos, whereon it was to be observed that one of the Twelve is handing a morsel to a dog, while the Disciple whom Jesus loved has his arm affectionately through that of his Master. The interior of the church is entirely white, with here and there a quickening and vivification in a note of red or blue or brown on the altar, the pulpit, and the organ.

After the service, I wandered up the old wooden stairs to the choir and organ loft, remarking the carven names and other havoc wrought by generations of choir boys, and, indeed, impressed with a sense that their roguish spirits were tripping up before me.

The organ is old. On the manual the sharps are in white, the naturals in black. The blowing arrangement consists of a succession of three movable beams, on which I had a glimpse of the old blower, like some ancient, dilapidated god chained to his task and making ascent of interminable flights of stairs. The organ had been stripped of all but the very smallest of its metal pipes for the making of munitions; doubtless they have gone hurtling through the air to deeper diapasons than they ever sounded here!

In the ambulatory is an ancient and crude wooden Calvary; a great tributary box “Für die Armen,” much bestudded with nails, and dating from Luther’s day; also cases with medals of Beeskow men who have fought for the Fatherland from the Napoleonic Wars onward. In the pulpit is a quaint old hour-glass of four glasses; in the vestry a church clock centuries old.

As we returned from one of these services the interpreter--the third in succession--told me that as a young man he set out to adventure to Iceland. He got as far as Swinemunde, when he met a young lady, and so, as he said, “I got engaged instead.” “Such things happen,” he added reflectively. I could only express the hope that never since had he got into such hot water as he might have experienced at the Geysers! The interpreter’s wife, by the way, was Madame Reinl, who has sung at Covent Garden in such parts as Isolde, and who for a number of years was a _prima donna_ in Berlin.

FOR THE DEAD

The Sunday after the signing of the Armistice a score of us attended morning service. We had seats in one of the galleries facing the pulpit, so that we could participate without being too conspicuously present. As it was, the congregation evinced no undue curiosity, though the three or four choir boys in the organ loft seemed to accept us gratefully as something of a spectacle for the enlivening of a dull day.

The congregation was very sparse, and consisted mostly of elderly women, sombre, sorrowful, almost emblematic figures; sad-faced, black clad, lonely. The vast white interior seemed cold--was cold, so that the organist, in his high latitudes, kept on his coat, with the collar upturned, and during the sermon made excursion among the architecture of the instrument. The pastor looked ill and depressed, and, with obviously a sad heart, he commenced his discourse, “This has been a heavy week for the Fatherland.”

On the following Sunday was held the yearly service for the dead. There were six or seven hundred people present, again mostly women, and again all in black. Many of them wept silently throughout the service, others gave way now and again to audible outbursts of grief. I could only see one living German soldier, but who shall say the spirits of how many dead were there?

A POLISH BAPTISM

In our walks abroad we have frequently passed a humble little chapel, which has been built for the numerous Poles who work on the farms in the neighbourhood. One Sunday forenoon in October, when hints and hopes of peace were in the air, I accompanied the padre and the Roman Catholic party in camp to this chapel, and was witness of a very interesting and picturesque baptismal ceremony.

The low-roofed room with its humble altar at one end, its walls hung with the stations of the cross, and perforated with windows showing the golden dying glories of the trees, was crowded with these rural folks. The women and girls were wearing quaint and brightly-coloured skirts and head-dresses showing pathetic effort after fashion and fitness of attire for the occasion. A virile femininity this, obviously built for child-bearing. In fact, most of the women seem to be in an interesting condition, and the officiating priest has no fewer than five infants to baptize. From these bundles of babyhood, which look like white bolsters tied with brightly-coloured ribands, comes a continuous, but not too vehement, crying, which, even to my not unsympathetic ear, seems something similar to the squealing of little pigs.

Three women stand up, supported by their lawful lords, ungainly, in unfamiliar Sunday garments, and diminutive beside their wives. Ever and anon one of the women performs mystery and miracle with her fingers in the mouth of her offspring to the temporary appeasing of its rage.

The remaining two women, who are seated, are in deep black, and their husbands are not forthcoming. When their turn arrives, and they too stand before the priest, there is something peculiarly pathetic in the unconscious crying of these posthumous infants whose fathers have doubtless fallen, just as I can behold the leaves falling from the trees outwith the windows.

These humble folk, many of them, would desire to remain behind for our service, but the guard has received special instructions from the Commandant this morning, and the German soldiers turn them out. One elderly dame makes a spirited demand for admission, and, the soldier proving obdurate, she bides her time until his back is turned, then enters and falls upon her knees facing the altar as if defying him to turn her out.

The padre gives us a little homily on the approaching peace, with a further urging of that “Peace which the world cannot give.”

On the march back to our _Lager_ we pass an ancient and dilapidated hackney-coach, open to display to an admiring world two of our mothers, with bundles tied with blue ribbon and red, in which the babies have been entirely buried out of sight against a biting wind.

ADVENTURES AFOOT

On the outskirts of Beeskow was a great _Kaserne_ or barracks of the Garde-Feldartillerie-Regiments, from which in the morning we could sometimes hear the bugle sing reveille. This is not dissimilar to our own, and carries the same suggestion in it of the ascending sun. In those dreary and difficult days the same heavy and uneasy suggestion also, that it falls upon many ears as unwishful to hear it as they would the Last Trump on Judgment Morn.

Sometimes we would meet a company of German soldiers coming back from a route march or returning from the shooting range--a likely enough looking lot, marching stoutly and singing lustily. When the _Unteroffizier_ saw us he would give the order to march to attention, which was very smartly carried out. In walking through the town we were continually followed by the little children, who would clatter after us in their sabots, in manner reminiscent of the “Pied Piper of Hamelin,” making demand for “_Kuchen_.” They would even break into our ranks, and insinuate their hands into our tunic pockets in search of the biscuits which were sometimes tossed to them.

During a walk one afternoon we were overtaken by a sharp shower, and sought shelter under the trees around some cottages. A little girl watched us with a timid wonder, which ultimately gave place to half-confidence. The rain increasing in violence, the mother threw open her door in invitation, while she and the little girl retired to the kitchen, leaving us the lobby, in which we sheltered until the worst of the storm was over.

One day we met an aged woman bearing a burden of faggots through the forest. When she cast eyes on us she suddenly put her hand to her face and burst into bitter tears. One afternoon we passed an old road-mender, whose carefully built piles of stones had much of the order and durability of a wall, and on whose bent back was a tangible token of the passage of years as big as any of his boulders.

On another occasion when we walked to the tennis court the German Lieutenant’s wife was waiting for him at the _Gasthof_, and the two partook of refreshment together at a little table under the trees. When we marched back we found that she was still accompanying him on the side-walk, which seemed to give to the whole parade a decidedly homely suggestion.

On Saturday afternoons we played football with the orderlies, when, in view of my advancing years and other discretions, I occasionally acted in the more retired position of full back. Pleasanter for me, however, was it to lie on my back in the forest, watching the young fir trees swaying to the wind like the masts of ships, while ever and anon they struck with a noise suggestive of the crossing of swords.

One of our orderlies, by the way, had been captured at Mons, and was a typical soldier of the period. He and his mate were lying in a ditch, up to the middle in mud and water, and under heavy fire. “I says to him, ‘Put a little artificial flower on me grave--I’m fond o’ roses myself.’” His teeth were knocked out by the butt of a soldier’s rifle, and he was flung into a church. When he first saw a loaf he “charged it,” toothless gums and all. He is still in the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” attitude towards his enemies. And he has lost practically a whole set!

Another orderly, who had recently been on commando, showed me his leg, which was badly scalded. “That’s the sort of thing we do, sir,” he said, “to prevent being sent down the mines!”

XI THE REVOLUTION

From scraps of conversation with the sentries and the interpreter, we knew by the middle of October that the Germans would sign an armistice whatever the terms might be. One afternoon the “Top” and “Bottom” of the house were engaged in a hockey match. As I stood on the road watching the contested field, passed me a cart driven by a French soldier prisoner of war. A German boy, burdened with a great sack of _Kartoffeln_ for Beeskow, gave hail, and the soldier pulled up and waited patiently until both boy and burden were on board. As he moved off he saluted me, and cried cheerily, “Bientôt, la paix!”

I approached Lieut. Stark and asked him when the game was likely to finish. “I suppose,” said he in his slow, deliberate English, “when they have won enough.” The German civilian, who had some days before surreptitiously slipped us a copy of the _Times_, was here again to-day, and obviously anxious to unburden himself to some one. Lieut. Stark, however, succeeded in hedging him off until the return journey, when we in front overtook him on the footpath. While still two or three yards behind him, I said, “Change your umbrella to your left hand!” As we passed we were thus able to slip him a couple of packets of tea in exchange for another copy of the paper, and also to arrange that in future he place the paper behind a certain tree. These papers were about a fortnight old usually, but they were very precious to us, and were circulated in rotation to every officer in the _Lager_.

On Saturday evening, the 9th November, an _Extrablatt_, announcing the “Abdankung des Kaisers,” found its way into camp, and created some little excitement. At Beeskow we were within breathing distance of Berlin, one might say, and we almost seemed to be haunted by a vision of that haunted man who had striven, in his own egotistical way, to fashion his country, and who seemed destined to see it shattered into shards. There was a rumour that the officer at the _Kaserne_ had been deposed, and, in expectation of trouble, all the shops in Beeskow closed at six o’clock. In the dark outside we heard two or three shots, but no one seemed able to explain them.

THE PASSING OF THE COMMANDANT

On Sunday morning, as it transpired, we paraded before the old Commandant for the last time. Shortly after _Appell_ he was waited upon by a delegation from the men, headed by a stout corporal who in peace time is a North Sea fisherman, and informed that his services were no longer required. With a touch of pride the corporal told me of his part in the deposition.

When informed that he must resign, “_Warum?_” inquired the Commandant. This was explained, but he still demurred. “I must wait,” said he, “for instructions from headquarters.” “We give you your instructions,” replied the corporal, “and you must go.”

Thereupon the old man wept. “_Er weinet_,” said the corporal, and he drew a finger from his eye downward to demonstrate. Greater than the Commandant wept in these days, I take it!

While we talked, standing on the road by the playing-field, came along the civilian, who succeeded eventually in transferring to my possession a copy of the _Times_ for 29th October containing a sensational discussion in the Reichstag, and also a slip of paper folded to a spill on which he had pencilled the terms of the armistice.

Over the barracks we found that the Imperial flag had been shorn of its black and white strips, and that only a thin red shred stood out menacingly in the wind from the staff.

A picket, with arms piled, was posted at the forked roads, and from the caps of all the soldiers the badges had been torn. These men more than ever seemed disposed to be fraternal; indeed, as we passed the _Kaserne_ some of the soldiers at the windows shouted out that they would be glad to play us a game of football now.

They deposed the Major who was in charge of the barracks, and the Medical Officer--he of the dashing manner and the Airedale terrier, who visited us for inoculatory purposes--had also to go. The Major and his young daughter were in a hotel when the soldiers demanded an audience. The Major endeavoured to escape by a back entrance, but was held, and had the humiliation of having his epaulets torn off, while his sword was broken and the pieces handed to the children standing around. So we had the story.

In our own camp Lieut. Stark, who was a ranker, and also reputed to be sympathetic to the revolution, was elected Commandant by the men’s committee--distinguished by white bands on their arms--in spite of the fact that Lieut. Kruggel was his superior in rank. The men took off Kruggel’s epaulets and badges, and then saluted him.

It was in these troublous times that Captain U., who was being transferred to another camp on account of his health, succeeded in jumping off the train when it slowed down somewhere in the neighbourhood of Storkow. The train was stopped, but no very effectual search was made, and the Captain, retracing his steps, had almost reached Lubben, when he was overtaken and held up by a gamekeeper on a bicycle, and carrying a gun. He was brought back to camp, and had a great reception, particularly from the members of his own mess, we having prepared a sort of composite meal of breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner. U. was looking none the worse for two or three nights’ and days’ exposure, and attributed his healthful appearance to “having had something to do.” Lieutenant Stark imposed no punishment, his only comment being, “This is not the good time for escaping; there will be peace in two days.”

LATITUDES AND LIBERTIES

Under the new regime our privileges were considerably extended. A few days after the Armistice, for instance, we were permitted to be present at a cinematographic entertainment.

The show was held in a rather dull and sad little hall, on the roof and walls of which, however, some artist had made valiant efforts at decoration with impossible pots and vases of impossible roses--neither white, nor red, nor even blue.

Behind the screen was a suggestion of a small stage, on which, doubtless, tragedy histrionic had been achieved in the days before tragedy overtook the town and the country generally. A dispirited-looking woman seemed to be in charge of affairs, and under her rather anxious direction our orderlies--all out for the afternoon--wheeled a piano into the hall, on which Lieutenant Davies and a German soldier, who has studied at the Berlin Conservatorium, alternately played melodies classic and cinematographic during the performance. A preliminary notice flung on the screen, “Rauchen ist Verboten,” went unheeded.

The first film, which gave rather charming glimpses of German family life, represented the adventures and misadventures of a poor little girl, who, after drinking a magic elixir, dreamt that she had become the daughter of a Graf. Mark Twain’s “Prince and the Pauper” in more modern guise. Second item, the efforts of a policeman to bring home his sheaves with him in the shape of a very sly and slippery tramp. The third, a _Lustspiel_ in four most amatory acts, introducing the customary machinery, so well known to the cinema stage, of love missives, magnificent motor-cars, bedrooms and bathrooms; keyholes betwixt these apartments; the never-failing porter with the inevitable trunk which forms the last inevitable stronghold and sanctuary for the inevitable hapless lover pursued by the inevitable unhappy husband.

Altogether, not too bad an entertainment for the money, which was one mark per head--_Lagergeld_, we having not yet been supplied with ordinary currency. This was the first night I had been out after dark since my capture, and it was pleasant to step free upon the pavement, and to see the comfortable lights in the shops. At a second cinema entertainment, we had--by request--a series of pictures showing German soldiers at work and play in rest billets.

In the outskirts of the forest stood the Gesellschaft Gasthaus, with, in the window, announcement of an entertainment in the form of an acrobatic act by “Les Original Alfonso Geissler.” The handbill, highly coloured, represented in one part of it, Monsieur, in evening dress, and with all the suavity of the dove, making request for a glass of beer from Mademoiselle at a public bar; in a second tableau discovers him, sloughed of his garb of respectability and, arrayed in multi-coloured tights, displaying all the cunning and pliancy of the serpent in marvellous contortions among the barroom properties. The proprietor informed us that he and his wife and three sons--one the hero of the handbill--were all travelling acrobats, that they had appeared frequently in England, and that they were in Sweden when the war broke out. It was observable that during the entertainment--which, despite the bill, proved to be entirely cinematographic--the proprietor obtained his incidental music by making demand upon several of the talented among the audience.

In this connection a rather notable incident occurred, though here it seemed to pass without note. A boy of about fourteen, who had earned his admission by operating the cinema for the major part of the evening, came quietly forward, took the violin from the rather faltering hand of a young soldier who had been agonizing for the last hour, and commenced to play with a sure and virile bow. He proved to be a friend of our German soldier pianist, and like him has studied at the Berlin Conservatorium.

SKETCHING IN THE STREETS

I was now allowed to sketch freely in the streets without hindrance or interruption, save for the presence of the younglings, which, after all, need not prove distracting or disconcerting. On the contrary, it may be even stimulating. Their criticism, for one thing, is largely enthusiastic, and this sometimes proves contagious. “_Fein!_” “_Hübsch!_” The pencil probably makes effort to prove worthy of such compliment. Then again, there is generally something patient and gently apologetic in the presence of a child, while one grown-up looking over the shoulder is usually sufficient for disconcertment.

I am sketching the Kirchestrasse. The name, however, is not visible at my end of the street, and I make inquiry of the little girl who for the last ten minutes has been standing quietly by my side. She misunderstands me at first, and upon my sketch-block writes her own name, “Charlotte Reseler.” There let it remain to add the value of a memory to the drawing.

On one such sketching expedition I was overtaken by a motor-waggon, packed with German soldiers, straight from the front, who seemed somewhat surprised to see me thus walking alone through the streets of the town with a sketch-block under my arm. The waggon was decorated with fir branches, while chalked upon the sides were such inscriptions as “Nach der Heimat!” In the streets also were decorations, flags and fir festoons, and garlands bearing the legend, “Willkommen!” One thing, however, cannot be lifted from these streets, nor lightened into them, and that is the dejection of defeat; the flush of victory.

I was sketching what is, since the burning of the “Grüne Baum,” the oldest house in Beeskow. I had hardly started, when the proprietor of the shop in the lower part of the building came running over, and, talking too rapidly for my entire comprehension, gave me to understand at least that he desired something added to my sketch. He disappeared, and in a few minutes there was unfurled from an upper window a great chocolate and white flag of Brandenburg. A little boy had all this while stood quietly by my side, save when, quite unbidden, he went over, and placed himself by the front of the house, just at the proper spot, that I might put him into the picture.

He spoke now, but whether for my information or encouragement I know not.

“England,” said he, “hat gewonnen--Deutschland hat verloren!”

I turned to look at him; he was but nine or ten, yet his voice sounded so forlornly that to me, standing in this street of gathering dusk and down-trodden snow, there came a sense of the awful tragedy of defeat!

A SOLDIERS’ BALL

I cannot dance, but there is always a portion of the ball, at least, to the beholder. Captain Sugrue and I had looked into the _Gasthaus_ at the Railway Crossing. It was an animated scene which met our eyes. The saloon was decorated with flags and festoons of red roses, while about eighty couples, composed of German soldiers and their sweethearts--these last with countenances of a colour to match the decorations--danced on almost without cessation. Certainly there were intervals, but these were of the shortest duration. The cavaliers would approach, possibly with a short bow; more frequently the overture was merely a smart tap upon the shoulder, and they were off. A little orchestra of piano, violins and ’cello, was housed on a little stage, upon which at one time there mounted the Master of the Ceremonies to announce the finding of a lady’s girdle.

Captain Sugrue and I also made various excursions afoot to townships within a radius of ten or twelve miles from Beeskow. One of these expeditions took us to the little village of Radinkendorf, where, after some research, we found a very modest little _Gasthof_, where an old woman undertook to supply us with coffee.

Whilst we waited, and she worked her coffee-mill, she invited us in motherly fashion into an inner room for warmth. Presently the coffee was prepared, and while we sipped it, “Where do you live?” inquired the aged woman.

“Zu Beeskow,” I replied. “We are prisoners.”

“Ah, das macht nichts,” said the dame kindly. “Das macht nichts. We are all human. Warum ist der Krieg?” distressfully, and touching her forehead with her finger as if in despair of a solution. “Why is the war? Why? Why?”

I could not tell her.

On another occasion Tim and I footed it to the small town of Friedland, which at one time, apparently, has had a Jewish population. As we sat together in the dusk by the stove in the _Gasthaus_, there entered a German soldier obviously fresh--but as obviously fatigued--from the front. He approached, recognizing our calling, but anticipating kinship, and was rather nonplussed on discovering our nationality. He told us that for the last days his company had been retiring at the rate of thirty kilometres a day, and leaving almost everything behind them.

Before returning we paid a visit to the _Rathaus_--in the Middle Ages the Castle of the Herren von Köckeritz. With his walking-stick Tim measured the walls--which are of amazing thickness--to the no small surprise of several members of the clerical staff who appeared at the window.

XII IN BERLIN DURING THE REVOLUTION

On a Friday evening of early December, my dear friend and fellow-prisoner, Captain Tim Sugrue, and I conspired to take French leave from the German prison _Lager_ and make a bolt for Berlin. Six o’clock next morning found us at the station; a little diplomacy and we had obtained tickets--singles only, as we must return by a different route.

From Beeskow to Berlin is a run of two hours and a half. For the latter part of the journey we are with business men. There is unfolding of newspapers, and we catch sight of occasional headlines. Street fighting in Berlin last night; 14 killed, 50 wounded. Anything may be expected to happen to-day--which means that anything may be expected to happen to us.

As we pass Karlshorst an obliging German directs our attention to it as the German Derby; as we enter the environs of the town he has a pointing hand for various features of interest.

Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse. As we make our way out through the barriers among the crowd, a tall, handsome gentleman and a young lady--equally handsome--who is obviously his daughter, seem to convey to us a telepathic smile of friendliness. In a few minutes we find them beside us in the throng; there comes a whisper in not entirely perfect English, “Thank God, Britain has won!”--and then they are gone. With a quick understanding the girl collector at the barrier permits me to retain my ticket as a souvenir.

We have had no breakfast; we are hungry; we make so bold as to enter a restaurant near the station. The waiter attends us, without apparent curiosity, and as of long custom. For three marks we have a fried haddock, some salad, and a cup of coffee. We could easily have paid as much in London for as little--we could easily have paid more. For proof of my veracity to future historians, I slip a menu card into my pocket.

From the instruction of a rather intelligent _Posten_ at Beeskow I have taken the precaution to prepare a rough plan of the centre of this most centralized of all great cities. We pass up Friedrichstrasse, and at the point where it intersects Unter den Linden pause for a moment, undecided as to left or right. It immediately becomes apparent that we must not pause, even for a moment. We are already the centre of a curious little crowd.

“What can I do for you, Captain?” Hat in hand, a youth of seventeen or eighteen approaches. We explain that we are simply up for the day, so to speak, and as I can see what is obviously the _Dom_ on our left, we make off at a sharp pace down the boulevard.

The people have seen British officers before; it is only when it dawns upon them that we are unaccompanied by a guard that their eyes begin to open. There is no hint of hostility, however. Twice during the day we are directly asked by civilians if we are in advance of a possible army of occupation.

The _Dom_ is the St. Paul’s of Berlin, but it is less impressive. The organist is here, however, blowing what are doubtless his own very real personal sorrows to the roof. As he passes into a fugal passage I observe that, as at Beeskow, the pipes of the instrument have taken flight.

The picture gallery is closed to-day, but entrance is to be had to the gallery of sculpture, and entrance we make. Tim is obviously impatient; sculpturesque life is not sufficiently full-blooded for him. Consequently I approach an attendant, and request that he discover to us the most celebrated items of his collection. Whereupon is opening of doors, unlocking of cabinets, up-pulling of blinds, and letting in of more light generally.

Most celebrated of all is a Grecian sculpture of 480 B.C., taken from the Louvre in 1870. When I suggest, as delicately as may be, that there is danger of it having to make further journeyings, the attendant sighs, and softly replaces the covering curtains. Young Hercules killing the snakes; a Badender Knabe; Göttin als Flora ergänzt; Trauernde Dienerin vom Grabmal der Nikarete aus Athens; a few hasty impressions--but how refreshing; white clouds in a summer sky--and Tim has haled me forth into the streets.

On the galleries, as on all similar public buildings, has been posted a placard in vivid red, “Nationales Eigentum!” National Possession.

It almost might seem as if in these penurious days for Germany, inventory of the national possessions had been taken, and, having been found to be but scanty, decision had been arrived at to hold fast to what few poor things appeared to be real and tangible! Everywhere also one finds vehement posters in red, inciting--to order! Pictured soldiers, open-eyed with terror, open-mouthed with message, beating alarum drums; sailors frantically waving flag signals of distress.

Palaces, memorials, museums, bridges; with much that is to be admired, Berlin seems so heavily encrusted and over-weighted with ponderous decoration, as to convey an impression almost that the ground may give way underfoot. That the solid foundations of things have given way must be more than an impression with many of these drawn-faced, dejected-looking passers-by. In the architecture there is a suggestion of London, of Paris, of ancient Rome--a suggestion of ancient Rome that is strongest, however, in a chill and deadly feeling of decline and fall. On many of the buildings, and particularly on the Königl. Marstall, is the markings of machine-gun fire--the guns have played upon the windows quite apparently like fire hose for the putting out of a difficult conflagration. On one of the palaces is stuck a sheet of paper written upon boldly and carelessly with blue pencil:

“FÜR EBERT UND HASSE.”

_Nationales Eigentum_ with a vengeance! Whether they are using the Royal suite for bureau or bedroom, or both, I know not.

At all points, and indeed acting as police for the city, are soldiers and sailors of the security service with white bands on their arms. Large parties of these men patrol the streets, with a peculiar movement in the column due to juxtaposition of the measured military step, and the easy swing of the sailor. We would pass such companies with a more or less unseeing eye, but we are continually assailed by cheery greetings of “Wie geht’s?” and “Guten Morgen!”

If we pause before a public building, a soldier or sailor immediately approaches and asks if we desire to enter. In suchwise we get glimpse of a number of the important public institutions, including the modern and rather magnificent Royal Library. In the Royal Opera House, despite the revolution, performances are announced for to-night of Verdi’s “Otello,” for to-morrow (Sunday) night of “Rigoletto.”

Some of the streets running off Unter den Linden bear marks of yesterday’s fighting; some of them are still big with agitation; groups and queues of gesticulating soldiers and civilians. We pass the Legations and through the Brandenburger Tor into the Tiergarten, and take leisurely view of the Reichstag, looking deserted and dejected, and as if all the glory of debate had departed from it for ever. Here is the Siegessäule and the Denkmal to Bismarck, Moltke, and the long lineage of German warriors. Here also is the Hindenburg statue, looking decidedly forlorn and rather foolish. Tim and I decide that it would hardly be expedient for us to drive in a couple of nails!

LIEBKNECHT AND ROSA LUXEMBURG

Now approaches a great procession of men and women, silent, sad, slow-moving, sombre-hued save for the red banners which here and there droop into the ranks and show through the trees like gouts of blood. It is the Spartacusbundes Party, with Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg at their head. They are doubtless come to mourn their dead of yesterday and to demand redress and revenge. The procession winds its way through the paths, and ultimately the speakers take up position beside the statue of one of the Margraves, where Liebknecht’s father agitated before him in less agitated times than these.

Liebknecht speaks now, fiercely and with arms outflung and disturbed as the leafless branches of the trees which form a background. There is a wild scream and the crowd commences to stampede. The motor-waggons of the Security Service of the Social Democratic Party are coming up, grim and grinning with machine-guns. A terrified crowd is a very terrible thing.

My last experience of its blind whirl and bewilderment was when the Germans shelled Béthune with big guns at long range on a market Monday of August, 1916. We looked like having trouble now. “Through force of habit they will doubtless take their sighting shots on us,” I said to Tim.

The soldiers have had orders, however, not to shoot unless they were attacked, and the crowd gradually regains reassurance. Standing on the outskirts of the throng, I bought an album of views of Berlin from a poor little girl, and immediately after a similar collection from an old woman equally poor and equally insistent.

My last recollection of Liebknecht is of a gesticulating volcanic figure, and of a livid face, with the wild eyes and the distorted mouth of a Greek tragic mask. He was killed a few weeks later, within a few hundred yards of where we heard him speak.

We have during the day made incursions to various cafés, the “Victoria,” and the one-time very cosmopolitan “Bauer.” In this last, at just an hour before train time we are seated, at question whether, our adventure having proved so successful so far, it be not financially possible to carry it into another day. We decide that if we go fasting during the morrow--a proceeding familiarity with which has rendered not too fearful---we shall have purses sufficient to pay for a bed in the hotel, and our return fares to Beeskow.

We have been sitting meanwhile amid a cheerless concourse. The people enter, take their refreshment without any appearance of refreshing, and so depart. “See,” says a Russian, just released from Ruhleben, who has entered into conversation, “how they are dazed; how they are dreaming! All of Germany is as a great empty building!”

The streets are crowded, and there is much excitement in the air. Outside the Friedrichstrasse Station we make purchase of a series of severe caricatures of the Kaiser, watched by quite a crowd who seem to recognize the irony of the situation. We have no difficulty in getting into a hotel, and we make no delay in getting into a very inviting bed.

CAPTIVITY DE LUXE!

Behold next morning two British _Gefangenen_ in the capital of Germany, pillowed luxuriously in bed, pulling the bell-rope insistently, and, a waiter appearing, making demands for an immediate serving of coffee. Not only so, but having search made in the German Bradshaw for the hour of departure of the train which was to convey us back to prison, and the time at which we could attend a celebration of Mass.

St. Hedewick is a great circular cathedral, not without a certain impressiveness, particularly when crowded as it was on our arrival. The service was in progress, and from the great organ came a sound like a rushing mighty wind. When we emerged it was raining, and we decided to call as invited on our Russian friend of yesterday. We made our way to the address circuitously and laboriously, receiving direction--and misdirection--from a sailor sentry, who left his post and accompanied us for a ten-minutes’ march to put us on the proper car. “I have to Hartlepool and Gateshead been,” he said.

The Russian family were delighted to see us, and extended what hospitalities they could, generously and graciously. They advised us to leave Berlin by the afternoon train, as the revolutionary storm which was obviously brewing was expected to burst blood-red that day. “I will see you to the station, then I shall not leave the house again.”

A nephew entering at this time, he undertook charge of us. As we stood on the platform of the tram, there tore alongside of us a motor-car, driven furiously, and full of soldiers and sailors who bombarded us with copies of the revolutionary paper, the _Rote Fahne_ (Red Flag), and with leaflets making call for a great mass meeting of the Spartacusbund.

I secured a copy. Among the named speakers were Rosa Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Levi, Duncker.[1]

Arrived at the Gorlitzer Station, we found that there would be no train till evening, and at our guide’s suggestion we three drank chocolate--at five marks for three cups, including a 50-pfennig tip to the waiter--and listened to the melancholy music in the great café which used to be called the “Piccadilly,” but which at the outbreak of the war was renamed “Das Vaterland.”

Returning to the station, we decided that our friend had best make purchase of the tickets, to prevent possible conflict.

While we waited there leapt upon us an aggressive young woman.

“Are you English officers?” she demanded.

“We are,” said we.

“Thank God for that!” she cried. “I’m English too, though I’m married to a German; and I love my country better than I love my husband, and think I shall come home!”

As this presented a marital problem too profound for our plumbing, we made the pretext of our friend’s return with the tickets to beat a hasty retreat.

We arrived back in Beeskow about ten o’clock, rang the bell and demanded admittance as good and dutiful _Gefangenen_. The _Posten_ opened the gate, and when he beheld us twain he very decidedly and indubitably closed a knowing eye!

FREEDOM AND FAREWELL

_It has come at last!_ And now that it has at last come it has not brought that immediate and amazing emotion of exultation which we had imagined and anticipated so long. We are leaving for _Home_--_To-day_--in a few hours! The brain receives the message, grasps it apparently, and passes it on to the heart. The heart hears, doubtless, yet it only says, soberly, even sadly, “Yes, that is so.” Perhaps later, after many days; after months; in after-years, maybe, there will be the full realization that we have come out of captivity, and we shall be moved even to tears!

Meanwhile, our boxes have to be filled; our cupboards have to be emptied. My last recollection of the German soldiery--these legions of a would-be modern Rome--is of their standing around while we piled into their outspread arms our old pots and pans, boxes of broken biscuits, and fragments of hardened bread. _Sic transit!_

Four o’clock. We pass through the gate of the old Bischofsschloss for the last time. As we go down the street one of the officers shows me the great padlock which he has carried off in his pocket as a souvenir! If he had been a Samson, he would doubtless have preferred the gate itself!

The people stand at doors and windows and wave us farewell. Auf Wiedersehen! Some of the passers-by insist on shaking us by the hand and wishing us God-speed. We have become familiar to them--and not too fearful--during the past five months. At the station there is something of a crowd; as the train moves out there is something of a cheer.

By nine o’clock we are once more in Berlin. We hire a whole squadron of dilapidated hackney coaches and move in somewhat whimsical procession for an hour through the already dark and almost deserted streets.

* * * * *

Warnemünde. We pass immediately from the train to the quay, where the Danish ship _Prins Christian_ is lying with steam up. A Danish officer is in waiting at the gangway, and as each officer answers to his name he passes over the ship’s side--a free man once more.

Lieut. Kruggel descends to the saloon to bid us good-bye. He shakes hands all round.

“Es ist vollbracht,” I said.

“Es ist vollbracht,” he replied.

And with a military salute, he turned, and, a suggestion of sadness in the stoop of his shoulders, made his way up the companion ladder.

THE END.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Two days later, in the train for Copenhagen, I gave up my seat willingly to a little boy with a face of great intellectuality, who was obviously in a very delicate state of health. This was accepted gratefully for the lad by the two Danish gentlemen who had him in charge. They told me that he was the son of Herr Duncker, Professor of Philosophy in the Berlin University, and one of the leaders of the Spartacusbund; that they were taking him to Copenhagen, where his elder brother already was, partly because he was suffering from malnutrition, but principally for safety, neither his father nor mother expecting to survive the Revolution. A sister of eighteen or nineteen stays with her parents. The boy’s guardians also informed me that the lad, who was only nine years old, already wrote verse which would not be discreditable to a young man, and that his brother had in a few months become the chief scholar in the Copenhagen school.

* * * * *

BALLADS OF BATTLE AND WORK-A-DAY WARRIORS

By Lieut. JOSEPH LEE

_SOME PRESS OPINIONS_

_The Times._--“There is real fibre and lifeblood in them, and they never fail to hold the attention.”

_The Spectator._--“Of the verse that has come straight from the trenches, the BALLADS OF BATTLE are among the very best.”

_Morning Post._--“There is staunch stuff in this little book of verse from the trenches.... Here is a soldier and a poet and a black-and-white artist of merit, and we wouldn’t exchange him for a dozen professional versifiers who ... cannot write with a spade or draw with a bayonet or blow martial music out of a mouth-organ.”

_Manchester Guardian._--“There is no shadow of doubt but that Sergeant Joseph Lee’s BALLADS OF BATTLE are the real thing.... In its way this little book is one of the most striking publications of the war.”

_Leeds Mercury._--“Many war poems have been published of late, but few approach the BALLADS OF BATTLE in point of imagination, and vitality of expression. There is a grim realism in the Sergeant’s poems, as well as an intensity of vision that is at times almost startling.”

_The Bookman._--“Sergeant Lee is in the succession, spiritual descendant of those balladists and lyricists who have made the name of Scotland bright.... As for the manner of the book, it is good--it is very good, it is notable.”

_Glasgow Herald._--“Sergeant Lee’s verses are as frank and straight as we would wish a soldier-poet’s work to be; but behind all the humour and grim realism there is a poet’s ideal humanised by a Scot’s tenderness, and the serious poems are worthy of any company. Their courageous cheerfulness is inspiring.”

_The Tatler._--“A little volume which I shall always hope to keep. Mostly these vivid little poems were composed well within the firing line; all of them are haunting--some because of their jocular soldier-spirit, others for their wonderful realization of the silent tragedy of war.”

_Sheffield Telegraph._--“A human, throbbing thing from the trenches. It strikes vibrant notes of laughter and tears; now it weeps, and now it is full of the exuberant joy of life; it is a living document authentic and deep.”

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

The one footnote has been moved to the end of the text and relabeled.

Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are mentioned.

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typos have been corrected.

Changes have been made as follows:

p. 83: “untolerable” changed to “intolerable” (an intolerable outrage)