"The Iron Ration" is the name for the food the soldier carries in his
"pack" when in the field. It may be eaten only when the commanding
officer deems this necessary and wise. When the iron ration is released,
no command that the soldier should eat is necessary. He is hungry
then--famished. Usually by that time he has been on half, third, and
quarter ration. The iron ration is the last food in sight. There may be
more to-morrow. But that is not the motive of the commander for
releasing the food. What he has to deal with is the fact that his men
are on the verge of exhaustion.
The population of the states known as the Central Powers group of
belligerents being in a position similar to that of the soldiers
consuming their iron ration, I have chosen the designation of this
emergency meal as title for a book that deals with life in Central
Europe as influenced by the war.
That life has been paid little attention by writers. The military
operations, on the one hand, and the scarcity of food, on the other,
have been the cynosures. How and to what extent these were related, and
in what manner they were borne by the public, is not understood. Seen
from afar, war and hunger and all that relates to them, form so
bewildering a mosaic in somber colors that only a very general
impression is gained of them.
I have pictured here the war time life of Central Europe's social and
political aggregates. Of that life the struggle for bread was the major
aspect. The words of the Lord's Prayer--"Give us our daily bread"--came
soon to have a great meaning to the people of Central Europe. That cry
was addressed to the government, however. Food regulation came as the
result of it. What that regulation was is being shown here.
It will be noticed that I have given food questions a great deal of
close attention. The war-time life of Central Europe could not be
portrayed in any other manner. All effort and thought was directed
toward the winning of the scantiest fare. Men and women no longer strove
for the pleasures of life, but for the absolute essentials of living.
During the day all labored and scrambled for food, and at night men and
women schemed and plotted how to make the fearful struggle easier.
To win even a loaf of bread became difficult. It was not alone a
question of meeting the simplest wants of living by the hardest of
labor; the voracity of the tax collector and the rapacity of the war
profiteer came to know no bounds. Morsels had to be snatched out of the
mouth of the poor to get revenue for the war and the pound of flesh for
the Shylocks.
So intense was that struggle for bread that men and women began to look
upon all else in life as wholly secondary. A laxness in sex matters
ensued. The mobilizations and the loss of life incident to the war
aggravated this laxity.
But these are things set out in the book. Here I will say that war is
highly detrimental to all classes of men and women. When human society
is driven to realize that nothing in life counts when there is no food,
intellectual progress ceases. When bread becomes indeed the irreducible
minimum, the mask falls and we see the human being in all its nakedness.
Were I presumptuous enough to say so, I might affirm that this book
contains the truth, nothing but the truth, and the whole truth about
Germany and Central Europe. I have the necessary background for so bold
a statement. I know the German language almost perfectly. German
literature, tradition and thought, and I are no strangers. Three years
of contact as newspaper-man with all that is German and Central European
provided all the opportunities for observation and study one could wish
for. And the flare of the Great War was illumining my field, bringing
into bold relief the bad, which had been made worse, and the good, which
had been made better.
But there is no human mind that can truthfully and unerringly encompass
every feature and phase of so calamitous a thing as the part taken in
the European War by the Central Powers group of belligerents. I at least
cannot picture to myself such a mind. Much less could I claim that I
possessed it.
What I have written here is an attempt to mirror truthfully the
conditions and circumstances which raised throughout Central Europe, a
year after the war had begun, the cry in city, town, village, and
hamlet, "Give us bread!"
During the first two months of the European War I was stationed at The
Hague for the Associated Press of America. I was then ordered to Berlin,
and later was given _carte blanche_ in Austria-Hungary, Roumania,
Bulgaria, and Turkey. When military operations, aside from the great
fronts in Central Europe, had lost much of the public's interest, I
returned to Germany and Austria-Hungary, giving thereafter the Balkans
and Turkey such attention as occasional trips made possible. In the
course of three years I saw _every_ front, and had the most generous
opportunities to become familiar with the subject treated in this
book--life in Central Europe as it was amidst war and famine.
You will meet here most of the personages active in the guiding of
Central Europe's destiny--monarchs, statesmen, army leaders, and those
in humbler spheres. You will also meet the lowly. Beside the rapacious
beasts of prey stand those upon whom they fed. Prussianism is
encountered as I found it. I believe the Prussianism I picture is the
real Prussianism.
The ways of the autocrat stand in no favor with me, and, being somewhat
addicted to consistency, I have borne this in mind while writing. The
author can be as autocratic as the ruler. His despotism has the form of
stuffing down others' throats his opinions. Usually he thinks himself
quite as infallible as those whose acts he may have come to criticize.
But since the doctrine of infallibility is the mainstay of all that is
bad and despotic in thought as well as in government, we can well afford
to give it a wide berth. If the German people had thought their
governments--there are many governments in Germany--less infallible they
would not have tolerated the absolutism of the Prussian Junker. To that
extent responsibility for the European War must rest on the shoulders of
the people--a good people, earnest, law-abiding, thrifty, unassuming,
industrious, painstaking, temperate, and charitable.
Some years ago there was a struggle between republicanism and monarchism
on the South African veldt. I was a participant in that--on the
republican side. I grant that our government was not as good as it might
have been. I grant that our republic was in reality a paternal
oligarchy. Yet there was the principle of the thing. The Boers preferred
being _burghers_--citizens--to being subjects. The word _subject_
implies government ownership of the individual. The word _citizen_ means
that, within the range of the prudently possible, the individual is
co-ordinate instead of subordinated. That may seem a small cause to some
for the loss of 11,000 men and 23,000 women and children, which the
Boers sustained in defense of that principle. And yet that same cause
led to the American Revolution. For that same cause stood Washington,
Jefferson, and Lincoln. For that same cause stands every good American
to-day--my humble self included.