“All this,” said Brand when they had gone, “is very instructive.... And I’ve been making discoveries.”
“What kind?”
Brand looked away into the vista of the room, and his eyes roved about the tables where other soldiers of ours sat with other Germans.
“I’ve found out,” he said, “that the British hatred of a nation breaks down in the presence of its individuals. I’ve discovered that it is not in the character of English fighting-men—Canadian, too, by the look of it—to demand vengeance from the innocent for the sins of the guilty. I’m seeing that human nature, ours anyhow, swings back to the normal, as soon as an abnormal strain is released. It is normal in human nature to be friendly towards its kind, in spite of five years’ education in savagery.”
I doubted that, and told him so, remembering scenes in Ghent and Lille, and that girl Marthe, and the woman of Verviers. That shook Brand a little from his new point of view and he shifted his ground, with the words:
“Perhaps I’m wrong, there.”
He told me of other “discoveries” of his, after conversation with many German people, explaining perhaps the lack of hostility and humiliation which had surprised us all. They were glad to see the English because they were afraid of the French and Belgians, with their desire for vengeance. They believed in English fair-play in spite of all the wild propaganda of the war. Now that the Kaiser had fled and Germany was a Republic, they believed that in spite of defeat, and great ruin, there would be a Peace which would give them a chance of recovery, and a new era of liberty, according to the pledges of President Wilson and the terms of the “Fourteen Points.” They believed they had been beaten by the hunger blockade, and not by the failure of the German Armies in the field, and they would not admit that as a people they were more guilty in the war than any others of the fighting nations.
“It is a sense of guilt,” said Brand, “that must be brought home to them. They must be convinced of that before they can get clean again, and gain the world’s forgiveness.”
He leaned over the table with his square face in the palms of his hands.