BILLETS
Every billet has its crab. To that rule there is, I believe, no
exception. The crab may be physical or moral, but the crab exists.
Conquerors and conquered come up against each other in a peculiarly
intimate way when sheltered by the same roof. Stop and reflect on the
conditions under which we English live in German houses, and the marvel
is not that friction sometimes arises, but that friction is not chronic.
Under the terms of the Peace Treaty the German authorities in the
Occupied Areas are bound to provide housing, light, and firing,
together with service, plate, and house linen, for Allied officers and
their families. The number of rooms allotted varies according to rank,
additional rooms if wanted must be paid for by the officer in question.
Into the middle of these German families, therefore, we arrive bag and
baggage, occupy by rights the principal rooms, while the owners squeeze
into the remainder as best they may. All of which is _la guerre_, and
when we reflect on the behaviour of the German armies in France and
Belgium, we can only feel that Cologne and the Rhineland have little
to grumble about. The war was not of our making, and between the two
alternatives of sitting in the German houses or the Germans sitting in
ours, naturally we prefer the former.
German houses reveal a great deal about the German character.
The spirit of a people is bound to impress itself on their daily
surroundings, and German virtues and German faults are writ large
over the residential quarters of Cologne. On the material side the
houses are admirable. They are sound, well-built, excellent examples
of good solid workmanship. Excellent too are all the material
appointments. Hot and cold water, baths, electric light, first-rate
kitchen apparatus--every practical comfort and convenience exists which
simplifies life for the housewife. Central heating is the rule. There
are no fires or fireplaces, though some houses have an open grate in
the principal room for auxiliary gas, or wood. At first the hearthless
rooms are very cheerless, but by degrees you discover virtue in the
even temperature of the house. Also the saving in dirt and the saving
in labour are considerable. No less excellent are all the fittings,
window sashes, doors, floors, etc. Everything dovetails perfectly;
there are no draughts, no signs of jerry-building. All that is material
is handled with complete efficiency.
But beauty--here we come to the ground with a crash. Never were houses,
taking them all round, so ugly and so devoid of taste. The furniture
and pictures give one a pain across the eyes. _Objets d’art_, costly
and incongruous, are jumbled together in the wildest confusion. I have
been in drawing-rooms in which Flemish tapestries, Japanese lacquer,
Louis XV. chairs, Meshrebiya work from Cairo, Indian embroideries,
bastard Jacobean chairs, Chinese dragons, and modern Dresden
shepherdesses were locked together in a deadly conflict to which the
Hindenburg line must have been child’s play. Robust oil paintings
usually look down on the struggle. Admirable though the German taste
in music, the race appears to be without eyes as regards the plastic
arts. The degree to which the things of the spirit have atrophied in
modern Germany is writ large across these dwelling-places. In their
material excellence, as in their aesthetic failures, they are a true
touchstone of the race.
Meanwhile, surely no Army of Occupation was ever so well housed or
so comfortable as we are. Human nature being what it is, competition
about billets is naturally keen. _Beati possidentes_ is the happy
state of those who have secured the best accommodation in the palaces
of the local plutocracy. Yet withal some of us never shake off a
sense of discomfort and oppression as regards conditions of life so
radically artificial. There is something very depressing in the general
atmosphere of a conquered people. Even when your personal relations
with the German household are pleasant, the feeling remains. Too
great a stream of blood and tears has flowed between the Germans and
ourselves. It is impossible to forget the sufferings and trials which
have led up to our presence on the Rhine, even though the sufferings
are not confined to one side. A very small grain of imagination is
necessary in order to realise what a military occupation would have
meant to us. Admittedly, if the war had come to a different end, we
should have felt to the full the weight of the Prussian jackboot. The
Boche as a conqueror can be intolerable--swollen-headed, swaggering,
brutal. Victory would have intensified tenfold every bad quality the
race possesses. But leaving aside any question of personal outrage
and indignity, what should we have felt as to the hard fact of the
conqueror established on our hearths, even though the conqueror
brought with him standards of justice and decent behaviour?
Let us imagine our houses invaded by Prussian officers who would have
demanded as by right the best rooms and the best appointments. Let
us further imagine they bring German servants, who are installed in
the basement and have to work somehow with our English maids. I often
ponder the situation in the terms of my own household. What I always
feel is that, hard though it would have been to endure the presence
of the officers, the final straw would have been the arrival of their
womenkind and children. The invasion of one’s home by fat German Fraus
would have proved the final and most bitter filling up of the cup. As
a race we should have taken the inevitable billeting consequences of
an occupation ill indeed. Conflicts would have been numerous, and the
heavy Prussian hand would have driven us down into even lower depths of
misery.
Now nothing of this sort exists in Cologne. Primarily the English are
not Germans, and cordially though many of them detest the Boche, the
English sense of decency and fair play checks any furtive growths of
Prussianism among our own people. The average English person in Cologne
is not concerned to ruffle it as a conqueror, but to enjoy life as much
as possible under conditions so pleasant and so comfortable. But also
the Germans are not English, and it is all part of the mental equipment
of these people that they accept, quite as a matter of course,
conditions which would drive us frantic. Nothing has surprised me more
than the philosophy with which they endure our presence. Detestable
as conquerors, they behave exceedingly well as conquered. I can only
conclude this attitude is all part of the war game to which they have
been trained. They play to win and are ruthless when the prizes fall to
their lot. But equally they are taught to take defeat without whining,
and to accept its trials as a matter of course. The Germans of the
Occupied Area have been, generally speaking, correct and dignified in
their attitude. They are neither subservient nor aggressive. Their lack
of imagination as a race, and the three extra skins of which I have
spoken elsewhere, no doubt help them over situations which would be
unendurable to more sensitive people.
But I must repeat every billet has its crab. English society in Cologne
is provided with two standing subjects of small talk unknown to us at
home. The hard-worked weather is able to have a rest while we discuss
in detail the shortcomings and idiosyncrasies of our Fraus or the
hideousness of the furniture in our billets. “What a trial for you to
have to live with these dreadful pictures,” is a common gambit when you
go out to tea. As I have said before, the utter lack of taste of the
average German house is apt to hit you between the eyes, and not only
do we examine each other’s billets with care, but criticism is audible.
It is to be hoped that the habit will not become chronic. Otherwise
some of us who are absent-minded will be in difficulties when we return
home. I can see myself looking round the ugly house of a dear friend
and remarking genially, “What shocking taste the people who live here
must have--did you ever see such ghastly furniture?”
But if we on our side discuss our Fraus, assuredly the Fraus at
their various Kaffee-Klatsches discuss their English lodgers just as
thoroughly. Much shaking of heads and mutual commiseration must take
place as the cups go round. I have no doubt that one story caps another
as regards the enormities of the batmen, the dirt and breakages in
the kitchen, and the general fecklessness and irresponsibility of the
English women whose days are spent not in housework but in pleasure.
Our personal billeting experiences have been fortunate. The house in
which we have lived for many months is small as Cologne houses go, but
very comfortable. As I have said before, the German house may fail in
taste, but it does not fail in the practical advantages of electric
light and bathrooms. Our Frau is a widow, a slight, dark, nervous
woman more French than German in appearance. She knows her Europe,
and travelled annually before the war in Italy and France. French is
the language in which we converse. Her attitude towards us was from
the first entirely correct and civil; as time went on it has become
friendly and pleasant. Insensibly human and personal relations grow
up when people live together month after month under the same roof.
I shall be sorry to say good-bye, and I hope her recollections of us
will not be unpleasant. But despite her politeness and self-control,
I have always felt that few women in Cologne can be more tried by the
fact of having strangers billeted on her. A housewife with an almost
fanatical sense of cleanliness and order, engaged from morning till
night in cleaning and tidying, the advent of the English soldiery must
have been a burthen hard to bear. Yet like all her race, she accepts
the situation outwardly with calm whatever her inner feelings. She was
inclined to welcome our advent as we succeeded a mess, and to have a
mess in your house is to the German Hausfrau a circle of Inferno to
which there is only one lower stage--having black troops put in.
But if our relations with Madame have always been pleasant, and I am
indebted to her for many small acts of kindness, heavy weather has
obtained not infrequently below stairs. The crab of our billet is
Gertrude, the cross cook who has lived with Madame for many years,
and has great weight with her. Gertrude is a lump of respectability,
virtue, and disagreeableness. She hates the English with a complete
and deadly hatred, and she leaves no stone unturned to make things
uncomfortable in the basement. Hence a series of fierce feuds with
a succession of soldier servants. I admit the soldier servant is
apt to be a trial. How can he be otherwise? Domestic service is a
skilled art, and the Army can hardly be regarded as a school for house
parlourmaids. I am grieved to say that there is no guile or deception
to which an officer will not stoop to secure, by fair means or foul,
a batman trained in a pantry. One pearl of great price have I known,
an exception to all rules. But good fellows though many of them are,
the average batman is apt to be casual and inefficient. His execution
among glass and crockery is deadly. I have often wondered, judging from
the weekly holocaust, whether it is a rule among soldier servants to
play Aunt Sally in the basement with the tall thin-stemmed German wine
glasses whose days are so brief and evil. Withal they are generally
good-tempered fellows, and in many houses get on quite well with the
German servants.
But naturally no Englishman is prepared to receive back-chat from
a cross Hun. Consequently in the basement sector of our own house
skirmishing is chronic. For some time Gertrude cooked for us, but
as her culinary performances were very moderate, it was no sorrow
when one day, after a pitched battle below stairs--a battle of such
intensity that murmurs of the strife floated up to us even through the
well-fitting doors--she flung down her pots and pans and declared she
would roast and boil no more. Since then we have had our own German
cook, who has played the part of buffer state between the contending
camps, and a far greater measure of peace has prevailed. But all this
makes an undercurrent of unpleasantness which reveals how thin is
the crust of conventionality on the top of which we live. Gertrude,
when the storms were at their worst, never failed to us personally in
respect and good manners, but her unfriendly face, sour and virtuous,
is a trial about the house. She comes from Düren, which was heavily
bombed during the war. Though the Germans initiated air raids, the
return of these particular chickens to roost filled them with panic and
disgust. Perhaps life has been embittered for Gertrude by the numerous
evenings spent in the cellar. Anyway she is an example of the German
character in its most unpleasant aspect.
But even in our billet the housemaid, Clara, shows how impossible it
is to generalise about the Germans. Clara, a great strapping wench
twenty-three years old, is as amiable and as good-tempered as Gertrude
is the reverse. Friendly and pleasant, her beaming face puts a smile
on the morning. No trouble is too great for her. First-rate at her
work--she never stops all day--she is at any time prepared to do all
manner of extraneous jobs for me quite outside her duties. A girl of
better disposition I have never come across, simple and sincere. Clara
has just become engaged to a carpenter, and naturally the household
has been in a state of sympathetic flutter over this affair of the
heart. Clara has confided to me many of her doubts and fears on the
subject of matrimony. Apparently her own parents were not a united
couple, a fact which gave her pause. However, her sister had made a
happy marriage, and the numerous perfections of Hermann at last won the
day.
The ceremony of being “verlobt” was carried out recently at Essen--the
home of the married sister. One wedding day is enough for most people.
Not so the German, who manages to wring two ceremonies out of the
event. The wedding day is preceded by a family gathering, when the
couple are formally betrothed. The wedding ring is solemnly placed
on the left hand, to be worn there throughout the engagement, till
on marriage it is transferred to the right hand. To break off an
engagement once “verlobt” is almost as disgraceful as a divorce. Clara
must have looked like a rainbow on this great occasion, judging by the
description she gave me of the various colours in her hat and gown.
In thoroughly German fashion, food figured prominently in her account
of this wonderful day. I suspect that a wish to get two copious meals
instead of one out of a marriage lies at the root of the betrothal
customs. “Wir haben so gut gegessen und getrunken,” she said with a
sigh of happy recollection.
Prices are too high, household effects too costly to admit of immediate
matrimony, a fact for which Madame is very thankful. Madame thoroughly
appreciates Clara’s good qualities, and views the worthy Hermann with
nothing but hostility. If only some brave man would carry off Gertrude!
But there are limits to human courage, and Gertrude’s face is a
barrier to adventures of the heart on the part of the stoutest would-be
Bräutigam.
When living in a German household it is very necessary to lay down
quite firm and definite rules as to your relations with the family.
It is unfortunately true that the average German would misunderstand
kindness and consideration, unless it is also made perfectly clear that
certain things must be done and one will tolerate no nonsense. A great
deal of “trying on” takes place in various billets, and it never does
to give way. Frontiers should be marked out with exactness, and adhered
to no less exactly. A race trained to obedience, the Germans understand
an order when they would take advantage of a hesitating request. It is
necessary in self-defence to accept their mentality in this respect.
The British point of scruple arises in putting forward nothing that
is unfair or unjust. On this basis it is possible to live on pleasant
terms with the German occupiers. People’s billeting experiences vary,
of course, considerably. In many cases they are the reflection of their
own temperament. Some people adapt themselves to the new conditions
and handle them sensibly. Others are always in trouble and are full of
grievances about the incivility of their Fraus.
The Germans for whom I have the least sympathy in billeting matters
are the owners of the really large houses. Very few members of the
former governing class are to be found in the Occupied Area, but the
few who remain are disagreeable people. The working-classes speak
bitterly of their selfishness during the war and class arrogance under
the old régime. These are the people who fostered and fomented all
that was arrogant and offensive in latter-day German policy, and it
is entirely just and seemly that the British Army should enjoy the
comforts of their luxurious mansions. In an encounter of which I heard
between a batman and a German baroness lies the whole philosophy of
the Occupation. The baroness was discovered by the officer’s wife
billeted in her house speechless with rage. Never in her life, so she
declared, had she been so insulted. Inquiries were made--batmen and
English servants are not allowed to be rude to German householders. It
then transpired that the lady, who after the manner of German Fraus
was in the habit of haunting her basement at odd hours, found one
afternoon two English soldiers belonging to the household sliding on
the back stairs and whistling. The lady spoke sharply and told them
that whistling and sliding on the banisters were “verboten.” Whereupon
Thomas Atkins, genial and undefeated, his hand on the stair rail,
turned to the angry baroness and remarked pleasantly, “Aye, missus, but
yer should have won the war, and then yer could have come and slid down
our back stairs and whistled.”