trouble on the spot, as usual, than in foreign newspapers. All classes
of the population—except perhaps that to which the turn of events had
brought the wisdom of silence—admitted that it had been a nuisance, but
it had left none of them ashen with fear or gaunt with suffering.
Indeed, business seemed to have gone on as usual during all but the two
or three days of retaking the city. Banks and the larger merchants had
been more or less heavily levied upon; lawyers and a few other classes
whom the new doctrine ranked as “parasitic” had found it wise to leave
their offices closed; but in the main all agreed that the population at
large was never troubled in their homes and seldom on the street. The
mistreatment of women, with rumors of which foreign newspapers reeked,
was asserted to have been rare, and their “nationalization,” which the
cables seem to have announced, had not, so far, at least, been
contemplated. All in all, the Bavarian capital suffered far less than
Winnipeg under a similar uprising of like date.
The moving spirit had come from Russia, as already mentioned, with a few
local theorists or self-seekers of higher social standing as its chief
auxiliaries. The rank and file of the movement were escaped Russian
prisoners and Munich’s own out-of-works, together with such disorderly
elements as always hover about any upheaval promising loot or unearned
gain. But the city’s chief scare seemed to have been its recapture by
government troops under orders from Berlin. Then for some fifty hours
the center of town was no proper place for those to dally who had
neglected their insurance premiums. A hundred more or less of
fashionable shop-fronts bore witness to the ease with which a
machine-gunner can make a plate-glass look like a transparent sieve
without once cracking it; rival sharpshooters had all but rounded off
the corners of a few of the principal buildings. The meek, plaster-faced
Protestant church had been the worst sufferer, as so often happens to
the innocent bystander. The most fire-eating Münchener admitted that
barter and business had lagged in the heart of town during that brief
period.
But Munich’s red days had already faded to a memory. Even the
assassination of hostages, among them some of the city’s most pompous
citizens, by the fleeing Sparticists was now mentioned in much the same
impersonal tone with which the Swiss might refer to the death of William
Tell or an Englishman regret the loss of Kitchener. The blue-and-white
flag of Bavaria fluttered again from the staffs that had been briefly
usurped by the red banner of revolt; the dark-blue uniform of the once
half-autonomous kingdom again asserted its sway over local matters in
the new _Volksreich Bayern_. At the Deutsches Theater a large audience
placidly sipping its beer set on little shelves before each seat
alternately roared and sniffled at the bare-kneed mountaineers in
feathered hats and the buxom _Mädels_ who bounced through a home-made
but well-done “custom picture” in the local dialect. It was evident that
life in Munich was not likely to afford any more excitement than had the
apathetic north. The atmosphere of the place only helped to confirm the
ever-hardening conviction that the German, north or south, east or west,
had little real sympathy for revolutions compared with the privilege of
pursuing his calling steadily and undisturbed. It was high time to take
to the road while a faint hope still remained that something might lay
in wait for me along the way to put a bit of ginger into a journey that
had thus far lamentably failed to fulfil its promise.
I breakfasted next morning with the German staff. At least I was the
only civilian in the palm-decked dining-room where a score of high
ranking wearers of the iron cross munched their black bread and purple
_Ersatz_ marmalade with punctilious formality. Away from their men, they
seemed to cling as tenaciously to the rules of their caste as if
disaster had never descended upon it. Each officer who entered the room
paused to click his heels twice resoundingly and bow low to his seated
fellows, none of whom gave him the slightest attention. It was as truly
German a gesture as the salute with which every wearer of the horizon
blue enters a public eating-place is French.
Nine o’clock had already sounded when I swung over my back the rucksack
containing my German possessions and struck out toward the north. Now,
if ever, was the time for the iron hand of the enemy to fall upon me.
Perhaps my mere attempt to leave the city on foot would bring me an
adventure. Vain hope! Neither civilians nor the endless procession of
soldiers gave me any more attention than they did the peasants returning
to their rich acres. Two sadly uneventful hours out of town a new
promise appeared in the offing. A soldier under a trench helmet, armed
with a glistening fixed bayonet, was patrolling a crossroad. He stepped
forward as he caught sight of me, grasped his piece in an alert
attitude, stared a moment in my direction, and—turning his back, leaned
against a tree and lighted a cigarette. Evidently I should have to fly
the Stars and Stripes at my masthead if I hoped to attract attention.
Not far beyond stood weather-blackened barracks sufficient to have
housed a regiment. I paused to photograph a company that was falling in.
I marched out in front of the jostling throng and took a “close-up” of
the lieutenant who was dressing it. He smiled faintly and stepped to the
end of the line to run his eye along it. I refrained from carrying out
an impulse to slap him on the back and shout: “Heh, old top! I am an
American, just out of the army! What are you going to do about it?” and
plodded on down the broad highway. How could a city be called
beleaguered and a country under martial law if strangers could wander in
and out of them at will, photographing as they went?
Fifteen kilometers from the capital I stopped at a crossroads
_Gasthaus_, quite prepared to hear my suggestion of food answered with a
sneer. Two or three youthful ex-soldiers still in uniform sat at one of
the bare wooden tables, sipping the inevitable half-liter mugs of beer.
I ordered one myself, not merely because I was thirsty, but because that
is the invariable introduction to any request in a Bavarian inn. As the
ponderous but neat matron set the foaming glass before me with the
never-lacking “May it taste well!” I opened preliminaries on the food
question, speaking gently, lest so presumptive a request from a total
stranger awaken the wrath of the discharged soldiers. Mine hostess had
no such misgivings. In a voice as loud and penetrating as my own had
been inarticulate she bade me explain my desires in detail. I huskily
whispered eggs, fried eggs, a plebeian dish, perhaps, in the land of my
birth, but certainly a greater height of luxury in Germany than I had
yet attained. I quail still at the audacity of that request, which I
proffered with an elbow on the alert to protect my skull from the reply
by physical force I more than half expected. Instead she made not a
sound, after the manner of Bavarian innkeepesses when taking orders, and
faded heavily but noiselessly away in the direction of the kitchen.
A few minutes later I beheld two _Spiegeleier_ descending upon me, not
merely real eggs, but of that year’s vintage. One of them alone might
have been an astonishment; a whole pair of them trotting side by side as
if the Kaiser had never dreamed how fetching the letters Rex Mundis
would look after his name was all but too much for me. I caught myself
clinging to the bench under me as one might to the seat of an airplane
about to buck, or whatever it is ships of the air do when they feel
skittish. A whole plateful of boiled potatoes bore the regal couple
attendance, and a generous slab of almost edible bread, quite unlike a
city helping both in size and quality, brought up the rear. When I
reached for a fifty-mark note and asked for the reckoning the hostess
went through a laborious process in mental arithmetic and announced
that, including the two half-liters of beer, I was indebted to the
extent of one mk. twenty-seven! In the slang of our school-days, “You
could have knocked me over with a feather,” particularly as four hours
earlier, back in a modest Munich hotel, I had been mulcted twelve marks
for an _Ersatz_ breakfast of “coffee, bread, marmalade,” and four very
thin slices of ham.
Twenty kilometers out of the city the flat landscape became slightly
rolling. Immense fields of mustard planted in narrow rows splashed it
here and there with brilliant saffron patches. Now and then an _Ersatz_
bicycle rattled by, its rider, like the constant thin procession of
pedestrians, decorated with the inevitable rucksack, more or less full.
The women always seemed the more heavily laden, but no one had the
appearance of being burdened, so natural a part of the custom of rural
Germany is the knapsack of Swiss origin. Each passer-by looked at me a
bit sourly, as if his inner thoughts were not wholly agreeable, and gave
no sign or sound of greeting, proof in itself that I was still in the
vicinity of a large city. But their very expressions gave evidence that
I was not being taken for a tramp, as would have been the case in many
another land. Germany is perhaps the easiest country in the world in
which to make a walking trip, for the habit of wandering the highways
and footpaths, rucksack on back, is all but universal. Yet this very
fact makes it also in a way the least satisfactory, so little attention
does the wanderer attract, and there are consequently fewer openings for
conversation.
Many fine work-horses were still to be seen in spite of the drain of
war, but oxen were in the majority. At least half the laborers in the
fields still wore the red-banded army cap, often with the Bavarian
_cocarde_ still upon it. One could not but wonder just what were the
inner reflections of the one-armed or one-legged men to be seen here and
there struggling along behind their plows, back in their native hills
again, maimed for life in a quarrel in which they really had neither
part nor interest. Whatever they thought, they were outwardly as
cheerful as their more fortunate fellows.
I had intended to let my fellow-pedestrians break the ice first, out of
curiosity to know how far from the city they would begin to do so. But
the continued silence grew a bit oppressive, and in mid-afternoon I fell
into step with a curiously mated couple who had quenched their thirst in
the same _Gasthaus_ as I a few minutes before. The woman was a more than
buxom _Frau_ of some forty summers, intelligent, educated, and of
decided personality. She was bareheaded, her full-moon face sunburnt to
a rich brown, her massive, muscular form visibly in perspiration, an
empty rucksack on her back. Her husband, at least sixty, scrawny,
sallow-faced under the cap of a forest-ranger, hobbled in her wake,
leading two rather work-broken horses. He was what one might call a
faint individual, one of those insignificant characters that fade
quickly from the memory, a creature of scanty mentality, and a veritable
cesspool of ignorance, prejudice, and superstition thrown into relief by
the virility of his forceful spouse.
The man had set out that morning from Munich to deliver the horses to a
purchaser a hundred miles away in the Bavarian hills. Poor as they were,
the animals had been sold for seven thousand marks. A first-class horse
was worth six to ten thousand nowadays, he asserted. Times had indeed
changed. A few years ago only an insane man would have paid as many
hundred. It was a hot day for the middle of May, a quick change from the
long, unusual cold spell. The crops would suffer. He didn’t mind
walking, if only beer were not so expensive when one got thirsty. Having
exhausted his scant mental reservoir with these and a few as commonplace
remarks, he fell into the rear conversationally as well as physically,
and abandoned the field to his sharp-witted spouse.
She, having more than her share of all too solid flesh to carry, had
left the afternoon before and passed the night at a wayside inn. It was
not that she was fond of such excursions nor that she could not trust
her husband away from home. While he was delivering the horses she would
go “hamstering,” buying up a ruck-sackful of food among the peasants of
that region, if any could be coaxed out of them, and they would return
by train. Fortunately, fourth-class was still cheap. Before the war she
had never dreamed of going anything but second. I broke my usual rule of
the road and mentioned my scribbling proclivities. A moment later we
were deeply engrossed in a discussion of German novelists and
dramatists. The placid, bourgeois-looking _Frau_ had read everything of
importance her literary fellow-countrymen had produced; she was by no
means ignorant of the best things in that line in the outside world.
Thrown into the crucible of her forceful mentality, the characters of
fiction had emerged as far more living beings than the men and women who
passed us now and then on the road—immensely more so, it was evident,
though she did not say so, than the husband who plodded behind us,
frankly admitting by his very attitude that we had entered waters
hopelessly beyond his depth. Of all the restrictions the war had
brought, none had struck her quite so directly as the decrease in
quality and number of the plays at Munich’s municipal theater. Luckily
they were now improving. But she always had to go alone. _He_—with a
toss of her head to the rear—didn’t care for anything but the movies. He
laughed himself sick over those. As to opera, her greatest pleasure in
life, he hadn’t the faintest conception of what it was all about. He
liked American ragtime (she pronounced it “rhakteam”), however. Still,
America had opera also, _nicht wahr_? Had not many of Germany’s best
singers gone to my country? There was Slézak, for instance, and
Schumann-Heink and Farrar....
I might have questioned her notion of the nationality of some of the
names she mentioned, but what did it matter?
Obviously it was a waste of breath to ask whether she was pleased with
the change of events that had given Germany universal suffrage for both
sexes. She had voted, of course, at the first opportunity, dragging
_him_ along with her; he had so little interest in those matters. Her
political opinions were no less decided than her artistic. Ludwig? She
had often seen him. He was rather a harmless individual, but his
position had not been harmless. It was a relief to be rid of him and all
his clan. He would have made a much better stable-boy than king. He had
wanted war just as much as had the Kaiser, whose robber-knight blood had
shown up in him. But the Kaiser had not personally been so guilty as
some others, Ludendorff, for instance ... and so on. The Crown Prince! A
clown, a disgrace to Germany. Nobody had ever loved the Crown
Prince—except the women of a certain class.
Bavaria would be much better off separated from the Empire. She was of
the opinion that the majority of Bavarians preferred it. At least they
did in her circle, though the strict Catholics—she glanced half-way over
her shoulder—perhaps did not. Republican, Sparticist, or Bolshevik—it
didn’t matter which, so long as they could get good, efficient rulers.
So far they had been deplorably weak—no real leaders. The recent
uprising in Munich had been something of a nuisance, to be sure. They
were rather glad the government troops had come. But the soldiers were
mostly Prussians, and once a Prussian gets in you can never pry him out
again.
We had reached the village of Hohenkammer, thirty-five kilometers out,
which I had chosen as my first stopping-place. My companion of an hour
shook hands with what I flattered myself was a gesture of regret that
our conversation had been so brief, fell back into step with her
movie-and-ragtime-minded husband, and the pair disappeared around the
inn that bulged into a sharp turn of the highway.
I entered the invitingly cool and homelike _Gasthaus_ prepared to be
coldly turned away. Innkeepers had often been exacting in their demands
for credentials during my earlier journeys in Germany. With the first
mug of beer, however, the portly landlady gave me permission—one can
scarcely use a stronger expression than that for the casual way in which
guests are accepted in Bavarian public-houses—to spend the night, and
that without so much as referring to registration or proofs of identity.
Then, after expressing her placid astonishment that I wanted to see it
before bedtime, she sent a muscular, barefoot, but well-scrubbed
kitchen-maid to show me into room No. 1 above. It was plainly furnished
with two small wooden bedsteads and the prime necessities, looked out on
the broad highway and a patch of rolling fields beyond, and was as
specklessly clean as are most Bavarian inns.
Rumor had it that any stranger stopping overnight in a German village
courted trouble if he neglected to report his presence to the
Bürgermeister, as he is expected to do to the police in the cities. I
had been omitting the latter formality on the strength of my
Wilhelmstrasse pass. These literal countrymen, however, might not see
the matter in the same light. Moreover, being probably the only stranger
spending the night in Hohenkammer, my presence was certain to be common
knowledge an hour after my arrival. I decided to forestall pertinent
inquiries by taking the lead in making them.
The building a few yards down the highway bearing the placard “Wohnung
des Bürgermeisters” was a simple, one-story, whitewashed cottage,
possibly the least imposing dwelling in town. These village rulers,
being chosen by popular vote within the community, are apt to be its
least pompous citizens, both because the latter do not care to accept an
unpaid office and because the “plain people” hold the voting majority.
The woman who tried in vain to silence a howling child and a barking dog
before she came to the door in answer to my knock was just a shade
better than the servant class. The husband she summoned at my request
was a peasant slightly above the general level.
He took his time in coming and greeted me coldly, a trifle sharply. One
felt the German official in his attitude, with its scorn for the mere
petitioner, the law’s underling, the subject class. Had I reported my
arrival in town in the regulation manner, he would have kept that
attitude. I should have been treated as something between a mild
criminal and an unimportant citizen whom the law had required to submit
himself to the Bürgermeister’s good pleasure. Instead, I assumed the
upper caste myself. I drew forth a visiting-card and handed it to him
with a regal gesture, at the same time addressing him in my most
haughty, university-circles German. He glanced at my unapologetic
countenance, stared at the card, then back into my stern face, his
official manner oozing slowly but steadily away, like the rotundity of a
lightly punctured tire. By the time I began to speak again he had shrunk
to his natural place in society, that of a simple, hard-working peasant
whom chance had given an official standing.
The assertion that I was a traveling correspondent meant little more to
him than did the card which he was still turning over and over in his
stubby fingers like some child’s puzzle. The Germans are not accustomed
to the go-and-hunt method of gathering information to satisfy popular
curiosity concerning the ways of foreign lands. I must find a better
excuse for coming to Hohenkammer or I should leave him as puzzled as the
card had. A brilliant idea struck me. On the strength of the “Hoover
crowd” letter in my pocket, I informed him that I was walking through
Germany to study food conditions, wording the statement in a way that
caused him to assume that I had been officially sent on such a mission.
He fell into the trap at once. From the rather neutral, unofficial, yet
unresponsive attitude to which my unexpected introduction had reduced
him he changed quickly to a bland, eager manner that showed genuine
interest. Here was an American studying food conditions; Germany was
anxiously awaiting food from America; it was up to him, as the ruler of
Hohenkammer, to put his best foot forward and give me all the
information I desired.
Here in the country, he began, people had never actually suffered for
want of food. They had lived better than he had during his four years at
the front. Fats were the only substance of which there was any serious
want. Milk was also needed, but they could get along. They did not
suffer much for lack of meat; there were tickets for it here in the
country also, but they were issued only after the meat each family got
by slaughtering its own animals had been reckoned out. Some families got
no food-tickets whatever, unless it was for bread. They were what
Germans call _Selbstversorger_ (“self-providers”)—that is, the great
majority of the peasants and all the village residents except the
shopkeepers who cultivated no land, the priest, the schoolmaster, and so
on. No, they had not received any American bacon or any other
_Lebensmittel_; every one took that to be a joke, something the Allies
were dangling before their eyes to keep them good-natured. He had never
actually believed before I turned up on this official mission for
studying the food situation that America actually meant to send food.
Yes, he had been on the western front the entire war, fifty-two months
in the trenches, and never once wounded. His first Americans he had seen
at St.-Mihiel; as soldiers they seemed to be pretty good, but of course
I must not forget that the German army was far different in 1918 from
what it was in 1914. He very much doubted whether Americans could have
driven them back in those days. More likely it would have been the
opposite.
As I turned to go he took his leave with a mixture of deference and
friendliness. He had not asked to see the papers bearing out all these
statements I had been making, but there was a hint in the depth of his
eyes that he felt it his duty to do so, if only he could venture to make
such a demand of so highly placed a personage. I went far enough away to
make sure he would not have the courage to demand them—which would have
been his first act had I approached him as a mere traveler—then turned
back, drawing the documents from a pocket as if I had just thought of
them. He glanced at them in a most apologetic manner, protesting the
while that of course he had never for an instant doubted my word, and
returned them with a deferential bow.
All in all, this plan of posing as an official scout of the
“Amerikanische Lebensmittel Kommission” had been a brilliant idea,
marked with a success that moved me to use the same innocent ruse a
score of times when any other means of gathering information might have
been frustrated. One must have a reasonable excuse for traveling on foot
in Germany. To pretend to be doing so for lack of funds would be absurd,
since fourth-class fare costs an infinitesimal sum, much less than the
least amount of food one could live on for the same distance. The only
weakness in my simple little trick was the frequent question as to why
the Americans who had sent me out on my important mission had not
furnished me a bicycle. The German roads were so good; one could cover
so much more ground on a _Fahrrad_.... Driven into that corner, there
was no other defense but to mumble something about how much more closely
the foot traveler can get in touch with the plain people, or to take
advantage of some fork in the conversation to change the subject.