ENGLAND INCAPABLE
The vagaries of the Suffragettes and the dangers of the Irish situation were Heaven-sent gifts for the Germans. When the Germans were accused of ravaging Belgium, they answered with a detailed calculation, proving, to their own satisfaction at any rate, that they had not destroyed half so much as the Suffragettes. The political situation was exploited so as to make the Germans believe that the English were incapable of any great effort. They could not even control their women! How could they face the Germans, then? Every month the reviews proved that the British Empire would fall to pieces at the first touch of war. At the same time the blame for the enmity between England and Germany was entirely thrown on England. England wanted all the German colonies. England wanted German trade. England wanted a war so as to divert public attention from the Suffragettes and the wild Irish. Germany desired nothing so much as to live in peace, only her wicked neighbours would not let her. The Lichnowsky Memoirs had not yet been published, and Dr. Mühlon was still an official at Krupp’s.
Conversations, that I was able to enjoy from time to time with official persons, threw a lurid light on all this agitation. The building of strategic railways all converging on the Belgian frontier was a matter of frequent discussion. I remember at a wedding-breakfast in 1913 sitting at the same table with a young lieutenant of artillery who had just been commanded to a munition factory near Bonn. He looked pale and worn-out, and explained that the factory was working day and night. Germany was two years ahead of France and Russia in its preparations and, as soon as it was ready, would go to war. We asked when that would be. “When the changes in the Kiel Canal and Cologne railway station are finished,” he answered. “At present our new Dreadnoughts cannot pass through the canal, and we cannot mobilize our troops quickly enough with Cologne station as it is.” He was the best of prophets. The rebuilding of the canal and of the station were both finished in July, 1914, and in that month Germany declared war.
SURPRISE OF WAR
But, you will say, how in the face of these facts can you declare that the war took the German people by surprise? Well, we all know that we are going to die, but we should be surprised to die just now. For the Germans, the war was a watched pot that had forgotten to boil. The newspapers were managed with exquisite cleverness during the crisis preceding the outbreak of hostilities. The German Government was going to proclaim war. Very well, then, they said, let us represent the matter as if peace were fairly certain, and as if the only obstacles in the way are the contumacy of a petty country like Serbia and the corrupt ambitions of the Russian Grand Dukes. On the very day war was declared, the Cologne Gazette solemnly assured the Belgian people that the stories as to German intentions of invading Belgium were only British or French inventions. “You want to know how many soldiers there are in the great camps near the Belgian frontier? We can assure you there are none at all. These camps are quite empty.” The German people believed that a great struggle for peace was going on, in which, owing to the fear of the German sword, the peace-makers were getting the upper hand. They were led to believe that the German Emperor had so generously embraced the cause of Peace, that the balance of chances inclined against War. Peace was dangled before their eyes like a fair apple, attainable, but tantalizingly just out of reach. And then when war did come, the German people turned with all the fury of disappointment, not upon their own Government, but upon Russia for supporting Serbia, and upon France and England for joining her. They had been taught ever since they were little boys at school that the righteous development of Germany was being thwarted at every turn by England, who had managed to hem them in with a ring of foes. With a deep breath of relief they drew the sword, confident in their ability to hew down whoever stood in their way. “Better an end to horror, than a horror without end,” says the German proverb, and in this spirit they went to war. But even Germans can be tricked too often. I do not think we need take much thought about how to punish the Kaiser and the other criminals responsible for this war. We need only hand them over to their nation, confident that the people whom they have so long befooled and fed with lies will know how to deal with them. Nothing is less likely than that the German people will forgive those who, avec un cœur léger, plunged them into the frightful catastrophe that befell them. I must apologize for insisting at such length upon the insincerities and crooked ways of the German Government, but I do insist, because at the present time it is necessary to understand quite clearly the kind of people with whom we have to deal. And while explaining how the German people were misled, I am offering no excuse for the spirit in which they conducted the war, once it began. The Government may have ordered the atrocities in the first place, but the nation has always set the seal of its approval on the actions of the Government after the deed, and so the nation has made itself jointly responsible.
CHAPTER II
LIES AND SPIES
War having finally broken out, the Government, of course, did not relax its hold on the Press. The early days brought a fine crop of fantastic inventions. The utmost was done to heighten the people’s illusions. The semi-official telegrams declared that England would remain true to its time-honoured principle of making money out of other people’s difficulties and abstain from taking part. This was at a time when Germany had already sown mines in English waters, arrested every English sailor in Germany, and cut the Jamaica cable. Japan was said to be about to conclude an alliance with Germany. A Frenchman was alleged to have poisoned wells in Alsace-Lorraine. While the Government invented the absurd story of a French aeroplane having been seen over Nuremberg before the war broke out, they quite concealed the fact that in the early days of the war French aeroplanes really did visit Coblenz. My authority is a priest who nearly lost his life from the shrapnel of the German air defences. The Government did not even spare its own citizens. A circumstantial report appeared in all the newspapers to the effect that the innkeeper Nicolai, of Cochem, and his son had been put to death for trying to blow up a railway tunnel on the Moselle. The affair created a sensation, because Nicolai was known far and wide for the excellence of his wines. The report was allowed to run for some time, and then the public were told that there had indeed been some charge of the sort against Nicolai, but upon investigation it had been withdrawn. And if you ask why a simple private citizen should be libelled in this way, the answer is easy—it was to heighten the prevailing spy-fever by suggesting that spies were to be found everywhere, in the least likely places.
SPIES
For from the beginning the Government began a merciless campaign against foreign spies, and let it be known that the whole country was swarming with French and Russian agents in disguise. The mob was given to understand that they had practically a free hand in dealing with any of these agents they should meet. A frenzied spy-mania sprang up and no Frenchman or Russian was safe in the streets. In a certain hospital at Bonn twenty foreigners were being treated at the same time as a result of the injuries inflicted by the mob. In Cologne, at a particular street corner, fifty men were mobbed in one day. I myself saw one such scene. An unfortunate Russian had been recognized in the street, and the police had come up just in time to save his life and were trying to get him to the police-station. The people all the while surged round from every direction, brandishing their sticks and uttering that peculiar mob-yell which is more blood-curdling to listen to than the howl of a pack of wolves. It is true that by such methods a certain number of spies were detected; but a far larger number of innocent persons suffered, and those mostly Germans. The mob thought a spy would be likely to try and disguise himself by putting on some sort of uniform, so they set upon anybody in official dress whose looks did not please them. One friend of ours, who was wearing an old Landsturm uniform, from which some buttons were missing, was three times hauled by the mob to the police-station. Another friend was a nurse, wearing the regulation cap and veil, and she was taken so often to the police-station that at last the officer lost all patience and drove the mob forth with such curses as only a German can swear. The priest who told me about the air-raid on Coblenz, in addition to nearly being killed by stray shrapnel, was attacked by hooligans, and but for the timely arrival of the police would have been robbed of all he possessed. The most amusing case (from a non-German point of view) was that of a member of the Reichstag on his way to the historic session at the Royal Palace on August 4. He was a little stout man with a peaked imperial beard, and he was wearing some sort of unfamiliar Court uniform that looked more French than German. The mob set upon him, threw him to the ground, and by the time the police intervened had all but kicked him to death.