Another and a longer pause, and then came his final word: “If our enemies refuse to give us a gleam of hope for the future, and if the Communists of Russia have shown us the only way to throw off the intolerable burden of insult and oppression, I go with them. And there are many like me in Germany.”
And I learnt before leaving Berlin that of the many like him, General Ludendorff was one.
From this interesting gathering I betook me to the house of the Socialist President of the German Republic, President Ebert. I found him seated in a comfortable library chair, in a pleasant room overlooking a garden, a plain-spoken simple old man, of a natural and pleasing dignity. He could speak no English, but there was an interpreter present. Also, the Ex-Chancellor Müller, looking much better in health than when I saw him in Berne, stood behind the President’s chair whilst we talked. Once more we related our adventures in Russia and drew from the President that the Communists of Germany were a troublesome and incalculable element, complicating the situation woefully for those desirous of keeping order till Germany was out of her difficult debate with the Allies.
I could not help comparing President Ebert with the two other Socialist Presidents of my acquaintance, Herr Seitz of Austria and Herr Eisner of Bavaria. Herr Seitz was professional in style, well dressed and bourgeois in appearance; Herr Eisner was Bohemian in appearance, not very clean in his dress and style. President Ebert was suggestive of the typical English Trade Union leader, good-tempered and comfortable looking, as good as most and not so clever as many, less liable to rouse antagonism than a more brilliant person; more apt to steer the ship of a troubled country across a stormy sea than a steersman given to taking risks with rocks and whirlpools in order to reach the haven a little sooner. I must say I liked the homely President of the new Germany.
That same evening we assembled in one of the private rooms of the Kaiserhof the leading lights of the Independent Socialists. To our regret Herr Kautsky was in Vienna, but there came to drink coffee with us the Herren Breitschied, Dittmann, Ochme, Kuenzer and Oscar Cohn, an amiable and interested group. We wanted them to talk about Germany, but they preferred to ask us questions about Russia. Most of them were about to leave for Russia on a similar expedition to our own. We answered their questions rather wearily, for the story had become very stale by this time. These men left us with two distinct impressions. The first was that the Socialists of Germany are for the most part disinterested in the Peace Treaty, and their minds are not engrossed to an appreciable extent with such questions as the distribution of coal, the assessment of reparations, the disarmament of Germany, or the mad designs of French Imperialists. They look upon all these things as so many inevitable steps in the dissolution of the old order. They see representatives and supporters of the old order, as if maddened with lust and revenge, doing their very best to make sure the passing of their authority, and they smile and pursue their various avocations, calm amid the storms that stir the breasts of the petty bourgeoisie and the impoverished aristocrats. Their only apparent political interest lies in the future and how that is to be shaped. Shall they follow the leadership of Russia? Or shall they make their own way in their own fashion out of the chaos which the world’s capitalists and militarists have created? As a matter of fact, the same debate is exercising the Socialists of every country, and the Second International (Berne) and the Third International (Moscow) are the symbols of the conflict.
To my regret there were no Socialist women in this little party. The rush into Berlin without letting anybody know I was coming, and the rush out again at the end of a few days, made it difficult to see all those it would have been pleasant and useful to see. In the Reichstag building I had counted seven women members of Parliament seated at their desks, and thought of our hard-working and courageous Lady Astor still unsupported by a single woman colleague. I believe there are many more than seven women in the German Parliament, though exactly how many at the moment I cannot say. But they looked very normal and thoroughly competent, and mingled with their fellows in an accepted comradeship of political labour very pleasing to observe.
I met Herr Dernburg at the Club House of the Democratic Party. He assembled a few like-minded people to meet us. Most of them spoke excellent English, all appeared to understand it. I like Dernburg very much; but for some he has an unfortunate manner which makes enemies. His frankness is regarded as mere brutal bad manners. It is nothing of the sort, and I like it. It makes for clearer understanding than the polite pretences of the less courageous. I cannot reproduce in his exact words what Herr Dernburg said, but the substance of part of his long and able discourse was the cruelty of the starvation policy of the Allies and in particular in its effect upon the children. “Your people come to Germany and report that we are pretending to be poor. They see our good clothes, neatly brushed, and our generally tidy appearance and they say that Germany is better clothed than they are. They do not realize that we are reaping now the reward of our habits of thrift. The clothes that we are wearing are many years old, taken out of wardrobes and altered as best might be to suit the fashion of the hour. Women’s dresses are frequently made out of the dyed linen, bed and table, which every German girl begins to accumulate for her marriage as soon as she leaves school or earlier. Many of our children wear paper clothes or garments woven of grasses. Always are our clothes kept well brushed and used with care. It is a feature of the German character, this neatness, cleanliness and industry. Look at Berlin. Would you think that a city so full of woes could find time and heart to be so clean and trim? And yet, compared with the Berlin of pre-war days, she is soiled and stained almost beyond knowledge to those who knew and loved her well. Our hotels are crowded with rich gourmands chiefly from foreign lands; but go into our little homes, the homes of the miners in the Ruhr, the homes of the workers in Leipzig, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Hamburg, and see in the wan, pinched faces of the children and their mothers what the peace is doing to those whom the war did not kill.”
There were those in Berlin who had carefully preserved the speeches of British statesmen during the war. One such drew out of his pocket a whole note-book full of phrases from the speeches of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith. “Listen to me,” he said, “and I will read you what your rulers said, and what the new-born Germany believed, to its present sorrow.” He fingered the loose news-cuttings and selected one from the rest. Clearing his throat he began: “Mr. Lloyd George on January 5, 1918. ‘The destruction or disruption of the German people has never been a war aim with us from the first day of this war to this day.... Our point of view is that the adoption of a really democratic Constitution by Germany would be the most convincing evidence that in her the old spirit of military domination had indeed died in this war and would make it much easier for us to conclude a broad democratic peace with her!’ Mr. Lloyd George on November 12, 1918. ‘No settlement which contravenes the spirit of justice will be a permanent one. We must not allow any sense of revenge, any spirit of greed, any grasping desire to override the fundamental principles of righteousness.’ Mr. Lloyd George on the same date: ‘We shall go to the Peace Conference to guarantee that the League of Nations is a reality!’ Mr. Bonar Law, September 24, 1914: ‘We have no desire to humiliate the German people.’ Mr. Lloyd George, September, 12, 1918: ‘We must not arm Germany with a real wrong. In other words, we shall neither accept nor impose on our foe a Brest-Litovsk treaty.’”