The first meeting between Wickham Brand and young Franz von Kreuzenach
had been rather dramatic, according to my friend’s account of it, and
he did not dramatise his stories much, in spite of being (before the
war) an unsuccessful novelist. It had happened on the third night after
his presentation of the billeting-paper which by military right of
occupation ordered the owners of the house to provide a bedroom and
sitting-room for an officer. There had been no trouble about that.
The _Mädchen_ who had answered the door of the big white house in a
side street off the Kaiserring had dropped a curtsey, and in answer to
Brand’s fluent and polite German said at once, “_Kommen Sie herein,
bitte_,” and took him into a drawing-room to the right of the hall,
leaving him there while she went to fetch “_die gnädige Baronin_,” that
is to say the Baroness von Kreuzenach. Brand remained standing, and
studied the German drawing-room to read its character as a key to that
of the family under whose roof he was coming by right of conquest, for
that, in plain words, was the meaning of his presence.
It was a large square room, handsomely and heavily furnished in an
old-fashioned style, belonging perhaps to the Germany of Bismarck, but
with here and there in its adornment a lighter and more modern touch.
On one wall, in a gilt frame to which fat gilt cupids clung, was a
large portrait of William I. of Prussia, and on the wall opposite,
in a similar frame, a portrait of the ex-Kaiser William II. Brand
saw also, with an instant thrill of remembrance, two large steel
engravings from Winterhalter’s portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert. He had seen them, as a child, in his grandfather’s house at
Kew, and in the houses of school-fellows’ grandfathers, who cherished
these representations of Victoria and Albert with almost religious
loyalty. The large square of Turkey carpet on polished boards, a
mahogany sideboard, and some stiff big arm-chairs of clumsily-carved
oak, were reminiscent of German furniture and taste in the period
of the mid-nineteenth century, when ours was equally atrocious. The
later period had obtruded itself into that background. There was a
piano in white wood at one end of the room, and here and there light
chairs in the “New Art” style of Germany, with thin legs and straight
uncomfortable backs. The most pleasing things in the room were some
porcelain figures of Saxon and Hanover ware, little German ladies with
pleated gowns and low-necked bodices, and, on the walls, a number of
water-colour drawings, mostly of English scenes, delicately done, with
vision and a nice sense of atmosphere.
“The younger generation thrusting out the old,” thought Brand, “and the
spirit of both of them destroyed by what has happened in five years.”
The door opened, he told me, when he had taken stock of his
surroundings, and there came in two women, one middle-aged, the other
young. He guessed that he was in the presence of Frau von Kreuzenach
and her daughter, and made his bow, with an apology for intruding upon
them. He hoped that they would not be in the least degree disturbed by
his billeting-order. He would need only a bedroom and his breakfast.
The Baroness was courteous but rather cold in her dignity. She was a
handsome woman of about forty-eight, with very fair hair streaked with
grey, and a thin, aristocratic type of face, with thin lips. She wore a
black silk dress with some fur round her shoulders.
“It will be no inconvenience to us, sir,” she answered in good English,
a little hard and over-emphasised. “Although the English people are
pleased to call us Huns”--here she laughed good-humouredly--“I trust
that you will not be too uncomfortable in a German house, in spite
of the privations due to our misfortunes and the severity of your
blockade.”
In that short speech there was a hint of hostility--masked under a
graciousness of manner--which Wickham Brand did not fail to perceive.
“As long as it is not inconvenient----” he said, awkwardly.
It was the daughter who now spoke, and Brand was grateful for her
friendly words, and impressed by her undeniable and exceptional good
looks. That she was the daughter of the older woman was clear at a
glance. She had the same thin face and fair hair, but Youth was on
her side, and her finely-chiselled features had no hardness of line
that comes from age or bitterness. Her hair was like spun gold, as
one sees it in Prussia more, I fancy, than in southern Germany,
and her complexion was that perfect rose-red and lily-white which
often belongs to German girls, and is doll-like if they are soft and
plump, as many are. This girl’s fault was thinness, but to Brand,
not a sentimentalist, nor quickly touched by feminine influence (I
have written that, but on second thoughts believe that under Brand’s
ruggedness there was a deep strain of sentiment, approaching weakness),
she seemed flower-like and spiritual. So he told me after his early
acquaintance with her.
Her first words to him were charming.
“We have suffered very much from the war, sir, but we welcome you to
our house not as an enemy, because the war finished with the Armistice,
but as an Englishman who may come to be our friend.”
“Thanks,” said Brand.
He could find nothing else to say at the moment, but spoke that one
word gratefully.
The mother added something to her daughter’s speech.
“We believed the English were our friends before they declared war upon
us. We were deeply saddened by our mistake.”
“It was inevitable,” said Brand, “after what had happened.”
The daughter--her name was Elsa--put her hand on her mother’s arm with
a quick gesture of protest against any other words about the war.
“I will show Captain Brand to his rooms.”
Brand wondered at her quickness in knowing his name after one glance
at his billeting-paper, and said, “Please do not trouble, _gnädiges
Fräulein_,” when he saw a look of disapproval, almost of alarm, on the
mother’s face.
“It will be better for Truda to show the gentleman to his rooms. I will
ring for her.”
Elsa von Kreuzenach challenged her mother’s authority by a smile of
amusement, and there was a slight deepening of that delicate colour in
her face.
“Truda is boiling the usual cabbage for the usual _Mittagessen_. I will
go, mother.”
She turned to Brand with a smile, and bowed to him.
“I will act as your guide upstairs, Captain Brand. After that, you may
find your own way. It is not difficult.”
Brand, who described the scene to me, told me that the girl went very
quickly up a wide flight of stairs, so that in his big riding-boots he
found it difficult to keep pace with her. She went down a long corridor
lined with etchings on the walls, and opened a white door leading
into a big room, furnished as a library. There was a wood fire burning
there, and at a glance Brand noticed one or two decorations on the
walls--a pair of foils with a fencing-mask and gauntlets, some charcoal
drawings--one of a girl’s head, which was this girl’s when that gold
hair of hers hung in two Gretchen pig-tails--and some antlers.
“Here you can sit and smoke your pipe,” said Elsa von Kreuzenach,
“Also, if you are bored, you can read those books. You see we have
many English authors--Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton,
Kipling--heaps. My brother and I used to read all we could get of
English books.”
Brand remembered that Franz von Kreuzenach had read Kipling. He had
quoted “Puck of Pook’s Hill” to Eileen O’Connor.
“Now and then,” he said, “I may read a little German.”
“Pooh!” said the girl. “It is so dull, most of it. Not exciting, like
yours.”
She opened another door.
“Here is your bedroom. It used to belong to my brother Heinrich.”
“Won’t he want it?” asked Brand.
He could have bitten his tongue out for that question when the girl
answered it.
“He was killed in France.”
A sudden sadness took possession of her eyes and Brand said, “I’m
sorry.”
“Yes. I was sorry, too, and wept for weeks. He was a nice boy, so
jolly, as you say. He would have been an artist if he had lived. All
those charcoal sketches are by him.”
She pointed to the drawing of a young man’s head over the
dressing-table.
“That is my brother Franz. He is home again, _Gott sei dank_! Heinrich
worshipped him.”
Brand looked at the portrait of the man who had saved Eileen O’Connor.
He had Eileen’s letter to him in his pocket. It was a good-looking
head, clean-cut, with frank eyes, rather noble.
“I hope we shall meet one day,” said Brand.
Elsa von Kreuzenach seemed pleased with those words.
“He will like to meet you--ever so much. You see, he was educated at
Oxford, and does not forget his love for England.”
“In spite of the war?” asked Brand.
The girl put both her hands to her breast.
“The war!” she said. “Let us forget the years when we all went mad. It
was a madness of hate and of lies and of ignorance--on both sides. The
poor people in all countries suffered for the sins of the wicked men
who made this war against our will, and called out our evil passions.
The wicked men in England were as bad as those in Germany. Now it is
for good people to build up a new world out of the ruins that war made,
the ruin of hearts.”
She asked a direct question of Brand, earnestly.
“Are you one of those who will go on hating?”
Brand hesitated. He could not forget many things. He knew, so he told
me, that he had not yet killed the old hatred that had made him a
sniper in No Man’s Land. Many times it surged up again. He could not
forgive the Germans for many cruelties. To this girl, then, he hedged a
little.
“The future must wipe out the past. The Peace must not be for
vengeance.”
At those last words the blue eyes of Elsa von Kreuzenach lighted up
gladly.
“That is the old English spirit! I have said to my mother and father a
thousand times ‘England is generous at heart. She loves fair play. Now
that victory is hers she will put away base passions and make a noble
peace that will help us out of our agony and ruin. All our hope is with
England, and with the American President, who is the noblest man on
earth.’”
“And your father and mother?” asked Brand. “What do they say?”
The girl smiled rather miserably.
“They belong to the old school. Franz and I are of the younger
generation ... my father denounces England as the demon behind all
the war-devils, and Little Mother finds it hard to forgive England
for joining the war against us, and because the English Army killed
Heinrich. You must be patient with them.”
She spoke as though Brand belonged already to their family life and
would need great tact.
She moved towards the door, and stood framed there in its white
woodwork, a pretty figure.
“We have two maidservants for this great house,” she said. “The war
has made us poor. Truda and Gretchen, they are called. They are
both quarrelling for the pleasure of waiting on you. They are both
frightfully excited to have an English officer in the house!”
“Queer!” said Brand, laughing.
“Why queer?” asked Elsa von Kreuzenach. “I am a little excited, too.”
She made a half-curtsey, like an Early Victorian girl, and then closed
his door, and Brand was sorry, as he told me quite frankly, that he was
left alone.
“The girl’s a pretty piece of Dresden china,” he said.
When I chaffed him with a “Take care, old lad!” he only growled and
muttered, “Oh, to hell with that! I suppose I can admire a pretty
thing, even if it’s made in Germany?”
Brand told me that he met Elsa’s father and brother on the third
evening that he slept in the Kreuzenachs’ house. When he arrived that
evening, at about five o’clock, the maidservant Truda, who “did”
his bedroom and dusted his sitting-room with a German passion for
cleanliness and with many conversational advances, informed him with a
look of mysterious importance that the Old Man wanted to see him in the
drawing-room.
“What old man?” asked Brand, at which Truda giggled and said, “the old
Herr Baron.”
“He hates the English like ten thousand devils,” added Truda,
confidentially.
“Perhaps I had better not go, then,” was Brand’s answer.
Truda told him that he would have to go. When the Old Herr Baron asked
for a thing it had to be given him. The only person who dared to
disobey him was Fräulein Elsa, who was very brave, and a “_hübsches
Mädchen_.”
Brand braced himself for the interview, but felt extremely nervous when
Truda rapped at the drawing-room door, opened it and announced, in
German,
“The English officer!”
The family von Kreuzenach was in full strength, obviously waiting for
his arrival. The Baroness was in an evening gown of black silk showing
her bare neck and arms. She was sitting stiffly in a high-backed chair
by the piano, and was very handsome in her cold way.
Her husband, General von Kreuzenach, was pretending to read a book by
the fireside. He was a tall, bald-headed, heavy-jowled man with a short
white moustache. The ribbon of the Iron Cross was fastened to the top
buttonhole of his frock-coat.
Elsa was sitting on a stool by his side, and on a low seat, with his
back to the fire, was a tall young man with his left arm in a sling,
whom Brand knew at once to be Franz von Kreuzenach, Eileen O’Connor’s
friend.
When Brand came into the room, everybody rose in a formal, frightening
way, and Elsa’s mother rose very graciously and, spoke to her husband.
“This, Baron, is Captain Brand, the English officer who is billeted in
our house.”
The Baron bowed stiffly to Brand.
“I hope, sir, that my servants are attending to your needs in every
way. I beg of you to believe that as an old soldier I wish to fulfil my
duty as an officer and a gentleman, however painful the circumstances
in which you find us.”
Brand replied with equal gravity, regretting his intrusion, and
expressing his gratitude for the great courtesy that had been shown to
him. Curiously, he told me, he had a strong temptation to laugh. The
enormous formality of the reception touched some sense of absurdity
so that he wanted to laugh loudly and wildly. Probably that was sheer
nervousness.
“Permit me to present my son,” said the lady. “Lieutenant Franz von
Kreuzenach.”
The young man came forward and clicked heels in the German fashion,
but his way of shaking hands, and his easy “How do you do?” were
perfectly English. For a moment Brand met his eyes, and found them
frank and friendly. He had a vision of this man sitting in Eileen
O’Connor’s room, gazing at her with love in his eyes, and, afterwards,
embarrassed, shameful, and immensely sad in that trial scene.
Elsa also shook hands with him, and helped to break the hard ice of
ceremony.
“My brother is very glad to meet you. He was at Oxford, you know. Come
and sit here. You will take tea, I am sure.”
They had prepared tea for him specially, and Elsa served it like an
English girl, charmingly.
Brand was not an easy conversationalist His drawing-room manners were
gauche always, and that evening in the German drawing-room he felt,
he told me, “a perfect fool,” and could think of no small-talk. Franz
von Kreuzenach helped him out by talking about Oxford, and Brand felt
more at ease when he found that the young German officer knew some of
his old college friends, and described a “rag” in his own third year.
The old Baron sat stiffly, listening with mask-like gravity to this
conversation. Elsa laughed without embarrassment at her brother’s
description of a “debagging” incident, when the trousers of a Proctor
had been removed in “the High,” and the Frau von Kreuzenach permitted
herself a wintry smile.
“Before the war,” she said, “we wished our children to get an English
education. Elsa went to a school at Brighton---- We were very fond of
England.”
The General joined in the conversation for the first time.
“It was a weakness. Without offence, sir, I think that our German youth
would have been better employed at German universities, where education
is more seriously regarded, and where the national spirit is fostered
and strengthened.”
Brand announced that he had been to Heidelburg University, and agreed
that German students take their studies more seriously than English.
“We go to our universities for character more than for knowledge.”
“Yes,” said the elder von Kreuzenach. “It is there the English learn
their Imperialism and political ambitions. From their point of view
they are right. English pride--so arrogant--is a great strength.”
Franz von Kreuzenach toned down his father’s remark.
“My father uses the word pride in its best sense--pride of race and
tradition. Personally, what struck me most at Oxford was the absence of
all deliberate philosophical influence. The men were very free in their
opinions. Most of those in my set were anti-Imperialists and advanced
Liberals, in a light-hearted way. But I fancy most of them did not
worry very much about political ideas. They were up for ‘a good time,’
and made the most of Youth, in sport and companionship. They laughed
enormously. I think the Germans laugh too little. We are lacking in a
national sense of humour, except of a coarse and rustic type.”
“I entirely disagree with you, Franz,” said the elder man, sternly. “I
find my own sense of humour sufficiently developed. You are biassed by
your pro-English sympathy, which I find extraordinary and regrettable,
after what has happened.”
He turned to Brand and said that as a soldier he would understand that
courtesy to individuals did not abolish the sacred duty of hating a
country which was essentially hostile to his own in spirit and in act.
“England,” he added, “has behaved in an unforgivable way. For many
years before the war she plotted the ruin of Germany in alliance
with Russia and France. She challenged Germany’s trade interests and
national development in every part of the globe, and built a great
fleet for the sole purpose of preventing Germany’s colonial expansion.
England has always been our enemy since she became aware of our
increasing strength, for she will brook no rival. I do not blame her,
for that is the right of her national egotism. But as a true German I
have always recognised the inevitability of our conflict.”
Brand had no need to answer this denunciation, for Elsa von Kreuzenach
broke into her father’s speech impatiently.
“You are too bad, Father! Captain Brand does not wish to spend the
evening in political argument. You know what Franz and I think.
We believe that all the evil of the war was caused by silly old
hatred and greedy rivalries. Isn’t the world big enough for the free
development of all its peoples? If not, then life is not worth living,
and the human race must go on killing each other until the world is a
wilderness.”
“I agree,” said Brand, looking at Elsa. “The peoples of Europe must
resist all further incitements to make war on each other. Surely the
American President has given us all a new philosophy by his call for a
League of Nations, and his promise of peace without vengeance, with the
self-determination of peoples.”
“That is true,” said Franz von Kreuzenach. “The Allies are bound by
Wilson’s Fourteen Points. We agreed to the Armistice on that basis, and
it is because of the promise that lies in those clauses--the charter of
a New World--that the German people, and the Austrians--accept their
defeat with resignation, and look forward with hope--in spite of our
present ruin--to a greater liberty and to a more beautiful democracy.”
“Yes,” said Elsa, “what my brother says, Captain Brand, explains the
spirit with which your English soldiers have been received on the
Rhine. Perhaps you expected hostility, hatred, black looks? No, the
German people welcome you, and your American comrades, because the
bitterness of defeat is softened by the knowledge that there is to be
no more bloodshed--alas, we are drained of blood!--and that the Peace
will begin a nobler age in history, for all of us.”
The General shifted in his chair so that it scraped the polished
boards. A deep wave of colour swept up to his bald head.
“Defeat?” he said. “My son and daughter talk of defeat!... There was no
defeat. The German Armies were invincible to the last. They never lost
a battle. They fell back not because of their own failure but because
the heart of the German people was sapped by the weakness of hunger,
caused by the infamous English blockade, which starved our women and
children. _Ja_, even our manhood was weakened by starvation. Still
more, our civilians were poisoned by a pestilential heresy learnt in
Russia, a most damnable pacifism, which destroyed their will to win.
Our glorious Armies were stabbed in the back by anarchy and treachery.”
“It is defeat, sir, all the same,” said Franz von Kreuzenach, with
grim deference, to his father. “Let us face the tragedy of the facts.
As an officer of the rearguard defence, I have to admit, too, that
the German Armies were beaten in the field. Our war machines were
worn out and disintegrated, by the repeated blows that struck us. Our
man-power was exhausted, and we could no longer resist the weight of
the Allied Armies. The Americans had immense reserves of men to throw
in against us. We could only save ourselves by retreat. Field Marshal
von Hindenburg, himself, has admitted that.”
The General’s face was no longer flushed with angry colour. He was very
white, with a kind of dead look, except for the smouldering fire of his
eyes. He spoke in a low, choking voice, in German.
“If I had known that a son of mine, bearing the name of Franz von
Kreuzenach, would have admitted the defeat of the German Army, before
an officer of an enemy power, I would have strangled him at birth.”
He grasped the arms of his chair and made one or two efforts to rise,
but could not do so.
“Anna!” he commanded, harshly, to his wife, “give me your arm. This
officer will excuse me, I trust. I feel unwell.”
Franz von Kreuzenach went quickly over to his father, before his mother
could rise.
“Father, I deeply regret having pained you. The truth is tragic
enough----”
The old man answered him ferociously.
“You have not spoken truth, but lies. You are a disgrace to the rank of
a German officer, and to my name. You have been infected by the poison
of socialism and anarchy. Anna--your arm!”
Elsa’s mother stooped over her husband, and lifted his hand to her lips.
“_Mein lieber Mann_,” she said, very softly.
The old man rose stiffly, leaning on his wife’s arm, and bowed to Brand.
“I beg you to excuse me, sir. As a German soldier I do not admit the
words ‘defeat’ or ‘retreat,’ even when spoken within my own household.
The ever-glorious German Army has never been defeated, and has never
retreated--except according to plan. I wish you good-night.”
Brand was standing, and bowed to the General in silence.
It was a silence which lasted after the husband and wife had left the
room. The girl Elsa was mopping her eyes. Franz von Kreuzenach stood,
very pale, by the empty chair in which his father had sat. He was the
first to speak.
“I’m awfully sorry. I ought not to have spoken like that before my
father. He belongs to the old school.”
Brand told me that he felt abominably uncomfortable, and wished with
all his heart that he had not been billeted in this German house.
Elsa rose quickly and put her hand on her brother’s arm.
“I am glad you spoke as you did, Franz. It is hateful to hurt our dear
father, but it is necessary to tell the truth now, or we cannot save
ourselves, and there will be no new era in the world. It is the younger
generation that must re-shape the world, and that cannot be done if we
yield to old falsehoods, and go the way of old traditions.”
Franz raised his sister’s hand to his lips, and Brand told me that
his heart softened at the sight of that caress, as it had when Elsa’s
mother kissed the hand of her old husband. It seemed to him symbolical
of the two generations, standing together, the old against the young,
the young against the old.
“In England, also,” he said, “we have those who stand by hate, and
those who would break with the old traditions and forget, as soon as
possible, old enmities.”
“It is the new conflict,” said Franz von Kreuzenach, solemnly. “It will
divide the world, and many houses, as Christ’s gospel divided father
from son, and blood-brothers. It is the new agony.”
“The new Hope,” said Elsa, passionately.
Brand made an early excuse to retire to his room, and Franz von
Kreuzenach conducted him upstairs, and carried his candlestick.
“Thanks,” said Brand in the doorway of his room. Then suddenly he
remembered Eileen O’Connor’s letter, and put his hand into his
breast-pocket for his case.
“I have a letter for you,” he said.
“So?” The young German was surprised.
“From a lady in Lille,” said Brand. “Miss Eileen O’Connor.”
Franz von Kreuzenach started violently, and for a moment or two he
was incapable of speech. When he took the letter from Brand his hand
trembled.
“You know her?” he said, at last.
“I knew her in old days, and met her in Lille,” answered Brand. “She
told me of your kindness to her. I promised to thank you when I met
you. I do so now.”
He held out his hand, and Franz von Kreuzenach grasped it in a hard
grip.
“She is well?” he asked, with deep emotion.
“Well and happy,” said Brand.
“That is good.”
The young German was immensely embarrassed, absurdly self-conscious and
shy.
“In Lille,” he said, “I had the honour of her friendship.”
“She told me,” answered Brand. “I saw some of your songs in her room.”
“Yes, I sang to her.”
Franz von Kreuzenach laughed, awkwardly. Then suddenly a look of
something like fear--certainly alarm--changed his expression.
“I must beg of you to keep secret any knowledge of my--my
friendship--with that lady. She acted--rashly. If it were known, even
by my father, that I did--what I did--my honour, perhaps even my life,
would be unsafe. You understand, I am sure.”
“Perfectly,” said Brand.
“As a German officer,” said Franz von Kreuzenach, “I took great risk.”
He emphasised his words.
“As a German officer I took liberties with my duty--because of a higher
law.”
“A higher law than discipline,” said Brand. “Perhaps a nobler duty than
the code of a German officer.”
He spoke with a touch of irony, but Franz von Kreuzenach was
unconscious of that.
“Our duty to God,” he said gravely. “Human pity. Love.”
An expression of immense sentiment filled his eyes. An Englishman would
have masked it more guardedly.
“Good night,” said Brand, “and thanks again.”
The young German clicked his heels and bowed.
“Good night, sir.”
Brand went to bed, in a leisurely way, and before sleeping heard
a violin being played in the room above his own. By the tune he
remembered the words of an old song, as Eileen O’Connor had sung it in
Lille, and as he had learnt it in his own home before the war.
There’s one that is pure as an angel,
And fair as the flowers of May,
They call her the gentle maiden
Wherever she takes her way.
Franz von Kreuzenach was having an orgy of sentiment, and Brand somehow
envied him.
V
Our entry into Cologne and life among the people whom we had been
fighting for four years, and more, was an amazing psychological
experience, and not one of us there on the Rhine could escape its
subtle influence upon our opinions and sub-conscious state of mind.
Some of our officers, I am sure, were utterly unaware of the change
being wrought in them by daily association with German civilians. They
did not realise how, day by day, their old beliefs on the subject of
“the Hun” were being broken down by contact with people who behaved
with dignity, for the most part, and according to the ordinary rules
of human nature. Charles Fortune, our humorist, delighted to observe
these things, and his irony found ready targets in Cologne, both among
British officers and German civilians, neither of whom he spared.
I remember that I was walking one day down Hohestrasse with young
Harding, after the proclamation had been issued (and enforced with
numerous arrests and fines by the A.P.M. and the military police) that
all German civilians were to salute British officers by doffing their
hats in the streets. The absurdity of it was so great that in a crowded
street like the Hohestrasse the civilian people would have had to
remain bareheaded, owing to the constant passing of our officers.
Fortune saluted Harding and myself not only with one hand but with two.
He wore his “heroic” face, wonderfully noble and mystical.
“How great and glorious is the British Army!” he said. “How immense
are the power and majesty of the temporary lieutenant! For four
years and a half we have fought to crush militarism. Nine hundred
thousand men of ours have died explosive deaths in order to abolish
the philosophy of Zabernism--you remember!--the claim of the military
caste to the servility of civilian salutes. Two million men of ours are
blind, crippled, shell-shocked, as martyrs for democracy made free of
Junkerdom by the crushing of the Hun. Now, by a slight error in logic
(the beautiful inconsistency of our English character!) we arrest,
fine, or imprison any German man or child who does not bare his head
before a little English subaltern from Peckham Rye or Tooting in a
Gor’blimy cap! How great and good we are! How free from hypocrisy! How
splendid our victory for the little peoples of the earth!”
Young Harding, who had been returning salutes solemnly and mechanically
to great numbers of Germans, flushed a little.
“I suppose it’s necessary to enforce respect. All the same, it’s a
horrid bore.”
Fortune wagged his hand behind his ear to an elderly German who took
off his bowler hat. The man stared at him in a frightened way, as
though the English officer had suddenly gone mad and might bite him.
“Strange!” said Fortune. “Not yet have they been taught the beauty of
the Guards’ salute. That man ought to be put into a dark cell, with
bread and water, and torture from 9 a.m. till mid-day, on Wednesdays
and Fridays.”
Fortune was vastly entertained by the sight of British soldiers
walking about with German families in whose houses they were billeted.
Some of them were arm-in-arm with German girls, a sergeant-major was
carrying a small flaxen-haired boy on whose sailor’s cap was the word
“_Vaterland_.”
“Disgraceful!” said Fortune, looking sternly at Harding. “In spite of
all our atrocity tales, our propaganda of righteous hate, our training
of the young idea that a Hun must be killed at sight--‘the only good
German is a dead German,’ as you remember, Harding--these soldiers of
ours are fraternising with the enemy and flirting with the enemy’s
fair-haired daughters, and carrying infant Huns shoulder-high. Look at
that sergeant-major forgetting all my propaganda. Surely he ought to
cut the throat of that baby Hindenburg? My heart aches for Blear-eyed
Bill, the Butcher of the Boche. All his work undone. All his fury
fizzled. Sad! sad!”
Harding looked profoundly uncomfortable at this sarcasm. He was
billeted with a German family who treated him as an honoured friend.
The mother, a dear old soul, as he reluctantly admitted, brought him an
early cup of tea in the morning, with his shaving-water. Three times
he had refused it, remembering his oath never to accept a favour from
male or female Hun. On the fourth time his will-power weakened under
the old lady’s anxious solicitations and his desire for the luxury of
tea before dressing. He said _Danke schön_, and afterwards reproached
himself bitterly for his feeble resistance. He was alarmed at his own
change of heart towards these people. It was impossible for him to draw
back solemnly or with pompous and aloof dignity when the old lady’s
grandchild, a little girl of six, waylaid him in the hall, dropped a
curtsey in the pretty German style, and then ran forward to kiss his
hand and say, “_Guten Tag, Herr Officer_!”
He bought a box of chocolate for her in the Hohestrasse and then walked
with it irresolutely, tempted to throw it into the Rhine, or to give
it to a passing Tommy. Half-an-hour later he presented it to little
Elizabeth, who received it with a cry of delight, and, jumping on to
his knee, kissed him effusively on both cheeks. Young Harding adored
children, but felt as guilty at these German kisses as though he had
betrayed his country and his faith.
One thing which acted in favour of the Germans was the lack of manners
displayed by some young English officers in the hotels, restaurants,
and shops. In all armies there are cads, and ours was not without
them, though they were rare. The conditions of our military occupation
with absolute authority over the civilian people provided a unique
opportunity for the caddish instincts of “half-baked” youth. They came
swaggering into Cologne determined to “put it across the Hun” and “to
stand no nonsense.” So they bullied frightened waiters, rapped their
sticks on shop-counters, insulted German shop-girls, and talked loudly
about “Hunnish behaviour” in restaurants where many Germans could hear
and understand.
Harding, Fortune and I were in the Domhof Hotel when one such scene
occurred. A group of noisy subalterns were disputing the cost of their
meal and refusing to pay for the wine.
“You stole all the wine in Lille,” shouted one lieutenant of ours. “I’m
damned if I’ll pay for wine in Cologne.”
“I stole no wine in Lille, sir,” said the waiter politely. “I was never
there.”
“Don’t you insult English officers,” said one of the other subalterns.
“We are here to tread on your necks.”
Fortune looked at me and raised his eye-brows.
“It isn’t a good imitation,” he said. “If they want to play the game of
frightfulness, they really ought to do better than that. They don’t
even make the right kind of face.”
Harding spoke bitterly.
“Cads!... Cads!... Somebody ought to put them under arrest.”
“It doesn’t really impress the Germans,” said Fortune. “They know it’s
only make-believe. You see, the foolish boys are paying their bill!
Now, if I, or Blear-eyed Bill, were to do the Junker stunt, we should
at least look the real ogres.”
He frowned horribly, puffed out his cheeks, and growled and grumbled
with an air of senile ferocity--to the great delight of a young German
waiter watching him from a corner of the room, and already aware that
Fortune was a humourist.
The few cads among us caused a reaction in the minds of all men of
good manners, so that they took the part of the Germans. Even various
regulations and restrictions ordered by the military governor during
the first few months of our occupation were resented more by British
officers and men than by the Germans themselves. The opera was closed,
and British officers said, “What preposterous nonsense! How are the
poor devils going to earn their living, and how are we going to amuse
ourselves?” The wine-concerts and restaurants were ordered to shut down
at ten o’clock, and again the British Army of Occupation “groused”
exceedingly and said, “We thought this war had been fought for liberty.
Why all this petty tyranny?” Presently these places were allowed
to stay open till eleven, and all the way down the Hohestrasse, as
eleven o’clock struck, one saw groups of British officers and men, and
French and American officers, pouring out of a Wein-stube, a _Kunstler
Conzert_ or a _Bier-halle_, with farewell greetings or promises of
further rendezvous with laughing German girls, who seemed to learn
English by magic.
“Disgraceful!” said young Harding, who was a married man with a pretty
wife in England for whom he yearned with a home-sickness which he
revealed to me boyishly when we became closer friends in this German
city.
“Not disgraceful,” said the little American doctor, who had joined us
in Cologne, “but only the fulfilment of nature’s law, which makes man
desire woman. Allah is great!... But juxtaposition is greater.”
Dr. Small was friends with all of us, and there was not one among our
crowd who had not an affection and admiration for this little man whose
honesty was transparent, and whose vital nervous energy was like a
fresh wind to any company in which he found himself. It was Wickham
Brand, however, who had captured the doctor’s heart, most of all, and
I think I was his “second best.” Anyhow, it was to me that he revealed
his opinion of Brand, and some of his most intimate thoughts.
“Wickham has the quality of greatness,” he said. “I don’t mean to say
he’s great now. Not at all. I think he’s fumbling and groping, not sure
of himself, afraid of his best instincts, thinking his worst may be
right. But one day he will straighten all that out and have a call as
loud as a trumpet. What I like is his moodiness and bad-temper.”
“Queer taste, doctor!” I remarked. “When old Brand is in the sulks
there’s nothing doing with him. He’s like a bear with a sore ear.”
“Sure!” said Dr. Small. “That’s exactly it. He is biting his own sore
ear. I guess with him, though, it’s a sore heart. He keeps moping
and fretting, and won’t let his wounds heal. That’s what makes him
different from most others, especially you English. You go through
frightful experiences and then forget them and say, ‘Funny old world,
young fellah! Come and have a drink.’ You see civilisation rocking like
a boat in a storm, but you say, in your English way, ‘Why worry?’ ...
Wickham worries. He wants to put things right, and make the world safer
for the next crowd. He thinks of the boys who will have to fight in the
next war--wants to save them from his agonies.”
“Yes, he’s frightfully sensitive underneath his mask of ruggedness,” I
said.
“And romantic,” said the doctor.
“Romantic?”
“Why, yes. That girl, Eileen O’Connor, churned up his heart all right.
Didn’t you see the worship in his eyes? It made me feel good.”