THE HUNGRY DAYS
§ 1
The entrance of the Citadel Mainz was calculated to inspire the most
profound gloom. An enormous gate swung open, revealing a black and
cavernous passage. As soon as all were herded in, the gate shut behind
us, and we were immersed in darkness. Then another gate at the end of
the passage creaked back on unoiled hinges, and ushered us into our new
home. That cobwebbed passage was like the neutral space between two
worlds. It laid emphasis on captivity.
Under the lens of the mendacious camera the entourage of the citadel
presents a very pleasant aspect. The square looks bright and large, the
rooms light and airy; from the top windows there is a delightful view
of the Mainz steeples and of the Rhineland hills, and a fleeting
glimpse can be caught of Heine’s bridge. But to the jaundiced eye of the
_Gefangener_ all this comeliness was illusion. In actual circumference
the square measured about 400 yards, and it was too full of the ghosts
of squad drill. On most of the walls were painted the head and shoulders
of dummy targets, that a regiment of snipers had once used for rifle
practice. The spirit of militarism was strong; and however delightful
the Rhine may look when photographed from the top-story window of a tall
block, it is less arcadian when viewed through a screen of wire netting.
The whole place was littered with sentries, and barbed wire. For not one
moment could one imagine one was free. At times even a sort of
claustrophobia would envelop one. The desire to move was imperative, and
the tall avenue of chestnuts seemed to rise furiously, as though they
were sentinels that would some day draw all things to themselves.
Some of the rooms were, it is true, light and sunny. But the rooms in
Block III were miserably dark. The windows were on a level with the
ground on account of a moat that ran round the building, and in front a
line of chestnuts shut out the sunlight. The rooms were long and narrow,
with bars across the windows. At the end it was very often too dark to
read; the window sill was the only place that provided enough light for
a morning shave. From the outside and from the inside the block was like
a dungeon, and the official photographs omitted to immortalise it.
The routine of the camp was very simple. At eight o’clock in the morning
breakfast, consisting of coffee, was brought to the rooms. At half-past
nine there was a roll-call. At twelve midday there was lunch in the
mess-rooms; at three in the afternoon coffee was brought round to the
rooms; at six there was supper in the mess-rooms. At nine the doors of
the block were closed; at nine-thirty there was an evening roll-call; at
eleven lights went out.
[Illustration: OUR DAILY ROLL.
[_To face page 48._
]
But for two fortunate contingencies those early days would have been
almost unendurable. One of them was the arrival from Karlsruhe of
Tarrant and Stone. During our first week every evening brought a draft
of new arrivals; and among one of the later of these appeared Tarrant
and Stone, staggering beneath the accumulated kit of fourteen months’
imprisonment. The change contented them little. After the shelter and
privacy of a room for two, it was no joke to be dumped into the
publicity of a room of ten. The creature comforts were missing.
Naturally we showered sympathy. But as a practical philosophy altruism
is a sadly broken reed. The pleasure at the prospect of their company
quite outweighed the inconvenience that its presence had caused to them;
and, besides that, they brought with them no small part of a library.
The bookless days were over now. No more should I have to spend a whole
morning over the only volume in the room--The Book of Common Prayer. No
more should I have to go to the most extreme lengths of subservience to
borrow _Freckles_ or _The Rosary_.
The other piece of luck we had was in the weather. During the early days
of May the square was bathed in a metallic heat; and as soon as
roll-call was over a deck chair was pushed into the shade of a tree,
where one could doze and read throughout the whole morning, and forget
that one was hungry.
For those were hungry days. Indeed it is hard not to make the first two
months a mere chronicle of sauerkraut. I honestly believe that the
Germans gave us as much food as they could, considering we were “useless
mouths”: but it was precious little. After all it is one thing to be
reduced to short rations by slow gradations, but it is a very different
thing to be taken from the flesh-pots of France where one eats a great
deal too much, to a vegetable diet that was not nearly sufficient. There
was only one proper meal a day: lunch. We then got two plates of soup,
three or four potatoes, and a spoonful or two of beetroot or cabbage.
The effect lasted for three hours. Supper rarely provided potatoes;
usually two plates of thin soup, and sauerkraut or barley porridge. In
addition there was a fortnightly issue of sugar, a weekly issue of jam,
and a bi-weekly issue of bread. On this last issue the _Gefangener’s_
fate depended. Life simplified itself into an attempt to spread out a
small loaf of bread over four days. It did not often succeed. On the
first day one carefully marked out on the crust the limit at which each
day’s plunderings must stop. The loaf was divided, first of all, into
four equal parts, then each quarter was again marked out in divisions;
so much for breakfast, so much for tea, so much for supper. It did not
work. Each day removed its neighbour’s landmark. By the third day only a
little edge of crust remained. It was demolished by tea-time, and
nothing quite equalled the depression of the evening of that third day.
The worst time was at eight o’clock. The effect of a slender supper had
by then worn off, and there was the comforting reflection that for
sixteen hours there was not the least likelihood of being able to lay
hand on any food; and the dizziness of a breakfastless morning is an
experience no one would wish to indulge in twice.
They were strange days, and strange things happened. Money ceased to
have any value unless it could be turned into edible substance. Those
with big appetites carried on a sort of secret service to obtain bread;
fabulous sums were offered for a quarter of a loaf of bread that
contained less flour than potatoes; and, at a time when a mark was worth
a shilling, there were those who were prepared to pay seventy-five marks
for a loaf; and twenty marks for half a loaf was the lowest rate of
exchange.
One knew then the emotions of the man with threepence in his pocket; who
is feeling ravenously hungry and knows that, if he spends that
threepence on dinner, he will have nothing left for the next day. It is
an alternative that in terms of brown bread has presented itself to
every prisoner of war.
The psychology of semi-starvation would make an interesting study; and
it would bring out very clearly the irrefutable truth that the only way
to get any peace for the mind is by throwing sops to the physical
appetites; that passions must be allayed, not suppressed; and that the
moment anything is suppressed it becomes an obsession. For there is
poison in every unacted desire, and the only way to deal with the
appetites is to be neither their slave nor tyrant. Asceticism renders a
clear view of life impossible.
And during those days, if one sufficiently objectified one’s emotions,
there would be always found the insidious germ working its way into the
most unlikely places. Even in books there was no escape from it; it
deliberately perverted the author’s meaning. And one occasion comes back
very vividly. I was reading _La Débâcle_ and had reached the scene where
Louis Napoleon is sitting alone in his room, and his servants lay
before him dish after dish which he leaves untouched. And because of
this perpetual hungriness the whole effect of the incident was spoilt. I
could not get into the mood necessary to appreciate the effect Zola had
aimed at. All I could think was, “Here is this appalling ass Louis
Napoleon, surrounded with meats and fish, entrées and omelettes, and the
fool does not eat them. If only they had given me a chance!”
It was interesting, too, to notice its effect on a man like Milton
Hayes. Naturally it hit him in that most vulnerable point, his theory of
Popular Taste.
One morning I found him sitting on a seat, dipping into three books in
turn, _Lorna Doone_, _Pickwick Papers_, and _The Knave of Diamonds_.
“A strange selection,” I said.
“No,” he said; “they are all the same, really. They’ve all done the same
thing; they’ve sold; they’ve got the same bedrock principle somewhere,
and I think I’ve found it.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Gratification of appetite. All these accounts of big meals and luxury.
That’s what gets over. People don’t want psychology. But they’ll smack
their lips over the dresses and feasts in _The Knave of Diamonds_; and
then look at the venison pasties in _Lorna Doone_, and the heavy dinners
in _Pickwick_. That’s what people want. They have not got these things;
but they want to be told they exist somewhere, and that they are there
to be found. If ever you want to write a book that will really sell,
remember that: gratification of appetite: make their mouths water.”
§ 2
There was, of course, in the form of the _Kantine_ an official method of
supplementing the ordinary issue. And across that counter strange things
passed.
Every day provided a fresh experiment. A rumour would fly round the camp
that there was a new sort of tinned paste to be had, “I saw a fellow
coming out with a biggish-looking tin,” some one would say. “I don’t
know what was in it. But it was too big for boot polish.”
There would follow a general rush, and a queue thirty deep would prolong
itself outside the door. The mixture would turn out to be a green paste
purported to be made from snails and liver. For a day or two the
unfortunates who had bought it spread it over their bread, and tried to
make themselves believe they liked it. The only purpose it really served
was to make the bread look thicker than it was.
Then another tin would appear; there would be another rumour, another
rush to the door, another disillusionment. There was a crab paste, a
vegetable paste, a nondescript brown paste; all in turn went their way,
and yielded to the soft intrigue of Dried Veg.
Dried Veg presented itself very innocuously in a paper bag covered with
directions in German. It looked dry and unappetising. None of us knew
how it should be treated,
[Illustration: THE “KANTINE” AT MAINZ.
[_To face page 56._
]
but the consensus of opinion decided that half an hour’s boiling was all
that was needed; and so adhering to the popular idea, we emptied the
packet into a saucepan full of water, boiled it for half an hour, and
ate it. It was really not so bad.
Within half an hour, however, we knew that something was wrong. All of
us began to move uncomfortably. Pain spread itself across our stomachs:
and then too late appeared one who could translate the instructions on
the wrapper. The contents should have been left to stand in water for at
least twenty-four hours, by which time it would have absorbed all the
moisture demanded by its composition. We had given it only half an
hour’s boiling. It took its revenge by swelling silently within us.
It was a terrible night.
* * * * *
From these expenditures it will follow that life at Mainz was not quite
so cheap as might be imagined. And we were unfortunate in being captured
at a time when the value of a mark was very high. For, thanks to the
business instincts of our German bankers, a cheque for three pounds was
worth only sixty marks.
Myself I do not pretend to understand bimetallism, rate of exchange, or
any of the other commercial problems that regulate the value of money.
But the equivalent of the sixty marks paid monthly by Messrs. Cox to the
German Government appeared in our pass-books at that time as £2 10_s._
6_d._; and as at our end we had to pay £3 for the same number of marks,
one is driven to assume that the intermediary German firm was making a
profit of about sixteen per cent. on every cheque drawn; a basis on
which we would all like to run a bank.
The result both of the rushes to the _Kantine_ and the succeeding rushes
to the Paymaster’s office was the distinguishing feature of our daily
routine--Queues. For the first impression of a stranger entering the
citadel would have been of a sequence of trailing lines receding from
open doors. Every department had its own particular queue. There was
the queue outside the library, an insignificant affair owing to the
thinly lined shelves; the queue outside the tin store for those who had
parcels, and the two main streams of humanity, the queue from the
_Kantine_, and the queue from the Paymaster’s office. These two last
were in a continual state of flux, a ceaseless ebb and flow; the moment
that they seemed likely to be engulfed within the welcoming portals
there would be another meeting of the ways, more applicants would
arrive, and the human rivers would overflow their banks. To any one who
enjoyed this pastime, life was prodigal of entertainment. He could flit
from one dissipation to another. But to the majority it was a tedious
business, and the art of “queuing” began.
For an art it certainly was. As the master of finance is always watching
the rise and fall of the markets, so that he shall know the exact moment
at which to buy or to sell; so the master queuist would bide, waiting
for that moment when the stream would be at its lowest ebb, and when he
might safely attach himself to its interests. The cowardly might enrol
themselves stolidly at an early hour, and shifting forward slowly,
almost imperceptibly, they would eventually reach the doors. For them
there was in queuing neither colour nor excitement. It was a dead level.
But for the artist in queues it was altogether different. He hazarded
much. He had to work out whether or not it would really pay him to get
to the door of the _Kantine_ an hour before it was due to open. If he
waited till later on in the day, he might manage to take advantage of
some quiet lull, and gain his ends after a paltry thirty minutes’ wait.
But, if he did, there was always the chance that when he did arrive the
article he had desired would be no longer there. The whole stock of
liver paste might have been exhausted. An appalling contingency. All
these considerations had to be weighed.
And with regard to the Paymaster’s office there were attached notable
risks. At noon every day the gates were closed, and consequently at
about half-past eleven the applicants ceased to arrive. Nobody cares to
wait thirty minutes and then have the doors shut upon him; and it was
here that the genius of the queuist was most in evidence.
At half-past eleven he would look at the queue: there were fifteen
people waiting: would those fifteen people be able to draw their cheques
in time? and in cases like this a mere average of time was valueless. In
queuing, as everywhere else, all standards were relative. Because on one
day twenty people had drawn their money in as many minutes, it did not
follow that on another fifteen would draw theirs in an hour.
Nationalities had to be taken into consideration. Those twenty men were
probably Irishmen. But if there were ten kilts outside the gate, even
when the hands of the clock stood only at a quarter-past eleven, the
great queuist would turn away. He knew that to each of those ten
Scotsmen the Paymaster would have to explain the theory of exchange in
indifferent English, which would not be understood, and that the
Paymaster would then have to try and gather the drift of a Scotsman’s
logic in a language he had not heard before, and that for each
individual applicant an interpreter would have to be summoned.
Queuing, if refined to an art, required a great deal more than the
merely neutral quality of patience.
[Illustration: THE QUEUE OUTSIDE THE PAYMASTER’S OFFICE.
[_To face page 62._
]