I asked him if Elsa’s family knew of her marriage and were reconciled to it, and he told me that they knew, but were less reconciled now than when she had first broken the news to her father and mother on the day of her wedding. Then there had been a family “scene.” The General had raged and stormed, and his wife had wept, but after that outburst had decided to forgive her, in order to avoid a family scandal. There had been a formidable assembly of uncles, aunts and cousins of the von Kreuzenach family to sit in judgment upon this affair which, as they said, “touched their honour,” and Elsa’s description of it, and of her terror and sense of guilt (it is not easy to break with racial traditions) was very humourous, though at the same time rather pathetic. They had graciously decided, after prolonged discussions in which they treated Elsa exactly as though she were the prisoner at a court-martial, to acknowledge and accept her marriage with Captain Brand. They had been led to this decision mainly owing to the information given by Franz von Kreuzenach that Captain Brand belonged to the English aristocracy, his father being Sir Amyas Brand, and a member of the English House of Parliament. They were willing to admit that, inferior as Captain Brand’s family might be to that of von Kreuzenach—so old and honoured in German history—it was yet respectable and not unworthy of alliance with them. Possibly—it was an idea suggested with enormous solemnity by Onkel von Kreuzenach—Elsa’s marriage with the son of an English Member of Parliament might be of service to the Fatherland in obtaining some amelioration of the Peace Terms (the Treaty was not yet signed), and in counteracting the harsh malignity of France. They must endeavour to use this opportunity provided by Elsa in every possible way as a patriotic duty.... So at the end of the family conclave Elsa was not only forgiven but was to some extent exalted as an instrument of God for the rescue of their beloved Germany.
That position of hers lasted in her family until the terms of the Peace Treaty leaked out, and then were published in full. A storm of indignation rose in Germany, and Elsa was a private victim of its violence in her own house. The combined clauses of the Treaty were read as a sentence of death by the German people. Clause by clause, they believed it fastened a doom upon them, and insured their ruin. It condemned them to the payment of indemnities which would demand all the produce of their industry for many and uncertain years. It reduced them to the position of a Slave state, without an army, without a fleet, without colonies, without the right to develop industries in foreign countries, without ships to carry their merchandise, without coal to supply their factories, or raw material for their manufactures. To enforce the payment of these indemnities foreign commissions would seize all German capital invested in former enemy or neutral states, and would keep armed forces on the Rhine ready to march at any time, years after the conclusion of peace, into the heart of Germany. The German people might work, but not for themselves. They had freed themselves of their own tyrants, but were to be subject to an international tyranny depriving them of all hope of gradual recovery from the ruin of defeat. On the West and on the East, Austria was to be hemmed in by new States formed out of her own flesh-and-blood under the domination of hostile races. She was to be maimed and strangled. The Fourteen Points to which the Allies had pledged themselves before the Armistice had been abandoned utterly, and Wilson’s promise of a peace which would heal the wounds of the world had been replaced by a peace of vengeance which would plunge Central Europe into deep gulfs of misery, despair, and disease. That, at least, was the German point of view.
“They’re stunned,” said Brand. “They knew they were to be punished, and they were willing to pay a vast price of defeat. But they believed that under a Republican Government they would be left with a future hope of progress, a decent hope of life, based upon their industry. Now they have no hope, for we have given them a thin chance of reconstruction. They are falling back upon the hope of vengeance and revolt. We have prepared another inevitable war when the Germans, with the help of Russia, will strive to break the fetters we have fastened on them. So goes the only purpose for which most of us fought this war, and all our pals have died in vain.”
He stopped in the street and beat the pavement with his stick.
“The damned stupidity of it all!” he said. “The infernal wickedness of those Old Men who have arranged this thing!”
Three small boys came galloping up Cheyne Walk with toy reins and tinkling bells.
“Those children,” said Brand, “will see the things that we have seen and go into the ditches of death before their manhood has been fulfilled. We fought to save them, and have failed.”
He told me that even Elsa had been aghast at the Peace Terms.
“I hoped more from the generous soul of England,” she had written to him.