It is sad to see the broken-down old fellows as porters at the railway-stations, panting with heavy trunks, and the same type among gangs of navvies repairing the roads. They ought to be seated at home with pipe and newspaper and easy slippers instead of earning a living still as a drudge. It is a convention to give your bag to a porter at a station, and in Germany you usually give it to a man much older and weaker than yourself, and you are moved to help him to carry it as in his infirmity he struggles along. What a contrast to the stalwart porters of Prague, or Rome, or Brussels. Poor wights! It is they who are paying for the war. Sightless soldiers led by little children come selling you sticking-plaster in the restaurants. Germany is too poor to care for them. It is they who are paying for the war. The drab, many-headed middle class of Berlin with its poverty-stricken breakfast-table, the old black bread of the war and no sugar and paper table-cloths; the women going about the streets with great bundles on their backs; the people making their 1918 clothes still do—they are paying somewhat. You see Hugo Stinnes and his like with a suite of rooms at the "Adlon," or driving luxuriously along the Unter den Linden, the Kaiser way, without the dignity of a Kaiser. They are not paying very much.
Most active-thinking people are to-day working for the reconciliation of Europe, and the greatest obstacle to reconstruction lies in a resentful, half-crushed, and continually harassed Germany. Berlin has been made a heart of ill-will, and the heart must somehow be changed. Some will no doubt say it is Paris that has the ill-will towards the peace of Europe—change the heart of Paris and all will go well. But even if France embarked on a policy of friendly tolerance towards Germany it would be long ere Berlin was converted. However that may be, it was naturally with a hope of sharing in the long task of reconciliation that the present writer visited Germany. Many Englishmen have a soft spot in their hearts for the Germans; perhaps it is the instinct of race, or it may be merely good sportsmanship:
I am not one of those
Who will not shake Fritz hand
Now that the war is done.
as a soldier-poet has expressed it.
I was told of a young German who set in front of himself the goal of a reconciled Europe. I would work to the same end in London. It only remained to find a similar devoted type in Paris to work from the French end, and we should have a triumvirate that might achieve the impossible. God can use the foolish of this world to confound the wise—the wise being mostly engaged in stirring up new quarrels. Somehow the desirable Frenchman ready to devote his life to that cause was not forthcoming—and that deficiency I suppose was symptomatic of the disease. For my part, I have made my journey of Europe and taken a good look at that which it is proposed to reconcile. At the end I came to Berlin and Paris, the two main centres of the modern world. In Germany naturally I sought the German who was ready to work unstintedly from the German side for the same cause.
I had never met him, but I pictured an idealist, one who had suffered in the war and felt the folly of it all, who deplored the egoism of nations, and had found a way to devote himself to humanity as a whole. I was mistaken! It is our weakness as a nation to think of a foreigner merely as a sort of Englishman who does not speak our tongue or know our conventions. So was it with me, and I soon found myself up against a real live German, a man of a type you would not find either in London or Paris. It was a disillusion. Here was a man unsuited by his national nature for the part for which he was cast. One could not see in him the potentiality of a helper of Europe. The German as a German is in a troubled mental state. Small wonder! Because of the psychology of my friend in —— I quickly began to surmise that the German at present has not got the spirit to save Europe. Perhaps he has not the ability to save himself.
My German helper was a tall, handsome young man with an open countenance and an engaging smile. He had done war-service for the Fatherland on several fronts in several capacities. Among other things he had been Commandant of a prisoners-of-war camp where British officers were really kindly treated and a most pleasant relationship existed between the command on the one hand and the prisoners on the other. He showed me photographs of himself with British officers, and he mentioned it as a matter of pride that these fellows asked for "Deutschland uber alles" to be sung one night, and they stood reverently to attention through the performance. This was followed by "God save the King," which the Germans honoured in the same way. It was explained to me that "Deutschland uber alles" does not mean "Germany over everybody else," but "Germany first of all!" as one says "My country, right or wrong." The prisoners must, if they were genuine Englishmen, have felt rather low-spirited. W——, however, saw in it evidence of what a happy family party Germans and English could be, if they liked. He was undoubtedly pro-English, had been to Oxford, had perhaps a quiver of an Oxford accent in his English; he had studied England, as Germans do, and made considerable research among us. His wife was openly and unreservedly friendly. He, however, was cautious, and corrected his wife when she said too much or went too far. It had been a great blow to them when England came in to the war, a personal and a national blow. They could not have believed it possible. And they imagined throughout the war that their friends in England did not share in the wild anti-German feeling and must at least passively be pro-German. Of course, it was not so. They deplored the extraordinary lapse in tone in the "Morning Post" and "The Times." "'The Times' actually refers to us as 'Huns.' At least, it can be said of our Press, high or low, it never nicknamed its enemies. French were always French, English—English, Russians—Russians. It was beneath the dignity of the war to call our enemies names." He was amazed at the ignorance concerning the Germans, and the credulity of such as those who believed they boiled their dead to make lard. I told him of the German Ambassador's reception in London, Dr. Sthamer, how he was received by certain people in Society and many were well disposed towards him, though at first he had difficulty in getting things done for him by the British working class.
"And you, you'll go anywhere in Germany, and every one will be only too ready to help you, to do your washing and clean our boots and the rest," said W—— reproachfully. "We are so good-natured."
He had forgotten that the Germans failed to ingratiate themselves with the London working class by dropping so many bombs in the East-end and terrorizing whole districts. He forgot the children who had been killed. He did not know the air-raids had had much effect.
"They had an unfortunate psychological effect."