As Herr Ballin said, "The world will find us as strongly organised for peace as we were organised for war." The labour problem, however, not only now, but for the days of reconstruction, is viewed very seriously, how seriously may be gathered from the fact that there is so much apprehension that Russia may refuse to allow her workers to go to Germany for some years after the war, that nearly everyone at the secret conference mentioned above was in favour of making concessions at the peace conference, should Russia insist. Indeed one Rhinelander was of the opinion that it would be worth while giving up Courland to get an unlimited supply of labour.

In the meantime the Germans have not been idle in other directions. Until Hindenburg called up his immense levies in the late summer, Germany exported steel building materials and coal to contiguous neutral countries, but she can no longer do this. Nevertheless, she did make elaborate preparations to "dump" into Russia on a colossal scale immediately after the resumption of intercourse. Immense supplies of farming implements and other articles of steel have been stored in the Rhineland, Westphalia, and Silesia, ready for immediate shipment to Russia, thus enabling Germany to get ahead of all rivals in this field.

Germans also derive comfort from the fact that their ships will be ready at once to carry cargoes and passengers, while so many of those of the Allies will be used for the transport of troops after the close of the war, and must then rent.

With such plans for "getting the jump" on competitors it is only natural that I saw more and more irritability on the part of the financial men with each month of the war after last April.

Von Gwinner's remark about the improbability of war between Japan and the United States in the near future would, if known to the German people, cause still another keen disappointment, since one of their solaces has been the thought that they would soon have an opportunity of reaping a munition harvest themselves.

When Germany tried to make a separate peace with Russia, Japan was also approached—how far, I do not know. The Wilhelmstrasse still maintains a Japanese department, and any possible thread, however light, which may be twisted from a Tokyo newspaper to show that perhaps Japan may be won over, is pounced upon most eagerly. Germany, Japan, and Russia was the combination whispered in Berlin at the time of the unsuccessful attempt to separate the Allies.

Absolute governments have certain advantages in war. They have also disadvantages. When things are not running smoothly in Germany the Germans worry more than do the English when things are not going well in England. When the German leaders began to disagree as to the best methods to conduct the war, the effect upon the people was demoralising. Only their gullibility saved them from complete dismay, Month after month the great struggle raged, under the surface for the most part, but occasionally boiling over. Would it be to the best interests of Germany to go the limit with the submarines or not? Not once did I hear the subject discussed on ethical grounds. Some remarks made to me by Doctor Stresemann, one of the powerful rational Liberals behind the mammoth industrial trust in Germany, and the most violent apostle of frightfulness in the Reichstag, aptly express the sentiment in favour of unrestricted submarine warfare. He and the rest of the men behind Tirpitz had fought and lost in the three Committee assemblies called to discuss U-boat policy in 1916.

As the day set for the September meeting of the Reichstag approached I noticed that Herr Stresemann was growing more and more excited. "This war is lasting too long," he declared to me in great agitation. "The Kaiser's most glaring fault is that of trying to fight Great Britain with one foot in the grave of chivalry. If the Chancellor continues to sway him, we will wreck the Chancellor at all costs. The only way to win this war is to publish again, and this time enforce, the decree of February 4th, 1915, warning all neutrals to keep out of the submarine zone."

"But, according to the 'Sussex Ultimatum,' that will cause a break with the United States," I said.

"We cannot let that deter us," he declared. "Britain is the keystone of our enemies. If she falls they all fall. We must attack her where she is vulnerable. We must starve her out. As for America, we have little to fear from her. In the first place, although she may break off diplomatic relations, she will not enter the war if we are careful not to sink her ships. As American ships play a small part in the carrying trade to England, we can thus refrain from sinking them—although we naturally should not proclaim this.

"In the second place, if America does declare war upon Germany, it would have little effect. The war will be over before she can organise after the manner of Great Britain. Herr Helfferich (former Minister of Finance and now Vive-Chancellor) feels that we should do everything possible to keep America out, inasmuch as thereby we shall be in a better position to conclude commercial treaties after the war. Herr Helfferich exerted powerful influence in the meeting at Great Headquarters at the time of the Sussex Crisis. But our duty to ourselves is to win the war. If we starve out England we win, no matter how many enemies we have. If we fail, another enemy, even the United States, would not make our defeat more thorough. We are justified, for our existence is at stake. The only way we can escape defeat is by a successful U-boat war against England. That would change defeat into overwhelming victory. I am absolutely confident; that is why the slow methods of the Chancellor make me so angry. It will take at least half a year to bring England to her knees, and with our increased privations he may wait too long. But we shall compel him; we shall compel him."

Herr Stresemann later requested me not to publish these statements—at least, not until a decision had been reached. I did, however, lay the matter before the American Embassy in London as soon as I arrived in England, since my investigations in Germany left no doubt in my mind that she would play two great cards—one, to work for peace through negotiation; the other, the last desperate recourse to the submarine.

As I write (January 21st, 1917) I am convinced that it is only a question of time until Germany is reduced to this last desperate resort. The men, who will decide that time will be Hindenburg and Batocki. The successful siege of Germany is a stupendous though not impossible task.

On the other hand, the human system is a very elastic piece of mechanism, and modern man, far from being the degenerate which some admirers of cave-man hardihood have pictured him, is able to undergo a tremendous amount of privation. Besieged cities have nearly always held out longer than the besiegers expected. In the besieged city the civilian population is for the most part a drag on the military, but in besieged Germany the civilian population, reinforced by slave labour from Belgium, France and Poland, continues working at high pressure in order to enable the military to keep the field. Fat is the vital factor. The more munitions Germany heaps up 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. It is my personal opinion that Verdun marks the supreme culmination of German military offensive in the West, and the West is the decisive theatre of war. If that is Hindenburg's opinion, then he realises that another colossal German offensive in the West would not bring a victorious peace. There remains only the alternative of building up a defensive against the coming Allied attacks—an alternative depending for its success upon sufficient food for the mass of the people. Thus the U-boat decision clearly rests upon the Chief of Staff and the Food Dictator, since their advice to the Imperial Chancellor and the All Highest War Lord must be determinative. When the day comes for Germany to proclaim to the world that she will sink at sight all ships going to and from the ports of her enemies, that day will be one of the great moments of history. Germany's last card will be on the table. It will be war to the knife. Either she will starve Great Britain or Great Britain, will starve her.

These are problems for the leaders, who have the further task of keeping the population hopeful on an alarmingly decreasing diet. Superficially, or until you want something to eat, or a ride in a taxicab, Berlin at night is gay. But you somehow feel that the gaiety is forced. London at first sight is appallingly gloomy is the evening, and foreigners hardly care to leave their hotels. But I find that behind the gloom and the darkness there is plenty of spontaneous merriment at the theatres and other places of entertainment. There is plenty of food, little peace talk, and quiet confidence.

Across the North Sea, however, great efforts are made by the German Government to keep up the spirits of the people. No public entertainer need go to the war at all, and the opera is carried on exactly as in peace time, though I confess that my material soul found it difficult to enjoy Tristan on a long and monotonous diet of sardines, potatoes, cheese and fresh-water fish—chiefly pike and carp. A humorous American friend used to laugh at the situation—the brilliantly dressed house, officers in their extremely handsome grey uniforms, ladies, some of them with too many diamonds, and—very little to eat.

At the slightest military gain the bells of victory peal wildly, and gay flags colour mile after mile of city streets, flags under which weary, silent women crawl in long lines to the shops where food is sold. A bewildering spectacle is this crawling through victory after victory ever nearer to defeat.

Early in the war a Norwegian packer, who had not had much demand for his sardines in Germany, put the picture of Hindenhurg on the tins and christened them the "Hindenburg Sardines." When he changed the trade-mark the Germans bought them as fast as he could supply them—not because they were short of food at that time, but through the magic of a name. To-day all that is changed. Norwegians no longer have to flatter the Germans, who are anxious to buy anything in the way of food. They flood Germany now with impunity with sardines whose merits are extolled in the hated English language, sardines which had originally been intended for Britain or America, but which are now eagerly snapped up at four and five times the peace price by people who invariably bid one another good-bye with "Gott strafe England." I saw the gem of the collection in a Friedrichstrasse window. It was entitled: "Our Allies Brand," on a bright label which displayed the flags of Great Britain, Prance, Russia, Italy, Belgium and Japan.

In Germany you feel that the drama of the battlefield has changed to the drama of the larder. Hope and despair succeed one another in the determination to hold out economically while soldier and sailor convince the world that Germany cannot be beaten. People laugh at the blockade, sneer at the blockade and curse the blockade in the same breath. A headline of victory, a mention of the army, the army they love, and they boast again. Then a place in the food line, or a seat at table, and they whine at the long war and rage against "British treachery." Like a cork tossing on the waves—such is the spirit of Germany.

The majority struggle on in the distorted belief that Germany was forced to defend herself from attack planned by Great Britain, while the minority are kept in check by armed patrols and "preventive arrest."

The spirit of "all for the Fatherland" is yielding to the spirit of self-preservation of the individual. Everywhere one sees evidence of this. The cry of a little girl running out of a meat shop in Friedenau, an excellent quarter of Berlin, brought me in to find a woman, worn out with grief over the loss of her son and the long waiting in the queue for food, lying on the floor in a semi-conscious condition. It is the custom to admit five or six people at a time. I was at first surprised that nobody in the line outside had stirred at the appeal of the child, but I need not have expected individual initiative even under the most extenuating circumstances from people so slavishly disciplined that they would stolidly wait their turn. But the four women inside—why did they not help the woman? The spirit of self-preservation must be the answer. For them the main event of the day was to secure the half-pound of meat which would last them for a week. They simply would not be turned from that one objective until it was reached.

And the soldiers passing through Berlin! I saw some my last afternoon in Berlin, loaded with their kit, marching silently down Unter den Linden to the troop trains, where a few relatives would tearfully bid them good-bye. There was not a sound in their ranks—only the dull thud of their heavy marching boots. They didn't sing nor even speak. The passers-by buttoned their coats more tightly against the chill wind and hurried on their several ways, with never a thought or a look for the men in field-grey, moving, many of them for the last time, through the streets of the capital. The old man who angered the war-mad throng before the Schloss on August 1st, 1914, with his discordant croak of "War is a serious business, young man," lives in the spirit of to-day. And he did not have to go to the mountain!



CHAPTER XXVII

ACROSS THE NORTH SEA

After my last exit from Germany into Holland I was confronted by a new problem. I had found going to England very simple on my previous war-time crossings. Now, however, there were two obstacles in my path—first, to secure permission to Board a vessel bound for England; secondly, to make the actual passage safely.

The passport difficulty was the first to overcome. The passport with which I had come to Europe before the war, and which had been covered with frontier visees, secret service permissions and military permissions, from the Alps to the White Sea and from the Thames to the Black Sea, had been cancelled in Washington at my request during my brief visit home in the autumn of 1915. On my last passport I had limited the countries which I intended to visit to Germany and Austria-Hungary. I purposed adding to this list as I had done on my old passport, but subsequent American regulations, aimed at restricting travellers to one set of belligerents, prevented that.

I was not only anxious to return to London to continue my work with Lord Northcliffe on The Times and the Daily Mail, but I was encouraged by two American officials in Germany and Austria-Hungary to write the truth about Germany—a feat quite impossible, as one of them said to me, for a correspondent remaining in the zone of the Central Powers. The official in Austria-Hungary had become righteously indignant at the sneering German remarks about how they could "play with Washington in the U-boat question." He asked me to learn all possible news of submarines. The official in Germany had been impressed by my investigations among the men behind Tirpitz, men who never for a moment ceased in their efforts to turn on frightfulness in full force. When I mentioned the new American passport regulations which would delay me getting to England, he said: "In Holland fix it with the British. I hope you will do some good with all this information, for you have the big scoop of the day. Now is the time."

I tried to "fix it" with the British authorities in Rotterdam, but as they did not know me my progress was slow for a few days. Then I went to Amsterdam to my old newspaper friend, Charles Tower, correspondent for the Daily Mail, a man of broad experience, and in close touch with affairs in Holland, a country which war journalists have grown to look upon as an important link in the news chain between Germany and England. I realised that this move might confirm the suspicions of von Kuhlmann's spies who were on my trail. However, the free air of Holland was making me a little incautious, a little over-confident.

"There is the man who is following you," said Tower, as we stepped in the evening from his home on to the brightly lighted street and made our way along the edge of the canals. The tall, round-shouldered German shadowed us through the crowded streets to the Amstel Hotel. Then we shadowed him, while he telephoned for help which came in the form of a persistent Hollander, who insisted in sitting at the table next to us, although it had just been vacated by diners and needed re-arranging, whereas many other tables were entirely free.

That is a sample of the manner in which we were systematically spied upon. In order to make arrangements it was necessary for us to travel together so that we could talk, as our time was limited. It was absolutely impossible for us to go into a restaurant or get into a railway compartment without having a satellite at our elbow. They were very persistent and very thorough; but the system in Holland has the same glaring flaw that is common to the German system everywhere—too much system and not sufficient cleverness in the individual.

Von Kuhlmann, the German Minister, certainly does not lack men. We encountered them everywhere. Travelling first class gives one more or less privacy in Holland, so that it was decidedly irritating to have a listener make for our compartment, while adjoining first-class compartments were entirely empty. If the intrusion resulted in our going to another compartment, an ever-ready Kamerad would quickly join us.

In all countries Germany considers certain telephone connections to be of great strategic importance. It is practically impossible to be connected with the British Consulate at Rotterdam, until the "interpreter" is put on. Mr. Tower experiences the same annoyance. Indeed, the Germans are extremely attentive to him, Although he needs only a small flat, since he lives alone, he has to protect himself by hiring the floor above and the floor below, as the Germans are continually trying to get rooms as close to him as possible. The German Government has for years been pouring out money like water to conquer the world. If I were a German taxpayer I should feel much like the man who discovers that the Florida land which some smooth-talking combination travelling book-agent and real estate agent persuaded him to buy is several feet under water.

Tower and the British authorities finally obtained permission for me to land in England, but they insisted that it would be worse than useless for me to attempt to go on a Dutch steamer, as I should be taken off. Within a week two of these steamers had been conducted by the Germans to Zeebrugge.

After I had left word that I wished to go at the first possible opportunity, and had received some further instructions, Tower and I left for Rotterdam on our last train ride together in Holland. The little man with the book who sat beside us in the tram to the Central station turned us over to a big man with whitish eyebrows and reddish hair and moustache, who followed us into a second-class compartment, which we had entered purposely, although we had bought first-class tickets. We then pretended to discover our mistake and changed to a vacant first-class compartment. Through some rare oversight there was no Kamerad on hand, whereupon the man with the reddish hair followed us with the pathetically feeble-explanation that he, too, had made the same mistake.

When Tower and I had talked ad nauseam on such fiercely neutral subjects as Dutch cheese and Swiss scenery, I felt an impelling desire to "get even" with the intruder, and began to complain to Tower of the injustice of the British not allowing me to return to America via England, which I wished to see for a few days. He took the cue readily, and accused me of being "fed-up like all neutral correspondents in Berlin." He frankly expressed his disgust at the enthusiasm which he declared that I had been showing for everything German since I met him in Holland. As the train pulled into the Hague, where I prepared to leave him, he concluded by saying, "After all, you ought not to blame the British authorities for refusing you permission to go to England. I have done my best and have failed; there is nothing more that I can do. I did get one concession for you, however. You will not be roughly handled or otherwise maltreated when your vessel touches at Falmouth."

I had to make a serious effort to keep a straight face while leaving the train with this last realistic touch of "British brutality" ringing in my ears. Tower, I might add, had voiced the extraordinary myth one hears in the Fatherland about the terrible manner in which the British treat passengers on neutral steamers touching at their ports.

The man with the reddish hair followed me to the office of the Holland-America Line, where I made application for a reservation on the boat which would sail in a week or ten days. From there I went to a small restaurant. He seemed satisfied and left me, whereupon I followed him. He hurried to the large Cafe Central, stepped straight to a table in the front room, which is level with the street, and seated himself beside a thin, dark German of the intellectual type who appeared to be awaiting him. From my seat in the shadows of the higher room I watched with amusement the increasingly puzzled expression on the face of the intellectual German while the man with the reddish hair unfolded his tale. When they parted my curiosity caused me to trail after the thin, dark man. He went straight to the German Legation.

For two days I nervously paced up and down the sands at Scheveningen looking out upon the North Sea and waiting for the call. It came one short drizzly afternoon. The Germans, of course, knew the whereabouts of the vessel on which I should embark for England, though it is highly improbable that they knew the sailing time, and they did not know when I should go on it.

I did everything possible to throw any possible spies off the trail as I made my way in the dark to a lonely wharf on the Maas River where I gave the password to a watchman who stepped out of a black corner near the massive gates which opened to the pier.

I went aboard a little five hundred ton vessel with steam up, and stood near two other men on the narrow deck, where I watched in considerable awe the silent preparations to cast away.

A man stepped out of the cabin. "I presume, sir, that you are the American journalist," he said. He explained that he was the steward. From the bridge came the voice of the captain, "We can give them only a few minutes more," he said.

Two minutes of silence, broken only by the gentle throbbing of the engines. Then from the blackness near the street gate came the sound of hurrying feet. I could make out three stumbling figures, apparently urged along by a fourth. "Who are they?" I asked the steward.

"They must be the three Tommies who escaped from Germany. Brave lads they are. A couple more days and we'll have them hack in England."

"A couple of days?" I exclaimed. "Why, it's only eight hours to the Thames estuary, isn't it?"

"Eight hours in peace time; and eight hours for Dutch boats now—when the Germany don't kidnap them away to Zeebrugge. But the course to the Thames is not our course. The old fourteen-hour trip to Hull often takes us forty now. Every passage is different, too. It isn't only on the sea that the Germans try to bother us; they also keep after us when we are in port here. Only yesterday the Dutch inspectors did us a good turn by arresting five spies monkeying around the boat—three Germans and two Dutchmen."

The little vessel was headed into the stream now, the three Tommies had gone inside, followed a little later by the two men who were on the deck when I arrived, men who talked French. When the steward left I was alone on the deck.

I watched the receding lights of Rotterdam till they flickered out in the distance. The night was misty and too dark to make out anything on shore. My thoughts went back to the last time, nearly a year before, when I had been on that river. I saw it then, in flood of moonlight as I stepped on the boat deck of the giant liner Rotterdam. The soft strains of a waltz floated up from the music room, adding enchantment to the windmills and low Dutch farmhouses strung out below the level of the water.

At that time my thoughts were full of my coming attempt to get into Germany, a Germany which was smashing through Serbia, and already planning the colossal onslaught against Verdun, the onslaught which she hoped would put France out of the war. I had got into Germany, but for a long time I had almost despaired of getting out; twice I had been turned back courteously but firmly from the frontiers, once when I tried to cross to Switzerland and again when I started for Denmark. A reliable friend had told me that the Wilhelmstrasse had suspected me but could prove nothing against me. The day before I felt Germany I was called to the Wilhelmstrasse, where I received the interesting and somewhat surprising information that the greatest good that a correspondent could do in the world be to use his influence to bring the United States and Germany to a better understanding. I made neither comment nor promise. I was well aware that the same Wilhelmstrasse, while laying the wires for an attempt to have my country play Germany's game, was sedulously continuing its propaganda of Gott strafe Amerika among the German people. As in the hatred sown against Great Britain hate against America was sown so that the Government would have a united Germany behind them in case of war.

I was at last out of Germany, but the lights of the Hook of Holland reminded me that a field of German activity lay ahead—floating mines, torpedoes, submarines, and swift destroyers operating from Ostend and Zeebrugge. They are challenging British supremacy in the southern part of the North Sea, through the waters of which we must now feel our way.

We were off the Hook running straight to the open sea. The nervous feeling of planning and delay of the last few days gave way now to the exhilaration which comes of activity in danger. If the Germans should get us, the least that would happen to me would be internment until the end of the war. I was risking everything on the skill and pluck of the man who paced the bridge above my head, and on the efficiency of the British patrol of the seas.

The little steamer suddenly began to plunge and roll with the waves washing her decks when I groped my way, hanging to the rail, to the snug cabin where six men sat about the table. The pallor of their faces made them appear wax-like in the yellow light of the smoking oil lamp which swung suspended overhead. Three of them were British, two were Belgian, and one was French, but there was a common bond which drew them together in a comradeship which transcends all harriers of nationality, for they had escaped from a common enemy.

They welcomed me to the table. It is surprising what a degree of intimacy can spring up between seven men, all with histories behind, and all with the same hope of getting to England. They were only beginning to find themselves, they were indeed still groping to pick up the threads of reality of a world from which they had been snatched two years before.

The Englishman at my right, a corporal, had been taken prisoner with a bullet in his foot at the retreat from Mons. In the summer of 1916 he had been sent to a punishment work camp near Windau in Courland. I had already heard unsavoury rumours of this camp while I was in Germany, of men forced to toil until they dropped in their tracks, of an Englishman shot simply because his guard was in bad temper. But the most damning arraignment of Windau came from a young Saxon medical student, who told me that after he had qualified, for a commission as second lieutenant he declined to accept it. This was such an unusual occurrence in a country where the army officer is a semi-deity that I was naturally curious to know why.

"I am loyal to the Fatherland," the young Saxon said to me, "and I am not afraid to die. I was filled with enthusiasm to receive a commission, but all that enthusiasm died when I saw the way Russian prisoners were treated in East Prussia and at Windau. I saw them stripped to the waist under orders from the camp officers, tied to trees and lashed until the blood flowed. When I saw one prisoner, weak from underfeeding, cut with switches until he died in the presence of a Berlin captain, my mind was made up. My country has gone too far in making the army officer supreme. I now could see the full significance of Zabern, a significance which I could not realise at the time. During the first part of the war I became angry when outsiders called us barbarians; now I feel sad. I do not blame them. But it is our system that is at fault, and we must correct it. Therefore, although I am an insignificant individual and do not count, I shall, as I love my country, obey the dictates of my conscience. I will not be an officer in the German system."

I thought of that sincere young student while the boat staggered under the onslaughts of heavy seas, and the corporal told of how twelve hours' daily toil on the railway in Courland with rations entirely inadequate for such work, finally put him on the sick list, and he was sent back to Munster in western Germany.

He was then sent into the fields with two companions—the two who were in the group about the table—and with them he seized a favourable opportunity to escape. His companions had tried on previous occasions, each separately, but had been caught, sent back and put into dark cells and given only one meal a day for a long and weakening period. That did not daunt them. The Germans thought that men who had gone through that kind of punishment would not try to escape again. Yet as soon as their strength was restored through their food parcels from home they were off, but in an entirely different direction.

I asked one of them, a little Welshman, where be got the waterproof rubber bag on the floor at his feet, in which were all his earthly belongings. "That used to be the old German farmer's tablecloth," he said.

To-day in Europe there are millions of civilians dressed in military uniform, which fails to hide the fact that their main work of life is not that of the soldier. But the three British soldiers sitting under the smoky brass lamp were of a different sort. Twelve years of service had so indelibly stamped them as soldiers of the King that the make-shift clothing given them in Holland, could not conceal their calling. Their faces were an unnatural white from the terrible experiences which they had undergone, but, like the rest of the Old Army, they were always soldiers, every inch of them.

The two men whom, I had heard talking French on the deck were Belgians. The one had been a soldier at Liege, and had managed to scramble across a ditch after his three days' tramp to Holland, although the sentry's bullet whistled uncomfortably close. He said that his strongest wish was to rejoin the Belgian army so that he might do his part to avenge the death of seven civilian hostages who had been shot before his eyes.

The other Belgian was just over military age, but he wanted to reach England to volunteer. His nerve and resource are certainly all right. He knew of the electrified wire along the Belgian-Dutch frontier, so he brought two pieces of glass with him, and thus held the current of death away from his body while he wriggled through to freedom.

We talked until after midnight. The French captain, formerly an instructor of artillery at Saint Cyr—the West Point and the Sandhurst of France—taken prisoner in the first autumn of the war, was the last to tell his story.

At Torgau, Saxony, in the heart of Germany, be plunged into the Elbe in the darkness of night, stemmed the swift waters, and on landing, half-drowned, rose speedily and walked fast to avoid a fatal chill.

For twenty-nine days he struggled on towards liberty. Nothing but the tremendous impulse of the desire for freedom could have carried him on his own two feet across Germany, without money, through countless closely-policed villages and great cities, in a country where everyone carries an identity book (with which, of course, he was unprovided), without a friend or accomplice at any point of the journey, with only a map torn from a railway time-table, and no other guides than the sun, moon, and stars and direction posts. I will give the rest of the man's story in his own words.

"I came to the conclusion that my brain would not stand the captivity. I knew some of the difficulties before me, but I doubt whether I would have started if I had known them all. I lived on unthreshed wheat and rye, apples, blackberries, bilberries, carrots, turnips and even raw potatoes. I did not taste one morsel of cooked food or anything stronger than water till I arrived in Holland. I did not speak one word to any human being. On two occasions I marched more than thirty miles in the twenty-four hours. I slept always away from the roadside, and very often by day, and as far as possible from any inhabited house. I am, as you see, weak and thin, practically only muscle and bone, and during the last three days, while waiting in Holland for the boat, I have had to eat carefully to avoid the illness that would almost certainly follow repletion."

After I had lain down for a few hours' sleep, I thought, as I had often thought during the past thirty months, that although this is a war of machinery there is plenty of the human element in it, too. People who tell only of the grim-drab aspect of the great struggle sometimes forget that romances just as fine as were ever spun by Victor Hugo happen around, them every day.

At dawn I hung to the rail of the wildly tossing ship, looking at the horizon from which the mists were clearing. Two specks began to grow into the long low black lines of destroyers. Our most anxious moment of the voyage had come. We waited for the shot that would show them to be German.

"They're all right. They're the escort!" came a voice on the winds that swept over the bridge.

They grew rapidly large, lashed the sea white as they tore along one on each side of us, diving through the waves when they could not ride them. When abreast of us they seemed almost to stop in their own length, wheel and disappear in the distance. Somehow the way they wheeled reminded me of the way the Cossacks used to pull their horses sharply at right angles when I saw them covering the rearguard in the retreat through the Bukovina.

The rough soldier at my side looked after them, with a mist in his eyes that did not come from the sea. "I'll be able to see my wife again," he said, more to the waves than to me. "I didn't write, because I didn't want to raise any false hopes. But this settles it, we're certain to get home safe now. I suppose I'll walk in and find her packing my food parcel for Germany—the parcel that kept me alive, while some of them poor Russian chaps with nobody to send them parcels are going under every day."

We ran close to two masts sticking up out of the water near the mouth of the Humber, the mast of our sister ship, which had gone down with all on board when she struck a mine.

That is the sort of sight which makes some critics say, "What is the matter with the British Navy?" Those critics forget to praise the mine-sweepers that we saw all about, whose bravery, endurance and noble spirit of self-sacrifice lead them to persevere in their perilous work and enable a thousand ships to reach port to one that goes down.

On that rough voyage across the North Sea, through the destroyer and armed motor launch patrol, maintained by men who work unflinchingly in the shadow of death, I felt once again the power of the British Navy. I cast my lot with that Navy when I left Holland. I know what its protection means, for I could not have crossed on a neutral Dutch vessel.

It is all very well to complain about a few raiders that manage in thirty months to pierce the British patrols, or the hurried dash of swift destroyers into the Channel, but when you look from the white chalk cliffs of the Kentish coast at hundreds of vessels passing safely off the Downs, when you sail the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and see only neutral and Allied ships carrying on commerce, when you cross the Rhine and stand in food lines hour after hour and day after day, where men and women who gloried in war now whine at the hardships it brings, when you see a mighty nation disintegrating in the shadow of starvation, and then pass to another nation, which, though far less self-sustaining in food, has plenty to eat, you simply have to realise that there are silent victories which are often farther reaching than victories of eclat.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE LITTLE SHIPS

I have been particularly impressed with two misconceptions which have existed, and to some extent still exist, not only in Germany but in neutral countries. The first is that England lacks virility, is degenerate, has had her day of greatness; the second, that in the present war she is continuing what is alleged to have been her policy in the past, namely, pulling the strings and reaping the benefit while other nations do the fighting. Through personal investigation I find these contentions so thoroughly refuted that to develop the point would be to commence another book instead of finishing this one.

As I write I can look from my desk in the Alexandra Hotel, Bridlington, on to the North Sea where it washes the "Frightfulness Coast," for Bridlington lies between Hull and Scarborough.

I see trawlers fishing and mine-sweeping whenever I raise my eyes from my writing. Their crews know that they work in the shadow of death in what they describe in the dock-side taverns as the greatest sport in the world. Praise of the big ships often causes us to forget the little ships. I admire the one and reverence the other. For if the men on the humbler craft could be intimidated, the doctrine of Frightfulness would be justified by victory.

Intimidation is a favourite weapon of the people across the Rhine. I was among them when their airmen dropped bombs on Paris early in the war. "It is really humane," they said, "for it will frighten the civilian population into imploring the military to yield to us to save them." They thought the same of Zeppelin raids over England. Intimidation was their guiding star in Belgium. The first I heard of the massacre of Louvain was from one of its perpetrators.

Intimidation was again their weapon in the case of Captain Fryatt. "We planned it well," snarled a member of the Reichstag, incensed over my expression of disapproval, "Before we sent our ships to intercept the Brussels we determined to capture him, try him quickly and execute him. Since our submarines will win the war we must protect them by all passible means. You see, when the next British captain thinks of ramming one of our submarines he will remember the fate of Captain Fryatt and think twice!"

Once more Germany is attempting intimidation, and seeking to make neutrals her ally in an attempt to starve Britain into defeat. The American Ambassador is leaving Berlin, hundreds of neutral vessels hug havens of safety all over the world, but the women in Grimsby and Hull still wave farewell to the little trawlers that slip down the Humber to grapple with death. Freighters, mine-sweepers, trawlers, and the rest of the unsung tollers of the sea continue their silent, all-important task. They know that for them Germany has declared the law off, that they will be slaughtered at sight. They know also that despite the Grand Fleet and the armies in France, the Allies and their cause will go down in complete defeat if Germany succeeds in blocking the routes of commerce. The insurmountable obstacle in her path is the simple, old-fashioned dogged courage of the average British seaman.

The Germans have developed to an astounding degree the quality of incorrectly diagnosing other peoples, due partly to the unbounded conceit engendered by their three wars of unification and their rapid increase of prosperity. Their mental food in recent years has been war, conquest, disparagement of others and glorification of self. They entered the struggle thinking only in army corps and siege artillery. Certain undefinable moral qualities, such as the last-ditch spirit of the old British Army on the Yser, did not come within their scope of reckoning.

British illusions of the early part of the war are gone. The average Briton fully appreciates Germany's gigantic strength, and he coldly realises that as conditions are at present, his country must supply most of the driving force—men, guns, and shells—to break it. He thinks of the awful cost in life, and the thought makes him serious, but he is ready for any sacrifice. He welcomes help from Allies and neutrals, but whether the help be great or small, he is willing and resolved to stand on his own feet, and carry on to the end. It is this spirit which makes Britain magnificent to-day.

When losses are brought home to the Germans they generally give vent to their feelings by hurling maledictions upon their enemies. The Briton, under similar circumstances, is usually remarkably quiet, but, unlike the German, he is individually more determined, in consequence of the loss, to see the thing through. Somehow the German always made me feel that his war determination had been organised for him.

Organisation is the glory and the curse of Germany. The Germans are by nature and training easily influenced, and as a mass they can be led as readily in the right path as in the wrong. Common-sense administration and co-operation have made their cities places of beauty, health, comfort and pleasure. But when you stop for a moment in your admiration of the streets, buildings, statues, bridges, in such a city as Munich and enter a crowded hall to sit among people who listen with attention, obedience and delight to a professor venomously instructing them in their duty of "hating with the whole heart and the whole mind," and convincing them that "only through hate can the greatest obstacles be overcome," you begin to suspect that something is wrong.

It is part of the Prussian nature to push everything to extremes, a trait which has advantages and disadvantages. It has resulted in brilliant achievements in chemical and physical laboratories, and in gout, dyspepsia and flabbiness in eating establishments. A virtue carried too far becomes a vice. In Germany patriotism becomes jingoistic hatred and contempt for others, organisation becomes the utilisation of servility, obedience becomes willingness to do wrong at command.

Americans and British are inclined to ascribe to the Germans their own qualities. In nothing is this more obvious than in the English idea that the fair treatment of Germans in England, will beget fair treatment of the English in Germany. The Prussians, who have many Oriental characteristics—and some of them, a good deal of Oriental appearance—think orientally and attribute fair, or what we call sportsmanlike, treatment to fright and a desire to curry favour.

When Maubeuge fell I heard Germans of all classes boast of how their soldiers struck the British who offered to shake hands after they surrendered to the Germans. Nearly two years later, during the Battle of the Somme, some Berlin papers copied from London papers a report of how British soldiers presented arms to the group of prisoners who had stubbornly defended Ovillers. I called the attention of several German acquaintances to this as an evidence of Anglo-Saxon sporting spirit, but I got practically the same response in every case. "Yes, they are beginning at last to see what we can do!" was the angry remark.

The Germans have become more and more "Prussianised" in recent years. State worship had advanced so far that the German people entered the conflict in the perverted belief that the German Government had used every means to avert war. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the German people entered the war reluctantly. They did not. There was perfect unity in the joyful thought of German invincibility, easy and complete victory, plenty of plunder, and such huge indemnities that the growing burden of taxation would be thrown off their shoulders.

A country where the innocent children are scientifically inoculated with the virus of hate, where force, and only force, is held to be the determinant internationally of mine and thine, where the morals of the farmyard, are preached from the professorial chair in order to manufacture human cogs for the machine of militarism, is an undesirable and a dangerous neighbour and will continue so until it accepts other standards. A victorious Germany would not accept other standards.

That is why I look on the little ships with so much admiration this morning. They sail between Germany and victory, for if they could be intimidated Britain would be starved out. Then the gospel that "only through hate can the greatest obstacles be overcome," would be the corner-stone of the most powerful Empire of history.

THE END