streets. Ascension and the centenary of the death of Napoleon were on
the same day. It was made into Napoleon Day and was a great festival.
One of the principal squares had its name changed to Place Napoleon.
There was a public Mass for the repose of Napoleon's soul. A statue of
Napoleon was unveiled. There were military processions and the fêting
of the French military mission, special honours for General du Moriez,
who brought "_les precieuses reliques de Napoleon_" to Poland, and of
General Niessel, and of M. de Panalieu, France's Minister
Plenipotentiary in Poland. The street crowds stopped the cars and
lifted the Frenchman on to their shoulders and carried them to plaudits
and joy-shrieks and brass bands. It was amusing to see a diminutive
French officer with grey head and beard, sprawling thus on a moving
couch of Polish hands whilst he waved his hat and was pelted from all
hands with cowslips and lilac. "_Vive la France_! _Vive la France_!"
Polish Cossacks with white pennants on their lances come trotting
through and break the crowds, and then come artillerymen and their
guns, and then French diplomatic personalities protected by mounted
guards with flashing sabres. The surging populace intervenes, and
sways, and gives, and closes again. Here comes a great banner on which
is embroidered the ominous white vulture of risen Poland, the ghostly
bird that has sojourned a hundred years in the death kingdoms, and on
the reverse side of the banner is depicted the Madonna and Child. The
crowd becomes instantly bareheaded, and the Germans in it wisely take
off their hats, too. Polish patriots follow, dressed in white and
bearing aloft notice-boards wreathed in coloured cloths; on the
notice-boards are watchwords: "We will not give up our Silesia," on
others maps of the integral Poland showing the province of "Szlazk" in
red. Specimens of insurrectionaries follow these sign-bearers, and
they are dressed-up peasants and miners carrying scythes on poles; more
crowds, more cheers! The Polish Press leaps its headlines in jingoism.
Street politicians with bells bawl declamations across the many-headed.
Windows open on third-floors, and clouds of political leaflets are
scattered to the wind.
The same demonstrations with the same banners parade for days. On
Sunday there is a review in front of the Russian Cathedral, and a
French General pins decorations on Polish heroes. Great throngs in the
streets sing the Marseillaise bareheaded. Warsaw breathes in and
breathes out--hot air. Not all the Poles, however, share in this
excitement. There were many in Warsaw who looked on coldly at the
proceedings. "There is a Governmental claque that starts all these
demonstrations" said one of them. "You ought not to be deceived by
that any more than by the new posters on the walls every day.
Bill-stickers are sent out by the Government each night. The people do
not paste up these posters themselves. Most of us are in a desperate
plight trying to earn an honest living. The only way to get rich is to
work in with the administration and share in the spoil."
It is a common opinion that the low value of the mark (over 8,000 to
the pound sterling) is due to the Government printing it _ad libitum_
to meet its private ends. It is a gross scandal that the exchange
value should have so fallen. With such a currency it is doubtful
whether the present constitution of Poland can last. It already
isolates Poland economically from the rest of Europe, and she cannot
import goods even from Germany at such a rate. There is a vast, poor,
seedy, underfed population. Food is comparatively cheap, and the
peasant is evidently being quietly robbed, by giving him only a fifth
of the money-value of his products, but even so a tiny loaf of bread
costs twenty marks. There is butter. There is no sugar (at cafés
there is liquid saccharine and you pass the saccharine bottle from one
to another). An obligatory seventy-five mark dinner of two courses is
served at the restaurants, but the mass of the people live on bread and
sausage.
There has been a great exodus from the Ghetto to Russia, and Warsaw can
no longer be said to be a predominantly Jewish city. The dignified
Semite in his black gaberdine and low-crowned hat is now only an
occasional figure on the Jerozolimska and Nowy Swiat. And the poor
Jews of the slums are not multitudinous as they were. On the main
street various trans-Atlantic shipping companies have opened offices
and offer to book emigrants right through to the United States. These
offices from morning till evening are crammed with people trying to get
away from Poland. Here may be found, in addition to the local
population, a certain number of people from Soviet Russia who have
bribed the Polish officials and are trying to get to the land of
opportunity as Poles. The United States, however, looks very coldly on
these would-be citizens, be they Poles or Russians or Ukrainians or
Letts or Lithuanians, or any other nationality of these suspected parts
of Europe. The number of visas granted is now being cut down to a
three per cent of previous emigration basis.
An interesting diversion from politics was provided by a visit to the
Polish Theatre, where Shakespeare's "Kuplec Wenecki" was being
performed. The main interest was naturally in Shylock. The Polish
actors made very attractive Italian _signors_. Portia was a
full-bosomed Polish beauty, who, with a male voice, made a fine effect
as Doctor of Law. The Prince of Morocco and Shylock were, however,
ethnographical studies. The Moor roared and barked and cut about in
the air with his scimitar, and made the ladies scream and the audience
laugh. Shylock was deliciously over-studied. The daily life of Warsaw
was added to the grandeur of a rich Oriental merchant. Shylock's
cleverness and intellectual assurance were obscured by funniosities
such as a sing-song Potash-and-Perlmutter speech breaking into gabble,
finger-counting, and beard-stroking, lying flat in the street and
howling. But the audience appreciated this highly, and clapped only
Shylock.
It was otherwise an old-fashioned performance. The Polish stage seems
not to have developed very much. Polish literature has, however,
increased considerably, and there are many shops well stocked with new
Polish books. You seldom see a foreign book in a shop window. Russian
books seem almost entirely to have disappeared. Owing to the exchange
situation French and English books cost enormous numbers of marks.
A remarkable feature of the city's architecture today is the Russian
Cathedral, with its slate-coloured domes divested of gold and divested
of crosses, a mighty white stone building in the pride of place in the
city. Who is responsible for the damage it would be difficult to say.
Probably both Poles and Germans had something to do with it. The
Kolokolnaya is blown up. The walls of the cathedral stream externally
with pitch. Many of the frescoes inside have been damaged and the gold
ornaments taken away. It is a grand Orthodox interior, breathing the
spirit of Russia from every wall. It was regarded rather as a
calculated affront to Poland in the old days--as the Russian population
in Warsaw was not large. Now, however, a Roman Catholic altar has been
erected, chairs have been brought in. There is a holy-water basin at
the main entrance, an organ sounds forth from the choir's gallery, and
a Polish priest drones the Latin liturgy. Multitudes of Poles flock in
on Sunday morning, smiling, untroubled, unselfconscious; bowing,
kneeling on one knee, piously crossing themselves in Latin style. If
there are Russians in the congregation they make no sign. But what
they must be feeling!
The appropriation of the cathedral is, no doubt, justified. But there
is something in the coolness of it, in the hate of it and lack of tact
which breeds the opposite of Christian charity in human hearts. The
Slavs have much to learn. By the stealing of trains, the purloining of
cathedrals, and false pretensions to their neighbours' lands, the Poles
are showing that there is yet national tragedy ahead for them. They
will be deceived by some nations and slaughtered by others. What have
we raised her from the dead for--but to live again, to live and let
live. All have rejoiced in the risen Poland, even the old destroyers
of Poland--Germany, Russia, and Austria, all rejoiced until they
realized the nature of the phantom. The beautiful white eagle that
leapt from the tomb is a more sinister bird to-day, blood-ravenous, and
scanning far horizons.
EXTRA LEAVES
(iv) _On Nationality and an Armistice Baby_
The personal idea of nationality suffered some heavy blows in the war
and even heavier ones in the peace which followed. A mature Austrian
suddenly becomes a Czech, a Hungarian who knows only Magyar becomes a
Roumanian, a self-conscious Prussian is written into a Pole, and their
hearts are supposed to respond to new loyalties. The famous lines:
"Breathes there a man with soul so dead" have now a comical effect when
recited in some parts of Europe. Men are saying such absurd things as
"I am a German Czecho-Slovak," "I am a Polish Austrian Jew," "I am a
Russian Armenian Greek." A relief from the imbroglio of nationalism
might be found in the name of European with a higher loyalty to Europe
as a whole, but few have reached that stage of knowledge and feeling.
Asked at Ellis Island what his nationality was a gloomy gentleman from
Upper Silesia recently answered, "Plebiscite." And have there not been
many babies born whose nationality has remained long in doubt, pending
plebiscites and decisions of the Supreme Council? The plight of the
plebiscite baby is, however, eclipsed by that of the Armistice one.
The following true story was told me by H.M. Consul at Munich. He had
to decide the point at issue, or at least to take a decision upon it.
The difficulty was that of stating the nationality of a child born on a
ship at the time of the Armistice. The ship was a German one which had
been captured by the British. It had a British crew, but it was
bringing refugees from Murmansk, the Arctic port of Russia, to Reval on
the Baltic. It was flying the Neutrality flag. The ship, however, was
wrecked off the coast of Norway and was towed by a Danish boat into the
harbour of Stavanger. None of the refugees were allowed ashore but the
baby was born in the ship whilst it lay in the harbour. The parents
were Russian, but an attempt was made to get the British Consul at
Stavanger to register it as British. He refused. The English law is
that the flag decides nationality and in this case the flag was neutral.
A neutral baby has, therefore, appeared on the scene. It is a case for
the League of Nations to decide, We can only hope they will find it
possible to give it the status of a "good European."
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
XI. FROM MUNICH
The first day in Munich was marked by police inspection in bed. The
police come early to the hotels so as to catch people before they have
got up and gone out. The only people who are immune are Bavarians. If
you are a foreigner, even if you are a German from another part of
Germany--a Saxon, a Prussian, a Westphalian, it is all the same, you
must present yourself at the police-station and obtain permission to
reside in Munich. This means some hours in a stuffy room. You must
write a request for the permission in German and bring it some hours
later and answer the usual set of questions and be charged 150 marks.
I said I had not come to Germany to study the police system, and so by
dint of perseverance cut through half the formalities and the waiting
time and got away. An official wrote the request and even signed it
for me himself. Nowhere is red-tape more absurd than when it is being
wound by a defeated nation after a great war.
Bavaria is encouraged to think of herself as a separate country.
French policy foreshadows an independent State of Southern Catholics.
With that in view a French minister plenipotentiary has been sent to
Munich, and we British have just followed the French suit by appointing
our diplomatic representative also. Bavaria is not supposed to enter
into foreign relationships except through the Reich. To this Bavaria
has remained loyal. She has stood by the Reich even when the Reich has
protested an inability to control her. The appointment of the French
plenipotentiary was, therefore, taken as a calculated provocation and
the minister was accorded a very hostile greeting in the Press. This
annoyed him much, and he put it down, not to the general unpopularity
of French policy, but to the secret intrigue of the British who, as it
happens, are unusually intimate with Munich editors. The rivalry of
English and French in diplomatic action is as marked here as it is in
other capitals of Europe. Here, also, the natural antipathy which
French chauvinism arouses locally is thought to be aggravated by
British Intrigue. Our diplomats are given credit for being much more
active than they are.
As I have already intimated, France favours a mergence of Austria and
Bavaria in one State as a solution of Austria's economic problem.
Bavaria would like Austria to be added to Germany as a whole. It would
give the Catholic party a stronger voice in the Reich. But Bavaria has
up till now steadfastly refused to sacrifice the advantages of
belonging to the German confederation. British policy is not averse
from Austria joining Germany, but no active steps have been taken to
facilitate such an amalgamation. The treaty of Versailles practically
inhibits it, and Britain remains passively loyal to that inhibition.
The time may come when the French rivalry may enkindle our people to
action, but it will be because the questions at issue are not brought
forward into the light of ordinary publicity and discussed openly and
frankly. Secret diplomacy among allies means secret quarreling. Open
diplomacy, when _both_ sides are open, is much more conducive to
lasting loyalty and friendship.
I met in Munich several influential Bavarians, thanks to the
hospitality and keenness of our Consul-General there, Mr. Smallbones.
There was no ill-feeling of any kind towards English people, and,
indeed, I met with no insult or cold treatment either from the working
class or upper classes in Bavaria--only some surprise as at a rare
visitor. For there are extremely few English people there now. The
famous picture-galleries are still powerless to attract the American
art pilgrim, though that is due more to the difficulty of obtaining
permission to reside than to lack of interest in the collections.
Possibly next year the police may relent. The food shortage is not so
menacing. Moreover, the village of Ober-Ammergau proposes once more to
have its religious fête and stage the "Life of Christ." "Whether we
can have the play depends almost entirely on the Americans," say the
villagers. "The money of visitors alone makes the performance possible
to-day." There is talk, however, of an American film corporation
financing the "Passion-Spiel" if exclusive cinema rights can be
obtained. The war made a dire defeat of village talent, however.
Several sure to have been billed for sacred parts were killed or
crippled. Other prospective saints who served the Fatherland and came
through whole are letting their beards grow now. If the difficulties
are overcome and the play is performed, the sound of English will be no
longer unfamiliar in Bavaria's capital.
Before this possibly Munich will have been for a few weeks Europe's
storm-centre. The storm which broke in Budapest and then broke in
Poland and Silesia will surely break again in Munich. For it is there,
perhaps, that the destiny of Austria will be decided. For Bavaria is
the centre of the intrigue for the unification of Austria and Germany.
Concurrently the French are intriguing for their plan of an independent
Bavaria.
I was at pains to inquire the general opinion of educated people and
there seemed to be no separatism in Bavaria, no sentiment of the kind,
and there was apparently no Roman Catholic propaganda in favour of
Bavarian separatism. It is curious that whilst Slav States are ravaged
by all sorts of local Sinn-Feinism, the for-ourselves-alone-ism of
Slovaks, Croats, Montenegrins, Little Russians, and so forth, the
instinct of all the constituent Germanic nations is to stand together.
Teutonic solidarity is giving witness of itself in these days.
The grievances of the Tyrol were very strongly stated at a Munich
dinner-party, a Bavarian count averring that that part of the Tyrol
which had fallen to the dole of Italy was too strongly affiliated to
the part which remained in Austria. It was recognized, however, that
Italy was now friendly to Germany, and that no good part was likely to
be achieved by doing anything to alienate Italian sympathy. The
French, however, begin to count on some Italian support when the
Austro-German idea is put to the test. The experimental plebiscite
taken in the Tyrol was said to have been arranged from Munich. Its
astonishing success from a German point of view at once encouraged the
intrigue.
There was not much alarm on the subject of the "sanctions" which France
threatened to apply. The Bavarian is too lethargic, slow, and
easy-going to be readily frightened--in temperament he has little in
common with the high-spirited, nervous Prussian. Bavarians spoke of
Germany and Germany's war-debt with an aloofness as of neutrals. It
did not trouble them deeply. They were sceptical as to France's
ability to collect a huge indemnity. The fifty per cent tax they
regarded as an absurdity. "It is possible to ruin Germany, but it is
not possible to enslave her," was the common opinion.
"But in the event of the complete ruin of the rest of Germany, would it
not be to the advantage of Bavaria to accept the idea of a separate
State?" I argued.
"If France deprived Germany of coal by occupying the Ruhr basin and by
allowing the Poles to hold Upper Silesia, Bavaria would have to look
out for herself and make what arrangements she could," I was told. But
it was an unwilling admission.
In the French scheme of things that is when Bavaria's moment comes. At
one stage this May it seemed as if that moment were near, but now that
Germany has accepted the alternative plans of payment of reparations,
and the British Prime Minister has intervened on her behalf to stop the
Polish annexation, the moment does not seem so near. But a great
effort will doubtless yet be made to detach Bavaria from the rest.
Meanwhile, Bavaria took advantage of the intrigue to keep a territorial
army of a kind undemobilized. The reich could demobilize it at will,
but allows itself to appear helpless through Bavaria's independence.
The situation was not helped by the arrival of a young British
staff-officer, who said that the British Government sympathized with
Bavaria, believing that she needed what troops she had to keep off
Bolshevism. Eventually the pressure in Germany became so great that
Bavaria gave a verbal promise to disarm--though to what extent that
promise will be carried out must remain doubtful. Her militia is some
protection for herself in case of a political conspiracy such as that
of Korfanty in Silesia, but is no menace to any other neighbouring
power.
Bavaria affects to be in deadly, daily fear of Bolshevism. "Under the
shadow of the sanctions, Communism was developing strongly," said one.
Speaking of the Russians, "Perhaps we shall all come to it," said
another.
A rich Munich Jew, a cinema merchant, wanted to adopt a Vienna orphan.
He wrote to Vienna for a Jewish male child, well-authenticated as an
orphan; he did not want the parents to come and sponge on him in later
years. The child was brought to Munich. Presently application was
made to the police for an extra milk ration on account of the boy.
Then the police discovered the new arrival. "What!" said they, "living
here without a permit! Application for permission to reside must be
made at once."
Application was made and permission was refused. The reason given was
that the housing shortage in Munich was too great. But some one was at
pains to find out the real reason. It was that the boy was a Jew, and
who could say--in twenty years, educated in the best institutions of
Munich--he might become a Trotsky or a Bela Kun or Bavarian Eisner.
"But why not a Disraeli?" said some one who listened to the story.
Permission was eventually granted.
One attempt has been made to seize Munich for the proletariat, and the
comfortable Bavarian realized that whilst he has a never-failing
stomach for good brown beer he has no stomach for revolution. The
great city is a monument of bourgeois enterprise. Business is more
than politics, and social conviviality than either.
S---- drove me out to the valley of the Iser, "Iser rolling rapidly."
We went to Grunewald, we passed Ludendorf's villa, curious credulous
Ludendorf, who took Winston Churchill at his word when the later penned
his appeal to Germany in the "Evening News" to save Europe by fighting
the Bolsheviks, and prepared a plan whereby the German army was
reconstituted in the strength at which in 1918 it was dissolved. We
surveyed from the hurrying car a fine park-like country, rich and calm,
and sensibly remote from Europe's centre. It was a lovely springtide,
and new hope fallaciously decked Southern Germany, as if all trouble
were over and all had been forgiven. We walked, too, in the gardens of
the Nymphenburg Palace where the mad king used to play. We visited the
State Theatre, where Wagnerian opera still holds the patient ear, and
there we heard, not Wagner, but Shakespeare's "Lear," done in a
jog-trot, uninspired, later-Victorian style. One felt as if the
theatre had slept for thirty years and then, awakening, had resumed in
the same style as before. It is often said reproachfully in Germany
that Queen Victoria would never have made the late war, and that
Victorian England was much nearer to Germany. It was nearer to the
Germany of Queen Victoria's time. That is quite true.
England has gone on and become more European; her passion for
individual freedom and self-expression has steadily developed, whilst
Germany has remained submissively under the yoke of authority and
discipline. Germany, with all her learning and her industry, her
unstinted application, and her good parts, has become dull. There was
an enormous amount of dulness, genuine uninspired dulness, in the
Germans in the war. You can identify it now when you visit Germany in
peace.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
XII. FROM BERLIN (I)
Old men and war-cripples as porters at the station, dirty streets
encumbered by hawkers and their wares, strings of pitiful beggars
shaking their hands and exposing mortified limbs--can this be Berlin,
Berlin the prim, the orderly, the clean? Something has happened here
in seven years, some sort of psychological change has been wrought in
the mind of a people. Here, as in some Slav countries, there are laws
and they are not kept, regulations and they are not observed. Unshaven
men and ill-washed women on the streets, and dowdy, hatless girls with
dirty hair crowding into cheap cinema theatres! A city that had no
slums and no poor in 1914 now becoming a slum _en bloc_. And the
litter on the roadways! You will not find its like in Warsaw. You
must seek comparisons in the Bowery of New York or that part of the
City of Westminster called Soho. The horse has come back to Berlin to
make up for loss of motors, and needs more scavengers to follow him
than the modern municipality can afford.
Not that Berlin has broken down in any way. It is the same great hive
of industrialism. Everyone is employed. More are employed than
before. The leisured class is smaller. All the workshops and
factories and offices are full. The shops display as many wares.
There is evidence of an enormous overflowing productivity. Cheap lines
of goods are run out in hawkers' barrows and auctioned on the pavement,
measures of cloth for suits, overcoats, soaps, stationery. Trams,
'buses, railways all are used to the last seat and standing-room. And
the working people are thinking about their work and their wages and
their homes and their beer--and not about the peace treaty and the
latest move of France for their destruction.
It is sad to see the broken-down old fellows as porters at the
railway-stations, panting with heavy trunks, and the same type among
gangs of navvies repairing the roads. They ought to be seated at home
with pipe and newspaper and easy slippers instead of earning a living
still as a drudge. It is a convention to give your bag to a porter at
a station, and in Germany you usually give it to a man much older and
weaker than yourself, and you are moved to help him to carry it as in
his infirmity he struggles along. What a contrast to the stalwart
porters of Prague, or Rome, or Brussels. Poor wights! It is they who
are paying for the war. Sightless soldiers led by little children come
selling you sticking-plaster in the restaurants. Germany is too poor
to care for them. It is they who are paying for the war. The drab,
many-headed middle class of Berlin with its poverty-stricken
breakfast-table, the old black bread of the war and no sugar and paper
table-cloths; the women going about the streets with great bundles on
their backs; the people making their 1918 clothes still do--they are
paying somewhat. You see Hugo Stinnes and his like with a suite of
rooms at the "Adlon," or driving luxuriously along the Unter den
Linden, the Kaiser way, without the dignity of a Kaiser. They are not
paying very much.