by an engine in a very advanced state of what appeared to be neglect.
Though all its parts were there, these, except where rubbed clean by
friction, were thick with rust and scaled with flaking paint. The worst
trouble, however, seemed to come from lack of lubrication, for in the
places where every other locomotive I had seen before was dripping with
oil, this one showed only caked graphite and hard, dry steel. While
there is little doubt that the Germans made a point of turning out their
worst engines and motor cars for the use of the Allied sub-commissions
in order to give an impression that things were really in a desperate
way with them, it is still beyond question that their railway stock
deteriorated greatly during the war, and that a shortage of lubricating
oils was one of their very worst difficulties.
The passenger coach was equally divided between first- and second-class
compartments. Entering at the second-class end, our party distributed
itself between the first two compartments reached. By the time one of
the several German officers who had now joined us pointed out the big
figure "2" on the windows, we were so comfortably settled that no one
deemed it worth while to move. As a matter of fact, on the German
railways, with their four or five classes, there is gentler gradation
between class and class than in France or England; and between first and
second--save that the former is upholstered in dark-red plush and the
latter in light-green--the difference is hardly noticeable. The main
difference is, I believe, in the price, and the fact that only six are
allowed in the first-class against eight in the second. We extracted a
good deal of amusement out of the fact that the several Workmen's and
Soldiers' representatives made no mistake, and lost no time, in marking
a first-class compartment for their own.
We had been somewhat perplexed on our arrival at the station to note
that the two uniformed Workmen's and Soldiers' representatives had
been joined by two civilians, each wearing the white arm-band of the
revolutionary council. But presently one of the latter, hat in hand,
came to the door of our compartment to explain. The naval authorities,
he said, had requested that the Workmen and Soldiers should guarantee
the safety of all Allied parties landing from civilian attack, and in
consequence he had been sent along as a "hostage." At least the German
term he used was one which could be translated as hostage, but after
talking it over we came to the conclusion that the man's _rôle_ was
more analogous to that of a "plain clothes" special policeman. There
was one of these men attached to every party that made a train journey
on the North Sea side (all stations in the Baltic littoral were reached
by destroyer, so that no "protection" from the civilian population was
necessary), and they were neither of any trouble nor--so far as I was
ever able to discern--any use.
Leaving a handful of morning papers behind him as a propitiatory
offering, our "hostage" bowed himself out of the door and backed off
down the corridor--still bowing--to rejoin his colleagues in the
first-class section of the car. In the quarter of an hour there was
still to wait before the line was clear for the departure of our train,
we had our first chance for a peep into Germany through the window of
the Press.
The four-page sheets turned out to be copies of _Vorwärts_, the
_Kölnische Volkszeitung und Handels-Blatt_, the _Weser Zeitung_, of
Bremen, the _Wilhelmshavener Tageblatt_, and the _Republik_. The
latter styled itself the _Sozialdemokratisches Organ für Oldenburg und
Ostfriesland_, and the _Mitteilungsblatt der Arbeiter und Soldatenräte_.
It claimed to be in its thirty-second year, but admitted that all this
time, except the fortnight since the revolution, it had borne the name
of _Oldenburger Volksblatt_. It had little in the way of news from
either the outside world or the interior, the few columns which it
gave up to this purpose being filled with accounts of the formation
of republics in various other provinces, and attacks upon members of
the acting Government in Berlin. Evidently under some sort of orders,
it mentioned the arrival of the _Hercules_ at Wilhelmshaven without
comment. A socialistic sheet of Hamburg, which turned up the next
day, showed less restraint in this connection, for it stated that the
Allied Commission had altered its decision not to meet the Workmen's
and Soldiers' representatives, and that negotiations were now in
progress in which the latter were taking a prominent part. Tangible
evidence of the truth of this statement, it added, might be found in the
fact that delegates from the Workmen and Soldiers accompanied Allied
parties whenever they landed. _Vorwärts_ tried to convey the same false
impression to its readers, but rather less brazenly. The _Kölnische
Volkszeitung_ printed a dispatch from London, in which the _Daily Mail_
was quoted as supporting the "_australischen Premierministers Hughes'_"
demand of an indemnity of "_acht milliarden Pfund Sterling_" from
Germany, and proceeded to prove in the course of an impassioned leader
of two columns why the demanding of any indemnity at all was in direct
violation of the pledged word of the Allies, to say nothing of Wilson's
Fourteen Points. A significant circumstance was the inclusion in each
paper of a part of a column of comment on the movement of prices of
"_Landesprodukte_" on the American markets.
The advertisements, which took up rather more than half of each sheet,
proved by long odds more interesting than the news. These were quite
in best "peace time" style. The _Metropol-Variete_ (_Neu renoviert!_)
informed all and sundry that "_Vier elegante junge Damen!_" disported
themselves in its "_Kabarett_" every evening. The head-line of the great
"_Spezialitäten Programm_" in the theatre was "_Die Grosse Sensation:
Martini Szeny, genannt der 'Ausbrecher-König'!_" A number in the
_Metropol's_ program which appealed to us more than all the others,
however, was one which was featured further down the list, for there,
sandwiched between "KITTY DEANOS UND PARTNER, _Kunstschutzen_," and
"HANS ROMANS, _Liedersanger_," appeared "LITTLE WILLY, _Trapez-Volant_."
"And all the time we thought he was in Holland," dryly commented the
American officer who made the discovery.
One could not help wondering respecting the "etymology" of "Little
Willy," and whether that "Flying Trapezist" knew that he bore the
favourite Allied nickname for His ex-Royal and Imperial Highness,
Frederick Wilhelm Hohenzollern, Crown Prince of Germany, etc., etc.
Evidence that Hun "piracy" had not been confined to their U-boats was
unearthed in the discovery that the Adler-Theatre of Bremen advertised
two performances of "DIE MODERNE EVA" for that very day--_Heute
Sonntag_! "I ran across the chap who wrote 'The Modern Eve' somewhere
out California way," said the same American who had spoken before. "He
was some bore, too, take it from me; but he never deserved anything
as bad as this, for the show itself was pretty nifty," and he began
humming, in extemporaneously translated German the words of "Good-bye
Everybody," the popular "song hit" from "The Modern Eve."
It was a Berlin theatre which advertised "2 _Vorstellungen_ 2" of
"Hamlet," which ended up the notice with "RAUCHEN STRENG VERBOTEN!" in
large type. "If they burn the same stuff in Berlin that our Workmen and
Soldier friends in the first-class are putting up that smoke barrage in
the corridor with," said an airship officer, "it would have to be a case
of '_Rauchen Streng Verboten_' or gas masks."
A number of booksellers advertised long lists of "_Neue Werke_,"
but one searched these in vain for any of the notorious polemics
directed against the Allies, or yet for the writings of any of the
great protagonists of the "Deutschland Ueber Alles" movement. Most of
them appeared to be "Romances" or out-and-out "Thrillers." Bachem, of
Köln, described "_Der Meister_" as "_Der Roman eines Spiritisten_";
"_Wettertannen_" as a "_Tiroler Roman aus der Gegenwart von Hans
Schrott_"; "_Wenn Irland dich ruft_" as "_Der Roman eines Fliegers_";
and "_Der blutige Behrpfennig_" as "_Erzählung aus dem Leben eines
Priesters_." Although one would have thought that the German people had
had quite enough of that kind of thing from their late Government, every
book I saw advertised in any of these papers was fiction.
Perhaps the most optimistic of all these advertisements was that of the
"Kismet Laboratorium," of Berlin, in the _Republik_, which claimed to
make a preparation for the improvement of the female form divine. Now
that the war was over, it read, they no longer felt any hesitation in
announcing that their great discovery was based on a certain product
which could only be obtained from British India. As their pre-war stock
had only been eked out by dilution with an not entirely satisfactory
substitute, it was with great pleasure that they informed their many
customers that they hoped shortly to conclude arrangements by which
the famous "Bakatal-Busenwasser" could again be furnished in all its
pristine purity and strength.
So here, it appears, was an indirect admission to prove wrong the
individual who averred that the German chemists could make out of coal
tar anything in the world except a gentleman. It seems that all the time
they had been dependent upon British India for even the "makings" of a
lady. It would have been interesting to know what the "arrangements"
were by which the supply was to be renewed. We were discussing that
question when the train started, and a "flat" wheel on the "bogey"
immediately under our compartment put an end to casual conversation.
On the outskirts of the town we passed by a great series of sidings
closely packed with oil-tank-cars from all parts of the Central Empires.
The most of them were marked in German, but with names which indicated
beyond a doubt that they had been employed in serving the Galician
fields of Austria. On many more the name of Rumania appeared in one
form or another, and several bore the names of the British concerns
from which they had been seized when the rich oilfields of that unlucky
country fell to Mackensen's armies. A considerable number of cars
were marked with Russian characters, which led to the assumption that
they had been seized in Courland or the Ukraine, and that they had
originally run to and from the greatest of the world's oilfields at
Baku, on the Caspian. There was a persistent report at one time that
Germany was constructing an oil-pipe-line from the Galician fields to
Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. Although quite practicable from an engineering
standpoint, this appears never to have been seriously considered,
probably on account of the great demand for labour and material it would
have made at a time when both could be used to better advantage in other
ways.
Seeing me standing at the window in the corridor looking at the
oil-cars, my young companion of the steel-tyred auto came out of his
compartment and moved up beside me. "As you will see," he said with his
slow precision, "we never lacked badly for the oil for our U-boats.
The one time that we had the great worry was when the Russians had the
fields of Galicia. That cut off our only large supply. But luckily we
had great stocks in hand when the war started, and these were quite
sufficient for our needs until the Russians had been driven out of
Austria. If they had remained there, it is hard to see how we could have
kept going after our reserve was finished. But they did not stay, the
poor Russians, and they did not even have the wits to destroy the wells
properly. We had them producing again at full capacity in a few months.
Now, if they had been destroyed like the English destroyed the wells in
Rumania it would have been different. _There_, in many places, we found
it the cheaper to drill the new wells. Ah, the English are very thorough
when they have the time, both in making and un-making."
As we passed through the suburbs of Wilhelmshaven we began to get some
inkling of where the food came from. All back yards and every spare
patch of ground were in vegetables. Nowhere in England or France have I
seen the surface of the earth so fully occupied, so thoroughly turned
to account. Some thrifty cultivators, after filling up their available
ground with rows of cabbages and Brussels sprouts, appeared to have been
growing beans and peas in hanging baskets and boxes of earth set up on
frames. One genius had erected a forcing bed for what (to judge from
the dead stalks) looked like cucumbers or squashes on the thatched roof
of his cowshed. The only thing needed to cap the climax of agricultural
industry would have been a "hanging garden" suspended from captive
balloons.
As we ran out of the suburban area and into the open country the
allotments gave place to large and well-tilled farms, or rather to farms
which had been well tilled in the season favourable to cultivation.
At the moment work was practically at a standstill on account of the
incessant rains which had inundated considerable areas and left the
ground heavy, water-logged, and temporarily unfit for the plough.
The results of a really bountiful harvest, however, were to be seen
in bulging barns and sheds and plethoric haystacks and fodder piles.
The surest evidence that there had actually been an over-supply of
vegetables was the careless way in which such things as cabbages,
swedes, and beets were being handled in transport. A starving people
does not leave food of this kind to rot along the road nor in the
station yards, evidences of which we saw every now and then for the next
forty miles.
Practically the whole of the North Sea littoral of Germany between the
Kiel Canal and the Dutch border--across the central section of which we
were now passing--is the same sort of a flat, sea-level expanse, and has
the same rich, alluvial soil, as the plains of Flanders. This region,
like Denmark and Holland, had been largely given over to dairying
before the war. The conversion of it from a pastoral to an agricultural
country, by ploughing up the endless miles of meadows, has resulted
in a huge output of foodstuffs, and has put the people inhabiting it
well beyond the risk of anything approaching starvation, no matter how
long the blockade might be kept up. The officers accompanying us were
quite frank in stating that the farmers had prospered and waxed wealthy
by selling their surplus in the nearest industrial centres, such as
Bremen and Hamburg. The pinch, they said, would come when the people
began trying to restock their dairy farms again, for at least a half
of the cattle had been killed off as their pastures had been put under
cultivation.
Judging by the very few cattle in sight--in comparison with the number
one has always seen in the fields in dairying regions--one would be
inclined to estimate the reduction of stock at a good deal more than
half. The fact that it is the local custom to keep the best of their
stock stabled during the most inclement months of the winter doubtless
had a good deal to do with the few animals in sight. As a matter of
fact, there was really very little grazing left for those that might
have been turned out. Sheep were also extremely scarce, but as this was
not a region where they were ever found in great numbers one remarked
their absence less than that of cattle.
But the most astonishing thing of all was that not a single pig was
sighted on either the going or returning journey. The sight of what
appeared to be a long-empty sty started a comparison of observations
from which it transpired that no one watching from either of our two
compartments had so much as clapped an eye on what the world has long
regarded as Germany's favourite species of live stock. After that we all
began standing "pig lookout," but the only "View Halloo" raised was a
false one, the "_schwein_" turning out to be a _dachshund_, and a very
scrawny one at that. Piqued by this astonishing porcine elusiveness,
the "air" parties (upon which most of the land travel devolved) met
in the ward-room of the _Hercules_ that evening and contributed to
form a "Pig Pool," the whole of which was to go to the first member
who could produce incontestable evidence that he had seen a pig upon
German soil. Astounding as it may seem, this prize was never awarded.
The claim of one aspirant was ruled out because, on cross-questioning,
he had to admit that his "pig" wore a German naval uniform and had
tried, by vigorous lying, to head him off from a hangar containing a
very interesting type of a new seaplane. Another claimant proved that
he had actually seen a pig, but only to have the prize withheld when it
transpired that he had flushed nothing more lifelike than the plaster
image of a pig which, cleaver in hand, stood as a butcher's sign in a
village on the island of Rügen. A third claimant _would_ have won the
award had he chanced along five minutes sooner when the villagers were
butchering a pig on the occasion when his party visited the Great Belt
Islands to inspect the forts. Even in this case, though, we should have
had to weigh carefully the evidence of an Irish-American officer of the
same party, who said that it was "a dead cert that pig had died from hog
cholera a good hour before it was killed!"
Although the fact that none of the members of the various Allied
sub-commissions saw so much as a single live hog during the course of
the many hundred miles travelled by train, motor, carriage, or foot
in North-Western Germany, does not mean that the species has become
extinct there by any means, there is still no doubt that the numbers of
this popular and appropriate symbol of the Hun's _grossness_ have been
greatly reduced, and that _schweine_ will be among the top items on
their list of "immediate requirements" forwarded to the Allied Relief
Committee.
Hurried as was this first of our journeys across Oldenburg, I was still
able to see endless evidence not only of the intensive cultivation,
but also the careful and scientific fertilization, which I had good
opportunity to study later at closer range in Mecklenburg and
Schleswig. Stable manure and mulches of sedulously conserved decaying
vegetable matter were being everywhere applied to the land according to
the most approved modern practice. This I had expected to see, for I
already knew the German as an intelligent and well-instructed farmer,
but what did surprise me was clear proof that the supply of artificial
fertilizers--phosphates, nitrates, and lime--was being fairly well
maintained. Truck loads of these indispensable adjuncts to sustained
production standing in station sidings showed that, and so did the state
of the fields themselves; for the fresh young shoots of winter wheat,
which I saw everywhere pushing up and taking full advantage of the
almost unprecedentedly mild December weather, showed no traces of the
"hungriness" I have so often noted during the last year or two in some
of the over-cropped and under-fertilized fields of England.
What with prisoners and the unremitting labour of women and children,
Germany accomplished remarkable things in the way of production. The
area of cultivation was not only largely increased, but the production
of the old fields was also kept at a high level. In no part of the world
have I ever seen fairer farmsteads than those through which the party
inspecting the Great Belt forts north of Kiel drove for many miles one
day. They struck me as combining something of the picturesqueness of a
Somerset farm with the prosperous efficiency of a California ranch. And
it is as a California rancher myself that I say that I only wish I had
soil and outbuildings that would come anywhere nearly up to the average
of those throughout this favoured region of Schleswig. It is true that
many of the people thereabouts are Danish, and I even saw a Danish flag
discreetly displayed behind the neat lace curtains of one farmhouse.
But, Danish or German, they are producing huge quantities of good
food, enough to keep the people of less fertile regions of "starving
Deutschland" far from want.
It was just before our arrival at Norddeich at the end of this first
day's railway journey that I spoke to the German officer who had joined
me at the window of the corridor about the very well-fed look of the
people we had seen on the streets of Wilhelmshaven and at the stations
of the towns and villages through which we had been passing. "It is
true," he replied, "that we have never suffered for food in this part
of the country, and that is because it is so largely agricultural. But
wait until you go to the industrial centres. In Hamburg and Bremen, it
is there that you will see the want and hunger. It is for those poor
people that the Allies must provide much food without delay."
Personally, I did not go either to Hamburg or Bremen, being absent with
parties visiting the Zeppelin stations at Nordholz and Tondern at the
time the Shipping Board of the Naval Commission was inspecting British
merchantmen interned in these once great ports. A member of that board,
however, assured me that he had observed no material difference in the
appearance of the people in the streets of Bremen and Hamburg and those
of Wilhelmshaven. His party had taken "potluck" at the Hotel Atlantic
in Hamburg, where the food had been found ample in quantity and not
unappetizing, even on a meatless day.
"But what of the poor?" I asked. "Did you see anything of the quarters
that would correspond to the slums of London or Liverpool?"
"Germany," he replied, "to her credit, has very few places where the
housing is outwardly so bad as in many British industrial cities I could
name. We did not see much of the parts of Bremen and Hamburg where
the working-classes live; but we did see a good deal of the workers
themselves. I know under-feeding when I see it, for I was in Russia
but a few months ago. But, so far as I could see, the chief difference
between the men in the dockyards and shipbuilding establishments
of Hamburg and those of the Tyne and Clyde was that the former were
working harder. They merely glanced up at us as we passed, with little
curiosity and no resentment, and went right on with the job in hand.
No, everything considered, I should not say that any one is suffering
seriously for lack of food in either Bremen or Hamburg."
"No one is suffering seriously for lack of food." That was the feeling
of all of us at the end of our first day in "starving Germany," and (if
I may anticipate) it was also our verdict when the _Hercules_ sailed for
England, three weeks later.
IV
ACROSS THE SANDS TO NORDERNEY
The names of "Norderney" and "Borkum" on the list of seaplane stations
to be inspected seemed to strike a familiar chord of memory, but it
was not until I chanced upon a dog-eared copy of "The Riddle of the
Sands" on a table in the "Commission Room" of the _Hercules_ that it
dawned upon me where I had heard them before. There was no time at
the moment to re-turn the pages of this most consummately told yarn
of its kind ever written, but, prompted by a happy inspiration, I
slipped the grimy little volume into my pocket. And there (as the
clattering special which was to take us to Norddeich, _en route_ to
Norderney, turned off from the Bremen mainline a few miles outside of
Wilhelmshaven) I found it again, just as the green water-logged fields
and bogs of the "land of the seven _siels_" began to unroll in twin
panoramas on either side. Opening the book at random somewhere toward
the middle, my eye was drawn to a paragraph beginning near the top of
the page facing a much-pencilled chart. "... The mainland is that
district of Prussia that is known as East Friesland." (I remember now
that it was "Carruthers," writing in the _Dulcibella_, off Wangerogg,
who was describing the "lay of the land.") "It is a short, flat-topped
peninsula, bounded on the west by the Ems estuary and beyond that by
Holland, and on the east by the Jade estuary; a low-lying country,
containing great tracts of marsh, and few towns of any size; on the
north side none. Seven islands lie off the coast. All, except Borkum,
which is round, are attenuated strips, slightly crescent-shaped, rarely
more than a mile broad, and tapering at the ends; in length averaging
about six miles, from Norderney and Juist, which are seven and nine
respectively, to little Baltrum, which is only two and a half."