of Europe, and the greatest obstacle to reconstruction lies in a
resentful, half-crushed, and continually harassed Germany. Berlin has
been made a heart of ill-will, and the heart must somehow be changed.
Some will no doubt say it is Paris that has the ill-will towards the
peace of Europe--change the heart of Paris and all will go well. But
even if France embarked on a policy of friendly tolerance towards
Germany it would be long ere Berlin was converted. However that may
be, it was naturally with a hope of sharing in the long task of
reconciliation that the present writer visited Germany. Many
Englishmen have a soft spot in their hearts for the Germans; perhaps it
is the instinct of race, or it may be merely good sportsmanship:
I am not one of those
Who will not shake Fritz hand
Now that the war is done.
as a soldier-poet has expressed it.
I was told of a young German who set in front of himself the goal of a
reconciled Europe. I would work to the same end in London. It only
remained to find a similar devoted type in Paris to work from the
French end, and we should have a triumvirate that might achieve the
impossible. God can use the foolish of this world to confound the
wise--the wise being mostly engaged in stirring up new quarrels.
Somehow the desirable Frenchman ready to devote his life to that cause
was not forthcoming--and that deficiency I suppose was symptomatic of
the disease. For my part, I have made my journey of Europe and taken a
good look at that which it is proposed to reconcile. At the end I came
to Berlin and Paris, the two main centres of the modern world. In
Germany naturally I sought the German who was ready to work unstintedly
from the German side for the same cause.
I had never met him, but I pictured an idealist, one who had suffered
in the war and felt the folly of it all, who deplored the egoism of
nations, and had found a way to devote himself to humanity as a whole.
I was mistaken! It is our weakness as a nation to think of a foreigner
merely as a sort of Englishman who does not speak our tongue or know
our conventions. So was it with me, and I soon found myself up against
a real live German, a man of a type you would not find either in London
or Paris. It was a disillusion. Here was a man unsuited by his
national nature for the part for which he was cast. One could not see
in him the potentiality of a helper of Europe. The German as a German
is in a troubled mental state. Small wonder! Because of the
psychology of my friend in ---- I quickly began to surmise that the
German at present has not got the spirit to save Europe. Perhaps he
has not the ability to save himself.
My German helper was a tall, handsome young man with an open
countenance and an engaging smile. He had done war-service for the
Fatherland on several fronts in several capacities. Among other things
he had been Commandant of a prisoners-of-war camp where British
officers were really kindly treated and a most pleasant relationship
existed between the command on the one hand and the prisoners on the
other. He showed me photographs of himself with British officers, and
he mentioned it as a matter of pride that these fellows asked for
"Deutschland uber alles" to be sung one night, and they stood
reverently to attention through the performance. This was followed by
"God save the King," which the Germans honoured in the same way. It
was explained to me that "Deutschland uber alles" does not mean
"Germany over everybody else," but "Germany first of all!" as one says
"My country, right or wrong." The prisoners must, if they were genuine
Englishmen, have felt rather low-spirited. W----, however, saw in it
evidence of what a happy family party Germans and English could be, if
they liked. He was undoubtedly pro-English, had been to Oxford, had
perhaps a quiver of an Oxford accent in his English; he had studied
England, as Germans do, and made considerable research among us. His
wife was openly and unreservedly friendly. He, however, was cautious,
and corrected his wife when she said too much or went too far. It had
been a great blow to them when England came in to the war, a personal
and a national blow. They could not have believed it possible. And
they imagined throughout the war that their friends in England did not
share in the wild anti-German feeling and must at least passively be
pro-German. Of course, it was not so. They deplored the extraordinary
lapse in tone in the "Morning Post" and "The Times." "'The Times'
actually refers to us as 'Huns.' At least, it can be said of our
Press, high or low, it never nicknamed its enemies. French were always
French, English--English, Russians--Russians. It was beneath the
dignity of the war to call our enemies names." He was amazed at the
ignorance concerning the Germans, and the credulity of such as those
who believed they boiled their dead to make lard. I told him of the
German Ambassador's reception in London, Dr. Sthamer, how he was
received by certain people in Society and many were well disposed
towards him, though at first he had difficulty in getting things done
for him by the British working class.
"And you, you'll go anywhere in Germany, and every one will be only too
ready to help you, to do your washing and clean our boots and the
rest," said W---- reproachfully. "We are so good-natured."
He had forgotten that the Germans failed to ingratiate themselves with
the London working class by dropping so many bombs in the East-end and
terrorizing whole districts. He forgot the children who had been
killed. He did not know the air-raids had had much effect.
"They had an unfortunate psychological effect."
"Well, you don't forgive us."
"On the contrary, the generality of Englishmen forgive Germany now she
is down."
My friend perceptibly winced at the word "down." I had used the wrong
word. But it is true enough.
"We know the Quakers are our friends, and the pacifists," said he. "We
are thankful for their friendship, but we need to win over the other
people. Make the business people feel that the Versailles Peace is bad
business, and the Imperialists that it is bad for Empire."
"They know that already, that it is not good for business and not very
good for the Empire. What we have to get over is something
psychological--the belief in 'the dirty Hun,' the belief in German
trickery and spite."
He had never heard of that sentence which is a motto in Carmelite
Street, "They'll cheat you yet, those Junkers," or "Once a German
always a German."
There is a genuine belief among the English masses that the Germans are
cheating us, that they are pretending to demobilize and keeping a large
army in secret readiness, pretending to be unable to pay "reparations,"
not taxing themselves, faking their figures.
W---- and several others whom I met in Germany put it in the foreground
of the work to be done for re-establishing Germany in the comity of
nations, that it should be proved that Germany was not responsible for
the beginning of the war. It is still the theme of innumerable
articles in the Press. The German mind has not grasped the fact that
no intelligent European blames Germany exclusively. Now that the hot
mood of war is past we are all ready to recognize that we were all in
part to blame. We all founded our security on armies and navies, the
nation that produced the "Dreadnought" most of all. We were all living
and picnicking and unfortunately quarrelling in the great cordite
warehouse of European militarism, and one day it blew up. If we had
not been so well prepared it could not have happened so. If the Kaiser
pronounced the dreadful atheism of "Let the guns speak," he really did
so after the event.
In debating this matter the German mentality disclosed itself in the
Germans with whom I conversed in Berlin. I had a suspicion that one of
them might have said England began it, if I had been other than an
Englishman. Edward the Seventh who arranged the _entente cordiale_ had
evidently something to do with it. As I am a known warm friend of
Russia he could not say Russia began it. His mind turned to a more
obscure nation.
"To think that Europe should thus have been ruined and all those
millions of lives lost," said he. "Just for stupid little Serbia."
I am afraid I could not agree to that. The devil began it. What does
it matter now? Nobody cares. The present and the future hold the
potentialities of happiness rather than the past. To discuss the past
you'd have to raise the dead on both sides.
England is not interested in history, but she is interested in
actuality.
Mr. Lloyd George has said that the German is not being taxed by his
Government in the proportion that the British are taxed by theirs--far
from it. Figures have been given in the Press. And they have not been
refuted by Germans. The Germans hold that they are being taxed so
heavily that a maximum has been reached. W----, who was well-off
before the war, has lost his income now, has taken a staff-post at the
Ministry of Trade and gets 20,000 marks a year. He ought to pay a
heavy income-tax on that. Yes, but it is only eighty pounds a year in
English money, and he has a wife and two children to keep on it. There
are tens of thousands of professional men in the same plight. Some of
the very rich arrange matters to avoid some of the heavy dues. And as
regards the working-class, it is notoriously hard to raise money from
them by direct taxation.
"Then it is said that you are running your railway and postal services
at a loss. And that is obviously true. England has raised her rates
and made her public pay. She thinks Germany should also."
To this it is replied that Germany does not believe in obstructing the
ready movement of people and of intelligence in her country. She
thinks it bad policy to charge highly for railway fares and letter
postage. What is gained by extra charges is more than lost through
business being hampered.
"These are points which you educated Germans should elucidate through
the British Press," said I. "The idea that Germany escapes taxation is
a very unfavourable one in England. It is much more important than the
rights or wrongs of the old war."
W----, who receives the "Nation" regularly, nevertheless did not think
any English paper would print what he might write on the theme.
I visited, among others, Herr Baumfelder, the editor of the "European
Press," once dropped from aeroplanes among our lines under the title of
the "European Times," but now under entirely new management, though
still a propagandist sheet. It is nothing like so strong a
propagandist for Germany as the "Continental Daily Mail" is for France.
But it has the potentiality of a counterblast. It makes one blush to
see English newspapers on German book-stalls with "HUNS' LATEST WHINE"
in large letters staring at the Germans as they pass. Strangely
enough, the Germans don't seem to mind these headlines; they don't tear
the papers off the stalls and burn them in indignation. They've been
drilled not to do such things. One would think, however, there would
be considerable scope for a good German daily, printed in the English
language, expounding European events from another point of view. The
European Press has that possibility.
Here, however, you find little that is helpful yet. I am all for
truth. It is the best type of propaganda--the only type that is not
loathsome. And surely there is enough in the domain of the simple
truth about Europe and Germany to touch men's hearts, whilst
There groans a world in anguish
Just to teach us sympathy.
I hoped Herr Baumfelder would make his paper into a living journal
which all would be glad to buy in order to know the facts of the hour
in Germany. No use to continue working the familiar lines of German
propaganda such as the "Menace to German Women of the Black Troops on
the Rhine," now so much exploited in press and cinema in Germany--or
the "Who was responsible for the war?" theme, alluded to above. It is
sad to read the verbal violence of some president of "League of German
Patriots" who does not believe the editor of the "Spectator" when he
says "_We for our part, can honestly say that ever since the Armistice
we have wanted to create an atmosphere helpful to Germany._"
"You the murderers of hundreds of thousands of innocent German children
dare to publish such a deliberate falsehood," says "The president."
"You are practically sodden with falsehood and hypocrisy."
No doubt the president of the L.G.P. has lost money in the war, and has
an especial grudge against England, but that sort of writing makes
potential friends into persistent enemies. And English readers of the
paper will say, "After all, what fools the Germans are."
There is a cynical disbelief in England's idealism. Perhaps that
cannot be wondered at. We have been, or seem to have been, very false
to our idealism at times. We are judged by our public acts. But
because of our professed idealism we are hailed as hypocrites,
appalling hypocrites. And yet those public acts and that idealism are
distinct. Both are authentic, and neither contradicts the other. We
fastened on Germany a shameful treaty at Versailles. But the idealists
never agreed to it, and do not do so now. Our idealism is genuine
enough and it is, indeed, the germ of Europe's hope. But for that the
outlook would be blacker still.
All that has been done to ease the application of the treaty has been
done at England's instance. We stand as wardens against the
infringement of the treaty, as for instance in the Silesian attack.
Indeed, the general tendency of England's policy is to save the
integrity of Germany and give her a chance to rehabilitate herself
among the nations.
The sophisticated educated class in Germany smiles in superior
knowledge, ascribing to us selfish motives of one kind or another. The
contempt for Englishmen passing through the country is somewhat
brutally expressed in the phrase _valuta-Englander_, the currency
Englishman, who is probably a nobody at home but swaggers here on the
difference of the exchange of the mark and the pound sterling. The new
educated class has always found difficulty in being tolerant and in
recognizing who were its potential enemies or friends. But I noticed
that the working class had less pre-judgment and was more open-hearted.
The working class grasped the truth of the situation. It was not
merely a desire to flatter and curry favour that prompted their
attitude.
"France is our real enemy--not England," was the frequent greeting of
the ex-soldier working man who grinned and asked if I'd been a soldier,
too, and on what front. Rank and file on both sides conceived a
respect for one another in the war, which the educated class somehow
missed. Perhaps the educated class in Germany would be more indulgent
if they were not so hard hit financially. The working man still has
money, has, indeed, a flattering number of marks in his pocket. When
he has not so much money he is as morose as his educated brother.
In Saxony, where an industrial depression not half so deep as that of
England is being felt, you have a strong Communist movement. The
devitalized masses of Leipzig are not so brotherly as the Berliners.
The signs of street-fighting are visible in the many cracked and broken
windows of shops, and the helplessness of police seems to be expressed
in gatherings under the auspices of the red flag, where
internationalism is bawled across the square by unshaven, collarless
young men, and it is "_Hoch die Weltrevolution_!"
"If we lose our export trade then the enfeebled industrial population
of places like Leipzig must die off, and Germany return to the land,"
said a Leipzig editor to me. "But before they die off they'll make red
war in Germany."
Not an unedifying place for the trial of war-criminals! There is
little at Leipzig to give English witnesses an idea of a flourishing or
promising Germany. A true study of the after-the-war Germany would
naturally take in Leipzig and the other great centres of industry and
trade. Berlin is admittedly deceptive, with its profiteers and its
rich foreigners. Bremen and Hamburg would be vital points to
reconsider. I visited the former--a beautiful quiet Hanse town, very
quiet now, once the port of sailing of the Nord-deutscher Lloyd boats,
and a port of many ships. There is an impoverished and diminished
population, and grass is growing in streets where it never could have
grown before. The German mercantile marine has dropped from
six-and-a-half million tons to one-half million of tonnage of little
vessels. You feel that fact at Bremen. The great ships, mishandled
and in many cases disabled, now swell the numerical tonnage of other
countries without adding so very much to their shipping power. The
Hamburg-America line and Nord-deutscher Lloyd and others, shorn of
their real glory, still continue a pettifogging existence booking
tickets for passengers on the ships of foreign lines. What a curious
Germany! She has made a strange backward progress since the days of
the Agadir incident, and the plea which eminent British and American
journalists defended then, that she should be accorded "a place in the
sun."
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
XIII. FROM BERLIN (II)
Berlin is a city of reason, not a city of faith. You cannot get people
to try and do the impossible there. It loves to grade itself upon the
possible and do that. Hence the apathy regarding Germany's
resurrection. Here all is measured and planned and square and
self-poised. No buildings aspire. The golden angels and the other
things which are high--are perched there. Some one put them up; they
did not fly so high. All the great capitals of Europe are redeemed
more by their past than adorned by their present, but Berlin has no old
Berlin to help her. If all that is worth while in London were built in
the spirit of Downing Street and Whitehall and the statue of Nurse
Cavell, it might be said that London was not unlike Berlin.
Clearly two ideas have tried to express themselves in Germany's
capital: one is modern commerce, and the other, and more
characteristic, is military glory. The commercial houses are naturally
much the same as in the rest of Europe, gloomily utilitarian. The
military in stone, however, is neither ornamental nor useful. Strange
that the Kaiser, who was reputed to have quick intelligence, should not
have felt how excruciatingly unspiritual and truly uninspiring the
glory-statuary and architecture was. The German army was one of the
greatest military organizations the world has seen, and it was in 1914
a potential terror to every nation in Europe, but its reflection in art
was ugly. The Victory Column, the statues of Germany's heroes, the
appalling queue of stone groups each side of the Sieges Allee, all show
up now like a spiritual X-ray photograph of Prussia.
It may seem ungenerous to taunt some one who is down, after the event,
but I did not see the Avenue of Victory before 1914, and it came as a
shock. Despite the loathsome details of the war, there are many
ex-enemies of Germany who have kept in their hearts an altar of
admiration for German arms. An idea of Teutonic chivalry lurked
somewhere in the imagination. But you can realize in Berlin from the
militarist self-confession in art that there is no idealism there. How
the Kaiser could go out day after day and confront these low
conceptions of patriotism and of Germany, and not order them to be
swept away, explains in great part how it was Germany made such a
blunder as to go to war the way she did. One advantage of a revolution
in Germany might be to sweep away these sad tokens of the past.
It was in this Avenue of Victory that old Hindenburg's wooden statue
was set up and the populace struck nails into it to boost
war-charities. It became so ugly that it was hidden away at last, and
despite the Field-Marshal's great popularity has lately been broken up
and destroyed. That was really worth keeping, and ought to have found
a place in a war-museum. It was authentic, but it did not flatter, and
it had to go.
Hindenburg is the greatest hero in Germany, and all the children
idealize him. Whatever he puts his name to, goes. He and a popular
pastor worked up a huge subscription for war-waifs, and when the money
had been raised it was found the waifs were already well provided for.
I believe the money was appropriated to a fund for helping the indigent
middle class. At a cabaret one night there appeared a clever
impersonator. A slim, clean-shaven man entertained the people sitting
at the dinner-tables by rapid changes of personization. He was in turn
every one who had a share in the making of modern Germany. Thus he was
Bismarck and he was Karl Marx, and he was Ebert, in rapid succession.
No one cheered him, and the people looked at the undistinguished figure
of Ebert without enthusiasm. Presently, as one foresaw, he came to
Hindenburg, and then every one cheered and the place rocked with
excitement. There were even a sprinkling of claps over to applaud his
next impersonization, the late Emperor Franz Joseph who was sandwiched
in to prepare the mind for something else. After that, one waited.
Would he show the Kaiser? What would happen if suddenly the familiar
face of Wilhelm the Second confronted that gathering of Germans? The
mimic, however, would not risk it, and his concluding make-up was not
Wilhelm but, very cleverly chosen, Frederick the Great. And every one
was at ease again.
Germany is not ready to have the Kaiser back. But, as at Athens, so in
Berlin, national humiliation has reacted in favour of the monarch.
There is a vague feeling that the Kaiser is suffering for Germany's
sake, and that his exile typifies the unhappy downfall of Germany. No
one thinks the Kaiser less virtuous than Lloyd George or Clemenceau.
Except for the Communist movement, which naturally tends in an entirely
different direction, there is a national sentimental reaction in favour
of the Hohenzollerns. This was clearly focussed in the honours paid to
the dead Kaiserin. Before the passing of that funeral cortège the
Kaiser's portrait was rare in public places. Now it has appeared again
and is common.
There are nevertheless few things in Europe more improbable than the
return of the Kaiser. He might come back before he died. But it would
be as the result of some strange turn of affairs in Europe. He will
probably die in Holland. And then will he not come back and receive
the greatest honour?
I was naturally interested in the spirit of the rising generation,
those who did not have to fight, those who perhaps will not be
conscripted to fight the next war. The boys at school are said to be
completely out of touch with the sordid reality of Germany's position.
Masters dare not explain her helplessness in its entirety. They are
ashamed of what their generation has done with the great inheritance.
Nevertheless the children know that Germany has been beaten. They
cannot know to what extent beaten. But a boy being asked what his
politics were replied to a friend: "One thousand kilometres to the
right of the right," and the constant thought in their talk, in their
essays, in their boyish life is _We will get back Strassburg_.
The mature mind regards such impulses questioningly, and looks from the
romantic children to the uninspired and uninspiring monuments of 1914
Germany. What sort of a Germany will it be fifty years hence, one
asks. Not the old set up again. But if a new Germany, what will it be
like and wherein will it excel?
The scenery of these years will no doubt be cleared away. In several
ways Germany has excellence and possibilities of great service to
humanity. In original research and invention, in applied science and
in science itself, in scholarship, and in social and industrial
development and organization, the German has shown himself to be a
pioneer. In these pacific domains Germany was in happy rivalry for the
leadership of the world. In several of them Germany actually was
leader. It is very unfortunate that the war should continue to strike
at these. And it would be idle to deny that those Germans whose work
serves humanity as a whole have in any way escaped the crippling effect
of the downfall of the State. In fact, the educated people have been
hit most, and are most threatened.
Moreover, the atmosphere of Germany in these days is not creative. A
black finger is pointing threateningly from the sky. The enormity of
the punishment which Fate threatens is incredibly great, and yet it
keeps threatening. It is perpetually:
The Ides of March are come,
Aye Caesar, but not gone.