One interesting artist of Germany I may call my friend, Karl Vollmoeller, author of The Miracle produced in London at Olympia in 1911. He is sometimes spoken of as the “Voltaire of Würtemberg” because of his physical likeness to Voltaire. He is small and pale, with fair hair, and thin, rather pinched features. I imagine he is very delicate in constitution. He is a scholar, a poet, a man of the world, one of the leading German neo-romanticists. He spoke to me and another of the time when Lord Northcliffe, whom the flighty young Radical intellectuals of this country have dubbed, “Alfred and Omega,” ironical of his pretended omniscience, boomed The Miracle, turning what threatened to be a failure into an overwhelming success. Whimsically he spoke also of Charles Cochran, who organized the Olympia “Miracle” season of Max Reinhardt, and who is now supposed to be the leader of the campaign against German plays.
Vollmoeller told many amusing stories of the rehearsals at Olympia, of Engelbert Humperdinck, the composer, Maria Carmi, the actress who played the Virgin, Max Pallenberg, the greatest comic actor of the German stage, Trouhanowa, the dancer, and so on.
Some time later Vollmoeller’s Turandot was produced at the St. James’s Theatre and The Venetian Night at the Palace. The latter caused considerable friction with the Lord Chamberlain. The performances were stopped for a day or two. Finally there was a compromise, and the performances were resumed. These reminiscences of the artist were full of a quaint interest. They revealed the utter folly of war and materialism in the light of the universality and beauty of art.
At the end of our four days we left Berlin, travelling via Cologne. There was a compulsory break of twelve hours there. It gave us an opportunity of seeing the city under Allied occupation, and of taking a trip up the Rhine. There were no outward and visible signs of unhappiness in the people; but I have long since learnt that the broad highway is not the place where respectable misery flaunts itself. That hides itself behind closed curtains and thrusts its children out of sight of the pitying eye of the foreigner. Still, the general appearance of the people was better here than in Berlin. They had more colour. They were not so thin. The middle-class crowds which came on to the steamer at Bonn and other towns as we sailed up the beautiful river to the cherry country of the Drachenfels were glowing with health by comparison with the anæmic Berliners, dragging tired feet along the hard and unsympathetic pavements. The Rhine is a glory. And the view from the top of the Drachenfels exhibited a panorama of soft wooded beauty which made the hot air of the city cafes a nightmare memory.
From Cologne to Antwerp, a ten hours’ journey through land almost literally flowing with milk and honey! Belgium is the richest war country in Europe. Her fields were brown with waving corn. Her fruit trees were laden with fruit. The restaurant on the train was packed with food, ample supplies of rich butter and milk and cream; eggs in abundance. Coming straight from the starving cities of Germany and Russia, the abundance of Belgium was a relief to the mind. And there are generous hearts in Belgium (as in France) which some of her politicians belie.
There is nothing so disgusting about war psychology as the willingness with which decent men and women will listen to any story which discredits the enemy. Whether it be true or not is no concern of theirs. They believe it could be true. So it must be true!
A rumour was set afloat in the Allied countries that Germany was converting the money which was being raised in America for relief purposes to political uses through the German Embassy in the United States. What was the fact? It was simply that the money raised in America was used by the German staff for its own expenses, and an equal amount credited to relief accounts by the Government in Germany in order to avoid the risks from torpedo activity of sending the money by ship. The rumour was, of course, an attempt to prevent relief being sent to little German children. But it failed; as it deserved to fail.