The Land of Deepening Shadow: Germany-at-War

by D. Thomas Curtin

CHAPTER XV

PREVENTIVE ARREST

In the beginning of the war, when all seemed to be going well, there was no disunity in Germany. When Germany was winning victory after victory, practically no censorship was needed in the newspapers; the police were tolerant; every German smiled upon every other German; soldiers went forth singing and their trains were gaily decorated with oak leaves; social democracy praised militarism.

All that has changed and the hosts who went singing on their way in the belief that they would be home in six weeks, have left behind homes many of them bereaved by the immense casualties, and most of them suffering from the increased food shortage.

Class feeling soon increased. The poor began to call the rich agrarians "usurers." The Government forbade socialistic papers such as the Vorwaerts to use the word "usurer" any more, because it was applied to the powerful junkers. Such papers as the Tagliche Rundschau and the Tageszeitung could continue to use it, however, for they applied it to the small shopkeeper who exceeded the maximum price by a fraction of a penny.

As the rigour of the blockade increased, the discontent of the small minority who were beginning to hate their own Government almost as much as, and in many cases more, than they hated enemies of Germany, assumed more threatening forms than mere discussion. Their disillusionment regarding Germany's invincibility opened their eyes to faults at home. Some of the extreme Social Democrats were secretly spreading the treasonable doctrine that the German Government was not entirely blameless in the causes of the war. It has been my custom to converse with all classes of society, and I was amazed at the increasing number of disgruntled citizens.

But the German Government is still determined to have unity. They had enlisted the services of editors, reporters, professors, parsons and cinema operators to create it; they are now giving the police an increasingly important role to maintain it.

As the German Parliament in no way resembles the British Parliament, so do the German, police in no way resemble the British police. The German police, mounted or unmounted, are armed with a revolver, a sword, and not infrequently provided with a machine-gun. They have powers of search and arrest without warrant. They are allowed at their discretion to strike or otherwise maltreat not only civilians, but soldiers. Always armed with extraordinary power, their position during the past few months has risen to such an extent that the words used in the Reichstag, "The Reign of Terror," are not an exaggeration.

Aided and even abetted by a myriad of spies and agents-provocateurs, they have placed under what is known as "preventive arrest" throughout the German Empire and Austria so great a number of civilians that the German prisons, as has been admitted, are filled to repletion.

With the Reichstag shut up, and the hold on the newspapers tightening,-what opportunity remains by which independent thought can be disseminated?

In Poland meetings to consider what they call "Church affairs," but which were really revolutionary gatherings, afforded opportunity for discussion. These have been ruled out of order.

The lectures taking place in their thousands all over Germany might afford a chance of expression of opinion, but the professors, like the pastors, are, as I have said, so absolutely dependent upon the Government for their position and promotion, that I have only heard of one of them who had the temerity to make any speech other than those of the "God-punish-England" and "We-must-hold-out" type. His resignation from the University of Munich was immediately demanded, and any number of sycophants were ready to take his place.

Clubs are illegal in Germany, and the humblest working-men's cafes are attended by spies. In my researches in the Berlin East-end I often visited these places and shared my adulterated beer and war bread with the working folk—all of them over or under military age.

One evening a shabby old man said rather more loudly than was necessary to a number of those round him:—"I am tired of reading in the newspapers how nice the war is. Even the Vorwaerts (then a Socialist paper) lies to us. I am tired of walking home night after night and finding restaurants turned into hospitals for the wounded."

He was referring in particular to the great Schultheiss working-men's restaurants in Hasenheide. His remarks were received with obvious sympathy.

A couple of nights later I went into this same place and took my seat, but it was obvious that my visit was unwelcome. I was looked at suspiciously. I did not think very much of the incident, but ten days later in passing I called again, when a lusty young fellow of eighteen, to whom I had spoken on my first visit, came forward and said to me, almost threateningly, "You are a stranger here. May I ask what you are doing?"

I said: "I am an American newspaper correspondent, and am trying to find out what I can about the ways of German working folk."

He could tell by my accent that I was a foreigner, and said: "We thought that you had told the Government about that little free speaking we had here a few days ago. You know that the little old man who was complaining about the restaurants being turned into hospitals has been arrested?"

This form of arrest, by which hundreds of people are mysteriously disappearing, is one of the burning grievances of Germany to-day. In its application it resembles what we used to read about Russian police. It has created a condition beneath the surface in Germany resembling the terrorism of the French Revolution. In the absence of a Habeas Corpus Act, the victim lies in gaol indefinitely, while the police are, nominally, collecting the evidence against him. One cannot move about very long without coming across instances of this growing form of tyranny, but I will merely give one other.

A German family, resident in Sweden, were in correspondence with a woman resident in Prussia. In one of her letters she incautiously remarked, "What a pity that the two Emperors cannot be taught what war really means to the German peoples." She had lost two sons, and her expression of bitterness was just a feminine outburst, which in any other country, would have been passed by. She was placed under preventive arrest and is still in gaol.

The police are armed with the censorship of the internal postal correspondence, telegrams and telephones. One of the complaints of the Social Democrat members of the Reichstag is that every movement is spied upon, and their communications tampered with by what they call the "Black Chamber."

There is no reason to suppose that the debates in the closing session of the Reichstag in 1916 on police tyranny, the Press censorship, the suppression of public opinion, will lead to any result other than the familiar expressions of mild indignation—such as that which came from the National Liberal and Pan-German leader, Dr. Paasche—and perhaps a little innocent legislation. But the reports of the detailed charges against the Government constitute, even as passed by the German censorship for publication, a remarkable revelation. It should be remembered in reading the following quotations that the whole subject has been discussed in the secrecy of the Reichstag Committee, and that what is now disclosed is in the main only what the Government has been unable to hush up or hide.

In his famous speech on "preventive arrest" the Social Democratic
Deputy, Herr Dittmann said:—

"Last May I remarked that the system of preventive arrest was producing a real reign of terror, and since then things have got steadily worse. The law as it was before 1848 and the Socialist Law, of scandalous memory, are celebrating their resurrection. The system of denunciation and of agents-provocateurs is in full bloom, and it is all being done under the mask of patriotism and the saving of the country. Anybody who for personal or other reasons is regarded by the professional agents-provocateurs as unsatisfactory or inconvenient is put under suspicion of espionage, or treason, or other crime. And such vague denunciations are then sufficient to deprive the victim of his freedom, without any possibility of defence being given him. In many cases such arrest has been maintained by the year without any lawful foundation for it. Treachery and low cunning are now enjoying real orgies. A criminal is duly convicted and knows his fate. The man under preventive arrest is overburdened by the uncertainty of despair, and is simply buried alive. The members of the Government do not seem to have a spark of understanding for this situation, the mental and material effects of which are equally terrible.

"Dr. Helfferich said in the Budget Committee in the case of Dr. Franz Mehring that it is better that he should be under detention than that he should be at large and do something for which he would have to be punished. According to this reasoning the best thing would be to lock up everybody and keep them from breaking the law. The ideal of Dr. Helfferich seems to be the German National Prison of which Heine spoke. The case of Mehring is classical proof of the fact that we are no longer far removed from the Helfferich ideal."

Herr Dittmann went on to say that Herr Mehring's only offence was that in a letter seized by the police he wrote to a Reichstag deputy named Herzfeld in favour of a peace demonstration in Berlin, and offered to write a fly-sheet inviting attendance at such a meeting. Mehring, who is over 70 years of age, was then locked up. Herr Dittmann continued:—

"How much longer will it be before even thoughts become criminal in Germany? Mehring is one of the most brilliant historians and writers, and one of the first representatives of German intellectual life—known as such far beyond the German frontiers. When it is now known abroad that such a man has been put under a sort of preventive arrest merely in order to cut him off from the public for political reasons, one really cannot be astonished at the low reputation enjoyed by the German Government both at home and abroad. How evil must be the state of a Government which has to lock up the first minds of the country in order to choke their opposition!"

Herr Dittmann's second case was that of Frau Rosa Luxemburg. He said that she was put under arrest many months ago, without any charge being made against her, and merely out of fear of her intellectual influence upon the working classes. All the Socialist women of Germany were deeply indignant, and he invited the Government to consider that such things must make it the positive duty of Socialists in France, England, Italy and Russia "to fight against a Government which imprisons without any reason the best-known champions of the International proletariat." The treatment of both Mehring and Frau Luxemburg had been terrible. The former, old and ill, had had the greatest difficulty in getting admission to a prison infirmary. Frau Luxemburg a month ago was taken from her prison bed in the middle of the night, removed to the police headquarters, and put in a cell which was reserved for prostitutes. She had not been allowed a doctor, and had been given food which she could not eat. Just before the Reichstag debate she had been, taken away from Berlin to Wronke, in the Province of Posen.

Herr Dittmann then gave a terrible account, some of it unfit for reproduction, of the treatment in prison of two girls of eighteen whose offence was that on June 27th they had distributed invitations to working women to attend a meeting of protest against the procedure in the case of Herr Liebknecht. He observed that they owed it entirely to themselves and to their training if they had not been ruined physically and morally in their "royal Prussian prison." When they were at last released they were informed that they would be imprisoned for the rest of the war if they attended any public meeting. Herr Dittmann proceeded:—

"Here we have police brutality in all its purity. This is how a working-class child who is trying to make her way up to knowledge and Kultur is treated in the country of the promised 'new orientation,' in which (according to the Imperial Chancellor) 'the road is to be opened for all who are efficient.' These are the methods by which the spirit of independence is systematically to be billed. That is the reason for the arrests of members of the Socialist party who stand on the side of determined opposition. You imagine that by isolating the leading elements of the opposition you can crush the head of the snake."

Herr Dittmann's next case was that of Dr. Meyer, one of the editors of Vorwaerts, who was arrested many months ago. He is suffering from tuberculosis, but is not allowed to go to a sanatorium. Another Socialist journalist named Regge, father of six children, has been under arrest since August, his only offence being that he has agitated against the militarist majority. Herr Dittmann then dealt at length with the Socialist journalist named Kluhs, who has been in prison for eight months, also for his activity on behalf of the Socialist minority against the majority, and was prevented from communicating with his dying wife or attending her funeral,

Herr Dittmann gave the details of three cases at Dusseldorf and one at Brunswick, and then explained how the military authorities in many parts of Germany are deliberately offering Socialists the choice between silence and military service. A well-known trade union official at Elberfeld, named Sauerbrey, who had been declared totally unfit for military service because he had lost several fingers on his left hand, was arrested and charged with treason. He was acquitted, but instead of obtaining his freedom he was immediately called up and is now in training for the front. Herr Dittmann said that this case had caused intense bitterness, and added:—

"The Military Command at Munster is surprised that the feeling in the whole Wupper Valley is becoming more and more discontented, and the military are now hatching new measures of violence in order to be able to master this discontent. One would think that such things came from the madhouse. In reality they represent conditions under martial law, and this case is only one of very many."

Herr Dittmann gave several instances of men declared unfit for service who had been called up for political reasons, and he ended his speech as follows:—

"In regard to all this persecution of peaceful citizens there is a regular apparatus of agents-provocateurs, provided by officials of all kinds, and the apparatus is growing every day. If these persecutions were stopped a great number of these agents and officials could be released for military service. In most cases they are mere shirkers, and that is why they cling to their posts and seek every day to prove themselves indispensable by discovering all sorts of crimes. Because they do not want to go to the trenches other people must go to prison. Put an end to the state of martial law, and help us to root up a state of things which disgraces the German name."

The Alsatian deputy, Herr Haus, said that Alsace-Lorraine is suffering more than any other part of the country, and that more than 1,000 persons have been arrested without any charge being brought against them. Herr Seyda, for the Poles, said that the Polish population of Germany suffers especially from the system of preventive arrest.

In his contemptuous reply, which, showed that the Government was confident that it had nothing to fear from the majority in the Reichstag, Herr Helfferich said:—

"The institution of the dictator comes from ancient Rome, from the classical Republic of antiquity. (Laughter.) When the State was fighting for its existence it was found necessary to place supreme power in the hands of a single man, and to give this Roman dictator authority which was much greater than the authority belonging to preventive arrest and martial law. The whole development proceeds by way of compromise between the needs of the State and the needs of protection for the individual. The results vary according to the particular level of civilisation reached by the particular State. (Socialist cries of 'Very true.') We are not at the lowest level. When one considers the state of things in Germany in peace time we can be proud. (Socialist interruptions.) I am proud of Germany. I think that our constitutional system before the outbreak of war and our level of Kultur were such as every German could be proud of. ('No, no.') I hope that we shall soon be able to revert to those conditions."

Herr Helfferich went on to argue that repression in Germany is really much milder than in France, England, or Italy; and for the debate on the censorship, which followed the debate on preventive arrest, he came armed with an account of the Defence of the Realm Acts. When he enlarged upon the powers of the British Government he was interrupted by cries of "It is a question not of theory but of practice," and the Socialist leader Herr Stadthagen made a scathing reply. He said:—

"Even if everything in England is as Herr Helfferich described it, the state of things is much better there than in Germany. Herr Helfferich stated the cases in which arrest and search of dwellings may take place, but those are cases in which similar action can be taken in Germany in time of peace under the ordinary criminal law. The Englishman has quite other rights. He has the right to his personality, and, above all, the officials in England, unlike Germany, are personally responsible. When we make a law, that law is repealed by the Administration. That is the whole point, but Herr Helfferich does not see it, and he does not see that we live in a Police State and under a police system. Did it ever occur to anybody in England to dispute the right of immunity of members of parliament? Did it ever occur to anybody in England to go to members of the Opposition in Parliament and demand that they should resign their seats on pain of arrest? Or has anybody in England been threatened with arrest if he does not withdraw a declaration against the committee of his party? Two newspapers have been suppressed in England because they opposed munitions work. I regret this check upon free criticism in England, but what would have happened in Germany? In Germany there would undoubtedly have been a prosecution for high treason. In England, moreover, the newspapers are allowed to reappear, and that without giving any guarantees. In Germany we are required to give guarantees that the papers shall be conducted by a person approved of by the political police. Herr Helfferich employs inappropriate comparisons. I will give him one which applies. The political police in Germany is precisely what the State Inquisition was in Venice."

An interesting point in the censorship debate was the disclosure of the fact that the local censors do what they please. Herr Seyda protested against the peculiar persecution of the Poles. He remarked that at Gnesen no Polish paper has been allowed to appear for the past two years.

But as significant as anything was Herr Stadthagen's account of the recruiting for the political police. He said that the police freely offer both money and exemption from military service to boys who are about to become liable for service. He gave a typical case of a boy of seventeen. The police called at his home and inquired whether he belonged to any Socialist organisation and whether he had been medically examined for the Army. A police official then waylaid the boy as he was leaving work and promised him that, if he would give information of what went on in his Socialist association, he could earn from 4 pounds to 4 pounds 10 shillings a month and be exempt from military service.

There is a peculiar connection between censorship and police. The evil effect of the censorship of their own Press by the German Government is to hypnotise the thousands of Government bureaucrats into the belief that that which they read in their own controlled Press is true.

No people are more ready to believe what they want to believe than the governing class in Germany. They wanted to believe that Great Britain would not come into the war. They had got into their heads, too, that Japan was going to be an ally of theirs. They wrote themselves into the belief that France was defeated and would collapse.

Regarding the Press, as they do, as all-important, they picked from the British Press any articles or fragments of articles suitable for their purpose and quoted them. They are adepts in the art of dissecting a paragraph so that the sense is quite contrary to that meant by the writer.

But the German Government goes further than that. It is quite content to quote to-day expressions of Greek opinion from Athens organs well known to be subsidised by Germany. Certain bribed papers in Zurich and Stockholm, and one notorious American paper, are used for this process of self-hypnotism. The object is two-fold. First, to influence public opinion in the foreign country, and, secondly, by requoting the opinion, to influence their own people into believing that this is the opinion held in the country from which it emanates. Thus, when I told Germans that large numbers of the Dutch people are pro-Ally, they point to an extract from an article in De Toekomst and controvert me.

These methods go to strengthen the hands of the police when they declare that in acting severely they are only acting against anarchistic opinions likely to create the impression abroad that there is disunity within the Empire.

Never, so far as I can gather, in the world's history was there so complete a machine for the suppression of individual opinion as the German police.

The anti-war demonstrations in Germany range all the way from the smashing of a few food-shop windows to the complete preparations for a serious crippling of the armies in the field by a general munition strike.

Half-way between were the so-called "Liebknecht riots" in Berlin. The notices summoning these semi-revolutionary meetings were whispered through factories, and from mouth to mouth by women standing in the food lines waiting for their potatoes, morning bread, meat, sugar, cheese, and other supplies. Liebknecht was brought to secret trial on June 27th, on the evening of which demonstrations took place throughout the city. I was present at the one near the Rathaus, which was dispersed towards midnight when the police actually drew their revolvers and charged the crowd.

The following evening I was at an early hour in the Potsdamer Platz, where a great demonstration was to take place. It was the second anniversary of the murder at Sarajevo. The city was clearly restless, agitated; people were on the watch for something to happen. The Potsdamer Platz is the centre through which the great arteries of traffic flow westward after the work of the day is done. The people who stream through it do not belong to the poorer classes, for these live in the east and the north. But on this mild June evening there was a noticeably large number of working men in the streets leading into the Platz. I was standing near a group of these when the evening editions appeared with the news that Liebknecht had been sentenced. A low murmur among the workmen, mutterings of suppressed rage when they realised the significance of the short trial of two days, and a determined movement toward the place of demonstration.

I hurried to the Potsdamer Platz. The number of police stationed in the streets leading into it increased. The Platz itself was blue with them, for they stood together in groups of six, ten and twelve. I went along the Budapester Strasse to the Brandenburger Tor, through which workmen from Moabit had streamed at noon declaring that they would strike. They had been charged by the mounted police, who drove them back across the Spree. There was a blue patrol along the Unter den Linden now. A whole army corps of police were on the alert in the German capital.

I returned to the Potsdamer Platz. It was thick with people now—curious onlookers. There were crowds of workmen in the adjacent streets, but they were not allowed to approach too near. Again and again they tried, but, unarmed, they were powerless when the horses were driven into them, I saw a few of the most obstinate struck with the flat of sabres, and on others were rained blows from the police on foot. Nobody hit Back, or even defended himself.

There was practically no violence such as one expects from a mob. It was something else which impressed me. It impressed my police-lieutenant friend, also. That was the dangerous ugliness in the workmen. Hate was written in their faces, and the low growl in the crowd told all too plainly the growing feeling against the war.

The Government realised this. They had already seen that the unity they had so artificially created could only be held by force. They had used force in the muzzling of Liebknecht, and quietly they were employing a most potent force every day, the force of preventive arrest.

In July there was agitation for the great munition strike which was to have taken place on the day of the second anniversary of the war. The dimensions of the proposed rising were effectually concealed by the censorship. The ugly feeling in the Potsdamer Platz had taught the Government a lesson.

No detail was neglected in the preparations against the strike. There was a significant movement of machine-guns to all points of danger, such as the Moabit district of Berlin, and Spandau, together with countless warnings against so-called "anarchists." Any workman who showed the slightest tendency to be a leader in a factory group was taken away. The expressions of intention not to work the first four days of August became so strong that the Press issued a warning that any man refusing to work would be put into a uniform, and he would receive not eight or more marks a day as in munition work, but three marks in ten days. Even the Kaiser supplemented his regular anniversary manifestoes to the armed forces of the Empire and the civilian population with a special appeal to the workmen.

I was up and ready at an early hour on the morning of August 1st. Again the city was blue with police. But this time they were reinforced. As I walked through streets lined with soldiers in the workingmen's quarters, I realised the futility of any further anti-war demonstrations in the Fatherland.

I stood in the immense square before the Royal Palace, and reflected that two years ago it was packed with a crowd wild with joy at the opportunity of going to war. There was unity. I stood on the very spot where the old man was jeered because he had said, "War is a serious business, young fellow."

On August 1st, 1916, there were more police in the square than civilians. On Unter den Linden paced the blue patrol. There was still unity in Germany, but a unity maintained by revolver, sword and machine-gun.