Vagabonding Through Changing Germany

by Harry Alverson Franck

The women had from the beginning tried to lead their husbands away from “arguing politics,” chiefly with ludicrously heavy attempts at coquetry, and at length they succeeded. I regained the highway. On either hand lay slightly rolling fields of fertile black soil, well cultivated as far as the eye could see, with only a scattering of trees. Miles away an abandoned Zeppelin hangar bulked into the sky. There were more women laborers than men; several gangs of them were working with picks and shovels; another group was slowly but patiently loading bricks. Horses were to be seen here and there, but oxen were in the majority. Farm-houses showed a rough comfort and a tolerable cleanliness, villages a passable neatness that may or may not have been due to German influence. Certainly the architecture, the farming methods, the communal customs, were little different from those of Prussia or the Rhineland.

The dinner served me in the chief tavern of a village of some two thousand inhabitants was nothing to complain of, either in variety or price. A general-shop keeper stated that “with the exception of a few semi-luxuries, such as cocoa and toilet soap,” his grocery department could still meet the decreased demands made upon it. In the clothing lines everything was scarce or wholly lacking. Worst of all, there was nothing fit to drink or smoke. The strong spirits that had once been his chief trade had become so weak no one but boys would drink them. If only America would send concentrated alcohol they could doctor the stock of liquor they had on hand so that no one would know the difference. Then if they could only get some American tobacco! Life was not what it used to be, without a real cigarette from one month’s end to the other. The German rule, on the whole, had not been so bad as many of the Allies seemed to believe. They got along, though it was rather pleasant to be relieved of the arrogant fellows, or see them crawl into their shells. No German resident in the village had given any sign of intending to move away. The communal school was still teaching the German language—two or three hours a week now. No one had noticed any other change of any importance. The French prisoners confined in the province during the war had been brutally treated. There was no doubt about that; he had seen it himself. But on the whole the German authorities had not been much harder on the Polish population than upon their own people, in Prussia and elsewhere. It was all part of the war, and every one in the Empire had to bear his share of the burdens. Happily, it was over now, if only the new Polish government did not grow ambitious for military conquests also, with the millions of soldiers, some of them patriotic to the point of self-sacrifice, under its command.

My hope of walking out of Posen province suffered the same fate as my plan of tramping into it from Germany. In the end I was forced to return to Poznan and make my exit by train over the same route by which I had entered. In the third-class compartment I occupied there were five German residents who had renounced forever their right to return, for the privilege of leaving now with the more portable of their possessions. Two of them had been born in the amputated province; the others had lived there most of their lives. All spoke Polish as readily as German. One masterly, yet scholarly youth, who had served through the war as a lieutenant, was a school-teacher by profession, as was the uncle who accompanied him. They had taught six and twenty-six years, respectively, but had been dispossessed of their positions and of their government dwellings by the new rulers. Up to the time we reached the frontier all five of my companions laid careful emphasis on the statement that they were going to seek re-establishment in their civilian professions in what was left of the Fatherland.

At Wronki the Polish authorities were far more inquisitive than they had been toward travelers from the other direction. One by one each compartment group was herded together, bag and baggage, and strained through the sieve of a careful search-and-questioning bureau. The soldier who examined my knapsack glared at the half-dozen precious American cigars I had left as if nothing but the presence of his superiors could have prevented him from confiscating them. Only sufficient food for the day’s journey was allowed to pass. In some cases this rule was interpreted rather liberally, but no one got through with more than ten or twelve pounds to the person. The amount that was confiscated easily sufficed to feed the garrison of Wronki for the twenty-four hours before the next westbound train was due. An old woman, riding fourth class, who resembled one of India’s famine victims, was despoiled of almost the entire contents of her trunk-sized chest—several sacks of flour, a dozen huge loaves of bread, and a generous supply of sausage. The fact that she spoke only Polish did not seem to impress the searchers in her favor, who silenced her wails at last by bundling her bodily back into the coach and tossing her empty coffer after her.

When at last we were under way again the Germans in my compartment took to comparing notes. One, a doctor, was bewailing the “plain theft” of a surgical appliance of rubber which the Poles had confiscated in spite of what seemed to be complete proof that it was his private property and not part of the German army supplies. A foxy-faced country youth, who had carefully changed from shoes to high boots just before the arrival at Wronki, changed back again now with the announcement that there were some four thousand marks concealed between the boot soles. The younger schoolmaster threw off the disguise with which he had covered his real thoughts and announced, vociferously:

“You drive me out to work for my livelihood! I will work for my Fatherland at the same time. I will go to Bromberg this very evening and join the army again. We shall see whether the Poles can keep Posen.”

The two other young men asserted that they, too, had left with exactly that intention. An indignation meeting against the Poles raged for an hour or more.

“I could have remained and kept my position,” went on the schoolmaster, “if I had wanted to turn Polack. Both my parents were Polish; I spoke it before I did German; but I shall always remain a true son of the Fatherland, no matter what happens to it.”

A few hundred yards from Kreuz station our train halted for more than an hour and gave us the pleasure of watching the Berlin express go on without us. Though it would have been a matter of twenty seconds to have sprinted across the delta between the two lines, armed boy soldiers prevented any one from leaving his compartment. To all appearances it was a case of “pure meanness” on the part of the German authorities. Our wrath at being forced to wait a half-day for a dawdling local train was soon appeased, however, by the announcement that we were the last travelers who would be allowed to enter Germany from the province of Posen “until the war was over.” The frontier had been closed by orders from Berlin. It is a long way round from Poland to Holland, and amid the turmoil of gloomy men, disheveled women, and squalling children who had been turned back with their goal so near I found cause to be personally thankful, particularly as I succeeded in eluding during all the afternoon the glassy eye of the cantankerous dyspeptic, who buffeted his way now and then through the throng.

Some things are still cheap in Germany. A twelve-word telegram from Kreuz to Berlin cost me nine cents—and it was delivered in telegraphic haste. The hungry passengers from farther east with whom I shared a compartment that evening eyed me greedily as I supped on the supplies I had brought from Posen. One man wearing several diamonds leaned toward me as I was cutting my coffee-brown loaf and sighed, reminiscently, “What beautiful white bread!” When I offered to share it with him, however, he refused vigorously, as if his pride would not permit him to accept what his appetite was so loudly demanding. Unable to find a place in the section to which my third-class ticket entitled me, I was riding second-class. The train-guard on his rounds confiscated my ticket and ignored my offer to pay the difference, with a stern, “It is unlawful to ride in a higher class.” On the Friedrichstrasse platform, however, instead of conducting me to his superiors, he sidled up to me in the darkness and murmured, “If you have a five-mark note with you it will be all right.” Germany is changing indeed if her very railway employees are taking on these Latin characteristics.