than for the native residents. For the first time I had something of the
sensation of being a millionaire—cost was of slight importance. The
marks I spent in Germany I bought at an average of two for fifteen
cents; had I delayed longer in exchanging I might have had them still
cheaper. In some lines, notably in that we are for the moment avoiding,
prices, of course, had increased accordingly, sometimes outdistancing
the advantages of the low rate of exchange. But the rank and file still
clung to the old standards; it was a hopeless task to try to make the
man in the street understand that the mark was no longer a mark. He went
so far as to accuse the American government of profiteering, because the
bacon it was indirectly furnishing him cost 7.50 marks a pound, which to
him represented, not fifty-seven cents, but nearly two dollars. The net
result of this drop in mark value was that the populace was several
degrees nearer indigence. Those who could spend money freely were of
three classes—foreigners, war profiteers, and those who derived their
nourishment, directly or indirectly, at the public teat. Not, of course,
that even those spent real money. There was not a penny of real money in
circulation in all Germany. Gold, silver, and copper had all long since
gone the way of other genuine articles in war-time Germany, and in their
place had come _Ersatz_ money. Pewter coins did service in the smallest
denominations; from a half-mark upward there were only “shin-plasters”
of varying degrees of raggedness, the smaller bills a constant annoyance
because, like most of the pewter coins, they were of value only in the
vicinity of the municipality or chamber of commerce that issued them.
Even the larger notes of the Reichsbank were precarious holdings that
required the constant vigilance of the owner, lest he wake up some
morning to find that they had been decreed into worthless paper.
But I am getting far ahead of my story. Long before I began to peer
beneath the surface of Berlin I had to face the problem of legalizing
even my superficial existence there. On the very morning after my
arrival I hastened to grim-sounding Wilhelmstrasse, uncertain whether my
next move would be toward some dank underground dungeon or merely a
swift return to the Dutch border. The awe-inspiring Foreign Office
consisted of several adult school-boys and the bureaucrat-minded
underlings of the old régime. A Rhodes scholar, who spoke English
somewhat better than I, greeted my entrance with a formal heartiness,
thanked me for adding my services to the growing band that was
attempting to tell a long-deceived world the truth about Germany, and
dictated an _Ausweis_ which, in the name of the Foreign Office backed by
all the authority of the new national government, gave me permission to
go when and where I chose within the Empire, and forbade any one, large
or small, to put any difficulties whatever in my way. Like a sea monster
killed at the body, but with its tentacles still full of their poisoning
black fluid, Wilhelmstrasse seemed to have become innocuous at home long
before its antennæ, such as the dreadful Herr Maltzen at The Hague, had
lost their sting.
If it had been a great relief to see the eyes of passers-by fade
inattentively away at sight of me in my civilian garb, after two years
of being stared at in uniform, it was doubly pleasant to know that not
even the minions of the law could now question my most erratic wandering
to and fro within the Fatherland. With my blanket _Ausweis_ I was not
even required to report to the police upon my arrival in a new
community, the _Polizeiliche Anmeldung_ that is one of the banes of
German existence. I was, of course, still expected to fill out the
regulation blank at each hotel or lodging-house I occupied, but this was
a far less troublesome formality than the almost daily quest for, and
standing in line at, police stations would have been. These hotel forms
were virtually uniform throughout the Empire. They demanded the
following information of each prospective guest: Day of arrival; given
and family name; single, married, or widowed; profession; day, month,
year, town, county, and land of birth; legal residence, with street and
number; citizenship (in German the word is _Staatsangehörigkeit_, which
sounds much more like “Property of what government?”); place of last
stay, with full address; proposed length of present stay; whether or not
the registering guest had ever been in that particular city or locality
before; if so, when, why, and how long, and residence while there. But
under the new democracy hotelkeepers had grown somewhat more easy-going
than in years gone by, and their exactions in this respect never became
burdensome.
It was soon evident that the man in the street commonly took me for a
German. In Berlin I was frequently appealed to for directions or local
information, not to mention the requests for financial assistance. To my
surprise, my hearers seldom showed evidence of detecting a foreign
accent, particularly when I spoke with deliberate care. Even then I was
usually considered a German from another province, sometimes a Dane, a
Hollander, or a Scandinavian. Now and again I assumed a pose out of mere
curiosity, and often “got away with it.” “You are from ——” (the next
town)? was a frequent query, with a tinge of doubt in the tone. “No, I
am from Mechlenburg”—or some other distant corner of Germany, I
sometimes answered; to which the response was most likely to be, “Ah
yes, I noticed that in your speech.” Now and again I let a
self-complacent inquirer answer for me, as was the case with a
know-it-all waiter in a Berlin dining-room, who proved his infallible
ability to “size up” guests with the following cocksure assumptions,
which he solemnly set down in his food-ticket register: “_Sie sind
Holländer, nicht?_” “_Jawohl._” “_Kaufmann?_” “_Jawohl._” “_Aus
Amsterdam?_” “_Jawohl._” “_Unverheiratet?_” “_Jawohl_,” and so on to the
end of the list. It is never good policy to peeve a man by showing him
up in public. During my first few days in unoccupied Germany I fancied
it the part of wisdom to at least passively disguise my nationality, but
the notion soon proved ridiculous, and from then on, with only
exceptions enough to test certain impressions, I went out of my way to
announce my real citizenship among all classes and under all
circumstances.
You can learn much of a country by reading its “Want Ads.” Thus the
discovery that the most respectable newspaper of Rio de Janeiro runs
scores of notices of “Female Companion Wanted,” or “Young Lady Desires
Protector,” quickly orientates the moral viewpoint in Brazil. In Berlin
under the armistice the last pages of the daily journals gave a more
exact cross-section of local conditions than the more intentional news
columns. There were, of course, countless pleas for labor of any
description, the majority by ex-soldiers. Then came offers to sell or
exchange all manner of wearing apparel, “A REAL SILK HAT, still in good
condition”; “A black suit of real peace-time cloth”; “A second-hand pair
of boots or shoes, such a size, of REAL LEATHER!” “Four dress shirts, NO
WAR WARES, will be exchanged for a working-man’s blouse and jumper,” was
followed by the enticement (here, no doubt, was the trail of the war
profiteer), “A pair of COWHIDE boots will be swapped for a Dachshund of
established pedigree.” Farther down were extraordinary opportunities to
buy _Leberwurst_, _Blutwurst_, _Jagdwurst_, _Brühwürstchen_, and a host
of other appetizing garbage, without meat-tickets. But the most
persistent advertisers were those bent on recouping their fortunes by
marrying money. It is strange if any new war millionaire in Germany has
not had his opportunity to link his family with that of some
impoverished one of noble lineage. In a single page of the _Berliner
Tageblatt_, which carries about one-tenth the type of the same space in
our own metropolitan dailies, there were eighty-seven offers of
marriage, some of them double or more, bringing the total up to at least
one hundred. Many of them were efforts, often more pathetic than
amusing, by small merchants or tradesmen, just returned from five years
in uniform, to find mates who would be of real assistance in
re-establishing their business. But a considerable number aroused
amazement that the wares offered had not been snapped up long ago. I
translate a few taken at random:
MERCHANT, 38 years, Christian, bachelor, idealist, lover of nature
and sports, fortune of 300,000 marks, wishes to meet a like-minded,
agreeable young lady with corresponding wealth which is safely
invested. Purpose: MARRIAGE.
FACTORY OWNER, Ph.D., Evangelical, 31, 1 meter 75, fine appearance,
reserve officer, sound, lover of sports, humorous and musical,
400,000 marks property, seeks a LIFE COMPANION of like gifts and
property in _safe_ investments.
Intelligent GENTLEMAN, handsome, splendid appearance, blond,
diligent and successful merchant, winning personality, Jewish,
etc....
Will a BEAUTIFUL, prominent, artistic, musical, and property-loving
woman in her best years make happy an old man (Mosaic) of wealth?
This modest old fellow had many prototypes. Now and then a man, and the
women always, were offered by third parties, at least ostensibly, half
the insertions beginning, “For my sister”; “For my daughter”; “For my
beautiful niece of twenty-two”; “For my lovely sister-in-law”; and so
on. Some looked like the opportunity of a lifetime:
I seek for my house physician, aged 55, a secure existence with a
good, motherly woman of from 30 to 50....
A neat little BLONDE of 19 with some property seeks gentleman
(Jewish) for the purpose of later marriage....
For a BARONESS of 23, orphan, ¾-MILLION property, later heiress of
big real estate....
If the demands of my calling had not kept me so busy I should have
looked into this splendid opportunity myself; or into the next one:
Daughter of a BIG MERCHANT, 22, ONE MILLION Property....
But, after all, come to think of it, what is a mere million marks
nowadays?
MERCHANT’S DAUGHTER, 24, tall and elegant appearance, only child of
one of the first Jewish families; 150,000 dowry, later large
inheritances....
A young widow (Jewish), 28 years, without property, longs for
another happy home....
Some did not care how much they spent on advertising. For instance:
I SEEK FOR MY FRIEND, a free-thinking Jewess, elegant woman in the
fifties, looking much younger, widow, owner of lucrative wholesale
business, a suitable husband of like position. The lady is of
beautiful figure, lovable temperament, highly cultured,
distinguished, worldly wise, and at the same time a good manager and
diligent business woman. [This last detail was plainly a tautology,
having already been stated in the ninth word of the paragraph.] The
gentleman should be a merchant or a government official of high
rank. Chief condition is good character, distinguished sentiments,
affectionate disposition. No photographs, but oral interview
solicited. Offers addressed, etc....
This last vacancy should have found many suitable candidates, if there
was truth in the violently pink handbills that were handed out in the
streets of Berlin during one of the “demonstrations” against the peace
terms. For the sake of brevity I give only its high lights:
END OF MILITARISM
BEGINNING OF JEW RULE!
Fifty months have we stood at the Front honorably and undefeated.
Now we have returned home, ignominiously betrayed by deserters and
mutineers! We hoped to find a free Germany, with a government of the
people. What is offered us?
A GOVERNMENT OF JEWS!
The participation of the Jews in the fights at the Front was almost
nil. Their participation in the new government has already reached
80 per cent.! Yet the percentage of Jewish population in Germany is
only 1½ per cent.!
OPEN YOUR EYES!
COMRADES, YOU KNOW THE BLOODSUCKERS!
COMRADES, WHO WENT TO THE FRONT AS VOLUNTEERS?
WHO SAT OUT THERE MOSTLY IN THE MUD? WE!
WHO CROWDED INTO THE WAR SERVICES AT HOME? THE JEWS!
WHO SAT COMFORTABLY AND SAFELY IN CANTEENS AND OFFICES?
WHICH PHYSICIANS PROTECTED THEIR FELLOW-RACE FROM THE TRENCHES?
WHO ALWAYS REPORTED US “FIT FOR DUTY” THOUGH WE WERE ALL SHOT TO
PIECES?
These are the people who rule us. [Here followed a long list of
names and blanket accusations.] Even in the Soldiers’ Councils the
Jews have the big word! Four long years these people hung back from
the Front, yet on November 9th they had the courage, guns in hand,
to tear away from us soldiers our cockades, our shoulder-straps, and
our medals of honor!
Comrades, we wish as a free people to decide for ourselves and be
ruled by men of OUR race! The National Assembly must bring into the
government only men of OUR blood and OUR opinions! Our motto must
be:
GERMANY FOR GERMANS!
German people, rend the chains of Jewry asunder! Away with them! We
want neither Pogrom nor Bürgerkrieg! We want a free German people,
ruled by free German men! We will _not_ be the slaves of the Jews!
ELECTORS
Out of the Parties and Societies run by Jews! Elect no Jews! Elect
also no baptized Jews! Elect also none of the so-called
“confessionless” Jews! Give your votes only to men of genuine German
blood!
DOWN WITH JEWRY!
Though it is violating the chronological order of my tale, it may be as
well to sum up at once the attitude of Berlin upon receipt of the peace
terms. Four separate times during my stay in Germany I visited the
capital, by combinations of choice and necessity. On the day the terms
of the proposed treaty were made public apathy seemed to be the chief
characteristic of the populace. If one must base conclusions on visible
indications, the masses were far less interested in the news from
Versailles than in their individual struggles for existence. The talk
one heard was not of treaty terms, but of food. Not more than a dozen at
a time gathered before the windows of the _Lokal Anzeiger_ on Unter den
Linden. They read the bulletins deliberately, some shaking their heads,
and strolled on about their business as if they had been Americans
scanning the latest baseball scores, a trifle disappointed, perhaps,
that the home team had not won. There was no resemblance whatever to the
excited throngs of Teuton colonists who had surged about the war maps in
Rio de Janeiro during August, 1914. One could not but wonder whether
this apathy had reigned in Berlin at that date. Scenes of popular
excitement and violence had been prophesied, but for two days I wandered
the streets of the capital, mingling with every variety of group,
questioning every class of inhabitant, without once hearing a violent
word. A few individuals asserted that their opinion of America had been
sadly shocked; one or two secretaries of Allied correspondents haughtily
resigned their positions. But the afternoon tea at the Adlon showed the
same gathering of sleek, well-dressed Germans of both sexes, by no means
averse to genial chats with enemy guests in or out of uniform. There was
no means of forming definite conclusions as to whether the nation had
been stunned with the immensity of the tragedy that had befallen it or
whether these taciturn beings had some secret cause for satisfaction
hidden away in their labyrinthine minds.
Later I was assured that many had stayed up all night, waiting for the
first draft of the terms. Südermann explained the apparent apathy with,
“We Germans are not like the French; we mourn in the privacy of our
homes, but we do not show our sorrow in public.” Certainly the Boche has
none of the Frenchman’s sense of the dramatic, nor his tendency to
hysteria. An observer reported that the “epoch-making first meeting of
the National Assembly at Weimar opened like the unfinished business of a
butchers’ lodge.” Once, during my absence from the capital, there was a
flurry of excitement, but nothing to cause me to regret my presence
elsewhere. The “demonstration” against the Ally-housing Adlon proved
upon my return to have been serious chiefly in the foreign press. At the
most genuinely German restaurant the head waiter had on the same date
informed an American woman that her guests would no longer be welcome if
they came in Allied uniforms, and that English would not be spoken—then
took her whispered order in that language behind a concealing palm.
Dodgers were dropped from airplanes on the capital one day, protesting
against a half-dozen articles of the treaty, demanding the immediate
return of German prisoners, and ending with the query, “Shall noble
Germans be judged by Serb murderers, Negro states, Japs, Chinese,
Siamese?...” Billboards blossomed out with highly colored maps showing
the territory that was being “stolen” from the Empire. But the populace
seemed to give little attention to these appeals. Ludendorff called the
Allied correspondents together and broke the record for short interviews
with, “If this is what they mean by Wilson’s Fourteen Points, our
enemies can go to hell.” Up to date they have not fully complied with
the general’s proposal. Haughty Richard Strauss declined to waste words
on his Allied fellow-guests at the Adlon. On May 9th several of the
Berlin dailies admitted at last, “We are conquered.” Had their staffs
been more efficient they might have shared that news with their readers
several months earlier. On the third Sunday in May, when the subject
would long since have grown cold among less phlegmatic peoples, I
attended a dozen meetings of protest against the peace terms in as many
parts of the city. Nothing could have been more ladylike, silent,
orderly, and funereal, with the possible exception of the processions
that formed after the meetings were over and plodded noiselessly down
the shaded length of Unter den Linden.
In the first heat of despair a _Trauerwoche_, or week of mourning, was
decreed throughout the Empire, with the cast-iron fist of dreaded Noske
to enforce it, but the nation took it less seriously than its forcible
language warranted:
In the time between May 10th and 16th, inclusive, must be postponed:
All public theater and musical representations, plays and similar
jovialities, so long as there is not in them a higher interest for
art or for science, and unless they bear a serious character.
Especially are forbidden:
Representations in music-halls, cabarets, and circuses, musical and
similar entertainments in inns and taverns.
All joyful public dances (_Tanzlustbarkeiten_), as well as social
and private dance entertainments in public places or taverns.
All dramatic representations and gaieties in the public streets,
roads, squares, and other public places.
Cinematographic entertainments which do not bear witness to the
earnestness of the times; all horse-races and similar public
sporting activities.
Gambling clubs are to close, and to remain closed also after the
16th until further notice.
There was no clause demanding that Germany fast or reduce her
consumption of food to the minimum; she had long been showing that
evidence of national sorrow without the necessity of a formal command.
VII
“GIVE US FOOD!”
Now then, having fortified ourselves for the ordeal, let us take a
swift, running glance at the “food situation” in Berlin. That we have
escaped the subject thus far is little short of miraculous, for it is
almost impossible to spend an hour in the hungry capital without having
that burning question come up in one form or another. The inhabitants of
every class, particularly the well-to-do, talked food all the time, in
and out of turn. No matter what topic one brought up, they were sure to
drift back to that. Their best anecdotes were the stirring adventure of
getting a pound of butter or (’Sh!) where they had found a half-pound of
cocoa for sale. The women were always discussing some kind of _Ersatz_
food, how it tasted or how nearly it comes to tasting, how to make it up
in the least unappetizing manner, where (Now, keep this strictly to
yourself!) one could get it for only a few times at a fair price. It is
curious how one’s thoughts persist in sticking to food when one hasn’t
enough of it. I soon found myself thinking of little else, and I am by
no means a sybarite or an epicurean. Most of Germany was hungry, but
Berlin was so in a superlative degree. No one seemed to escape
comparative famine or to have strength of will enough to avoid
discussion of the absorbing topic of the hour. When I called on
Südermann at his comfortable residence in the suburb of Grunewald he
could not confine his thoughts to drama or literature, or even to the
“atrocious” peace terms for more than a sentence or two before he also
drifted back to the subject of food—how hungry he had been for months;
how he had suffered from lack of proper nourishment during a recent
convalescence; how he had been forced to resort to _Schleichhandel_ to
keep himself and his sick daughter alive.
Loose-fitting clothing, thin, sallow faces, prominent cheekbones, were
the rule among Berliners; the rosy complexions and the fine teeth of
former days were conspicuous by their scarcity. The prevailing facial
tint in the city was a grayish-yellow. “Why, how thin you are!” had
become taboo in social circles. Old acquaintance meeting old friend was
almost sure to find his collar grown too large for him. Old friend,
perhaps, did not realize that sartorial change in his own appearance,
his mirror pictured it so gradually, but he was quick to note a similar
uncouthness in the garb of old acquaintance. In the schoolroom there
were not red cheeks enough to make one pre-war pair, unless the face of
a child recently returned from the country, shining like a new moon in a
fog, trebled the pasty average. Every row included pitiful cases of
arrested development, while watery eyes turned the solemn, listless gaze
of premature old age on the visitor from every side. The newspapers of
Berlin were full of complaints that pupils were still required to attend
as many hours and otherwise strive to attain pre-war standards. It was
“undemocratic,” protested many parents, for it gave the few children of
those wealthy enough to indulge in _Schleichhandel_ an unfair advantage
over the underfed youngsters of the masses. Even adults condoled with
one another that their desire and ability to work had sunk to an
incredibly low level. “Three hours in my office,” moaned one
contributor, “and my head is swirling so dizzily that I am forced to
stretch out on my divan, dropping most pressing affairs. Yet before the
war I worked twelve and fourteen hours a day at high pressure, and
strode home laughing at the idea of fatigue.”
It was perfectly good form in Berlin for a man in evening dress to wrap
up a crust of black bread and carry it away with him. Even in the best
restaurants waiters in unimpeachable attire ate all the leavings—in the
rare cases that there were any—on their way back to the kitchen. I have
already mentioned the constant munching of wretched lunches by theater
audiences. The pretense of a meal on the stage was sure to turn the most
uproarious comedy into a tear-provoking melodrama. Playwrights avoided
such scenes in recent works; managers were apt to “cut them out” when
offering the older classics. The Berliner suffered far more from the
cold than in the bygone days of plenitude. Two or three raw spells
during the month of May, which I scarcely felt myself, found thousands
buttoned up in one and even two overcoats, and wrapped to their noses in
mufflers. The newspapers were constantly publishing “hunger sketches”;
the jokesters found the prevailing theme an endless source of sad
amusement. “There are many children of four who have never tasted
butter,” remarked one paragrapher; “some hardly know what meat is; no
one of that age has ever tasted real bread.” A current joke ran: “How
old is your sister?” “I don’t know,” replied the foil, “but she can
still remember how bananas taste.” A cartoonist showed a lean and
hollow-eyed individual standing aghast before a friend whose waistcoat
still bulged like a bay-window—where he found him in Berlin is a
mystery—with the caption, “_Mein lieber Karl_, you must have been
getting some of that famous American bacon!” Those food-supplies from
America, so incessantly announced, were a constant source both of
amusement and of wrath in Germany, not wholly without reason, as I shall
show before I have done with this distressing subject.