The scenery of the Col de Schlücht is very fine. A country to be really appreciated must be seen on foot, and motoring is at best but an unsatisfactory makeshift for the busy. To the true vagabond, as Borrow and Robert Louis Stevenson understood the term, the friendly hills of the Vosges must offer many attractions as a wandering ground. Our time being limited, we were grateful to the motor for the cinematograph impression we were able to carry away. Fighting of a more serious character had taken place on the Col de Schlücht than at Saales. It was along this road the French made their original thrust into Alsace at the beginning of the war, when for a brief period they occupied Colmar in the plain below. Driven back by the Germans with heavy losses, the line was stabilised for some years at a point near the head of the pass. Even so the unfailing test of the trees showed that the destruction had not been complete. Münster at the foot of the pass was a heap of ruins. Here for a time artillery fire must have been heavy. But we passed rapidly out of the zone of battle; a great contrast in this respect to the plain of the Woevre where, mile after mile before Verdun is reached, the aspect of the landscape along the road from Metz is desolate and desolating in the extreme.
The agricultural value of the great plain of Alsace must be considerable. The land is rich and well cultivated. Corn, potatoes, and beetroot flourish. Crops of maize and fields of tobacco point to the warmth of the climate. Hops and vines are grown on a scale which does not indicate much enthusiasm for the Pussyfoot movement. Hops are trained on rather a different principle from that usual in Kent, and the long trailing festoons of leaves and flowers languish one towards another like so many elegant and swooning beauties. Tobacco factories and breweries have been established in Strasbourg by the Germans; engine works and foundries also contribute to its wealth. But despite the commercial and manufacturing activities which have turned a city of 78,000 people in 1870 to one of 170,000 in 1911, the strength of Alsace remains rooted in its agriculture and its agricultural population. Except Strasbourg, and in a lesser degree Mülhausen, there are no big towns. From the land has come in the main the brave spirit which carried the people through years of gloom and foreign domination. That the same spirit will triumph over the difficulties of reconstruction must be the hope of all friends of France.
CHAPTER XIII
SOME ELECTIONEERING IMPRESSIONS
I
German political life is in the main a sealed book to the British public. Many people take but a tepid interest in the politics of their own country. To grapple with the intricacies of parties and programmes in a foreign land is an effort quite beyond the will or the power of the average citizen. Yet Germany plays, and is bound to play for years to come, so dominant a part in every calculation and forecast made by her neighbours, that it is of considerable importance to try and realise what forces are at work among her own people.
Constitutional life in Germany has had many vicissitudes. When the tragic history of our own times comes to be written, future historians will probably regard the failure of the Frankfurt deputies in 1848 to solve the problem of German unity on a democratic basis as the most fatal date in modern history. The unity which the “Professors’ Parliament” failed to achieve was welded together triumphantly by Bismarck, twenty-three years later, through blood and iron. To the cult of blood and iron Germany henceforth dedicated itself, and for many years, with striking success. But even within the Empire the system had its challengers, as the spread of Socialist doctrines and the successes of the Social Democrats proved. When the military régime collapsed in defeat and confusion in the autumn of 1918, it was to the despised democratic elements that Germany owed her escape from utter ruin.
Little or no attention has ever been paid to the astonishing feat of constitutional reorganisation which was carried through after the flight of the Emperor. Complete military disaster had overtaken the country; revolution and anarchy were abroad in the land. Yet on the morrow of these events not only was a Republic proclaimed, but a German Government came into being which worked out a democratic constitution based on universal suffrage and full ministerial responsibility of the cabinet to the elected representatives of the people. The history of parliaments contains no more surprising page. Women were enfranchised, lists of voters prepared, and within a few weeks of the Armistice, elections were held which brought into existence a provisional National Assembly whose business it was to carry on the hard task of government till the first Reichstag of the new Republic could subsequently be elected. How all this was done in the time is a mystery, especially having in mind the endless delays to which our own last Franchise Bill gave rise, and the difficulties pleaded as regards the revision of voters’ lists. The temper of the hour and the mood of the conquering Allies did not permit of one word of praise for a constitutional tour de force carried through under conditions of overwhelming difficulty. But it would be unjust and ungenerous not to recognise to-day with what dogged determination the German democrats, inexperienced and untried as they were in government, handled the half-foundering ship they were called upon to save. To make a success of the task was an impossibility under the circumstances for them or for any set of men. But that they kept the ship afloat, in view of the seas breaking over it, is little short of a marvel.
The man who played a thoroughly creditable part in the hour of collapse was Hindenburg. Unlike other distinguished members of the ruling class he did not run away when the game was up, but stood by his country through the grim business of defeat and surrender. Without a shred of sympathy for the Republican Government, he gave that government loyal assistance as regards the withdrawal of the armies. No man in Germany to-day commands more universal respect than the old Field-Marshall. Amid the flood of recriminations which German statesmen, generals, and admirals have poured on each other, Hindenburg has displayed reticence and generosity which do him entire credit. The inclusion of his name in the list of War Criminals is of all Allied ineptitudes since the Peace perhaps the greatest.
The National Assembly lasted for about fifteen months. In June 1920 Germany went to the polls to elect the first Reichstag of the Republic. Not the faintest interest in the event was taken by the British public. Yet whatever the result, it could only react on the whole future of European reconstruction.
Current conceptions at home remain astonishingly crude as to the position in Central Europe. The man in the street, brought up in the true milk of the word as preached by the Yellow Press, is still of opinion that Germany is as militant and as threatening as ever, and that, should we be so foolish as to stop sitting on her head, she would promptly overrun Europe again. Suggest that Germany with her fleet sunk, her merchant shipping confiscated, her colonies lost, her army disbanded, her war material surrendered, her railway system in ruins, her food shortage considerable, is hardly in a position at the moment to make an unprovoked attack on any one, and the said person hints darkly in reply at hidden divisions on the Eastern Frontier; at an alliance between the Bolshevists and the German Government; at a military menace little less serious than what existed in 1914. It is surprising that people of this type are not more in conceit with themselves after the Allied victory, and fail so completely in appreciation of what the conquering armies have done. The German legions, perfectly trained and equipped after years of preparation, and with the whole resources of the German Empire behind them, could not achieve the preliminary pounce on Paris in 1914. Is the present Republican Government in any better position to succeed where they failed? A nation broken by hunger and defeat may become a centre of disease, dangerous to its neighbours owing to the poison spread through the whole international system. But any talk of external military adventure, apart from sporadic insurrections, is absurd.