THE CENSORSHIP
In one direction the censorship exercised a healthy influence. When war broke out, the German hatred of the enemy found the coarsest and most disgusting expression. For instance, the Bonner Zeitung (a newspaper written by the professors for the professors of the University), reporting the shooting of a Russian lady for espionage, added: “And now the carrion of her carcase is rotting in its well-deserved grave.” (I disdain to render the original more exactly.) Picture-postcards and flysheets were issued in thousands, in which all the resources of the filthiest imagination in Europe were employed to vilify the enemy. But one day they disappeared like magic from the shop-windows, and the newspapers took on a cleaner tone. After the news of the destruction of Louvain came, the papers were inclined to exult and glorify the deed. But a sign from the Government was enough to keep their enthusiasm within bounds. It is the habit to laugh at the Germans for their slavish press, but I am certain they would not have held out so long as they have done under any other system. Only in England is it possible for the populace to be daily fed with wild stories of the incompetence, stupidity, or treachery of the Government, and yet to continue to prosecute the war with undiminished vigour.
CHAPTER III
THE TREATMENT OF THE ENGLISH IN GERMANY
It is curious how much sympathy there was for England even months after the beginning of the war. Ladies whom we knew had always had their dresses made in London, and asserted their intention of doing so again as soon as the war was over. Others, who were strongly attracted by the freedom of English life, still felt the charm in spite of all that had happened. And when they were in the company of people they could trust, they used to say how much they were longing for the war to end in order that they might resume the pleasant relations which had been broken off. They never doubted that the English would meet them halfway. Such of my students as were in England when war was declared were loud in praise of the courtesy with which they had been treated. Communication was possible with England through Holland, and these students were still receiving letters breathing assurances of friendship. The German Government had at the very beginning laid their hands on the personal possessions of all Englishmen who had left Germany. I tried in vain to rescue the property of my friends who had fled at the outbreak of war. The War Office had been there before me. On the other hand, the officials in England were not so quick. My students were getting their effects sent out to them through Holland without any hindrance.
ENGLISH TRADE
It was curious to notice how things English had risen in public estimation when once they were hard to get. Huntley and Palmer’s biscuits, for instance, ruled the German market in time of peace. No German biscuit can be compared with them for a minute. An officer we knew wrote home asking his mother to send him out some biscuits. She trudged all over Bonn in search of Huntley and Palmer’s. At one shop they offered her German ones, saying they were just as good. She flared up at once. “Do you think,” she said, “I would send German biscuits to my son at the front?” Finally the indomitable old lady managed to get a tin of English biscuits, and she sent them off. All the mourning crêpe, arm-bands, and so on, worn in Germany were imported from England, even long after war was declared. A merchant told me that the Germans could not manufacture it, they simply had to have English crêpe! Jokes were often cut at the expense of the business instincts of the English; they got up a war to kill German soldiers in order to sell mourning to their mothers and wives. I could hear of nothing else being imported from England except English books. All the new publications on the English market arrived regularly and could be inspected at the University Library. Even the little propaganda booklets of the Clarendon Press were there. I subscribed to the Morning Post through a Dutch bookseller and for nearly a year received every number, except the one describing the attack on Scarborough. That was suppressed.
Although I had nothing to complain of, Englishwomen married to Germans were subject to the bitterest persecution. Coffee parties would be formed, to which they would be invited, and then each guest present in turn, by those little stabs that women know so well how to inflict, would see how she could torture the “Engländerin.” A certain “Professorenfrau” we knew wanted to try the same tactics on me. She made the most extravagant efforts to convert me to her way of thinking. When everything else had failed she even visited the members of my household and suggested they should make my life a hell to me until they had brought me round to the German point of view. Then she tried to entrap me. She was putting on the usual pose, asserting that Germany had never expected that England would make war on her and that nothing had surprised her more.
A VIRAGO
“Well, then,” I assured her, “how do you explain the fact that four days before the declaration of war Germany arrested all the English sailors in the country, even those in little sailing vessels far up the Rhine, as well as other Englishmen she thought it desirable to keep?” I gave her the names of acquaintances of mine who were put in the common jail without being accused of anything—and this before the declaration of war. She refused to believe it, and requested me to give her a written statement over my signature. This was the trick always played by German agents on Belgians in neutral countries. If they made a written declaration and signed their names to it, their families in Belgium would suffer for it; while if they refused—then they were branded as liars. I, of course, refused, and the woman broke out into a storm of abuse. I have never seen a more horrible figure, even among the drunken viragos of Whitechapel. At last, fearing for my eyes, as her fingers were obviously itching to be at me, I bowed, and left the room as hastily as was consistent with dignity.