During these battles I saw thousands of German prisoners, and studied
their types and physiognomy, and, by permission of Intelligence
officers, spoke with many of them in their barbed-wire cages or on the
field of battle when they came along under escort. Some of them looked
degraded, bestial men. One could imagine them guilty of the foulest
atrocities. But in the mass they seemed to me decent, simple men,
remarkably like our own lads from the Saxon counties of England, though
not quite so bright and brisk, as was only natural in their position
as prisoners, with all the misery of war in their souls. Afterward they
worked with patient industry in the prison-camps and established their
own discipline, and gave very little trouble if well handled. In each
crowd of them there were fellows who spoke perfect English, having lived
in England as waiters and hairdressers, or clerks or mechanics. It was
with them I spoke most because it was easiest, but I know enough German
to talk with the others, and I found among them all the same loathing
of war, the same bewilderment as to its causes, the same sense of being
driven by evil powers above them. The officers were different. They lost
a good deal of their arrogance, but to the last had excuses ready for
all that Germany had done, and almost to the last professed to believe
that Germany would win. Their sense of caste was in their nature. They
refused to travel in the same carriages with their men, to stay even for
an hour in the same inclosures with them. They regarded them, for the
most part, as inferior beings. And there were castes even among the
officers. I remember that in the last phase, when we captured a number
of cavalry officers, these elegant sky-blue fellows held aloof from the
infantry officers and would not mix with them. One of them paced up and
down all night alone, and all next day, stiff in the corsets below that
sky-blue uniform, not speaking to a soul, though within a few yards of
him were many officers of infantry regiments.
Our men treated their prisoners, nearly always, after the blood of
battle was out of their eyes, with a good--natured kindness that
astonished the Germans themselves. I have seen them filling German
water-bottles at considerable trouble, and the escorts, two or three to
a big batch of men, were utterly trustful of them. “Here, hold my rifle,
Fritz,” said one of our men, getting down from a truck-train to greet a
friend.
An officer standing by took notice of this.
“Take your rifle back at once! Is that the way to guard your prisoners?”
Our man was astonished.
“Lor' bless you, sir, they don't want no guarding. They're glad to be
took. They guard themselves.”
“Your men are extraordinary,” a German officer told me. “They asked me
whether I would care to go down at once or wait till the barrage had
passed.”
He seemed amazed at that thoughtfulness for his comfort. It was in the
early days of the Somme fighting, and crowds of our men stood on the
banks above a sunken road, watching the prisoners coming down. This
officer who spoke to me had an Iron Cross, and the men wanted to see it
and handle it.
“Will they give it back again?” he asked, nervously, fumbling at the
ribbon.
“Certainly,” I assured him.
He handed it to me, and I gave it to the men, who passed it from one to
the other and then back to the owner.
“Your men are extraordinary,” he said. “They are wonderful.”
One of the most interesting prisoners I met on the field of battle was
a tall, black-bearded man whom I saw walking away from La Boisselle when
that place was smoking with shell-bursts. An English soldier was on each
side of him, and each man carried a hand-bag, while this black-bearded
giant chatted with them.
It was a strange group, and I edged nearer to them and spoke to one of
the men.
“Who's this? Why do you carry his bags?”
“Oh, we're giving him special privileges,” said the man. “He stayed
behind to look after our wounded. Said his job was to look after
wounded, whoever they were. So there he's been, in a dugout bandaging
our lads; and no joke, either. It's hell up there. We're glad to get out
of it.”
I spoke to the German doctor and walked with him. He discussed the
philosophy of the war simply and with what seemed like sincerity.
“This war!” he said, with a sad, ironical laugh. “We go on killing
one another-to no purpose. Europe is being bled to death and will
be impoverished for long years. We Germans thought it was a war for
Kultur--our civilization. Now we know it is a war against Kultur,
against religion, against all civilization.”
“How will it end?” I asked him.
“I see no end to it,” he answered. “It is the suicide of nations.
Germany is strong, and England is strong, and France is strong. It is
impossible for one side to crush the other, so when is the end to come?”
I met many other prisoners then and a year afterward who could see no
end of the massacre. They believed the war would go on until living
humanity on all sides revolted from the unceasing sacrifice. In the
autumn of 1918, when at last the end came in sight, by German defeat,
unexpected a few months before even by the greatest optimist in the
British armies, the German soldiers were glad. They did not care how
the war ended so long as it ended. Defeat? What did that matter? Was it
worse to be defeated than for the race to perish by bleeding to death?