HOW AMERICANS WERE TREATED IN GERMANY.
"Wilson Breaks with Germany!" So announced the B. Z. am Mittag at noon on Sunday February 5, 1917. It was a very cold day, almost the coldest of that long cold winter. The chills were running up and down my spine in our cold apartment, but this headliner froze me stiff.
"Wilson Breaks with Germany." That is a typical German headliner. They never say "America" in the German papers, but always "Wilson," and it is Wilson that gets the blame for everything and never the American people.
The Monday after the break occurred the Americans flocked around the Embassy. We were all tremendously excited. Some were talking about "getting out" and others about "staying over." All were saying something, but most of us were saying "We will wait and see." When war was really declared, we took it much more calmly, we had grown used to emotion.
Our breaking off relations was taken very quietly by the German people. It was not flattering, and I felt that they should show a little horror and emotion that the greatest country in the world was against them. But the German people are sort of stunned in their emotions, and the only real emotion they have is the wish for peace. Peace is all they think about and long for.
When our Embassy went away all the Americans that remained behind went to the station to see them off. It was a slushy, snowy night. German policemen were everywhere and we had to show our passes to get out to the train. The platform was full of people, and the people who were going away were leaning from the train windows. Mr. and Mrs. Gerard had a little crowd around their window. I saw two men from the German Foreign Office in the crowd, Dr. Roediger and Herr Horstmann. Dr. Roediger was the clever young German who censored most of the articles of the American newspaper correspondents. His English was perfect.
When the train pulled out, there was a faint "Hurrah," and the people turned down the steps, embassyless and ambassadorless.
Right after the break Herr Zimmermann gave out that the Americans in Germany should be shown every courtesy, and that they should be treated as neutrals, and that any discourtesy should be reported to him at once.
Nothing happened to us until about the first of April all the Americans were summoned to the Military Commandery, and here we were lined up and registered. The Militär advised us to go home. The Foreign Office too gave us this advice. Even the American men were advised to leave, and none of them were held.
The last of April the Americans got notices that they would have to report to their local police every day to get official papers stamped. Also that they could not go from one city to another without a special permit which took three weeks to get, also that they could not go to the suburbs of Berlin without a permit—this last included Grunewald. The only bright spot was that we could stay out at night as late as we liked.
But for most Americans this did not last long, and they got off with reporting only once a week, and some of them had permanent permits for going to certain places in the suburbs of Berlin. As I was expecting to leave Germany, I never asked for one of these permits, for it was an awful task to go to the Military Commandery for anything, because there were always so many people there waiting, it took half a day to get anything. But I got off from going to the police every day. No Americans were allowed to go to either Potsdam or Spandau, Potsdam because of the royal residences, and Spandau because of the military stores. If you went any place without a permit, you were fined twenty marks and were liable to imprisonment.
I lived at a boarding-house where there were a lot of German officers, and on all the excursions that were made to the country by the boarders, I was asked to go along. The officers were very nice men, and they said that they would protect me if anything was said about my not having a permit, but I never went with them, for I don't look like a German and I was afraid I would be caught. I always stayed within the law.
I lived at that boarding-house seven weeks just before I left Germany, and I can honestly say that I never heard a word against my country. When I first went there I felt worried, for I was afraid that they would say things to me about America, and that I would answer back and maybe I would get into trouble and be arrested and held in Germany. But nothing like that happened. We hardly ever talked war—no one in Germany talks war as we do here in America—we talked about things to eat.
At this boarding-house I made friends with a very nice little German girl. One day we were talking and she said to me, "You and I have become very good friends. I never would have made up with you if you had been an English girl, but we Germans have no hate for America." And I have found this true of most of the German people—I am not speaking of the high officials and the big Militär, for I don't know anything about their sentiments—but the German folks, they have no hatred for us.
Amelia, the boarding-house maid, astonished me one day by asking if America was in the war. When I told her "yes" she wanted to know on which side, and when I told her she said, "Donnerwetter, we have so many enemies, I can't keep track of them. But I want to go to America, and I am going there after the war."
Every place I went I met Germans who want to come to America after the war; every man on the police force where I reported wants to come.
All the time all sorts of reports were being spread in America. My family heard that I was being held as a hostage, and another report was that an American lady in Dresden had been shot as a spy. The lady was called up by Mr. Oswald Schuette, an American correspondent, and the lady herself answered the phone. It was the first she had heard of it.
Personally I never heard of an American that was mistreated. I heard of one American that did a lot of blowing and talking, and he was forced to report to the police twice a day, and he had to be in at eight o'clock at night, but when he got a passage for America he was allowed to leave the country. All the American business houses were open as usual, and no American property was destroyed and no money was confiscated. Of course one has the feeling that one is in an enemy's land when one has to go to the police every week, and it did get on my nerves. And yet, every one was nice to me, and I was there five months after the break.
The German people have the greatest faith in their undersea-boats and the majority believe that the war will be over before America really gets into it. To them America seems far away. They don't know our power and our might, and they are hoping, hoping that the war will be over soon. Ask any German when the war will be over and the answer is, "In two months from now." "It can't last," they say.