however, I have yet to hear that one of them ever expressed repentance
for the horrors their nation loosed upon the world. The war they seemed
to take as the natural, the unavoidable thing, just a part of life, as
the gambler takes gambling, with no other regret than that it was their
bad luck to lose. Like the gambler, they may have been sorry they made
certain moves in the game; they may have regretted entering the game at
all, as the gambler would who knew in the end that his adversary had
more money on his hip than he had given him credit for in the beginning.
But it was never a regret for being a gambler. Did not Nietzsche say
that to regret, to repent, is a sign of weakness? Unless there was
something under his mask that never showed a hint of its existence on
the surface, the German is still a firm disciple of Nietzschean
philosophy.
There was much debate among American officers as to just what surge of
feeling passed through the veins of a German of high rank forced to
salute his conquerors. With rare exceptions, every Boche in uniform
rendered the required homage with meticulous care. Now and then one
carefully averted his eyes or turned to gaze into a shop-window in time
to avoid the humiliation. But for the most part they seemed almost to go
out of their way to salute, some almost brazenly, others with a
half-friendly little bow. I shall long remember the invariable click of
heels and the smart hand-to-cap of the resplendent old general with a
white beard who passed me each morning on the route to our respective
offices.
That there was feeling under these brazen exteriors, however, was proved
by the fact that most of the officers in the occupied area slipped
quietly into civilian clothes, for no other apparent reason than to
escape the unwelcome order. From the day of our entrance no German in
uniform was permitted in our territory unless on official business,
sanctioned by our authorities. But the term “uniform” was liberally
interpreted. A discharged soldier, unable to invest in a new wardrobe,
attained civilian status by exchanging his ugly, round, red-banded
fatigue-bonnet for a hat or cap; small boys were not rated soldiers
simply because they wore cut-down uniforms. Then on March 1st came a new
order from our headquarters commanding all members of the German army in
occupied territory never to appear in public out of uniform, always to
carry papers showing their presence in our area to be officially
authorized, and to report to an American official every Monday morning.
The streets of Coblenz blossomed out that day with more varieties of
German uniforms than most members of the A. E. P. had ever seen outside
a prisoner-of-war inclosure.
It was easy to understand why Germans in uniform saluted—they were
commanded to do so. But why did every male, from childhood up, in many
districts, raise his hat to us with a subservient “_’n Tag_”; why the
same words, with a hint of courtesy, from the women? Was it fear,
respect, habit, design? It could scarcely have been sarcasm; the German
peasantry barely knows the meaning of that. Why should a section
foreman, whose only suggestion of a uniform was a battered old railway
cap, go out of his way to render us military homage? Personally I am
inclined to think that, had conditions been reversed, I should have
climbed a tree or crawled into a culvert. But we came to wonder if they
did not consider the salute a privilege.
Only the well-dressed in the cities showed an attitude that seemed in
keeping with the situation, from our point of view. They frequently
avoided looking at us, pretended not to see us, treated us much as the
Chinese take their “invisible” property-man at the theater. At the back
door of our headquarters the pompous high priests of business and
politics, or those haughty, well-set-up young men who, one could see at
a glance, had been army officers, averted their eyes to hide the rage
that burned within them when forced to stand their turn behind some
slattern woman or begrimed workman. In a tramway or train now and then
it was amusing to watch a former captain or major, weather-browned with
service in the field, still boldly displaying his kaiserly mustache,
still wearing his army leggings and breeches, looking as out of place in
his civilian coat as a cowboy with a cane, as he half openly gritted his
teeth at the “undisciplined” American privates who dared do as they
pleased without so much as asking his leave. But it was no less amusing
to note how superbly oblivious to his wrath were the merrymaking
doughboys.
The kaiserly mustache of world-wide fame, by the way, has largely
disappeared, at least in the American sector. In fact, the over-modest
lip decoration made famous by our most popular “movie” star seemed to be
the vogue. More camouflage? More “_Kamerad_”? A gentle compliment to the
Americans? Or was it merely the natural change of style, the passing
that in time befalls all things, human or _kaiserlich_?
Speaking of German officers, when the first inkling leaked out of Paris
that Germany might be required by the terms of the Treaty of Peace to
reduce her army to a hundred thousand men there was a suggestion of
panic among our German acquaintances. It was not that they were eager to
serve their three years as conscripts, as their fathers had done. There
was parrot-like agreement that no government would ever again be able to
force the manhood of the land to that sacrifice. Nor was there any great
fear that so small an army would be inadequate to the requirements of
“democratized” Germany. The question was, “What on earth can we do with
all our officers, if you allow us only four thousand or so?”
Prohibition, I believe, raised the same grave problem with regard to our
bartenders. But as we visualized our own army reduced to the same stern
necessity the panic was comprehensible. What would we, under similar
circumstances, do with many of our dear old colonels? They would serve
admirably as taxi-door openers along Fifth Avenue—were it not for their
pride. They would scarcely make good grocery clerks; they were not spry
enough, nor accurate enough at figures. However, the predicament is one
the Germans can scarcely expect the Allies to solve for them.
“War,” said Voltaire, “is the business of Germany.” One realized more
and more the fact in that assertion as new details of the thorough
militarization of land, population, and industry came to light under our
occupancy. Fortifications, labyrinths of secret tunnels, massive stores
of everything that could by any possibility be of use in the complicated
business of war; every man up through middle age, who had still two legs
to stand on, marked with his service in Mars’s workshop; there was some
hint of militarization at every turn. Not the least striking of them was
the aggressive propaganda in favor of war and of loyalty to the war
lords. Not merely were there monuments, inscriptions, martial mottoes,
to din the military inclination into the simple _Volk_ wherever the eye
turned. In the most miserable little _Gasthaus_, with its bare floors
and not half enough cover on the beds to make a winter night
comfortable, huge framed pictures of martial nature stared down upon the
shivering guest. Here hung a life-size portrait of Hindenburg; there was
a war scene of Blücher crossing the Rhine; beyond, an “_Opfergaben des
Volkes_,” in which a long line of simple laboring people had come to
present with great deference their most cherished possession—a bent old
peasant, a silver heirloom; a girl, her hair—on the altar of their
rulers’ martial ambition. It is doubtful whether the Germans have any
conception of how widely this harvest of tares has overspread their
national life. It may come to them years hence, when grim necessity has
forced them to dig up the pernicious roots.
But the old order was already beginning to show signs of change. On a
government building over at Trier the first word of the lettering
“Königliches Hauptzollamt” had been obliterated. In a little town down
the Rhine the dingy
HOTEL DEUTSCHER KAISER
Diners 1 mk. 50 und höher
Logis von 2 mk. an
had the word “Kaiser” painted over, though it was still visible through
the whitewash, as if ready to come back at a new turn of events.
The adaptability of the German as a merchant has long since been proved
by his commercial success all over the world. It quickly became evident
to the Army of Occupation that he was not going to let his feelings—if
he had any—interfere with business. As a demand for German uniforms,
equipment, insignia faded away behind the retreating armies of the
Kaiser, commerce instantly adapted itself to the new conditions. Women
who had earned their livelihood or their pin-money for four years by
embroidering shoulder-straps and knitting sword-knots for the soldiers
in field gray quickly turned their needles to making the ornaments for
which the inquiries of the new-comers showed a demand. Shop-windows
blossomed out overnight in a chaos of divisional insignia, of service
stripes, with khaki cloth and the coveted shoulder-pins from brass bars
to silver stars, with anything that could appeal to the American
doughboy as a suitable souvenir of his stay on the Rhine—and this last
covers a multitude of sins indeed. Iron crosses of both classes were
dangled before his eager eyes. The sale of these “highest prizes of
German manhood” to their enemies as mere pocket-pieces roused a howl of
protest in the local papers, but the trinkets could still be had, if
more or less _sub rosa_. Spiked helmets—he must be an uninventive or an
absurdly truthful member of the new Watch on the Rhine who cannot show
visible evidence to the amazed folks at home of having captured at least
a dozen Boche officers and despoiled them of their headgear. Those
helmets were carried off by truck-loads from a storehouse just across
the Moselle; they loaded down the A. E. F. mails until it is strange
there were ships left with space for soldiers homeward bound. A sergeant
marched into his captain’s billet in an outlying town with a telescoped
bundle of six helmets and laid them down with a snappy, “Nine marks
each, sir.”
“Can you get me a half-dozen, too?” asked a visiting lieutenant.
“Don’t know, sir,” replied the sergeant. “He made these out of some
remnants he had left on hand, but he is not sure he can get any more
material.”
If we had not awakened to our peril in time and the Germans had taken
New York, would our seamstresses have made German flags and our
merchants have prominently displayed them in their windows, tagged with
the price? Possibly. We of the A. E. F. have learned something of the
divorce of patriotism from business since the days when the
money-grabbers first descended upon us in the training-camps at home.
The merchants of Coblenz, at any rate, were quite as ready to take an
order for a Stars and Stripes six feet by four as for a red, white, and
black banner. What most astonished, perhaps, the khaki-clad warriors who
had just escaped from France was the German’s lack of profiteering
tendencies. Prices were not only moderate; they remained so in spite of
the influx of Americans and the constant drop in the value of the mark.
The only orders on the subject issued by the American authorities was
the ruling that prices must be the same for Germans and for the soldiers
of occupation; nothing hindered merchants from raising their rates to
all, yet this rarely happened even in the case of articles of almost
exclusive American consumption.
“Shoe-shine parlors,” sometimes with the added enticement, “We Shine
Your Hobnails,” sprang up in every block and were so quickly filled with
Yanks intent on obeying the placard to “Look Like a Soldier” that the
proprietors had perforce to encourage their own timid people by posting
the notice, “Germans Also Admitted.” Barber shops developed hair carpets
from sheer inability to find time to sweep out, and at that the natives
were hard put to it to get rid of their own facial stubble. When the
abhorred order against photography by members of the A. E. F. was
suddenly and unexpectedly lifted, the camera-shops resembled the
entrance to a ball-park on the day of the deciding game between the two
big leagues. There was nothing timid or squeamish about German commerce.
Shops were quite ready to display post-cards showing French ruins with
chesty German officers strutting in the foreground, once they found that
these appealed to the indefatigable and all-embracing American
souvenir-hunter. Down in Cologne a German printing-shop worked overtime
to get out an official history of the American 3d Division. In the cafés
men who had been shooting at us three months before sat placidly sawing
off our own popular airs and struggling to perpetrate in all its native
horror that inexcusable hubbub known as the “American jazz.” The sign
“American spoken here” met the eye at frequent intervals. Whether the
wording was from ignorance, sarcasm, an attempt to be complimentary, or
a sign of hatred of the English has not been recorded. There was not
much call for the statement even when it was true, for it was astounding
what a high percentage of the Army of Occupation spoke enough German to
“get by.” The French never tired of showing their surprise when a Yank
addressed them in their own tongue; the Germans took it as a matter of
course, though they often had the ill manners to insist on speaking
“English” whatever the fluency of the customer in their own language, a
barbaric form of impoliteness which the French are usually too
instinctively tactful to commit.
On the banks of the Rhine in the heart of “Duddlebug”—keep it dark! It
is merely the American telephone girls’ name for Coblenz, but it would
be a grievous treachery if some careless reader let the secret leak out
to Berlin—there stands one of the forty-eight palaces that belonged to
the ex-Kaiser. Its broad lawn was covered now with hastily erected Y. M.
C. A. wooden recreation-halls that contrast strangely with the buildings
of the surrounding city, constructed to stand for centuries, and which
awaken in the German breast a speechless wrath that these irreverent
beings from overseas should have dared to perpetrate such a
_lèse-majesté_ on the sacred precincts. But the _Schloss_ itself was not
occupied by the Americans, and there have been questions asked as to the
reason—whether those in high standing in our army were showing a
sympathy for the monarch who took Dutch leave which they did not grant
the garden variety of his ex-subjects. The allegation has no basis. Upon
his arrival the commander of the Army of Occupation gave the palace a
careful “once over” and concluded that the simplest solution was to
leave its offices to the German authorities who were being ousted from
more modern buildings. As to the residence portion, the wily old
caretaker pointed out to the general that there was neither gas,
electricity, nor up-to-date heating facilities. In the immense drawing-
and throne-rooms there was, to be sure, space enough to billet a
battalion of soldiers, but it would, perhaps, have been too typically
Prussian an action to have risked a repetition of what occurred at
Versailles in 1871 by turning over this mess of royal bric-à-brac and
the glistening polished floors to the tender care of a hobnailed band of
concentrated virility.
Plainly impressive enough outwardly, the “living”-rooms of the castle
would probably be dubbed a “nightmare” by the American of simple tastes.
The striving of the Germans to ape the successful nations of antiquity,
the Greeks, and particularly the Romans, in art and architecture, as
well as in empire-building, is in evidence here, as in so many of the
ambitious residences of Coblenz. The result is a new style of “erudite
barbarism,” as Romain Rolland calls it, “laborious efforts to show
genius which result in the banal and grotesque.” The heavy, ponderous
luxury and mélange of style was on the whole oppressive. In the entire
series of rooms there was almost nothing really worth looking at for
itself, except a few good paintings and an occasional insignificant
little gem tucked away in some corner. They were mainly filled with
costly and useless bric-à-brac, royal presents of chiefly bad taste,
from Sultan, Pope, and potentate, all stuck about with a very stiff air
and the customary German over-ornateness. The place looked far less like
a residence than like a museum which the defenseless owner had been
forced to build to house the irrelevant mass of junk that had been
thrust upon him. Costly ivory sets of dominoes, chess, table croquet,
what not, showed how these pathetic beings, kings and emperors, passed
their time, which the misfortune of rank did not permit them to spend
wandering the streets or grassy fields like mere human beings.
The old caretaker had some silly little anecdote for almost every
article he pointed out. He had taken thousands of visitors through the
castle—it was never inhabited more than a month or two a year even
before the war—and the only thing that had ever been stolen was one of
the carved ivory table-croquet mallets, which had been taken by an
American Red Cross nurse. I was forced to admit that we had people like
that, even in America. In the royal chapel—now an American Protestant
church—the place usually taken by the pipe organ served as a half-hidden
balcony for the Kaiser, with three glaring red-plush chairs—those ugly
red-plush chairs, no one of which looked comfortable enough actually to
sit in, screamed at one all over the building—with a similar, simpler
embrasure opposite for the emperor’s personal servants. The main floor
below was fully militarized, like all Germany, the pews on the right
side being reserved for the army and inscribed with large letters from
front to rear—“Generalität,” “General Kommando,” “Offiziere und
Hochbeamter,” and so on, in careful order of rank. Red slip-covers with
a design of crowns endlessly repeated protected from dust most of the
furniture in the _salons_ and drawing-rooms, and incidentally shielded
the eye, for the furniture itself was far uglier than the covering.
The most pompous of _nouveaux riches_ could not have shown more evidence
of self-worship in their decorations. Immense paintings of themselves
and of their ancestors covered half the Hohenzollern walls, showing them
in heroic attitudes and gigantic size, alone with the world at their
feet, or in the very thick of battles, looking calm, collected, and
unafraid amid generals and followers who, from Bismarck down, had an air
of fear which the royal central figure discountenanced by contrast. Huge
portraits of princes, _Kurfürsten_, emperors, a goodly percentage of
them looking not quite intelligent enough to make efficient
night-watchmen, stared haughtily from all sides. A picture of the old
Hohenzollern castle, from which the family—and many of the world’s
woes—originally sprang, occupied a prominent place, as an American
“Napoleon of finance” might hang in his Riverside drawing-room a
painting of the old farm from which he set out to conquer the earth.
Much alleged art by members of the royal family, as fondly preserved as
Lizzy’s first—and last—school drawing, stood on easels or tables in
prominent, insistent positions. Presents from the Sultan were
particularly numerous, among them massive metal tablets with bits in
Arabic from the Koran. One of these read, according to the caretaker,
“He who talks least says most.” Unfortunately, the Kaiser could not read
Arabic, hence the particularly pertinent remark was lost upon him. In an
obscure corner hung one of the inevitable German cuckoo clocks, placed
there, if my guide was not mistaken, by a former empress in memory of
the spot where she plighted her troth. Poor, petty little romances of
royalty! Probably it was not so much coquetry as an effort to escape the
pseudo-magnificence of those appalling rooms that drove her into the
corner. How could any one be comfortable, either in mind or in body,
with such junk about them, much less pass the romantic hours of life in
their midst? I should much have preferred to have my _Verlobungskuss_ in
a railway station.
Only the library of the ex-empress, with its German, French, and English
novels and its works of piety, showed any sign of real human
individuality. Her favorite picture hung there—a painting showing a
half-starved woman weeping and praying over an emaciated child, called
“The Efficacy of Prayer.” No doubt the dear empress got much sentimental
solace out of it—just before the royal dinner was announced. The
Kaiser’s private sleeping-room, on the other hand, was simplicity
itself—far less sumptuous than my own a few blocks away. He had last
slept there, said the caretaker, in the autumn of 1914, while moving
toward the western front with his staff.
“And all this belongs to the state now, since Germany has become a
republic?” I remarked.
“Only a part of it,” replied my guide. “We are making up lists of the
private and crown property, and his own possessions will be returned to
the Kaiser.”
The outstanding feature of the visit was not the castle itself, however,
but the attitude of this lifelong servant of the imperial owner. The
assertion that no man is a hero to his valet applies, evidently, clear
up to emperors. The caretaker was a former soldier in a Jäger and
forestry battalion, born in the Thüringerwald fifty-six years ago, a man
of intelligence and not without education. He had been one of hundreds
who applied for a position in the imperial household in 1882, winning
the coveted place because he came “with an armful of fine references.”
To him the Kaiser and all his clan were just ordinary men, for whom he
evidently felt neither reverence nor disdain. Nor, I am sure, was he
posing democracy; he looked too tired and indifferent to play a part for
the benefit of my uniform. The many gossipy tales of royalty,
semi-nobility, and ignobility with which he spiced our stroll were told
neither with ill feeling nor with boastfulness; they were merely his
every-day thoughts, as a printer might talk of his presses or a farmer
of his crops.