CHAPTER XXV
BERLIN'S EAST-END
The poor of Berlin live in the north and east of the city. I have seen Berlin's East-end change from the hilarious joy of the first year of the war to an ever-deepening gloom. I have studied conditions there long and carefully, but I feel that I can do no better than describe my last Saturday in that interesting quarter of the German capital.
Late in the morning I left the Stettiner Bahnhof in the north and walked eastward through the Invalidenstrasse. There was practically no meat in the butchers' shops, just the customary lines of empty hooks. A long queue farther on attracted my attention and I crossed the street to see what the people were waiting for. A glance at the dark red carcases in the shop told me that this was horse-meat day for that district.
The number of vacant shops of all descriptions was increasing. The small shoemaker and tailor were closing up. The centralisation of food distribution is greater here than in the better-class districts, with the result that many small shopkeepers have been driven out of business. In parts of Lothringerstrasse a quarter of the shops were vacant, in other parts one-half. The bakers' shops are nearly empty except at morning and evening. In fact, after my long sojourn in blockaded Germany I still find myself after two months in England staring in amazement at the well-stocked shop windows of every description.
Shortly before noon I reached the _Zentral Viehund-Schlachthof (the slaughter-houses). Through a great gateway poured women and children, each carrying some sort of a tin or dish full of stew. Some of the children were scarcely beyond the age of babyhood, and their faces showed unmistakable traces of toil. The poor little things drudged hard enough in peace time, and in war they are merely part of the big machine.
The diminishing supply of cattle and pigs for killing has afforded an opportunity to convert a section of the slaughter-houses into one of the great People's Kitchens. Few eat there, however. Just before noon and at noon the people come in thousands for the stew, which costs forty pfennigs (about 5 pence) a quart, and a quart is supposed to be enough for a meal and a half.
I have been in the great Schlachthof kitchen, where I have eaten the stew, and I have nothing but praise for the work being done. This kitchen, like the others I have visited, is the last word in neatness. The labour-saving devices, such as electric potato-parers, are of the most modern type. In fact, the war is increasing the demand for labour-saving machinery in Germany to at least as great an extent as high wages have caused such a demand in America. Among the women who prepare the food and wait upon the people there is a noticeable spirit of co-operation and a pride in the part they are playing to help the Fatherland durchhalten (hold out). Should any of the stew remain unsold it is taken by a well-known restaurant in the Potsdamer Platz, which has a contract with the municipal authorities. Little was wasted in Germany before the war; nothing, absolutely nothing, is wasted to-day.
As at the central slaughter-house, so in other districts the poor are served in thousands with standard stew. The immense Alexander Market has been cleared of its booths and tables and serves more than 30,000 people. One director of this work told me that the Berlin authorities would supply nearly 400,000 people before the end of the winter.
The occasional soldier met in the streets looked shabbier in the shabby surroundings of the East. The German uniform, which once evoked unstinted praise, is suffering sadly to-day owing to lack of raw materials. I was in a Social Democratic district, but the men in uniform who were home on leave were probably "good" Social Democrats, since it is notorious that the regular variety are denied this privilege.
The faces of the soldiers were like the rest of the faces I saw that day. There was not the least trace of the cheerful, confident expression of the days when all believed that the Kaiser's armies would hammer their way to an early peace—"in three months," as people used to say during the first year and a quarter of the war. Verdun had been promised them as a certain key to early peace, and Admiral Scheer was deified as the immortal who tore loose the British clutch from the German throat. But Verdun and Jutland faded in succeeding months before the terrible first-hand evidence that the constant diminution of food made life a struggle day after day and week after week. The news from Rumania, though good, would bring them no cheer until it was followed by plenty of food.
In the vicinity of the Schlesischer Bahnhof occurred a trifling incident which gave me an opportunity to see the inside of a poor German home that day. A soldier in faded field-grey, home on leave, asked me for a match. During the conversation which followed I said that I was an American, but to my surprise he did not make the usual German reply that the war would have been ended long ago if it had not been for American ammunition. On the contrary, he showed an interest in my country, as he had a brother there, and finally asked me if I would step into his home and explain a few things to him with the aid of a map.
Though I was in a district of poverty the room I entered was commendably clean. An old picture of William I. hung on one wall; opposite was Bismarck. Over the low door was an unframed portrait of "unser Kaiser," while Hindenburg completed the collection. Wooden hearts, on which were printed the names Liege, Maubeuge, and Antwerp, recalled the days when German hearts were light and German tongues were full of brag.
A girl of ten entered the room. She hated the war because she had to rush every day at noon from school to the People's Kitchen to fetch the family stew. In the afternoon she had to look after the younger children while her mother stood in the long lines before the shops where food was sold. The family were growing tired of stew day after day. They missed the good German sausage and unlimited amount of bread and butter.
The mother looked in on her way to the street, basket under arm. She was tired, and was dulled by the daily routine of trying to get food. She talked bitterly about the war, but though she blamed the Agrarians for not doing their part to relieve the food situation, she expressed no animosity against her own Government. The father had been through Lodz in Hindenburg's two frontal assaults on Warsaw, where he had seen the slopes covered with forests of crosses marking the German dead, and his words were bitter, too, when he talked of his lost comrades. And then, the depressing feeling of returning from an army pursuing the mirage of victory to find his family and every other family struggling in the meshes of that terrible and relentless blockade!
It never had occurred to him that his Government might be in the least responsible for the misery of his country. Like the great bulk of the German people he is firmly convinced that the Fatherland has been fighting a war of defence from the very beginning. "To think that one nation, England, is responsible for all this suffering!" was the way that he put it. He is a "good" Social Democrat.
When I once more resumed my walk I saw the lines of people waiting for food in every street. Each time I turned a corner great black masses dominated the scene. I paused at a line of more than three hundred waiting for potatoes. Ten yards away not a sound could be heard. The very silence added to the depression. With faces anxious and drawn they stood four abreast, and moved with the orderliness of soldiers. Not a sign of disturbance, and not a policeman in sight. Some women were mending socks; a few, standing on the edge of the closely packed column, pushed baby carriages as they crawled hour after hour toward the narrow entrance of the shop.
Every line was like the rest. The absence of policemen is particularly noteworthy, since they had to be present in the early days—a year ago—when the butter lines came into being. Drastic measures were taken when the impatient women rioted. Those days are over. The Government has taught the people a lesson. They will wait hour after hour, docile and obedient henceforth, if necessary until they drop—make no mistake of that.
But the authorities also learned a lesson. "People think most of revolution when they are hungry," was what one leader said to me. On this Saturday of which I write not a potato was to be bought in the West-end of Berlin, where the better classes live. Berlin had been without potatoes for nearly a week. To-day they had arrived, and the first to come were sent to the East-end. In the West-end the people are filled with more unquestioning praise of everything the Government does; they applaud when their Kaiser confers an Order upon their Crown Prince for something, not quite clear, which he is supposed to have accomplished at Verdun. Therefore they can wait for potatoes until the more critical East-end is supplied.
I went farther eastward through the Kottbuser district to the Kottbuser Ufer on the canal, along which, a couple of hundred people waited in an orderly column without any guardian—another evidence of the success of the drastic measures of July and early August, when the demonstrations against the war were nipped in the bud. These people were waiting for the free advertisement sheets from the gaudily painted yellow Ullstein newspaper building across the square. They had to stand by the side of the canal because a queue of several hundred people waiting for potatoes wound slowly before Ullstein's to the underground potato-shop next door.
I had not heard a laugh or seen anybody smile all day, and when darkness fell on the weary city I went to a cheap little beer-room where several "bad," but really harmless Social Democrats used to gather. Among them was the inevitable one who had been to America, and I had become acquainted with them through him. They talked in the new strain of their type, that they might as well be under the British or French, as under their own Government.
Their voices were low—a rare event where Germans gather at table. They did not plot, they merely grumbled incessantly. The end of the war had definitely sunk below their horizon, and peace, not merely steps to peace, was what they longed for. There was the customary cursing of the Agrarians and the expressions of resolve to have a new order of freedom after the war, expressions which I believe will not be realised unless Germany is compelled to accept peace by superior forces from without.
I left the dreary room for the dreary streets, and turned towards the centre and West-end of Berlin, where the cafe lights were bright and tinkling music made restricted menu-cards easier to bear.
Suddenly the oppressive feeling of the East-end was dispelled by the strains of military music drawing closer in a street near by. I hurried towards it, and saw a band marching at the head of two companies of wounded soldiers, their bandages showing white under the bright street lights of Berlin.
The men were returning to their hospital off the Prenzlauer Allee from a day's outing on the River Spree. Scores of followers swelled to hundreds. The troubles of the day were forgotten. Eyes brightened as the throng kept step with the martial music. A roll of drum, a flare of brass, and the crowd, scattered voices at first, and then swelling in a grand crescendo, sang Deutschland uber Alles. To-morrow they would complain again of food shortage and sigh for peace, but tonight they would dream of victory.