Part 16

Now and then one ran across a simple old countryman who took his opinions wholly and unreservedly as they had been delivered to him, without ever having opened the package. “How did it start? Why, let’s see. They killed some prince down in ... somewhere or other, I never can remember these foreign names, and his wife, too, if I remember, and then Russia ...” and so on. He was of the same class as those who asserted, “I don’t know when gas was first used, or just where, but it was by the wicked French—or was it the scoundrelly English?” But these simple, swallow-it-whole yokels were on the whole more rare than they would have been in many another land. However much we may sneer at her _Kultur_, the Kaiser régime brought to the most distant corners of the Empire a certain degree of instruction, even if it was only of a deliberately Teutonic brand. In the great majority of cases one was astounded at the clear, comprehensive, and, within limits, unprejudiced view of all the field of European politics of many a peasant grubbing out his existence on a remote hillside. More than one of them could have exchanged minds with some of our national officials to the decided advantage of the latter. My memory still harks back to the tall, ungainly farmer in whose lowly little inn I spent the last night of my German tramp, a man who had lived almost incessantly in the trenches during all the war, and returned home still a “simple soldier,” who topped off a sharp, clear-cut exposé of the politics of Europe for the past half-century with: “Who started it? Listen. Suppose a diligent, sober, hard-working mechanic is engaged on the same job with an arrogant, often careless, and sometimes intoxicated competitor. Suppose the competitor begins to note that if things go on as they are the sober mechanic will in time be given all the work, for being the more efficient, or that there will come a time when, thanks to his diligence, there will be no work left for either of them. If the rowdy suddenly strikes his rival a foul blow in the back when he is not looking and the hard-worker drops his tools and strikes back, who started it?”

On the conduct of the war there was as nearly unanimity of opinion as on its genesis. “The Russians and the French, secretly sustained by England, invaded Germany first. William”—they call him that almost as often as the Kaiser now—“who was the only important ruler who had not declared war in more than forty years, gave them twelve hours to desist from their designs; they refused, and the war went on. Had we planned to go to war we should certainly have passed the tip to the millions of Germans in foreign lands in time for them to have reached Germany. You yourself have seen how they poured down to the ports when they heard of the Fatherland’s danger, and how regretfully they returned to their far-off duties when it became apparent that England was not going to let them come home. Then we went through Belgium. We should not have done so, of course, but any people would have done the same to protect its national existence. Besides, we offered to do so peacefully; the stubborn Belgians would not have suffered in the slightest. And Belgium had a secret treaty with the Entente that would have permitted them to attack us from that side ...” and so on.

“Moral guilt? Not the slightest. As we feel no guilt whatever for starting the war—because we did not start it—so we feel none for any of the ways in which we waged it. The U-boats? What was our drowning of a few silly passengers who insisted on traveling compared with what the British were doing in starving our women and children, our entire nation?” (The old specious argument about the warning not to take the _Lusitania_ was still frequently heard.) “We had to use U-boats or starve. A hysterical world blamed us for the more dramatic but by far the less wicked of two weapons. Drowning is a pleasant death compared with starvation. War is war. But it was a very stupid mistake on the part of old fool Tirpitz.” (The admiral probably had his whiskers pulled more often, figuratively, than any other man in the Empire. True, he was almost the only German left who felt capable of still nourishing so luxurious an adornment. But the U-boat policy had very few partizans left.) “Moral guilt, most certainly not. But it was the height of asininity. If he had had ten times as many U-boats, yes, by all means. But not when it brought in America and still failed to break the blockade. If the U-boat fans had not insisted on their program the war would have been over in 1916. But America would probably have come in, anyway; there were her loans to the Allies, and the munitions she furnished them. America, we suspect, was chiefly interested in her interest.”

To all charges of unfair methods of warfare, of tyranny over the civilian population, of atrocities, Germany replied with an all-embracing: “You’re another.” “If we first used gas”—which by no means all Germans admitted—“think of those dreadful tanks! If we bombed London and Paris, see how our dear brethren along the Rhine suffered from your airmen. If we were forced to be stern with the population of the occupied regions, go hear what the Russians did in our eastern provinces. You make martyrs of your Cavells and Fryatts; we can name you scores of Germans who suffered worse far more unjustly. As to accusing us of wanton atrocities, that has become one of the recognized weapons of modern warfare, one of the tricks of the game, this shouting of calumnies against your gagged enemy to a keenly listening audience not averse to feeding on such morbid morsels. It was accepted as a recognized misdeal in the political poker game as far back as the Boer War, when the science of photography first reached the advanced stage that made it possible to show English soldiers catching on their bayonets babies that had never been within a hundred miles of them. Like all the underhand moves, it was immensely improved or perfected during this long life-and-death struggle. That was one of the things we somewhat neglected, first from lack of foresight, later because of the impossibility of making ourselves heard by the audience, of getting it across the footlights, while our enemies screened the whole front of the stage. Ninety per cent. of the so-called atrocities were made out of whole cloth, or out of very slight remnants. We admit the cleverness of the other side in ‘getting away with it,’ but now that it has served its purpose we expect him, if he is the fair sportsman he pretends, to acknowledge it was only a trick, at least as soon as the smoke and heat of action have cleared a bit.” (This view was widely held among citizens of Allied nations who have traveled in Germany since the signing of the armistice, though few of them admitted it except in private conversation.) “There were, of course, things that should not have been. There are in all armies; there have been in all wars, and always will be. But if some of our soldiers forgot themselves, if our reserve officers were not always of the high standard their position called for, let us tell you of some of the horrible things the Russians perpetrated in our eastern provinces”—somehow Germany always seemed to flee eastward when this question of atrocities came up.

“One of our greatest mistakes was the failure to realize the value of _réclame_, of publicity, propaganda, advertising, or whatever you choose to call it, until it was too late.” (Berlin was showing one of our great “Hun” pictures in her principal cinemas at the time of my visit, partly for the amusement of seeing themselves as others see them, but chiefly as an example of how they “missed a bet” in not discovering how the “movies” could also be “mobilized” for war ends.) “The United States was finally led astray and brought into the war chiefly because England and France made skilful use of propaganda, because they controlled the great avenues of the transmission of news. It looks like a silly, childish little trick for the Allies to take our cables away from us—along with our milch cows—but it is really very important, for they keep on telling unrefuted lies about us as long as it serves their purposes. Now that they have a clear field, they will discolor the facts more than ever. They censored, doctored their public prints far more than we did. See how they dare not even yet publish the terms of the treaty that was handed us at Versailles; yet we have had them here in Germany for days. Even the French Chamber and the American Senate got them first from our papers. Open diplomacy indeed! There never was a time during the war that French and English and, when we could get them, American papers could not be bought at any kiosk in our larger cities. Look at Haase, who publishes daily the strongest kind of attacks on the government, quite openly, while the newspapers of Paris are still sprinkled with the long white hoofprints of the censor.

“We admit our fault—and we are now paying for it. This publicity was one of the ‘perfectly legitimate’ moves in the crooked game of war, one of the cleverest of the tricks, and we overlooked it, thanks to the thick heads of our diplomats! It was perhaps the deciding factor. The English with their shopkeeper souls; the French, crudely materialistic under their pretended love of art; the traitorous Italians—were not equal all together to downing us. But when they succeeded in talking over America, a great big healthy child overtopping them all, naïve, inexperienced, rather flattered at being let into a man’s game, somewhat hysterical”—I am putting things a bit more baldly than I ever heard them stated, but that is what was meant—“we might have known it was all over with us. Now we are in a pretty predicament. We have no national wealth left, except our labor, for we have given up everything else. We cannot even emigrate—except to Russia. My children will see a great combination with them, unless this Bolshevism sweeps all before it now while the bars are down.

“But we were never defeated militarily. _Ausgeschlossen!_ We won the war—on the field of battle, such a war as was never before waged against a nation in all history. That is what makes our real defeat so bitter. America did it, with her unlimited flood of materials, her endless resources, plus the hunger blockade. With the whole world against us and starvation undermining us at the rear, what was left for us? But we still held our front; our line never cracked. The German army was the best in the world—to-day the American is—its discipline was strict, but there was a reason, centuries of experience, behind every command. But the war lasted too long; we got overtrained, went stale and....”

No German, from the mouth of the Elbe to the mountains of Bavaria, admitted for an instant that his army was defeated. Whatever their other opinions, the Boches insisted on hugging to themselves the cold conviction that they were beaten from within, never by a foreign enemy. They seemed almost fond of boasting that it took America with her boundless resources to turn the scales against them. But they were not always consistent in this view, for they admitted that with the failure of the last offensive they knew the game was up; they admitted that Hindenburg himself asserted that the side that succeeded in bringing up the last half-million fresh troops would win the war. In this connection it may be of interest to hear what the German Staff (American Intelligence Section) thought of the American army. “The United States enlisted men,” runs their statement, “were excellent soldiers. They took battle as an adventure and were the best shock troops of the war when it ended. Their officers were good up to and sometimes through battalion commanders; above that they were astonishingly weak.”

Throughout all Germany the proposed peace terms were received in much the same spirit they had been in Berlin. Outwardly they were greeted with surprising calmness, almost apathy. But one could find protests and to spare by knowing where to listen. “This peace is even less open and fair than that of the Congress of Vienna,” came the first returns. “We expected to lose some territory in the east, perhaps, but that Alsace-Lorraine should be allowed to vote which of us she cared to join, that ‘self-determination’ of which Wilson has spoken so much. Both of those provinces always belonged to Germany, except for the hundred years between the time Louis XIV stole them from us and Bismarck won them back; they belonged to Germany just as much as Poland ever did to the Poles. Lorraine may want to be French; Alsace certainly does not, and never did.”

It seemed to be the old men who resented most the loss of territory, as the women were most savage in their expressions. Probably grandfather would miss the far corner lot more than would the younger members of the family, who had not been accustomed to seeing it so long. When one could get the Germans to specify, they rated the proposed terms about as follows: “The loss of the Saar is the worst; the losses in the east, second; the loss of our colonies, third.” But they reminded one of a man who has just returned home and found his house wrecked—the farther he looks the more damage he discovers; at each new discovery he gasps a bit more chokingly, and finally stands dumb before the immensity of the catastrophe that has befallen him, for some time undecided just what his next move shall be. “We would rather pay any amount of indemnity than lose territory,” they went on, at last. “It is a crime to occupy the Rhineland, the richest, most taxable, the most freedom-loving part of Germany. And now they are trying to steal that from us in addition! The Allies are trying to Balkanize us. They do not want money from us; they want to _vernichten_ us, to destroy us completely. The immense majority of the people of the Rhineland do not want to abandon us; they are loyal to the Empire. But the French have the upper hand now; they protect the few self-seekers who are riding it over the loyal masses; the British are willing and the Americans are simple enough to believe that the republic that is to have its capital in Coblenz represents the desires of the majority. Never! The Catholics and the capitalists combined to form the Rhine Republic, with the aid of the French—because they could thus both have more power for themselves.” (How true this statement may be I can only judge from the fact that a very small minority of those I questioned on the subject while with the Army of Occupation expressed any desire to see the region separated from Germany, and that I found virtually _no_ sentiment for abandoning the Empire in any portion whatever of unoccupied Germany.)

“Then these new frontiers in the east were set by men who know the conditions there only from books, not from being on the spot, or at best by men who were misinformed by the stupid or biased agents they sent. Thus many towns almost wholly inhabited by Germans are now to be given to the Poles, and _vice versa_.” As to the proposed punishment of the Kaiser, though there seemed to be very little love and no great loyalty—except in acquitting him on the score of beginning the war—left for him among the great mass of the people, this clause aroused as great wrath as any. The German saw in it a matter of national honor.

Such anger as the peace terms aroused was, of course, chiefly poured out upon President Wilson. “We believed in Wilson and he betrayed us,” protested a cantankerous old man. “Wilson told us that if we chased the Hohenzollerns out he would ‘treat us right’; we did so, and now look what he has gone and done to us! He has led us to slaughter, and all the time we thought he was leading us out of the wilderness. He has grossly betrayed us. People put too much faith in him. _I_ never did, for I always considered his lean face the mask of hypocrisy, not the countenance of justice and idealism. We Germans, with few exceptions, believed him to be a noble character, whereas he is operated by strings in the hands of the American capitalists, like the puppets the children at the Guignol mistake for living people.” “Only the capitalists,” cried a motorman, “led by Wilson, had any say in this treaty. Your Wilson and his capitalists are far worse tyrants than the Kaiser ever aspired to be in his wildest moments.” “Wilson leads the capitalists of the world against Socialism, against socialistic Germany, which they fear far more than they ever did a military Germany,” asserted the Majority-Socialist papers.

On the other hand there were Germans who stanchly defended Wilson, taking an unprejudiced, scientific view of the entire question, as they might of the fourth dimension or of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy. These were apt to bring their fellow-countrymen up with a round turn by asserting that Wilson never promised to make peace with Germany based on his Fourteen Points. Ah, those Fourteen Points! If they had been bayonets I should have resembled a sieve long, long before my journey was ended.

“We Germans can look at the problem from both sides,” insisted one such open-minded professor, “because we are more liberal than the Allies, because we travel, we do business in all parts of the world. We have advanced beyond the stage of melodrama, of believing that all right, all good is on one side and the contrary on the other. The Frenchman rarely leaves home, the Englishman never changes his mind when he does—he has it set in cement for safety’s sake before he starts. The American is too young to be able to look frankly at a question from both sides.”

“Militarism,” said a mason who had one crippled leg left, yet who chatted with me in an equally friendly manner both before and after he had learned my nationality, “was our national sport, as football is in England, and whatever you play most is in America. Now we have discovered that it is not a very pleasant sport. We have a nose full of it! Yet we cannot sign this peace. If a man has a thousand marks left and a footpad says to him: ‘I am going to take this away from you. Kindly sign this statement to the effect that you are giving it to me freely. I shall take it, anyway, but we will both be better off if I have your consent,’ what would you expect the man to do? Let the Allies come to Berlin! We cannot go to war again, but—the people must stand behind the government!”

Just what he meant by the last assertion was not entirely clear; but at least the first half of the assertion was frequently borne out by little hints that all but escaped the eye. Thus, a large bookstore in Berlin bore the meaningful placard, “War Literature at Half Price!”

“From this date” (May 8th), gasped an important Berlin daily, “we drop to a fourth-rate power, along with Spain.” (There were, to be sure, some Spanish suggestions in the uncleanliness, the apathy, the run-down condition of buildings that had suffered five years of disrepair, in the emaciated beggars one occasionally saw in the Germany of 1919.) “With this ‘peace’ we are down and out; we can never get on our feet again. There is not wealth enough in all Germany to pay this indemnity and still save ourselves. We can never recover because we can never buy the raw materials we must have to do so. There is nothing left in the country with which to pay for these raw stuffs except our labor, and we cannot set to work because we have no raw stuffs to work with. We are caught in the whirlpool! It is a fallacy to think that we shall save money on our army. The army we have to-day costs us far more than the one we had when the armistice was signed. If we are required to have an army of volunteers only and pay them as good wages as they now require ... to-day one soldier costs us more than thirty did under the old system! And what soldiers! We shall not be able to compete with the world, first of all because the exchange on the mark will make our raw materials cost us three times what they do our rivals, and then we have these new eight-hour laws and all the rest of the advance socialistic program, which they do not have in other countries. The Allies should have hunted out the guilty individuals, not punish us all as a nation, as an incompetent captain punishes his entire company because he is too lazy or too stupid to catch the actual wrong-doers. In twenty years Germany will have been completely destroyed. All the best men will have emigrated. If we try to spend anything for _Kultur_—that excellent heritage of the old régime which our enemies so falsified and garbled—for working-men’s insurance, new schools, municipal theaters, even for public baths, the Allies will say, ‘No, we want that money ourselves; you owe us that on the old war game you lost.’ In that case all we can do is to resort to passive resistance”—a strange German occupation indeed!

The little blond German “ace of aces,” credited with bringing down some twoscore Allied airmen, hoped to come to America and play in a circus. He put little faith in the rumor that he might not be received there, and thought that if there really was any opposition it could easily be overcome by getting one of our large “trusts” to take a financial interest in his case. In fact, the chief worry of many Germans seemed to be whether or not and how soon they would be allowed to come to America—North or South. “Rats desert a sinking ship.” One man whose intelligence and experience warranted attention to his words assured me that he belonged to a party that had been working for some time in favor of, and that they found a strong sentiment for—making Germany an American colony! I regret the inability to report any personal evidence to support his statements.

But if the general tone was lacrymose, notes of a more threatening timbre were by no means lacking. “With this ‘peace,’” was one assertion, “we shall have another Thirty Years’ War and all Europe will go over the brink into the abyss.” “We Germans got too high,” mused a philosophic old innkeeper accustomed to take advantage of his profession as a listening-post. “He who does is due for a fall, and we got it. But France is the haughty one now, and she is riding to a cropper. She will rue her overbearing manner, for the _revanche_ is here already—on our side this time. And if French and Germans ever go to war again there will be no prisoners taken!” “If the Germans are forced to sign this ‘peace,’” cried a fat Hollander who had lived much in Germany, “there will be another war within ten years, and all Europe will be destroyed, Holland with the rest, France certainly, for she is tottering already. If they do not sign, we shall all be plunged into anarchy.” “We had looked to Wilson to bring an end to a century-old situation that had grown intolerable,” moaned a Berlin merchant. “Now we must drill hatred into our children from their earliest age, so that in thirty years, when the time is ripe....”