Harris breaks the law--The helpful man: The dangers that beset him--George
sets forth upon a career of crime--Those to whom Germany would come as a
boon and a blessing--The English Sinner: His disappointments--The German
Sinner: His exceptional advantages--What you may not do with your bed--An
inexpensive vice--The German dog: His simple goodness--The misbehaviour
of the beetle--A people that go the way they ought to go--The German
small boy: His love of legality--How to go astray with a perambulator--The
German student: His chastened wilfulness.
All three of us, by some means or another, managed, between Nuremberg and
the Black Forest, to get into trouble.
Harris led off at Stuttgart by insulting an official. Stuttgart is a
charming town, clean and bright, a smaller Dresden. It has the
additional attraction of containing little that one need to go out of
one's way to see: a medium-sized picture gallery, a small museum of
antiquities, and half a palace, and you are through with the entire thing
and can enjoy yourself. Harris did not know it was an official he was
insulting. He took it for a fireman (it looked like a fireman), and he
called it a "dummer Esel."
In German you are not permitted to call an official a "silly ass," but
undoubtedly this particular man was one. What had happened was this:
Harris in the Stadgarten, anxious to get out, and seeing a gate open
before him, had stepped over a wire into the street. Harris maintains he
never saw it, but undoubtedly there was hanging to the wire a notice,
"Durchgang Verboten!" The man, who was standing near the gate stopped
Harris, and pointed out to him this notice. Harris thanked him, and
passed on. The man came after him, and explained that treatment of the
matter in such off-hand way could not be allowed; what was necessary to
put the business right was that Harris should step back over the wire
into the garden. Harris pointed out to the man that the notice said
"going through forbidden," and that, therefore, by re-entering the garden
that way he would be infringing the law a second time. The man saw this
for himself, and suggested that to get over the difficulty Harris should
go back into the garden by the proper entrance, which was round the
corner, and afterwards immediately come out again by the same gate. Then
it was that Harris called the man a silly ass. That delayed us a day,
and cost Harris forty marks.
I followed suit at Carlsruhe, by stealing a bicycle. I did not mean to
steal the bicycle; I was merely trying to be useful. The train was on
the point of starting when I noticed, as I thought, Harris's bicycle
still in the goods van. No one was about to help me. I jumped into the
van and hauled it out, only just in time. Wheeling it down the platform
in triumph, I came across Harris's bicycle, standing against a wall
behind some milk-cans. The bicycle I had secured was not Harris's, but
some other man's.
It was an awkward situation. In England, I should have gone to the
stationmaster and explained my mistake. But in Germany they are not
content with your explaining a little matter of this sort to one man:
they take you round and get you to explain it to about half a dozen; and
if any one of the half dozen happens not to be handy, or not to have time
just then to listen to you, they have a habit of leaving you over for the
night to finish your explanation the next morning. I thought I would
just put the thing out of sight, and then, without making any fuss or
show, take a short walk. I found a wood shed, which seemed just the very
place, and was wheeling the bicycle into it when, unfortunately, a red-
hatted railway official, with the airs of a retired field-marshal, caught
sight of me and came up. He said:
"What are you doing with that bicycle?"
I said: "I am going to put it in this wood shed out of the way." I tried
to convey by my tone that I was performing a kind and thoughtful action,
for which the railway officials ought to thank me; but he was
unresponsive.
"Is it your bicycle?" he said.
"Well, not exactly," I replied.
"Whose is it?" he asked, quite sharply.
"I can't tell you," I answered. "I don't know whose bicycle it is."
"Where did you get it from?" was his next question. There was a
suspiciousness about his tone that was almost insulting.
"I got it," I answered, with as much calm dignity as at the moment I
could assume, "out of the train. The fact is," I continued, frankly, "I
have made a mistake."
He did not allow me time to finish. He merely said he thought so too,
and blew a whistle.
Recollection of the subsequent proceedings is not, so far as I am
concerned, amusing. By a miracle of good luck--they say Providence
watches over certain of us--the incident happened in Carlsruhe, where I
possess a German friend, an official of some importance. Upon what would
have been my fate had the station not been at Carlsruhe, or had my friend
been from home, I do not care to dwell; as it was I got off, as the
saying is, by the skin of my teeth. I should like to add that I left
Carlsruhe without a stain upon my character, but that would not be the
truth. My going scot free is regarded in police circles there to this
day as a grave miscarriage of justice.
But all lesser sin sinks into insignificance beside the lawlessness of
George. The bicycle incident had thrown us all into confusion, with the
result that we lost George altogether. It transpired subsequently that
he was waiting for us outside the police court; but this at the time we
did not know. We thought, maybe, he had gone on to Baden by himself; and
anxious to get away from Carlsruhe, and not, perhaps, thinking out things
too clearly, we jumped into the next train that came up and proceeded
thither. When George, tired of waiting, returned to the station, he
found us gone and he found his luggage gone. Harris had his ticket; I
was acting as banker to the party, so that he had in his pocket only some
small change. Excusing himself upon these grounds, he thereupon
commenced deliberately a career of crime that, reading it later, as set
forth baldly in the official summons, made the hair of Harris and myself
almost to stand on end.
German travelling, it may be explained, is somewhat complicated. You buy
a ticket at the station you start from for the place you want to go to.
You might think this would enable you to get there, but it does not. When
your train comes up, you attempt to swarm into it; but the guard
magnificently waves you away. Where are your credentials? You show him
your ticket. He explains to you that by itself that is of no service
whatever; you have only taken the first step towards travelling; you must
go back to the booking-office and get in addition what is called a
"schnellzug ticket." With this you return, thinking your troubles over.
You are allowed to get in, so far so good. But you must not sit down
anywhere, and you must not stand still, and you must not wander about.
You must take another ticket, this time what is called a "platz ticket,"
which entitles you to a place for a certain distance.
What a man could do who persisted in taking nothing but the one ticket, I
have often wondered. Would he be entitled to run behind the train on the
six-foot way? Or could he stick a label on himself and get into the
goods van? Again, what could be done with the man who, having taken his
schnellzug ticket, obstinately refused, or had not the money to take a
platz ticket: would they let him lie in the umbrella rack, or allow him
to hang himself out of the window?
To return to George, he had just sufficient money to take a third-class
slow train ticket to Baden, and that was all. To avoid the
inquisitiveness of the guard, he waited till the train was moving, and
then jumped in.
That was his first sin:
(a) Entering a train in motion;
(b) After being warned not to do so by an official.
Second sin:
(a) Travelling in train of superior class to that for which ticket was
held.
(b) Refusing to pay difference when demanded by an official. (George
says he did not "refuse"; he simply told the man he had not got it.)
Third sin:
(a) Travelling in carriage of superior class to that for which ticket
was held.
(b) Refusing to pay difference when demanded by an official. (Again
George disputes the accuracy of the report. He turned his pockets out,
and offered the man all he had, which was about eightpence in German
money. He offered to go into a third class, but there was no third
class. He offered to go into the goods van, but they would not hear of
it.)
Fourth sin:
(a) Occupying seat, and not paying for same.
(b) Loitering about corridor. (As they would not let him sit down
without paying, and as he could not pay, it was difficult to see what
else he could do.)
But explanations are held as no excuse in Germany; and his journey from
Carlsruhe to Baden was one of the most expensive perhaps on record.
Reflecting upon the case and frequency with which one gets into trouble
here in Germany, one is led to the conclusion that this country would
come as a boon and a blessing to the average young Englishman. To the
medical student, to the eater of dinners at the Temple, to the subaltern
on leave, life in London is a wearisome proceeding. The healthy Briton
takes his pleasure lawlessly, or it is no pleasure to him. Nothing that
he may do affords to him any genuine satisfaction. To be in trouble of
some sort is his only idea of bliss. Now, England affords him small
opportunity in this respect; to get himself into a scrape requires a good
deal of persistence on the part of the young Englishman.
I spoke on this subject one day with our senior churchwarden. It was the
morning of the 10th of November, and we were both of us glancing,
somewhat anxiously, through the police reports. The usual batch of young
men had been summoned for creating the usual disturbance the night before
at the Criterion. My friend the churchwarden has boys of his own, and a
nephew of mine, upon whom I am keeping a fatherly eye, is by a fond
mother supposed to be in London for the sole purpose of studying
engineering. No names we knew happened, by fortunate chance, to be in
the list of those detained in custody, and, relieved, we fell to
moralising upon the folly and depravity of youth.
"It is very remarkable," said my friend the churchwarden, "how the
Criterion retains its position in this respect. It was just so when I
was young; the evening always wound up with a row at the Criterion."
"So meaningless," I remarked.
"So monotonous," he replied. "You have no idea," he continued, a dreamy
expression stealing over his furrowed face, "how unutterably tired one
can become of the walk from Piccadilly Circus to the Vine Street Police
Court. Yet, what else was there for us to do? Simply nothing. Sometimes
we would put out a street lamp, and a man would come round and light it
again. If one insulted a policeman, he simply took no notice. He did
not even know he was being insulted; or, if he did, he seemed not to
care. You could fight a Covent Garden porter, if you fancied yourself at
that sort of thing. Generally speaking, the porter got the best of it;
and when he did it cost you five shillings, and when he did not the price
was half a sovereign. I could never see much excitement in that
particular sport. I tried driving a hansom cab once. That has always
been regarded as the acme of modern Tom and Jerryism. I stole it late
one night from outside a public-house in Dean Street, and the first thing
that happened to me was that I was hailed in Golden Square by an old lady
surrounded by three children, two of them crying and the third one half
asleep. Before I could get away she had shot the brats into the cab,
taken my number, paid me, so she said, a shilling over the legal fare,
and directed me to an address a little beyond what she called North
Kensington. As a matter of fact, the place turned out to be the other
side of Willesden. The horse was tired, and the journey took us well
over two hours. It was the slowest lark I ever remember being concerned
in. I tried once or twice to persuade the children to let me take them
back to the old lady: but every time I opened the trap-door to speak to
them the youngest one, a boy, started screaming; and when I offered other
drivers to transfer the job to them, most of them replied in the words of
a song popular about that period: 'Oh, George, don't you think you're
going just a bit too far?' One man offered to take home to my wife any
last message I might be thinking of, while another promised to organise a
party to come and dig me out in the spring. When I mounted the dickey I
had imagined myself driving a peppery old colonel to some lonesome and
cabless region, half a dozen miles from where he wanted to go, and there
leaving him upon the kerbstone to swear. About that there might have
been good sport or there might not, according to circumstances and the
colonel. The idea of a trip to an outlying suburb in charge of a nursery
full of helpless infants had never occurred to me. No, London,"
concluded my friend the churchwarden with a sigh, "affords but limited
opportunity to the lover of the illegal."
Now, in Germany, on the other hand, trouble is to be had for the asking.
There are many things in Germany that you must not do that are quite easy
to do. To any young Englishman yearning to get himself into a scrape,
and finding himself hampered in his own country, I would advise a single
ticket to Germany; a return, lasting as it does only a month, might prove
a waste.
In the Police Guide of the Fatherland he will find set forth a list of
the things the doing of which will bring to him interest and excitement.
In Germany you must not hang your bed out of window. He might begin with
that. By waving his bed out of window he could get into trouble before
he had his breakfast. At home he might hang himself out of window, and
nobody would mind much, provided he did not obstruct anybody's ancient
lights or break away and injure any passer underneath.
In Germany you must not wear fancy dress in the streets. A Highlander of
my acquaintance who came to pass the winter in Dresden spent the first
few days of his residence there in arguing this question with the Saxon
Government. They asked him what he was doing in those clothes. He was
not an amiable man. He answered, he was wearing them. They asked him
why he was wearing them. He replied, to keep himself warm. They told
him frankly that they did not believe him, and sent him back to his
lodgings in a closed landau. The personal testimony of the English
Minister was necessary to assure the authorities that the Highland garb
was the customary dress of many respectable, law-abiding British
subjects. They accepted the statement, as diplomatically bound, but
retain their private opinion to this day. The English tourist they have
grown accustomed to; but a Leicestershire gentleman, invited to hunt with
some German officers, on appearing outside his hotel, was promptly
marched off, horse and all, to explain his frivolity at the police court.
Another thing you must not do in the streets of German towns is to feed
horses, mules, or donkeys, whether your own or those belonging to other
people. If a passion seizes you to feed somebody else's horse, you must
make an appointment with the animal, and the meal must take place in some
properly authorised place. You must not break glass or china in the
street, nor, in fact, in any public resort whatever; and if you do, you
must pick up all the pieces. What you are to do with the pieces when you
have gathered them together I cannot say. The only thing I know for
certain is that you are not permitted to throw them anywhere, to leave
them anywhere, or apparently to part with them in any way whatever.
Presumably, you are expected to carry them about with you until you die,
and then be buried with them; or, maybe, you are allowed to swallow them.
In German streets you must not shoot with a crossbow. The German law-
maker does not content himself with the misdeeds of the average man--the
crime one feels one wants to do, but must not: he worries himself
imagining all the things a wandering maniac might do. In Germany there
is no law against a man standing on his head in the middle of the road;
the idea has not occurred to them. One of these days a German statesman,
visiting a circus and seeing acrobats, will reflect upon this omission.
Then he will straightway set to work and frame a clause forbidding people
from standing on their heads in the middle of the road, and fixing a
fine. This is the charm of German law: misdemeanour in Germany has its
fixed price. You are not kept awake all night, as in England, wondering
whether you will get off with a caution, be fined forty shillings, or,
catching the magistrate in an unhappy moment for yourself, get seven
days. You know exactly what your fun is going to cost you. You can
spread out your money on the table, open your Police Guide, and plan out
your holiday to a fifty pfennig piece. For a really cheap evening, I
would recommend walking on the wrong side of the pavement after being
cautioned not to do so. I calculate that by choosing your district and
keeping to the quiet side streets you could walk for a whole evening on
the wrong side of the pavement at a cost of little over three marks.
In German towns you must not ramble about after dark "in droves." I am
not quite sure how many constitute a "drove," and no official to whom I
have spoken on this subject has felt himself competent to fix the exact
number. I once put it to a German friend who was starting for the
theatre with his wife, his mother-in-law, five children of his own, his
sister and her _fiance_, and two nieces, if he did not think he was
running a risk under this by-law. He did not take my suggestion as a
joke. He cast an eye over the group.
"Oh, I don't think so," he said; "you see, we are all one family."
"The paragraph says nothing about its being a family drove or not," I
replied; "it simply says 'drove.' I do not mean it in any
uncomplimentary sense, but, speaking etymologically, I am inclined
personally to regard your collection as a 'drove.' Whether the police
will take the same view or not remains to be seen. I am merely warning
you."
My friend himself was inclined to pooh-pooh my fears; but his wife
thinking it better not to run any risk of having the party broken up by
the police at the very beginning of the evening, they divided, arranging
to come together again in the theatre lobby.
Another passion you must restrain in Germany is that prompting you to
throw things out of window. Cats are no excuse. During the first week
of my residence in Germany I was awakened incessantly by cats. One night
I got mad. I collected a small arsenal--two or three pieces of coal, a
few hard pears, a couple of candle ends, an odd egg I found on the
kitchen table, an empty soda-water bottle, and a few articles of that
sort,--and, opening the window, bombarded the spot from where the noise
appeared to come. I do not suppose I hit anything; I never knew a man
who did hit a cat, even when he could see it, except, maybe, by accident
when aiming at something else. I have known crack shots, winners of
Queen's prizes--those sort of men,--shoot with shot-guns at cats fifty
yards away, and never hit a hair. I have often thought that, instead of
bull's-eyes, running deer, and that rubbish, the really superior marksman
would be he who could boast that he had shot the cat.
But, anyhow, they moved off; maybe the egg annoyed them. I had noticed
when I picked it up that it did not look a good egg; and I went back to
bed again, thinking the incident closed. Ten minutes afterwards there
came a violent ringing of the electric bell. I tried to ignore it, but
it was too persistent, and, putting on my dressing gown, I went down to
the gate. A policeman was standing there. He had all the things I had
been throwing out of the window in a little heap in front of him, all
except the egg. He had evidently been collecting them. He said:
"Are these things yours?"
I said: "They were mine, but personally I have done with them. Anybody
can have them--you can have them."
He ignored my offer. He said:
"You threw these things out of window."
"You are right," I admitted; "I did."
"Why did you throw them out of window?" he asked. A German policeman has
his code of questions arranged for him; he never varies them, and he
never omits one.
"I threw them out of the window at some cats," I answered.
"What cats?" he asked.
It was the sort of question a German policeman would ask. I replied with
as much sarcasm as I could put into my accent that I was ashamed to say I
could not tell him what cats. I explained that, personally, they were
strangers to me; but I offered, if the police would call all the cats in
the district together, to come round and see if I could recognise them by
their yaul.
The German policeman does not understand a joke, which is perhaps on the
whole just as well, for I believe there is a heavy fine for joking with
any German uniform; they call it "treating an official with contumely."
He merely replied that it was not the duty of the police to help me
recognise the cats; their duty was merely to fine me for throwing things
out of window.
I asked what a man was supposed to do in Germany when woke up night after
night by cats, and he explained that I could lodge an information against
the owner of the cat, when the police would proceed to caution him, and,
if necessary, order the cat to be destroyed. Who was going to destroy
the cat, and what the cat would be doing during the process, he did not
explain.
I asked him how he proposed I should discover the owner of the cat. He
thought for a while, and then suggested that I might follow it home. I
did not feel inclined to argue with him any more after that; I should
only have said things that would have made the matter worse. As it was,
that night's sport cost me twelve marks; and not a single one of the four
German officials who interviewed me on the subject could see anything
ridiculous in the proceedings from beginning to end.
But in Germany most human faults and follies sink into comparative
insignificance beside the enormity of walking on the grass. Nowhere, and
under no circumstances, may you at any time in Germany walk on the grass.
Grass in Germany is quite a fetish. To put your foot on German grass
would be as great a sacrilege as to dance a hornpipe on a Mohammedan's
praying-mat. The very dogs respect German grass; no German dog would
dream of putting a paw on it. If you see a dog scampering across the
grass in Germany, you may know for certain that it is the dog of some
unholy foreigner. In England, when we want to keep dogs out of places,
we put up wire netting, six feet high, supported by buttresses, and
defended on the top by spikes. In Germany, they put a notice-board in
the middle of the place, "Hunden verboten," and a dog that has German
blood in its veins looks at that notice-board and walks away. In a
German park I have seen a gardener step gingerly with felt boots on to
grass-plot, and removing therefrom a beetle, place it gravely but firmly
on the gravel; which done, he stood sternly watching the beetle, to see
that it did not try to get back on the grass; and the beetle, looking
utterly ashamed of itself, walked hurriedly down the gutter, and turned
up the path marked "Ausgang."
In German parks separate roads are devoted to the different orders of the
community, and no one person, at peril of liberty and fortune, may go
upon another person's road. There are special paths for "wheel-riders"
and special paths for "foot-goers," avenues for "horse-riders," roads for
people in light vehicles, and roads for people in heavy vehicles; ways
for children and for "alone ladies." That no particular route has yet
been set aside for bald-headed men or "new women" has always struck me as
an omission.
In the Grosse Garten in Dresden I once came across an old lady, standing,
helpless and bewildered, in the centre of seven tracks. Each was guarded
by a threatening notice, warning everybody off it but the person for whom
it was intended.
"I am sorry to trouble you," said the old lady, on learning I could speak
English and read German, "but would you mind telling me what I am and
where I have to go?"
I inspected her carefully. I came to the conclusion that she was a
"grown-up" and a "foot-goer," and pointed out her path. She looked at
it, and seemed disappointed.
"But I don't want to go down there," she said; "mayn't I go this way?"
"Great heavens, no, madam!" I replied. "That path is reserved for
children."
"But I wouldn't do them any harm," said the old lady, with a smile. She
did not look the sort of old lady who would have done them any harm.
"Madam," I replied, "if it rested with me, I would trust you down that
path, though my own first-born were at the other end; but I can only
inform you of the laws of this country. For you, a full-grown woman, to
venture down that path is to go to certain fine, if not imprisonment.
There is your path, marked plainly--_Nur fur Fussganger_, and if you will
follow my advice, you will hasten down it; you are not allowed to stand
here and hesitate."
"It doesn't lead a bit in the direction I want to go," said the old lady.
"It leads in the direction you _ought_ to want to go," I replied, and we
parted.
In the German parks there are special seats labelled, "Only for grown-
ups" (_Nur fur Erwachsene_), and the German small boy, anxious to sit
down, and reading that notice, passes by, and hunts for a seat on which
children are permitted to rest; and there he seats himself, careful not
to touch the woodwork with his muddy boots. Imagine a seat in Regent's
or St. James's Park labelled "Only for grown-ups!" Every child for five
miles round would be trying to get on that seat, and hauling other
children off who were on. As for any "grown-up," he would never be able
to get within half a mile of that seat for the crowd. The German small
boy, who has accidentally sat down on such without noticing, rises with a
start when his error is pointed out to him, and goes away with down-cast
head, blushing to the roots of his hair with shame and regret.
Not that the German child is neglected by a paternal Government. In
German parks and public gardens special places (_Spielplatze_) are
provided for him, each one supplied with a heap of sand. There he can
play to his heart's content at making mud pies and building sand castles.
To the German child a pie made of any other mud than this would appear an
immoral pie. It would give to him no satisfaction: his soul would revolt
against it.
"That pie," he would say to himself, "was not, as it should have been,
made of Government mud specially set apart for the purpose; it was nor
manufactured in the place planned and maintained by the Government for
the making of mud pies. It can bring no real blessing with it; it is a
lawless pie." And until his father had paid the proper fine, and he had
received his proper licking, his conscience would continue to trouble
him.
Another excellent piece of material for obtaining excitement in Germany
is the simple domestic perambulator. What you may do with a
"kinder-wagen," as it is called, and what you may not, covers pages of
German law; after the reading of which, you conclude that the man who can
push a perambulator through a German town without breaking the law was
meant for a diplomatist. You must not loiter with a perambulator, and
you must not go too fast. You must not get in anybody's way with a
perambulator, and if anybody gets in your way you must get out of their
way. If you want to stop with a perambulator, you must go to a place
specially appointed where perambulators may stop; and when you get there
you _must_ stop. You must not cross the road with a perambulator; if you
and the baby happen to live on the other side, that is your fault. You
must not leave your perambulator anywhere, and only in certain places can
you take it with you. I should say that in Germany you could go out with
a perambulator and get into enough trouble in half an hour to last you
for a month. Any young Englishman anxious for a row with the police
could not do better than come over to Germany and bring his perambulator
with him.
In Germany you must not leave your front door unlocked after ten o'clock
at night, and you must not play the piano in your own house after eleven.
In England I have never felt I wanted to play the piano myself, or to
hear anyone else play it, after eleven o'clock at night; but that is a
very different thing to being told that you must not play it. Here, in
Germany, I never feel that I really care for the piano until eleven
o'clock, then I could sit and listen to the "Maiden's Prayer," or the
Overture to "Zampa," with pleasure. To the law-loving German, on the
other hand, music after eleven o'clock at night ceases to be music; it
becomes sin, and as such gives him no satisfaction.
The only individual throughout Germany who ever dreams of taking
liberties with the law is the German student, and he only to a certain
well-defined point. By custom, certain privileges are permitted to him,
but even these are strictly limited and clearly understood. For
instance, the German student may get drunk and fall asleep in the gutter
with no other penalty than that of having the next morning to tip the
policeman who has found him and brought him home. But for this purpose
he must choose the gutters of side-streets. The German student,
conscious of the rapid approach of oblivion, uses all his remaining
energy to get round the corner, where he may collapse without anxiety. In
certain districts he may ring bells. The rent of flats in these
localities is lower than in other quarters of the town; while the
difficulty is further met by each family preparing for itself a secret
code of bell-ringing by means of which it is known whether the summons is
genuine or not. When visiting such a household late at night it is well
to be acquainted with this code, or you may, if persistent, get a bucket
of water thrown over you.
Also the German student is allowed to put out lights at night, but there
is a prejudice against his putting out too many. The larky German
student generally keeps count, contenting himself with half a dozen
lights per night. Likewise, he may shout and sing as he walks home, up
till half-past two; and at certain restaurants it is permitted to him to
put his arm round the Fraulein's waist. To prevent any suggestion of
unseemliness, the waitresses at restaurants frequented by students are
always carefully selected from among a staid and elderly classy of women,
by reason of which the German student can enjoy the delights of
flirtation without fear and without reproach to anyone.
They are a law-abiding people, the Germans.