The senior British officer explained his errand. “As we’re no longer prisoners,” he said, “we may surely go out for walks?”
The German looked a little awkward.
“Well,” he said hesitatingly, “the fact is, I really am not the person to ask. You see, the soldiers’ council are in command. You must go and ask Herr Bomenheim, he is the representative.”
And besides being representative of the revolution, Herr Bomenheim was also the window cleaner; it is a strange world in which a colonel takes his orders from his batman.
At Mainz we were less democratic, as our affairs were run by a sergeant-major. But for all that we had no truck with the old regime, and the “Soldaten Raht” proved its independence by court-martialling the Prussian General. For that deed alone the prisoners of Mainz bear to the revolutionaries a debt of everlasting gratitude. And the escapade that led to this retribution provides a fitting example of all that is most aggressive and inhuman in the Berlin military caste.
At this time there was a very great deal of sickness in Mainz, and the hospitals were crowded both with civilians and British officers. It was also a time at which congestion of the railroads had delayed the arrival of our Red Cross parcels. The British authorities in the camp had in consequence collected as large a supply of food as possible, to be sent to the hospital and divided not only among our own invalids, but among those of the civilian population whose condition was really critical. This consignment was loaded on a handcart, and surrounded, by sentries, was to proceed into the town.
At the gates, however, it was met by the General, who, by the courtesy of the revolutionaries, was now allowed to wear his uniform. He immediately stopped the handcart and asked where it was going; on being informed of its destination he ordered that the food should be returned at once to the officers who had collected it, as he could in no wise countenance such a proceeding. It was pointed out to him that the condition of several officers in the hospital was most serious, and that meat stuffs were urgently required. But he would have none of it.
“My permission was not asked first,” he said, “and I cannot allow it. If you had come to me, it would have been different. But I cannot have you behaving as though you were under your own rule.”
And it is to the credit of the soldiers’ council that they took instant steps in the matter. The General was informed that he only occupied his position on tolerance and had no active authority whatsoever. And within two days he was removed from the camp, and is now, I believe, awaiting court-martial on a charge of “inhumanity and callousness.”
And all the while rumours about our release bred at an alarming rate. The German authorities had told us that it would be impossible for them to provide us with a train for at least a fortnight, but that if we liked we could make our own arrangements, and charter a steamer that would take us up the Rhine. These were days of furious conjecture. The complete technique of a pleasure trip was exhaustively discussed. How long did it take a steamer to coal? how long to get up steam? And then of how many knots an hour was it capable? Sums were worked out on the old methods of, Let x be the rate of the steamer, and y the speed of the Rhine. We roughly gauged that it would take twenty-seven hours. But then, of course, the Dutch Government had to be considered. However delightful we might be as individual companions, we were not at all sure whether a neutral country would welcome the sudden arrival of 500 guests. Of course they had received the Kaiser, but that was not quite the same thing. There was an inconvenient margin of doubt.