The New Germany

by George Young

We have been present at the first scene of the forcible suppression of the Councils movement in its constitutional centre—a suppression that has since become continuous.

The next covert we have to draw in our hunt is a club of intellectuals, mostly Independents, meeting weekly at a private house. Berlin never had a club life, and this is only an embryo of a political club before it emerges from a social gathering. The members sit round in a great ring, sometimes all joining in a general debate, sometimes breaking up into small discussions. They are of all types and tendencies. The well-bred, well-dressed man with a Balliol manner is a Rhodes Scholar and a successful diplomatist of ultra-radical views—for such an anomaly is possible under Count Brockdorff-Rantzau. The soldier in faded field grey describing a scheme for educating workman members of Councils in their duties, is a Communist. The diplomat is maintaining that Germany should join the League of Nations, even if it and the peace conditions are unsatisfactory. The worse the material position of Germany the better its moral position for taking the lead in a revision of the peace and of the League. The Communist brushes this aside as sophistry. How can you found internationalism on national Governments or even on national Parliaments? Wilsonism and Weimarism are both out of date and off the mark. An international Soviet of washerwomen would be of more real value and vitality. He is interrupted by cheers greeting the arrival of a famous fighting flying man, who was believed to have been one of the twelve hundred arrests of opposition leaders. An early Victorian middle-aged man in side whiskers and a frock coat, an ex-Minister in touch with the Government, begins to explain the necessity of reconstructing the Cabinet by eliminating the men most compromised by the loss of life, and including new men from the Left. He considers that while opinion is moving to the Left the Government is moving to the Right, and that as the breach widens the outbreaks will get worse. He fears, however, that men who have grown old in opposition and have only just tasted power will not be torn away from it and will find it simple to govern by machine-guns. But the young men are not interested in the Cabinet—they drift off into discussing their schemes for the Councils.

Here, too, is life—the life radiated by young men who feel that power is coming to them before youth has gone, the life reflected from middle-aged men who have broken the dull crust in which circumstance was encasing them.

When this club was suppressed shortly after, Berlin could ill afford the loss of vitality. For the absence of all healthy, happy and youthful faces made it like a world of gnomes and goblins. In the case of the men this was mainly owing to the war, and in the case of the women and children to the blockade. Over a million of the fittest men had been killed, and the result was a survival of all the unfit; while the food and fuel hardships had fallen heaviest on the women and children of the towns.

But there was another reason for the disappearance of all young men that had youth and manliness. Their warfare was not yet accomplished, and they had only come back from fighting the whole world on three fronts for four years to fight against each other in the streets of their capital cities. They went to war against the world for two ideals—patriotism and progress; and now these two ideals had themselves collided in civil war.

Of the two German ideals, that of patriotism is the one we know best. That dull devotion and forced fervour that fights in massed formations to sentimental songs. It is a form of patriotism that does not appeal to us. To Athens Sparta is anti-pathetic. But there were fine fellows among the Spartans as well as tyrants and helots, and now that the tyrants are gone such as are left of the fine fellows have a chance of realising their Spartan ideals. Now that those trumpery tinsel tyrants, the Kaiser and his courtier generals, have retired to scribble and squabble and scuffle over dirty linen—a Valhalla of washerwomen—the men of the real Spartan breed, who carried the German arms from conquest to conquest until the catastrophe was complete, are working hard to restore ideals shattered by rout and revolution.

Of the real fine fellows that I've met in Germany half were officers and men who had responded to the various appeals for home defence and who were working to revive the old Spartan tradition in the war-wearied youth.

Here are two notices from the advertisement columns of the Lokal Anzeiger, which seem to me to contrast the real Spartan and the Junker:

"To all old soldiers of the Prince Moritz of Anhalt-Dessau Fifth Pomeranian Infantry Regt., No. 42. Regimental Comrades! From day to day the impudence of the Poles increases. From day to day they seize more German land and more German food. From day to day they come nearer to—they claim more of—our Old Pomerania. All you brave old 42nd who ever undefeated have defended German soil against more formidable foes, rejoin your beloved regiment to defend your homes against the ungrateful Poles to liberate whom so many of your comrades died. Report to Headquarters, Stralsund. Conditions of service are pay, allowances, etc., as on active service with 5 mks. extra daily, and a fortnight's notice. Obedience required to military regulations and to those in authority, with whom are associated councils of delegates. Signed F——, member of Soldiers' Council, First Lieut. K——Regimental Commandant."

Note the signature of the representative of the Soldaten-Rat preceding that of the Commandant.