First of all, in regard to our sentries. As there were so few of us, we soon managed to get on friendly terms with them. They were a delightful couple. One of them was medically unfit, and had never been in the trenches. He was mortally afraid of his own rifle, and at the first opportunity unloaded it. The responsibility of a live round in the breech was too great.
The other was old and kindly, with the Iron Cross; and like all men who have seen war, loathed it thoroughly.
“Englander and German,” he said, “trenches, ah, blutig; capout; here alles kameraden; krieg, nix mehr.”
And at every station he tried to get food out of the authorities. He was not very successful. Only once, at Louvain, did he manage to raise some bully beef and bread, and if we had had to rely on official largess, we should have been very thin by the time we reached Karlsruhe. But luckily, through being a small party, we were able to benefit from the generosity of the Belgian civilians at a small village called Bout-Merveille, who showered on us bread and eggs and cigarettes.
But for all that the journey was tedious beyond words. We were crowded in a third-class carriage, with unpadded seats. We had nothing to read. Wherever the train stopped at a siding it remained there for any period from four to seven hours; it did all its movement by night, and for at least ten hours of daylight presented us with a stationary landscape. It seemed as though it would never end. Nor did our arrival in Germany afford any diversion. Another traditional conception “went west.” We had all vaguely expected to receive some insult or brutality at the hands of the civilian population. But no old men spat on us, no hectic women attacked us with their hair-pins. Instead of that they regarded us with a friendly curiosity.
“Cheer up!” one girl said to us. “The war’ll soon be over. You will be back in four months.”
It was the same here as behind the line. Peace—nothing else mattered. The Germans had suffered so much personally that they had ceased to nourish the collective loyalties of world power and empire. They no longer wanted to conquer the world, they wanted to be at peace; and to this end their victories in the field seemed the shortest way. The short snatches of conversation that we had with civilians on Heidelberg Station were all in this key. Peace would come in four months. Beyond that they had no ambitions. They no longer shared the megalomania of their rulers.
CHAPTER III
KARLSRUHE AND MILTON HAYES
After the discomforts of the trenches and the tedium of a fortnight’s travelling, Karlsruhe provided a delightful haven. Here all the material needs were satisfied; there was a Red Cross issue of tin foods three times a week: the beds were moderately comfortable, and one’s clothes could be disinfected: and there was a library. After a fortnight’s exile from books there is no joy comparable to the sight of a printed page.
And in the evenings we were allowed out till eleven o’clock. There were big arc lamps under the trees, and in this romantic atmosphere the greater part of the camp lay out reading in deck chairs. It was easy then to cast a false glamour over imprisonment; to see in it a succession of harmonious days; a quiet backwater in which the mind was free to work. It was easy to bathe the emotions in the ordered periods of George Moore’s prose, and reflect that there “lay no troublous thing before.” It was the reaction natural after the turgid experiences of the last eight months, and it certainly made that one week at Karlsruhe lyrical with content.