second customs examination, even more searching than that at our
arrival. They relentlessly ferreted out the foodstuffs hidden away in
the most unlikely corners of the smallest luggage, and dropped them
under the low counter at their feet. An emaciated woman bearing an
Austrian passport was thus relieved of seventeen parcels, down to those
containing a half-pound of butter or a slice of cheese. In her case not
even her midday train lunch escaped. No one could complain that the
blockade requirement against Holland reshipping to Germany was being
violated at Oldenzaal. As we passed out the door to the platform a
soldier ran his hands up and down our persons in search of suspicious
lumps and bulges. My Dutch identity card had been taken away from me; I
no longer had the legal right to exist anywhere. Once on the train,
however, the food blockade proved to have been less watertight than it
had seemed. As usual, the “wise ones” had found means of evading it.
Several experienced travelers had provided themselves with official
authorization to bring in ten or twelve pounds of _Lebensmittel_. A few
others aroused the envy of their fellow-passengers—once the boundary was
passed—by producing succulent odds and ends from secret linings of their
baggage. One loud-voiced individual asserted that there was much
smuggling through the forests beside us. It is not likely, however, that
the food that escapes the Oldenzaal search brought much relief to the
hunger of Germany.
The thin-faced Austrian woman sat hunched in a far corner of the
compartment, noiselessly crying. Two middle-aged Germans of the
professor-municipal-employee caste whispered cautiously together on the
opposite cushion. As we passed the swampy little stream that marks the
boundary they each solemnly gave it a military salute, and from that
moment on raised their voices to a quite audible pitch. One displayed a
sausage he had wrapped in a pair of trousers. The other produced from a
vest pocket a tiny package of paper-soap leaves, each the size of a
visiting-card. He pressed three or four of them upon his companion. The
latter protested that he could not accept so serious a sacrifice. The
other insisted, and the grateful recipient bowed low and raised his hat
twice in thanks before he stowed the precious leaves away among his
private papers. They passed a few remarks about the unfairness of the
food blockade, particularly since the signing of the armistice. One
spoke scornfully of the attempt of the Allies to draw a line between the
German government and the people—there was no such division, he
asserted. But by this time we were grinding to a halt in Bentheim, in
all probability the end of my German journey.
The passengers and their hand-luggage jammed toward a door flanked by
several German non-coms. and a handsome young lieutenant. I pressed
closely on the heels of the American courier. He was received with
extreme courtesy by the German lieutenant, who personally saw to it that
he was unmolested by boundary or customs officials, and conducted him to
the outgoing waiting-room toward which we were all striving. Meanwhile a
sergeant had studied my passport, quite innocent of the German visé,
dropped it into the receptacle of doubtful papers, and motioned to me to
stand back and let the others pass, exactly as I had expected him to do.
How ridiculous of me to fancy I could bluff my way through a cordon of
German officials, as if they had been French or Italian! Would they shut
me up or merely toss me back on the Dutch? The last of my legitimate
fellow-passengers passed on into the forbidden land and left me standing
quite alone in the little circle of German non-coms. One of them rescued
my passport and handed it to the handsome young lieutenant as he
returned. He looked at me questioningly. I addressed him in German and
slipped the weak-kneed Food Commission letter into his hands.
Perhaps—but, alas! my last hope gave a last despairing gasp and died;
the lieutenant read English as easily as you or I!
“You see,” I began, lamely, “as a correspondent, and more or less
connected with the Food Commission, I wished to have a glimpse of the
distribution from Hamburg—and I can catch one of their ships back from
there to Rotterdam. Then as the lieutenant I am with speaks no German, I
offered to act as interpreter for him on the way. I ... I....”
I was waiting, of course, to hear the attentive listener bellow the
German version of, “You poor fish! do you think you can pull that kind
of bull on _me_!” Instead, he bowed slightly in acknowledgment of my
explanation and looked more closely at my passport.
“You should have had this stamped at the German Legation in The Hague,”
he remarked, softly.
“I did not know until shortly before the train left that the lieutenant
was coming,” I added, hastily, “so there was no time for that. I thought
that, with the letter from the Food Commission also....”
Either I am really very simple—in my particular asinine moments I feel
the certainty of that fact—or I have been vouchsafed the gift of putting
on a very simple face. The German gazed an instant into my innocent
eyes, then glanced again at the letter.
“Yes, of course,” he replied, turning toward an experience-faced old
_Feldwebel_ across the room. “Will you be kind enough to wait a moment?”
This gentle-voiced young officer, whom I had rather expected to kick me
a few times in the ribs and perhaps knock me down once or twice with the
butt of his side-arm, returned within the period specified and handed my
papers back to me.
“I have not the authority myself to pass on your case,” he explained. “I
am only a _Leutnant_, and I shall have to refer it to the _Oberleutnant_
at the _Schloss_ in town. I do not think, however, that he will make the
slightest difficulty.”
I thought differently. The _Ober_ would almost certainly be some
“hard-boiled” old warrior who would subject me to all those brutalities
his underling had for some reason seen fit to avoid. Still there was
nothing to do but play the game through.
“I shall send a man with you to show the way,” continued the lieutenant.
“You have plenty of time; the train does not leave for two hours.
Meanwhile you may as well finish the other formalities and be ready to
go on when you return.”
A customs officer rummaged through my hamper.
“No more soap?” he queried, greedily, as he caught sight of the two bars
I possessed. Evidently he had hoped to find enough to warrant
confiscation. His next dig unearthed three cakes of commissary
chocolate. He carefully lifted them out and carried them across the
room. My escapade was already beginning to cost me dearly, for real
chocolate is the European traveler’s most valuable possession in
war-time. He laid the precious stuff on a pair of scales, filled out a
long green form, and handed it to me as he carefully tucked the
chocolate back in my hamper.
“Forty-five pfennigs duty,” he said.
At the current exchange that was nearly four cents!
A second official halted me to inquire how much German money I had in my
possession. I confessed to twenty-five hundred marks, and exhibited the
thick wad of brand-new fifty-mark _Scheine_ I carried like so much
stationery in a coat pocket. There was no use attempting to conceal it,
for just beyond were the little cabins where passengers were submitted
to personal search. Luckily I had left some money behind in Rotterdam,
in case they confiscated _all_ of this. But the official was making out
a new form.
“This,” he said, handing it to me, “is a certificate for the amount you
are bringing in with you. When you leave Germany take this to any branch
of the Reichsbank and get another permitting you to take out with you
again whatever is left. Otherwise you can take only fifty marks.”
In the cabin next the one I entered a man was buttoning his trousers.
Stories of skins being treated to a lemon massage to detect secret
writing surged up in my memory. I had no concealed valuables, but I have
never learned to submit cheerfully to the indignity of personal search.
I turned a grim visage toward the not immaculate soldier who had entered
with me.
“Hollander?” he asked, as I prepared to strip.
“American,” I admitted, for once regretfully. He would no doubt make the
most of that fact.
“Indeed!” he said, his eyes lighting up with interest. “Have you any
valuables on your person?” he continued, stopping me by a motion from
removing my coat.
“None but the money I have declared,” I replied.
“Thank you,” he said, opening the door. “That is all. Good day.”
A thin soldier with a greenish-gray face and hollow eyes, dressed in
field gray that had seen long service, was assigned to conduct me to the
_Schloss_. Twice on the way he protested that I was walking too fast for
him. A long alleyway of splendid trees led to the town, the population
of which was very noticeably thinner and less buoyant of step than the
Hollanders a few miles behind. At the foot of an aged castle on a
hillock the soldier opened the door of a former lodge and stepped in
after me. The military office strikingly resembled one of our own—little
except the _feldgrau_ instead of khaki was different. A half-dozen
soldiers and three or four non-coms. were lounging at several tables
sprinkled with papers, ink-bottles, and official stamps. Two typewriters
sat silent, a sheet of unfinished business drooping over their rolls.
Three privates were “horse-playing” in one corner; two others were
loudly engaged in a friendly argument; the rest were reading newspapers
or humorous weeklies; and all were smoking. The _Feldwebel_ in charge
laid his cigarette on his desk and stepped toward me. My guide sat down
like a man who had finished a long day’s journey and left me to state my
own case. I retold my story. At the word “American” the soldiers slowly
looked up, then gradually gathered around me. Their faces were entirely
friendly, with a touch of curiosity. They asked a few simple questions,
chiefly on the subject of food and tobacco conditions in Allied
territory. One wished to know how soon I thought it would be possible to
emigrate to America. The _Feldwebel_ looked at my papers, sat down at
his desk with them, and reached for an official stamp. Then he seemed to
change his mind, rose, and entered an inner office. A middle-aged,
rather hard-faced first lieutenant came out with him. The soldiers did
not even rise to their feet. The _Ober_ glanced at me, then at my papers
in the hands of the _Feldwebel_.
“I see no objection,” he said, then turned on his heel and disappeared.
When the _Feldwebel_ had indorsed my passport I suggested that he stamp
the Food Commission also. A German military imprint would give it the
final touch within the Empire, at least for any officials who did not
read English well. The under-officer carried out the suggestion without
comment, and handed the papers back to me. I had permission to go when I
chose.
Before I had done so, thanks to the continued curiosity of the soldiers,
the _Oberleutnant_ sent word that he wished to see me. I kicked myself
inwardly for not having gone while the going was good, and entered his
private office. He motioned me to a chair, sat down himself, and fell to
asking me questions. They were fully as disconnected and trivial as many
an interrogation of prisoners I had heard from the lips of American
officers. My respect for the stern discipline and trained staff of the
German army was rapidly oozing away. Like his soldiers, the C. O. of
Bentheim seemed chiefly interested in the plenitude and price of food
and tobacco in France and Belgium. Then he inquired what people were
saying in Paris of the peace conditions and how soon they expected them
to be ready.
“_Sie kriegen keinen Frieden_—they’ll get no peace!” he cried suddenly,
with considerable heat, when I had mumbled some sort of answer. Then he
abruptly changed the subject, without indicating just what form the lack
of peace would take, and returned again to food.
“What will Wilson do about his Fourteen Points?” he interrupted,
somewhat later.
“All he can,” I answered evasively, having had no private tip on the
President’s plans.
“Yes, but what _can_ he,” demanded the German, “against that other pair?
We shall all be swamped with Bolshevism—America along with the rest of
us!
“Luckily for you the train comes in the morning,” he concluded, rising
to indicate that the interview was at an end. “You would not have found
us here this afternoon. May first is a national holiday this year, for
the first time. We are a republic now, with socialistic leanings,” he
ended, half savagely, half sneeringly.
An hour later I was speeding toward Berlin on a fast express. I had
always found that a dash at the heart of things was apt to be surer than
a dilly-dallying about the outskirts. Once in the capital, I could lay
my plans on a sounder foundation than by setting out on my proposed
tramp so near the border. To be sure, I had not ventured to buy a ticket
to Berlin at a wicket surrounded by a dozen soldiers who had heard me
assert that I was going to Hamburg. But—Dame Fortune seeming to have
taken me under her wing for the day—a Dutch trainman with whom I fell
into conversation chanced to have such a ticket in his pocket, which he
was only too glad to sell. As a matter of fact, I doubt whether the open
purchase of the bit of cardboard would have aroused any comment, much
less created any difficulties. Looking back on it now from the pinnacle
of weeks of travel in all parts of the German Empire, by every possible
means of locomotion, that teapot tempest of passing the frontier seems
far more than ridiculous. It is possible that the combination of
circumstances made admittance—once gained—seem easier than it really is.
But I cannot shake off the impression that the difficulties were almost
wholly within my own disordered brain—disordered because of the wild
tales that had been dished out to us by the Allied press. It was, of
course, to the advantage of the correspondents fluttering about the
dovecote at the head of Unter den Linden to create the impression that
the only way to get into Germany was to cross the frontier on hands and
knees in the darkest hour of a dark night at the most swampy and
inaccessible spot, with a rabbit’s foot grasped firmly in one hand and
the last will and testament in the other. The _blague_ served at least
two purposes—perfectly legitimate purposes at that, from a professional
point of view—it made “bully good reading” at home, and it scared off
competition, in the form of other correspondents, whose timorous natures
precluded the possibility of attempting the perilous passage.
Though it sap all the succeeding pages of the “suspense” so
indispensable to continued interest, I may as well confess here as later
that I moved about Germany with perfect freedom during all my stay
there, far more freely than I could have at the same date in either
Allied or neutral countries, that neither detectives nor spies dogged my
footsteps nor did policemen halt me on every corner to demand my
authority for being at large. Lest he hover menacingly in the background
of some timorous reader’s memory, embittering any dewdrops of pleasure
he may wring from this tale, let me say at once that I never again heard
from or of the dreadful Herr Maltzen. Indeed, the castle of Bentheim had
scarcely disappeared below the wet green horizon of a late spring when I
caught myself grumbling that these simple Germans had wrecked what
should have been a tale to cause the longest hair to stand stiffly erect
and the most pachydermous skin to develop goose-flesh. Saddest of
all—let us have the worst and be done with it—they continued that
exasperating simplicity to the end, and left me little else for all my
labors than the idle vaporings of a summer tourist.
Contrary to my expectations, the train was an excellent _Schnellzug_,
making rare stops and riding as easily as if the armistice conditions
had not so much as mentioned rolling-stock. The plush covering of
several seats was missing, as beyond the Rhine, but things were as
orderly, the trainmen as polite and diligently bent on doing their duty
as if they had been under the military command of an exacting enemy. In
our first-class compartment there were two American lieutenants in
uniform, yet there was not so much as a facial protest that they should
be occupying seats while German men and women stood in the corridor.
There was, to be sure, a bit of rather cold staring, and once what might
have been called an “incident.” At Osnabrück we were joined by a
cropped-headed young German, wearing the ribbon of the Iron Cross in the
lapel of his civilian clothing, but whom a chance word informed us was
still a captain, accompanied by two older men. They sat in
expressionless silence for a time; then one of the older men said,
testily:
“Let’s see if we can’t find a more congenial compartment. Here there is
too much English spoken.” And the trio disappeared. As a matter of fact,
the English they heard was being chiefly spoken by a Dutch diplomat who
had fallen in with us. I could not reflect, however, that to have spoken
German in a French train at that date would have been positively
dangerous. The lieutenants and the diplomat asserted that they had never
before seen any such evidence of feeling among the defeated enemy, and
it is the only strained situation of the kind that I recall having
witnessed during all my German journey. When we changed cars at Löhne
soldiers and civilians gazed rather coldly, as well as curiously, at the
lieutenants, yet even when people chatted and laughed with them there
was no outward evidence of protest.
There were very few cattle and almost no laborers in the fields, though
the holiday may have accounted for the absence of the latter. The
landscape looked everywhere well cultivated and there were no signs that
any except purposely pasture lands had been allowed to lie fallow. Near
Hanover, with its great engine-works, stood hundreds of rusted
locomotives which had been refused by the Allies. Among them were large
numbers that the Germans had drawn from Russia and which were now
useless even to the Teutons, since they were naphtha-burners, and
naphtha was no longer to be had within the Empire. Acres upon acres of
cars, both passenger and freight, filled another yard—cars from Posen,
from Breslau, from München, and from Königsberg, from every corner of
Germany. At Nauen the masts of the great wireless station from which we
had picked up most of our German news during the war loomed into the
evening sky, and beyond were some immense Zeppelin hangars bulking above
the flat landscape like distant mountains. We reached Berlin on time and
before dark. May-day had brought all city transportation to a
standstill; neither taxi, carriage, nor tramcar was to be found—though
it was reported that this first official national holiday had been the
tamest in years. Farmers’ carts and beer wagons had been turned into
carryalls and transported a score of passengers each, seated
precariously on loose boards, from station to station. Hotels were as
packed as they seem to be in all capitals in war-time. The magnificent
Adlon, housing the Allied commissions, laughed in my face. For two hours
I canvassed that section of the city and finally paid eleven marks for
accommodation in a hotel of decayed gentility at the door of which an
old sign read: “Fine rooms on the garden, two marks and upward.” To be
sure, the rate of exchange made the difference considerably less than it
seemed—to those who had purchased their marks in the foreign market.
VI
THE HEART OF THE HUNGARY EMPIRE
In many districts of Germany the traveler’s eye was frequently drawn,
during the hectic spring of 1919, to a large colored poster. It showed
two men; the one cold, gaunt, and hungry, huddled in the rags of his old
uniform, was shuffling through the snow, with a large, dismally gray
city in the background; the other, looking well nourished and cheerful,
wearing a comfortable new civilian suit, was emerging from a
smoke-belching factory and waving gaily in the air a handful of
twenty-mark notes. Under the picture ran the device: “DON’T GO TO
BERLIN! There every one is hungry and you will find no work. Instead, go
to the nearest government employment office”—the address of the most
convenient being added.
Despite this and many similar efforts on the part of the authorities and
private agencies, people kept crowding into the capital. Not even a
personal appeal from his new “Reichspräsident” Ebert to the ordinarily
laborious and persistent German to remain at home and keep at work,
rather than to try to better his lot by this vain pilgrimage, succeeded
in shutting off the Berlinward stream of discontented humanity. War and
social disorders seem always to bring this influx into the national
metropolis, the world over. It is man’s nature to wander in search of
happiness when he is not happy, seldom recognizing that he is carrying
his unhappiness with him and that it is but slightly dependent upon the
particular spot he inhabits. In this case the general misery was largely
due to the gnawings of hunger, and surely Berlin, in the year of grace
1919, was the last place in all Germany in which to seek alleviation
from that particular misfortune. Yet the quest of the rainbow end went
hopefully on, until the tenements of the capital were gorged with
famished provincials and her newspapers teemed with offers of
substantial rewards to any one who would furnish information of rooms,
apartments, or dwelling-houses for rent.
That Berlin was hungry was all too evident, so patent, in fact, that I
feel it my duty to set down in a place apart the gruesome details of
famine and warn the reader to peruse them only in the presence of a
full-course dinner. But the overcrowding was at first glance less
apparent. Indeed, a superficial glimpse of the heart of Prussianism
showed it surprisingly like what it had been a decade before. The great
outdoor essentials were virtually unaltered. Only as one amassed bit by
bit into a convincing whole the minor evidences of change, as an
experienced lawyer pieces together the scattered threads of
circumstantial proof, did one reach the conclusion that Berlin was no
longer what she used to be. Her great arteries of suburban railways, her
elevated and underground, pulsated regularly, without even that clogging
of circulation that threatened the civic health of her great
temperamental rival to the west. Her shops and business houses seemed,
except in one particular, well stocked and prosperous; her sources of
amusement were many and well patronized. Her street throngs certainly
were not shabby in appearance and they showed no outward signs of
leading a hampered existence. True, they were unusually
gaunt-featured—but here we are encroaching on ground to be explored
under more propitious alimentary circumstances.
Of the revolution, real or feigned, through which it had recently
passed, the city bore surprisingly few scars. Three or four government
buildings were pockmarked with bullet-holes that carried the mind back
to “election” days in the capitals of tropical America; over in
Alexanderplatz the bricks and stones flaunted a goodly number of
shrapnel and machine-gun wounds. But that was all, or almost all, the
proof of violence that remained. The palaces of the late Kaiser stood
like abandoned warehouses; the Reichstag building was cold and silent,
testifying to a change of venue for the government on trial, if not of
régime. Yet it could not, after all, have been much of a “revolution”
that had left unscathed those thirty-two immense and sometimes
potbellied images of the noble Hohenzollerns, elaborately carved in
stone, which still oppressed the stroller along the Sieges Allee in the
otherwise pleasant Tiergarten. The massive wooden Hindenburg at the end
of it, a veritable personification of brute strength from cropped head
to well-planted feet, stared down upon puny mankind as of yore, though,
to be sure, he looked rather neglected; the nailing had never been
completed and the rare visitors passed him by now without any attempt to
hammer home their homage. Farther on that other man of iron gazed away
across the esplanade as if he saw nothing in this temporary abandonment
of his principles to cause serious misgivings.