Thin, sickly, with a stoop, a sallow complexion, a timid and plaintive
expression, this Jew is the most unobtrusive of men. He seems afraid of
taking up too much room. When spoken to he is abashed and stammers. He
never asks for anything. He is always content. If you merely smile at
him, he looks at you humbly, with a dumb, gentle gratitude.
As he knows some German, I have been able to talk to him. He is a
good little soul, peaceful and inoffensive, rather dull-witted. He
contemplates the knout and the pogroms without indignation, accepting
them as a farmer accepts hail. The only pleasure he knows is the negative
one of being left unnoticed, of being forgotten, but this pleasure he
welcomes as a wonderful act of grace. In a word, he is one of the humble
of heart to whom the Rabbi rejected of the rabbis has promised the
kingdom of heaven.
One day, when I was bringing him an orange, his compatriots leapt upon me
from their palliasses, surrounding me and restraining me by force from
approaching the Jew, pointing him out with a gesture of disgust, as if to
preserve me from a horrible contagion.
“Jew! Jew!” they cried with flashing eyes.
They were all speaking at once, so that I was bewildered by their
volubility and their passionate gesticulations. Desiring to clear up the
difficulty, I sought an interpreter, and as soon as we returned, the
cries were redoubled.
“What are they all saying?” I demanded of Issajoff, the interpreter. “Why
are they holding me back like this?”
Issajoff smiled. “Here is something,” he said, “which wins me over to
France! You’re astonished that these Russians prevent you giving help
to a Jew, that they insist on assuring you that he is a Jew. To them
it seems self-evident that as soon as you know him to be a Jew you will
no longer wish to give him anything, but will treat him as a leper, a
pariah, a damned soul!”
The Russians continued to scream, to look murderously at the Jew, to
shake their fists at him. As for him, with his customary air of dull
indifference, he remained quietly in his own corner behind the door,
beside the dustbin and the spittoon, the dirtiest and dampest corner of
the casemate.
Said Issajoff: “They say to him, ‘You have crucified our Lord Jesus
Christ’—‘I have defiled your mother’—this is the grossest insult in our
language. They also say to him, ‘You love the Germans; if you could,
you would have shot us.’ They also say: ‘If you accept the Frenchman’s
present, we will flay you alive!’”
Issajoff is a revolutionist—and a Jew, although he keeps this last fact
to himself. Coldly and deliberately he reported to me his comrades’
words. But the vague smile which played over his large features indicated
irony and contempt.
“You really find this scene surprising?” he resumed.
I contemplated these disciples of the Christ, all yapping at this poor
wretch. For the first time in my life I found my Christianity a heavy
burden.
I went up to Kajedan. I pressed him by the hand and gave him the orange.
I wanted to give him the contents of my cigarette case, but he said
he did not smoke. “Well, give them to your friends.” He did so. The
Russians greedily seized the _papirosy_. They threw themselves on their
palliasses, and, forgetting to avenge their God any longer, they gave
themselves up to the delights of tobacco.
VASSILI
_July 1, 1915._
I am Vassili’s _barin_ (seigneur). He polishes my shoes; every morning,
in the court, he brings me water for my “teube”; he picks up balls for
me in our extemporized game of tennis; if I am thirsty, he runs to the
well; if the cloth of my worn trousers, too skimpy for me (the government
has never been able to supply me with trousers suited to my figure),
gives way during an unusually vigorous movement of Swedish gymnastics, he
promptly threads a needle and repairs the damage; he watches over me as
one watches milk on the boil; no valet has ever served me so well. But
what constrains him?
Were I to forbid him to serve me, he would shed bitter tears. Have I
ever given him an order? Have I ever been short with him? Is Vassili my
valet or my friend? He no longer kisses my hands, he no longer kisses my
lips, he no longer kisses the ground where I have trod. He has given up
these moujik ways. He simply shakes hands with me. When I am at work,
he sits on my ration-chest or stands at the window, smoking _papirosy_
(cigarettes), and looking at the illustrations in my books. When he likes
them he exclaims “_Harosho, harosho!_” (good, good). But always I feel
his faithful Siberian eye upon me. He divines the least of my wishes. Do
I need a book? He knows perfectly to whom it has been lent. He jumps up,
runs along the corridors, finds the man, maybe in his casemate, maybe
beneath the shade of a poplar, maybe in one of the ditches, explains
himself in nigger talk, and, breathless and perspiring, comes back to me
with the prize. It can hardly be said that we converse; the difficulties
are too great. We look at one another, and we smile. He gives me
everything he can; I respond in kind. He works; I work. He serves me; I
serve him. I know how to read and write; I can influence the _Feldwebel_;
and I can ask my relatives and friends in France to send me things. For
his part, he knows how to darn, patch, fetch water, wash up. Thus, side
by side, each at his own task, we both work. He imagines that I am a
_barin_, in which he is mistaken, and that I love him, in which he is
not mistaken. For my part, I regard him as a good fellow from Tomsk, who
pines for his _izba_ (cottage) and his wife, and I would like to send him
back to them in good condition when his imprisonment is over.
THE COMMON PEOPLE OF GERMANY AND THE WAR
_July 7, 1915._
It has lasted for eleven months. How much longer will it continue?
Our sentries are even more impatient than we are ourselves. They grumble
and faultfind. “It is too bad!” they exclaim. “Do you think it will be
over in a month?” they ask us. “Pooh!” we answer; “in a year perhaps, or
maybe two, when we have conquered the autocracy which tyrannizes over
you!” They stare at us blankly, utterly disheartened.
These poor fellows are suffering. They have many children, six, seven,
or eight. Their savings are exhausted, and the wolf is at the door. When
we are marching to work, they recount their troubles to Brissot and to
me, confidingly and deferentially, as they would to an elder brother.
They are good by nature, simple-minded, somewhat subservient, weighted by
innumerable centuries of silent submission. One perceives so clearly that
they have not effected their revolution, and that despite parliamentary
suffrage and the Reichstag they are still under the dominion of the
feudal age.
Through studying them closely, and through talking with them, it seems to
me that I am beginning to understand this huge and mysterious Germany. I
knew something of the élite of the country, but was quite ignorant of the
common people, workmen, peasants, and lower middle class. But these are
the backbone of Germany.
How different is their world from ours! In France we read the paper; we
have political ideas; we influence the appointment of ministers; we take
sides passionately, for or against Pelletan, for or against Clemenceau,
for or against Poincaré; every one of our village orators has good advice
to give to our admirals, our generals, and our diplomats. How unlike
Germany! Nothing can equal the ignorance of these folk in public matters.
Think of a French agriculturist of the days of Louis XIV, hardworking and
kindly, engrossed in domestic cares, knowing that it is hard to gain a
livelihood and occupied in this pursuit by day and by night; accepting
princes, seigneurs, taxes, corvées, and wars as one accepts sunshine,
rain, hail, and frost, without venturing to pass any judgment upon them;
saying that these things have been, are, and will be, that he himself is
but a poor man, that every one has his own trade, that it is the king’s
to govern and his to provide a living for his family; there you have the
political essence of the German peasant and the German workman. Monarchy,
republic, foreign relations, double alliance or triple alliance—don’t
waste your time talking to him about these. Should you do so, he will
listen, he will express a civil assent, and will fall asleep over his
beer.
A Frenchman cannot understand how utterly indifferent are the common
people in Germany to political ideas and to questions of state. A
Frenchman, whether he knows it or not, and even if he believes himself to
be a monarchist, reasons like a leader. He speaks as if he were himself
a part of the king, and a considerable part. He eagerly discusses the
affairs of the country. Militarist or anti-militarist, he is patriotic to
the core—patriotic like the sovereign he is. Should the foreigner insult
France, he is personally insulted; this is his own business; the offence
is not offered to some distant prince; it touches himself, the individual
king; it makes his own skin tingle. This was obvious at the mobilization;
it remains obvious after a year of war. It is not simply a caste which
detests the Kaiser and his satellites and wishes to subdue them; these
feelings animate every Frenchman, be he minister or cobbler. For France,
one and indivisible, is truly _a free nation_, a collection of autonomous
individuals who have determined to live together, who know themselves to
have been entrusted with the most exalted of human missions, and each one
of whom makes the fulfilment of that mission a point of personal honour.
How different is Germany! The country possesses an élite of persons well
equipped for administration and rule, and this endows her national life
with a fine aspect of cohesion. But directly we examine more closely,
doubts arise; we see that the cohesion is no more than apparent; there
are those who theorize about Germany as a whole, but there is not
_one_ Germany; between the people and the leaders there is no intimate
solidarity, no communion of love, hope, and will. Above, there is an
empyrean of men who believe themselves superhuman, who utter claims,
trace plans, issue orders (_Befehle_), who, as if at section drill,
thunder out commands to Germany and to the world at large; below, there
is a swarm of good and peaceable folk, all engaged in their insignificant
private affairs, and making no attempt to interfere in the loftier
mysteries.
Doubtless, in the lower regions, respect is felt for the empyrean; people
tremble before it, as before the eye of God; but there is no risk that
they will attempt to penetrate its designs. They are faithful subjects,
and they obey. They are soldiers when the time comes for enrolment,
and good soldiers; when the order for mobilization is issued, they go
to the war; when the ritual demands it, they shout hurrahs “for king
and country.” But at bottom, if words have any meaning, they are not
patriots. Militarists, yes; easily regimented, yes; patriots, no.
It is true that they would be greatly astonished if any one were to
say to them point-blank: “You don’t care a fig for your country!” They
all believe themselves to be good, honest, and loyal Germans. Are
they not obedient to the death? Certainly they are. But they would be
equally obedient, with very little feeling of disturbance at the change,
to George V or to Poincaré; and they would obey just as well in a
republic as in a monarchy. It is not their business to be patriots (for
this presupposes a degree of liberty, and of internal sovereignty, to
which they have not yet attained), but to be good subjects. To obey,
unfailingly and without discussion; to abase themselves devoutly before
authority; to be subservient to their leader, whoever he may be; to
carry out orders whencesoever derived, be they democratic or be they
Cæsarian—this it is to be a good German. Active as he is in private
affairs, he is passive in religion, with a sort of mystical fervour,
and he is passive in his relationships to authority. The Germans hardly
realize this, and yet to us it is so obvious.
Here is an example. On one occasion I, a prisoner of war, roundly
reprimanded a sentry, reproaching him with disobedience to orders.
Secretly I was laughing, but the sentry trembled. Standing at attention
as if confronted by an officer, he trembled before the majesty of the
command, the _Befehl_. I had issued an order, and that is why he stood
to attention; there he was, submissive, stupefied with willingness;
he forgot that I was a Frenchman, subject to his orders, that the
regulations forbade me to speak to him, that he should have charged
bayonet and touched me with the steel, even run me through. No, I
had issued an order; the man who commands, who gives a _Befehl_, is
sacrosanct for the German.
The reason is that the German has never emerged from private life. He
lives in his house, on his land, in his factory, his tavern, his church;
he lives with his family, with a few friends, with his professional
associates. He makes his life there as agreeable as possible; he is
an able domestic economist, knowing well how to adorn his residence,
his table, his savings bank. The currents of modern life, socialism,
liberalism, materialism, the religion of comfort and of hygiene, have
developed his practical aptitudes to an unimaginable extent, to a degree
unsuspected in France. But no current of modern life has induced him to
touch the holy of holies, the government; to discuss the constitution,
the bureaucracy, or the army; to investigate the essential problems of
political life. Even the boldest among them does not lose his veneration
for constituted authority. In fine, there is but one domain in which
he is free, that of economic life. Here, therefore, his energy is
concentrated, and within this sphere his thoughts are confined. Here he
is master; here none can equal him in perseverance and tenacity; here he
risks everything and makes trial of everything; unceasingly he innovates;
he is hindered by no prejudice: the poverty of recent days spurs him on
and makes wealth seem marvellously appetizing; in a decade he transforms
a province; in three decades he makes of Germany a fragment of America
in the heart of Europe. We are forced to recognize that Germany is the
“Marius’s mule” of the economic world.
But this suffices him. Formerly he possessed the clouds, but he has
bartered the inheritance for the markets of the world. He boasted of
being Greek, but he is now content to be Carthaginian. He makes money,
and he knows nothing more.
And authority? Does he not know authority? Yes, he knows it, but as
something grand and remote, as a sort of divinity which might do him
harm, and which he must render favourable or at least indifferent. He
knows it as an average Christian knows the invisible. He believes in it,
but continues to mind his own business; he is not jealous of it and has
no desire to share its exercise; he gives it his confidence, and pays it
a certain worship of an unexacting character; above all, he asks that
authority should help him to make money; in that case he finds everything
good—the Kaiser, the bureaucracy, the army.
This utilitarian loyalty is especially characteristic of the wealthy
German. As far as those of small means are concerned, they recognize
that outside private life, beyond the family, the factory, the tavern,
and the trade-union, there exists something that is great, divine,
and unknowable. In the highest degree of the unknowable, in close
proximity to God, the saints, and the hero Siegfried, there exists
authority: emperor, princes, generals, diplomatists, ministers. All
this is an immense and unfathomable ocean, primitive and sacred; but
he, poor mollusc, rooted to his rock, is concerned solely with the tiny
region upon which his valves open. And when the terrible convulsion
of the powers of the abyss, of the sceptred, gold-laced, and helmeted
majesties, rages athwart him, shaking his frail habitation, he trembles,
simultaneously inspired with dread and with love, and he murmurs his
abjection and his devotion in inarticulate words. When all is over,
forgetting the gods that have passed, the gods that glitter, shout at
him, and sometimes kick and chastise him, he conscientiously resumes the
task of loving his wife, of procreating as many children and of earning
as many marks as possible.
After all, the German of no account is utilitarian in his loyalty. He
does not, like the wealthy German, demand that his government shall
deliver the universe into his hands, so that he may inundate it with
wares great and small “made in Germany.” He is less exacting. He asks
merely for work and a livelihood. But upon this his desire is firmly
fixed. He has become accustomed to a certain degree of comfort—quite
recently, it is true, but the newest pleasure is ever the most
attractive. He wants to get his belly well-lined during the week, and
to be able on Sundays to go with his _gnädige Frau_ and his quiverful
of children, all smartly dressed, to drain several dozen tankards of
beer, and to spend the entire afternoon, laughing boisterously, in the
arbours of neighbouring _Wirtschaften_. He likes to think proudly that
his father lived in poverty, but that he lives at ease. He likes to
imagine that no workman in the world is happier than the German workman.
As long as he has a full stomach, he can believe that all is well. The
government can do what it likes, can ally itself to Austria or to France,
can be licentious or strait-laced, can obey or disobey the Reichstag. He
himself, trusty Michael, is well off. Germany, therefore, is great, the
world is perfect.
I have gradually been able to fathom this state of mind through more
or less clandestine conversations with the soldiers who guard us and
the peasants who employ us at twenty pfennig for the day of nine hours.
Notwithstanding all the patriotic songs with which the recruits make
the roads resound, and notwithstanding all the pratings of the pulpit
and the school, I am now confident that the affairs of the fatherland
are not Michael’s affairs. Whether it be that the degree of economic
emancipation he has attained supplements or reinforces his ingrained
instinct of submission to authority, in any case, the ancient sentiment,
quasi-religious in nature, and the new sentiment, thoroughly utilitarian,
lead to the same result, a concern with nothing but private affairs,
political indifference, so that one can even say that in the world of
politics the common German is a mere cipher.
This state of mind has its advantages. It is favourable to the
maintenance of public order. Since everyone rests content in his own
sphere, there is no friction, there is no waste of energy, no mutual
suspicion between the classes. Authority, certain of its durability,
can take long views, it has elbow-room. Whilst those in authority are
loved, they can give themselves up to their natural bent, which is to
regulate—to regulate the workman at home, the employer abroad; to wrap
themselves in purple, to cut a dash, to astonish the universe. All these
things are done for their own sake, for the pleasure they give, but they
serve also to shed a reflected glory on German commerce. This political
nullity of the crowd has hitherto had good results. But hitherto the
crowd has consisted of fat kine. Association with the worthy Michael day
after day in these times when every one is rationed, when poverty and
death stalk abroad, has led me to think that the political nullity of
the people, precious to those in authority, is hardly likely to produce
a tenacious and trustworthy patriotism, and that in the long run it may
well eventuate in disaster.
* * * * *
For nearly a year I have been studying life in this corner of Germany.
I observe, I ask questions, and I listen. They are now quite tamed. No
longer do they cry death on us. No longer do they call out _kaput_,
except as a joke. In the villages, when the working gang arrives, the
children flock to the scene from all directions, bare-footed, somewhat
timid, at once shy and smiling. They have heard their fathers say that
the French are splendid soldiers, “the only ones who can hold their
ground against the grey-blues.” The description has raised us in these
youngsters’ esteem. They know, too, that we receive parcels, many
parcels. They believe us to be extraordinarily wealthy. The gossips even
state with definite assurance that there are six millionaires and one
multi-millionaire at Fort Orff; and, for what reason I know not, I am
the multi-millionaire. This little world is astonished that persons of
such eminence, terrible on the battlefield, should be so friendly with
their humble selves. The German bourgeois and the junkers, we gather,
have less agreeable manners. Finally, the villagers have been informed
that our prison society is a true republic, that we have suppressed
all distinctions of fortune, that the “sans-parcels” gain just as much
advantage from the coming of the French mail as the “little-parcels” and
the “big-parcels.” This communism, natural as it seems to us, touches and
vanquishes them.
The fact is that the children and the members of the working gang
fraternize. Some of the poor women secretly offer us an apple or an
egg. The old men salute us humbly. One of us was addressed as “Most
honoured sir,” another as “Highly well-born sir.” Even those who have
been discharged from service on account of severe wounds, men with empty
sleeves and horribly scarred faces, no longer glare at us with the
murderous hatred they showed at the outset.
At Ingolstadt, when we are waiting for our parcels in the square in
front of the _Kommandantur_, civilians come and go before our group and
converse with us. The women are particularly attentive. They recognize
monsieur Pierre, “who had a frightful wound, and who, God be thanked, is
now quite well again”; monsieur Paul, “who …”; monsieur Jacques, “who
…” They smile broadly when we call them to order, quoting to them the
phrases in which one of the newspapers the night before has censured
them for their friendliness to the prisoners. Little do they care what
the papers say. The sentry growls at them, but they tell him to his face
that the _Franzosen_ are pre-eminently “cholis” and “chantils.” Some of
the better educated go so far as to admit that “a red-trousers is worth
quite as much as a _Feldgrau_,” and that “it is all nonsense to say, as
people do, that France is decadent.”
Yesterday, some of the gang were talking to a hoary-headed postman.
“Well, daddy, how goes it?” said Bracke, who can speak the Franconian
patois.
“Very well, gentlemen, very well!” There he stood, not knowing what to
say. He had taken off his _Mütze_ and was wiping his forehead to keep
himself in countenance. Then, all at once:
“It grieves me,” stammering slightly, “to think that we are at war with
you.…”
“Nou, nou, old chap, we’re not at war with you! Our quarrel is with the
big guns of your country. They’re a bad lot; they oppress you, and would
like to oppress the whole world. But you’re a _poteau_! (_Du bist ein
poteau_).”
“_Poteau_, what’s that?”
“A comrade, a chum.”
The postman had tears in his eyes. “Ah,” he exclaimed, “it does me good
to hear you say that. I love the French. You are so awfully nice to every
one. You don’t despise the common people.”
“Here, old general, here’s a cheroot which my missus has sent me. Happily
France keeps us supplied, as you know. All the same, we intend to give a
good hiding to your old Kaiser and all your bigwigs. We are republican.
Liberty, equality, and fraternity. Live and let live is our motto. But
any one who meddles with us had better look out. Damn it all! why don’t
you kick your dirty old Kaiser into the sewer? Never mind! We shall set
you free, and be jolly quick about it.”
The postman, dumbfounded, lit his cigar at the wrong end.