Hence these tears. We expressed sympathy with the family troubles, but said it was foolish not to have mentioned the various fowling-pieces of whose innocent intentions Herr Klassen spoke with such conviction. However, he showed no resentment that the long arm of British law had touched him in his remote village, though, as the hero of the hour, his feelings were clearly a little hurt that we had no knowledge of his fame. At this moment up came Herr Richard Klassen, hot and perspiring from the hayfield.
Yes, he had a pond, and he had a lot of trout. They were not very big as yet, but they would soon grow; was he not feeding them on lumps of the dead cow whose remains had caused me to get to windward of his brother. Would we like to see the pond? Nothing was easier. Down another small valley, therefore, we plunged again till the road came to an end, and a pretty path through a wood brought us out on the shore of a secluded pond. It was a peaceful scene, with the warm sunlight on the wood and the water, and the sweet smell of new-cut hay reaching us from a neighbouring meadow. As we walked we admired the beauty of the country. This moved Herr Klassen to a flow of words: the country was beautiful, but men were bad; since the war there was no honour, no goodness, no morality. It was all greed and grab, “Wucher” and “Schieber.” And the end would be Bolshevism. Herr Klassen’s lack of faith in human nature was demonstrated practically by the barbed-wire entanglements which surrounded his trout pond. Along the narrow track by the water’s edge were various, almost invisible, contrivances destined to show whether any trespasser had come that way. Here at last were some trout, if only little ones. But little trout grow, and Herr Klassen was emphatic that if we would come back in a fortnight or three weeks we should have good sport. As for payment, it was to be strictly by results—no fish, no cash. All fish caught were paid for at so much a pound—a very fair arrangement.
It was pleasant to linger by the water-side in the evening sunshine, and, pipes and cigarettes being produced, the talk slid east and west over matters of greater moment than the trout. We had been joined by a friend of Herr Klassen’s, a wag with red hair and freckled face who poked fun at his neighbour with great vigour. Freckles had been to the war, Herr Klassen had not—the women and the Church would not let him go, declared the former; at which Herr Klassen raised protesting hands to heaven. Both men spoke with evident alarm of Bolshevism. Another war was bound to come, only next time it would be a Bolshevist war. It must be remembered this pleasant Bergische Land is not so very far removed from the Ruhr district, and that at Remscheid only a few miles away there had been shootings and murders. The spectre of anarchy and red revolution has come very near homes such as Herr Klassen’s, and for revolution a small farmer of his type has nothing but horror. We asked about the new Republican Government. It moved neither man to much enthusiasm. Weakness can never inspire enthusiasm, and the policy pursued by the Allies towards Germany has made it impossible for any government to be strong. Herr Klassen said what they wanted was a constitutional monarchy like England. They were doubtful of Republics. France was a Republic and they did not want to be like France.
We talked of the war and the peace and the threatening condition of affairs in Eastern Europe. Both men called down fire from heaven on the Poles. No German can speak of a Pole in measured language. Soon there would be a Bolshevist army in Warsaw, and then what was going to happen to Germany? Freckles, who had fought on the Eastern Front, spoke well of the Russians. They were brave men, so he said, and if properly armed and properly led would fight as well as the Germans. They had no chance in the war; men could not fight with spades and hayforks. They were mown down like sheep because they had often neither rifles nor guns. Klassen had had a Russian prisoner working on his farm and had found him a good fellow. Freckles, who was, I gathered, not a man of property, was rather attracted by some of the anti-capitalist ideas of the Bolsheviks. Klassen was talking bitterly of the Schiebers and the terrific price of food and goods in Germany—capitalism was a curse. “What are you but a capitalist,” retorted Freckles with a grin; “you have four cows and some land and a pond full of trout”—before which sally Klassen, who was clearly at the mercy of his more nimble-witted friend, collapsed entirely. “What about the arms, too,” said Freckles with another grin and a wink in our direction. Klassen turned to us as eagerly as his brother. Of course we had heard of the law proceedings in Cologne at which he had been fined? No? His face fell on realising the limited span of his fame; it was a terrible affair; he did not know how he should get the money for the fine.
We packed both men into the car and took them back to the village, where we parted with mutual goodwill. “In a fortnight, then,” said Klassen, “you will come again when the fish are bigger. Yes, you can bring a friend too if you wish.”
So we said good evening and, consoled by the discovery of a secret pond if we had failed to secure a length of stream, travelled westwards towards the setting sun and Cologne.
CHAPTER IX
WHO PAYS?
To the traveller passing from the devastated regions of France to the hills and valleys of the Rhineland, there is something almost scandalous in the impression of wealth and solidity conveyed by the latter country. “These people have not suffered in the war at all,” said an English woman in Cologne to me indignantly; “look at the worldwide misery they have provoked; look at the state of France, and then see how lightly the Germans themselves have escaped: everything intact and their country untouched.”
But has Germany really escaped so lightly? Untouched her country may be; intact in one vital particular it certainly is not. Bricks and mortar can in time be replaced, shell holes can be filled in, and the plough pass again over the devastated fields. But at a date when the material destruction of France will be, let us hope, to a large extent repaired, Germany will still be paying for the sins of her rulers in the bodies of a generation a large proportion of which will be enfeebled and diseased. It is an insidious form of payment, lacking in obviousness or dramatic quality. But its ultimate thoroughness ought to satisfy even the moralists who demand that an entity called Germany should be punished, quite irrespective of the guilt or innocence of the actual person on whom the punishment falls.