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.