Part 13

The resultant gnawings of perpetual hunger had brought to light a myriad of _Ersatz_ foods that were in reality no food at all. It was frequently asserted that this consumption of unwholesome imitations of food was responsible for the erratic conduct of many a present-day German, manifesting itself now in morose, now in talkative moods, often in more serious deviations from his moral character. Certainly it had made him less pugnacious. Indirectly it had made him more of a liar—at least on his bills of fare. The best hotel in Berlin made no bones of shredding turnips or beet-roots and serving them as mashed potatoes. Once in a while an honest waiter warned the unsuspecting client, as was the case with one who shattered my fond hopes of an appetizing dish announced on the menu-card he had handed me. “_Venison_ your grandmother!” he whispered, hoarsely. “It is horse-meat soaked in vinegar. Take the beef, for at least that is genuine, poor as it is.” Milk, butter, and all such “trimmings” as olives, pickles, sauces, preserves, and the like were wholly unknown in public eating-places. Pepper I saw but once in all Germany—as a special luxury in a private household. Coffee might now and then be had, but an imitation of burnt corn and similar ingredients took its place in an overwhelming majority of cases, and cost several times what real coffee did before the war. Beechnut oil, supplied only to those holding tickets, did the duty of butter and lard in cooking processes. The richest and most influential could not get more than their scanty share of the atrocious, indigestible stuff miscalled bread. Bakers, naturally, were mighty independent. But those who could get bread often got cake, for there was always more or less “underground” traffic in forbidden delicacies. One of the most difficult tasks of all was to lay in a lunch for a journey. Before my first trip out of the capital I tramped the streets for more than an hour in quest of something edible to carry along with me, and finally paid six marks for an egg-and-sausage sandwich that went easily into a vest pocket.

Good linen had almost wholly disappeared—at least from sight. It was never seen on dining-tables, having long since been commandeered by the government for the making of bandages—or successfully hidden. Paper napkins and tablecloths were the invariable rule even in the most expensive establishments. Personal linen was said to be in a sad state among rich and poor alike; the _Ersatz_ soap or soap-powders reduced it quickly to the consistency and durability of tissue-paper. Many of the proudest families had laid away their best small-clothes, hoping for the return of less destructive wash-days. As to soap for toilet purposes, among German residents it was little more than a memory; such as still existed had absolutely no fat in it, and was made almost wholly of sand. Foreigners lucky or foresighted enough to have brought a supply with them might win the good will of those with whom they came in contact far more easily than by the distribution of mere money.

But we are getting off the all-absorbing topic of food. If the reader feels he can endure it, I wish to take him to a half-dozen meals in Berlin, where he may see and taste for himself. The first one is in a public soup-kitchen, where it will be wiser just to look on, or at most to pretend to eat. Long lines of pitiful beings, women and children predominating, file by the faintly steaming kettles, each carrying a small receptacle into which the attendants toss a ladleful of colored water, sometimes with a piece of turnip or some still more plebeian root in it. The needy were lucky to get one such “hot meal” a day; the rest of the time they consumed the dregs of the markets or things which were fed only to hogs before the war. The school lunch and often the supper of perhaps the majority of the children of Berlin consisted of a thin but heavy slice of war-bread lightly smeared with a colic-provoking imitation of jam. In contrast, one might stroll into the Adlon in the late afternoon and see plump and prosperous war profiteers—“Jews” the Berliners called them, though they were by no means confined to a single race—taking their plentiful “tea” in the midst of, and often in company with, Allied officers.

My own first German meal—for those in the occupied region were rather meals in Germany—was a “breakfast” in a second-class hotel, of the kind with which almost every one began the day in the Fatherland. There was set before me with great formality a cupful of lukewarm water with something in it which made a faint effort to pretend it was coffee, a very thin slice of war-bread, yielded only after long argument because I had as yet no bread-tickets, and a spoonful of a sickly looking purple mess that masqueraded under the name of “marmalade.” Where the Germans got their comparative abundance of this last stuff I do not know. Its appearance suggested that it was made of bruised flesh; its taste reminded one of rotten apples. The bill on this occasion was three marks, plus 10 per cent. for service. Begin a few days on that and see how much “pep” you have left; by noon you will know the full meaning of the word hungry.

I took lunch that day in a working-man’s restaurant. There I got a filling, though not a very lasting, dinner of beans and potatoes, a “German beefsteak”—resembling our “Hamburger,” but possibly made of horse-meat—a slice of what Europe calls bacon, which is really salt pork, and two mugs of weak beer—total, four mk. forty. No bread was asked or given. The clients ranged from small merchants to hackmen.

For supper I investigated a long-established vegetarian restaurant on Friedrichstrasse. An oat soup was followed by a plate of mashed peas, one storage egg (two marks), a cold potato salad, a pint of “white beer,” and a pudding that would have been tasteless but for its _Himbeer_ sauce, sickly as hair-oil. The check came to seven mk. seventy-five, including the usual tip.

A few blocks farther on along this same chief cross-artery of Berlin is a famous “Tunnel” restaurant below the level of the sidewalk. If you have been in the German capital during this century you have no doubt passed it, though you probably took care not to enter. In 1919 it was one of the chief rendezvous of lost souls. Girls of sixteen, already _passées_, mingled with women of once refined instincts whom the war had driven to the streets. Their male companions were chiefly “tough characters,” some of them still in uniform, who might give you a half-insolent, half-friendly greeting as you entered, but who displayed little of that rowdyism so characteristic of their class in our own country. Here no attention was paid to meatless days, and, though the date was plainly written on the bill of fare, it offered, even on Tuesdays and Fridays, several species of beef and veal and many kinds of game—wild duck, marsh fowl, rabbit, mountain goat, and so on, all evidently the real article. The servings were more than generous, the potatoes almost too plentiful. The menu asserted that “Meat, bread, and potatoes were served only against tickets,” but for the payment of an extra twenty-five pfennigs the lack of these was overlooked, except in the case of bread. A small glass of some sickly-sweetish stuff called beer cost the same amount; in the more reputable establishments of the capital the average price for a beverage little better was about four times that. Five marks sufficed to settle the bill, after the most nearly satisfying meal I had so far found in Berlin. Here 15 per cent. was reckoned in for service. Evidently the waiters had scorned a mere 10 per cent. in so low-priced a resort.

While I ate, an old woman wandered in, peddling some sort of useless trinkets. She was chalky in color and emaciated to the last degree, staggering along under her basket as if it had been an iron chest. Several of the habitués got rid of her with a pewter coin. I happened to have no change and gave her instead a few bread-tickets. The result was not exactly what I had expected. So great was her gratitude for so extraordinary a gift, beside which mere money seemed of little or no interest, that she huddled over my table all the rest of the evening. Before the war she had been the wife of a shopkeeper in Charlottenburg. Her husband and both her sons had died in France. Business had dwindled away for lack of both demand and supply until she had been dispossessed, and for nearly two years she had been wandering the night streets of Berlin with her basket. Her story was that of thousands in the larger cities of Germany.

“No, I am not exactly sick,” she explained, after all but toppling over upon me, “but my heart is so weak that it gives way when I try to work. I faint in the street every few hours and know nothing about it until I find myself in some shop door or alleyway where passers-by have carried me. The back of my head and my neck have ached for more than a year now, all the time, from the chin clear around. It is lack of food. I know where I could get plenty of meat, if I could pay for it and spend six or seven marks for a coach to get there.”

“But you get American bacon now, don’t you?” I put in, more out of curiosity to know how she would answer than to get information.

“Bacon!” she coughed. “Yes, indeed, one slice every two weeks! Enough to grease my tongue, if it needed it.”

A moment later I chanced to mention Holland. She broke off a mumbling account of the horrors of war suffering at home with:

“Holland! Isn’t that where our Kaiser is? Do you think our wicked enemies will do something wrong to his Majesty? Ah me, if only he would come back!”

Like all her class, she was full of apologies for the deposed ruler and longed to bask once more in the blaze of his former glory, however far she was personally removed from it. Nor had her sufferings dimmed her patriotism. An evil-faced fellow at a neighboring table spat a stream of his alleged beer on the floor and shouted above the hubbub of maudlin voices: “_Ein Hundeleben ist das in Deutschland!_ A _dog’s_ life! Mine for a better country as quick as possible.”

“Rats always desert a sinking ship,” snapped the old woman, glaring at the speaker with a display of her two yellow fangs, “no matter how well they have once fared upon it.”

The fifth meal to which the reader is invited was one corresponding to our “business man’s lunch.” The clients were wholesale merchants, brokers, lawyers, and the like. In its furnishings the place was rather sumptuous, but as much cannot be said of its food. My own luncheon consisted of a turnip soup, roast veal (a mere shaving of it, as tasteless as deteriorated rubber), with one potato, a “German beefsteak,” some inedible mystery dubbed “lemon pudding,” and a small bottle of water—beer was no longer served in this establishment. The bill, including the customary forced tip, was nineteen mk. eighty, and the scornful attitude of the waiter proved that it was considerably less than the average. Even here the majority of the dishes were some species of _Ersatz_, and the meat itself was so undernourished that it had virtually no nourishment to pass on. Of ten pounds of it, according to the wholesale butcher who sat opposite me, at least five disappeared in the cooking. Finish such a meal at one and you were sure to be ragingly hungry by three. Yet there was less evidence of “profiteering” in establishments of this kind in Berlin than I had expected. The ice-cold bottle of mineral water, for instance, cost forty-five pfennigs, a mere four cents to foreigners. The German does not seem to go over his entire stock daily and mark it higher in price irrespective of its cost to him, as in Paris and, I fear, in our own beloved land.

But there was one restaurant in Berlin where a real meal, quite free from _Ersatz_, could still be had, by those who could pay for it—the famous Borchardt’s in Französischerstrasse. Situated in the heart of the capital, in the very shadow of the government that issues those stern decrees against “underground” traffic in foodstuffs, it was protected by the rich and influential, and by the same government officials whose legal duty it was to suppress it. Admittance was only by personal introduction, as to a gambling club. The only laws this establishment obeyed were in the serving of bread and the use of paper in place of table linen. Meatless days meant nothing to its chefs; many articles specifically forbidden in restaurants were openly served to its fortunate guests. It depended, of course, entirely on _Schleichhandel_ for its supplies. Among the clients, on the evening in question, were generals out of uniform, a noted dealer in munitions, a manufacturer of army cloth, several high government officials, two or three Allied correspondents, and Bernsdorff’s right-hand “man” in several of his American trickeries—in a silky green gown that added to the snaky effect of her serpent-like eyes. It was she who “fixed” so thoroughly the proposed attack on us from Mexico during the early days of 1917.

Four of us dined together, and this is a translation of the bill:

Cover (tablecloth and napkins, or paper) 2.50 Marks Two bottles of Yquem 90. Wine tax on same 18. Half-bottle Lafanta (ordinary wine) 13.50 Tax on same 2.60 Hors-d’œuvre (radishes, foie gras, etc.) 150. Roast veal (very ordinary) 80. Potatoes (cost, 1 mark in the market) 12.50 Asparagus (plentiful in Berlin) 54. Charlotte (a tasteless dessert) 20. Ice 6. Bread (one very thin slice each—black) .60 Cigars (three horrible cabbages) 18. Butter 4. —————— 471.20 10 per cent. for service 47.15 —————— Total 518.35

Thankfully received, May 8, 1919 FRITZ REICH.

At that day’s rate of exchange this amounted to something over forty dollars; at the pre-war rate, which was still in force so far as the German clients were concerned, it was about one hundred and twenty-five dollars. Small wonder the clientèle was “select” and limited.

Before we end this round of restaurants let us settle with the waiters. About the time of the revolution the majority of them refused to have their income any longer subject to the whims of clients, a movement which had spread through all the larger cities of unoccupied Germany. In most eating-places a charge of “10 per cent. for service” was now added to the bill; in a few cases it ran as high as 25 per cent. How soon they will be demanding 100 per cent. is a question I cannot answer. There were suggestions that before long they will expect to get free-will tips in addition to the forced contribution, especially after the first flock of American tourists descends upon the Fatherland. In many hotels the bills were stamped “10 per cent. added” so faintly that the unsuspecting new-comer was often overgenerous by mistake. At some establishments the waiter was required to inform the guest that the service fee had been included, but the majority labored under no such compulsion, and those who did frequently whispered the information so hurriedly that only ears sharpened by financial worries could catch it. Another favorite trick was to find it so difficult to make change that the busy client finally stalked out without it. The advantages to the customer of this system were dubious; the waiters, on the whole, seem to like the new arrangement. “We may not get any more,” I was assured in a wide variety of cases, “or even as much; but at least we know what we are getting.” Some of the clan seemed to do their best, in their quiet, phlegmatic way; others took full advantage of the fact that, like physicians, they got their fees, anyway, no matter how poor the service. As is the tendency among the laboring class the world over, the fellows were inclined greatly to overrate their importance in these new days of “democracy.” Formerly they were quite content to be addressed as “_Kellner_,” and their chief answered with alacrity to the call of “_Ober Kellner_.” To-day the wise diner summons the most humble of the serving personnel with a respectful, gently modulated “_Herr Ober_.”

The question of _Schleichhandel_, or food trickery, had grown disturbing all over Germany, particularly so in Berlin. It is undeniable that those with plenty of money could still get enough to eat, irrespective both of the law and of the general supply, though by so doing they abetted profiteering, hoarding, smuggling, and several other species of rascality. Perhaps it was not worth while for the government to expend its energies in combating the illegal traffic in foodstuffs, which, compared with the whole problem, was a minor matter and might involve a struggle with the most influential citizens. More likely the higher officials feared that an honest inquiry would disclose their own bedraggled skirts. The newspapers of the capital teemed with such paragraphs as the following:

SCHLEICHHANDEL WITH POTATOES

In the past two months not only has underhand dealing become far more prevalent, but the prices of articles affected by it have greatly increased. We now have the common circumstance that wares in no way to be had legally are offered openly for sale in _Schleichhandel_, so that the expression “_Schleich_” (slippery, underground) is no longer true. For instance, every one knows to-day the price of butter in _Schleichhandel_, but very few know the official price. The government has sent out the following notice:

“The _Schleichhandel_ in potatoes has taken on an impulse that makes the furnishing of the absolutely necessary potatoes, officially, very seriously threatened. From many communities, especially in the neighborhood of large cities, thousands of hundredweight of potatoes are carried away daily by ‘hamsterers.’ At present the authorities are chiefly contenting themselves with confiscating the improperly purchased wares, without taking action against the improper purchasers. A bettering of the situation can only be hoped for through a sharper enforcement of the laws and decrees concerning food. The potato-protective law of July 18, 1918, calls for a punishment of a year’s imprisonment and 10,000 marks fine, or both. For all illegal carrying off of food—and in this, of course, all _Schleichhandel_ is included—the fine must equal twenty times the value of the articles.”

Yet for all these threats Borchardt’s and similar establishments went serenely on, often feeding, in all probability, the very men who issued these notices.

Of ordinary thievery Germany also had her full share. Every better-class hotel within the Empire displayed the following placard in a prominent position in all rooms:

The honorable guests are warned, on account of the constantly increasing thefts of clothing and footwear, not to leave these articles outside the room, as was formerly the custom, for cleaning, but to hand them over personally for that purpose directly to the employees charged with that service, since otherwise the hotel declines any responsibility for the loss of such articles.

VEREIN OF HOTEL OWNERS.

As to foodstuffs, thefts were constant and attended with every species of trickery, some of them typically German in their complications. Thieves and smugglers on the large scale were particularly fond of using the waterways about the capital. One night the boat-watch on the Spree detected a vessel loaded with fifty hundredweight of sugar slipping along in the shadow of the shore. The two brothers on board, a waiter and a druggist, announced that they had bought their cargo from a ship, and had paid five thousand marks for it, but they were unable to explain how the ship had reached Berlin. They planned to dispose of the sugar privately, “because it would cause fewer complications.”

A few days later the papers announced:

The police of Berlin report that not only native foodstuffs, but our foreign imports, are being stolen. American flour disappears in startling quantities. Many arrests of drivers and their helpers show where much of it goes. It is stolen, and later most of it comes into _Schleichhandel_. The drivers who take the flour from the boats to the bakers are too seldom given a guardsman, and even when they are they find friends to act as such and help them in the stealing. Even in the finest weather the driver puts a tarpaulin over the load, and his accomplice hides himself under it. There he fills an empty bag he has brought along by pawing a few handfuls out of each sack of flour and sewing them up again. Then he slips into some tavern along the way. The number of sacks remains the same, and as our bakers are not familiar with the fullness of American flour sacks, hundreds of hundredweight of flour are lost this way daily. In spite of many arrests the stealing continues.

The wildest rumors on the subject of food were current in Berlin. One of the yellow sheets of the capital, for instance, appeared one evening with the blatant head-line, “GOAT SAUSAGE OF CHILD FLESH!” asserting that many Berliners were unconsciously indulging in cannibalism. “Where,” shrieked the frenzied article, “are those one hundred and sixty-five children who have disappeared from their homes in Berlin during the past month, and of whom the police have found no trace? Ask the sausage-makers of one of our worst sections of town, or taste more carefully the next ‘goat sausage’ you buy so cheaply in some of our less reputable shops and restaurants....” To my astonishment, I found no small number of the populace taking this tale seriously.

I have it from several officers of the American shipping board that affairs were still worse along the Kiel Canal and in the northern ports than in Berlin. At Emden, where there were even “vinegar tickets,” and along the canal the inhabitants were ready to sell anything, particularly nautical instruments, for which Germany has now so little use, for food—though not for money. Even the seagulls were said to abandon their other activities to follow the American flag when a food-ship came into port. Stevedores sent down into the hold broke open the boxes and ate flour and lard by the handful, washing it down with condensed milk. If German guards were placed over them, the only difference was that the guards ate and drank also. Set American sentries over them and the stevedores would strike and possibly shoot. What remained under the circumstances but to let them battle with their share of the national hunger in their own indigestible manner?

VIII FAMILY LIFE IN MECHLENBURG

Two or three days after my arrival in Berlin I might have been detected one morning in the act of stepping out of a wabbly-kneed _Droschke_ at the Stettiner Bahnhof soon after sunrise. In the northernmost corner of the Empire there lived—or had lived, at least, before the war—a family distantly related to my own. I had paid them a hurried visit ten years before. Now I proposed to renew the acquaintance, not only for personal reasons, but out of selfish professional motives. The exact degree of war suffering would be more easily measured in familiar scenes and faces; moreover, the German point of view would be laid before me frankly, without any mask of “propaganda” or suspicion.