CHAPTER XIX
THE WOMAN IN THE SHADOW
The handling of the always difficult question of the eternal feminine was firmly tackled by the German Government almost immediately after the outbreak of war.
To understand the differences between, the situation here and in, Germany it is necessary first to have a little understanding of the German woman and her status. With us, woman is treated as something apart, something on a pedestal. In Germany and in Austria the situation is reversed. The German man uses his home as a place to eat and sleep in, and be waited upon. The attitude of the German woman towards the man is nearly always that of the obedient humble servant to command. If a husband and wife are out shopping it is often enough the wife who carries the parcels. In entering any public place the middle-class man walks first and the wife dutifully follows. When leaving, it is the custom for the man to be helped with his coat before the woman. Indeed, she is generally left to shift for herself.
Woman is the under sex, the very much under sex, in Germany, regarded by the man as his plaything or as his cook-wife and nurse of his children; and she will continue to be the under sex until she develops pride enough to assert herself. She accepts her inferiority without murmur; indeed, she often impresses one as delighting in it.
It is no dishonour for a girl of the middle or lower class to have a liaison with some admirer, particularly if he is a student or a young officer; in fact, it is quite the proper thing for him to be welcomed by her parents, although it is perfectly well understood that he has not the slightest idea of marrying her. The girls are doing their part to help along the doctrine of free love, the preaching and practice of which are so greatly increasing in the modern German State.
After marriage the woman's influence in the world is nearly zero. The idolatry of titles is carried to an extreme in Germany which goes from the pathetic to the ludicrous. One does not address a German lady by her surname, as Frau Schmidt, but by her husband's title or position, as Frau Hauptmann (Mrs. Captain), Frau Doktor, Frau Professor, Frau Bakermeister (Mrs. Bakershopowner), or even Frau Schornsteinfegermeister (Mrs. Master Chimneysweep), although her husband may be master over only some occasional juvenile assistant. In military social functions, and they are of daily occurrence in garrison towns, Mrs. Colonel naturally takes precedence in all matters over the wives and daughters of other members of the regiment. Contemplate the joyful existence of a vivacious American or British girl, accustomed to the respectful consideration of the other sex, married to a young lieutenant and ruled over by all the wives of his superior officers!
To try to marry money is considered praiseworthy and correct in German military circles. In Prussia a lieutenant in peace times receives for the first three years 60 pounds a year, from the fourth to the sixth year 85 pounds, from the seventh to the ninth year 99 pounds, from the tenth to the twelfth year 110 pounds, and after the twelfth year 130 pounds a year. A captain receives from the first to the fourth year 170 pounds, from the fifth to the eighth year 230 pounds, and the ninth year and after 355 pounds.
Thus it is that no young lady, however ugly, need be without an officer husband if she has money enough to buy one. If he has not a private income, the Government forbids him to marry until his pay is sufficient. That point is seldom reached before he is thirty-five years of age. Marriage helps him out of the difficulty, and since the army is so deified in the Fatherland that the highest ambition of nearly every girl is to marry an officer, his opportunity of trading shoulder-knots for a dowry is excellent.
The efforts of some women to increase their fortune sufficiently to enable them to invest in a military better-half are pathetic from an Anglo-Saxon point of view. One woman who requested an interview with me said that as I was an American correspondent I might be able to advise her how she could dispose of a collection of autographs to some American millionaire. She explained that her financial condition was not so good as formerly, but she was desperate to better it as she was in love with an officer, who, although he loved her, would have to marry another if she could not increase her income. The autographs she showed me were from Prince Henry of Prussia, Prince Bulow and other notables, and most of them were signed to private letters.
Take the story of Marie and Fritz, both of whom I knew in a garrison city in eastern Germany. Nothing could illustrate better the difference between the German attitude and our own on certain matters. She was a charming, lovable girl of nineteen engaged to an impecunious young lieutenant a few years older. They moved in the best circle in the Garnisonstadt.
Two years after their engagement her father lost heavily in business and could no longer afford to settle 5,000 pounds on her to enable them to marry.
It mattered not; theirs was true love, and they would wait until his pay was sufficient,
All went well until another girl, as unattractive as Marie was charming, decided that she would try to buy Fritz as a husband. After four months of her acquaintance he found time at the end of a day's drill to write a few lines informing the young lady, nine years of whose life he had monopolised, of his intention to marry the new rival. Life became black for Marie, the more as she realised that she and Fritz had only to wait a little longer and his pay would be sufficient.
How would Fritz be regarded in this country, and how was he regarded according to German standards? That is what makes the story worth telling. With us such a man as Fritz would have been cut socially and there would have been great sympathy for the sweet girl whose years had been wasted. But on the other side of the Rhine women exist solely for the comfort of men. In militaristic Germany Fritz lost not an iota of the esteem of his friends of either sex; as for Marie, she had failed in a fair game, that was all. The girl's mother even excused his conduct by saying that he was ambitious to get ahead in the army. Like most of her sex in Germany she has been reared to venerate the uniform so much that anything done by the man who wears it is quite excusable. Indeed, Marie's mother still listens with respectful approval at Kaffeeklatsch to Fritz's mother when she boasts of what her son is doing as a major over Turkish troops.
German women have many estimable qualities, but a proper amount of independence and pride is noticeably foreign to their natures. Is it surprising that the American girl of German parents requires only a very brief visit to the Fatherland to convince her that the career of the Hausfrau is not attractive.
On the whole, the efforts of the German woman have almost doubled the national output of war energy. Except in Berlin few are idle, and these only among the newly-rich class. The women of the upper classes, both in Germany and Austria, are either in hospitals or are making comforts for the troops. Women have always worked harder in Germany and at more kinds of work than in Britain or the States, and what, judging by London illustrated papers, seems to be a novelty—the engagement of women in agricultural and other pursuits—is just the natural way of things in Germany. It should always be remembered, when estimating German man-power and German ability to hold out, that the bulk of the work of civil life is being done by prisoners and women. A German woman and a prisoner of war, usually a Russian, working side by side in the fields is a common sight throughout Germany.
It is the boast of the Germans that their building constructions are going on as usual. I have myself seen plenty of evidence of this, such as the grading of the Isar at Munich, the completion of the colossal railway station at Leipzig, the largest in Germany, the construction of the new railway station at Gorlitz, the complete building since the war of the palatial Hotel Astoria at Leipzig, also two gigantic new steel and concrete palaces in the same city for the semi-annual fair, the erection of a new Hamburg-America Line office building adjacent to the old one and dwarfing it. The slaughter-house annexes, contracted for in days of peace, continue their slow growth, although Berlin has no present need for such extension in these half-pound-of-meat-a-week times.
The construction of the Nord-Sud Bahn of the underground railway, for linking up the north and south sections of Berlin has proceeded right along, the women down in the pit with picks and shovels doing the heavy work of navvies. That department of the German Government whose duty it is to enlighten Neutrals is not too proud of the fact, surprisingly enough. An American kinematograph operator, Mr. Edwards, of Mr. Hearst's papers, was desirous of taking a film of these women navvies—heavy, sad creatures they are. The Government stepped in and suggested that, although they had no objection to a personally conducted and posed picture—in which the women would no doubt smile to order—they could not permit the realities of this unwomanly task to be shown in the form of a truth-telling moving picture.
German authorities are utilising every kind of woman. The social evil, against which the Bishop of London and others are agitating in England, was effectively dealt with by the German authorities, not only for the sake of the health of the troops, but in the interests of munitions. Women of doubtful character were first told that if found in the neighbourhood of barracks or in cafes they were liable to be arrested, and when so found were immediately removed to their native places, and put into the nearest cartridge filling or other shop. The double effect has been an increased output of munitions for the army and increased health for the soldier, and such scenes as one may witness in Piccadilly or other London streets at night have been effectively squelched by the strong Prussian hand, with benefit to all concerned.
I am not speaking of German morals in general, which are notorious. I merely state the practical way the Germans turn the women of the street into useful munition makers.
The lot of the German woman has been much more difficult than the lot of her sister in the Allied countries, for upon her has fallen the great and increasing burden of the struggle to get enough to eat for her household. In practically all classes of Germany it has been the custom of the man to come home from his work, whether in a Government office, bank, or factory, for his midday meal, usually followed by an hour's sleep.
The German man is often a greedy fellow as regards meals. For him special food is always provided, and the wife and children sit round patiently watching him eat it. He expects special food to-day. The soldier, of course, is getting it, and properly, but the stay-at-homes, who are men over forty-five or lads under nineteen, still get the best of such food as can be got. Exceptions to the nineteen to forty-five rule are very few indeed. National work in Germany means war work pure and simple, and now the women are treated exactly as the men in this respect, except that they will not be sent to the front.
In January, 1917, Germany at length began formally to organise the women of the country to help in the war. Each of the six chief army "commands" throughout the Empire now has a woman attached to it as Directress of the "Division for Women's Service." Hitherto, as in England, war work by women has been entirely voluntary. The Patriotic Auxiliary Service (Mass Levy) Law is not compulsory so far as female labour is concerned. German women, however, having proclaimed that they regard themselves liable for national service under the spirit if not the letter of the law, it has finally been decided to mobilise their services on a more systematic basis than in the past.
None of the countless revolutions in German life produced by the war outstrips in historical importance this official linking up of women with the military machine. Equally striking is the fact that the directresses of Women's Service, who hold office in Berlin, Breslau, Magdeburg, Coblenz, Konigsberg, and Karlsruhe, are all feminist leaders and promoters of the women's emancipation movement. The directress for the Mark of Brandenburg (the Berlin-Potsdam district) is an able Jewess named Dr. Alice Salomon, who is one of the pioneers of the German women's movement. The main object of the "Women's Service" Department is to organise female labour for munitions and other work from which men can be liberated for the fighting line.
I have nothing but praise and admiration for the way in which the German women have thrown themselves into this struggle. Believing implicitly as they have been told—and with the exception of the lower classes, after more than two years of war, they believe everything the Government tells them—that this war was carefully prepared by "Sir Grey" (Lord Grey of Fallodon), "the man without a conscience," as he is called in Germany, they feel that they are helping to fight a war for the defence of their homes and their children, and the cynics at the German Foreign Office, who manufacture their opinions for them, rub this in in sermons from the pastors, novels, newspaper articles, faked cinema films, garbled extracts from Allied newspapers, books, and bogus photographs, Reichstag orations by Bethmann-Hollweg, and the rest of it, not forgetting the all-important lectures by the professors, who are unceasing in their efforts all over Germany.
To show how little the truth of the war is understood by the German women, I may mention an incident that occurred at the house of people of the official class at which I was visiting one day. The eldest son, who was just back from the Somme trenches, suffering from slight shell-shock, brought home a copy of a London illustrated paper, which had been thrown across the trenches by the English. In this photograph there was a picture of a long procession of German prisoners captured by the English. The daughter of the house, a well-read girl of nineteen, blazed up at the sight of this photograph, and showed it to her mother, who was equally surprised. The son of the house remarked, "Surely you know the English have taken a great many prisoners?"
His mother, realising her mistake, looked confused, and simply said, "I didn't think." In other words, the obvious fact that Germans were sometimes captured had never been pointed out to her by the Government, and most Germans are accustomed to think only what they are officially told to think.
While there are an increasing number of doubters among the German males as to the accuracy of statements issued by the Government, in the class with which I mostly came into contact in Germany, the women are blindfold and believe all they are told. So strong, too, is the influence of Government propaganda on the people in Germany that in a town where I met two English ladies married to Germans, they believed that Germany had Verdun in her grasp, had annihilated the British troops (mainly black) on the Somme, had defeated the British Fleet in the battle of Skagerrak (Jutland), and reduced the greater part of the fortifications, docks, and munition factories of London to ruins by Zeppelins.
Their anguish for the fate of their English relations was sincere, and they were intensely hopeful that Britain would accept any sort of terms of peace in order to prevent the invasion which some people in Germany still believe possible.
At the beginning of the war the click of the knitting needle was heard everywhere; shop-girls knitted while waiting for customers, women knitted in trams and trains, at theatres, in churches, and, of course, in the home. The knitting is ceasing now for the very practical reason that the military authorities have commandeered all the wool for the clothing of the soldiery. A further reason for the stoppage of such needlework is the fact that women are engaged in countless forms of definite war work.
Upon the whole it is beyond question that the German women are not standing the losses as well as the British women. I have been honoured in England by conversations with more than one lady who has lost many dear ones. The attitude is quieter here than in Germany, and is not followed by the peace talk which such events produce in German households.
What surprises me in England is the fact that the word "peace" is hardly ever mentioned anywhere, whereas in any German railway train or tramcar the two dominant words are Friede (peace) and Essen (food). The peace is always a German idea of peace—for the extreme grumblers do not talk freely in public—and the food talk is not always the result of the shortage, but of the great difficulty in getting what is to be obtained, together with the increasing monotony of the diet.
It must not be supposed, however, that the life of feminine Germany is entirely a gloomy round of duty and suffering. Among the women of the poor, things are as bad as they can be. They are getting higher wages than ever, but the food usury and the blockade rob them of the increase.
The middle and upper classes still devote a good deal of time to the feminine pursuits of shopping and dressing. The outbreak of war hit the fashions at a curious moment. Paris had just abandoned the tight skirt, and a comical struggle took place between the Government and those women who desired to be correctly gowned.
The Government said, "In order to avoid waste of material, you must stick to the tight skirt," and the amount of cloth allowed was carefully prescribed. Women's desire to be in the mode was, however, too powerful for even Prussianism. Copies of French fashion magazines were smuggled in from Paris through Switzerland, passed from dressmaker to dressmaker, and house to house, and despite the military instructions and the leather shortage, wide skirts and high boots began to appear everywhere,
This feminine ebullition was followed by an appeal from the Government to abandon all enemy example and to institute new German fashions of their own making. Models were exhibited in shop windows of what were called the "old and elegant Viennese fashions." These, however, were found to be great consumers of material, and the women still continued to imitate Paris.
The day before I left Berlin I heard an amusing conversation in the underground railway between two women, one of whom was talking about her hat. She told her friend that she found the picture of the hat in a smuggled fashion paper, and had it made at her milliner's and she was obviously very pleased with her taste.
The women in the munition factories, who number millions, wear a serviceable kind of uniform overall.
The venom of the German women in regard to the war is quite in contrast to the feeling expressed by English women. They have read a great deal about British and American women and they cordially detest them. Their point of view is very difficult to explain. When I have told German women that in many States in my country women have votes, their reply is, "How vulgar!" Their attitude towards the whole question of women's franchise is that it is a form of Anglo-Saxon lack of culture and lack of authority.
The freedom accorded to English and American girls is entirely misunderstood. A Dutch girl who, in the presence of some German ladies, expressed admiration for certain aspects of English feminine life, was fiercely and venomously attacked by that never-failing weapon, the German woman's tongue. The poor thing, who mildly expressed the view that hockey was a good game for girls, and the fine complexions and elegant walk of English women were due to outdoor sports, was reduced almost to tears.
The intolerance of German women is almost impossible to express. I know a case of one young girl, a German-American, whose parents returned to Hamburg, who declined to repeat the ridiculous German formula, "Gott strafe England," and stuck to her point, with the result that she was not invited to that circle again.
To the cry "Gott strafe England" has been added "Gott strafe Amerika," the latter being as popular with the German women as the German men. The pastors, professors, and the Press have told the German women that their husbands and sons and lovers are being killed by American shells. A man who ought to know better, like Prince Rupert of Bavaria, made a public statement that half of the Allies' ammunition is American. After the British and French autumn offensive of 1915 the feeling against America on the part of German women became so intense that the American flag had to be withdrawn from the American hospital at Munich, although that hospital, supported by German-American funds, has done wonderful work for the German wounded.
Arguments with German women about the war are absolutely futile. They follow the war very closely after their own method, and believe that any defeats, such as on the Somme or Verdun, are tactical rearrangements of positions, dictated by the wisdom of the General Staff, and so long as no Allied troops are upon German soil so long will the German populace believe in the invincibility of its army. I am speaking always of the middle and upper classes, who are on the whole, but with increasing exceptions, as intensely pro-war as the lower classes are anti-war.
The modern German Bible is the Zeitung (the rough translation of which is "newspaper") and German women are even more fanatical than the men, if possible, in their worship of it.
On one occasion, when I candidly remarked that von Papen and Boy-Ed came back to the Fatherland for certain unbecoming acts, some of which I enumerated, a Frau Hauptmann jumped to her feet and, after the customary brilliant manner of German argument, shrieked that I was a liar. She declared that their Zeitung had said nothing about the charges I mentioned, therefore they, were not true. She furthermore promised to report me to Colonel ——— at the Kriegsministerium (War Office), and she kept her word.
The neglect, and, in some cases refusal, to attend the British wounded by German nurses are a sign both of their own intensity of feeling in regard to the war and their entirely different mentality. Again and again I have heard German women say, "In the event of a successful German invasion of England the women will accompany the men, and teach the women of England that war is war." Their remarks in regard to the women of my own country are equally offensive. Indeed, States that Germany regards as neutral, and who are treated by the officially controlled German Press with a certain amount of respect, are loathed by German women. Their attitude is that all who are not on their side are their enemies. American women who are making shells for the British, French, and Russians are just as much the enemies of Germany as the Allied soldiers and sailors. One argument often used is that to be strictly neutral America should make no munitions at all, but it would not be so bad, say the Germans, if half the American ammunition went to Germany and half to the Allies.
I lost my temper once by saying to one elderly red-faced Frau, "Since you have beaten the British at sea, why don't you send your ships to fetch it?" "Our fleet," she said, "is too busy choking the British Fleet in its safe hiding places to afford time to go to America. You will see enough of our fleet one day, remember that!"
Summing up this brief and very sketchy analysis of German femininity in the war, I reiterate views expressed on previous visits to Germany, that German women are not standing the anxiety of the war as well as those of France and Britain.
They have done noble work for the Fatherland, but the grumblings of the lower third of the population are now such as have not been heard since 1848. German officials in the Press Department of the Foreign Office try to explain the unrest away to foreign correspondents like myself, but many thinking Germans are surprised and troubled by this unexpected manifestation on the part of those who for generations have been almost as docile and easily managed as children.