Watching on the Rhine

by Violet R. Markham

However varied the views among the officer class, the rank and file of the Army have settled down to friendly relations with the Germans—too friendly many people think. Men who have never understood the French temperament or outlook find themselves very much at home in Germany. From time to time agitated articles appear in the English papers deploring the fact that English soldiers are “getting to like Germans,” and calling on some one to do something drastic. The fact that the bow of hatred does not remain tense and strung, as desired by some people, will certainly cause no regret to those who are appalled by the perils of the present state of Europe. Better relations between nations will, I believe, be built up ultimately on working-class levels. The diplomacy of the politicians in power is too bitter and too tortuous to further the cause of European reconstruction. From this point of view the Occupation has been wholly to the good, inasmuch as tens of thousands of Englishmen who have passed through the country have gone home with a saner appreciation of the situation.

German households, on whom many of these men were quartered, found to their amazement that instead of proving, as they feared, demons incarnate, the British soldiers were good-hearted, good-tempered fellows who shared the family life, peeled potatoes, and played with the children. The soldiers on their side appreciated the kindly treatment they received and were touched by the many evidences of hunger and suffering among the working-classes. Some day I hope we shall have a “Book of Decent Deeds” showing that among all belligerents there is another side to war besides that of atrocities. We may smile at the true story of the British Tommy writing home to his mother to send him a feeding-bottle, with tubes and apparatus complete, for a German baby in his billet who was in a poor way owing to the lack of these things. The German mother burst into tears when she was given the bottle which meant the difference between life and death to the child. But such an act and the Spirit it breathes is a ray of light in the darkness.

Loud protests are sometimes made by well-fed, well-to-do people as to the impropriety of helping the starving children of Central Europe. Very different was the attitude of the soldiers who had overthrown the German military power. It is to the eternal honour of the conquering army which marched into the Rhineland, that its first act was one of pity and mercy to the hungry women and children of Cologne. It was necessary for the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Plumer, to telegraph to the Peace Conference that, unless supplies were forthcoming for the underfed German civilians, he could not be responsible for the effect on the discipline of the Army. The soldiers were up in arms at the spectacle of starvation, and nothing could prevent them, contrary to orders, from sharing their rations with the enemy.

I think the question of hatred is one which calls for clear thinking at the present crisis in the world’s history. Many people imagine that when they have abused the Boche in round terms they have “done their bit” towards squaring the accounts of devastated France or Belgium. All that they have done is to feed and sustain the spirit which led in the first place to the devastations. Whatever enormities Germany may have committed during the war, the task of punishment is not the problem of supreme urgency which here and now confronts us all. What we are face to face with is the question as to whether civilisation as a whole can survive the blows rained on it. The responsibility of Germany for this state of affairs is at the moment less important than the rescue of civilisation from the brink of the chasm on which it is trembling. It is useless to go on saying that Germany must be punished or that Germany must pay, if in fact the actual policy pursued is calculated to involve conquerors and conquered alike in common ruin. At times it is difficult to avoid the gloomy conclusion that we are approaching the end of a cycle of history, and that a period of darkness and chaos bids fair to overwhelm a world incapable of saving itself. The economic and political condition of Europe is grave in the extreme. In every country wild forces are surging upwards, the peril of which lies in the absence of any powers of moral and spiritual counteraction. The strain of the war has swallowed up the spiritual reserves of the world, and its moral credit is not only exhausted but overdrawn.

No nation ever went to war in a spirit more grave and more responsible than that in which the British people accepted the German challenge. The call to arms is invariably a great and inspiring moment. At such a time men and women realise that they are caught up and raised on the wing of ideals greater than themselves. But it is part of the evil of war that the longer it lasts the more black and the more bitter the spirit it breeds. From August 1914 and the hush of consecration which fell on the nation, to December 1918 and what was well described by a distinguished publicist as the “organized blackguardism” of the General Election, is a falling away in temper and standard almost unbearable to contemplate.

I have often wondered whether the men and women who lent themselves casually to “hatred stunts” during the war ever realised what cruel suffering was caused to a large number of humble and obscure folk. Now that the spirit of sanity and moderation is making itself heard again, English people must surely look back with shame on the treatment meted out to inoffensive enemy aliens. Busybodies obsessed by spy mania were merely a source of nuisance and ridicule to the Secret Service. That Service was highly efficient, and its agents were quite capable of doing their work without the interference of officious amateurs. The German wife and the English woman with a German husband were in many cases treated as outcasts. Years of residence in England, even the fact of children fighting with the British Army, did not serve in many cases to mitigate the violence and hatred of their neighbours. The German wives of English subjects, and the English wives of Germans, were naturally in a painful and trying position and one which was bound to excite prejudice. The degree, however, to which a group of men within Parliament, and a section of the Press without, sought deliberately to inflame the lowest passions of the mob in this matter, is the most sordid page in the history of the war. Helpless, friendless, without money, unable to make their voices heard, these unhappy people, treated as pariahs both in the land of their birth and in that of their adoption, were hunted from pillar to post.

Periodically “intern-them-all” campaigns were worked up which led to obscure Germans of proved respectability being locked up. Many of these people had English wives and families, who suffered severely through the removal of the breadwinner. English women were forced to take refuge in Germany from the persecutions of their own countrymen. What are we to think of the spirit and policy which could drive from the shores of England—England the home of Liberty, England the safe asylum of the oppressed—women of our own race who found the treatment meted out to them too hard to be endured?

Wives and families landed in Germany not speaking one word of the language, to be welcomed naturally by a spirit as hard and bitter as any they had left. The lot of English wives resident in Germany was unenviable. But I do not gather that enemy aliens were treated with a greater measure of harshness in Germany during the war than what occurred in England. Many English women living in Germany throughout the war did not suffer in any marked degree from the hostility of their neighbours. Naturally these would-be pogroms never catch the right person. Rich people who may be really mischievous escape; the poor man is hunted. The Junkers whom it would be satisfactory to punish are living in comfort and prosperity on their estates. The poor starve and are driven down into inconceivable depths of misery both of body and soul.

Even to-day the position of many English women in Germany who are married to Germans is most pitiful. Under the Peace Treaty the Allies reserved the power to retain and liquidate all property belonging to German nationals. I am not concerned at this point to raise the question as to how far this precedent of confiscation may prove a double-edged weapon in the capitalist world. But again, it is not the rich man who suffers. Large fortunes can always take care of themselves. The people who have been ground to powder by this provision are women with tiny incomes or annuities, the complete stopping of which has meant literal starvation. Most painful cases of this character came to my notice in the Rhineland. In some instances women are told that if they leave their husbands and return to England the money will be paid. Is a war fought for “truth and justice” to eventuate in alternatives of such a character? Are women, at the end of an agonising experience, to choose between husbands they may love and the stark fact of starvation? I heard of one English woman, too proud to beg or receive alms, who came by stealth and searched the swill-tubs of a mess in order to pick out food from it. The British military authorities have shown invariable sympathy and kindness to these unfortunates. They have done what lay in their power to mitigate the circumstances. Soldiers do not fail in compassion to the poor and needy. The little group of politicians conspicuous for their Hun-hunting activities have not served with the colours. The British Army fights its enemies in the field. It does not persecute women and decrepit old men. But the soldiers cannot alter the confiscation clauses of the Treaty which press with such peculiar hardship on people of small incomes. If these clauses are directed to searching the pockets of the Stinnes and the Krupps, let exceptions at least be made on the lower levels. The Treaty of Versailles in many of its provisions merely reflects the current hatreds of the hour. Modification of these clauses is inevitable when the wave of passion has subsided.

Not sorrow, loss, and suffering, but the temper born and bred of war, is its real and essential evil. The ruthless and cruel spirit which dominated the German war-machine and the many crimes committed are mainly responsible for the bitterness which was developed among the British peoples during the struggle. However natural the growth of this temper, its survival to-day is a menace to the future of the world. Hatred when it takes possession of the soul of a man or woman is a wholly corroding and destructive force. Where hatred abides the powers of darkness have their being, ready to sally forth and work havoc anew. Meanwhile the breaking of this coil promises to be no easy task. The war let loose in every country a new and evil force called propaganda—in plain language, organised lying. It is one of the foibles of propagandists that they insist on speaking of themselves as super-George Washingtons. But during the war any fiction which came to hand was good enough so long as it served to inflame national hatreds. Propaganda during the last years of the struggle did a great deal to obscure the moral issues for which we were fighting. It corrupted both character and temper. But the propaganda genie, having emerged from its bottle in clouds of smoke and dirt, entirely refuses to subside now the struggle is over. It is one of the horrid forces with vitality derived from the war which continues to pursue an independent existence. It is the weapon-in-chief for keeping open sores and exasperating passions which good sense would try to allay. Nations catch sight of each other dimly through mists of misrepresentation and bitterness. Truth and justice disappear in the welter, and without truth and justice the practical affairs of the world drift daily towards an ultimate whirlpool of chaos.