Part 6

My mother was nearly held up on the German border when she left Germany. A German lady in Dresden asked her to take some presents to her daughter in America, and among the things were two little bibs worked in a cross stitch design that were to be given to the daughter's child. The officials at Warnemünde seemed to think that the designs meant something, and they studied over them a long time, but finally after half an hour they gave them back to mother but with an air of not being sure what the cross stitch designs really were.

The greatest role for spies in this war is that of Red Cross worker. Here they have much freedom, and they can get very near the front. Then a sick or wounded man will tell things that a well man will not. Also, it is not so hard for them to transmit messages to their fellow conspirators. In every country Red Cross workers are closely watched.

Another kind of spy is the newspaper spy. There was a newspaper spy in Berlin when I was there. He posed as being very _deutschfreundlich_, and his good cigars and quantities of spending-money got him lots of information. When newspaper men are taken to the front, they have to sign a paper that they will not leave Germany for a month after their return. They also have to sign a paper that they will not hold the German government responsible in case of anything happening to them.

They tell all sorts of spy stories in Germany, and some of them sound very far-fetched. Here is a typical one. In East Prussia a nun was found weeping in a railway station. She had a funeral wreath in her hands. A sympathetic crowd gathered around her and tried to comfort her. Finally, a little boy in the crowd cried, "Oh, look, mother, what big hands she has!" The crowd looked, and sure enough they were big--they were a man's hands. And the nun was found to be a man, a Russian spy.

An American girl I knew was arrested as a spy. She was summering in a little town in the Westphalia district. She was an ardent photographer, and she could not see anything without wanting to snap it. The second day there, she was out walking and discovered what she considered a neat bit--green trees and a factory in the distance. She snapped the picture and just then a voice behind her asked what she was doing. She looked around and there stood a German soldier who told her to come with him. She went. She was taken to a guard house where her pass was examined and the film developed. When the films came out it was found she had a picture of a bridge and two munition factories. They gave the girl two hours to get out of the town. She never dreamed it was _verboten_.

All the munition factories, granaries, wharves, supply places and flying-places in Germany are guarded night and day, and if any one goes poking around these places he is told to "move on." If any one can spy on any of these locked-up places he must be very clever.

PRISONERS IN GERMANY.

Every thirtieth person in Germany is a war prisoner. Every fifth man is a Russian.

In Germany there are now nearly 2,000,000 prisoners of war. In the summer of 1916 the Central Powers held 2,658,283 prisoners, and of this number 1,647,225 were held in Germany. This was before Roumania fell, and then the number was greatly increased.

They have 150 large prison camps and five hundred small prison camps in Germany, and there are hundreds of places where the working prisoners live. The largest camps are at Guben and Czersh, where the prisoners are mostly Russians. The camps at Zossen, Wunsdorf, Nuremberg and Ratisbon are also very large.

The camps are divided into military divisions, and they are run like real military camps. The common prisoners sleep in dormitories, and they are furnished with a straw mattress, a pillow and colored bed covers. The men must keep their own beds clean, and they are compelled to take a bath every day. Many of the prisoners are employed around the camp, some of them helping in the cooking and the baking. In a camp of 10,000 prisoners it is no easy task to get the meals ready.

The prisoners, especially on the east front, are compelled to be vaccinated against cholera, typhoid and small-pox, and every prisoner must be disinfected for lice and fleas, even his clothes. Every Russian prisoner must have his head shaved. Prisoners are employed as barbers.

Every prisoner is allowed to write four postcards and two letters each month, and these letters are censored. All prisoners except the Russians receive many packages from their homes. In the Stuttgart camp, where the soldiers are mostly English and French, the twenty-four hundred prisoners receive on an average seventeen thousand packages each month. Every package is censored. No alcoholic drinks are allowed to be sent, and also no cartoons that would be offensive to the Germans.

The English and French prisoners receive spending money from their families, and most of them are never without spending money for tobacco and beer. It goes much harder with the Russians whose families are too poor to send anything. That is one reason why the Russian prisoners are anxious to work.

Most of the Russian prisoners are employed in carrying the ashes out of the apartment houses, and the big burly fellows lift the great iron cans as though they were made of paper. These men are quite free, and they run their wagons without a guard. They are very well behaved, attending strictly to their own business and speaking to no one. It is _verboten_ for the German people to speak to them, so of course they do not do it. The working Russian prisoners wear their soldier uniform, a brown coat, brown corduroy trousers and a brown cap with a green band. They have a black stripe sewed around their sleeve. This shows they are prisoners.

Last fall many of the prisoners were employed in cutting down trees in the Grunewald. A guard was always stationed near them. I was walking one day with a German who spoke Polish, when we came upon a group of prisoners. The German asked the Russians in Polish how they liked Berlin. "_Sehr gut, aber_--" (very good, but--) one of the fellows answered. Just then a German guard came from the top of the hill, and he told us to move on. In Germany, every time anything became truly interesting I was told to move on.

A great many Russians work on the railroad tracks, and still others are employed in factories, gardening and working in the fields. Those that work in the factories are not employed in the explosive departments but are engaged in lifting heavy bars of metal and shells. In these factories the men are closely guarded, but the average Russian is very docile and easy to manage.

Very few English prisoners do any work, but many French prisoners are employed in factories and in the fields. They still wear their bright red trousers. In Dresden I saw a lot of these red-trousered fellows running around the streets loose. One prisoner had a little German child with him. She was a little girl of about four years of age, and she clung to his hand and seemed very fond of him.

At Circus Busch last winter a great spectacular play was produced and as five hundred supers were needed for the show, men were taken from the prison camps to take part. There were English, French, Arabs and Turcos, all dressed in their own uniforms, but some of the prisoners had to take the part of German soldiers. They were dressed in the regular German uniform and they looked rather sheepish. Of course in the play the Germans won all of the battles, but there was a waiting list of prisoners who wanted jobs in the show. They were paid one mark a night. The theater management was responsible for the safety of the prisoners, and the theater was well guarded.

Two of the most interesting camps in Germany are the two near Berlin, the one at Zossen and that for the English at Ruhleben. The camp at Zossen is about an hour's ride from Berlin and can be seen from the train window on the way to Dresden. It is built in the open country and is a town of small houses. They have all kinds of prisoners here.

The "Gentlemen's Camp" at Ruhleben is where the English civil prisoners are interned, and some very rich and influential men are here. Ruhleben is built on a race track, and though at first it had only a few buildings, it is now a small town. It has its main streets, its shops, its restaurants, its reading rooms, its select circle and its four hundred. It had a theater, the director of which was the director of one of the Berlin theaters before the war.

They have a newspaper printed in Ruhleben. The German authorities do not allow these papers to be sent out of the camp, but I was lucky enough to have seen one of them. An English girl I knew in Berlin got one of them from the German wife of a Ruhleben prisoner. I had to swear that while I was in Germany I would never tell I had seen it. It was a very neat little sheet with stories, poems and advertisements--no news. The advertisements were for the different shops and stores in Ruhleben. Some of the men interned there carry on trades, and I saw advertisements for printing, clothes-pressing and tailoring.

At Ruhleben they have what they call their "university," and here they have classes in languages, art and science, and for the colored prisoners they have the common school branches. All these benefits were not gotten up by the Germans, but by the prisoners themselves. The men are allowed to spend only a certain amount of money each month, which keeps down the gambling, but they are allowed to buy what furniture they wish.

A great cry has been raised against the small amount of food given the prisoners at Ruhleben. I heard from all sides that this was true, and that in winter they have very little coal. But Germany can't give her prisoners much--she can't give even her own people much. What they have to give the Russian prisoners is a mystery--perhaps just enough to exist on.

When I was in Germany, an English preacher was invited to come over from England and inspect the Ruhleben camp. He was met at the German frontier by a German officer and escorted direct to Ruhleben. He spent one week in the camp, living the same life the English prisoners live. He was allowed to bring messages to the men and to take messages from the men back to England--censored of course. There were rumors around Berlin about him, but there was nothing in the German papers. I read his report in the _London Times_ after he got back to England. He said that the men were comfortable and that they had an intellectual life, but he added that the men surely needed the food packages sent from England and that they received the packages sent.

One day the first summer I was in Berlin, I was in Wertheim's department store. I saw a great many people gathered around the sporting-goods counter. When I asked what was the matter I was told that the two men in civilian clothes were Englishmen from Ruhleben, and that they had come to Berlin to buy a tennis racket. They were accompanied by a German sergeant. The Englishmen seemed to be enjoying themselves and they took a long time to select the rackets.

This spring they left a number of men out of Ruhleben. These men wanted to work. One day I was standing in my boarding-house hall talking to the landlady, when a fine-looking young man came up and asked for a room. He spoke very good German, but I could see that he was a foreigner. Before she showed him the room he asked what kind of boarders she had, and she said, mostly German officers. "Then there is no use for me to look at the room," he answered, "I am an enemy foreigner, and maybe it would not be pleasant." "Oh, it would be all right," said the eager landlady, "all you would have to do would be to report to the police." "Oh, yes, I know," answered the man, "I am _sehr bekannt_ (well known) to the police. I am an Englishman."

Every prison camp has religious services according to the religion of the prisoners. Prince Max of Saxony likes to preach, and he goes around preaching to the Russian prisoners in Russian. At Wunsdorf and Zossen they have mosques where the Mohammedan prisoners can hold their services.

Some of the officers' camps are at Klausthal and Wildemann in the Harz, at Cologne, and at Mainz. They have much better quarters than the common soldiers. In some cases they have separate rooms, and the meals are better and are served in better style. They are even said to have napkins. The officers never work for the Germans, but I have seen pictures of them knitting and doing fancy work.

The youngest prisoners are some little Russian boys from twelve to fourteen years of age. These children were used as messenger boys to the Russian officers and employed around the camp kitchens. In the camps they are given a lesson in German every day.

VERBOTEN.

In Germany nowadays--

It is _verboten_ to throw rubbish on the side walks and streets.

It is _verboten_ to spit in public places.

It is _verboten_ for children and nurse girls to occupy all the benches in the parks. Places must be left for old people.

It is _verboten_ for children to play in the halls of apartment houses. There are sand-boxes in the rear for them.

It is _verboten_ for you to play your piano in an apartment after ten o'clock at night. Other people might want to sleep.

It is _verboten_ to make any unnecessary noises in an apartment house at any time.

It is _verboten_ to take dogs into restaurants and grocery stores.

It is _verboten_ to beat carpets on any day except Friday or Saturday, and then it is forbidden to start before eight o'clock. People in Germany don't have brooms, they beat their carpets each week.

It is _verboten_ for customers to handle fruit on the market stands. It is also forbidden to handle poultry or game.

It is _verboten_ to sell short weights, and for this the punishment is severe.

It is _verboten_ to put more people in a street car than it can seat.

It is _verboten_ to take dogs into any train coupé except the one marked "For dogs."

It is _verboten_ to put more people in an elevator than it can hold.

It is _verboten_ to employ a man until he is old and then to throw him out and give his place to a younger man.

It is _verboten_ to employ women with very young babies.

* * * * *

Since the war some new things have been added to this list:

* * * * *

It is _verboten_ to eat more food than is your share. There must be enough for all.

It is _verboten_ for dealers to raise their prices on the common necessary articles higher than those fixed by the government.

It is _verboten_ to bake cakes and pastry at home. The flour must be saved for bread.

It is _verboten_ to either sell or use cream. Cream is a luxury, butter is a necessity.

It is _verboten_ to dance during the war.

These are only a few rules laid down by the German people for the German people. And they are not only laid down but they are obeyed without question. The power to obey laws shows strength and not weakness, and it is this little word _verboten_ that the world has laughed at so much that is helping Germany to win battles to-day.

For the Germans _verboten_ means not only "forbidden," but it means self-restraint, obedience, and the respect for the rights of others, and it means unity as well,--the unity of working together, of hearing commands given by those above and of heeding those commands.

A German is quite as selfish as a person of any other nation, and he is also quite as greedy, but since the war he is forbidden to be greedy. He has the inclination but he cannot carry it out. He can buy only a certain amount of things each week and that at a price so sternly fixed by the government that a man's store is closed if he charges one cent more than allowed. Also, he is not allowed to refuse to sell things if he has them in stock, and the laws are very strict about selling spoiled things. If a butcher sells you spoiled meat and refuses to take it back you can go to the police with your story. It is _verboten_ to sell bad meat.

The drink question had become a mighty one for all the warring nations, but Germany, the greatest beer-drinking country of the whole world, has quietly settled the question without a fuss, and now since the war, the breweries are forbidden to retail more than two-thirds of their output in peace times.

The Germans say that _verboten_ is a part of patriotism, for real patriotism consists in not only loving your country but in serving it as well and in having respect for its laws and the rights of other men.

THE MAIL IN GERMANY.

In Germany, when a crowd of Americans got together, we had but two topics of conversation--the food and the mail.

The mail between Germany and America came pretty regularly until February, 1916. Since that time it is only a few straggling letters that have gotten there at all. Even before America went into the war, letters addressed to Germany direct were held, but most people had a Holland or Scandinavian address, and they had their letters relayed to them. But even many of these letters did not get through.

This relaying can still be done through Switzerland but not through Scandinavia, as the Scandinavian boats do not carry mail; and there is no mail service between America and Scandinavia. The relaying of letters is very expensive, and where before the war it cost ten pfennigs to send a letter to America on a German boat, by the relaying it costs fifty pfennigs. The relaying is done in this way. The letter is placed in an open envelope addressed to the person in America. On the outside of this envelope one fastens an International Coupon which can be bought in any country. In Germany it costs thirty pfennigs, and it can be exchanged in any country for a five-cent stamp. A second open envelope is placed over the first envelope with the coupon attached. A twenty-pfennig stamp is placed on this second envelope to take the letter out of the country. The relayer takes the coupon and buys a stamp with it in the neutral country where he is and mails the letter. Sometimes these letters reach their destination.

The German censor seldom opens a letter that has already been opened by the English censor, but they open all letters marked Holland or Denmark or Switzerland. Letters sent out of Germany must be mailed open, and it is better to write on one side of the paper so that if the censor takes it into his head to clip, only one side of the paper is spoiled. If the German censor thinks that a letter is too long he sends it back and tells you to make it shorter.

Until America entered the war, newspapers sent out by newspaper offices to firms in Germany generally got there, but papers sent to private people were usually held up. The American papers were about two months old. I received several letters nine months old. An American I know received two letters in the same mail. One was dated June, 1914, and announced the marriage of a friend of his in Chicago. The second letter was dated July, 1915, and it was a card telling of the birth of a boy to the couple.

On the 1st of February, 1917, it was advertised in all the German newspapers that any one wishing to send mail by the U-Deutschland could do so by paying two marks extra postage, and that all the letters should be in the post office by the 15th of February. Many people sent letters. On the 5th of February, America broke off relations with Germany, so the boat did not sail. Along in March all the people who had sent letters received their two marks back with their letter and the information that the boat had not sailed and that there was now no mail service between America and Germany.

Before the war Germany had the finest mail system in the world, letters came more quickly, they had more deliveries and not so many letters were lost. Now since so many of the clerks are new and many of them are women, the service is not as efficient as it was. One often loses letters.

The first mail delivery in Germany comes at 7.30 in the morning and the last delivery is at 8 o'clock at night, and there are many more in between. Then they have what they call their _Rohrpost_ letters and these are the special delivery letters, and they are shot through a tube from one post office to another and are delivered by a boy at the other end. Now a good many of the special delivery messengers are women.

The most extensive mail in Germany is the _Feldpost_ or the soldiers' mail. It does not cost anything to send a letter to a soldier or for a soldier to send a letter to you. All you have to do is to put the word _Feldpost_ at the top of the letter and it goes free. Even if you know where a soldier is, you do not put the name of the place on the envelope, only his field address which consists of the army corps, the regiment and the company of the soldier.

A one-pound package can be sent to the soldiers for twenty pfennigs. Thousands and thousands of packages are sent each day. Just before I left Berlin it was forbidden to send a soldier packages of food, as the soldiers in the field had better rations than the German civilian population. Many soldiers sent their families packages of food. I visited a German family in Dresden in May, 1917, just the month before I left Germany, and every day while I was there they received a package of food from the son who was an officer in Hungary.

In the summer of 1916, the prices of postage stamps were raised in Germany. Letters that had before cost five pfennigs now cost seven and one-half pfennigs, and letters that cost ten pfennigs, now cost fifteen pfennigs. The price was not changed on the letters going out of Germany. Some of the people rather grumbled and said: "It now costs fifteen pfennigs to send a letter from Potsdam to Berlin and only twenty pfennigs to send a letter from Germany to America."

It does not take nearly as long for a letter to go to a soldier in France as it takes to go to a soldier in Russia. A letter sometimes comes in one day from the Somme to Berlin, but from Russia a letter takes four or five days at the least.

All the mail that goes to the soldiers on the west front is first sent to Hanover to a central station. Here the mail is sorted and sent to different stations along the front. From these main stations the mail is sent to different sub-stations. Every day each regiment sends a soldier to its sub-branch for the regiment's mail. Nobody but the soldier and the head of the sub-branch knows where the mail is to go, for each regiment's whereabouts are kept a secret.

THE "AUSLÄNDEREI"

In Germany, one evening last winter I heard a German count give a lecture on the _Ausländerei_. He started out by saying that for years the German people had been suffering from a disease called _Ausländerei_, which means that they have always been too fond of all that is foreign, that they have been ashamed of being Germans, and that they have tried to copy the manner, modes and customs of other nations instead of sticking to their own national ideals.