_The Russian Peace_
“Oh, Ben, have you seen the papers?” asked Erna one day as I came in
for _Kaffeetrinken_. “Peace has been declared!--Peace!”
“_Was?_” I asked, dumbfounded.
“Peace! Peace has been declared! The Russians have made peace!”
“Oh!” I sighed, my hopes dashed to the ground. “I’ve heard that before.”
“_Ja_, but it is true,” corroborated _Mutter_. “It’s real peace! It’s
the beginning of the end. It’ll all be settled now in a few weeks!
Hostilities on the Eastern Front have ceased. There it is in the paper.”
She handed me the _Rostocker Anzeiger_ and they watched me while I read
the story of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. They expected me to dance
with glee at the joyous news and were keenly disappointed when I failed
to share their elation.
“Aren’t you glad?” asked _Mutter_, “It’s peace! Peace!”
“No,” I said. “It’s war, worse war and more of it!”
I read the paper with no little interest for the next few days, glowing
and optimistic and especially conciliatory toward the vanquished
Russians. The Russians were naturally clever and amiable people, who
had simply been the unfortunate dupes of wicked England. The hand of
friendship was again to be extended to the Slavonic brethren, and
all animosities inspired by the war were to be forgotten. Indeed, it
severely pained the tender heart of the Germans that they had been
compelled to kill so many Russians, and they fervently prayed that no
misunderstanding would ever again arise between the great German and
Russian races.
No reference was made to the treatment of the Russian prisoners,
for--there it stood in the treaty--they were to be “repatriated with
all possible speed!”
The helpless Russian _Gefangener_, however, already the most brutally
treated of the prisoners, were from that day reduced to a more abject
and wretched slavery than ever before. Cut off from all outside help
and with no government at home capable of protesting, they were
absolutely at the mercy of their German masters. They were overworked
and whipped or slashed or imprisoned whenever it pleased any particular
German to do so. In the camps and on the big working _Komandos_, they
begged, thieved, waited on the other prisoners for their food, or
else--starved.
The repatriation clause keenly interested the Russians in Kossebade.
The evening after the news came they gathered in joyous groups in the
village square and sang songs and congratulated one another.
A German farmer saw me watching them.
“Don’t you wish England had made peace,” he asked, “so _you_ could go
home, too!”
For weeks afterward the Russians talked confidently of going home.
“When are you going home?” was the usual greeting when we met one of
them.
“Don’t know, but soon!” was the reply.
Some months later I met my old neighbor, Ivan, now nearly four years in
captivity. We were ploughing two adjoining fields.
“When are you going home, Ivan?” I asked jocularly. It was the first
time that I had referred to it for a long time.
“I don’t know,” he answered smiling sadly, “I think mine is a life
sentence!”
When at last the armistice was signed and the French and Belgians and
all the rest of us were leaving, poor old Ivan was still there, and so
were his thirty-four comrades--still going wearily through the routine
of toil for their German masters, and playing _Einundzwanzig_ on
Sundays! The day of departure had passed into that realm of sweet, but
distant hope to which the Millennium belongs.