It is not necessary to be long in Rhineland and Westphalia to realise that a shortage in these and other essentials is much more disturbing to the heads of these wonderful organisations than the fear of aerial bombs.

On the occasion of my first war-time visit to Essen it would have been easy to have bombed it. There is an old saying that a shoemaker's children are the worst shod, and the display of anti-aircraft guns which has since manifested itself was then non-existent. The town was ablaze. It is still ablaze, but the lighting has been cunningly arranged to deceive nocturnal visitors, and any aeroplanes approaching Essen at a height of twelve or fifteen thousand feet would find it hard to discover which was Essen, and which Borbeck, and which was Steele.

Mulheim is easily found, because it is close to the River Ruhr. We had to halt a long time outside the station of Essen, so great was the pressure of traffic. The cordon surrounding the entrance to the city is some distance away, and having passed that safely I had no fear of being again interrogated.

I told the hotel manager that I was a travelling newspaper correspondent, and should like to see as many as possible, of the wonders of his town. After praise of his hostelry, which, as the sub-manager said, was too good for the Essenites, I set out on my travels to see the sights of the city, foremost among them being the regulation statue of William I.

It was easy to find Krupps, for I had only to turn my steps towards the lurid panorama in the sky. As I came nearer, not only my sense of sight but my sense of hearing told me that Germany's great arsenal was throbbing with unwonted life. The crash and din of mighty steam hammers and giant anvils, the flame and flash of roaring blast furnaces, the rumbling of great railway trucks trundling raw and finished products in and out, chimneys of dizzy height belching forth monster coils of Cimmerian smoke, seem to transport one from the prosaic valley of the Ruhr into the deafening realm of Vulcan and Thor. The impression of Krupps by night is ineffaceable. The very air exudes iron and energy. You can almost imagine yourself in the midst of a thunderous artillery duel. You are at any rate in no doubt that the myriad of hands at work behind those carefully guarded walls are even more vital factors in the war than the men in the firing line. The blaze and roar fill one with the overpowering sense of the Kaiser's limitless resources for war-making. For you must roll Sheffield and Newcastle-on-Tyne and Barrow-in-Furness into one clanging whole to visualise Essen-on-the-Ruhr.

In some way Essen is unlike any other town I have visited. It has its own internal network of railways, running to and from the various branches of Krupps, and as the trains pass across the streets they naturally block the traffic for some minutes. They are almost continuous and the pedestrians' progress is slow, but it is exciting, for it is here that one realises what it means to be at war with Germany. If the resolution of the German people were as rigid as the steel in the great cranes and rolling mills, the Allied task would be impossible.

The brief noon-tide rush of the workpeople resembles our six o'clock rush in America towards Brooklyn Bridge. I can say no more than that. There is nothing like it in London. The home-going crowd round the Bank of England does not compare with the Essen crowd, because the crowd at Essen is for a few minutes more concentrated. Old and young, men and women, refugees and prisoners of several nationalities (I saw no British), Poles and Russians predominating, grimy, worn, and weary, they pour out in a solid mass, and cover the tramcars like bees in swarming time. The pedestrians gradually break up into little companies, most of them going to Kronenberg and other model colonies founded by Frau Krupp—"Bertha," as she is affectionately called throughout Germany. The highest honour the Germans can bestow upon her is to name their 16-inch howitzer "Fat Bertha." Frau Bertha Krupp, it may be well to recall, was the heiress to the great Krupp fortune, and on her marriage in 1906 to Herr von Bohlen und Halbach, a diplomatist, he changed his name to Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.

Though a private corporation with 12,500,000 pounds share capital owned by the "Cannon Queen" and her family, it is to all intents and purposes a Government Department just as Woolwich Arsenal is an adjunct of the British War Office. In the past, as the elaborate centenary (1910) memorial proudly recites, fifty-two Governments throughout the world have bought Krupp guns, armour, shells, and warships, with Germany by far the biggest customer.

Out of the stupendous profits of war machines the Krupps have built workpeople's houses that, as regards material comfort, would not be easy to excel. These houses are provided with ingenious coal-saving stoves, that might well be copied elsewhere, for though Essen is in the coal centre of Germany, they are just as careful about coal as though it were imported from the other end of the world.

Frau Bertha and her husband (a simple and modest man, who is, I was informed, entirely in the hands of his specialists, and who has the wisdom to let well alone) have put up a big fight with Batocki, the food dictator. The semi-famine had not reached its height when I was in Essen, and the suffering was not great there. A munition-maker working in any of the Rhenish-Westphalian towns is regarded by Germans as a soldier. As the war has proceeded he has been subject to continuous combing out.

The amount of food allowed to those engaged in these great factories and rolling mills is, I estimate, 33 per cent. more than that allowed to the rest of the civil population. In all the notices issued throughout Germany in regard to further food restrictions, there is appended the line, "This change is necessary owing to the need for fully supplying your brothers in the army and the munition works."

Essen is a town that before the war had a population exceeding 300,000. A conservative estimate makes the figure to-day nearly half a million. The Krupp Company employ about 120,000. A prevalent illusion is that Krupps confine their war-time effort exclusively to making war material. That is a mistake. A considerable part of Krupp's work is the manufacture of articles which can be exchanged for food and other products in neighbouring countries, thus taking the place of gold. At Lubeck, I saw the quays crowded with the products of Essen in the shape of steel girders and other building machinery going to Sweden in exchange for oil, lime from Gotland, iron ore, paper, wood, and food products,

A mining engineer of the great mines at Kiruna, Lapland, told me that he had just given an order for steam shovels from the Westphalian manufacturers, who are also sending into Holland knives and scissors and other cutlery and tools.

Germany's principal bargaining commodities with contiguous neutral nations are steel building materials, coal, and dye-stuffs. Coal dug in Belgium by Belgian miners is a distinct asset for Germany, when she exchanges it for Swiss cattle, Dutch cheese, and Swedish wood. When we consider that the great industrial combinations of Rhineland and Westphalia are not only reaping enormous munition profits, but supply the steel and coal which form the bulk of German war-time exports, we can easily understand why some Social Democrats grew dissatisfied because the all-powerful National Liberals resisted a war profits tax for two years. It is noteworthy that several of the more outspoken German editors have been suspended for attacking these profiteers.

I should qualify this statement of exports slightly by saying that they pertained up to November, 1916. The effort to put more than ten million men into military uniform resulted not only in the slave-raids in Belgium but in a concentration in munition output that stopped further exports of steel products and coal on a large scale.

We should always remember in this great war of machinery that Germany secured a tremendous advantage at the expense of France at the outset when she occupied the most important French iron region of Longwy-Briey. The Germans, as I previously observed, have been working the French mines to the utmost—indeed, they boast that they have installed improved machinery in them. They have, furthermore, been importing ore steadily from Sweden, some of the Swedish ore, such as Dannemora, being the best in the world for the manufacture of tool steel—so important in munition work.

Dusseldorf, probably the most attractive large manufacturing city in the world, had planned an industrial exhibition for 1915 or 1916, and the steel skeletons of many of the buildings had already been erected at the outbreak of war. But the Germans immediately set to work to tear down the steel frames to use them for more practical purposes. "We were going to call it a German Fair," said a native manufacturer to me early in the war; "but we can have it later and call it a World's Fair, as the terms will be synonymous."

Isolated near the Rhine is the immense reconstructed Zeppelin shed which British airmen in November, 1914, partly destroyed, together with the nearly completed Zeppelin within it. The daring exploit evidently work up the newly appointed anti-aircraft gunners, for they subsequently annihilated two of their own machines approaching from the West.

The badly paid war slaves of Essen are working the whole twenty-four hours, seven days a week, in three shifts a day of eight hours each, under strict martial law. The town is a hotbed of extreme Social Democracy, and as a rule the Socialists of Westphalia are almost as red as those of the manufacturing districts of Saxony. But Socialists though they be, they are just as anti-British as the rest of Germany, and they like to send out their products with the familiar hall-mark of "Gott strafe England," or "Best wishes for King George." It is the kind of Socialism that wants more money, more votes, less work, but has no objection to plenty of war. It is a common-sense Socialism, which knows that without war Essen might shrink to its pre-war dimensions.

Essen is very jealous of the great Skoda works near Pilsen in Austria. My hotel manager spoke with some acerbity of the amount of advertising the Austrian siege howitzers were receiving. "You can accept my assurance," he said, "that the guns for the bombardment of Dover were made here, and not at the Skoda works, as the Austrians claim."

Every German in Essen seems to feel a personal pride in the importance of the works to the Empire at the fateful hour. The 43-centimetre gun "which conquered Belgium"—as the native puts it—is almost deified. Everybody struts about in the consciousness that he or she has had directly or indirectly something to do with the murderous weapon which has wrought such death and glory in Germany's name. "The Empire has the men, Essen has the armour-plate, the torpedoes, the shells, the guns. It is the combination which must win." That is the spirit in Kruppville.



CHAPTER XXI

TOMMY IN GERMANY

One day the world will be flooded with some of the most dramatic, horrible, and romantic of narratives—the life-stories of the British soldiers captured in the early days of the war, their gross ill-treatment, their escapes, and attempts at escape. I claim to be the only unofficial neutral with any large amount of eye-witness, hand-to-hand knowledge of those poor men in Germany.

One of the most difficult tasks I assumed during the war was the personal and unconducted investigation of British prisoners of war. The visitor is only allowed to talk with prisoners when visiting camps under the supervision of a guide. My tramps on foot all over Germany gave me valuable information on this as on other matters.

My task was facilitated by the Germany policy of showing the hated British captives to as many people as possible; thus the 30,000 men have been scattered into at least 600 prison camps. In the depleted state of the German Army it is not easy to find efficient guards for so many establishments. Prisoners are constantly being moved about. They are conveyed ostentatiously and shown at railway stations en route, where until recently they were allowed to be spat upon by the public, and were given coffee into which the public were allowed to spit. These are but a few of the slights and abominations heaped upon them. Much of it is quite unprintable.

Many a night did I lie awake in Berlin cogitating how to get into touch with some of these men. I learned something on a previous visit in 1914, when I saw the British prisoners at one of the camps. At that time it was impossible to get into conversation with them. They were efficiently and continually guarded by comparatively active soldiers.

On this occasion I came across my first British prisoner quite by accident, and, as so often happens in life, difficult problems settle themselves automatically. In nothing that I write shall I give any indication of the whereabouts of the sixty prisoners with whom I conversed privately, but there can be no harm in my mentioning the whereabouts of my public visit, which took place in one of the regular neutral "Cook's tours" of the prisoners in Germany.

The strain of my work in so suspicious a place as Berlin, the constant care required to guard one's expressions, and the anxiety as to whether one was being watched or not got on my nerves sometimes, and one Sunday I determined to take a day off and go into the country with another neutral friend. There, by accident, I came across my first private specimen of Tommy in Germany.

We were looking about for a decent Gasthaus in which to get something to eat when we saw a notice high up in large type on a wall outside an old farmhouse building, which read:—

Jeder Verkehr der Zivilbevolkerung mit den Kriegsgefangenen ist STRENG VERBOTEN,

"Any intercourse of the civil population with the prisoners of war is strictly forbidden."

These notices, which threaten the civilian population with heavy penalties if they exchange any words with the prisoners, are familiar all over Germany, but I did not expect to find them in that small village.

My neutral friend thought it would make a nice photograph if I would stand under the notice, which I did after a cautious survey showed that the coast was clear.

As I did so a Russian came out of the barn and said, in rather bad German, "Going to have your photograph taken?" I replied, in German, "Yes."

He heard me speaking English to my friend, and then, looking up and down the street each way to see if we were being watched, he addressed me in English with a strong Cockney accent.

"You speak English, then?" I said.

"I am English," he replied. "I'm an English prisoner."

"Then what are you doing in a Russian uniform?"

"It is the only thing I could get when my own clothes wore out." Keeping a careful eye up and down the street, he told us his story. He was one of the old Expeditionary Force; was taken at Mons with five bullet wounds in him, and, after a series of unpublishable humiliations, had been drafted from camp to camp until he had arrived at this little village, where, in view of the German policy of letting all the population, see an Englishman, he was the representative of his race in that community. "The local M.P." he called himself, in his humorous way.

Robinson Crusoe on his island was not more ignorant of the truth about the great world than that man, for, while he had learnt a few daily expressions in German, he was unable to read it. The only information he could gather was from the French, Belgian, and Russian prisoners with him, and some he got by bribing one of the Landsturm Guards with a little margarine or sugar out of his parcel from England. He was full of the battle of Mons and how badly he and his comrades in Germany felt at the way they had been left unsupported there. None the less, though alone, with no Englishman for miles, living almost entirely on his parcels, absolutely cut off from the real facts of the war, hearing little but lies, he was as calmly confident of the ultimate victory of the Allies as I am.

I asked him if he heard from home.

"Yes," he said, "now and then, but the folks tell me nothing and I can tell them nothing. If you get back to England you tell the people there not to believe a word that comes from English prisoners. Those who write favourably do so because they have to. Every truthful letter is burned by the military censor. Tell the people to arrange the parcels better and see that every man gets a parcel at least once a week—not send five parcels to one man and no parcels to some poor bloke like me who is alone. How is the war going on, guv'nor?" he asked. I gave him my views. "I think it's going badly for the Germans—not by what they tell me here or what I gets in that awful Continental Times paper, but from what I notice in the people round about, and the officers who visit us. The people are not so abusive to the English as they used to be. The superior officers do not treat us like dogs, as they did, and as for the Landsturmers—well, look at old Heinrich here."

At that moment a heavy, shabby old Landsturm soldier came round the corner, and the Cockney prisoner treated him almost as though he were a performing bear.

"You're all right, ain't you, Heiny, so long as I give you a bit of sugar now and then?" he said to his decrepit old guardian in his German gibberish.

This state of affairs was a revelation to me, but I was soon to find that if the British prisoners are weary of their captivity their old German guardians are much more weary of their task. These high-spirited British lads, whom two years of cruelty have not cowed, are an intense puzzle to the German authorities.

"You see," remarked a very decent German official connected with the military censorship department, "everyone of these Britishers is different. Every one of them sticks up for what he calls his 'rights': many of them decline to work on Sunday, and short of taking them out on Sunday morning at the point of the bayonet we cannot get them to do it. We have to be careful, too, with these Englishmen now. As a man of the world, you will realise that though our general public here do not know that the English have captured many Germans lately, and the fact is never mentioned in the communiques, we have had a hint from Headquarters that the British prisoners may one day balance ours, and that hardship for these verfluchte Englander may result in hardship for our men in England."

That incident was long ago. It is important to relate that since the beginning of the battle of the Somme there is, if I was correctly informed, a marked improvement in the condition of English prisoners all over Germany—not as regards food supplied by the authorities, because the food squeeze naturally affects the prisoners as it does their guardians, but in other ways.

In addition to the British capturing numbers of German hostages on the Somme to hold against the treatment of their men in Germany, I think I may claim without undue pride that much good work has been done by the American Ambassador and his staff of attaches, who work as sedulously on behalf of the prisoners as though those prisoners had been American.

The German authorities hate and respect publicity and force in matters not to their liking, and Mr. Gerard's fearlessness in reports of conditions and urgent pleas for improvement have been of great service. All the threats and bluster of Germany have failed to cow him.

To continue my narrative of the Cockney soldier in Russian uniform. So many Englishmen are in Russian uniform, Belgian uniform, French uniform, or a mix-up uniform that there is no possibility of my Cockney Russian being recognised by the authorities, and the photograph which my neutral friend took of him and me was taken under the very eyes of his Landsturmer.

"Heiny," said the Russian Cockney, "is fed up with the war. Aren't you, old Heiny? During the last few weeks a fresh call for more men has cleared the district of everything on two legs. We have had to work fourteen hours a day, and I wonder what my mates at home would think of 3 shillings pay for ten days' work?"

I was able to comfort him by giving him some cigars, and a great deal of really true and good news about the war, all of which he repeated to Landsturmer Heinrich. I suggested that this might be unwise. "Not a bit of it," he said. "Lots of these old Germans are only too anxious to hear bad news, because they think that bad news will bring the thing to a stop."

How true that remark was I knew from my minute investigations. The incident was closed by the distant appearence of a Feldwebel (sergeant-major). My Cockney vanished, and Heinrich patrolled onward.

This particular incident is not typical of the life of a British prisoner in Germany, but it is indicative of the position many of the 30,000 prisoners have taken up by reason of their strong individuality and extraordinary cheerfulness and confidence. My impression of them is of alert, resourceful men (their escapes have been wonderful)—men who never know when they are beaten. If Britain has sufficient of these people she cannot possibly lose the war.

* * * * *

The world does not need reminders such as that of Wittenberg or of such singularly accurate narratives as several in Blackwood's Magazine to know what has happened to British prisoners in Germany.

It is common knowledge throughout the German Empire that the most loathsome tasks of the war in connection, with every camp or cage are given to the British. They have had to clean the latrines of negro prisoners, and were in some cases forced to work with implements which would make their task the more disgusting. One man told me that his lunch was served to him where he was working, and when he protested he was told to eat it there, or go without.

Conversations that I have had here in London about prisoners give me the impression that the British public does not exactly apprehend what a prisoner stands for in German eyes.

First, he is a hostage. If he be an officer his exact social value is estimated by the authorities in Berlin, who have a complete card index of all their officer prisoners, showing to what British families they belong and whether they have social or political connections in Britain. Thus when someone in England mistakenly, and before sufficient German prisoners were in their hands, treated certain submarine marauders differently from other prisoners, the German Government speedily referred to this card-index, picked out a number of officers with connections in the House of Lords and House of Commons, and treated them as convicts.

The other German view of the prisoner is his cash value as a labourer. I invite my readers to realise the enormous pecuniary worth of the two million prisoner slaves now reclaiming swamps, tilling the soil, building roads and railways, and working in factories for their German taskmasters.

The most numerous body of prisoners in Germany are the Russians. They are to be seen everywhere. In some cases they have greater freedom than any other prisoners, and often, in isolated cases, travel unguarded by rail or tramway to and from their work. If they are not provided with good Russian uniforms, in which, of course, they would not be able to escape, they are made conspicuous by a wide stripe down the trouser or on the back. They are easy, docile, physically strong, and accustomed to a lower grade of food than any other prisoners, except the Serbs.

The British, of course, are much the smallest number in Germany, but much the most highly prized for hate propaganda purposes.

"More difficult to manage," said one Unteroffizier to me, "than the whole of the rest of our two million." It is, indeed, a fact that the 30,000 British prisoners, though the worst treated, are the gayest, most outspoken, and rebellious against tyranny of the whole collection.

There is, however, a brighter side to prison life in Germany, I am happy to record. A number of really excellent camps have been arranged to which neutral visitors are taken. When I told the German Foreign Office that I would like to see the good side of prison life, I was given permission by the Kriegsministerium (War Office) to visit the great camp at Soltau, with its 31,000 inmates with Halil Halid Bey (formerly Turkish Consul in Berlin) and Herr Muller (interested in Germany's Far Eastern developments).

Five hours away from Berlin, on the monotonous Luneberger Heide (Luneberg Heath), has sprung up this great town with the speed of a boom mining town in Colorado.

On arrival at the little old town of Soltau we were met by a military automobile and driven out on a road made by the prisoners to the largest collection of huts I have ever seen.

There is nothing wrong that I could detect in the camp, and I should say that the 300 British prisoners there are as well treated as any in Germany. The Commandant seems to be a good fellow. His task of ruling so great an assemblage of men is a large and difficult one, rendered the easier by the good spirit engendered by his tact and kindness.

I had confirmation of my own views of him later, when I came across a Belgian who had escaped from Germany, and who had been in this camp. He said:—"The little captain at Soltau was a good fellow, and if I am with the force that releases the prisoners there after we get into Germany, I will do my best to see that he gets extra good treatment."

Our inspection occupied six hours. Halil Halid Bey, who talks English perfectly, and looks like an Irishman, was taken for an American by the prisoners. In fact, one Belgian, believing him to be an American official, rushed up to him and with arms outstretched pleaded: "Do you save poor Belgians, too, as well as British?"

The physical comfort of the prisoners is well looked after in the neat and perfectly clean dormitories. The men were packed rather closely, I thought, but not more than on board ship.

One became almost dazed in passing through these miles of huts, arranged in blocks like the streets of an American town.

We visited the hospital, which was as good as many civilian hospitals in other countries. There I heard the first complaint, from a little red-headed Irishman, his voice wheezing with asthma, whose grievance was not against the camp itself, but against a medical order which had reversed, what he called his promise to be sent to Switzerland. He raised his voice without any fear, as our little group, accompanied by the Commandant and the interpreter, went round, and I was allowed to speak to him freely. I am not a medical man, but I should think his was a case for release. His lungs were obviously in a bad state.

We were also accompanied by an English sergeant, one Saxton—a magnificent type of the old Army, so many of whom are eating out their days in Germany. He spoke freely and frankly about the arrangements, and had no complaint to make except the food shortage and the quality of the food.

The British section reminded one now and then of England. Portraits of wives, children, and sweethearts were over the beds; there was no lack of footballs, and the British and Belgians play football practically every day after the daily work of reclaiming the land, erecting new huts, making new roads, and looking after the farms and market gardens has been accomplished.

An attempt has been made to raise certain kinds of live stock, such as pigs, poultry, and Belgian hares—a large kind of rabbit. There were a few pet dogs about—one had been trained by a Belgian to perform tricks equal to any of those displayed at variety theatres.

Apparently there is no lack of amusement. I visited the cinematograph theatre, and the operator asked, "What would you like to see—something funny?" He showed us a rather familiar old film. The reels are those that have been passed out of service of the German moving picture shows. In the large theatre, which would hold, I should think, seven hundred to a thousand people, there was a good acrobatic act and the performing dog, to which I have referred, with an orchestra of twenty-five instruments, almost all prisoners, but a couple of German Landsturmers helped out. The guarding of the prisoners is effected by plenty of barbed wire and a comparatively small number of oldish Landsturmers.

A special cruelty of the Germans towards prisoners is the provision of a lying newspaper in French for the Frenchmen, called the Gazette des Ardennes. The Gazette des Ardennes publishes every imaginable kind of lie about the French and French Army, with garbled quotations from English newspapers, and particularly The Times, calculated to disturb the relations of the French and English prisoners in Germany. For the British there is a paper in English which is quite as bad, to which I have already referred, called the Continental Times, doled out three times a week. The Continental Times is, I regret to say, largely written by renegade Englishmen in Berlin employed by the German Government, notably Aubrey Stanhope, who for well-known reasons was unable to enter England at the outbreak of war, and so remains and must remain in Germany, where, for a very humble pittance, he conducts this campaign against his own country.

For the Russians a special prevaricating sheet, called the Russki Visnik, is issued. All these newspapers pretend to print the official French, British, and Russian communiques.

For a long time the effect on the British prisoners was bad, but little by little events revealed to them that the Continental Times, which makes a specialty of attacks on the English Press, was anti-British.

The arrival of letters and parcels is, of course, the great event for the prisoners and, so far as the large camps are concerned, I do not think that there are now any British prisoners unprovided with parcels. It is the isolated and scattered men, moved often from place to place for exhibition purposes, who miss parcels.

Soltau, although a model camp, is bleak and dreary and isolated. At the outset cases of typhus occurred there, and in a neat, secluded corner of the camp long lines of wooden crosses tell the tale of sadness. The first cross marked a Russian from far-away Vilna, the next a Tommy from London. East had met West in the bleak and silent graveyard on the heather. Close to them slept a soldier from some obscure village in Normandy, and beside him lay a Belgian, whose life had been the penalty of his country's determination to defend her neutrality. Here in the heart of Germany the Allies were united even in death.

As I made the long journey back to Berlin I reflected with some content on the good things I had seen at Soltau, and I felt convinced that the men in charge of the camp do everything within their power to make the life of the prisoners happy. But as the train pounded along in the darkness I seemed to see a face before me which I could not banish. It was the face of a Belgian, kneeling at the altar in the Catholic chapel, his eyes riveted on his Saviour on the Cross, his whole being tense in fervent supplication, his lips quivering in prayer. My companions had gone, but I was held spellbound, feeling "How long! How long!" was the anguish of his mind. He must have been a man who had a home and loved it, and his whole expression told unmistakably that he was imploring for strength to hold out till the end in that dreary, cheerless region of brown and grey.

His captors had given him a chapel, to be sure, but why was he in Germany at all?

* * * * *

Soltau and other camps are satisfactory—but there are others, many others, such as unvisited punishment camps. The average Britisher in confinement in Germany is under the care of an oldish guard, such as Heiny of the Landsturm, but the immediate authority is often a man of the notorious Unteroffizier type, whose cruelty to the German private is well known, and whose treatment of the most hated enemy can be imagined.

The petty forms of tyranny meted out to German soldiers such as making a man walk for hours up and down stairs in order to fill a bath with a wineglass; making him shine and soil then again shine and soil hour after hour a pair of boots; making him chew and swallow his own socks have been described in suppressed German books.

I believe that publicity, rigorous blockade and big shells are the only arguments that have any effect on the Prussians at present. It is publicity and the fear of opinion of certain neutrals that has produced such camps as Soltau. It is difficult for the comfortable sit-at-homes to visualise the condition of men who have been in the enemy atmosphere of hate for a long period. All the British soldiers whom I met in Germany were captured in the early part of the war when their shell-less Army had to face machine-guns and high explosives often with the shield of their own breasts and a rifle.

Herded like cattle many of the wounded dying, they travelled eastwards to be subject to the insults and vilifications of the German population. That they should retain their cheery confidence in surroundings and among a people so ferociously hostile so entirely un-British, so devoid of chivalry or sporting instinct, is a monument to the character of their race.



CHAPTER XXII

HOW THE PRUSSIAN GUARD CAME HOME FROM THE SOMME

Early in August, 1916, I was in Berlin. The British and French offensive had commenced on July 1st. Outwardly it appeared to attract very little notice on the part of Germany and I do not believe that it attracted sufficient attention even in the highest military quarters. It was considered to be Great Britain's final "bluff." The great maps in the shop windows in every street and on the walls in every German house showed no change, and still show no change worth noticing. "Maps speak," say the Germans.

One hot evening in Berlin I met a young officer whom I had known on a previous visit to Germany, and who was home on ten days' furlough. I noticed that he was ill or out of sorts, and he told me that he had been unexpectedly called back to his regiment on the Western front. "How is that?" I said. He made that curious and indescribable German gesture which shows discontent and dissatisfaction. "These ——— English are putting every man they have got into a final and ridiculous attempt to make us listen to peace terms. My leave is cut short, and I am off this evening." We had a glass of beer at the Bavaria Restaurant in the Friedrichstrasse.

"You have been in England, haven't you?" he inquired. I told him that I had been there last year. "They seem to have more soldiers than we thought," he said. "They seem to be learning the business; my battalion has suffered terribly."

Within the next day or two there were other rumours in Berlin—rumours quite unknown to the mass. How and where I heard these rumours it would be unfair to certain Germans, who were extremely kind to me, to say, but it was suggested to me by a friend—a member of the Extreme Left of the Social Democratic Party—that if I wanted to learn the truth I should go out to Potsdam and see the arrival of the wounded men of the famous Prussian Guard, who had, he said, had a terrible experience at the hands of the English at Contalmaison on July 10th.

He drew me aside in the Tiergarten and told me, for he is, I am sure, a real German patriot, that the state of things in the Somme, if known throughout Germany, would effectively destroy the pretensions of the annexationist party, who believed that Germany has won the war and will hold Belgium and the conquered portion of France and Poland.

He told me to go out to Potsdam with caution, and he warned me that I should have the utmost difficulty in getting anywhere near the military sidings of the railway station there.

I asked another usually extremely well-informed friend if there was anything particular happening in the war, and told him that I thought of going to Potsdam, and he said, "What for? There is nothing to be seen there—the same old drilling, drilling, drilling." So well are secrets kept in Germany.

The 4th of August is the anniversary of what is known in Germany as "England's treachery"—the day that Britain entered the war in what the German Government tells the people is "a base and cowardly attempt to try and beat her by starving innocent women and children."

On that sunny and fresh morning I looked out of the railway carriage window some quarter of a mile before we arrived at Potsdam and saw numerous brown trains marked with the Ked Cross, trains that usually travel by night in Germany.

There were a couple of officers of the Guard Cavalry in the same carriage with me. They also looked out. "Ach, noch 'mal" ("What, again?") discontentedly remarked the elder. They were a gloomy pair and they had reason to be. The German public has begun to know a great deal about the wounded. They do not yet know all the facts, because wounded men are, as far as possible, hidden in Germany and never sent to Socialist centres unless it is absolutely unavoidable. The official figures which are increasing in an enormous ratio since the development of Britain's war machine, are falsified by manipulation.

And if easy proof be needed of the truth of my assertion I point to the monstrous official misstatement involved in the announcement that over ninety per cent. of German wounded return to the firing line! Of the great crush of wounded at Potsdam I doubt whether any appreciable portion of the serious cases will return to anything except permanent invalidism. They are suffering from shell wounds, not shrapnel, for the most part, I gathered.

As our train emptied it was obvious that some great spectacle was in progress. The exit to the station became blocked with staring peasant women returning from the early market in Berlin, their high fruit and vegetable baskets empty on their backs. When I eventually got through the crowd into the outer air and paused at the top of the short flight of steps I beheld a scene that will never pass from my memory. Filmed and circulated in Germany it would evoke inconceivable astonishment to this deluded nation and would swell the malcontents, already a formidable mass, into a united and dangerous army of angry, eye-opened dupes. This is not the mere expression of a neutral view, but is also the opinion of a sober and patriotic German statesman.

I saw the British wounded arrive from Neuve Chapelle at Boulogne; I saw the Russian wounded in the retreat from the Bukovina; I saw the Belgian wounded in the Antwerp retreat, and the German wounded in East Prussia, but the wounded of the Prussian Guard at Potsdam surpassed in sadness anything I have witnessed in the last two bloody years.

The British Neuve Chapelle wounded were, if not gay, many of them blithe and smiling—their bodies were hurt but their minds were cheerful; but the wounded of the Prussian Guard—the proudest military force in the world—who had come back to their home town decimated and humbled—these Guards formed the most amazing agglomeration of broken men I have ever encountered. As to the numbers of them, of these five Reserve regiments but few are believed to be unhurt. Vast numbers were killed, and most of the rest are back at Potsdam in the ever growing streets of hospitals that are being built on the Bornstadterfeld.

One of the trains had just stopped. The square was blocked with vehicles of every description. I was surprised to find the great German furniture vans, which by comparison with those used in England and the United States look almost like houses on wheels, were drawn up in rows with military precision. As if these were not enough, the whole of the wheeled traffic of Potsdam seemed to be commandeered by the military for the lightly wounded—cabs, tradesmen's wagons, private carriages—everything on wheels except, of course, motor-cars, which are non-existent owing to the rubber shortage. Endless tiers of stretchers lay along the low embankment sloping up to the line. Doctors, nurses, and bearers were waiting in quiet readiness.

The passengers coming out of the station, including the women with the tall baskets, stopped, but only for a moment. They did not tarry, for the police, of which there will never be any dearth if the war lasts thirty years, motioned them on, a slight movement of the hand being sufficient.

I was so absorbed that I failed to notice the big constable near me until he laid his heavy paw upon my shoulder and told me to move on. A schoolmaster and his wife, his Rucksack full of lunch, who had taken advantage of the glorious sunshine to get away from Berlin to spend a day amidst the woods along the Havel, asked the policeman what the matter was.

The reply was "Nichts hier zu sehen" ("Nothing to be seen here. Get along!"). The great "Hush! Hush! Hush!" machinery of Germany was at work.

Determined not to be baffled, I moved out of the square into the shelter of a roadside tree, on the principle that a distant view would be better than none at all, but the police were on the alert, and a police lieutenant tackled me at once. I decided to act on the German military theory that attack is the best defence, and, stepping up to him, I stated, that I was a newspaper correspondent. "Might I not see the wounded taken from the train?" I requested. He very courteously replied that I might not, unless I had a special pass for that purpose from the Kriegsministerium in Berlin.

I hit upon a plan.

I regretfully sighed that I would go back to Berlin and get a pass, and retracing my steps to the station I bought a ticket.

A soldier and an Unteroffizier were stationed near the box in which stood the uniformed woman who punches tickets.

The Unteroffizier looked at me sharply, "No train for an hour and a half," he said.

"That doesn't disturb me in the least when I have plenty to read," I answered pleasantly, at the same time pointing to the bundle of morning papers which I carried, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of the Foreign Office, on the outside.

I knew Potsdam thoroughly, and was perfectly familiar with every foot of the station. I knew that there was a large window in the first and second-class dining-room which was even closer to the ambulances in the square than were the exit steps.

I did not go directly to the dining-room, but sat on one of the high-backed benches on the platform and began to read the papers. The Unteroffizier looked out and found me fairly buried in them. He returned a little later and saw me asleep—or thought he did.

When he had gone I sauntered along the platform into the dining-room, to find it vacant save for a youthful waiter and a barmaid. I walked straight to the window—where the light would be better for reading—and ordered bread and Edam cheese, tearing off a fifty gram amount from my Berlin bread ticket, which was fortunately good in Potsdam.

My position enabled me to look right out upon the square below, but rendered me inconspicuous from the street.

By this time the wounded were being moved from the train. The slightly wounded were drawn up in double ranks, their clean white arm- and head-bandages gleaming in the noonday light. They stood dazed and dejected, looking on at the real work which was just beginning—the removal of the severely wounded.

Then it was that I learned the use of those mammoth furniture vans. Then it was I realised that these vans are part of Germany's plans by which her wounded are carried—I will not say secretly, but as unobtrusively as possible. In some of the mammoths were put twelve, into others fourteen; others held as many as twenty.

The Prussian Guard had come home. The steel corps of the army of Germany had met near Contalmaison the light-hearted boys I had seen drilling in Hyde Park last year, and in a furious counter-attack, in which they had attempted to regain the village, had been wiped out.

These were not merely wounded, but dejected wounded. The whole atmosphere of the scene was that of intense surprise and depression. Tradition going back to Frederick the Great, nearly two hundred years ago, had been smashed—by amateur soldiers. The callow youth of sixteen who served my lunch was muttering something to the barmaid, who replied that he was lucky to be in a class that was not likely to be called up yet.

The extreme cases were carried at a snail's pace by bearers, who put their feet down as carefully as if they were testing very thin ice, and who placed the comfortable spring stretchers in the very few vehicles which had rubber or imitation rubber tyres. The work was done with military precision and great celerity. The evacuation of this train was no sooner finished than another took its place, and the same scene was repeated. Presently the great furniture vans returned from having deposited their terrible loads, and were again filled. One van was reserved for those who had expired on the journey, and it was full.

This, then, was the battered remnant of the five Reserve regiments of the Prussian Guard which had charged the British lines at Contalmaison three weeks before in a desperate German counter-attack to wrest the village from the enemy, who had just occupied it. Each train discharged between six and seven hundred maimed passengers. Nor was this the last day of the influx.

The Guard had its garrisons chiefly in Potsdam, but also partly in Berlin, and represents the physical flower of German manhood. On parade it was inspiring to look at, and no military officer in the world ever doubted its prowess. Nor has it failed in the war to show splendid courage and fighting qualities. English people simply do not understand its prestige at home and among neutrals.

The Guard is sent only where there is supreme work to be done. If you hear that it has been hurled into a charge you may rest assured that it is striving to gain something on which Germany sets the highest price—for the life-blood of the Guard is the dearest that she can pay.

In the battle of the Marne the active regiments of the Guard forming a link between the armies of von Bulow and von Hausen were dashed like spray on jagged cliffs when they surged in wave after wave against the army of Foch at Sezanne and Fere Champenoise.

Germany was willing to sacrifice those superb troops during the early part of the battle because she knew that von Kluck had only to hold his army together, even though he did not advance, and the overthrow of Foch would mean a Teuton wedge driven between Verdun and Paris.

One year and ten months later she hurled the Guard Reserve at Contalmaison because she was determined that this important link in the chain of concrete and steel that coiled back and forth before Bapaume-Peronne must remain unbroken. The newly-formed lines of Britain's sons bent but did not break under the shock. They were outnumbered, but, like all the rest of the British that the back-from-the-front German soldiers have told me about, these fought on and on, never thinking of surrender.

I know from one of these that in a first onslaught the Guard lost heavily, but was reinforced and again advanced. Another desperate encounter and the men from Potsdam withered in the hand-to-hand carnage. The Germans could not hold what they had won back, and the khaki succeeded the field grey at Contalmaison.

The evacuation of the wounded occupied hours. I purposely missed my train, for I knew that I was probably the only foreign civilian to see the historic picture of the proudest soldiery of Prussia return to its garrison town from the greatest battle in history.

Empty trains were pulled out of the way, to be succeeded by more trains full of wounded, and again more. Doctors and nurses were attentive and always busy, and the stretcher-bearers moved back and forth until their faces grew red with exertion.

But it was the visages of the men on the stretchers that riveted my attention. I never saw so many men so completely exhausted. Not one pair of lips relaxed into a smile, and not an eye lit up with the glad recognition of former surroundings.

It was not, however, the lines of suffering in those faces that impressed me, but that uncanny sameness of expression, an expression of hopeless gloom so deep that it made me forget that the sun was shining from an unclouded sky. The dejection of the police, of the soldier onlookers, of the walking wounded, and those upturned faces on the white pillows told as plainly as words could ever tell that the Guard had at last met a force superior to themselves and their war machine. They knew well that they were the idol of their Fatherland, and that they had fought with every ounce of their great physical strength, backed by their long traditions. They had been vanquished by an army of mere sportsmen.

My thoughts went back to Berlin and the uninformed scoffings at the British Army and its futile efforts to push back the troops of Rupprecht on the Somme. Yet here on the actual outskirts of the German capital was a grim tribute to the machine that Great Britain had built up under the protection of her Navy.

In Berlin at that moment the afternoon editions were fluttering their daily headlines of victory to the crowds on the Linden and the Friedrichstrasse, but here the mammoth vans were moving slowly through the streets of Potsdam.

To the women who stood in the long lines waiting with the potato and butter tickets for food on the other side of the old stone bridge that spans the Havel they were merely ordinary cumbersome furniture wagons.

How were they to know that these tumbrils contained the bloody story of Contalmaison?



CHAPTER XXIII

HOW GERMANY DENIES

Germany, according to Reichstag statements, is spending millions of pounds upon German propaganda throughout the universe. The trend of that propaganda is:—

1. To attempt to convince the neutral world that Germany cannot be beaten; and

2. Above all, to convince Great Britain (the chief enemy) that Germany cannot be beaten.

The only factors really feared by the Germans of the governing class are the Western front and the blockade.

I went into Germany determined to try to find out the truth, and to tell the truth. I had an added incentive to be thorough and work on original lines, since I was fortunate enough to secure possession of an official letter which advised those whom it concerned to give no information of value to Americans in general. I also got accurate information that the Wilhelmstrasse had singled me out as one American in particular to whom nothing of value was to be imparted.

The German, with his cast-in-a-mould mind, does not understand the trait developed among other peoples of seeing things for themselves. He is unacquainted with originality in human beings. He thinks a correspondent does not observe anything unless it is pointed out to him.

Last summer, for example, one could learn in the Wilhelmstrasse that the potato crop was a glittering success. By walking through the country and pulling up an occasional plant, also talking to the farmers, I concluded that it was a dismal failure, which conclusion I announced in one of the first newspaper articles I wrote after I had left Germany. Recent reports from that country show that I was right, which increases my conviction that the confidential tips given by Germany's professional experts, who instruct neutral visitors, do very well to make Germany's position seem better than it actually is, but they seldom stand the acid test of history.

Seeking to invent excuses is not peculiar to the Germans, but it is more prevalent among them than among any other people that I know. In this one respect the German Government is a Government of the people. Some of the diplomatic explanations which have emanated from Berlin during the war have been weird in their absurdity and an insult to the intelligence of those to whom they were addressed.

President Wilson did not accept the official lie concerning the sinking of the Arabic, in view of the positive proof against Germany, and Germany backed down. President Wilson did not accept the official lie concerning the sinking of the Sussex. Incomprehensible as it is to the Teutonic mind, he attached greater weight to the first-hand evidence of reliable eye-witnesses, plus fragments of the torpedo which struck the vessel, than to the sacred words of the German Foreign Office, which had the impertinence to base its case on a sketch, or alleged sketch, hastily made by a U-boat manipulator whose artistic temperament should have led him to Munich rather than to Kiel. The crime and the lie were so glaring that Germany once more backed down.

Germany lied about the Dutch liner Tubantia. As in the case of the Sussex, the evidence of the fragments of torpedo was so incontrovertible that Berlin had to admit that a German torpedo sank the Tubantia. Indeed, one fragment contained the number of the torpedo. During my travels in the Fatherland at that time I found no doubt in the minds of those with whom I discussed the matter that a German submarine sank the vessel, though many were of the opinion that it was a mistake.

The Wilhelmstrasse is tenacious, however, and we awoke one morning to read, what was probably its most remarkable excuse. To be sure, a German torpedo sank the Tubantia, but it was not fired by the Germans. The expert accountant who was in charge of the U-boat learned upon consulting his books that he fired that torpedo on March 6. It did not strike the Tubantia until March 16. So that it had either been floating about aimlessly and had encountered the liner, or perhaps the cunning British had corraled it and made use of it. At any rate, Berlin disclaimed all responsibility for its acts subsequent to the day it parted company with the German submarine.

The path of the torpedo, however, had been observed from the bridge of the Tubantia.

I remarked to one of my well-informed confidants among the Social Democratic politicians that although it is perfectly true that a rolling stone gathers no moss, it is equally true that a moving torpedo leaves no wake.

"Yes," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "our Foreign Office is well aware of that. Have you not noticed the significance of the two dates, March 6, when the torpedo is said to have been fired, and March 16, when it struck? Do you not see that our diplomats have still one more loop-hole in case they are pressed? Is it not clear that they could find a way out of their absurd explanation by shifting the responsibility to the man or the men who jotted down the date and transferred it? The question in my mind is: Who lost the 1 from the 16?"

Be that as it may, little Holland, enraged at the wanton destruction of one of her largest vessels, was not in a position to enforce her demands. Therefore Germany did not back down—that is, not publicly.

My description of the return of the Prussian Guard to Potsdam naturally aroused the wrath of a Government which strives incessantly, to hide so much from its own people and the outside world.

Directly the article reached Germany the Government flashed a wireless to America that no members of the Potsdam Guard returned to Potsdam from Contalmaison. This is a typical German denial trick. I never mentioned the Potsdam Guard.

I had referred to the Prussian Guard.

If any reader of this chapter cares to look into the files of English newspapers at the time of the Contalmaison battle, for such it was, they will find confirmation of my statements as to the presence of the Prussian Guard in the English despatches published in the second week in July.

The Contalmaison article has in whole or in part been circulated in the United States, and also in the South-American Republics, and probably in other neutral countries. This has now called forth a semi-official detailed denial, which I print herewith.

It is signed by the Head Staff Doctor at Potsdam, one Geronne, by name. He divides his contradiction into ten clauses. Each of the first nine contains an absolute untruth.

The last is a mere comment on a well-known, German statesman, who told me that as I was seeking the truth in Germany I had better go and find it at Potsdam.

I wish to deal with the denials one by one, as each is a revelation of German psychology.

1. The hospital train, This says "Hospital which reached Potsdam on train" (singular). I August 4, and was there described hospital trains unloaded, brought wounded (plural). It may be true men from various troop that one train did not divisions. There were no contain any Prussian Guards. Prussian Guards among them. I did not happen to see that train. All the trains that I saw unloaded Prussian Guard Reserves.

2. No wounded man is I have never said that kept concealed in Germany. any wounded man was All are consigned to kept concealed in Germany. public hospitals or I have pointed out lazarets, where they may that the whole system of at any time be visited the German placing of the by their relatives and wounded is to hide from friends. the German population, and especially in Social Democrat districts, the extent of their wounded.

3. Hospital trains travel This is absolutely untrue. by day as well as by night, The number of wounded arriving and, in accordance with at the depots in Germany is instructions, are unloaded now so great that the trains only in the daytime. In are obliged to be unloaded case they reach their whenever they arrive, by day destination during the or by night. I have witnessed night, the regulations both. provide that they are to wait until the following morning before unloading.

4. In order that the loading The whole of this paragraph or unloading of the vehicles is a transparent distortion which transport the wounded of fact. What happens at to the lazarets may proceed Potsdam and what happens as rapidly as possible, it everywhere else is that a is necessary to keep the cordon of police surrounds surroundings of the train the scene and, drives the clear. The wounded must public by force in the usual also be spared all annoyance Prussian way, if necessary, and curiosity on the part from the scene. I described of the public. the method by which I witnessed what was going on at the railway station from the railway station refreshment room itself.

5. Dead men have never been I saw the dead men removed. unloaded from the lazaret trains at Potsdam—therefore there could have been none on August 4, 1916. The principle of transporting the wounded is based upon the ability of the wounded to bear transportation. All those who suffer during the journey are removed to a hospital at the frontier.

6. The furniture vans A transparent untruth used for transporting on the face of it. If only wounded to the hospitals one train came into Potsdam at Potsdam and other why use furniture vans at cities have proved a great all? The furniture vans success. These vans, are used for purposes of moreover, all bear the sign concealment, and because of the Red Cross, and may the very large ambulance easily be recognised as supply always on duty at hospital vehicles. the great military hospitals at Potsdam was unequal to the task. I saw no Red Cross indications.

7. That men who are My statement is that all seriously wounded should the German wounded at give one an impression of the present stage of the weariness goes without war, lightly or otherwise, saying. Lightly wounded compare badly with the men who travel from the English and French Somme to Boulogne may wounded, whom I have make a better appearance seen. They are utterly than the seriously wounded war weary and suffering who have made the long not so much from shell journey from the West shock as from surprise front to Potsdam. shock, the revelation of the creation of a British Army that had never occurred to the German soldiers.

8. As to the great "Hush! I have made inquiries hush! machinery"—what is of British officials, and one to call the attempt they tell me that it is to keep the truth from absolutely untrue that the neutrals by closing channel is closed to English harbours near the neutral shipping when the Channel to neutral shipping English hospital transports for whole days at a proceed to England. time—during which the This untruth is on a par English ship-transports of with the others. wounded proceed to England?

9. The figures published An interesting revelation by the Ministry of War as to German casualty lists. concerning the numbers of It is stated by this head men dismissed from lazarets medical officer of Potsdam (hospitals) are based upon that these lists are drawn up unquestionable statistics. from the men dismissed from These statistics remain as lazarets (hospitals), that is given—despite all the to say, this doctor admits aspersions of our enemies. that the custom is now to keep back the casualty lists until the man is discharged, whereas your British lists, I am informed on authority, are published as speedily as possible after the soldier is wounded. The whole of the German wounded now in hospitals have not yet, therefore, been included in casualty lists—the casualties which are forcing the Germans to employ every kind of labour they can enslave or enroll from Belgium, Poland, France, and now from their own people from sixteen up to sixty years of age of both sexes.

10. It would prove interesting For obvious reasons I to learn the name of the decline to subject my "patriotic German Statesman," friend to the certain who is said to cherish the punishment that would follow same opinions as this writer disclosure of his name. in the Daily Mail.

I regret to burden readers with a chapter so personal to myself, but I think that anyone who studies these German denials with the preceding chapter on the Contalmaison wounded will learn at least as much about the German mind as he would by studying the famous British White paper of August, 1914.



CHAPTER XXIV

GERMANY'S HUMAN RESOURCES

Three factors are of chief importance in estimating German man-power. First, the number of men of military age; second, the number of these that are indispensable in civil life; third, the number of casualties. Concerning the last two there are great differences of opinion among military critics in Allied and neutral countries. As regards the first there need be little difference, although I confess surprise at the number of people I have met who believe the grotesque myth that Germany has systematically concealed her increase in population, and that instead of being a nation of less than seventy millions she has really more than one hundred millions.

It is safe to say that at the outbreak of war Germany was a nation of 68,000,000, of whom 33,500,000 were males. Of these nearly 14,000,000 were between 18 and 45; 350,000 men over 45 are also with the Colours. The boys who were then 16 and 17 can now be added, giving us a grand total of some 15,000,000.

Normally Germany employed men of between 18 and 45 as follows:—Mines, 600,000; metals, 800,000; transport, 650,000; agriculture, 3,000,000; clothing, food preparation, 1,000,000, making a total of 6,050,000.

Up to this point there can be little difference of opinion. From this point on, however, I must, like others who deal with the subject, make estimates upon data obtained. During my last visit to Germany I systematically employed a rough check on the figures derived through the usual channels. Concentrated effort to obtain first-hand information in city, village, and countryside, north, east, south, and west, with eyes and ears open, and vocal organs constantly used for purposes of interrogation, naturally yielded considerable data when carried over a period of ten months. The changes from my last visit and from peace time were also duly observed as were the differences between Germany and the other nations I had visited during the war. Walking, of which I did a colossal amount, was most instructive, because it afforded me an opportunity to study conditions in the villages. Discreet questioning gave me accurate statistics in hundreds of these that I visited, and of many more hundreds that I asked about from people whom I met on my travels. For example, in Oberammergau, which had at the beginning of the war 1,900 inhabitants, about 350 had been called to the Colours when I was there, and of these thirty-nine had been killed.

My investigations in the Fatherland convinced me that of the 3,000,000 men between 18 and 45 formerly engaged in agriculture, considerably fewer than 100,000 continue to be thus occupied. This work is done by prisoners and women. Mine and metal work have kept from 60 to 70 per cent. of their men of military age; but transport, already cut somewhat, lost 25 per cent. of the remainder when Hindenburg assumed supreme command, which would reduce 650,000 to about 300,000. More than 90 per cent. of those engaged in the preparation of food and the making of clothing have been called up. Thus of the 6,050,000 engaged in the occupations given above, about 1,750,000 remain, which means that more than 4,000,000 have been called to the Colours.

From building and allied trades at least 90 per cent. are in military uniform. Assuming that some 2,000,000 men of military age are included in indispensable engineers, fishermen, chemists, physically unfit, and so forth, we conclude on this basis that Germany can enrol in her Army and Navy more than 11,000,000 men.

We may approach the subject from a somewhat different angle by considering what percentage of her total population Germany could call to the Colours under stress—and she is to-day under stress. Savage tribes have been known to put one-fifth under arms. An industrial State such as Germany cannot go to this extreme. Yet by using every means within her power she makes a very close approach to it. In practically every village of which I secured figures in Saxony, Bavaria, Posen, East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and Oldenburg, a fifth or nearly a fifth have been called up. In some Silesian and Rhenish-Westphalian districts, however, not more than from a seventh to a tenth. If we allow for all Germany a little less than one-sixth, we get 11,000,000.

What are the factors which enable Germany to call this number or a little more than this number to the Colours? First, the organisation of the women. I have seen them even in the forges of Rhineland doing the work of strong men. "The finest women in the world, these Rhinelanders," as one manager put it. "Just look at that one lift that weight. Few men could do better." And his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.

Second, and of tremendous importance, are the huge numbers of prisoners in Germany, and her sensible determination to make them work. She has taken about one and two-third millions on the field of battle. There also happen to be in Germany nearly a million other prisoners, buried alive, whose existence has apparently escaped the notice of the outside world. These are the Russian civilians who were caught in the German trap when it snapped suddenly tight in the summer of 1914. Before the war 2,000,000 Russians used to go to Germany at harvest time. The war began at harvest time. The number of these men, which from my own first-hand investigations in the remote country districts I estimate at nearly a million, would have escaped my notice also, had I not walked across Germany.

Another important factor in the labour problem in Germany is the employment of the Poles. Not only are they employed on the land, but great colonies of them have grown up in Dusseldorf and other industrial centres. I saw an order instructing the military commandants throughout Germany to warn the Poles, whose discontent with the food conditions in Germany made them desire to return home, that conditions in Poland were much worse. This, then, is an official German admission that there is starvation in Poland, for much worse could mean nothing else. Germany is keeping Poland a sealed book, although I admit that she occasionally takes tourists to see the German-fostered university at Warsaw. Just before I left Germany still another order was issued for the regulation of neutral correspondents. Under no circumstances were they to be allowed to talk with the natives in Poland. From unimpeachable authority I learned that the Poles were intensely discouraged at the thoroughness with which the Prussians stripped the country after the last harvest, and that in some sections the people are actually dying of hunger. Even in Warsaw, the death-rate in some neighbourhoods has increased from 700 to 800 per cent. I was witness to German rage when Viscount Grey stipulated that food could be sent there only if the natives were allowed to have the produce of their own land. Prussia wanted that produce, and she got it.

I mention these supplies here because the Poles who worked to produce them must be included in German labour estimates just as much as though they had been working in Germany.

Germany also adds to her man-power by utilising her wounded so far as possible. Her efforts in this direction are praiseworthy, since they not only contribute to the welfare of the State, but benefit the individual. I have seen soldiers with one leg gone, or parts of both legs gone, doing a full day's work mending uniforms. The blind are taught typewriting, which enables them to earn an independent living in Government employ. In short, work is found for everybody who can do anything at all.

In a previous chapter I have spoken of the organisation of the children, a factor which should not be left out of consideration.

* * * * * Having considered the assets, let us turn to the debits.

The German casualty lists to the end of 1916 total 4,010,160, of which 909,665 have been killed or died of wounds. My investigations in Germany lead me to put the German killed or died of wounds at 1,200,000, and the total casualties at close to 5,000,000. If we assume that 50 per cent. of all wounded return to the front and another 25 per cent. to service in the interior, we must also consider in computation of man-power that the casualty lists do not include the vast numbers of invalided, and the sick, which almost balance those that return to the front. This means, in short, that the net losses are nearly as great at any one time as the gross losses. Consequently, according to my estimates there must be at least 4,500,000 Germans out of action at this moment.

In a war of attrition it is the number of men definitely out of action which counts, for the German lines can be successfully broken, and only successfully broken, when there are not enough men to hold them. The Germans now have in the West probably about 130 divisions.

Hindenburg's levies in the late summer were so enormous that I am convinced from what I saw in Germany that she has now called almost everything possible to the Colours. One of Hindenburg's stipulations in taking command was that he should always have a force of half a million to throw wherever he wished. We have seen the result in Rumania, and the men skimmed from the training units then have been replaced by this last great levy from civilian life.

Therefore, with something over 11,000,000 men called up, Germany has now 6,000,000, or a little more all told, many of whom are not at all suited for service at the front.

Germany on the defensive at the Somme certainly lost at least 600,000 men. Attrition, to be sure, works both ways, but if the Germans are out-gunned this year in the West to the extent expected their position must become untenable. The deadly work of reducing German man-power continues even though the Allied line does not advance. I know of a section of the German front opposite the French last winter which for five months did not have an action of sufficient importance to be mentioned by either side in the official reports, yet the Germans lost 10 per cent. of their effectives in killed.

The more munitions the Allies make Germany use, the more fat she must use for this purpose, and the less she will have for the civil population, with a consequent diminution of their output of work. Germany simply cannot burn the candle at both ends.



CHAPTER XXV

BERLIN'S EAST-END

The poor of Berlin live in the north and east of the city. I have seen Berlin's East-end change from the hilarious joy of the first year of the war to an ever-deepening gloom. I have studied conditions there long and carefully, but I feel that I can do no better than describe my last Saturday in that interesting quarter of the German capital.

Late in the morning I left the Stettiner Bahnhof in the north and walked eastward through the Invalidenstrasse. There was practically no meat in the butchers' shops, just the customary lines of empty hooks. A long queue farther on attracted my attention and I crossed the street to see what the people were waiting for. A glance at the dark red carcases in the shop told me that this was horse-meat day for that district.

The number of vacant shops of all descriptions was increasing. The small shoemaker and tailor were closing up. The centralisation of food distribution is greater here than in the better-class districts, with the result that many small shopkeepers have been driven out of business. In parts of Lothringerstrasse a quarter of the shops were vacant, in other parts one-half. The bakers' shops are nearly empty except at morning and evening. In fact, after my long sojourn in blockaded Germany I still find myself after two months in England staring in amazement at the well-stocked shop windows of every description.

Shortly before noon I reached the _Zentral Viehund-Schlachthof (the slaughter-houses). Through a great gateway poured women and children, each carrying some sort of a tin or dish full of stew. Some of the children were scarcely beyond the age of babyhood, and their faces showed unmistakable traces of toil. The poor little things drudged hard enough in peace time, and in war they are merely part of the big machine.

The diminishing supply of cattle and pigs for killing has afforded an opportunity to convert a section of the slaughter-houses into one of the great People's Kitchens. Few eat there, however. Just before noon and at noon the people come in thousands for the stew, which costs forty pfennigs (about 5 pence) a quart, and a quart is supposed to be enough for a meal and a half.

I have been in the great Schlachthof kitchen, where I have eaten the stew, and I have nothing but praise for the work being done. This kitchen, like the others I have visited, is the last word in neatness. The labour-saving devices, such as electric potato-parers, are of the most modern type. In fact, the war is increasing the demand for labour-saving machinery in Germany to at least as great an extent as high wages have caused such a demand in America. Among the women who prepare the food and wait upon the people there is a noticeable spirit of co-operation and a pride in the part they are playing to help the Fatherland durchhalten (hold out). Should any of the stew remain unsold it is taken by a well-known restaurant in the Potsdamer Platz, which has a contract with the municipal authorities. Little was wasted in Germany before the war; nothing, absolutely nothing, is wasted to-day.

As at the central slaughter-house, so in other districts the poor are served in thousands with standard stew. The immense Alexander Market has been cleared of its booths and tables and serves more than 30,000 people. One director of this work told me that the Berlin authorities would supply nearly 400,000 people before the end of the winter.

The occasional soldier met in the streets looked shabbier in the shabby surroundings of the East. The German uniform, which once evoked unstinted praise, is suffering sadly to-day owing to lack of raw materials. I was in a Social Democratic district, but the men in uniform who were home on leave were probably "good" Social Democrats, since it is notorious that the regular variety are denied this privilege.

The faces of the soldiers were like the rest of the faces I saw that day. There was not the least trace of the cheerful, confident expression of the days when all believed that the Kaiser's armies would hammer their way to an early peace—"in three months," as people used to say during the first year and a quarter of the war. Verdun had been promised them as a certain key to early peace, and Admiral Scheer was deified as the immortal who tore loose the British clutch from the German throat. But Verdun and Jutland faded in succeeding months before the terrible first-hand evidence that the constant diminution of food made life a struggle day after day and week after week. The news from Rumania, though good, would bring them no cheer until it was followed by plenty of food.

In the vicinity of the Schlesischer Bahnhof occurred a trifling incident which gave me an opportunity to see the inside of a poor German home that day. A soldier in faded field-grey, home on leave, asked me for a match. During the conversation which followed I said that I was an American, but to my surprise he did not make the usual German reply that the war would have been ended long ago if it had not been for American ammunition. On the contrary, he showed an interest in my country, as he had a brother there, and finally asked me if I would step into his home and explain a few things to him with the aid of a map.

Though I was in a district of poverty the room I entered was commendably clean. An old picture of William I. hung on one wall; opposite was Bismarck. Over the low door was an unframed portrait of "unser Kaiser," while Hindenburg completed the collection. Wooden hearts, on which were printed the names Liege, Maubeuge, and Antwerp, recalled the days when German hearts were light and German tongues were full of brag.

A girl of ten entered the room. She hated the war because she had to rush every day at noon from school to the People's Kitchen to fetch the family stew. In the afternoon she had to look after the younger children while her mother stood in the long lines before the shops where food was sold. The family were growing tired of stew day after day. They missed the good German sausage and unlimited amount of bread and butter.

The mother looked in on her way to the street, basket under arm. She was tired, and was dulled by the daily routine of trying to get food. She talked bitterly about the war, but though she blamed the Agrarians for not doing their part to relieve the food situation, she expressed no animosity against her own Government. The father had been through Lodz in Hindenburg's two frontal assaults on Warsaw, where he had seen the slopes covered with forests of crosses marking the German dead, and his words were bitter, too, when he talked of his lost comrades. And then, the depressing feeling of returning from an army pursuing the mirage of victory to find his family and every other family struggling in the meshes of that terrible and relentless blockade!

It never had occurred to him that his Government might be in the least responsible for the misery of his country. Like the great bulk of the German people he is firmly convinced that the Fatherland has been fighting a war of defence from the very beginning. "To think that one nation, England, is responsible for all this suffering!" was the way that he put it. He is a "good" Social Democrat.

When I once more resumed my walk I saw the lines of people waiting for food in every street. Each time I turned a corner great black masses dominated the scene. I paused at a line of more than three hundred waiting for potatoes. Ten yards away not a sound could be heard. The very silence added to the depression. With faces anxious and drawn they stood four abreast, and moved with the orderliness of soldiers. Not a sign of disturbance, and not a policeman in sight. Some women were mending socks; a few, standing on the edge of the closely packed column, pushed baby carriages as they crawled hour after hour toward the narrow entrance of the shop.

Every line was like the rest. The absence of policemen is particularly noteworthy, since they had to be present in the early days—a year ago—when the butter lines came into being. Drastic measures were taken when the impatient women rioted. Those days are over. The Government has taught the people a lesson. They will wait hour after hour, docile and obedient henceforth, if necessary until they drop—make no mistake of that.

But the authorities also learned a lesson. "People think most of revolution when they are hungry," was what one leader said to me. On this Saturday of which I write not a potato was to be bought in the West-end of Berlin, where the better classes live. Berlin had been without potatoes for nearly a week. To-day they had arrived, and the first to come were sent to the East-end. In the West-end the people are filled with more unquestioning praise of everything the Government does; they applaud when their Kaiser confers an Order upon their Crown Prince for something, not quite clear, which he is supposed to have accomplished at Verdun. Therefore they can wait for potatoes until the more critical East-end is supplied.

I went farther eastward through the Kottbuser district to the Kottbuser Ufer on the canal, along which, a couple of hundred people waited in an orderly column without any guardian—another evidence of the success of the drastic measures of July and early August, when the demonstrations against the war were nipped in the bud. These people were waiting for the free advertisement sheets from the gaudily painted yellow Ullstein newspaper building across the square. They had to stand by the side of the canal because a queue of several hundred people waiting for potatoes wound slowly before Ullstein's to the underground potato-shop next door.

I had not heard a laugh or seen anybody smile all day, and when darkness fell on the weary city I went to a cheap little beer-room where several "bad," but really harmless Social Democrats used to gather. Among them was the inevitable one who had been to America, and I had become acquainted with them through him. They talked in the new strain of their type, that they might as well be under the British or French, as under their own Government.

Their voices were low—a rare event where Germans gather at table. They did not plot, they merely grumbled incessantly. The end of the war had definitely sunk below their horizon, and peace, not merely steps to peace, was what they longed for. There was the customary cursing of the Agrarians and the expressions of resolve to have a new order of freedom after the war, expressions which I believe will not be realised unless Germany is compelled to accept peace by superior forces from without.

I left the dreary room for the dreary streets, and turned towards the centre and West-end of Berlin, where the cafe lights were bright and tinkling music made restricted menu-cards easier to bear.

Suddenly the oppressive feeling of the East-end was dispelled by the strains of military music drawing closer in a street near by. I hurried towards it, and saw a band marching at the head of two companies of wounded soldiers, their bandages showing white under the bright street lights of Berlin.

The men were returning to their hospital off the Prenzlauer Allee from a day's outing on the River Spree. Scores of followers swelled to hundreds. The troubles of the day were forgotten. Eyes brightened as the throng kept step with the martial music. A roll of drum, a flare of brass, and the crowd, scattered voices at first, and then swelling in a grand crescendo, sang Deutschland uber Alles. To-morrow they would complain again of food shortage and sigh for peace, but tonight they would dream of victory.



CHAPTER XXVI

IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW

A little, bent old woman, neat, shrivelled, with clear, healthy eye and keen intelligence, was collecting acorns in the park outside the great Schloss, the residence of von Oppen, a relative of the Police President of Berlin.

I had walked long and was about to eat my picnic lunch, and stopped and spoke with her. We soon came to the one topic in Germany—the war. She was eighty-four years of age, she told me, and she worked for twelve hours a day. Her mother had seen Napoleon pass through the red-roofed village hard by. She well remembered what she called "the Bismarck wars." She was of the old generation, for she spoke of the Kaiser as "the King."

"No," she said, "this war is not going like the Bismarck wars—not like the three that happened in 1864, 1866, 1870, within seven years when I was a young woman." She was referring, of course, to Denmark, Austria, and France. "We have lost many in our village—food is hard to get." Here she pointed to the two thin slices of black bread which were to form her mid-day meal. She did not grumble at her twelve hours' day in the fields, which were in addition to the work of her little house, but she wished that she could have half an hour in which to read history.

Her belief was that the war would be terminated by the Zeppelins. "When our humane King really gives the word, the English ships and towns will all be destroyed by our Zeppelins. He is holding back his great secret of destruction out of kindness."

The remark of that simple, but intelligent old woman as to the restraint imposed by the Kaiser upon the Zeppelins constituted the universal belief of all Germany until the British doggedly built up an air service under the stress of necessity, which has brilliantly checked the aerial carnival of frightfulness. People in Great Britain seem to have no conception of the great part the Zeppelins were to play in the war, according to German imagination. That simple old peasant lady expressed the views that had been uttered to me by intelligent members of the Reichstag—bankers, merchants, men and women of all degrees. The first destruction of Zeppelins—that by Lieutenant Warneford, and the bringing down of LZ77 at Revigny, did not produce much disappointment. The war was going well in other directions. But the further destruction of Zeppelins has had almost as much to do with the desire for peace, in the popular mind, as the discomfort and illness caused by food shortage and the perpetual hammerings by the French and British Armies in the West.

It should be realised that the Zeppelin has been a fetish of the Germans for the last ten years. The Kaiser started the worship by publicly kissing Count Zeppelin, and fervently exclaiming that he was the greatest man of the century. Thousands of pictures have been imagined of Zeppelins dropping bombs on Buckingham Palace, the Bank of England, and the Grand Fleet. For a long time, owing to the hiding of the facts in England of the Zeppelin raids, even high German officials believed that immense damage had been done. The French acted more wisely. They allowed full descriptions of the aeroplane and Zeppelin raids in France to be published, and the result was discouraging to the Germans. I remember studying the British Zeppelin communiques with Germans. At that time the London Authorities were constantly referring to these raids taking place in the "Eastern counties," when the returned Germans knew exactly where they had been. The result was great encouragement. Nothing did more to depress the Germans than the humorous and true accounts of the Zeppelin raids which were eventually allowed to appear in the English newspapers.

The Germans have now facts as to the actual damage done in England. They know that the British public receive the Zeppelins with excellent aircraft and gun-fire. They know that anti-aircraft preparations are likely to increase rather than decrease, and while, for the sake of saving the nation's "face," it will be necessary that Zeppelins be further used, the people who are directing the war know that, so far as land warfare is concerned, they are not a factor.

There have been more mishaps than have been published; more wounded and damaged Zeppelins than the Germans have ever announced. I was informed that the overhauling and repair of many Zeppelins after a successful or unsuccessful raid was a matter, not of days, but of weeks. There was great difficulty in obtaining crews. Most of them are sailors, as are the officers. There have been suppressed mutinies in connection with the manning of the Zeppelins.

Count Zeppelin, who, up to a year ago, was a national hero, is already regarded by a large section of the population as a failure. The very house servants who subscribed their pfennigs and marks in the early days to help conduct his experiments now no longer speak of him with respect. They have transferred their admiration to Hindenburg and the submarines.

The majority of Germans of all classes believe what they are officially instructed to believe, no more, no less. The overmastering self-hypnotism which leads the present-day German to believe that black is white, if it adds to his self-satisfaction, is one of the most startling phenomena of history. But what of Ballin, Heineken, von Gwinner, Gutmann, Thyssen, Rathenau, and other captains of industry and finance? Some of them have expressed opinions in interviews, but what do they really think? I am not going to indulge in any guesswork on this matter. I am simply going to disclose some important statements made at a secret meeting attended by many of the business directors of the German Empire. The meeting was for the purpose of discussing actual conditions in a straightforward manner, therefore no member of the Press, German or foreign, was present.

In striking contrast with custom when the war is discussed, nothing was said of Kultur, of German innocence or enemy guilt, of an early and victorious peace, of British warships hiding always in safety, or of the omniscience and infallibility of the Supreme Military Command.

The little circle of Germans who have displayed such brilliant organising ability in commerce and industry are practical men, who look at the war and the days to follow the war in the cold light of debit and credit. This being the case, the honest opinions expressed by Arthur von Gwinner, President of the Deutsche Bank, are worthy of serious consideration. His chief points were:—

1. The belief cherished by the mass of the nation that a Central Europe Economic Alliance will amply compensate us for any shortcomings elsewhere, and enable us to sit back and snap our fingers at the rest of the world is too absurd to be entertained by serious men. Our trade, import and export, with Austria-Hungary was as great as it could be for many years to come, and it was only a small part of our total trade. After the war, as before, the bulk of our trade must be with countries now neutral or enemy, and we must seriously consider how to hold and add to this trade in the future.

2. The solution of the labour problem will be vital in the work of reconstruction. We must make every provision in order to forge rapidly ahead immediately after the close of the war.

No German, except for necessary reasons of State, should be allowed to leave the country for a number of years after the war.

3. Before the war 3,000,000 Russians came to us every year at harvest time. These must continue to come.

4. We have done wonderful work in scientific agriculture, but the limit of productivity of the soil has undoubtedly been reached.

5. Do not place too much hope in an early war between the United States and Japan.

6. There is great rejoicing over the sinking of enemy ships. It should also be remembered, however, that we are not paying any dividends at present.

In the discussion which followed the statements of Herr von Gwinner and from various channels of reliable information which I made use of in Germany, I found a serious view taken of these and other topics, of which the great body of Germans are quite unaware.

Take the labour problem, for example. For years Germany has recognised the necessity of a rapid increase of population, if a nation is to smash rivals in industry and war. Not for a moment during this struggle has Germany lost sight of this fact. Many times have I heard in the Fatherland that the assurance of milk to children is not entirely for sentimental but also for practical reasons. Official attempts are being made at present to increase the population in ways which cannot be discussed in this book. "You get yourself born and the State does all the rest" was an accurate analysis of Germany before the war; but the State looks after everything now.

When men go home on leave from the army, married or single, they are instructed in their duty of doing their part to increase the population so that Germany will have plenty of colonists for the Balkans, Turkey and Asia in the great economic development of those regions. To impress this they argue that Germany and France had nearly the same number of inhabitants in 1870. "See the difference to-day," says the German. "This difference is one of the chief causes of our greatly superior strength."

Working girls in Dresden have not only been encouraged but quietly advised to serve the State "by enabling Deutschland to achieve the high place in the world which God marked out for it, which can only be done if there are a sufficient number of Germans to make their influence felt in the world." They have been told not to worry, that the State will provide for the offspring. In fact, societies of godfathers and godmothers are growing all over Germany. They do not necessarily have to bring up the child in their own home; they can pay for its maintenance. Thus the rich woman who does not care to have many children herself is made to feel in ultra-scientific Germany that she should help her poorer sister.

The Germans treat the matter very lightly. In Bremen, for example, where the quartering of Landsturmers (the oldest Germans called to military service) among the people resulted in a large batch of illegitimate children, I found it the custom, even in mixed society of the higher circles, to refer to them jokingly as "young Landsturmers."

A serious consideration of what Germany, or any other belligerent, will do after the war is usually of little value, as conditions after the war depend upon what is done during the war. The amount of freedom which the German people attain in the next few years is in direct proportion to the amount of thrashing administered to their country by the Allies. Perhaps they will have something to say about the frontier regulations of Germany; but assuming that the training of centuries will prevent their hastily casting aside their docility, it is extremely probable that few, if any, Germans will be allowed to leave Germany during the first years of reconstruction.

This will disappoint several million Germans. Despite the snarling rage displayed everywhere in the fatherland, except in diplomatic circles, against the United States, I heard an ever-increasing number of malcontents declare that, immediately after the close of war, they would go to the States to escape the burden of taxation. One hears two words—Friede (peace) and Essen (food)—constantly. The third word I should add is Steuern (taxes). It is all very well to sit by some neutral fireside reading Goethe or Schopenhauer, while listening to the Meistersinger von Nurnberg, or the "Melody in F," and lull yourself into the belief that the Germans are a race of idealists. This touch is used to a considerable extent in German propaganda. Any one familiar, however, with conditions in modern Germany knows that Germans are ultra-materialistic.

I have heard them talk of the cost of the war from the very beginning. They gloated over the sweeping indemnities they would exact. After they realised the possibilities of State-organised scientific burglary in Belgium they were beside themselves in joyful anticipation of what Paris, London, and a score of other cities would yield. When the war became a temporary stalemate, I heard it said, particularly by army officers, that Germany was taking no chances with the future, but was exacting indemnities now from the occupied districts. When taxes rose and food shortage increased, the possibility that the Germans themselves would have to pay some of their own costs of the war in various forms of taxation determined a rapidly growing number to seek a way out by emigrating at the first opportunity.