For Richard, in want of occupation, had begun to read lately; hoping to find in history the companionship of other children of No Man’s Land; common-sense told him that in every war must have been a few examples of betwixt and between, belonging to both sides and therefore outcast from either side. He was comforted, in an odd sort of way, by this hunt through old tomes and chronicles, for precedent to his own position. Precedent that he could quote authoritatively to Ferdie, less well-informed.
“Be patient,” said Ferdinand Marcus. “One day the war will be over, and all will be forgotten.”
“Not it. Never. No foreigner will ever feel safe in England again.”
“Why not? we suffer from inconvenience, not from tyranny.”
“But in their heart of hearts they’ve chucked us out for good.... Haven’t you heard old Gryce swear he’ll never shake hands with a German again?”
Ferdie weighed the question of old Gryce with solemn deliberation, and then summed up: “Yes, he has the mania to persecute. One can understand—but one wishes he would not insult your aunt. But perhaps he has lost a son.”
“Oh—is this Regent Street or Tuesday?” impatiently. “No forgivable link of cause and effect. Besides, he hasn’t lost a son. He’s not even married. It’s just that he has nothing better to do. You never hear a fellow who’s back from the Front, using himself up in anti-alien agitation. But old Gryce talks big about brave little Belgium—and then raises hell if the Belgians get served with the pudding before him at dinner. I’m not unreasonable, Dad; I can understand perfectly well that while the Germans are murdering our men and women it’s natural that the relations of our murdered men and women find it painful to meet us, even though we’re not the same Germans. That’s why the internment penalty is a just penalty, I suppose; at any rate, I don’t see how it could be avoided. But petty nagging is different. There’d be some sense in the not-shaking-hands business if one could strike away a hand that was the concentrated essence of all that was foul in Germany——”
“I wonder,” said Ferdinand slowly, “if you have any idea of all that is foul in Germany?—of what drove a whole colony to England in 1848?—the Acht-und-vierzigers, as they call themselves, those few who are still alive and whose sons are now part and parcel of the British Empire, bleeding for it....”
“Eighteen-forty-eight?—that was a democratic revolt against the domination of Prussia over the smaller states, wasn’t it?”
“Yes; the only way we could protest; we could hardly enter into Civil War—we who wanted only peace. The early socialists. So we escaped to England, and we are glad we escaped. We—well, I was not born yet; my turn came later, and was more solitary. But there lies the root of our antagonism to the fatherland that bore us; and that is what the English find so hard to understand in us now. They argue by analogy: because no Englishman can ever feel anything but an Englishman, so no German—etc. But the English nature is different ... and besides, it has had no need for discontent; no need to exchange their own country for another. They think we still love Germany. But are we not here because we hate Germany? I have no wish to make speeches or to give you a history-lesson, Richard; but I sometimes wish, when I see you angry with me for—how did you once put it?—shoving you in a position with your feelings in one pocket and your birth-certificate in the other, I sometimes wish you realized a little better how you would have rebelled against German education and drill system and forced Imperialism; rebelled, or—worse still—submitted. You have noticed your grandfather, even now that he is old and ill and in a strange land, how rudely he still speaks, how dogmatically he thinks, how arbitrary are his judgments, and how he considers nobody. That is all military Germany embodied. There is another side to Germany, certainly, but it is crushed during war-time. Perhaps it will flower softly again afterwards——”