Vagabonding Through Changing Germany

by Harry Alverson Franck

“Nein, it was ordered by General Pershing.” (She pronounced it “Pear Shang.”)

Stupid of me, but my change from the land of an ally to that of an enemy had been so abrupt, and the evidence of enmity so slight, that I had scarcely realized it was our own commander-in-chief who was now reigning in Trier. I covered my retreat by abruptly putting a question about the Kaiser. Demigod that I had always found him in the popular mind in Germany, I felt sure that here, at least, I should strike a vibrant chord. To my surprise, she screwed up her face into an expression of disgust and drew a finger across her throat.

“That for the Kaiser!” she snapped. “Of course, he wasn’t entirely to blame; and he wanted to quit in nineteen-sixteen. But the rich people, the Krupps and the like, hadn’t made enough yet. He didn’t, at least, need to run away. If he had stayed in Germany, as he should have, no one would have hurt him; no living man would have touched a hair of his head. Our Crown Prince? Ach! The Crown Prince is leichtsinnig (light-minded).”

“Of course, it is natural that the British and French should treat us worse than the Americans,” she went on, unexpectedly harking back to an earlier theme. “They used to bomb us here in Trier, the last months. I have often had to help Grossmutter down into the cellar”—Grossmutter smirked confirmation—“but that was nothing compared to what our brave airmen did to London and Paris. Why, in Paris they killed hundreds night after night, and the people were so wild with fright they trampled one another to death in trying to find refuge....”

“I was in Paris myself during all the big raids, as well as the shelling by ‘Grosse Bertha,’” I protested, “and I assure you it was hardly as bad as that.”

“Ah, but they cover up those things so cleverly,” she replied, quickly, not in the slightest put out by the contradiction.

“There is one thing the Americans do not do well,” she rattled on. “They do not make the rich and the influential contribute their fair share. They make all the people (das Volk) billet as many as their houses will hold, but the rich and the officials arrange to take in very few, in their big houses. And it is the same as before the war ended, with the food. The wealthy still have plenty of food that they get through Schleichhandel, tricky methods, and the Americans do not search them. Children and the sick are supposed to get milk, and a bit of good bread, or zwiebach. Yet Grossmutter here is so ill she cannot digest the war-bread, and still she must eat it, for the rich grab all the better bread, and, as we have no influence, we cannot get her what the rules allow.”

I did not then know enough of the American administration of occupied territory to remind her that food-rationing was still entirely in the hands of the native officials. I did know, however, how prone conquering armies are to keep up the old inequalities; how apt the conqueror is to call upon the “influential citizens” to take high places in the local administration; and that “influential citizens” are not infrequently so because they have been the most grasping, the most selfish, even if not actually dishonest.

Midnight had long since struck when I was shown into the guest-room, with a triple “Gute Nacht. Schlafen Sie wohl.” The deep wooden bedstead was, of course, a bit too short, and the triangular bolster and two large pillows, taking the place of the French round traversin, had to be reduced to American tastes. But the room was speckless; several minor details of comfort had been arranged with motherly care, and as I slid down under the feather tick that does duty as quilt throughout Germany my feet encountered—a hot flat-iron. I had not felt so old since the day I first put on long trousers!

My last conscious reflection was a wonder whether the good citizens of Trier were not, perhaps, “stringing” us a bit with their aggressive show of friendliness, of contentment at our presence. Some of it had been a bit too thick. Yet, as I thought back over the evening, I could not recall a word, a tone, a look, that gave the slightest basis to suppose that my three hostesses were not the simple, frank, docile Volk they gave every outward evidence of being.