ARMISTICE DAYS
§ 1
Since my return, so many people have asked me whether prisoners of war
had any idea of the turn affairs were taking during the autumn, that it
would be as well to state here exactly what our sources of information
were. There were only two papers printed in English, the
_Anti-Northcliffe Times_ and the _Continental Times_. The former I never
saw, and it cannot have had a very large circulation. But the
_Continental Times_, which appeared three times a week, was to be found
in every room in the camp. It was the most mendacious chronicle. It was
printed at Berlin, and was published solely for British prisoners of
war; a more foolish production can hardly be imagined. Its views,
political and military, changed with each day’s tidings, and its chief
object was to impress on British prisoners the relative innocence of
Germany and perfidy of the Entente. But it was so badly done that it can
never have achieved its ends. It was far too violent, and so obviously
partial. Its only interesting features were the reproductions from the
English weeklies of articles by men like Ivor Brown and Bertrand
Russell; once they even paid me the doubtful honour of a quotation, a
tribute considerably enhanced by the appearance of the poem under the
name of Siegfried Sassoon.
But no one took the _Continental Times_ seriously, and the paper that we
relied on for our news was the _Frankfurter Zeitung_, the representative
organ of the Rhine towns. There were two issues daily. The morning one
contained the Alliance _communiqués_, and the evening one the Entente.
Like all other German papers, it was under the strictest censorship of
the military bureaucrats, but it maintained nevertheless an
extraordinary impartiality. It rarely indulged in heroics, and except
for a little “hot air” on March 22nd it kept its head remarkably well.
It is, of course, the most moderate paper in the country, and the
_Berliner Tageblatt_ is considerably more hectic. But the _Frankfurter
Zeitung_ was, certainly during the period of my captivity, more
restrained than any British daily publication. It can be most fittingly
compared, in tone though not in politics, with our sixpenny weekly
papers whose appeal is to the educated classes.
From this paper we could get a pretty fair idea of how things were
going; but even without the paper we should have been prepared for the
debacle of November. For we could see what the papers do not show--and
that is the psychology of the people. For so long their hopes had been
buoyed up by the expectations of immediate victories in the field; they
had been told that the March offensive would most surely bring them
this peace; and on this belief had rested their entire faith. For this
they had maintained a war that was crippling them. They had endured
sufferings greater than those of either France or England. Their
casualties had been colossal, the civilian population had been starved.
But yet they had hung on, because they had been told that victory would
bring them peace; and then Foch attacked; their expectations were
overthrown; the Entente were still fresh and ready to fight. There was
talk of unlimited resources, and Germany was faced with the prospect of
a long and harassing war that could end only in exhaustion and reverse;
and that the German people were not prepared to endure.
For there will always come a point at which the individual will refuse
to have his interests sacrificed for a collective abstraction with which
he has not identified himself. Mankind in the mass has neither mind nor
memory, and can be swayed and blinded by a clever politician; it can be
led to the brink of folly without realising what road it follows.
Collectively it is capable of injustice which in an individual it would
never countenance; but sooner or later the collective emotion yields
before the personal demand, and the individual asks himself, “Why am I
doing this? Am I benefiting from it; and if I am not benefiting from it,
who is?” For, of course, by even the most successful war the position of
the individual is not improved. The indemnities and confiscations that
the treaty brings never cover the expenses and privations previously
entailed. And collective honour is perishable stuff. But as long as the
war is successful, the politicians are able to persuade the people that
they are actually gaining something from it. They can say, “We have got
this island and that; here our frontier has been pushed forwards, and in
return for that small concession, look, behold an indemnity.” And
because mankind has neither mind nor memory it is prepared to forget the
millions of pounds that had to be spent first, and the quantity of
blood that had to be spilt.
That is when the war is successful; but when defeat looms near, whatever
the courtly ministers may urge, the individual will contrast in his own
mind the ravages, that another two years of warfare will entail, with
the possible emoluments that may lie at the end of them. He will say to
himself, “It is reasonable to expect that, by fighting for another two
years, we may eventually get better terms than we should get now, if we
signed a peace. But to me personally, is the difference sufficient to
warrant the sufferings of a protracted war?” And the answer, as often as
not, is “No.” That is, as far as one can judge, the sort of argument
that presented itself to the individual German in the weeks following
Foch’s resumption of the attack. And in determining the forces that went
to the framing of that “no,” the most important thing to realise is that
Germany was actually starving.
That this is so, a certain portion of the Press has, during the last
month, attempted to deny; and it is rumoured that the armies of
occupation have found the German towns well stocked with food. If this
last report is true, I do not profess to be able to explain it; but of
one thing there can be no doubt, while we were prisoners in Mainz the
German people there were not merely hungry, they were starving. It is
true that meat was obtainable in restaurants, but only at a price so
high as to be well beyond the means of even the moderately wealthy. A
dinner, consisting of a plate of soup and a plate of meat and
vegetables, would in places cost as much as twelve to fifteen marks, and
the majority of men and women had to exist entirely on their rations. Of
many of the necessaries of life it was impossible to get enough,
especially in the case of butter and milk and cheese. Of meat there was
very little, and flour could only be bought at an exorbitant price. The
bread ration was small, and eggs were rarely obtainable. Potatoes alone
were plentiful, and two years of such a diet had considerably lowered
the nation’s vitality.
In times of sickness this weakness produced heavy fatalities, especially
among the children. A German father even went to the lengths of offering
an English officer a hundred marks for a shilling packet of chocolate to
give to his son who was sick. And all the children born during the last
two years are miserably weak and puny; some of them even having no nails
on their toes and fingers.
“You are not a father, so you will not understand,” a German soldier
said to me. “But it is a most terrible thing to watch, as I have watched
during the last four years, a little boy growing weaker and paler month
after month; and I can tell you that when I look at my little boy, all
that I want is that this war should end, I do not care how.”
And it is only natural that the individual parent should feel like this,
and I do not think that in England we quite realise all that Germany has
suffered. I remember one morning after the signing of the armistice
that some small boys of about seven years old climbed up the outside of
the citadel, and asked us for some food. We gave them a few biscuits;
they were very hard and dry, but I have never seen such excitement and
joy on a child’s face before. It was a most pathetic sight. A child of
that age cannot feign an emotion, and those children were absolutely
starving.
And the knowledge that this was so must have had a very saddening effect
on the German soldier at the front. For one of the very few consolations
that were granted to a British soldier in the line was the certainty
that his wife and family were well and safe. But the German soldier must
have been faced continually with the thought that, whatever sufferings
he might himself endure, he could not protect those he loved from the
hunger that was crushing them, and for him those long cold nights and
lonely watches must have been unrelieved by any gleam of hope.
It is not natural that any nation should bear such hardships for an
instant longer than they appeared absolutely needful, and when it became
quite clear that the Entente had not only survived the March offensive,
but had emerged from it with undiminished powers, the Germans began to
agitate for an instant peace. At the beginning they were not aware of
their weakness in the field, and when the first armistice note was sent
the terms expected were very light.
“We shall probably have to evacuate France and Belgium,” they said, “and
perhaps Italy and Palestine. That’s all the guarantee that will be
required.”
And at this point, as far as we could gather, there was very little
animosity against the Kaiser.
“Of course,” they said, “this sort of thing must not happen again. We
shall have to tie him down a good deal. Ministers will have to be
responsible to the Reichstag and not to him. That should ensure us.”
There was hardly any talk of a republic.
But when the Austrian and Bulgarian armies crumpled up, and Foch began
to threaten invasion from every side, it was as if a sort of panic
seized the Germans. They felt that they must have an armistice at any
cost, and were terribly afraid it would not be granted them. They
thought that the French would demand revenge for every indignity and
injustice they had suffered in 1871; and when they realised that the
Entente was not prepared to treat with the Kaiser, they clamoured for
his abdication. It was an ignoble business. Even the _Frankfurter
Zeitung_ joined in the tumult. There was a general terror which gave
birth to the revolution.
§ 2
The revolutionists arrived at Mainz on Friday, November 8th, and the
first intimation we received of their presence was the arrival on
morning parade of the German adjutant in a civilian suit. He had
apparently spent the previous evening at Köln, where all officers had
been advised either to leave the town as speedily as possible, or else
change into mufti. This gallant officer did both, and for the first time
since we were captured, we were dismissed without an _appel_.
During the whole of that day the camp was possessed of rumours. At any
moment we were told the revolutionaries might present themselves before
the gates; we should be in their hands; our whiskered sentries would
have neither the power nor the inclination to protect us. Thoughts of
Bolshevism worked disquietingly within our minds; we pictured a
sanguinary contest between the military and socialist parties, and we
were a little nervous lest the caprice of the moment should ally us with
one or other of the warring parties. The town was clearly under the
power of the Red Flag. German officers were not allowed in the streets
in uniform, and it was a pleasant sight to see the General robing
himself in a suit of mustard-coloured cloth before venturing beyond the
gate. But I must own that personally I was considerably alarmed about my
safety. However deep-rooted may be one’s objections to constitutions and
their rulers, however much one may sympathise with the ἰδέα of
rebellion, one does prefer to view these calamitous upheavals either
from the safety of a hearthrug, or from a distance of two hundred yards.
And it seemed more than likely that, on the signing of the armistice, we
should have to beat a very hasty retreat which would involve the dumping
of the greater part of our kit; and we had received no information of
what we might take with us. This was very disquieting. During the eight
months of my confinement I had written some two-thirds of a novel, and
had no wish to discover that manuscript was contraband. Tarrant viewed
my troubles with complete composure.
“My dear Waugh,” he said, “as I’ve told you more than once before, that
novel is quite unprintable, and if it is published, it will plunge both
you and your publisher into disaster. You’d do much better to leave it
here.”
But with this I could naturally not agree, and in a state of some
perturbation carried my heart-searchings to the German adjutant. He
received me most affectionately.
“Ah, Mr. Waugh,” he said, “things are not as serious as all that. It
will be all right. If, of course, you had been exchanged, it would have
been a different thing. But now you can take what you like, and I am
sure that anything you write would be quite harmless.”
“Quite harmless”.... I thought of all the scholastic fury that had been
split over Gordon Carruthers, I thought of Mr. Dames-Longworth who had
called it “pernicious” stuff, of Canon Lyttelton who had spoken so much
and to such little purpose, and who had given me so royal an
advertisement. And I thought of that long stream of correspondents who
had signed themselves “A mere schoolmaster,” and I thought of what they
will say of my new book if it ever sees the light of day; and it seemed
to me that of all the adjectives both of appreciation and abuse that may
be attached to that sorry work, “harmless” is certainly the one it will
never receive again.
During the remainder of the day rumours bred at an alarming pace. It was
reported that the revolutionaries had taken charge of the camp, and that
although the armistice was still unsigned, they had told us to make our
own arrangements about repatriation. Already negotiations had been
opened with a shipping firm that was to take us down the Rhine to the
Dutch frontier. We had visions of England within a week.
As to the state of affairs in the town only conjecture was possible; but
from the top windows of Block II, the slate roofs presented the same
somnolent appearance, and it was hard to realise that beneath that
placid landscape Democracy was lighting its flaming torch.
Most of our information came from the medical orderly. In pre-war days
he had been a waiter at the Carlton, and he had not forgotten how to
swear in English. He was one of the most complete terrorists.
“Europe is overrun with Bolshevism,” he said. “It is everywhere. You
have it in England. Do you know that you have soldiers’ councils in
England? You have. Did you know that the British Fleet sailed into Kiel
Harbour flying the Red Flag? It did. Soon the whole world will be having
revolutions. There will be no safety, none at all.”
He was most hectic, and on the day of the armistice his anger exceeded
all bounds.
“Why do you give us terms like this?” he said. “We have got rid of our
roundheads, our Kaiser, our Ludendorf. Why do you not get rid of yours?
Ah, but Bolshevism will come, and do you know what your soldiers’
councils have done, they have wired to us not to sign the armistice. But
the wire came too late. Still, it will be all right in time, your
soldiers’ councils will see to that.”
Where the Germans got the idea that there were soldiers’ councils in
England, I do not know. It certainly did not appear in the _Frankfurter
Zeitung_. But an enormous number of Germans were under the impression
that a corresponding state of affairs existed in England. Probably it
was a point of the revolutionaries’ programme.
* * * * *
By November 11th the revolution, as far as Mainz was concerned, had more
or less adjusted itself; and the people’s attention was so occupied by
the new regime that the news of the armistice was not received with as
much excitement as might have been expected. The terms were a great deal
harder than they had hoped for, but they were so glad the war was over
that this did not greatly trouble them. They had ceased to care for
collective honour. The only man I met who was really conscious of the
defeat was the professor who used to take French and German classes. Of
course, all his life it had been his business to instil imperialistic
propaganda into the boys and girls under him, and no doubt he himself
must have considerably absorbed the Pan-German doctrines, and he did
feel acutely the ignominy of his country’s position.
“What hurts our pride more than anything else,” he said, “is the thought
that we release prisoners instead of exchanging them. It shows us so
clearly that we are beaten.”
But the people themselves were not at all worried about this. The only
thing that troubled them was the doubt whether they would be able to get
enough to eat after the surrender of so many wagons. The grippe was
raging very fiercely among them, and the need for food was being very
keenly felt. They had also hoped that one of the conditions of the
armistice would have been the removal of the blockade.
“You have beaten us,” they said. “We cannot fight any more. Why must you
continue the blockade? We have done everything you asked for; the Kaiser
has gone; we have a new Government.”
For they have not yet realised the extent to which the previous deceit
of their military rulers has discredited them in the eyes of Europe.
They do not realise that every political movement they make has come to
be regarded with suspicion.
With us the revolution produced fewer ludicrous situations than it did
in some other places, and a most amusing story is told about the camp at
Frankfurt. A few days after the signing of the armistice the senior
British officer and his adjutant presented themselves before the German
Commandant, with the request that they might be allowed out in the town
on parole. There they found their late tyrant, sitting down in his
shirt-sleeves, cutting the epaulettes off his tunic. On their arrival,
however, he put on his greatcoat and made an attempt to recover his
dignity.
“Yes, gentlemen,” he said, with his courtly foreign grace.
The senior British officer explained his errand. “As we’re no longer
prisoners,” he said, “we may surely go out for walks?”
The German looked a little awkward.
“Well,” he said hesitatingly, “the fact is, I really am not the person
to ask. You see, the soldiers’ council are in command. You must go and
ask Herr Bomenheim, he is the representative.”
And besides being representative of the revolution, Herr Bomenheim was
also the window cleaner; it is a strange world in which a colonel takes
his orders from his batman.
At Mainz we were less democratic, as our affairs were run by a
sergeant-major. But for all that we had no truck with the old regime,
and the “Soldaten Raht” proved its independence by court-martialling the
Prussian General. For that deed alone the prisoners of Mainz bear to the
revolutionaries a debt of everlasting gratitude. And the escapade that
led to this retribution provides a fitting example of all that is most
aggressive and inhuman in the Berlin military caste.
At this time there was a very great deal of sickness in Mainz, and the
hospitals were crowded both with civilians and British officers. It was
also a time at which congestion of the railroads had delayed the arrival
of our Red Cross parcels. The British authorities in the camp had in
consequence collected as large a supply of food as possible, to be sent
to the hospital and divided not only among our own invalids, but among
those of the civilian population whose condition was really critical.
This consignment was loaded on a handcart, and surrounded, by sentries,
was to proceed into the town.
At the gates, however, it was met by the General, who, by the courtesy
of the revolutionaries, was now allowed to wear his uniform. He
immediately stopped the handcart and asked where it was going; on being
informed of its destination he ordered that the food should be returned
at once to the officers who had collected it, as he could in no wise
countenance such a proceeding. It was pointed out to him that the
condition of several officers in the hospital was most serious, and that
meat stuffs were urgently required. But he would have none of it.
“My permission was not asked first,” he said, “and I cannot allow it. If
you had come to me, it would have been different. But I cannot have you
behaving as though you were under your own rule.”
And it is to the credit of the soldiers’ council that they took instant
steps in the matter. The General was informed that he only occupied his
position on tolerance and had no active authority whatsoever. And within
two days he was removed from the camp, and is now, I believe, awaiting
court-martial on a charge of “inhumanity and callousness.”
And all the while rumours about our release bred at an alarming rate.
The German authorities had told us that it would be impossible for them
to provide us with a train for at least a fortnight, but that if we
liked we could make our own arrangements, and charter a steamer that
would take us up the Rhine. These were days of furious conjecture. The
complete technique of a pleasure trip was exhaustively discussed. How
long did it take a steamer to coal? how long to get up steam? And then
of how many knots an hour was it capable? Sums were worked out on the
old methods of, Let _x_ be the rate of the steamer, and _y_ the speed of
the Rhine. We roughly gauged that it would take twenty-seven hours. But
then, of course, the Dutch Government had to be considered. However
delightful we might be as individual companions, we were not at all sure
whether a neutral country would welcome the sudden arrival of 500
guests. Of course they had received the Kaiser, but that was not quite
the same thing. There was an inconvenient margin of doubt.
It was a most disquieting time. Each hour was filled with conflicting
rumours, and after a while one ceased to believe in any of them. We
assumed that on the arrival of the army of occupation we should be
liberated, and it appeared as if we should have to wait till then.
On November 17th, however, we were given an official permit to go into
the town, and from then onwards the burden of waiting was light.