PREVENTIVE ARREST
In the beginning of the war, when all seemed to be going well,
there was no disunity in Germany. When Germany was winning victory
after victory, practically no censorship was needed in the
newspapers; the police were tolerant; every German smiled upon
every other German; soldiers went forth singing and their trains
were gaily decorated with oak leaves; social democracy praised
militarism.
All that has changed and the hosts who went singing on their way in
the belief that they would be home in six weeks, have left behind
homes many of them bereaved by the immense casualties, and most of
them suffering from the increased food shortage.
Class feeling soon increased. The poor began to call the rich
agrarians "usurers." The Government forbade socialistic papers
such as the _Vorwaerts_ to use the word "usurer" any more, because
it was applied to the powerful junkers. Such papers as the
_Tagliche Rundschau_ and the _Tageszeitung_ could continue to use
it, however, for they applied it to the small shopkeeper who
exceeded the maximum price by a fraction of a penny.
As the rigour of the blockade increased, the discontent of the
small minority who were beginning to hate their own Government
almost as much as, and in many cases more, than they hated enemies
of Germany, assumed more threatening forms than mere discussion.
Their disillusionment regarding Germany's invincibility opened
their eyes to faults at home. Some of the extreme Social Democrats
were secretly spreading the treasonable doctrine that the German
Government was not entirely blameless in the causes of the war. It
has been my custom to converse with all classes of society, and I
was amazed at the increasing number of disgruntled citizens.
But the German Government is still determined to have unity. They
had enlisted the services of editors, reporters, professors,
parsons and cinema operators to create it; they are now giving the
police an increasingly important role to maintain it.
As the German Parliament in no way resembles the British
Parliament, so do the German, police in no way resemble the British
police. The German police, mounted or unmounted, are armed with a
revolver, a sword, and not infrequently provided with a
machine-gun. They have powers of search and arrest without
warrant. They are allowed at their discretion to strike or
otherwise maltreat not only civilians, but soldiers. Always armed
with extraordinary power, their position during the past few months
has risen to such an extent that the words used in the Reichstag,
"The Reign of Terror," are not an exaggeration.
Aided and even abetted by a myriad of spies and
_agents-provocateurs_, they have placed under what is known as
"preventive arrest" throughout the German Empire and Austria so
great a number of civilians that the German prisons, as has been
admitted, are filled to repletion.
With the Reichstag shut up, and the hold on the newspapers
tightening,-what opportunity remains by which independent thought
can be disseminated?
In Poland meetings to consider what they call "Church affairs," but
which were really revolutionary gatherings, afforded opportunity
for discussion. These have been ruled out of order.
The lectures taking place in their thousands all over Germany might
afford a chance of expression of opinion, but the professors, like
the pastors, are, as I have said, so absolutely dependent upon the
Government for their position and promotion, that I have only heard
of one of them who had the temerity to make any speech other than
those of the "God-punish-England" and "We-must-hold-out" type. His
resignation from the University of Munich was immediately demanded,
and any number of sycophants were ready to take his place.
Clubs are illegal in Germany, and the humblest working-men's
_cafes_ are attended by spies. In my researches in the Berlin
East-end I often visited these places and shared my adulterated
beer and war bread with the working folk--all of them over or under
military age.
One evening a shabby old man said rather more loudly than was
necessary to a number of those round him:--"I am tired of reading
in the newspapers how nice the war is. Even the _Vorwaerts_ (then
a Socialist paper) lies to us. I am tired of walking home night
after night and finding restaurants turned into hospitals for the
wounded."
He was referring in particular to the great _Schultheiss_
working-men's restaurants in Hasenheide. His remarks were received
with obvious sympathy.
A couple of nights later I went into this same place and took my
seat, but it was obvious that my visit was unwelcome. I was looked
at suspiciously. I did not think very much of the incident, but
ten days later in passing I called again, when a lusty young fellow
of eighteen, to whom I had spoken on my first visit, came forward
and said to me, almost threateningly, "You are a stranger here.
May I ask what you are doing?"
I said: "I am an American newspaper correspondent, and am trying to
find out what I can about the ways of German working folk."
He could tell by my accent that I was a foreigner, and said: "We
thought that you had told the Government about that little free
speaking we had here a few days ago. You know that the little old
man who was complaining about the restaurants being turned into
hospitals has been arrested?"
This form of arrest, by which hundreds of people are mysteriously
disappearing, is one of the burning grievances of Germany to-day.
In its application it resembles what we used to read about Russian
police. It has created a condition beneath the surface in Germany
resembling the terrorism of the French Revolution. In the absence
of a Habeas Corpus Act, the victim lies in gaol indefinitely, while
the police are, nominally, collecting the evidence against him.
One cannot move about very long without coming across instances of
this growing form of tyranny, but I will merely give one other.
A German family, resident in Sweden, were in correspondence with a
woman resident in Prussia. In one of her letters she incautiously
remarked, "What a pity that the two Emperors cannot be taught what
war really means to the German peoples." She had lost two sons,
and her expression of bitterness was just a feminine outburst,
which in any other country, would have been passed by. She was
placed under preventive arrest and is still in gaol.
The police are armed with the censorship of the internal postal
correspondence, telegrams and telephones. One of the complaints of
the Social Democrat members of the Reichstag is that every movement
is spied upon, and their communications tampered with by what they
call the "Black Chamber."
There is no reason to suppose that the debates in the closing
session of the Reichstag in 1916 on police tyranny, the Press
censorship, the suppression of public opinion, will lead to any
result other than the familiar expressions of mild
indignation--such as that which came from the National Liberal and
Pan-German leader, Dr. Paasche--and perhaps a little innocent
legislation. But the reports of the detailed charges against the
Government constitute, even as passed by the German censorship for
publication, a remarkable revelation. It should be remembered in
reading the following quotations that the whole subject has been
discussed in the secrecy of the Reichstag Committee, and that what
is now disclosed is in the main only what the Government has been
unable to hush up or hide.
In his famous speech on "preventive arrest" the Social Democratic
Deputy, Herr Dittmann said:--
"Last May I remarked that the system of preventive arrest was
producing a real reign of terror, and since then things have got
steadily worse. The law as it was before 1848 and the Socialist
Law, of scandalous memory, are celebrating their resurrection. The
system of denunciation and of _agents-provocateurs_ is in full
bloom, and it is all being done under the mask of patriotism and
the saving of the country. Anybody who for personal or other
reasons is regarded by the professional _agents-provocateurs_ as
unsatisfactory or inconvenient is put under suspicion of espionage,
or treason, or other crime. And such vague denunciations are then
sufficient to deprive the victim of his freedom, without any
possibility of defence being given him. In many cases such arrest
has been maintained by the year without any lawful foundation for
it. Treachery and low cunning are now enjoying real orgies. A
criminal is duly convicted and knows his fate. The man under
preventive arrest is overburdened by the uncertainty of despair,
and is simply buried alive. The members of the Government do not
seem to have a spark of understanding for this situation, the
mental and material effects of which are equally terrible.
"Dr. Helfferich said in the Budget Committee in the case of Dr.
Franz Mehring that it is better that he should be under detention
than that he should be at large and do something for which he would
have to be punished. According to this reasoning the best thing
would be to lock up everybody and keep them from breaking the law.
The ideal of Dr. Helfferich seems to be the German National Prison
of which Heine spoke. The case of Mehring is classical proof of
the fact that we are no longer far removed from the Helfferich
ideal."
Herr Dittmann went on to say that Herr Mehring's only offence was
that in a letter seized by the police he wrote to a Reichstag
deputy named Herzfeld in favour of a peace demonstration in Berlin,
and offered to write a fly-sheet inviting attendance at such a
meeting. Mehring, who is over 70 years of age, was then locked up.
Herr Dittmann continued:--
"How much longer will it be before even thoughts become criminal in
Germany? Mehring is one of the most brilliant historians and
writers, and one of the first representatives of German
intellectual life--known as such far beyond the German frontiers.
When it is now known abroad that such a man has been put under a
sort of preventive arrest merely in order to cut him off from the
public for political reasons, one really cannot be astonished at
the low reputation enjoyed by the German Government both at home
and abroad. How evil must be the state of a Government which has
to lock up the first minds of the country in order to choke their
opposition!"
Herr Dittmann's second case was that of Frau Rosa Luxemburg. He
said that she was put under arrest many months ago, without any
charge being made against her, and merely out of fear of her
intellectual influence upon the working classes. All the Socialist
women of Germany were deeply indignant, and he invited the
Government to consider that such things must make it the positive
duty of Socialists in France, England, Italy and Russia "to fight
against a Government which imprisons without any reason the
best-known champions of the International proletariat." The
treatment of both Mehring and Frau Luxemburg had been terrible.
The former, old and ill, had had the greatest difficulty in getting
admission to a prison infirmary. Frau Luxemburg a month ago was
taken from her prison bed in the middle of the night, removed to
the police headquarters, and put in a cell which was reserved for
prostitutes. She had not been allowed a doctor, and had been given
food which she could not eat. Just before the Reichstag debate she
had been, taken away from Berlin to Wronke, in the Province of
Posen.
Herr Dittmann then gave a terrible account, some of it unfit for
reproduction, of the treatment in prison of two girls of eighteen
whose offence was that on June 27th they had distributed
invitations to working women to attend a meeting of protest against
the procedure in the case of Herr Liebknecht. He observed that
they owed it entirely to themselves and to their training if they
had not been ruined physically and morally in their "royal Prussian
prison." When they were at last released they were informed that
they would be imprisoned for the rest of the war if they attended
any public meeting. Herr Dittmann proceeded:--
"Here we have police brutality in all its purity. This is how a
working-class child who is trying to make her way up to knowledge
and _Kultur_ is treated in the country of the promised 'new
orientation,' in which (according to the Imperial Chancellor) 'the
road is to be opened for all who are efficient.' These are the
methods by which the spirit of independence is systematically to be
billed. That is the reason for the arrests of members of the
Socialist party who stand on the side of determined opposition.
You imagine that by isolating the leading elements of the
opposition you can crush the head of the snake."
Herr Dittmann's next case was that of Dr. Meyer, one of the editors
of _Vorwaerts_, who was arrested many months ago. He is suffering
from tuberculosis, but is not allowed to go to a sanatorium.
Another Socialist journalist named Regge, father of six children,
has been under arrest since August, his only offence being that he
has agitated against the militarist majority. Herr Dittmann then
dealt at length with the Socialist journalist named Kluhs, who has
been in prison for eight months, also for his activity on behalf of
the Socialist minority against the majority, and was prevented from
communicating with his dying wife or attending her funeral,
Herr Dittmann gave the details of three cases at Dusseldorf and one
at Brunswick, and then explained how the military authorities in
many parts of Germany are deliberately offering Socialists the
choice between silence and military service. A well-known trade
union official at Elberfeld, named Sauerbrey, who had been declared
totally unfit for military service because he had lost several
fingers on his left hand, was arrested and charged with treason.
He was acquitted, but instead of obtaining his freedom he was
immediately called up and is now in training for the front. Herr
Dittmann said that this case had caused intense bitterness, and
added:--
"The Military Command at Munster is surprised that the feeling in
the whole Wupper Valley is becoming more and more discontented, and
the military are now hatching new measures of violence in order to
be able to master this discontent. One would think that such
things came from the madhouse. In reality they represent
conditions under martial law, and this case is only one of very
many."
Herr Dittmann gave several instances of men declared unfit for
service who had been called up for political reasons, and he ended
his speech as follows:--
"In regard to all this persecution of peaceful citizens there is a
regular apparatus of _agents-provocateurs_, provided by officials
of all kinds, and the apparatus is growing every day. If these
persecutions were stopped a great number of these agents and
officials could be released for military service. In most cases
they are mere shirkers, and that is why they cling to their posts
and _seek every day to prove themselves indispensable by
discovering all sorts of crimes_. Because they do not want to go
to the trenches other people must go to prison. Put an end to the
state of martial law, and help us to root up a state of things
which disgraces the German name."
The Alsatian deputy, Herr Haus, said that Alsace-Lorraine is
suffering more than any other part of the country, and that more
than 1,000 persons have been arrested without any charge being
brought against them. Herr Seyda, for the Poles, said that the
Polish population of Germany suffers especially from the system of
preventive arrest.
In his contemptuous reply, which, showed that the Government was
confident that it had nothing to fear from the majority in the
Reichstag, Herr Helfferich said:--
"The institution of the dictator comes from ancient Rome, from the
classical Republic of antiquity. (Laughter.) When the State was
fighting for its existence it was found necessary to place supreme
power in the hands of a single man, and to give this Roman dictator
authority which was much greater than the authority belonging to
preventive arrest and martial law. The whole development proceeds
by way of compromise between the needs of the State and the needs
of protection for the individual. The results vary according to
the particular level of civilisation reached by the particular
State. (Socialist cries of 'Very true.') We are not at the lowest
level. When one considers the state of things in Germany in peace
time we can be proud. (Socialist interruptions.) I am proud of
Germany. I think that our constitutional system before the
outbreak of war and our level of _Kultur_ were such as every German
could be proud of. ('No, no.') I hope that we shall soon be able
to revert to those conditions."
Herr Helfferich went on to argue that repression in Germany is
really much milder than in France, England, or Italy; and for the
debate on the censorship, which followed the debate on preventive
arrest, he came armed with an account of the Defence of the Realm
Acts. When he enlarged upon the powers of the British Government
he was interrupted by cries of "It is a question not of theory but
of practice," and the Socialist leader Herr Stadthagen made a
scathing reply. He said:--
"Even if everything in England is as Herr Helfferich described it,
the state of things is much better there than in Germany. Herr
Helfferich stated the cases in which arrest and search of dwellings
may take place, but those are cases in which similar action can be
taken in Germany in time of peace under the ordinary criminal law.
The Englishman has quite other rights. He has the right to his
personality, and, above all, the officials in England, unlike
Germany, are personally responsible. When we make a law, that law
is repealed by the Administration. That is the whole point, but
Herr Helfferich does not see it, and he does not see that we live
in a Police State and under a police system. Did it ever occur to
anybody in England to dispute the right of immunity of members of
parliament? Did it ever occur to anybody in England to go to
members of the Opposition in Parliament and demand that they should
resign their seats on pain of arrest? Or has anybody in England
been threatened with arrest if he does not withdraw a declaration
against the committee of his party? Two newspapers have been
suppressed in England because they opposed munitions work. I
regret this check upon free criticism in England, but what would
have happened in Germany? In Germany there would undoubtedly have
been a prosecution for high treason. In England, moreover, the
newspapers are allowed to reappear, and that without giving any
guarantees. In Germany we are required to give guarantees that the
papers shall be conducted by a person approved of by the political
police. Herr Helfferich employs inappropriate comparisons. I will
give him one which applies. The political police in Germany is
precisely what the State Inquisition was in Venice."
An interesting point in the censorship debate was the disclosure of
the fact that the local censors do what they please. Herr Seyda
protested against the peculiar persecution of the Poles. He
remarked that at Gnesen no Polish paper has been allowed to appear
for the past two years.
But as significant as anything was Herr Stadthagen's account of the
recruiting for the political police. He said that the police
freely offer both money and exemption from military service to boys
who are about to become liable for service. He gave a typical case
of a boy of seventeen. The police called at his home and inquired
whether he belonged to any Socialist organisation and whether he
had been medically examined for the Army. A police official then
waylaid the boy as he was leaving work and promised him that, if he
would give information of what went on in his Socialist
association, he could earn from 4 pounds to 4 pounds 10 shillings a
month and be exempt from military service.
There is a peculiar connection between censorship and police. The
evil effect of the censorship of their own Press by the German
Government is to hypnotise the thousands of Government bureaucrats
into the belief that that which they read in their own controlled
Press is true.
No people are more ready to believe what they want to believe than
the governing class in Germany. They wanted to believe that Great
Britain would not come into the war. They had got into their
heads, too, that Japan was going to be an ally of theirs. They
wrote themselves into the belief that France was defeated and would
collapse.
Regarding the Press, as they do, as all-important, they picked from
the British Press any articles or fragments of articles suitable
for their purpose and quoted them. They are adepts in the art of
dissecting a paragraph so that the sense is quite contrary to that
meant by the writer.
But the German Government goes further than that. It is quite
content to quote to-day expressions of Greek opinion from Athens
organs well known to be subsidised by Germany. Certain bribed
papers in Zurich and Stockholm, and one notorious American paper,
are used for this process of self-hypnotism. The object is
two-fold. First, to influence public opinion in the foreign
country, and, secondly, by requoting the opinion, to influence
their own people into believing that this is the opinion held in
the country from which it emanates. Thus, when I told Germans that
large numbers of the Dutch people are pro-Ally, they point to an
extract from an article in _De Toekomst_ and controvert me.
These methods go to strengthen the hands of the police when they
declare that in acting severely they are only acting against
anarchistic opinions likely to create the impression abroad that
there is disunity within the Empire.
Never, so far as I can gather, in the world's history was there so
complete a machine for the suppression of individual opinion as the
German police.
The anti-war demonstrations in Germany range all the way from the
smashing of a few food-shop windows to the complete preparations
for a serious crippling of the armies in the field by a general
munition strike.
Half-way between were the so-called "Liebknecht riots" in Berlin.
The notices summoning these semi-revolutionary meetings were
whispered through factories, and from mouth to mouth by women
standing in the food lines waiting for their potatoes, morning
bread, meat, sugar, cheese, and other supplies. Liebknecht was
brought to secret trial on June 27th, on the evening of which
demonstrations took place throughout the city. I was present at
the one near the Rathaus, which was dispersed towards midnight when
the police actually drew their revolvers and charged the crowd.
The following evening I was at an early hour in the Potsdamer
Platz, where a great demonstration was to take place. It was the
second anniversary of the murder at Sarajevo. The city was clearly
restless, agitated; people were on the watch for something to
happen. The Potsdamer Platz is the centre through which the great
arteries of traffic flow westward after the work of the day is
done. The people who stream through it do not belong to the poorer
classes, for these live in the east and the north. But on this
mild June evening there was a noticeably large number of working
men in the streets leading into the Platz. I was standing near a
group of these when the evening editions appeared with the news
that Liebknecht had been sentenced. A low murmur among the
workmen, mutterings of suppressed rage when they realised the
significance of the short trial of two days, and a determined
movement toward the place of demonstration.
I hurried to the Potsdamer Platz. The number of police stationed
in the streets leading into it increased. The Platz itself was
blue with them, for they stood together in groups of six, ten and
twelve. I went along the Budapester Strasse to the Brandenburger
Tor, through which workmen from Moabit had streamed at noon
declaring that they would strike. They had been charged by the
mounted police, who drove them back across the Spree. There was a
blue patrol along the Unter den Linden now. A whole army corps of
police were on the alert in the German capital.
I returned to the Potsdamer Platz. It was thick with people
now--curious onlookers. There were crowds of workmen in the
adjacent streets, but they were not allowed to approach too near.
Again and again they tried, but, unarmed, they were powerless when
the horses were driven into them, I saw a few of the most obstinate
struck with the flat of sabres, and on others were rained blows
from the police on foot. Nobody hit Back, or even defended himself.
There was practically no violence such as one expects from a mob.
It was something else which impressed me. It impressed my
police-lieutenant friend, also. That was the dangerous ugliness in
the workmen. Hate was written in their faces, and the low growl in
the crowd told all too plainly the growing feeling against the war.
The Government realised this. They had already seen that the unity
they had so artificially created could only be held by force. They
had used force in the muzzling of Liebknecht, and quietly they were
employing a most potent force every day, the force of preventive
arrest.
In July there was agitation for the great munition strike which was
to have taken place on the day of the second anniversary of the
war. The dimensions of the proposed rising were effectually
concealed by the censorship. The ugly feeling in the Potsdamer
Platz had taught the Government a lesson.
No detail was neglected in the preparations against the strike.
There was a significant movement of machine-guns to all points of
danger, such as the Moabit district of Berlin, and Spandau,
together with countless warnings against so-called "anarchists."
Any workman who showed the slightest tendency to be a leader in a
factory group was taken away. The expressions of intention not to
work the first four days of August became so strong that the Press
issued a warning that any man refusing to work would be put into a
uniform, and he would receive not eight or more marks a day as in
munition work, but three marks in ten days. Even the Kaiser
supplemented his regular anniversary manifestoes to the armed
forces of the Empire and the civilian population with a special
appeal to the workmen.
I was up and ready at an early hour on the morning of August 1st.
Again the city was blue with police. But this time they were
reinforced. As I walked through streets lined with soldiers in
the workingmen's quarters, I realised the futility of any further
anti-war demonstrations in the Fatherland.
I stood in the immense square before the Royal Palace, and
reflected that two years ago it was packed with a crowd wild with
joy at the opportunity of going to war. There was unity. I stood
on the very spot where the old man was jeered because he had said,
"War is a serious business, young fellow."
On August 1st, 1916, there were more police in the square than
civilians. On Unter den Linden paced the blue patrol. There was
still unity in Germany, but a unity maintained by revolver, sword
and machine-gun.