The New Germany

by George Young

In those days even Frei-Corps recruited in this manner had their Soldiers' Councils. And it was the remains of this Council organisation that prevented these Corps from being used to overthrow the Republic in the coup-d'état planned when the treaty was signed.

Compare now the appeal of the Junker—a Vortanzer no doubt at many a Court Ball and a flunkey still.

"Officer of elegant appearance and engaging manners with experience of polite society, seeks employment. Would undertake to supervise restaurant."

Moreover, as a result of class war, the students, hitherto always the Young Guard of revolution in Germany, have this time taken sides with what may well be called reaction. In the various volunteer corps—the "Noske Guards"—that are used for fighting the revolutionary troops and the workmen, the largest and best elements are young ex-officers or N.C.O.'s and students.

I remember when a workmen's meeting was broken up by a picket of the Reinhard Corps noting that the privates almost all wore pince-nez. The workmen called them mercenaries and murderers, but it was absurd to accuse fine young men who looked like Balliol, with a leaven of Blues and Bloods, of selling themselves for eight shillings a day and extra rations. These Spartans and their ideals will be heard of again unless Germany is given a square deal and a fair field.

And the other half of the fine fellows I've met in Germany were Spartacists—fighters for the ideal of progress. For this ideal has had in Germany as many devotees as the other. No country had so large a radical and revolutionary political element as Germany before the war. In no country did the economics and politics of Socialism occupy so many minds. Sovietism is only a rough Russian realisation of German ideals. The rebellion under Spartacus of revolted gladiators and escaped slaves, which challenged for years the imperialism and militarism of Rome, does give some idea of what these men are and what their cause is.

The handsomest and most intelligent man I've met in Germany was a Spartacist, a film actor by profession. The last time I saw him—with a rifle slung over his shoulder and stick bombs in his belt—he explained what he was fighting for. German militarism, he said, had revived, encouraged by the Entente attitude; the present Government was as much in the hands of reactionary officers as any during the war. The war had crippled militarism, but only real revolution, the council system, could kill it. He was glad he had escaped the war, so as to have a life to offer to the right side. The next day he was taken and shot.

Now, I do not intend to convey that the Germany of to-day is a fighting country. It is quite the reverse. But a section of idealists at each extreme has decided that they are bound to die for their ideals as Spartans or Spartacists. That they will die in vain is inevitable. If only because there is no Sparta and no Spartacus. There is no German land where such an ideal as that of the reactionary "Spartans" can now be realised, not even in rural Prussia; and there is no Spartacus to command and control the "Spartakists" of Germany. But there is another reason also—that there are too few young Germans left.

On a Sunday morning I went to the Academy of Singing to hear old German music. One number on the programme, "A Scottish Ballad of a Lost Battle," proved to be a translation of Lady Lindsay's "Lament After Flodden." Sung to a plaintive eighteenth century air, with the thin far-away accompaniment of lute and spinet, it was like an echo from the lost battles and lost beauty of all time. With bowed heads and tear-filled eyes, men and women sat silent long after the last heartrending refrain had died away.

In the afternoon I went out to the "Greenwood" of Berlin, a district of pine woods, hills, and lakes, where the young people of Berlin used to flock for picnics and water-parties. The Berliners are noisy in their enjoyments, and on Sunday afternoons before the war the woods of the Havelland would ring with shouting and singing and laughter, with feasting and flirting, as though Pan himself held festival.