Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Sidenotes are identified as: [SN: text of sidenote].
The listed Errata have been corrected in the text.
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
BOCHE AND BOLSHEVIK
* * * * *
BOCHE AND BOLSHEVIK
_EXPERIENCES OF AN ENGLISHMAN
IN THE GERMAN ARMY AND
IN RUSSIAN PRISONS_
BY HEREWARD T. PRICE
M.A. (OXON.), PH.D. (BONN)
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1919
* * * * *
[_All rights reserved_]
* * * * *
ERRATA.
Page 2, line 19, delete “of” at end of line.
Page 54, line 1, _read_ “insolent expression of mocking pity,”
_not_ “piety.”
Page 91, line 6, _read_ “oases,” _not_ “cases.”
Page 134, line 6, _insert_ “but” _before_ “was.”
Page 145, line 16, _read_ “justified,” _not_ “satisfied.”
Page 145, line 26, _read_ “Herrman,” _not_ “Harman.”
Page 226, line 2, _after_ “so,” inverted commas (so”).
Page 231, line 3, _insert_ “at” _before_ “any rate.”
PREFACE
The present book reprints a series of articles which appeared in the
_China Illustrated Weekly_ from November, 1918, to February, 1919. This
accounts for certain allusions, which I have not altered, as they are
unimportant and fill no large space in the narrative. My thanks are due
to H. G. Woodhead, Esq., the Editor of the _China Illustrated Weekly_,
for the help he has given me in publishing these articles.
H. T. PRICE.
TIENTSIN.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE v
I. MANUFACTURING PUBLIC OPINION 1
II. LIES AND SPIES 15
III. THE TREATMENT OF THE ENGLISH IN GERMANY 28
IV. IN THE ARMY 37
V. THE GERMAN ARMY IN THE FIELD 55
VI. IN CAPTIVITY 95
VII. SIBERIA 128
VIII. CAMOUFLAGE 150
IX. HUMAN NATURE 169
X. PROPAGANDA 189
XI. THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT 207
APPENDIX: WHAT BOLSHEVISM MEANS 235
INDEX 245
* * * * *
BOCHE AND BOLSHEVIK
CHAPTER I MANUFACTURING PUBLIC OPINION
When war broke out I was picking late cherries in our garden near the
Rhine. A boy came by with the news on a flysheet. I ran and bought
a paper and then told our gardener’s wife. Her face went pinched
and white, for she was the mother of many sons; but she only pulled
her shawl a little tighter round her shoulders, and then, with the
immemorial stoicism of the peasant, turned to her work again. She
remembered the days of “seventy,” when, as she often used to tell us,
the regimental bands had to play their loudest in order to drown the
sobs of the women as the troops marched to the station.
No such memories haunted the bulk of the German people. The whole
of Bonn was delirious with joy at the declaration of war. They were
absolutely certain of victory, and already treated foreigners, and
especially Englishmen, with withering contempt. They seemed to be glad
to throw off the mask they had been wearing for years. The Great Day
had arrived when Germany was to reach a pinnacle of glory unattained
by any other nation in history. She was to become the arbitress of the
destinies of the whole human race. This, at any rate, was the feeling
that chiefly struck foreign observers. But I do not think we shall
ever do justice to the Germans until we realize that for most of them
the war came as a surprise. To the very last they thought the crisis
would pass over as so many others had done. I can best illustrate the
prevailing mood by what happened to myself. The day before Germany
was declared in a state of war, I bade good-bye to my students for
the term, and said I hoped no war would prevent us from meeting again
in October as usual. I was answered by a loud burst of laughter. Yet
even while I was speaking a detachment of troops was marching past
the University in order to take up a position guarding the bridge
across the Rhine. The intoxication of the Germans at the opening of
hostilities was the natural reaction from the long years of strain and
preparation for war, and it was the more violent because it was so
unexpected.
[SN: DOCTRINE OF WAR]
It is difficult for Englishmen to understand how all those years the
Germans lived in the shadow of war. Every student of German affairs
knows that the Government controlled the organs of public opinion and
with what fine cunning and persistence it infected the national mind
with its doctrine of war. I am concerned here only to give a few
instances of how the poison worked. When I came back to Bonn from my
first summer vacation in 1905, my chief asked me what people in England
were saying about the war. “What war?” I answered. “Why,” he said, “the
war between England and Germany.” So accustomed had they become to the
idea of this war, that long before it broke out, they spoke of it as
something present and real. Extremely instructive were the antics of
the German Government after the publication of the interview with the
Kaiser in the _Daily Telegraph_ in 1908. It will be remembered that the
German people were furious because in this interview the Kaiser denied
that the German Fleet was to be used against England, alleging it was
for use against Japan. The nation felt it had been tricked, because it
would not have spent so much money to provide against a war with Japan.
To allay the excitement, the Government sent round an article to the
little provincial papers, intimating that the Kaiser’s interview was a
well-intentioned effort to befool the English. Then it went on to say
in so many words: our fleet is not intended to be used against Japan,
it is intended to be used if England should ever introduce Protection
and Colonial Preference. Our fleet must be so strong that England would
never dare to embark on such a policy. This article did not, of course,
appear in the leading journals, because then it would have attracted
too much attention in England. As it is, it appears to have gone
unnoticed.
[SN: PRINCE OSKAR]
But this affair of the interview had another and more interesting
sequel. One of the Kaiser’s sons, Prince Oskar, was at the time a
student at Bonn. Every November the Rector of the University gave a
great inauguration dinner, and the guest of highest rank present had to
propose the toast of the Kaiser. Usually the Princes request some one
else to do it for them, because most of them are incapable of making
even the simplest speech. But, to the surprise of everybody, this year
Prince Oskar rose to speak, and the wonder grew when it became obvious
that the speech had been written for him by his father. In veiled
language, the meaning of which, however, was clear, the interview was
thrown over, and we were told to prepare for war. Now, Prince Oskar
had been my pupil, and the fact that I should be present at the dinner
had not escaped the attention of whoever prepared the speech. So after
he had sat down, Prince Oskar tore off a corner of his menu card and
sent me a note to the effect that he wished to drink my health. We
accordingly raised glasses and drank to one another across the crowded
hall. I still have the “scrap of paper” in my possession--a lasting
testimony to the tortuous diplomacy of the Hohenzollerns.
This is, perhaps, the best place to state what I learned of the
character of Prince Oskar and his associates. He had been very strictly
brought up, in seclusion, somewhere in the country. So well had he been
looked after that till he was twenty-one he had never been in Berlin
alone. He had all the traditional piety of the Prussian Junker, the
piety that made Bismarck, in applying for the hand of his future wife,
write a long letter stating his religious beliefs in full. I can best
illustrate his character by repeating his argument in favour of the
existence of ghosts. “What I say is, with God everything is possible.
If He wanted to make ghosts, He could. What is the difficulty, then?
Of course there are such things as ghosts!” The ingenuous youth failed
to see that by the same reasoning one could prove the existence of
griffins, dragons, the unicorn, winged horses, sea-serpents, and Mrs.
Harris. He was generally considered by the professors at Bonn the
most intelligent Hohenzollern that had visited the University. His
conversation was about country life and sport, and, above all, the
army. He was a soldier through and through, and the army was his life.
He often expressed a wish to die on the battlefield, shot through the
heart. This wish has not been gratified. His health broke down in
the first year of the war, and he was invalided. Afterwards he was
appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Home Forces. He has distinguished
himself in this position by starving his soldiers and then telling
them to go to the front if they wanted anything to eat. His God was
“our good old German God,” a Being as horrible as Moloch and as stupid
as Mumbo-Jumbo. But at any rate Oskar was sincere, and there are no
scandals about him as there are about the Crown Prince, who, to quote
the German phrase, departed from Bonn like the devil, leaving a smell
behind him.
Prince Oskar may be forgiven for the crudeness of his religion, because
his teachers were even worse than he. At the end of the Semester he
used to give a dinner to all his tutors. The chief guest was one Zorn,
a Prussian who had been imported from North Germany to teach the
Princes law, because the Rhinelanders were not supple enough. Zorn
twice represented Germany at the Hague Conferences, and I believe he
is a recognized authority on International Law. During the dinner the
Prince had occasion to speak of his sister’s aptitude for mathematics.
“Why,” he said, “she is quite silly; she actually loves the stuff.”
Zorn immediately chimed in. “My daughter is like that; my daughter is
silly too. She _likes_ mathematics. When I get home I shall tell her
how silly Her Royal Highness your sister is, and I am sure she will
be most sympathetically touched to hear that Her Royal Highness is as
silly as herself.” Thus are compliments paid in the Land of Culture.
Afterwards we went out on to the terrace, and Zorn monopolized the
conversation. He delivered two lectures, the first a warning against
humour. He advised us never to make jokes in our lectures, humour and
science being incompatible. He added, “I never joke.” Then he went
on to prove the impossibility of doubting the existence of God. He
railed against mathematicians for being atheists, although they every
day assume the existence of quantities without proof. Why could they
not assume the existence of God? Needless to say this champion of
Prussian piety was one of the first to rush into print with a defence
of Germany’s action in Belgium. I have no doubt that, if he is alive
now, he is still writing pamphlets in honour of frightfulness. When we
remember that their instructors, the very flower of the nation, men
with European reputations for scholarship, are of such common clay, can
we be surprised at what the Hohenzollerns do?
[SN: HAGUE CONFERENCES]
Much of the talk that went on that night is interesting now, especially
in the light of what has happened since. Zorn frankly admitted that
the ill-success of the Hague Conferences was due to Germany. “Much
more might have been attained,” he said, “if only _we_ had wished.”
His estimates of the English representatives are worth recording. “Fry
was only a good frame to the picture. For Satow we had the greatest
respect. He was a hard nut to crack. He gave us more trouble than all
your men put together.” But he spoke with most admiration of Fisher.
It was a curious thing, because Zorn speaks no English and Fisher
apparently no German, but such was the open breeziness and cordiality
of Fisher’s manner, that the two became fast friends. Then the talk
wandered to the relations between France and Germany, and we skated on
thin ice, because both an Englishman and Frenchman were present. But it
was obvious that an attempt was being planned to draw France over to
Germany’s side by representing to her that an alliance with England was
not worth while, as she would only be pulling the English chestnuts out
of the fire. Finally, one of the Prince’s aides, Major Graf von Dohna,
gave me his impressions of the Boxer expedition. “Of course,” he said,
“each army thinks its officers the best. We think ours the best, as you
do yours. But there is one thing where you are undoubtedly superior to
us, and that is in the relations between the officers and the men. Your
officers get on with their men much better than ours do.” He deplored
the English attachment to sport, saying that the Tommies, whenever they
had a free moment, got out a football and began kicking it about. But
the Japs spent every minute of their spare time watching the German
drill, greedy to learn whatever new details they could.
[SN: MOROCCO CRISIS]
To come back to where I started from. No one could deny the strong
agitation going on against England, but not till after the Morocco
crisis of 1911 did I think it meant war. We are now so much accustomed
to the idea of war that it is hard to realize that there was a time
when it seemed fantastic. Panic-mongering is a favourite sport of
European Governments, and the methods employed in Germany were not so
different from those of other countries. Moreover, a considerable body
of public opinion was opposed to war. Those great export houses whose
business depended upon England’s good-will, were especially eager to
maintain friendly relations. The Kaiser and his family were unpopular
in Rhineland, perhaps because this province has never been thoroughly
Prussianized, perhaps for other reasons. When the Crown Prince paid a
visit to Cologne, once, no preparations were undertaken to give him
a grand reception, on the ground that as yet he had done nothing for
Germany. Things never seemed to me to be so bad between England and
Germany as they had been between England and Russia, and I imagined
there would always be enough common sense in both countries to avoid
the supreme folly of war. It is easy to see now that I underestimated
the power of the court and rated far too high the influence of public
opinion. I forgot, too, how easy it is to manufacture public opinion,
when occasion demands.
In 1911 I married, got naturalized (after many fruitless endeavours
to obtain a post in England), and settled down to spending my life in
Germany with the full inner certainty that the peace would be kept. And
then came the Morocco debates in the Reichstag, and it was obvious to
every one that war was inevitable.
The Morocco crisis was admirably utilized by the German Government.
It definitely swung round the great mass of public opinion against
England. Its first fruits were an increase in the Naval Estimates
which otherwise would have been impossible. The Government took
courage and became far more cynical in its agitation than before. For
instance, one year the International Yacht Races were held in Germany.
Several English yachts took part and an English peer gave a cup to be
competed for. The Kaiser, of course, attended and greeted the English
with a speech of welcome, in which the usual platitudes were said.
Immediately the German provincial papers were flooded with articles
pointing out that the Kaiser was bound as host to say something nice
to Germany’s guests, and that his words of friendship really meant
nothing and were not to be taken seriously. The Government understood
the fine art of inflaming the people’s passions and so contrived their
news that everything that happened in England seemed to be a personal
insult to Germany. For example, the launching of a new battleship
would be announced in thick type and the ordinary Philistine reading
his newspaper would somehow get the feeling that here was another sly
trick of perfidious Albion. Everything that tended to the discredit of
England was dragged in and made much of.
[SN: ENGLAND INCAPABLE]
The vagaries of the Suffragettes and the dangers of the Irish situation
were Heaven-sent gifts for the Germans. When the Germans were accused
of ravaging Belgium, they answered with a detailed calculation,
proving, to their own satisfaction at any rate, that they had not
destroyed half so much as the Suffragettes. The political situation
was exploited so as to make the Germans believe that the English were
incapable of any great effort. They could not even control their women!
How could they face the Germans, then? Every month the reviews proved
that the British Empire would fall to pieces at the first touch of war.
At the same time the blame for the enmity between England and Germany
was entirely thrown on England. England wanted all the German colonies.
England wanted German trade. England wanted a war so as to divert
public attention from the Suffragettes and the wild Irish. Germany
desired nothing so much as to live in peace, only her wicked neighbours
would not let her. The Lichnowsky Memoirs had not yet been published,
and Dr. Mühlon was still an official at Krupp’s.
Conversations, that I was able to enjoy from time to time with
official persons, threw a lurid light on all this agitation. The
building of strategic railways all converging on the Belgian frontier
was a matter of frequent discussion. I remember at a wedding-breakfast
in 1913 sitting at the same table with a young lieutenant of artillery
who had just been commanded to a munition factory near Bonn. He looked
pale and worn-out, and explained that the factory was working day
and night. Germany was two years ahead of France and Russia in its
preparations and, as soon as it was ready, would go to war. We asked
when that would be. “When the changes in the Kiel Canal and Cologne
railway station are finished,” he answered. “At present our new
Dreadnoughts cannot pass through the canal, and we cannot mobilize our
troops quickly enough with Cologne station as it is.” He was the best
of prophets. The rebuilding of the canal and of the station were both
finished in July, 1914, and in that month Germany declared war.
[SN: SURPRISE OF WAR]
But, you will say, how in the face of these facts can you declare that
the war took the German people by surprise? Well, we all know that we
are going to die, but we should be surprised to die just now. For the
Germans, the war was a watched pot that had forgotten to boil. The
newspapers were managed with exquisite cleverness during the crisis
preceding the outbreak of hostilities. The German Government was going
to proclaim war. Very well, then, they said, let us represent the
matter as if peace were fairly certain, and as if the only obstacles
in the way are the contumacy of a petty country like Serbia and the
corrupt ambitions of the Russian Grand Dukes. On the very day war
was declared, the _Cologne Gazette_ solemnly assured the Belgian
people that the stories as to German intentions of invading Belgium
were only British or French inventions. “You want to know how many
soldiers there are in the great camps near the Belgian frontier? We
can assure you there are none at all. These camps are quite empty.”
The German people believed that a great struggle for peace was going
on, in which, owing to the fear of the German sword, the peace-makers
were getting the upper hand. They were led to believe that the German
Emperor had so generously embraced the cause of Peace, that the balance
of chances inclined against War. Peace was dangled before their eyes
like a fair apple, attainable, but tantalizingly just out of reach.
And then when war did come, the German people turned with all the fury
of disappointment, not upon their own Government, but upon Russia for
supporting Serbia, and upon France and England for joining her. They
had been taught ever since they were little boys at school that the
righteous development of Germany was being thwarted at every turn by
England, who had managed to hem them in with a ring of foes. With a
deep breath of relief they drew the sword, confident in their ability
to hew down whoever stood in their way. “Better an end to horror, than
a horror without end,” says the German proverb, and in this spirit
they went to war. But even Germans can be tricked too often. I do
not think we need take much thought about how to punish the Kaiser
and the other criminals responsible for this war. We need only hand
them over to their nation, confident that the people whom they have
so long befooled and fed with lies will know how to deal with them.
Nothing is less likely than that the German people will forgive those
who, _avec un cœur léger_, plunged them into the frightful catastrophe
that befell them. I must apologize for insisting at such length upon
the insincerities and crooked ways of the German Government, but I
do insist, because at the present time it is necessary to understand
quite clearly the kind of people with whom we have to deal. And while
explaining how the German people were misled, I am offering no excuse
for the spirit in which they conducted the war, once it began. The
Government may have ordered the atrocities in the first place, but the
nation has always set the seal of its approval on the actions of the
Government after the deed, and so the nation has made itself jointly
responsible.