Watching on the Rhine

by Violet R. Markham

Every billet has its crab. To that rule there is, I believe, no exception. The crab may be physical or moral, but the crab exists. Conquerors and conquered come up against each other in a peculiarly intimate way when sheltered by the same roof. Stop and reflect on the conditions under which we English live in German houses, and the marvel is not that friction sometimes arises, but that friction is not chronic.

Under the terms of the Peace Treaty the German authorities in the Occupied Areas are bound to provide housing, light, and firing, together with service, plate, and house linen, for Allied officers and their families. The number of rooms allotted varies according to rank, additional rooms if wanted must be paid for by the officer in question. Into the middle of these German families, therefore, we arrive bag and baggage, occupy by rights the principal rooms, while the owners squeeze into the remainder as best they may. All of which is la guerre, and when we reflect on the behaviour of the German armies in France and Belgium, we can only feel that Cologne and the Rhineland have little to grumble about. The war was not of our making, and between the two alternatives of sitting in the German houses or the Germans sitting in ours, naturally we prefer the former.

German houses reveal a great deal about the German character. The spirit of a people is bound to impress itself on their daily surroundings, and German virtues and German faults are writ large over the residential quarters of Cologne. On the material side the houses are admirable. They are sound, well-built, excellent examples of good solid workmanship. Excellent too are all the material appointments. Hot and cold water, baths, electric light, first-rate kitchen apparatus—every practical comfort and convenience exists which simplifies life for the housewife. Central heating is the rule. There are no fires or fireplaces, though some houses have an open grate in the principal room for auxiliary gas, or wood. At first the hearthless rooms are very cheerless, but by degrees you discover virtue in the even temperature of the house. Also the saving in dirt and the saving in labour are considerable. No less excellent are all the fittings, window sashes, doors, floors, etc. Everything dovetails perfectly; there are no draughts, no signs of jerry-building. All that is material is handled with complete efficiency.

But beauty—here we come to the ground with a crash. Never were houses, taking them all round, so ugly and so devoid of taste. The furniture and pictures give one a pain across the eyes. Objets d’art, costly and incongruous, are jumbled together in the wildest confusion. I have been in drawing-rooms in which Flemish tapestries, Japanese lacquer, Louis XV. chairs, Meshrebiya work from Cairo, Indian embroideries, bastard Jacobean chairs, Chinese dragons, and modern Dresden shepherdesses were locked together in a deadly conflict to which the Hindenburg line must have been child’s play. Robust oil paintings usually look down on the struggle. Admirable though the German taste in music, the race appears to be without eyes as regards the plastic arts. The degree to which the things of the spirit have atrophied in modern Germany is writ large across these dwelling-places. In their material excellence, as in their aesthetic failures, they are a true touchstone of the race.

Meanwhile, surely no Army of Occupation was ever so well housed or so comfortable as we are. Human nature being what it is, competition about billets is naturally keen. Beati possidentes is the happy state of those who have secured the best accommodation in the palaces of the local plutocracy. Yet withal some of us never shake off a sense of discomfort and oppression as regards conditions of life so radically artificial. There is something very depressing in the general atmosphere of a conquered people. Even when your personal relations with the German household are pleasant, the feeling remains. Too great a stream of blood and tears has flowed between the Germans and ourselves. It is impossible to forget the sufferings and trials which have led up to our presence on the Rhine, even though the sufferings are not confined to one side. A very small grain of imagination is necessary in order to realise what a military occupation would have meant to us. Admittedly, if the war had come to a different end, we should have felt to the full the weight of the Prussian jackboot. The Boche as a conqueror can be intolerable—swollen-headed, swaggering, brutal. Victory would have intensified tenfold every bad quality the race possesses. But leaving aside any question of personal outrage and indignity, what should we have felt as to the hard fact of the conqueror established on our hearths, even though the conqueror brought with him standards of justice and decent behaviour?

Let us imagine our houses invaded by Prussian officers who would have demanded as by right the best rooms and the best appointments. Let us further imagine they bring German servants, who are installed in the basement and have to work somehow with our English maids. I often ponder the situation in the terms of my own household. What I always feel is that, hard though it would have been to endure the presence of the officers, the final straw would have been the arrival of their womenkind and children. The invasion of one’s home by fat German Fraus would have proved the final and most bitter filling up of the cup. As a race we should have taken the inevitable billeting consequences of an occupation ill indeed. Conflicts would have been numerous, and the heavy Prussian hand would have driven us down into even lower depths of misery.

Now nothing of this sort exists in Cologne. Primarily the English are not Germans, and cordially though many of them detest the Boche, the English sense of decency and fair play checks any furtive growths of Prussianism among our own people. The average English person in Cologne is not concerned to ruffle it as a conqueror, but to enjoy life as much as possible under conditions so pleasant and so comfortable. But also the Germans are not English, and it is all part of the mental equipment of these people that they accept, quite as a matter of course, conditions which would drive us frantic. Nothing has surprised me more than the philosophy with which they endure our presence. Detestable as conquerors, they behave exceedingly well as conquered. I can only conclude this attitude is all part of the war game to which they have been trained. They play to win and are ruthless when the prizes fall to their lot. But equally they are taught to take defeat without whining, and to accept its trials as a matter of course. The Germans of the Occupied Area have been, generally speaking, correct and dignified in their attitude. They are neither subservient nor aggressive. Their lack of imagination as a race, and the three extra skins of which I have spoken elsewhere, no doubt help them over situations which would be unendurable to more sensitive people.

But I must repeat every billet has its crab. English society in Cologne is provided with two standing subjects of small talk unknown to us at home. The hard-worked weather is able to have a rest while we discuss in detail the shortcomings and idiosyncrasies of our Fraus or the hideousness of the furniture in our billets. “What a trial for you to have to live with these dreadful pictures,” is a common gambit when you go out to tea. As I have said before, the utter lack of taste of the average German house is apt to hit you between the eyes, and not only do we examine each other’s billets with care, but criticism is audible.

It is to be hoped that the habit will not become chronic. Otherwise some of us who are absent-minded will be in difficulties when we return home. I can see myself looking round the ugly house of a dear friend and remarking genially, “What shocking taste the people who live here must have—did you ever see such ghastly furniture?”

But if we on our side discuss our Fraus, assuredly the Fraus at their various Kaffee-Klatsches discuss their English lodgers just as thoroughly. Much shaking of heads and mutual commiseration must take place as the cups go round. I have no doubt that one story caps another as regards the enormities of the batmen, the dirt and breakages in the kitchen, and the general fecklessness and irresponsibility of the English women whose days are spent not in housework but in pleasure.