I spent the first day listening to the eloquent wranglings of the sections, and then went to view the city of Strasburg. The old parts are French, but the solid new parts of the city are German. It is a quiet old city of cafés and quaint streets and houses. It is dominated by its wonderful cathedral with the historic clock. The small hotel where I stayed, with its German proprietor, was a model of cleanliness. In front ran the canalized river. Bands of troops, black and white, marched through the streets, but the citizens paid little attention to them. Only once did I see a touching thing. A few bold boys marched singing a tune with a familiar sound about it. I stopped to look and listen. Near me was a student, a boy of twenty-three or four, with a broad round face and rather long fair hair. He had tears in his eyes, and held his cap in his hand. What had moved him? Not that simple, boyish singing? Was it the song? I caught the word “Heimland” as the lads marched past, and—yes—there was just one phrase in the song which brought to mind the English melody, “Home, sweet home!”
On the second day I made my speech. The gallant Frenchmen received it well, and I left the platform in a storm of cheers. But that was for the woman and not the speech; for they did not understand a word, and they voted heavily for the Third International at a subsequent meeting! The split was inevitable.
The next day I left for Berne en route for Geneva and the conference of the Save the Children Fund. I had to spend several hours at Basle and arrived in Berne at six in the evening. But what was the matter with the place? The station was as quiet as a church on weekdays. And the Hôtel Belle Vue was like a huge crypt, cold and clammy and empty. In that great lounge and immense drawing-room capable of holding comfortably a thousand persons, there were not three people! The drawing-room was dark; and the lounge lit by only a few dim lights. Were all the people in their rooms, or what was wrong?
“You are very quiet, aren’t you?” I asked the hotel clerk as I signed the register.
“Yes, madam,” he replied. “Most people are leaving Berne. Here are several letters for you which are probably from some of your friends.”
I tore open the letters one after the other. Mr. Rudolf Kommer had gone to Berlin. Mrs. Lord was in Lugano. Prince Windischgraetz was in Paris. His wife had left for Prague. The group of German pacifists had returned to Berlin. Dr. de Jong was in Basle. M. Zalewski, the Polish Minister in Berne, whom I had met in England, and with whom I had renewed my acquaintance in Switzerland, was rumoured to have gone as Minister to Athens. Madame de Rusiecka, another Polish friend, was living in Geneva. Baron Szilassy and his sister were in Bex. Mr. de Kay was in Lucerne. Mr. Savery had been sent to the Legation in Warsaw—all, all had gone, the old familiar faces! And what a desolation they had left!
I gathered up my letters and prepared to take a walk to discover if there were anybody left. Was the Assyrian giant with the Gargantuan appetite still sitting in the Wiener Café? I have referred before to Dr. Ludwig Bauer, but he deserves another word. For he was a truly remarkable journalist. From the early days of the war he wrote every day, without exception, the leading article on politics for the Basle National Zeitung. His articles were always marked #—so he became known as the “Kreuzlbauer.” They were read all over the country, a thing which happened for the first time in the journalistic history of Switzerland, it was said. The little Basle paper became suddenly an organ of national importance. The international representatives, diplomats, foreign correspondents, propagandists read the articles with great care. It is a curious fact that this Austrian was spoken of as “the only neutral in Switzerland.” The French Swiss were more French than the French. The German Swiss were more German than the Germans. The Swiss Government tried to steer an equal course between the two sets of belligerents. There the Austrian journalist was useful. He expressed neutrality day by day. His articles were quoted in Paris and in Berlin. Occasionally his paper was excluded from one or the other, he himself being bitterly attacked by both sides. Most of all was he attacked by his Swiss colleagues who resented the great success of the foreign intruder, with a mentality more Swiss than their own. Another and a greater alien, Friedrich Schiller, whose “Wilhelm Tell” is the classic reading of Swiss youth, never saw Switzerland, but had caught the Swiss spirit better than some of the sons of the soil!
Dr. Bauer was not at the café. Neither were the jewelled and fragrant women who used to sip its sparkling wines, whilst they waited in the ante-chamber to Paris for their visa for the Heaven of their dreams. The war produced large numbers of this feminine type. I knew several of them. Sometimes beautiful, often wealthy, in spite of fallen money values, they played their game of coquetry in Berne to while away the time till better things came in sight. The ghastly tragedy of famine passed them by. The sufferings of the war left them cold. The colossal spectacle of Europe’s downfall was nothing to them. Clothes, jewels, fine furniture, a good social position were the only things which counted with them. Their lovers from the broken countries they flouted. They had just enough practical sense to see that the things they wanted were not to be found in the land of their birth. Their men had become ineligible. They would take husbands from the lands of the conquerors. The “Entente husband” became an institution and the fair husband-hunters a joke. Beauty, wealth maintained by gambling in exchanges, in return for an “Entente husband” and a visum for Paris and the glory of silks and scents and a place with the conquerors! I know one such woman, a beautiful Pole—but let me be merciful!