Bertram was not good at arithmetic. International finance was a mystery to him. He could not find any clue to this economic mystery of the German people, bankrupt (they said) yet prosperous, capturing world trade (as they admitted), yet “bleeding to death.”
More within his power of observation was the mentality of these people, and in patient listening at luncheon tables and dinner tables, where he met the Junker crowd and the “Intellectuals,” in conversations with shop-keepers and peasants, he tried to discover the drift of thought in Germany after defeat.
Largely the peace of the world depended upon their outlook on the future. Had they liberated themselves from their old militarism? Were they preparing to march forward as a free democracy in a commonwealth of nations, away from the darkness of the old War-Gods in this Jungle? Or were they again worshipping those ancient gods with secret rites and propitiations?
It was hard to tell among Dorothy’s friends. They revealed how deep the agony of war had been in their souls, how sharply the wound still hurt. These German ladies, very charming, some of them, had lost fathers, husbands, brothers, lovers, sons, even in more appalling numbers than the death-rate of England. Whole families of the German aristocracy had been wiped out, and in the humbler classes it was the same.
They cursed the war, and the Army commanders, and the politicians. They said they had been “betrayed” by the conceit of Ludendorff, by the folly of the Supreme War Council, by the spirit of Bolshevism among the troops on the Russian Front who had been bitten by that frightful microbe. They protested against the “cruelty” of the Versailles Treaty, and asserted their faith in Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” which had never been fulfilled. That was another betrayal, not only of Germany, but of all the hopes of the world.
Yet never once in any company did any German, man or woman, acknowledge the guilt of Germany in having started the war. Russia had “moved first.” England had hemmed in Germany. The German people had been ringed round by enemies. And in spite of all those enemies, the German armies had never been defeated. It was the home front that had broken down, by sheer starvation.
Never defeated! Bertram challenged that belief, with some violence, at one of Dorothy’s afternoon “at homes.”
Among the ladies were several ex-officers, two Generals of Rupprecht’s Army, so long opposite the British, in Flanders.
It was General von Althof who made the statement, with simple sincerity.
“Gott sei dank! Our brave Armies were never defeated, from first to last.”