Part 4

Some contended that the women in particular had a deep resentment against the American soldiers, that they were still loyal to the Kaiser and to the old order of things, that they saw in us the murderers of their sons and husbands, the jailers of their prisoners. On a few rare occasions I felt a breath of frigidity in the attitude of some _grande dame_ of the haughtier class. But whether it was a definite policy of conciliation to win the friendship of America, in the hope that it would soften the blow of the Treaty of Peace, as a naughty boy strives to make up for his naughtiness at sight of the whip being taken down from its hook, or a mere “mothering instinct,” the vast majority of our hostesses, even though war widows, went out of their way to make our stay with them pleasant. Clothes were mended, buttons sewed on unasked. Maids and housewives alike gave our quarters constant attention. The mass of Americans on the Rhine came with the impression that they would be forced to go heavily armed day and night. Except for the established patrols and sentries, the man or officer who “toted” a weapon anywhere in the occupied area could scarcely have aroused the ridicule of his comrades more had he appeared in sword and armor. There was, to be sure, a rare case of an American soldier being done to death by hoodlums in some drunken brawl, but, for the matter of that, so there was in France.

Now and then one stumbled upon the sophistry that seems so established a trait in the German character. No corporation lawyer could have been more clever in finding loopholes in the proclamations issued by the Army of Occupation than those adherents of the “scrap of paper” fallacy who set out to do so. My host sent up word from time to time for permission to spend an evening with me over a bottle of well-aged Rhine wine with which his cellar seemed still to be liberally stocked. On one occasion the conversation turned to several holes in the ceiling of my sumptuous parlor. They were the result, the pompous old judge explained, of an air raid during the last August of the war. A bomb had carried away the window-shutters, portions of the granite steps beneath, and had liberally pockmarked the stone façade of the house.

“It was horrible,” he growled. “We all had to go down into the cellar, and my poor little grandson cried from fright. _That_ is no way to make war, against the innocent non-combatants, and women and children.”

I did not trouble to ask him if he had expressed the same sentiments among his fellow club-members in, say, May, 1915, for his sophistry was too well trained to be caught in so simple a trap.

Whatever the docility, the conciliatory attitude of our forced hosts, however, I have yet to hear that one of them ever expressed repentance for the horrors their nation loosed upon the world. The war they seemed to take as the natural, the unavoidable thing, just a part of life, as the gambler takes gambling, with no other regret than that it was their bad luck to lose. Like the gambler, they may have been sorry they made certain moves in the game; they may have regretted entering the game at all, as the gambler would who knew in the end that his adversary had more money on his hip than he had given him credit for in the beginning. But it was never a regret for being a gambler. Did not Nietzsche say that to regret, to repent, is a sign of weakness? Unless there was something under his mask that never showed a hint of its existence on the surface, the German is still a firm disciple of Nietzschean philosophy.

There was much debate among American officers as to just what surge of feeling passed through the veins of a German of high rank forced to salute his conquerors. With rare exceptions, every Boche in uniform rendered the required homage with meticulous care. Now and then one carefully averted his eyes or turned to gaze into a shop-window in time to avoid the humiliation. But for the most part they seemed almost to go out of their way to salute, some almost brazenly, others with a half-friendly little bow. I shall long remember the invariable click of heels and the smart hand-to-cap of the resplendent old general with a white beard who passed me each morning on the route to our respective offices.

That there was feeling under these brazen exteriors, however, was proved by the fact that most of the officers in the occupied area slipped quietly into civilian clothes, for no other apparent reason than to escape the unwelcome order. From the day of our entrance no German in uniform was permitted in our territory unless on official business, sanctioned by our authorities. But the term “uniform” was liberally interpreted. A discharged soldier, unable to invest in a new wardrobe, attained civilian status by exchanging his ugly, round, red-banded fatigue-bonnet for a hat or cap; small boys were not rated soldiers simply because they wore cut-down uniforms. Then on March 1st came a new order from our headquarters commanding all members of the German army in occupied territory never to appear in public out of uniform, always to carry papers showing their presence in our area to be officially authorized, and to report to an American official every Monday morning. The streets of Coblenz blossomed out that day with more varieties of German uniforms than most members of the A. E. P. had ever seen outside a prisoner-of-war inclosure.

It was easy to understand why Germans in uniform saluted—they were commanded to do so. But why did every male, from childhood up, in many districts, raise his hat to us with a subservient “_’n Tag_”; why the same words, with a hint of courtesy, from the women? Was it fear, respect, habit, design? It could scarcely have been sarcasm; the German peasantry barely knows the meaning of that. Why should a section foreman, whose only suggestion of a uniform was a battered old railway cap, go out of his way to render us military homage? Personally I am inclined to think that, had conditions been reversed, I should have climbed a tree or crawled into a culvert. But we came to wonder if they did not consider the salute a privilege.

Only the well-dressed in the cities showed an attitude that seemed in keeping with the situation, from our point of view. They frequently avoided looking at us, pretended not to see us, treated us much as the Chinese take their “invisible” property-man at the theater. At the back door of our headquarters the pompous high priests of business and politics, or those haughty, well-set-up young men who, one could see at a glance, had been army officers, averted their eyes to hide the rage that burned within them when forced to stand their turn behind some slattern woman or begrimed workman. In a tramway or train now and then it was amusing to watch a former captain or major, weather-browned with service in the field, still boldly displaying his kaiserly mustache, still wearing his army leggings and breeches, looking as out of place in his civilian coat as a cowboy with a cane, as he half openly gritted his teeth at the “undisciplined” American privates who dared do as they pleased without so much as asking his leave. But it was no less amusing to note how superbly oblivious to his wrath were the merrymaking doughboys.

The kaiserly mustache of world-wide fame, by the way, has largely disappeared, at least in the American sector. In fact, the over-modest lip decoration made famous by our most popular “movie” star seemed to be the vogue. More camouflage? More “_Kamerad_”? A gentle compliment to the Americans? Or was it merely the natural change of style, the passing that in time befalls all things, human or _kaiserlich_?

Speaking of German officers, when the first inkling leaked out of Paris that Germany might be required by the terms of the Treaty of Peace to reduce her army to a hundred thousand men there was a suggestion of panic among our German acquaintances. It was not that they were eager to serve their three years as conscripts, as their fathers had done. There was parrot-like agreement that no government would ever again be able to force the manhood of the land to that sacrifice. Nor was there any great fear that so small an army would be inadequate to the requirements of “democratized” Germany. The question was, “What on earth can we do with all our officers, if you allow us only four thousand or so?” Prohibition, I believe, raised the same grave problem with regard to our bartenders. But as we visualized our own army reduced to the same stern necessity the panic was comprehensible. What would we, under similar circumstances, do with many of our dear old colonels? They would serve admirably as taxi-door openers along Fifth Avenue—were it not for their pride. They would scarcely make good grocery clerks; they were not spry enough, nor accurate enough at figures. However, the predicament is one the Germans can scarcely expect the Allies to solve for them.

“War,” said Voltaire, “is the business of Germany.” One realized more and more the fact in that assertion as new details of the thorough militarization of land, population, and industry came to light under our occupancy. Fortifications, labyrinths of secret tunnels, massive stores of everything that could by any possibility be of use in the complicated business of war; every man up through middle age, who had still two legs to stand on, marked with his service in Mars’s workshop; there was some hint of militarization at every turn. Not the least striking of them was the aggressive propaganda in favor of war and of loyalty to the war lords. Not merely were there monuments, inscriptions, martial mottoes, to din the military inclination into the simple _Volk_ wherever the eye turned. In the most miserable little _Gasthaus_, with its bare floors and not half enough cover on the beds to make a winter night comfortable, huge framed pictures of martial nature stared down upon the shivering guest. Here hung a life-size portrait of Hindenburg; there was a war scene of Blücher crossing the Rhine; beyond, an “_Opfergaben des Volkes_,” in which a long line of simple laboring people had come to present with great deference their most cherished possession—a bent old peasant, a silver heirloom; a girl, her hair—on the altar of their rulers’ martial ambition. It is doubtful whether the Germans have any conception of how widely this harvest of tares has overspread their national life. It may come to them years hence, when grim necessity has forced them to dig up the pernicious roots.

But the old order was already beginning to show signs of change. On a government building over at Trier the first word of the lettering “Königliches Hauptzollamt” had been obliterated. In a little town down the Rhine the dingy

HOTEL DEUTSCHER KAISER Diners 1 mk. 50 und höher Logis von 2 mk. an

had the word “Kaiser” painted over, though it was still visible through the whitewash, as if ready to come back at a new turn of events.

The adaptability of the German as a merchant has long since been proved by his commercial success all over the world. It quickly became evident to the Army of Occupation that he was not going to let his feelings—if he had any—interfere with business. As a demand for German uniforms, equipment, insignia faded away behind the retreating armies of the Kaiser, commerce instantly adapted itself to the new conditions. Women who had earned their livelihood or their pin-money for four years by embroidering shoulder-straps and knitting sword-knots for the soldiers in field gray quickly turned their needles to making the ornaments for which the inquiries of the new-comers showed a demand. Shop-windows blossomed out overnight in a chaos of divisional insignia, of service stripes, with khaki cloth and the coveted shoulder-pins from brass bars to silver stars, with anything that could appeal to the American doughboy as a suitable souvenir of his stay on the Rhine—and this last covers a multitude of sins indeed. Iron crosses of both classes were dangled before his eager eyes. The sale of these “highest prizes of German manhood” to their enemies as mere pocket-pieces roused a howl of protest in the local papers, but the trinkets could still be had, if more or less _sub rosa_. Spiked helmets—he must be an uninventive or an absurdly truthful member of the new Watch on the Rhine who cannot show visible evidence to the amazed folks at home of having captured at least a dozen Boche officers and despoiled them of their headgear. Those helmets were carried off by truck-loads from a storehouse just across the Moselle; they loaded down the A. E. F. mails until it is strange there were ships left with space for soldiers homeward bound. A sergeant marched into his captain’s billet in an outlying town with a telescoped bundle of six helmets and laid them down with a snappy, “Nine marks each, sir.”

“Can you get me a half-dozen, too?” asked a visiting lieutenant.

“Don’t know, sir,” replied the sergeant. “He made these out of some remnants he had left on hand, but he is not sure he can get any more material.”

If we had not awakened to our peril in time and the Germans had taken New York, would our seamstresses have made German flags and our merchants have prominently displayed them in their windows, tagged with the price? Possibly. We of the A. E. F. have learned something of the divorce of patriotism from business since the days when the money-grabbers first descended upon us in the training-camps at home. The merchants of Coblenz, at any rate, were quite as ready to take an order for a Stars and Stripes six feet by four as for a red, white, and black banner. What most astonished, perhaps, the khaki-clad warriors who had just escaped from France was the German’s lack of profiteering tendencies. Prices were not only moderate; they remained so in spite of the influx of Americans and the constant drop in the value of the mark. The only orders on the subject issued by the American authorities was the ruling that prices must be the same for Germans and for the soldiers of occupation; nothing hindered merchants from raising their rates to all, yet this rarely happened even in the case of articles of almost exclusive American consumption.

“Shoe-shine parlors,” sometimes with the added enticement, “We Shine Your Hobnails,” sprang up in every block and were so quickly filled with Yanks intent on obeying the placard to “Look Like a Soldier” that the proprietors had perforce to encourage their own timid people by posting the notice, “Germans Also Admitted.” Barber shops developed hair carpets from sheer inability to find time to sweep out, and at that the natives were hard put to it to get rid of their own facial stubble. When the abhorred order against photography by members of the A. E. F. was suddenly and unexpectedly lifted, the camera-shops resembled the entrance to a ball-park on the day of the deciding game between the two big leagues. There was nothing timid or squeamish about German commerce. Shops were quite ready to display post-cards showing French ruins with chesty German officers strutting in the foreground, once they found that these appealed to the indefatigable and all-embracing American souvenir-hunter. Down in Cologne a German printing-shop worked overtime to get out an official history of the American 3d Division. In the cafés men who had been shooting at us three months before sat placidly sawing off our own popular airs and struggling to perpetrate in all its native horror that inexcusable hubbub known as the “American jazz.” The sign “American spoken here” met the eye at frequent intervals. Whether the wording was from ignorance, sarcasm, an attempt to be complimentary, or a sign of hatred of the English has not been recorded. There was not much call for the statement even when it was true, for it was astounding what a high percentage of the Army of Occupation spoke enough German to “get by.” The French never tired of showing their surprise when a Yank addressed them in their own tongue; the Germans took it as a matter of course, though they often had the ill manners to insist on speaking “English” whatever the fluency of the customer in their own language, a barbaric form of impoliteness which the French are usually too instinctively tactful to commit.

On the banks of the Rhine in the heart of “Duddlebug”—keep it dark! It is merely the American telephone girls’ name for Coblenz, but it would be a grievous treachery if some careless reader let the secret leak out to Berlin—there stands one of the forty-eight palaces that belonged to the ex-Kaiser. Its broad lawn was covered now with hastily erected Y. M. C. A. wooden recreation-halls that contrast strangely with the buildings of the surrounding city, constructed to stand for centuries, and which awaken in the German breast a speechless wrath that these irreverent beings from overseas should have dared to perpetrate such a _lèse-majesté_ on the sacred precincts. But the _Schloss_ itself was not occupied by the Americans, and there have been questions asked as to the reason—whether those in high standing in our army were showing a sympathy for the monarch who took Dutch leave which they did not grant the garden variety of his ex-subjects. The allegation has no basis. Upon his arrival the commander of the Army of Occupation gave the palace a careful “once over” and concluded that the simplest solution was to leave its offices to the German authorities who were being ousted from more modern buildings. As to the residence portion, the wily old caretaker pointed out to the general that there was neither gas, electricity, nor up-to-date heating facilities. In the immense drawing- and throne-rooms there was, to be sure, space enough to billet a battalion of soldiers, but it would, perhaps, have been too typically Prussian an action to have risked a repetition of what occurred at Versailles in 1871 by turning over this mess of royal bric-à-brac and the glistening polished floors to the tender care of a hobnailed band of concentrated virility.

Plainly impressive enough outwardly, the “living”-rooms of the castle would probably be dubbed a “nightmare” by the American of simple tastes. The striving of the Germans to ape the successful nations of antiquity, the Greeks, and particularly the Romans, in art and architecture, as well as in empire-building, is in evidence here, as in so many of the ambitious residences of Coblenz. The result is a new style of “erudite barbarism,” as Romain Rolland calls it, “laborious efforts to show genius which result in the banal and grotesque.” The heavy, ponderous luxury and mélange of style was on the whole oppressive. In the entire series of rooms there was almost nothing really worth looking at for itself, except a few good paintings and an occasional insignificant little gem tucked away in some corner. They were mainly filled with costly and useless bric-à-brac, royal presents of chiefly bad taste, from Sultan, Pope, and potentate, all stuck about with a very stiff air and the customary German over-ornateness. The place looked far less like a residence than like a museum which the defenseless owner had been forced to build to house the irrelevant mass of junk that had been thrust upon him. Costly ivory sets of dominoes, chess, table croquet, what not, showed how these pathetic beings, kings and emperors, passed their time, which the misfortune of rank did not permit them to spend wandering the streets or grassy fields like mere human beings.

The old caretaker had some silly little anecdote for almost every article he pointed out. He had taken thousands of visitors through the castle—it was never inhabited more than a month or two a year even before the war—and the only thing that had ever been stolen was one of the carved ivory table-croquet mallets, which had been taken by an American Red Cross nurse. I was forced to admit that we had people like that, even in America. In the royal chapel—now an American Protestant church—the place usually taken by the pipe organ served as a half-hidden balcony for the Kaiser, with three glaring red-plush chairs—those ugly red-plush chairs, no one of which looked comfortable enough actually to sit in, screamed at one all over the building—with a similar, simpler embrasure opposite for the emperor’s personal servants. The main floor below was fully militarized, like all Germany, the pews on the right side being reserved for the army and inscribed with large letters from front to rear—“Generalität,” “General Kommando,” “Offiziere und Hochbeamter,” and so on, in careful order of rank. Red slip-covers with a design of crowns endlessly repeated protected from dust most of the furniture in the _salons_ and drawing-rooms, and incidentally shielded the eye, for the furniture itself was far uglier than the covering.

The most pompous of _nouveaux riches_ could not have shown more evidence of self-worship in their decorations. Immense paintings of themselves and of their ancestors covered half the Hohenzollern walls, showing them in heroic attitudes and gigantic size, alone with the world at their feet, or in the very thick of battles, looking calm, collected, and unafraid amid generals and followers who, from Bismarck down, had an air of fear which the royal central figure discountenanced by contrast. Huge portraits of princes, _Kurfürsten_, emperors, a goodly percentage of them looking not quite intelligent enough to make efficient night-watchmen, stared haughtily from all sides. A picture of the old Hohenzollern castle, from which the family—and many of the world’s woes—originally sprang, occupied a prominent place, as an American “Napoleon of finance” might hang in his Riverside drawing-room a painting of the old farm from which he set out to conquer the earth. Much alleged art by members of the royal family, as fondly preserved as Lizzy’s first—and last—school drawing, stood on easels or tables in prominent, insistent positions. Presents from the Sultan were particularly numerous, among them massive metal tablets with bits in Arabic from the Koran. One of these read, according to the caretaker, “He who talks least says most.” Unfortunately, the Kaiser could not read Arabic, hence the particularly pertinent remark was lost upon him. In an obscure corner hung one of the inevitable German cuckoo clocks, placed there, if my guide was not mistaken, by a former empress in memory of the spot where she plighted her troth. Poor, petty little romances of royalty! Probably it was not so much coquetry as an effort to escape the pseudo-magnificence of those appalling rooms that drove her into the corner. How could any one be comfortable, either in mind or in body, with such junk about them, much less pass the romantic hours of life in their midst? I should much have preferred to have my _Verlobungskuss_ in a railway station.

Only the library of the ex-empress, with its German, French, and English novels and its works of piety, showed any sign of real human individuality. Her favorite picture hung there—a painting showing a half-starved woman weeping and praying over an emaciated child, called “The Efficacy of Prayer.” No doubt the dear empress got much sentimental solace out of it—just before the royal dinner was announced. The Kaiser’s private sleeping-room, on the other hand, was simplicity itself—far less sumptuous than my own a few blocks away. He had last slept there, said the caretaker, in the autumn of 1914, while moving toward the western front with his staff.

“And all this belongs to the state now, since Germany has become a republic?” I remarked.

“Only a part of it,” replied my guide. “We are making up lists of the private and crown property, and his own possessions will be returned to the Kaiser.”