As more and more men were called to the front, women were employed in unusual work. The new underground road in Berlin is being built largely by woman labour. This is not so difficult a matter in Berlin as in New York, because Berlin is built upon a bed of sand and the difficulties of rock excavation do not exist. Women are employed on the railroads, working with pickaxes on the road-bed. Women drive the great yellow post carts of Berlin. There were women guards on the underground road, women conductors on the tramways and women even become motor men on the tramcars. Banks, insurance companies and other large business institutions were filled with women workers who invaded the sacred precincts of many military and governmental offices.
A curious development of the hate of all things foreign was the hunt led by the Police President of Berlin, von Jagow (a cousin of the Foreign Minister), for foreign words. Von Jagow and his fellow cranks decided that all words of foreign origin must be expunged from the German language. The title of the Hotel Bristol on the Unter den Linden disappeared. The Hotel Westminster on the same street became Lindenhof. There is a large hotel called "The Cumberland," with a pastry department over which there was a sign, the French word, Confissérie. The management was compelled to take this sign down, but the hotel was allowed to retain the name of Cumberland, because the father-in-law of the Kaiser's only daughter is the Duke of Cumberland. The word "chauffeur" was eliminated, and there, were many discussions as to what should be substituted. Many declared for Kraftwagenfuhrer or "power wagon driver."
But finally the word was Germanised as "Schauffoer." Prussians took down the sign, Confektion, but the climax came when the General in command of the town of Breslau wrote a confectioner telling him to stop the use of the word "bonbon" in selling his candy. The confectioner, with a sense of humour and a nerve unusual in Germany, wrote back to the General that he would gladly discontinue the use of the word "bonbon" when the General ceased to call himself "General," and called the attention of this high military authority to the fact that "General" was as much a French word as "bonbon."
Unusual means were adopted in order to get all the gold coins in the country into the Imperial Bank. There were signs in every surface and underground car which read, "Whoever keeps back a gold coin injures the Fatherland." And if a soldier presented to his superiors a twenty mark gold piece, he received in return twenty marks in paper money and two days leave of absence. In like manner a school boy who turned in ten marks in gold received ten marks in paper and was given a half holiday. Cinematograph shows gave these patrons who paid in gold an extra ticket, good for another day. An American woman residing at Berlin was awakened one morning at eight o'clock by two police detectives who told her that they had heard that she had some gold coins in her possession, and that if she did not turn them in for paper money they would wreck her apartment in their search for them. She, therefore, gave them the gold which I afterwards succeeded in getting the German Government to return to her. Later, the export of gold was forbidden, and even travellers arriving with gold were compelled to give it up in return for paper money.
While, of course, I cannot ascertain the exact amounts, I found, nevertheless, that great quantities of food and other supplies came into Germany from Holland and the Scandinavian countries, particularly from Sweden. Now that we are in the war we should take strong measures and cut off exports to these countries which export food, raw material, etc. to Germany. Sweden is particularly active in this traffic, but I understand that sulphur pyrites are sent from Norway, and sulphuric acid made therefrom is an absolute essential to the manufacture of munitions of war.
Potash, which is found as a mineral only in Germany and Austria, was used in exchange of commodities with Sweden and in this way much copper, lard, etc. reached Germany.
Early in the summer of 1915, the first demonstration took place in Berlin. About five hundred women collected in front of the Reichstag building. They were promptly suppressed by the police and no newspaper printed an account of the occurrence. These women were rather vague in their demands. They called von Buelow an old fat-head for his failure in Italy and complained that the whipped cream was not so good as before the war. There was some talk of high prices for food, and the women all said that they wanted their men back from the trenches.
Early summer brought also a number of cranks to Berlin. Miss Jane Addams and her fellow suffragists, after holding a convention in Holland, moved on Berlin. I succeeded in getting both the Chancellor and von Jagow to consent to receive them, a meeting to which they looked forward with unconcealed perturbation. However, one of them seems to have impressed Miss Addams, for, as I write this, I read in the papers that she is complaining that we should not have gone to war because we thereby risk hurting somebody's feelings.