I was getting good and sick of the Germans, as such, for they had worked some good gags on us at that camp at Landshut. They took all our clothes, including shoes, to have them fumigated in order, as they said, to safeguard the health of the camp, and, as a substitute, they issued us old Russian prisoner uniforms. For shoes, they gave us some toy paper bedroom slippers, which could be bought in an American novelty store for a dime. To our surprise, in a few days these clothes were returned to us, unfumigated, in fact, untouched except thoroughly searched. It was the typical shell game under the guise of Kultur, for, at the end of the month, we found that we had been charged three dollars for the said shoes, and, since the Germans controlled the prisoners’ exchequer, the transaction would not permit of any argument.
Another time, I was soaked outright. The officer at my previous prison camp at Karlsruhe gave me a receipt for my fast dwindling purse. When I presented this receipt at Landshut, the authorities stated that they had no record of it, but that, if I would turn over this receipt to them, they would send it to Karlsruhe for verification. Like a boob, I turned the receipt over, and I have never seen it or the money since. I demanded the money several times afterwards, but demands, when a prisoner, do not carry a great deal of pull.
Shortly after the armistice, the orders came for us to be taken to another camp, preparatory to our “coming out.” Our Red Cross food supply had been running short for some time, and, just the way things always happen, a carload of food arrived for us the day we started for the new camp. On our trip, they sent the customary number of guards along, including the sergeant interpreter of the camp, whose name was Kapp, and who was in charge of the party. The railways were congested, as they usually were in Germany, so Herr Kapp sat in our compartment, and his presence eliminated the necessity of the objectionable guards.
Herr Kapp was a well-to-do German of the middle class, an artist by profession, well educated, and about forty years old. The only objection I had to Kapp was that, like most other Germans, he was an habitual liar. However, he tried to be a good fellow, which was decidedly in his favor, and there was one other good thing about him—his unusually good sense of humor.
Realizing the uniqueness of our position, which happens only once in a couple of centuries, namely, being a member of the victorious army about to pass from the hands of the enemy, I sought to engage Herr Kapp in honest, frank conversation, since there could now be no reason for deceptions. After a while, he opened up, so I asked him when he considered the German cause was at its best. He said that it was undoubtedly in the early part of the War, when the Germans were at the gates of Paris. I asked him when he thought the tide had turned, and he said that the German people realized, on July 18, 1918, when the Allies attacked between Château-Thierry and Soissons, that thereafter Germany was fighting the War on the defensive.
“What,” I asked, “was the attitude of the German people toward their prospects of victory when America entered the War?”
“Well,” he calmly replied, “to a large number of the common people who, of course, read the Governmental propaganda, they only considered it as a big bluff, for they reasoned that it would be impossible for America to transport her army overseas. You see,” he went on, “the reports of the sinking of allied ships by our submarines had been greatly exaggerated, and the general public honestly thought that America could do no more harm as a belligerent than she could as a neutral, for she was so unprepared that, before she could possibly raise an army, the Von Tirpitz U-boat warfare would have brought the Allies to their knees. But,” he continued emphatically, “to us educated and thinking Germans, we quite well knew that, when America declared war, it was all over for us unless we succeeded in capturing Paris, which, of course, would paralyze the French Railway System, and cut off the Allies’ means of transportation and supply to the front. This was the reason for our big spring drive. It was a last hope, and we banked everything on its success. America won the war for the Allies.”
“Herr Kapp,” I said, “do the German people realize that America entered the war from purely unselfish reasons—only as a matter of principle—and that they expect to gain nothing materially?”
“Oh,” he laughed sarcastically, “how could any nation make the sacrifice that America was prepared to make and yet expect to gain nothing material from it. That is not to be expected. But,” he continued, “the truth of the matter is this. Your President had made us so many promises, so many speeches in which he stated that he was the friend of the German people that, when it came to the worst, we took him up—for the German people expected that he would make good on some of his utterances, but, when the terms of the armistice were made public, they knew that either Wilson had been overruled, or that the German people had been a bunch of suckers and had bitten the wrong bait.”
“But at that,” he emphasized, “the Germans feel no natural animosity toward the Americans, but they hate the French and despise the English.”