April 20, 1915.
The Russians whom we were dreading have arrived. For the last three months the Germans have been threatening us with them as with the plague, adding: “In the camps where the French and the Russians are together they always come to blows.”
One morning theOberstabsarztinoculated us against cholera. Every one said: “They are coming!” TheFeldwebeldid in fact go through the casemates, allotting five to one, ten to another, and fifteen to some. In the afternoon, groups were watching from the outer part of the slope which commands the road from Ingolstadt. There was much grumbling. Some were cursing the Germans for wishing to poison us with the deadly Asiatic disease. Some, frightened by the inoculation, were already imagining themselves black and rotten.
At six in the evening, an hour earlier than usual, the electric bell rang for the evacuation of the courts. Immediately afterwards, the forty-nine heads of rooms were summoned, were drawn up in line beyond the bridge, and were told to wait.
The gentle April twilight had already enveloped the brow of the slopes, and the lower red-brick front looking into the ditch lay hidden in the gathering darkness as if in ambuscade. French prisoners were bunched round the windows. With laughing faces they defied the commandant, stiff and dapper, doing sentry-go on the glacis. Under his very nose they began to hum the Russian national anthem. But the Russians did not come. The great black gate, buttressed between the mossy walls of the counterscarp, starred with anemone and colt’s-foot, remained obstinately shut. Impatience grew. At length the outer sentry whistled, theHauptmannwent forward, and the gate opened.
The distribution of the convoy was effected in the Prussian manner. Each headman went to take delivery of his Russians outside, behind the gate, and conducted the supplementary squad to his casemate. This took half an hour. In Indian file, following their French corporal or sergeant, they went along at a quick step, but noiselessly in their supple jack-boots; they were muffled in huge grey overcoats, and their size was increased by enormous fur caps. Night fell. The dead colour of their uniforms melted away in the darkness. The silence was absolute. Pale Scythian faces, flat-nosed Tartar faces, Asiatic types with wide cheek-bones, Samoyede beards, downy and curled—all the Russias were passing. We looked on. When they had crossed the bridge the fort swallowed them.
In the interior, to the scandal of our masters, Frenchrule prevailed. Notwithstanding the order confining us to our rooms, the “Frantsuz” crowded to the thresholds to greet the “little fathers”—“Good-day, Russkis!” they cried, regardless of the Boches; “Germania kaput!The Carpathians floup!” They made roguish gestures indicating freedom.
“What monkeys!” thought the Germans, as they looked on. The truth is that no one understands so well as the French how to invent a language, to supplement words by signs and onomatopœias. They have an excellent excuse for neglecting the study of foreign languages! Does a good mime learn foreign tongues?
The Russians got on little faster in the corridors of Fort Orff than in the attack upon Lowicz, where their advance was obstructed by barbed wire. Each door was an ambush; every Frenchman an obstacle. Cigars and cakes rained upon them. And then the handshakings and the amicable clappings on the shoulder. Détry, though he is as much afraid of lice as of cholera, exchanged his képi for an imposing Siberian headdress made of sheepskin, bristling, stinking, and alive!
The little fathers had had nothing to eat since the previous day. The quartermaster served them out a morsel of cheese, but no bread. “Germania, niet hleb” (“There is no bread in Germany!”), said the Russians, “Ja, nichts Brot!” rejoined the French in their bad German; “but FranceBrot, plentyBrot!” Thus communicating with their friends in nigger talk, they emptied their haversacks before the hungry men.
The Germans laughed on the wrong side of their mouths. They had expected war; what they saw was love. Until nine o’clock the turmoil was incredible. Each room was treating its new recruits. The poorer rooms offered crusts of white bread baked in Saintonge or Lower Brittany. In the well-to-do quarters the men brewed chocolate and served it with rusks. Since in my room, that of the interpreters, there were no Russians, I went to No. 16, the casemate of Corporal Dumoulin, my comrade-at-arms. Dinner was finished. Seated on their palliasses doubled over, our allies were digesting the good things sent by French mothers. Near the window, a hairdresser was already dealing with the great mops of hair.
“You see,” said Dumoulin, “I want to smarten them up. But how pious and ceremonious they are. Of course we divided our food with them. They all kissed my hand. Then they took off their caps, said their prayers, and fed. After that, they got up, said their prayers again, and kissed my hand once more. But what have you got there?”
“I have no Russians, so I shall adopt yours. But unfortunately they have already dined!”
“Don’t bother about that; they will dine ten times over this evening!”
It was my turn to be embraced. Gingerbread, Easter eggs, jam, petit-beurre biscuits, dates, cigarettes—I was kissed between each course. One of the Russians, a hairy corporal, a thick-set man, with dog-like eyes, was not satisfied with my hand, but kissed meon the lips. I suppose it is the custom of the country. Some of them overwhelmed me with profound genuflexions as if I had been the white elephant.
Throughout the evening there was an intoxication of generosity. Thrifty men at ordinary times, the French now gave all they had. Il Poverello could not have done better. The huge round loaves kneaded in the family kneading-trough and baked in the village oven, the apples and nuts of the last harvest, old sausages spiced with garlic and thyme, everything, even the “surprises” secretly prepared by the maman for her boy in captivity—everything was handed over. Little Stéphanus of Saint-Denis, who has lost his hearing through a wound in the head, and who, being an orphan, would receive nothing from France were it not for you and Mme. Weiss, had only his fifth of a loaf of potato bread. He gave it. The comrades from the invaded regions, who have to live on the provisions of their “adopted brothers,” were greatly distressed that they had nothing to share out but their poverty.
But if charity was lively, gaiety was insane. The little fathers were stupefied with astonishment. They looked upon us as legendarybariny(seigneurs), as Crœsuses flowing with milk and honey, as magicians proof against misfortune, able to make the desert, and even the prison pavement, blossom like the rose. What a change for them! They had been the serfs of the Boche sergeants in the Lechfeld camp, their backs were still smarting from the canings administered to revenge the loss of Przemysl, and from this they were suddenlytransported to become guests at the feast of the parable! Rich and poor, beggars and lords, all were equal, all were friends, all were brothers at this primitive Christian agape, which lacked nothing, not even good cigars. Such plenty and such brotherhood turned their heads. Bewildered and mute, ignorant of our language as we were ignorant of theirs, and having no other means of showing us their gratitude, they kissed us in season and out, and they prostrated themselves before us as before their own icons.
I have spoken to you about Graby, one of the two famous comic cyclists known in Paris, and indeed throughout Europe, under the name of the Brothers Abbins. His wound is healed. He is as lithe as ever, gay, martial, a jolly fellow. “Ein lustiger Gesell,” theFeldwebelcalls him, adding, “There’s a typical Frenchman for you!” In Dumoulin’s room I am being melted almost to tears under the Russian kisses, when Graby bursts open the door, and, quite out of breath, exclaims: “Riou, old chap, my Slav poilus are making ready to dance. I invite you to the party.” He drags me off. His casemate is at the other end of the fort. On the way he explains that he has discovered a sort of interpreter, a Pole who has been in New York, and who knows a few words of English. “You’ll see, we’re going to have high jinks to-night!”
There are indeed high jinks. An assemblage of képis and fur caps beneath a huge candelabra, improvised by the hosts, and ornamented with aeroplanesand flags cut out of paper. A horrible menagerie odour fills the room. The banquet is over. Tea is being handed round in old tins. Graby, looking even more like a street arab than usual, is doing the honours, assisted by big Ménard, erect, smart, as clean shaven as a British guardsman, and with the suspicion of an English accent. Prompted by Abbins, the Pole introduces me as a French writer familiar with Russian authors.
“Friends!”
“Friends!”
“Comrades!”
“Sayousniki!”
“Bravo!”
“Hurrah!”
“Now,” says Graby, sketching a figure, “let us dance.”
A circle is formed. Two youths as lean as cats confront one another. At first they make a feint of sparring. They seem as if engaged in a slow and weary pyrrhic dance. The onlookers’ eyes sparkle; an indefinite measure is beaten with the hands. This lasts for two minutes. Then the rhythm becomes brisker, the partners draw themselves up to their full height and keep their arms closely pressed to their sides; they are motionless like fakirs. But with their heels they make a noise which sounds like that of distant castanets, a muted crackling in an ever-accelerating tempo. A sudden pause. The dancers squat on their hams. There follows the famous stepwhich we have beheld at the Russian ballet, the strange dance whose savage rhythm is punctuated by the clacking of boots on the boards. At the very end, the Russians give an abrupt “Hurrah!” It is over. Graby congratulates his men by patting their cheeks, by commendatory gurgles, by the “boo, boo, boo,” and other labial interjections that mothers use to their nurslings.
More tea, more cigarettes. We ask for the Russian national anthem. You know it. It seems to me as heavy as a convict’s fetters. To relieve my ears I demand theMarseillaise. Boude sings the couplets and we take up the chorus. The swing of it, the decision, the thrill, as of a victorious charge, astonish the Russians. My neighbour the Pole weeps.
“You are crying?” I say to him in English.
“You can’t understand,” he makes answer. “That air represents liberty. You possess it; you don’t know the value of it. We dream of it.” His debased English was interspersed with Polish phrases which rang with a sort of Latin sweetness. “Don’t you know that we are slaves?”
“This war will free you.”
“You think so? We have fought well enough! My comrades stood firm when they were being mown down before Lowicz. Yes, we have fought fiercely for the Czar, even while feeling that his victory would serve only to make our chains heavier. Poor Poland! Poor Poland!”
The name of Poland attracts the attention of abig artilleryman with a bull neck, a flat nose, a hard and suspicious expression.
“What are you saying about Poland?” he asks me in German.
“That this war will liberate the country. You have the Czar’s promise.”
His fixed look, fierce and defiant, his turned-up chin, his tanned and robust visage, contrast with the noble passion of his words. Never before have I witnessed real despair, that despair which hardens the features and vulcanizes the soul, despair transformed into a motive for living.
This Pole is as tragic as one of Wyspianski’s heroes.
Around us the others are enjoying themselves like brothers reunited. Graby is begging Ménard to sing the AmericanRow! Row! Row!I long to take my companion out on to the slopes, and there, amid the silence, to let him talk at length, to listen, and to make him feel that I share his dreams, that France is the friend of every nation that yearns for freedom.
The Pole makes no accusations against France. She has deceived his people, but he loves her just thesame. He believes in her, despite her faults, as the great champion of justice.
Ménard is singing. The French and the Russians are taking up in chorus the refrain, “Row! Row! Row!” Elbows on knees, head in hands, expression disdainful, my Pole says no more, but sits like a colossus, making the best of his impotence.
The Russians have suddenly started a new air. A tenor sings the first phrase in solo. A bass joins in. Then the other voices take up their parts. It is beautiful, with a rough, serious, wild beauty. I ask the title.The Song of the War against Japan.Then they give some love songs. It seems to me that all voice the same music, a powerful and melancholy, and yet simple music, with the sweet notes of infinite submission. I think of a grand Gregorian chant encompassing all the pleasures and all the wrongs of earth in an atmosphere of the eternal. The strains have a bourdon of lamentation, like that of a woman spent with suffering asking sympathy and consolation.
Next day the Bavarians of the guard could hardly believe their eyes. In the courts, in the ditches, everywhere, among basins and heaps of underclothing, quite a tribe of naked little fathers were glistening in the sunshine. How thin they were! To what skeletons they had been reduced by two months in Germany. Smiling, making awkward little gestures, each one of them allowed himself to be manipulated by a Frenchman, who soaped him all over, rubbed himdown, pummelled him, dried him, and finally dressed him as a French infantryman. “Now, then, we must wash your duds. Come along.” And the French mamma led his great little Slav to the well, helped him to pump some water, arranged him a bench. Then both set to work and scrubbed.
In the evening, when the roll was called, theHauptmannexclaimed: “But where on earth are the Russians?”
“There they are,” answered Junot, sergeant-major of No. 46.
“But what is the meaning of this masquerade?”
“Mon commandant, their clothes are drying on the slopes, and you see they could not attend muster in a loin cloth.”
These first days were pleasant. It was good to make friends. To share without thought of the morrow, to live without calculation, to act solely as the heart dictated—it was like paradise. Yes, paradise within prison walls. We were brothers. Even the veterans of Manchuria and the Afghanistan campaigns, with all their tinsmith’s shop of commemorative medals and their grizzled heads, even the sergeants with three stripes, had become our little brothers. “You are hungry? Here is some white bread from France; here is some home-made jam; here are some apples from my orchard. Eat, Russki.” Or it would be: “You old zebra, what are you doing that for, digging the lice out of the seams of your clothes with a knife? You’re sowing them all over the place. Thatkind of grain sprouts. Look, this is the way. Tic! Tic! Take your thumbs to it and press the beast between the two nails. Kill, kill! It’s inhumane? Never mind. Kill away. Have no compunction.” So the Russian “zebra” sets to work to crush his live-stock. They now divest themselves of lice quite after the French manner, and no longer swarm with vermin as when they arrived. But they can still while away their long hours of leisure in parasitological investigations and in slaughter.
Every evening the French and the Russians walk arm in arm on the slopes. In less than no time a conventional language has sprung into being. It does not lead very far. No matter. When the mimic vocabulary is exhausted, the friends walk side by side in silence. But if a Bavarian sentry passes, the conversation is resumed, the same things being emphatically repeated; they clap one another on the back, they exchange head-gear, képi for toque, fatigue-cap for its Russian equivalent. After a few days the Russian buttons stamped with the two-headed eagle had found their way on to our coats, while the French grenade buttons were displayed upon the huge Russian earth-coloured cloaks. Tartar feet were encased in French army shoes; while red trousers were tucked into the supple boots of Ukraine leather. Early Christian communism prevailed. Every one dressedas he fancied, mixing the uniform of the two armies. For an entire week the height of the fashion in Nos. 44 and 46, aristocratic regions, was to walk out in moujiks’ blouses. Le Second, Poiret’s pupil, had work after his own heart. Little Mitka’s blouse, a brilliant grey-green, embroidered in black at the collar and wristbands, was his great triumph.
Gradually the little fathers came to understand that they must not kiss our hands, and that genuflexions were by no means to our taste. It must be admitted that they found this repugnance somewhat troublesome, the repugnance of men who make a cult of equality. They love direct demonstrations. They are nearer to the days of the Iliad than to ’89, fond of physical endearments like children and the early Greeks, and a trifle fawning. But so winsomely! Besides, they had to show us their gratitude. If instead of the forbidden gestures they made us an oration, we raised our hands to heaven, saying: “Nye ponimayu—I don’t understand!” What were they to do? Yesterday one of them, in despair, threw himself upon the ground, kissing my footsteps in a transport of delight. Impatiently I seized him, and dragged him to his feet rather roughly. You should have seen him, awkward, speechless, and motionless. His silence seemed to say: “Why do you forbid me to embrace you, to kiss the dust beneath your feet? Do you not care for my gratitude? And yet you are kindly. Or do you prefer our simple ‘thanks,’ ourspasiba, to which your French jokers invariablyrespond by a long word which I can’t understand, saying, ‘Non, pas si bas! Plus haut!’ Do you really think that a word has anybodyin it if it be unaccompanied by action?”
It was thus that they reasoned within themselves, timid and embarrassed, when we repelled their embraces. Then, struck with a sudden idea, they took the brooms from our hands, they seized the shoes that we were polishing, they ran to fetch water for us. In order to give body to theirspasiba, they did all our work for us. Soon it was impossible for the Frenchmen to find any occupation for their hands. In the dark corridor leading to the great well, where the prisoners have to wait in a long queue for their turn, shouldering pitchers stamped with blue lozenges, one now saw none but Russians; in the kitchens, when the potatoes were being peeled, none but Russians; in the corner of the courts where the laundrymen install buckets and tables, none but Russians. We had to take severe measures, and to insist that France should take a hand in all the hard work.
But, amid this fine zeal, the Moslem Tartars take their ease on their palliasses, quiet and blissful. Let others perform all the arduous tasks. Christians and Jews can scour the cement floors of the casemates, shake the rugs, fold up the bedding, carry theKartoffelbrot[32]from the tumbrel to the storeroom. Impassive, crushing you by the glassy immobility of their introspective gaze, indolent as mandarins (whom they resemble in theiryellow tint, their wide cheek-bones, and their fine, shining moustaches), it seems as if the Prophet had furnished them with an opiate against all the accidents of life. Nothing moves them. They ask for nothing. They never share anything. They never pray. Do them a service; give them something from your own narrow resources; they take it all as a matter of course. Some of them have two or three wives. Without a sign of tenderness, they show you the portraits of these wives, fraternizing in a single photograph. Plenty, scarcity; cold, heat; a concourse, solitude; war, exile—everything is alike to them. Life breaks impotently against the bovine torpor of their fatalism.
But when the Christian Russians say their morning prayer, standing bare-headed, multiplying triple signs of the cross, kissing the Testament, and abasing themselves before the little painted icon in a glass case fixed to the wall above their palliasse, it sometimes happens that their inhuman eyes blaze. They utter a raucous cry: “Your Lord Jesus Christ, he’s no good!” Thereupon the devotees break off their Paternosters, and attack the scoffers with foot or with fist in order to avenge the insult to their deity.
In casemate 34 there are ten Frenchmen, twelve Russians, and one Jew. Thin, sickly, with a stoop, a sallow complexion, a timid and plaintive expression, this Jew is the most unobtrusive of men. He seems afraid of taking up too much room. When spoken to he is abashed and stammers. He never asks for anything. He is always content. If you merely smile athim, he looks at you humbly, with a dumb, gentle gratitude.
As he knows some German, I have been able to talk to him. He is a good little soul, peaceful and inoffensive, rather dull-witted. He contemplates the knout and the pogroms without indignation, accepting them as a farmer accepts hail. The only pleasure he knows is the negative one of being left unnoticed, of being forgotten, but this pleasure he welcomes as a wonderful act of grace. In a word, he is one of the humble of heart to whom the Rabbi rejected of the rabbis has promised the kingdom of heaven.
One day, when I was bringing him an orange, his compatriots leapt upon me from their palliasses, surrounding me and restraining me by force from approaching the Jew, pointing him out with a gesture of disgust, as if to preserve me from a horrible contagion.
“Jew! Jew!” they cried with flashing eyes.
They were all speaking at once, so that I was bewildered by their volubility and their passionate gesticulations. Desiring to clear up the difficulty, I sought an interpreter, and as soon as we returned, the cries were redoubled.
“What are they all saying?” I demanded of Issajoff, the interpreter. “Why are they holding me back like this?”
Issajoff smiled. “Here is something,” he said, “which wins me over to France! You’re astonished that these Russians prevent you giving help to a Jew, that they insist on assuring you that he is a Jew. Tothem it seems self-evident that as soon as you know him to be a Jew you will no longer wish to give him anything, but will treat him as a leper, a pariah, a damned soul!”
The Russians continued to scream, to look murderously at the Jew, to shake their fists at him. As for him, with his customary air of dull indifference, he remained quietly in his own corner behind the door, beside the dustbin and the spittoon, the dirtiest and dampest corner of the casemate.
Said Issajoff: “They say to him, ‘You have crucified our Lord Jesus Christ’—‘I have defiled your mother’—this is the grossest insult in our language. They also say to him, ‘You love the Germans; if you could, you would have shot us.’ They also say: ‘If you accept the Frenchman’s present, we will flay you alive!’”
Issajoff is a revolutionist—and a Jew, although he keeps this last fact to himself. Coldly and deliberately he reported to me his comrades’ words. But the vague smile which played over his large features indicated irony and contempt.
“You really find this scene surprising?” he resumed.
I contemplated these disciples of the Christ, all yapping at this poor wretch. For the first time in my life I found my Christianity a heavy burden.
I went up to Kajedan. I pressed him by the hand and gave him the orange. I wanted to give him the contents of my cigarette case, but he said he did notsmoke. “Well, give them to your friends.” He did so. The Russians greedily seized thepapirosy. They threw themselves on their palliasses, and, forgetting to avenge their God any longer, they gave themselves up to the delights of tobacco.
July 1, 1915.
I am Vassili’sbarin(seigneur). He polishes my shoes; every morning, in the court, he brings me water for my “teube”; he picks up balls for me in our extemporized game of tennis; if I am thirsty, he runs to the well; if the cloth of my worn trousers, too skimpy for me (the government has never been able to supply me with trousers suited to my figure), gives way during an unusually vigorous movement of Swedish gymnastics, he promptly threads a needle and repairs the damage; he watches over me as one watches milk on the boil; no valet has ever served me so well. But what constrains him?
Were I to forbid him to serve me, he would shed bitter tears. Have I ever given him an order? Have I ever been short with him? Is Vassili my valet or my friend? He no longer kisses my hands, he no longer kisses my lips, he no longer kisses the ground where I have trod. He has given up these moujik ways. He simply shakes hands with me. When I am at work, he sits on my ration-chest orstands at the window, smokingpapirosy(cigarettes), and looking at the illustrations in my books. When he likes them he exclaims “Harosho, harosho!” (good, good). But always I feel his faithful Siberian eye upon me. He divines the least of my wishes. Do I need a book? He knows perfectly to whom it has been lent. He jumps up, runs along the corridors, finds the man, maybe in his casemate, maybe beneath the shade of a poplar, maybe in one of the ditches, explains himself in nigger talk, and, breathless and perspiring, comes back to me with the prize. It can hardly be said that we converse; the difficulties are too great. We look at one another, and we smile. He gives me everything he can; I respond in kind. He works; I work. He serves me; I serve him. I know how to read and write; I can influence theFeldwebel; and I can ask my relatives and friends in France to send me things. For his part, he knows how to darn, patch, fetch water, wash up. Thus, side by side, each at his own task, we both work. He imagines that I am abarin, in which he is mistaken, and that I love him, in which he is not mistaken. For my part, I regard him as a good fellow from Tomsk, who pines for hisizba(cottage) and his wife, and I would like to send him back to them in good condition when his imprisonment is over.
July 7, 1915.
It has lasted for eleven months. How much longer will it continue?
Our sentries are even more impatient than we are ourselves. They grumble and faultfind. “It is too bad!” they exclaim. “Do you think it will be over in a month?” they ask us. “Pooh!” we answer; “in a year perhaps, or maybe two, when we have conquered the autocracy which tyrannizes over you!” They stare at us blankly, utterly disheartened.
These poor fellows are suffering. They have many children, six, seven, or eight. Their savings are exhausted, and the wolf is at the door. When we are marching to work, they recount their troubles to Brissot and to me, confidingly and deferentially, as they would to an elder brother. They are good by nature, simple-minded, somewhat subservient, weighted by innumerable centuries of silent submission. One perceives so clearly that they have not effected their revolution, and that despite parliamentary suffrage and the Reichstag they are still under the dominion of the feudal age.
Through studying them closely, and through talking with them, it seems to me that I am beginning to understand this huge and mysterious Germany. I knew something of the élite of the country, but was quite ignorant of the common people, workmen, peasants, and lower middle class. But these are the backbone of Germany.
How different is their world from ours! In France we read the paper; we have political ideas; we influence the appointment of ministers; we take sides passionately, for or against Pelletan, for or against Clemenceau, for or against Poincaré; every one of our village orators has good advice to give to our admirals, our generals, and our diplomats. How unlike Germany! Nothing can equal the ignorance of these folk in public matters. Think of a French agriculturist of the days of Louis XIV, hardworking and kindly, engrossed in domestic cares, knowing that it is hard to gain a livelihood and occupied in this pursuit by day and by night; accepting princes, seigneurs, taxes, corvées, and wars as one accepts sunshine, rain, hail, and frost, without venturing to pass any judgment upon them; saying that these things have been, are, and will be, that he himself is but a poor man, that every one has his own trade, that it is the king’s to govern and his to provide a living for his family; there you have the political essence of the German peasant and the German workman. Monarchy, republic, foreign relations, double alliance or triple alliance—don’t waste your time talking to him about these. Should you do so, he will listen,he will express a civil assent, and will fall asleep over his beer.
A Frenchman cannot understand how utterly indifferent are the common people in Germany to political ideas and to questions of state. A Frenchman, whether he knows it or not, and even if he believes himself to be a monarchist, reasons like a leader. He speaks as if he were himself a part of the king, and a considerable part. He eagerly discusses the affairs of the country. Militarist or anti-militarist, he is patriotic to the core—patriotic like the sovereign he is. Should the foreigner insult France, he is personally insulted; this is his own business; the offence is not offered to some distant prince; it touches himself, the individual king; it makes his own skin tingle. This was obvious at the mobilization; it remains obvious after a year of war. It is not simply a caste which detests the Kaiser and his satellites and wishes to subdue them; these feelings animate every Frenchman, be he minister or cobbler. For France, one and indivisible, is trulya free nation, a collection of autonomous individuals who have determined to live together, who know themselves to have been entrusted with the most exalted of human missions, and each one of whom makes the fulfilment of that mission a point of personal honour.
How different is Germany! The country possesses an élite of persons well equipped for administration and rule, and this endows her national life with a fine aspect of cohesion. But directly we examine more closely, doubts arise; we see that the cohesion is nomore than apparent; there are those who theorize about Germany as a whole, but there is notoneGermany; between the people and the leaders there is no intimate solidarity, no communion of love, hope, and will. Above, there is an empyrean of men who believe themselves superhuman, who utter claims, trace plans, issue orders (Befehle), who, as if at section drill, thunder out commands to Germany and to the world at large; below, there is a swarm of good and peaceable folk, all engaged in their insignificant private affairs, and making no attempt to interfere in the loftier mysteries.
Doubtless, in the lower regions, respect is felt for the empyrean; people tremble before it, as before the eye of God; but there is no risk that they will attempt to penetrate its designs. They are faithful subjects, and they obey. They are soldiers when the time comes for enrolment, and good soldiers; when the order for mobilization is issued, they go to the war; when the ritual demands it, they shout hurrahs “for king and country.” But at bottom, if words have any meaning, they are not patriots. Militarists, yes; easily regimented, yes; patriots, no.
It is true that they would be greatly astonished if any one were to say to them point-blank: “You don’t care a fig for your country!” They all believe themselves to be good, honest, and loyal Germans. Are they not obedient to the death? Certainly they are. But they would be equally obedient, with very little feeling of disturbance at the change, to George V or to Poincaré; and they would obey just as well in arepublic as in a monarchy. It is not their business to be patriots (for this presupposes a degree of liberty, and of internal sovereignty, to which they have not yet attained), but to be good subjects. To obey, unfailingly and without discussion; to abase themselves devoutly before authority; to be subservient to their leader, whoever he may be; to carry out orders whencesoever derived, be they democratic or be they Cæsarian—this it is to be a good German. Active as he is in private affairs, he is passive in religion, with a sort of mystical fervour, and he is passive in his relationships to authority. The Germans hardly realize this, and yet to us it is so obvious.
Here is an example. On one occasion I, a prisoner of war, roundly reprimanded a sentry, reproaching him with disobedience to orders. Secretly I was laughing, but the sentry trembled. Standing at attention as if confronted by an officer, he trembled before the majesty of the command, theBefehl. I had issued an order, and that is why he stood to attention; there he was, submissive, stupefied with willingness; he forgot that I was a Frenchman, subject to his orders, that the regulations forbade me to speak to him, that he should have charged bayonet and touched me with the steel, even run me through. No, I had issued an order; the man who commands, who gives aBefehl, is sacrosanct for the German.
The reason is that the German has never emerged from private life. He lives in his house, on his land, in his factory, his tavern, his church; he lives with hisfamily, with a few friends, with his professional associates. He makes his life there as agreeable as possible; he is an able domestic economist, knowing well how to adorn his residence, his table, his savings bank. The currents of modern life, socialism, liberalism, materialism, the religion of comfort and of hygiene, have developed his practical aptitudes to an unimaginable extent, to a degree unsuspected in France. But no current of modern life has induced him to touch the holy of holies, the government; to discuss the constitution, the bureaucracy, or the army; to investigate the essential problems of political life. Even the boldest among them does not lose his veneration for constituted authority. In fine, there is but one domain in which he is free, that of economic life. Here, therefore, his energy is concentrated, and within this sphere his thoughts are confined. Here he is master; here none can equal him in perseverance and tenacity; here he risks everything and makes trial of everything; unceasingly he innovates; he is hindered by no prejudice: the poverty of recent days spurs him on and makes wealth seem marvellously appetizing; in a decade he transforms a province; in three decades he makes of Germany a fragment of America in the heart of Europe. We are forced to recognize that Germany is the “Marius’s mule” of the economic world.
But this suffices him. Formerly he possessed the clouds, but he has bartered the inheritance for the markets of the world. He boasted of being Greek,but he is now content to be Carthaginian. He makes money, and he knows nothing more.
And authority? Does he not know authority? Yes, he knows it, but as something grand and remote, as a sort of divinity which might do him harm, and which he must render favourable or at least indifferent. He knows it as an average Christian knows the invisible. He believes in it, but continues to mind his own business; he is not jealous of it and has no desire to share its exercise; he gives it his confidence, and pays it a certain worship of an unexacting character; above all, he asks that authority should help him to make money; in that case he finds everything good—the Kaiser, the bureaucracy, the army.
This utilitarian loyalty is especially characteristic of the wealthy German. As far as those of small means are concerned, they recognize that outside private life, beyond the family, the factory, the tavern, and the trade-union, there exists something that is great, divine, and unknowable. In the highest degree of the unknowable, in close proximity to God, the saints, and the hero Siegfried, there exists authority: emperor, princes, generals, diplomatists, ministers. All this is an immense and unfathomable ocean, primitive and sacred; but he, poor mollusc, rooted to his rock, is concerned solely with the tiny region upon which his valves open. And when the terrible convulsion of the powers of the abyss, of the sceptred, gold-laced, and helmeted majesties, rages athwart him, shaking his frail habitation, he trembles, simultaneously inspired with dread and withlove, and he murmurs his abjection and his devotion in inarticulate words. When all is over, forgetting the gods that have passed, the gods that glitter, shout at him, and sometimes kick and chastise him, he conscientiously resumes the task of loving his wife, of procreating as many children and of earning as many marks as possible.
After all, the German of no account is utilitarian in his loyalty. He does not, like the wealthy German, demand that his government shall deliver the universe into his hands, so that he may inundate it with wares great and small “made in Germany.” He is less exacting. He asks merely for work and a livelihood. But upon this his desire is firmly fixed. He has become accustomed to a certain degree of comfort—quite recently, it is true, but the newest pleasure is ever the most attractive. He wants to get his belly well-lined during the week, and to be able on Sundays to go with hisgnädige Frauand his quiverful of children, all smartly dressed, to drain several dozen tankards of beer, and to spend the entire afternoon, laughing boisterously, in the arbours of neighbouringWirtschaften. He likes to think proudly that his father lived in poverty, but that he lives at ease. He likes to imagine that no workman in the world is happier than the German workman. As long as he has a full stomach, he can believe that all is well. The government can do what it likes, can ally itself to Austria or to France, can be licentious or strait-laced, can obey or disobey the Reichstag. He himself, trusty Michael, is well off. Germany, therefore, is great, the world is perfect.
I have gradually been able to fathom this state of mind through more or less clandestine conversations with the soldiers who guard us and the peasants who employ us at twenty pfennig for the day of nine hours. Notwithstanding all the patriotic songs with which the recruits make the roads resound, and notwithstanding all the pratings of the pulpit and the school, I am now confident that the affairs of the fatherland are not Michael’s affairs. Whether it be that the degree of economic emancipation he has attained supplements or reinforces his ingrained instinct of submission to authority, in any case, the ancient sentiment, quasi-religious in nature, and the new sentiment, thoroughly utilitarian, lead to the same result, a concern with nothing but private affairs, political indifference, so that one can even say that in the world of politics the common German is a mere cipher.
This state of mind has its advantages. It is favourable to the maintenance of public order. Since everyone rests content in his own sphere, there is no friction, there is no waste of energy, no mutual suspicion between the classes. Authority, certain of its durability, can take long views, it has elbow-room. Whilst those in authority are loved, they can give themselves up to their natural bent, which is to regulate—to regulate the workman at home, the employer abroad; to wrap themselves in purple, to cut a dash, to astonish the universe. All these things are done for their own sake, for the pleasure they give, but they serve also to shed a reflected glory on German commerce. This politicalnullity of the crowd has hitherto had good results. But hitherto the crowd has consisted of fat kine. Association with the worthy Michael day after day in these times when every one is rationed, when poverty and death stalk abroad, has led me to think that the political nullity of the people, precious to those in authority, is hardly likely to produce a tenacious and trustworthy patriotism, and that in the long run it may well eventuate in disaster.
For nearly a year I have been studying life in this corner of Germany. I observe, I ask questions, and I listen. They are now quite tamed. No longer do they cry death on us. No longer do they call outkaput, except as a joke. In the villages, when the working gang arrives, the children flock to the scene from all directions, bare-footed, somewhat timid, at once shy and smiling. They have heard their fathers say that the French are splendid soldiers, “the only ones who can hold their ground against the grey-blues.” The description has raised us in these youngsters’ esteem. They know, too, that we receive parcels, many parcels. They believe us to be extraordinarily wealthy. The gossips even state with definite assurance that there are six millionaires and one multi-millionaire at Fort Orff; and, for what reason I know not, I am the multi-millionaire. This little world is astonished that persons of such eminence, terrible on the battlefield, should be so friendly with their humble selves. The German bourgeois and the junkers, we gather, have less agreeablemanners. Finally, the villagers have been informed that our prison society is a true republic, that we have suppressed all distinctions of fortune, that the “sans-parcels” gain just as much advantage from the coming of the French mail as the “little-parcels” and the “big-parcels.” This communism, natural as it seems to us, touches and vanquishes them.
The fact is that the children and the members of the working gang fraternize. Some of the poor women secretly offer us an apple or an egg. The old men salute us humbly. One of us was addressed as “Most honoured sir,” another as “Highly well-born sir.” Even those who have been discharged from service on account of severe wounds, men with empty sleeves and horribly scarred faces, no longer glare at us with the murderous hatred they showed at the outset.
At Ingolstadt, when we are waiting for our parcels in the square in front of theKommandantur, civilians come and go before our group and converse with us. The women are particularly attentive. They recognize monsieur Pierre, “who had a frightful wound, and who, God be thanked, is now quite well again”; monsieur Paul, “who …”; monsieur Jacques, “who …” They smile broadly when we call them to order, quoting to them the phrases in which one of the newspapers the night before has censured them for their friendliness to the prisoners. Little do they care what the papers say. The sentry growls at them, but they tell him to his face that theFranzosenare pre-eminently “cholis” and “chantils.” Some of the better educated go so far as toadmit that “a red-trousers is worth quite as much as aFeldgrau,” and that “it is all nonsense to say, as people do, that France is decadent.”
Yesterday, some of the gang were talking to a hoary-headed postman.
“Well, daddy, how goes it?” said Bracke, who can speak the Franconian patois.
“Very well, gentlemen, very well!” There he stood, not knowing what to say. He had taken off hisMützeand was wiping his forehead to keep himself in countenance. Then, all at once:
“It grieves me,” stammering slightly, “to think that we are at war with you.…”
“Nou, nou, old chap, we’re not at war with you! Our quarrel is with the big guns of your country. They’re a bad lot; they oppress you, and would like to oppress the whole world. But you’re apoteau! (Du bist ein poteau).”
“Poteau, what’s that?”
“A comrade, a chum.”
The postman had tears in his eyes. “Ah,” he exclaimed, “it does me good to hear you say that. I love the French. You are so awfully nice to every one. You don’t despise the common people.”
“Here, old general, here’s a cheroot which my missus has sent me. Happily France keeps us supplied, as you know. All the same, we intend to give a good hiding to your old Kaiser and all your bigwigs. We are republican. Liberty, equality, and fraternity. Live and let live is our motto. But any one whomeddles with us had better look out. Damn it all! why don’t you kick your dirty old Kaiser into the sewer? Never mind! We shall set you free, and be jolly quick about it.”
The postman, dumbfounded, lit his cigar at the wrong end.
Yes, they have changed greatly since our coming. The dogma of French decadence, with which they had been sedulously indoctrinated, no longer finds credence. They join with us in making fun of it. It is amusing to see these humble folk, who have always been treated with disdain by their superiors, whether civil or military, accept us as intimate friends. They feel flattered when they can talk to us on a footing of democratic equality, for they do not fail to recognize our superiority, and they are greatly touched that we never abuse it. They feel that we are sincere in our hatred of the pride of caste. They applaud our republican speeches. In return, they confide to us their grievances and their despair. The poor devils are absolutely unanimous in detesting this horrible butchery.
It is unquestionable that the terrible burden of the war—the most terrible burden of death, weariness, and misery, that has ever weighed humanity down—presses more heavily upon their shoulders than upon ours. We have been held up in the trenches since September. On their side, for a year they have had no respite. Alternately victors and vanquished, upon the eastern front there continually occurs some newgigantic action, like that of the Marne. Day after day there is a savage attack in full force. Day after day there is a massacre. More than three and a half million Germans are fattening the soil of Galicia and Poland; more than ten millions have been wounded. And why? In defence? “Ah,” they say to us, “if you only knew how little we care whether we are French or Prussian! Give us peace, give us peace!”
They no longer believe that the war is a war of defence. They have heard their non-commissioned officers, men of the middle class, cursing Austria for having led them into this hateful business. The idea has become current in the villages where the troops are quartered. Exasperated by their sufferings, the soldiers are murmuring. Many would like to desert. They understand perfectly that they are the victims of a caste of nobles and manufacturers mad with pride. They still obey, but they grumble. A German grumbler is a new phenomenon.
“Every one hates us,” declared in my hearing a young workman from Upper Franconia. “Every one in the world except the Pope and the Turks. There can be no doubt that our rulers wanted everything for themselves. They told us, too, that the French nation was crumbling and would fall to pieces at a touch. What rot! We know well enough that you are splendid soldiers.”
“I was in the Vosges,” said a sentry of the 13th Bavarians. “Your chasseurs alpins are perfect fiends!”
“I was on the Yser,” commented another. “I shan’t forget your colonial infantrymen in a hurry!”
He made me come near the lamp to see his wound.
“Old man,” I rejoined, “my younger brother, a colonial infantryman, was also wounded in the fight on the Yser.”
“We have been made fools of,” they declare without exception. “You are not decadent! Far from it! Nor are your cannon. Fine tales they fed us up with! If our leaders had been the humanitarians they claim to be, it is obvious that we should have a few friends somewhere in the world. We should not have every one against us. And we poor devils have to pay for the folly. It’s altogether too bad! Oh that peace may come quickly! Take Alsace-Lorraine if you like. What on earth does it matter? Take anything. What difference does it make to us whether we are governed from Paris or from Berlin?”
A fatUnteroffizierspoke as follows:
“I honestly prefer the French to the Prussians. The French are good fellows. They feel compassion; they share their bread with us. But the Prussians! It’s kicks we get from them. A pack of swelled-heads who imagine they can do anything they like, who want everything for themselves, who bamboozle their own people and refuse to give them any rights! There is but one thing we want: to live at peace with the world. Instead of that they make us go and kill. Why? Does any one know why? What do we gain by it? The villages are full of widowsand disabled men. It is even worse in the towns, where lots of working-class families are positively starving. You fellows are lucky. France is rich. France can send parcels to her prisoners. All that we can do is to draw our belts tighter. They lead us to the slaughter while they leave our wives and children to suffer. And how it drags. Peace! Let’s have done with it! Peace at any price!”
For the last six months I have not heard a single German soldier use any other language than this. Wounded returning to the front, men of theLandwehror theLandsturmon their way to the fighting-line, they are unanimous. If but the tenth part of their private grumblings were to be translated into action there would be revolution throughout the country.
To speak frankly, these mutterings do not evoke my admiration. They are not the fruit of an indignant conscience, they do not manifest the reaction of inner freedoms which have been outraged and deceived, and which come to their own again in the form of a reasserted dignity. One hears in them nothing but the cry of the beaten and overloaded mule. He wants his peaceful stable, bran, fresh water, warm and comfortable litter. But there is no occasion to be alarmed, for he dreads the whip, and his master is an adept in drubbing him all the way up the hill.
For Michael can hardly be said to have become more spiritual-minded since the empire was founded. In former days he was extremely poor. He was frugal. He was fond of music and of dreaming, andwas addicted to a mystical piety. A serf before men, he felt free in the presence of God, his God of the gospels, gentle and affectionate,mein lieber Gott. To-day he is fairly well-to-do. He is still a serf, more of a serf than ever, in relation to those in authority, the nobility, officers in the army, and employers; but he no longer endeavours to find freedom at God’s hands. His new cult is that of a cosy fireside, with good victuals and a barrel of beer. In a word, he has become an egoist. He now thinks only of himself, of his personal interests, of his trade unions which protect his wages, of his co-operative societies which secure his comforts. Without realizing it, through ignoring politics, through taking no interest in the workings of authority, through thinking solely of his own private affairs, he has slipped into the acceptance of that base doctrine which finds expression in the ancient formula,Ubi bene, ibi patria—“My country is the place where I am well off!”
Last July, when he was luxuriating in his petty good fortune, he cried with his masters, “Deutschland über alles!” At his drinking parties he vociferated jingo songs. Some of the megalomania of the Olympians was fermenting in his body, indiscriminately mingled with beer and sausages. In this mood he saw himself mounting in company with his Germania, mounting continuously to attain the topmost summit of glory and strength. Then he loved his Germania. She was so powerful. It was thus that she had always been depicted to him, as a robust and formidable matron,not altogether amiable, imposing her will with peremptory fists, but providing her children with such good things to eat and drink, with all the comforts they could desire. How can one help loving a person like this when one is a poor devil who has only just emerged from poverty?
Now the war has begun. Germania is at length to become queen of the world. Forward! Good Michael sets out for Paris. It will soon be over. A fortnight or so. A simple wedding journey. Just think of it: Rheims, and champagne in floods; Paris, the little women, all the delights of Babylon. For, after all, France, as every one knows, is ours for the taking. Forward!
Forward! But, confound it all, there are some hard knocks! Paris is just over there, but what an inferno of fire to get through first! I say, we’re retreating now! We’re leaving a lot of good Germans on the stubbles and in the ponds of the Marne. What a massacre! They have been fooling us, it seems. The French can beat us after all: in fact, they have already given us a good licking.
“But there’s no end to it. How bitter winter seems in the trenches. Always more dead, and more, and more. My feet are freezing. I am badly fed. Oh, my slippers, my nice, comfortable slippers, my darling wife who used to light my long pipe for me, and who used to cuddle me warm in bed!Sakrament!What’s this horrible war about? They told me it would be such an easy matter. After all, what do I, good, honestMichael, care about ruling the world? Must I pay forthiswithmyskin? No, no; I’m only a poor man. What business is it of mine, this ruling of the world? Oh,lieber Gott, let the war end soon, let me get back to my village, my pub, my bed, and my children!”
Thus has Michael reasoned, and thus he continues to reason. It is not heroic. Sancho Panza would shake him by the hand as a true comrade. Still, why should Michael be a Don Quixote? Has Germany ever claimed to be a Dulcinea? Has she manifested herself to him as charming, winsome, gentle, and maternal, as loving him unselfishly for his own sake? Nothing of the sort! On the contrary, Germany has terrorized him with rough orders, and has made him efface himself by her display of aggressive force. She has appealed to the traditional servility of his imagination, not to the nobility of his heart. She has desired obedience, not affection.
Now the great hour has arrived, the gloomy hour of sacrifice. It is not enough to sing: