territory, however, the Poles required that one of the same class and
condition be delivered to them in exchange. Several long freight-trains,
loaded from end to end with potatoes, rumbled past us on the parallel
track. Two hundred thousand tons of tubers were sent to Germany each
month in exchange for coal. It was at that date the only commercial
intercourse between the two countries, and explained why potatoes were
the one foodstuff of comparative abundance even in Berlin. At Biala the
station guards were Polish, but there was little indeed to distinguish
them from those of Kreuz and Bromberg. Their uniforms, their rifles,
every detail of their equipment, were German, except that some of them
wore the square and rather clumsy-looking Polish cap or had decorated
their round, red-banded fatigue bonnets with the silver double-eagle of
the resurrected empire. Many were without even this insignia of their
new allegiance, and only the absence of oak-leaves on their collars
showed that they were no longer soldiers of the Fatherland.
We halted at Wronki for two hours, which made our departure three hours
later, for clocks and watches were turned ahead to correspond with
Polish time. Frontier formalities were even more leisurely and
disorganized than they had been in Kreuz. The Poles seemed to have
something of the amiable but headless temperament of the French. Their
officers, too, in their impressive new uniforms with broad red or yellow
bands, and their rattling sabers, bore a certain resemblance to children
on Christmas morning that did not help to expedite matters under their
jurisdiction. They were a bit less “snappy” than the more experienced
Germans, somewhat inclined to strut and to flirt, and there were
suggestions in their manner that they might not have been horrified at
the offer of a tip. When at length my turn had come they found my
credentials unsatisfactory. Why had they not been viséed by the Polish
consul in Berlin, as well as by the Germans at Frankfurt? I had never
dreamed that Berlin boasted a Polish consul. Indeed! Who, then, did I
suppose handled the interests of their nation there? However, it was all
right. As an American and a fellow-Ally they would let me pass. But I
must promise to report at a certain office in Posen within twenty-four
hours of my arrival.
Barefoot boys were selling huge slabs of bread and generous lengths of
sausage through the car windows. All things are relative, and to the
travelers from Germany these “ticket-free” viands of doubtful origin
seemed a kingly repast. With every mile forward now it was easier to
understand why the loss of the province of Posen had been so serious a
blow to the hungry Empire. Here were no arid, sandy stretches, but an
endless expanse of rich black loam, capable of feeding many times its
rather sparse population. If it had been “pumped dry” by the former
oppressors, it was already well on the road to recovery. Wheat, corn,
and potatoes covered the flat plains to the horizons on either hand.
Cattle and sheep were by no means rare; pigs, goats, ducks, and chickens
flocked about every village and farm-house, evidently living in
democratic equality with the human inhabitants. There were other
suggestions that we were approaching the easy-going East. Men in high
Russian boots sauntered behind their draft animals with the
leisureliness of those who know the world was not built in a day, nor
yet in a year. Churches of Oriental aspect, with steep roofs that were
still not Gothic, broke the sameness of the prevailing German
architecture. There was something softly un-Occidental in the atmosphere
of the great city into which we rumbled at sunset, a city which huge new
sign-boards on the station platform stridently announced was no longer
Posen, but “Poznan.”
XI
AN AMPUTATED MEMBER
(_Posen under the Poles_)
The same spirit that had led the Poles to impress so forcibly upon the
traveler the fact that the city in which he had just arrived was now
called Poznan (pronounced Poznánya) had manifested itself in a thousand
other changes. In so far as time had permitted, every official signboard
had already been rendered into Polish and the detested German ones cast
into outer darkness. Only those familiar with the Slavic tongue of the
new rulers could have guessed what all those glitteringly new enameled
placards that adorned the still Boche-featured station were commanding
them to do or not to do. Every street in town had been baptized into the
new faith and gaily boasted that fact on every corner. For a time the
names had been announced in both languages, as in Metz; but a month or
so before my arrival the radicals had prevailed and the older placards
had been abolished. True, in most cases the new ones were merely
translations of the old. But what did it help the German resident who
had neglected to learn Polish to know that the “Alte Markt” was still
the “Old Market” so long as he could not recognize it under the new
designation of “Stary Rynek”? Imagine, if you can, the sensation of
waking up some morning to find that Main Street has become Ulica Glòwna,
or to discover that the street-car you had always taken no longer runs
to Forest Park but to Ogrott Lass.
Nothing but the few things that defied quick change, such as post-boxes
or names deeply cut into stone façades, had escaped the all-embracing
renovation. Indeed, many of these had been deliberately defaced. The
cast-iron “Haltestelle der Strassenbahn” high up on the trolley-supports
had been daubed with red paint, though they were still recognizable to
motormen and would-be passengers. Many business houses had followed the
official lead, and private signs were more apt than not to have the
German words that had once called attention to the excellence of the
wares within crudely effaced or changed to the new tongue. Sometimes it
was not merely the language that had been altered, but the whole tenor
of the proprietor’s allegiance. A popular underground beer-hall in the
heart of town was no longer the “Bismarck Tunnel,” but the “Tunel
Wilsona.” German trucks thundering by on their iron tires bore the white
eagle of Poland instead of the black Prussian bird of prey. German
newspapers were still published, but as the streets they mentioned were
nowhere to be found in all Poznan, their advertisements and much of
their news were rather pointless. It gave me a curiously helpless
feeling to find myself for the first time in years unable to guess a
word of the language about me. Fortunately all Poznan still spoke
German. Only once during my stay there did I find myself hampered by my
ignorance of Polish—when a theater-ticket office proved to be in charge
of a pair recently arrived from Warsaw. On more than one occasion my
advances were received coldly, sometimes with scowls. But a reply was
always forthcoming, and whenever I announced myself an American, who
spoke the less welcome of the two tongues by necessity rather than by
choice, apology and friendly overtures immediately followed.
Having effaced the lingual reminders of their late oppressors, the
Poznanians had proceeded to pay their respects to the bronze heroes they
had left behind. The Germans, as is their custom, had littered the
public squares with statues of their chief sword-brandishers, in
gigantic size—tender reminders to the conquered people of the blessings
that had been forced upon them. The downfall of these had been sudden
and unceremonious. Some had descended so hastily that the allegorical
figures at their feet had suffered the fate so often overtaking faithful
henchmen of the fallen mighty. The stone image of an old woman
representing “Sorrow” looked doubly sorrowful with broken nose, legs,
and fingers. Kaiser Friedrich, Doctor Bismarck with his panacea of
“blood and iron,” the world-famed Wilhelm, had all left behind them
imposing pedestals, like university chairs awaiting exponents of newer
and more lasting doctrines. Here and there a statue had remained,
because it was Polish, but these were few and small and tucked away into
the more obscure corners.
Next to its change of tongue the most striking feature of the new Poznan
was its military aspect. The streets swarmed with soldiers even during
the day; in the evening the chief gathering-places became pulsating seas
of field gray. For it was still the garb of their former servitude that
clothed the vast majority of these warriors of the reborn nation. The
silver double-eagle on his service-faded cap was all that was needed to
turn a wearer of the German uniform into a soldier of Poland. Many still
wore their “_Gott mit uns_” belt-buckles and their Prussian buttons. A
scattering minority, officers for the most part, were conspicuous in the
full new Polish uniform—double-breasted, with a forest-green tinge. The
high, square cap, distinctive only of the province of Poznan, was more
widely in evidence; the less cumbersome headgear of military visitors
from Warsaw or Galizia now and then broke the red-banded monotony. But
the only universal sign of new fealty was the silver double-eagle. This
gleamed everywhere. Men in civilian garb wore it on their hats or in
their coat lapels; women adorned their bodices with it; boys and girls
proudly displayed it in some conspicuous position. It fluttered on a
thousand banners; it bedecked every Polish shop-front; it stared from
the covers of newly appeared books, pamphlets, music-sheets in the
popular tongue; the very church spires had replaced their crosses with
it. One could buy the resurrected insignia, of any size or material, in
almost any shop—providing one could produce “legitimation papers” or
other proof that it would not be used to disguise a German as a Pole.
An over-abundance of swords tended to give the new army a comic-opera
aspect, but this detail was offset by the genuine military bearing of
all but a few of the multitude in uniform. The great majority, of
course, had had German training. Now, however, they put the “pep” of a
new game into the old forms of soldierly etiquette. Their two-finger
salute was rendered with the precision of ambitious recruits and at the
same time with the exactitude of “old-timers.” They sprang unfailingly
to attention at sight of a superior officer and stood like automatons
until he turned away. Yet there seemed to be an un-German comradeship
between the rank and file and the commissioned personnel, a democracy of
endeavor, a feeling that they were all embarked together on the same big
new adventure. There were, to be sure, some officers and a few men whose
sidewalk manners suggested that they had learned Prussian ways a bit too
thoroughly, but they were lost in a mass that had something of the
easy-going temperament of the East or the South.
All classes of the Polish population were represented in the new army
from the bulking countryman who ran after me to say that the photograph
I had just taken of him would not be a success because he had not been
looking at the lens during the operation to the major who granted me
special permission to use my kodak in spite of military rules. This
officer had been late in reaching his office, and I passed the time in
his anteroom in conversation with his sergeant-major. When he entered at
last the entire office force sprang to its feet with what in an older
army would have been an exaggeration of discipline. The sergeant-major,
his middle finger glued to the seams of his trousers, explained my
presence and request. The major asked several questions in Polish, which
the sergeant repeated to me in German, relaying my replies back to the
major in his native tongue. When the latter had nodded his approval and
disappeared, and the office force had relaxed into mere human beings, I
expressed my surprise that an officer of such high rank knew no German.
“Knows no German!” cried the sergeant-major, bursting into laughter.
“The major was for nine years a captain in the German army. He is a
graduate of the War College in Berlin and was a member of Hindenburg’s
staff. But he never lets a word of the accursed tongue pass his lips if
he can possibly avoid it.”
The new Polish government had established a conscription act as drastic
as if it had been taken bodily from the old German statute-books. All
males between the ages of seventeen and forty-five were liable to
service. Those between eighteen and thirty had already been called to
the colors, though thus far German residents had been tacitly exempted.
Every afternoon of my stay in Poznan a hundred or two of recruits,
flower-bedecked and carrying each his carton of travel rations, marched
in column of squads from the railway station to what had once been the
Kaiser’s barracks, singing as they went some rousing Polish song of the
olden days. At least half of them wore more or less complete German
uniforms. Some were so under-sized that a rifle in their hands would
have resembled a machine-gun. But with few exceptions their military
bearing testified to previous training under the exacting
drill-sergeants of their former rulers. Watching this new addition each
day to the hordes in uniform that already crowded the city, one could
not but wonder whether the new Poland was not giving refuge, perhaps
unconsciously, to the discredited spirit of militarism that had so
recently been expelled from its German Fatherland.
The “revolution,” or “_Putsch_,” as the Poles call it, that brought
about all this new state of affairs had been brief and to the point.
Paderewski, relying, perhaps, on Germany’s promise to help re-establish
the ancient Polish Kingdom, had come to Posen for the Christmas
holidays. The hotel he occupied had been decorated with the flags of the
Allies. It is scarcely surprising that the Germans proceeded to tear
them down in spite of the armistice that had recently been concluded.
According to several observers, they might even have “got away with”
this had they not persisted in their Prussian aggressiveness. On
December 27th a Polish youth paused to ask another for a light from his
cigarette. Matches had long been precious things in Posen. A German
officer pounced upon the pair and demanded to know what conspiracy they
were hatching together. The Polish youths quite properly knocked him
down. Their companions joined in the fracas. The Polish turnvereins had
long had everything prepared for just such an eventuality. Word swept
like prairie fire through the city. French and Italian prisoners of war
sprang to such arms as they could lay hands on and added their
assistance. The soldiers of the garrison, being chiefly Poles or of
Polish sympathies, walked out almost in a body and joined the revolt. It
raged for twenty-four hours. In the words of the sergeant-major already
introduced: “It was a busy day from four in the morning until the
following dawn. At least sixty ribs were broken—mostly German ones.”
There have been bloodier revolutions, however, for the number killed is
set at ten. The Polish leaders were soon masters of the situation. In
three days they had established order. Their search for arms was
thorough and included Polish as well as German houses. The government
they had already established in secret soon tautened the reins that had
been struck from the hands of the Germans, and by New Year’s Day Poznan
had already settled down to peace and to a contentment it had not known
in more than a century.
As far, at least, as outward appearances go, there was nothing
particularly oppressive about the new rule. Civilians were not
permitted on the streets after midnight, but those with any legitimate
excuse for night-hawking were granted special passes. The Poles showed
a tendency to meet half-way their next-door neighbor and late
oppressor. With the exception of a few “_Polen-fresser_,” German
residents were not driven out, as in Metz and Strassburg. Boche
merchants continued to do business at the old stand. Newspapers
published in Germany were refused admittance, but that was a fair
retaliation for similar action by the new authorities of the late
Empire. Even the detested statues were not overthrown until March,
when the Germans declined to give the Poles port facilities at Danzig.
The language of the schools, as well as of government offices, was
changed to Polish; but as soon as Berlin consented to a reciprocal
arrangement, German was restored to the curriculum, though it was
taught only a few hours a week, as a foreign tongue. In short, the
conditions of Bromberg had been nicely reversed in Poznan. It must, to
be sure, have been rather a tough life for the town braggart who had
always espoused the German cause; but there was apparently nothing to
be feared by those who know how to hold their tongues and confine
their attention to their own affairs—and the German is a past-master
at lying low when it is to his interest to do so. His native tongue
was almost never heard on the streets, such arrogance as existed was
confined now to the Poles, and the just-let-us-alone-and-we’ll-be-good
rôle had been assumed by the Teutons.
There were suggestions, however, that the Poles were not yet adepts at
governing, nor likely soon to establish a modern Utopia. Already they
had succeeded in encumbering themselves with fully as much red-tape as
the French. A musician as national leader and rallying-point seemed to
be in keeping with the Polish temperament. There was a lack of practical
directness in their methods, a tendency toward the erratic, at the
expense of orderly progress. One of their foremost business men turned
high official, to whom I applied for a signature and the imprint of a
government stamp, received me with a protest that he was “too busy to
breathe”—and spent two hours reciting Polish poetry to me and
demonstrating how he had succeeded in photographing every secret
document that had reached Posen during the war without being once
suspected by the Germans. “I am not experienced in this business of
government,” he apologized, when I succeeded at last in taking my leave,
“but I am ready to sacrifice myself and all I have to the new Poland.”
The statement rang true in his case, but there were others whose
repetition of it would have raised grave suspicions that they were
putting the cart before the horse. The rush for government jobs under
the new régime had in it something of the attitude of the faithful
henchmen toward the periodical return to power of their beloved Tammany.
There were tender reminiscences of the A. E. F. in the flocks of
incompetent pretty girls who encumbered government offices, dipping
their charming noses into everything except that which concerned them,
as there was in the tendency on the part of both sexes to consider
government transportation synonymous with opportunity for “joy-riding.”
It will be strange if the Polish servant-girls and factory hands who
come to us in the future bring with them the accept-anything spirit of
the past, at least after the period of orientation to their new
environment is over. They are “feeling their oats” at home now and will
be apt to set their worth and their rights to full equality
correspondingly higher.
The Poles, evidently, are not by nature a frolicsome people, but they
seemed to have thrown away the “lid” in Poznan and given free play to
all the joy within them. Pianos were more in evidence than they had been
during all the twenty months I had spent in war-torn Europe. Children
appeared to have taken on a new gaiety. Night life was almost Parisian,
except in the more reprehensible features of the “City of Light.” It may
have been due only to a temporary difference of mood in the two races,
but Polish Poznan struck me as a far more _livable_ place than German
Berlin. Evidently the people of the provinces were not letting this new
attractiveness of the restored city escape them; the newspapers bristled
with offers of reward for any one giving information of apartments or
houses for rent. Underneath their merriness, however, the religious
current of the race still ran strong and swift. The churches discharged
multitudes daily at the end of morning mass; no male, be he coachman,
policeman, soldier, or newsboy, ever passed the crucifix at the end of
the principal bridge without reverently raising his hat. There are
Protestant Poles, but they apparently do not live in Poznan. Now and
again, too, there were episodes quite the opposite of gay to give the
city pause in the midst of its revelry—the drunken sots in uniform, for
instance, who canvassed the shops demanding alms and prophesying the
firing-squad for those who declined to contribute. Were they not perhaps
the outposts of Bolshevism? But all this was immersed in the general
gaiety, tinged with a mild Orientalism that showed itself not only in
the architecture, but in such leisurely customs as closing shops and
offices from one to three, in defiance of nearly a century and a half of
the sterner German influence.