Germany Revisited

I

A PARIS grown prosaic to those who knew it in the days of the shrill alerte, when the hostile avions flapped overhead, has lost something of its old charm. One involuntarily misses the boom that betokened the landing of the giant shells. I concluded that Germany, if equally profitless from the standpoint of excitement, might at least show more of interest.

The great, dimly lighted Gare de l’Est was as crowded and uncontrolled as in the days when we used to take the morning train for G.H.Q. at Chaumont. And, incidentally, it is quite as warlike since the permissionnaires of two armies of occupation are continually pouring through it. The half-effaced legend, ‘Lignes de Madhouse,’ antedating the war of 1870, is still there. I remembered looking at it on the morning when the news came that Soissons had fallen. How hopelessly ironical it seemed when there appeared to be little likelihood that Mulhouse would ever be known by any other title than that of Miihlhausen. Now two new and proud affiches mark the platforms, as symbolical of victory as triumphal arches might be. One bears the words ‘Metz, Trèves, Coblenz,’ and the other, ‘Strasbourg, Mayence, Wiesbaden. ’

Instead of the Teutonic tourists in their long, woolen cloaks, who were wont to take the eastern trains in other days, there was a steady stream of athletic young soldiers in the horizon blue of the infantry, or the red fez and khaki of the Colonials. That picturesque figure of other days, the unshaven middle-aged poilu, bending under the load of his pack and saucepan and extra pair of shoes, has disappeared. He has gone back to the farm and to the workshop, and in his place were these lithe fellows of the Line. A few German civilians there were, to be sure, who looked curiously at the soldiers and seemed to think that the times were sadly out of joint.

‘Your luck is in,’ said the sergeant in the American R.T.O. ‘Usually it is hard to get a sleeping-compartment unless you have ordered it days ahead, but the boys in Coblenz are going on manœuvres in a few days, and no leaves are being handed out.’

I got into my comfortable compartment, and knew little more until I was awakened by the Luxembourg customs officials in their high-peaked, Austrianlike hats.

My neighbor in the next compartment came out in the passageway, and, finding that I spoke German, engaged me in conversation. He had remained in his home at Saargemünde, it appeared, throughout the war, because he managed an Eisenfabrik, and his presence was imperative.

‘I would rather have been at the front,’ he said regretfully. ‘Our food was so execrable, and toward the end we could hardly get a night’s sleep because your fliers came so regularly.’

He went on to speak of the aerial bombardment, contending that the actual damage, which he computed shrewdly enough, was trifling in comparison with the gigantic scope and cost of the effort; and that the greatest damage done was to the shattered nerves of the workers in the Kriegsfabriken, who could not work properly after a dist urbing night.

‘I know exactly,’ he said, ‘because one of your American officers was quartered with me directly after the Armistice. It was his business to check up the damage done by the Allied fliers and he was amazed to find there was so little. Take the aniline plant in Ludwigshaven, which your newspapers claimed was so heavily damaged: it was scarcely even struck.’

His conclusion was that in which the best judgment of England has lately come to concur, namely, that the measures of defense did not increase in proportion to the means of aerial aggression. The elaborate barrage which protected Mannheim and Frankfort would not have sufficed to prevent their virtual destruction by the Allied fiiers, had the war lasted a few more months. Similarly, the comparative immunity enjoyed by London and Paris in the last weeks of the war was due not so much to the defensive systems, efficacious though they were, but rather to the breakdown in the German morale. My fellow traveler set up for an authority on Zeppelins, and stated that their failure was due to their extreme vulnerability to explosive bullets. With the use of helium, a non-inflammable gas, he considered that the Zeppelin would be a far more effective agent of destruction than the aeroplane.

By this time we were rolling through the beautiful valley of the Saar, which has lately loomed so large on the troubled political horizon. My companion was at the expense of some sarcasm concerning the Allied nations who, while purporting to fight for Democracy, had turned over a district in which ninety-five per cent of the people were Germans, to French control. Having just come from the tortured city of Rheims, two days before, I was in no humor to be lectured by a Boche, and reminded him rather sharply that the French control was for a limited period only, to the end of securing the coalsupply. I invited him to visit the devastated Aisne Valley before criticizing any steps which the Allied powers had taken in Germany. This caused somewhat of a coldness between us, and he left me at Trier with a very gruff ‘Guten Morgen.’

The great Bahnhof at Trier seemed unchanged except for the tricolor floating over the office of the major de cantonment, and the number of French soldiers of all branches of service. German uniforms, of course, there were none; but by a special indulgence promulgated some days before by the Rhineland Commission, the display of the German flag was again permitted. What the Republican flag is, or whet her there is any, I never discovered; but the old Schwarz, Weis, und Rot was in evidence at many of the windows

II

The train pursued its way, following the sinuosities of the beautiful Moselle, and finally brought us into the teeming Bahnhof of Coblenz. Here all was American and khaki-clad and businesslike. The military police, with their long batons, paced the platforms.

At the hotel, the embarrassments of the vanquished were brought home to me when the proprietor asked me if I were American. Only Americans, it appeared, military or civil, were to be quartered at the best of the river-front hotels. A German fellow traveler had the mortification of being told to seek a less comfortable hostelry on a side street. Vœ victis!

My bedroom was placarded with warnings that were in themselves evidence of the weakening of moral fibre in a nation which had once been regarded as an exemplar in the homelier virtues. One was advised not to put one’s boots outside of the door at night, and to keep baggage continually under surveillance, and was even warned of the prevalence of venereal diseases. I had noticed in the railroad stations how the associations for Versicherungs Reisegepäck, or protection of baggage against theft, had multiplied. Then, too, there was the flaunting of certain forms of vice whose publicity would not have been tolerated in the old days.

The Rhine embankment, with its noble terraces and allées, shimmered in the sunshine of that lovely August day. The stately municipal buildings, now occupied by the Allied Rhineland Commission, the glowing flood of the broad river, the bridge of boats, the castled crag of Ehrenbreitstein, confronted me as they did Childe Harold on just such a day, a century since. Only now, from the highest point of the storied castle, floated an enormous and singularly beautiful American flag, an earnest of victory and an emblem of defiance in the clear autumnal air.

The American Occupation at Coblenz, albeit complete and effectual, is the shadow of a shade. ‘You should have seen the place when the boys were here,’ said the doughboy who drove me out in his camion to the great outlying fortress of Feste Franz. ‘The M.P.’s had their hands full, I can tell you. Now we are all fat as butter from this lazy life. This here fortress, now: she is all mined by our engineers and ready to go up some time this fall, when the other Rhine forts are demolished. We get along pretty well with the Boches; but then we know how to treat them. If a Boche tries to take up too much of the sidewalk, we just push him out into the street.’

The centre of activity in Coblenz, at the present moment, is the great group of buildings on the Rhine embankment. Here float the flags of the Great Powers that make up the Commission. An army of clerks inhabits the ornate rooms; the sentries of four armies pass before its doors. Conscientious German policemen keep order in the crowd of idle onlookers, and salute punctiliously with the passing of each Allied officer.

The city of Blücher and Moreau is ludicrously Americanized, to those who knew it in other days. Chewing-gum and Camel cigarettes are displayed in the windows. The street gamins pester one in very tolerable English slang. A baseball schedule is displayed on the great bulletin board in the Schloss Platz; and in contrast to the homesickness which featured the closing days of the A.E.F. in France, no one in Coblenz seemed to wish to go home.

quoted one of the officers who knew his Thackeray. The spectre of an arid America seemed to loom with nameless terror.

The train for Wiesbaden was as crowded as in the old tourist days. A French general, resplendent in goldembroidered oak-leaves, preceded me, accompanied by his orderly. They inquired as to the platform for Mayence. ‘It is there, man général,' said one of the Eismbahn Angestellten in excellent French. But I heard him mutter to the ticket-puncher that the name had been Mainz at one time, and might soon be so again.

Opposite to me, in the crowded compartment, sat three alert middleaged Germans, who appraised me with practised eye. The habit of cutting the hair quite close has somehow survived the war, and often gives that, peculiar animal-like appearance which suggests the typical German physiognomy of the great Dutch caricaturist. I knew at once that my vis-à-vis had seen military service, and they accosted me as an American. We chatted amiably enough until we came below St. Goar and observed a company of French engineers throwing a pontoon bridge across the river. I innocently asked if this were not the place where Blücher had made his famous crossing in 1813. They answered that it was, and then, evidently moved by the contrast, broke into invective against the rigor of the Allies, the duplicity of the Americans, and the stupidity of their own leaders, who, they alleged, had brought them to so sorry a pass.

‘Look at me,’ exclaimed the younger and most soldierly appearing of the three. ‘I have worn the King’s coat for fourteen years. I had been artillery officer at Plauen since 1906. Now I am turned off, a broken man, glad to get an obscure clerkship in Frankfort. We could not have been worse off if we had fought to the end. But it was your Wilson who tricked us, with his fine protestations and his fourteen points. If only we had not been such dupes as to give up our weapons and our railroads ! ’

We passed a freight train moving on the up track. ‘Do you see that hay?’ he continued. ‘Do you know where it is going? To France. They have taken our milk-cows while our children starve; they have taken our best locomotives, which they cannot even use, and now they want our grain. If only we had stood shoulder to shoulder and said, “Lassen sie uns nur kommen.”’

The second man, whom I found to be a wine merchant from Bodenbach, began, with more moderation, to discuss the stringency of the times. ‘I must pay my people three times as much as in 1913, but they will not work. During the war they became accustomed to periods of two or three weeks of intense endeavor, followed by months of inactivity. It has ruined them. And then the French will give me no sugar, and I cannot properly prepare my wine. We have a good fruit harvest, particularly in apples, but without sugar they will all be wasted.’

Now we were passing Bacharach. In mid-stream steamed two rakish, lightdraught torpedo-boats, each with a wicked gun mounted on the foredeck. They were units of the Flotillc Rhénane, with which the French police the river. Opposite the Bahnhof was a storehouse now used as a barracks by the occupying army. Above the roof fluttered the beautiful tricolor, and beside it some strange green ensign of t he Prophet. From each window appeared swarthy faces under-red fezes; before the door paced a gigantic Moroccan sentry. My companions regarded the Colonials with gloomy eye, and began to tell me of their misdeeds, rapes, and tyrannies, and of the still wilder Senegalese who had preceded them.

‘The French might at least have garrisoned us with civilized troops,’ said the ex-artillery officer.

I told him, not too mincingly, that I might have had more sympathy with him if I had not the week previous been in the Champagne; and suggested that the native French might well be needed at home to restore a countryside which his countrymen had so hideously ravaged.

A palpable hit, this, for he could only mutter something about ‘Krieg ist Krieg.’

The third traveler, who had said little, began now to discuss the war, showing a correctness of information that seems to be the attribute of every educated German, and that causes one to marvel that so shrewd a people should have committed so many and such grave blunders in the conduct of the war. Like most of his countrymen, however, he had no conception of the American standpoint.

‘The mistake we made in America,’ said he, ‘ was in allowing the newspapers to be bought up by the English. We should have floated a big loan in your country. If your money had been invested with us in any great quantity, you would never have entered the war.’ Again, speaking of the end of the conflict, ‘We were beaten from within; it all seemed so hopeless. Those who had come home to work for the allotted period in the munition factories refused to go back to the front. The men grew to hate their officers. The whole world seemed to be against us.’

I was curious to see how he had viewed the shocking poltroonery that had sent out a much-vaunted navy, under a white flag, to surrender to their arch enemies. This amazing proceeding, however, had apparently left him quite cold. It was certain destruction to fight, he said; if a surrender was to be made, as well do it thoroughly. I began dimly to see that the real elements of national greatness were wanting in a folk who could reason so callously where the honor of the entire people was concerned.

My three companions expressed themselves quite freely as to the payment of the war-indemnity and were unanimously of the opinion that no indemnity would ever be paid. Indeed, I never spoke to any German during my stay in their country who professed to believe that it would be paid, even in part.

III

We crossed the Rhine and rolled into the great ornate Bahnhof, built for the loveliest and most cosmopolitan of the German watering-places. I recalled Wiesbaden as I had left it six years before, on the first feverish day of the mobilization. I remembered the tumult and the excitement, the quays heaped high with pyramids of trunks of belated tourists, the continual clanging of the church-bells. What a change now from the well-ordered state of other days! The platforms were unscrubbed and littered with paper. The beautiful bluish-glass roof was grimy. Of the host of deferential porters in former times not one appeared to take my bag. Near the ticket-gate we must turn to avoid a row of French soldiers sleeping on the stone floor.

My driver told me that Wiesbaden was full, that the Allied officers from Köln and Coblenz brought much custom, but that prices were high, and that the once conservative city was drifting into the control of the Spartacists. He carried me to my destination smartly enough, and I gave him a generous fare in German currency, which, if exchanged into our money, would about equal the tip that a New York cabbie would expect for a similar service.

The luxurious Rose is one of the few larger hotels which the French have not taken over. The befrogged porter, sadly altered from the pompous demeanor of other days, received me with a rueful smile. He had served four years, it appeared, and had been three times wounded. Business was returning, but very slowly, and ‘Es heist arbeiten,’ he observed hopefully.

I secured a room for an absurdly trivial figure in my American exchange, and ascended to the glass-enclosed terrace, through which had flowed the gay life of other days. At that corner table, in 1914, I had seen the last of the Orleanist princes, the Pretender, who had magnanimously volunteered in the first days of the war to fight as a private under the three-colored flag so abhorrent to his family. The table was occupied now by the American Commandant and his staff, come over from Coblenz for the day. His four-starred automobile stood outside, the only one of a long line which were usually parked there. Some English officers sat chatting at another table, and a group of commercial travelers at a third. Save for these, the great sunny terrace was deserted.

I deposited my bag, left the place where so many crowding memories were fast driving me into a fit of depression, and walked over to the gardens of the Koch Brunnen. The Anlagen lay shimmering and beautiful in the August sunshine, but the gates are open now. The French Commission has decreed that the health-giving waters shall be distributed without ticket or fee, except on the occasion of a concert.

The once plethoric gate-keeper was in his place, and recognized me immediately. He had stayed at home, but had also borne his particular cross, as was evident from his shrunken figure. ‘Sehen sie nur an,’ he exclaimed, as he stretched out his vest to show me how he had fallen from the corporeal estate of other days. I tried to console him by telling him that he looked much improved; but he only shook his head in doubtful fashion and began to tell me how ominous was the food-situation. The restrictions on the use of grain were still in force, and the bread was a wretched oily substance, differing little from the Kriegsbrof. Profiteering was on a gigantic scale, and was held in bounds only by the threats of the Spartacists. Only the week before, the shopkeepers had demanded six marks each for eggs. The Spartacists had risen and broken into the food-shops. Now eggs were back to the old price of four marks each.

I continued on my way to the famous eye-hospital, where I had dwelt before the war. The names of the streets, I noticed, had been reposted in French. The ‘Markl. Platz’ was now the ‘Place du Marché,’ and — crowning irony — the splendid ‘ Wilhelmstrasse’ had been rechristened as the ‘Rue Guillaume.’ This was the street on which daily, in the first week of May, I had been accustomed to see the War Lord ride out for his promenade in the Taunus Wald. I recalled his brilliant train and the mounted lackeys who bore the great baskets into which the complaisant monarch heaped the bouquets that a devoted people presented. How imposing he looked on horseback, and with what easy affability he was wont, to acknowledge the enthusiasm of his loyal subjects. And now he was drawing out a morose and dishonored exile, biting his fingers at destiny. This very street bore an alien name, and echoed to the marching steps of his hereditary foes. Had he shown himself upon it, his life would hardly have been safe from those same citizens who had once worshiped him almost as a god.

The renow ned Angen Klinik seemed as scrupulously clean and well-ordered as ever. Through its doors, in the last decade, had passed many notabilities, seeking relief for distressed vision at the hand of the Master. I remembered how, on this pavement, old King Leopold was wont to pace up and down, early in the morning, waiting for the doors to open and admit him for his consultation. The door-man (a new face — poor Franz, the old porter, had fallen at Armentières) looked at me in some surprise. The Herr Doctor was engaged, but would see me shortly.

I walked upstairs and was joyfully received in the spotless diet kitchen, where I drank thin coffee and listened to the news. The war, it appeared, was a hideous nightmare of bad food and long exhausting hours, punctuated by the alarm of nightly aeroplane raids on Mainz. The poor girls looked worn and haggard, and bore the uneasy, furtive expression which I noticed on so many faces in Germany. It seemed to hint at a future which bore little hope. ‘We can hardly clothe ourselves on what we earn now,’said Minna. ‘We earn three hundred marks a month, but the government takes a hundred and twenty of that in taxes, so you see there is not much left. And a decent pair of shoes costs six hundred marks.’

Word came that the Doctor was ready to see me, and I descended to his private office. I was astonished at the change in his appearance. This was the man whom the physicians of the great Empress Queen had called to England during her last sickness, to pass upon some defects in her vision, and who, report said, had been the first to discover that the august patient was dying and beyond human aid. Now he stood before me, thin and pallid; his clothes were shiny and worn. Although ho greeted me cordially enough, it was evident that the iron had entered his soul.

He spoke of the war and of the shame and bitterness which it entailed. ‘Sad times indeed! I can no longer afford to conduct my Klinik on the old lines, and yet my German patients are unable to pay me more than formerly. My English patients are returning; some are living here now and more will come. But I cannot take them at the old rates, nor can I have one rate for the Germans and another for the English and Americans. One of your American houses has asked me to come over for three months, they to arrange my consultations and take ten per cent of the fees. But I will not go while I must hang my head. When we Germans are reinstated in your public opinion, then, perhaps ’

He spoke of the military occupation without any attempt to conceal his chagrin. ‘The French take our all and we are powerless to prevent it. If the French commandant wishes my house, my goods, or my wife, he can do as he pleases. You remember how clean and decent this city used to be? Now it is full of official brothels and low dancehalls. They have garrisoned us with African troops, who know no law but their own lust. Only last week a young girl was found raped and murdered, outside of their barracks. Their officers make inquiries, but it seems no one is punished.’

He then began to detail to me the various and vexatious restrictions which were imposed upon the citizens. While listening, I was wondering whether he was aware of the fact that the French had simply taken the German proclamations which they had found in Lille and in the Belgian cities and retranslated them for use in the Rhineland. However, I could see nothing to gain by an argument, and we parted in friendly fashion.

I had a commission to perform in the older section of the city, and asked Teresa, gentlest and kindest of nurses, to go with me. As we walked along, she told me of the thousands of blinded officers who had passed through the Augen Klinik, and of the work and the suffering. She feared that the coming generation would be much weakened by the strain of five years of insufficient rationing.

‘We will walk by the Röderstrasse,’ she said, ‘and you can see for yourself.’

I had known the Röderstrasse as a working-class quarter, teeming with life and overflowing with children. The children were still there, but many of them wan and stunted. In the central part of the city, where are the shops and the great hotels, the effects of the war are to be estimated only by such trivial tokens as shabby clothing, paper linen, and the absence of silver. Here, in the poor man’s house, the real result of the four years’ blockade upon the development of the nation could best be observed. Children who were ten years old looked to be seven or eight. Many of the little faces were pinched; fat, rosy baby legs were scarcely to be seen.

‘We have practically no milk,’ continued Teresa, ‘and not much chance of getting any for some months. It is a bad outlook for the very young and the very old, for these must have milk. It was a bitter day for us when we knew that the French were to come. It was raining hard on the day that they marched in, and everyone stayed indoors behind drawn curtains.’

By this time we had come the length of the mediæval Markt Platz, the centre of the old town. A strain of wild Oriental music came to our ears, and we knew by the gathering crowd that the daily ceremony of the changing of the guard was about to take place. The Markt Platz is flanked on one side by the Archducal Palace where the Emperor was wont to reside when he visited Wiesbaden. This is now the residence of the French Commander-inChief. Opposite is the stately old Rathaus. Above its Gothic portal still flaunts the erstwhile haughty motto: —

Some military cynic on the staff of the occupying army had allowed this inscription to remain when many of the other legends were effaced. It is a biting commentary to a proud people, forced to pass beneath it in their daily life and to reflect upon the shortness of shine of human promise.

On the steps of the palace were the regimental commander and his staff, who stood at attention beneath the flag of France, while the officers of the day paced to and fro with drawn swords. Beyond them were three files of Algerian infantry, in red fezes, with abnormally long bayonets. These were drawn from the very border of the Great Desert, and had formed a part of the famous Division de Fer. Next was the regimental band, of trumpets and shrill African bagpipes. To each trumpet was attached a green pennon, embroidered in Arabic characters. Before the beginning of the tune, the tambour-major waved the cadence with a huge brass crescent; the lean, swarthy arms shot up in unison; the green banners waved, and then the barbaric strains of ‘SidiBrahim’ rang through the mediæval German square.

I looked about me into the faces of the crowd. A nation’s cup of gall was being drained to the bitter dregs. I glanced down at Teresa and saw that there were tears in her eyes. We turned aside and left the Markt Platz, pondering as we went on the mutation of earthly greatness.