Watching on the Rhine

by Violet R. Markham

Very different was the tone and temper of the meeting of the Social Democrats on the following night. From first to last not one word was said with which I, as an English Liberal, was out of harmony. Any democratic audience in Great Britain would have found itself in entire sympathy with the general views expressed. The audience was typically working-class; quiet, orderly people, who made on me an unmistakable impression of underfeeding and suffering. The shabby field-grey uniforms converted to civilian use served to heighten the curious earthen look noticeable on so many faces here. Food is plentiful now in the Occupied Area, but the cost of living is so high, many families remain ill-nourished. Fresh milk is unobtainable; during the many months I have been in Cologne I have never seen a drop. Over and over again the same question is driven home with overwhelming force: can even the most volatile and opportunist of politicians imagine that the unspecified millions of the indemnity, or, indeed, any indemnity at all, can be collected from a nation which is not in a position to eat or work?

Herr Meerfeld, the leader of the Social Democrats in Cologne, and Frau Röhl were the principal speakers at this final gathering. Both were members of the National Assembly; Frau Röhl unfortunately has not survived the deluge which has overwhelmed many of her colleagues. A capable-looking woman with golden hair, she reminded me a little of Mary Macarthur, though lacking in the magnetism and stature, moral no less than physical, of the English trade-union leader. Herr Meerfeld’s speech was a merciless indictment of the former militarist Government and its colossal blunders in connection with the war. In his first words he struck the keynote of all that followed: “We will have no more war. What we want in future is a ‘Peace-Kultur’”—that untranslatable word which in so many varied forms finds its place in the political utterances of all parties—“we seek a revision of the Treaty of Versailles, but we seek it through a policy of reconciliation and understanding with the democracies in other countries.” The failures of the military party to make peace when an honourable peace was still possible, the rejection of President Wilson’s offers of mediation, the folly and crime of the unrestricted U-boat campaign—all these subjects were handled in a spirit which astonished me. A pamphlet on sale at the meeting, “Wer trägt die Schuld an unserem Elend?” (Who bears the responsibility for our misery?), of which I bought a copy, was packed with a damning array of facts, many of them unknown to me, as to the part played by the Kaiser’s Government during the war. “The German people have been lied to, and deceived, and betrayed,” cried the speaker. “We were told that the U-boat campaign would bring England to her knees in three months!” German mentality is a baffling thing, but I hardly expected that this remark would be received with shouts of good-natured laughter. The long arm of England’s sea-power has been no laughing matter for Germany, but throughout this campaign I was specially struck with the absence of hostility shown to England. Even at the Volkspartei meetings I listened in vain for the note which shows itself unmistakable when an audience is deeply roused. The justice and fair dealing which have marked the British Occupation have contributed primarily to this end.

A quaint little woman dressed in black came on to the platform to make a few remarks during the discussion. At first she was almost inaudible, but her voice gathered force and courage as she proceeded. She had been a Red Cross nurse during the war, so she said. Nothing could have been more scandalous than the pilfering by the officers in charge of stores and comforts destined for wounded men. She had to stand by helplessly and watch robbery and corruption of all kinds going on at the expense of the sufferers. “These heroes who filled their pockets,” she concluded naïvely, “always declared they were great patriots. Please vote to-morrow for the patriotism of the Social Democrats, which won’t rob sick men.” Even more pathetic was the appeal of a working-man on whom disease had clearly laid a fatal hand. He addressed the meeting as “dear brothers and sisters,” which raised a laugh. But there was nothing comic about the few words spoken. He had starved, so he said, during the war. Wars meant nothing but misery and starvation. Let them support the Social Democrats and then there would be no more war. He was followed by a Communist youth, who in languid and superior tones struck the first note of dissent by adjuring those present at the meeting not to vote at all. If, however, they felt irresistibly driven to the polls, the only mitigation of a bad act would be to vote for the Independent Socialists. General uproar resulted from this advice, a fat man near me rising from his seat and shouting with fury, “I know how you’ll vote. You’re the sort that votes Zentrum.” The Communist highbrow did not stop to see the end of the storm he had provoked, but, having said his say, discreetly fled before Herr Meerfeld could deliver a highly chastening reply. He left the hall pursued by the execrations of my neighbour, who showed signs of vaulting over the chairs and continuing the argument in more forcible fashion in the street. The general tone of the meeting, apart from this incident, was serious and appreciative, but it lacked any of that electric quality which thrills a party on the eve of victory. I came away uneasy as to the result—an uneasiness more than justified by the issue.

As for the future, it lies, as I write, on the knees of dark and doubtful gods. The British people found it hard to acquire the habit of war and to make war thoroughly. To-day it seems as hard a task to recover the habit of peace and make peace thoroughly. As I have said before, so long as we persist in regarding Germany as a political unit solidly inspired by the old military spirit, and of using a sledge-hammer to it on all occasions, the resettlement of Europe becomes an impossibility. The moral of the Kapp Putsch has been completely ignored in Allied countries. Yet it was highly suggestive as to the changed conditions which now rule. A militarist plot was nipped in the bud by the German working-classes who retaliated with the weapon of a general strike. I do not know what better proof of good faith the German democrats could have given as to their determination to have no more to do with the old régime. The cry of “give us back our Junkers” will never arise unless democracy itself is wholly discredited. We can take no risks with Germany, and there is no question of her escape from the penalties of the war she provoked, and the burdens which in consequence she must bear. Common-sense points, however, to the Allies giving a fair chance to the democratic elements from whom, and from whom alone, we have anything to hope as regards the future. We may make Germany’s burden impossible, in which case, sooner or later, general collapse and chaos must follow—chaos and collapse which will certainly not be confined within the borders of this country. Or we may make the burden possible, and not deny a place for repentance to the men and women who are struggling against heavy odds to remake their country on principles which are the basis of our own freedom.

CHAPTER XIV
HATRED

It is, I fear, true that national hatreds are in the main created and kept alive by the educated and upper classes. Working men and women throughout the world, absorbed as they are in daily toil and often preoccupied about the next meal, have no leisure for the cultivation of abstract sentiments. With a greater simplicity of outlook they take people and things as they find them and do not theorise about their faults. The scholastic attitude as regards hatred is an ironical commentary on some of the byways into which education is apt to stray. Professors—German professors in particular—are notorious for their bloodthirstiness. The ordinary fighting soldier, who has been over the top half a dozen times, is a man of peace compared with certain ferocious persons of academic distinction. The brandishing of quills has apparently a more permanently disturbing effect on character than the hurling of hand grenades. The man in the trench has, after all, a certain tie of fellowship with the man in the trench opposite. They are linked together by a common sense of duty fulfilled and of horrors equally endured. Each knows that the other is a man very much like himself, sick with the misery and dirt of the whole business, whose heart in all probability is yearning just in the same way for a wife, and home, and child. Men under these circumstances do not give themselves up to abstract hatreds.

But among civilians, a man or woman’s gift of warlike talk is often in inverse ratio to any sort of personal capacity to shoulder the responsibilities of battle. Women are always apt to be more bitter than men because their measure of personal sacrifice in the war has been invariably less. They have seen their loved ones perish and the light of happiness quenched in their own lives. It is not easy for them to think steadily of the great ideals for which men died, and to realise that bitterness breeds a spirit which makes the fulfilment of such ends impossible. The case of the professors is even worse. In Germany the subservience of high academic authorities to the most abominable doctrines of the militarists was a grave and sinister feature in the history of the years preceding the war. The beating of tom-toms by men presumably of education goes a long way to justify the jibe of the “New Ignorance” applied to education by Mr. James Stephens. Education left to itself is just a force, and if it throws off the right sort of moral controls, becomes, as the whole history of latter-day Germany proves, a very dangerous force. Probably in Germany to-day there is no class more bitter, no class more full of hatred and the desire for revenge, than that of the professors. But a similar attitude may often be found among well-to-do people of all races, people who, whether or not they have been educated in the real sense of the term, have had the opportunities and advantages which spring from worldly status and prosperity.

No side of the Occupation has been more interesting than the points of contact it has provided between the English and the Germans. Social intercourse on the upper levels is non-existent. Germany and England were at war when the Rhineland was occupied, and the relations then inevitable between conqueror and conquered have remained unaltered. Many of the English families now living in Cologne can hardly be conscious that they are in a foreign country. The English military community lives a life apart. At hardly any point, except in the shops, do they come in contact with the Germans. The large majority of English people, men and women alike, do not speak the language, and few make any effort to learn it.

It is not easy to say what impressions of Germany and the Germans many of these people will bring away. Opinion on the subject varies considerably, and the views expressed are as wide asunder as the poles. Some people admit frankly that their judgment and outlook have been modified considerably by all they have seen and heard. Others brought a stock-in-trade of prejudices from England and have guarded it jealously from any contact with facts. If an Occupation following on a war has any moral value, it is that necessarily it brings the enemies of yesterday in touch, and so helps to break down a certain amount of prejudice and to soften bitter feeling. Thus the way is paved to the resumption, sooner or later, of normal relations. It is easy to hate the abstract entity Germany. It is less easy to hate individual Germans who may prove on acquaintance to be estimable people. Little of this modifying influence has made itself felt on the Occupation. Many women, and some officers, declare that the behaviour of the Boche is rude and insolent; that he jostles English women in the streets, and is generally lying and dishonest in all his ways. Circumstantial stories are related in this sense. It has been stated in my presence that a certain lady could not use the trams owing to the gross incivility of the conductors. I am left wondering how far people who have these experiences provoke them by trailing their coats. Obviously, English women who talk loudly in a tram about “the beastly Boche” may find themselves in trouble with their fellow-passengers, the German ignorance of foreign languages not being as great as their own.

Speaking for myself, I have never received one rude or uncivil word from man, woman, or child during the year I spent in Germany. I went about sometimes wearing the official arm-band, and therefore obviously English; sometimes not. I have never noticed the smallest difference in the behaviour of the people on the pavements or in the street cars. Tram conductors I have found almost without exception a polite and efficient body of men. All great cities contain a proportion of gross and undesirable people. Cologne is no exception to this rule, but the particular elements are not more conspicuous here than elsewhere. So far from hostility, I have received much courtesy and consideration from Germans with whom I came into casual touch. I am not denying the reality of other people’s contrary experiences. I can only state my own. Temperament is a mirror which deflects the passage of facts, and some of the English in Cologne have arrived at fixed judgments about Germany before setting foot in the country. If they find the inhabitants civil they at once call them servile, if they show spirit they denounce them as insolent. In Cologne drawing-rooms English women will sometimes discuss the Germans much in the spirit of the Mohammedans who sat in a circle and spat at a ham. I have never been able to understand on what grounds they founded that extreme view. Upper-class Germany has vanished from the Occupied Areas, and no one regrets their disappearance. But as regards the humbler classes with whom we of the Occupation come in touch, the working-men and country-folks, the shopkeepers, small business people and minor bureaucracy, I have no hesitation in saying that they are, generally speaking, hard-working civil people, correct in their attitude and bearing. Reasonable people should find no difficulty in maintaining the superficial amenities of life with them, even under the abnormal conditions which have thrown us together.