We had hoped to reach Osnabruck before dark, but it was actually ten o’clock when we finally arrived at the hotel. At the entrance to the town, which we reached shortly after nine o’clock, we were taken in charge by a military patrol. But the police alone could give us the necessary permission to travel onwards.
So, attended by a N.C.O., we drove to the head police office at Osnabruck. Again we were made to spread our belongings on the floor and explain each scrap of paper. The deadly sheet of celluloid we offered to the police in the hopes of ending the recurrent trouble, but with no effect. Full of suspicion as to its uses though they might be, yet they would not take it.
We were delayed here about twenty minutes before we were given permission to stay at the Kaiserhof Hotel for the night and to leave Osnabruck early on the following morning. As we left the office our car was held up by the passage of several hundred Russian workmen who had been placed under arrest on the outbreak of war and who were now being taken to an internment camp. Dejected and hopeless they moved miserably through a hissing and booing crowd to the prison which was to be their home until peace came again. Such is discipline in Germany that half a dozen policemen sufficed to keep the mob, ever ready to strike, at bay.
At the Kaiserhof Hotel we were greeted with singular charm by the proprietor, who, though a possible future enemy, did not show any suspicion or displeasure. Nay, rather did he go out of his way to make us truly comfortable, he himself superintending the cooking of our belated dinner.
While we ate there sat at a table near by a party of German students, who with much noise sang patriotic verses and cheered lustily the names of national heroes while they steadily drank tankard after tankard of beer. After a space they began to take interest in us. Glancing from time to time at our table they talked excitedly of ‘Englanders’ and, from the few words we could understand, of our navy. I was very tired, and under the impression that they desired to pick a quarrel, I went to bed to escape trouble. Keating, on the other hand, scenting an immediate if a minor war, refused to move and did not reach his room until the early hours of the morning. It appears that far from desiring to annoy us they wished us to join them. This Keating did and a short conversation in French followed. The use of this language was quickly banned as unpatriotic and a curious but wonderful version of English was substituted. They were under the impression that England was about to become Germany’s ally. Thus combined the two nations were to dominate the world in the manner indicated to us by several others during our travels. These views, so soon to fade, served to create a temporary friendship between Keating and the students, which ended shortly before three in the morning with the joint humming of ‘God Save the King,’ because, as they said, ‘without words it is the National Anthem of both the related countries.’ It was a happy evening, in that it formed so great a contrast to other nights of the same week.
The next morning we left on the last lap of our journey through Germany rather late, slightly after eleven o’clock, owing to the encouraging friendliness of the previous night. This day was August 4 and in honour of its high destiny was one of sunlit splendour. Our innkeeper, in the smallness of his bill and his obvious readiness to give credit until the end of the war in case our money had run short, showed that some Germans are not devoid of the kindlier instincts of humanity. Human nature is the same the world over by whatever title the races may be labelled.
With usual delays from road patrols we passed slowly through Lottë, Westerkappeln, and Höveringhausen. In Ibbenburgen we were held up by a long patriotic procession, chiefly of children dressed brilliantly in white, and carrying banners decorated in some cases with religious symbols and in some with the armorial device of Westphalia. As they walked they sang, with the softness of childhood, songs of the countryside.
It was pleasant when in the midst of our worries to listen to the beat of childish feet and the echo of childish voices between the lines of high narrow houses of this quiet Westphalian village. Curious incidents, unimportant in themselves, remain in one’s memory for all time.
We had intended to drive out of the country through Bentheim, the same route by which we entered. But when the police examined us at Rheine, though they showed no desire to detain us, they told us that we must divert our course through Burgsteinfurt and leave Germany by Gronau, reaching Enschede in Holland. This meant a journey increased by forty miles, a serious matter under the then existing critical conditions.