From noon until one the struggle raged with double fury. The boy soldiers asserted their authority in vain. A mere bayonet-prick in the leg was apparently nothing compared with the gnawing of continual hunger. Individual fights developed and often threatened to become general. Those who got tickets could not escape from the crushing maelstrom behind them. Women were dragged unconscious from the fray, often feet first, their skirts about their heads. The rear of the column formed a flying wedge and precipitated a free-for-all fracas that swirled vainly about the window. When this closed again I was still ten feet away. I concluded that I had my fill of pot-luck, and, buffeting my way to the outer air, purchased a ticket for the following morning at the Adlon.
A little episode at my departure suggested that the ever-obedient German of Kaiser days was changing in character. The second-class coach was already filled when I entered it, except that at one end there was an empty compartment, on the windows of which had been pasted the word “Bestellt.” In the olden days the mere announcement that it was “engaged” would have protected it as easily as bolts and bars. I decided to test the new democracy. Crowding my way past a dozen men standing obediently in the corridor, I entered the forbidden compartment and sat down. In a minute or two a seatless passenger put his head in at the door and inquired with humble courtesy whether it was I who had engaged the section. I shook my head, and a moment later he was seated beside me. Others followed, until the compartment was crowded with passengers and baggage. One of my companions angrily tore the posters from the windows and tossed them outside.
“Bestellt indeed!” he cried, sneeringly. “Perhaps by the Soldiers’ Council, eh? I thought we had done away with those old favoritisms!”
A few minutes later a station porter, in his major’s uniform, appeared at the door with his arms full of baggage and followed by two pompous-looking men in silk hats. At sight of the throng inside he began to bellow in the familiar old before-the-war style.
“This compartment is bestellt,” he vociferated, in a crown-princely voice, “and it remains bestellt! You will all get out of there at once!”
No one moved; on the other hand, no one answered back. The porter fumed a bit, led his charges farther down the train, and perhaps found them another compartment; at any rate, he never returned. “Democracy” had won. Yet through it all I could not shake off the feeling that if any one with a genuinely bold, commanding manner, an old army officer, for instance, decorated with all the thingamabobs of his rank, had ordered the compartment vacated, the occupants would have filed out of it as silently and meekly as lambs.
The minority still ruled in more ways than one. A placard on the wall, forbidding the opening of a window without the unanimous consent of the passengers within the compartment, was strictly obeyed. The curtains had long since disappeared, as had the leather straps with which one raised or lowered the sash, which must now be manipulated by hand. As in the occupied zone, the seats had been stripped of their velvety coverings, suggesting that this had been no special affront to the Allies, but merely a sign of the scarcity of cloth for ladies’ blouses. It was a cloudless Sunday, and railway employees along the way were taking advantage of it to work in their little vegetable gardens, tucked into every available corner. They did not neglect their official duties, however, for all that. At every grade crossing the uniformed guard stood stiffly at attention, his furled red flag held like a rifle at his side, until the last coach had passed.
At Spandau there lay acre upon acre of war material of every species, reddening with rust and overgrowing with grass and weeds. The sight of it aroused a few murmurs of discontent from my companions. But they soon fell back again into that apathetic silence that had reigned since our departure. A few had read awhile the morning papers, without a sign of feeling, though the head-lines must have been startling to a German, then laid them languidly aside. Apparently the lack of nourishing food left them too sleepy to talk. The deadly apathy of the compartment was quite the antithesis of what it would have been in France; a cargo of frozen meat could not have been more uncommunicative.
The train showed a singular languor, due perhaps to its Ersatz coal. It got there eventually, but it seemed to have no reserve strength to give it vigorous spells. The station we should have passed at noon was not reached until one-thirty. Passengers tumbled off en masse and besieged the platform lunch-room. There were Ersatz coffee, Ersatz cheese, watery beer, and war-bread for sale, the last only “against tickets.” I had not yet been supplied with bread-coupons, but a fellow-passenger tossed me a pair of them and replied to my thanks with a silent nod. The nauseating stuff seemed to give the traveler a bit of surplus energy. They talked a little for the next few miles, though in dreary, apathetic tones. One had recently journeyed through the occupied area, and reported “every one is being treated fairly enough there, especially by the Americans.” A languid discussion of the Allies ensued, but though it was evident that no one suspected my nationality, there was not a harsh word toward the enemy. Another advanced the wisdom of “seeing Germany first,” insisting that the sons of the Fatherland had been too much given to running about foreign lands, to the neglect of their own. Those who carried lunches ate them without the suggestion of an offer to share them with their hungry companions, without even the apologetic pseudo-invitation of the Spaniard. Then one by one they drifted back to sleep again.
The engine, too, seemed to pick up after lunch—or to strike a down-grade—and the thatched Gothic roofs of Mechlenburg soon began to dot the flat landscape. More people were working in the fields; cattle and sheep were grazing here and there. Groups of women came down to the stations to parade homeward with their returning soldier sons and brothers. Yet after the first greeting the unsuccessful warriors seemed to tire of the welcome and strode half proudly, half defiantly ahead, while the women dropped sadly to the rear.