Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. STREET SCENE AT EISENBACH, SOUTHERN GERMANY From the villages and small towns is recruited sixty per cent. of the German army.Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.STREET SCENE AT EISENBACH, SOUTHERN GERMANYFrom the villages and small towns is recruited sixty per cent. of the German army.
Commission-menwere licensed by the government, and when food regulation became a little more stringent they were obliged to make some sort of a slovenly report on the quantities they handled. But the government food commissions did not have the necessary personnel to keep close tally of these reports. This led to partial returns by the middlemen, a practice which entailed no particular risk so long as the government did not actually control and direct the buying of foodstuffs in the country and at the mills.
Business moved smartly as the result of this combination of circumstances. The wholesaler bought twice as much from the commission-man, and the latter had to buy, accordingly, in the country.
The maximum prices which the government set upon foods about to enter into possession of the consumer were invariably accompanied by minimum prices which the producer was to get. Reversely, the arrangement meant that the customer could not offer less for food than the government had decided he should pay, nor could the farmer or other producer demand more.
That was well enough in a way. The farmer was to get for a kilogram (2.205 pounds) of wheat not less than four and one-half cents, and the middleman selling to the mill could not askmore than five and one-half cents. Labor and loss in milling taken into consideration, the mill was to be satisfied with seven cents, while the consumer, so said the regulations, was to get his flour for eight and one-quarter cents per kilogram.
That was all very well, but it came to mean little in the end.
The customer thought he would lay in two hundred pounds of wheat flour for the rainy day. The retailer could not see it in that way. That was just a little too much. There were other worthy customers who might have to go short of their regular quota if he sold in amounts of that size. But the customer wanted the flour and was willing to pay more than the regulation or maximum price for it. It took but little tempting to cause the fall of the retailer.
The wholesaler would do the same thing. The commission-man was willing, since part of, let us say, a 20-per-cent. increase was being handed along the line. The mill got a few crowns more per hundred kilograms, and a little of the extra price would get as far as the farmer.
Thatl'appétit vient en mangeantis a notorious fact. A dangerous practice had been launched, nor was it always inaugurated by the consumer. No class of dealers was averse to doing business that might be illicit, but which brought large profits.
A first result was that the farmer was spoiled, as the consumer and the government looked at it. While purchases from the farmer werebounded in price by a minimum, there was no prohibition of paying him as much more as he would take. The government's duty was to stimulate production, and that was the purpose of the minimum price.
The government, learning that a certain farmer had been getting six cents for his wheat, might wonder how much the consumer paid and get after the middlemen, but it could not hold the farmer responsible.
As a matter of fact, the government hardly ever heard of such transactions. They did not talk at the gate of the food "speak-easy." When questioned the farmer would always protest that he had all he could do to get the minimum price.
Not only was the first excess in price passed along, but large profits attached themselves to the article as it progressed cityward. The commission-men got theirs, the miller did not overlook himself, the wholesaler was remembered, naturally, and the retailer, as factotum-general in the scheme, saw to it that he was not deprived of his share.
As is always the case, the consumer paid the several pipers. And the special consumer to whom the food, thus illicitly diverted from the regular channels, meant the assurance that he would not starve although others might, paid cheerfully. What was the good of having money in the bank when soon it might not buy anything?
The lines in front of the food-shops lengthened, and many retailers acquired the habit ofkeeping open but part of the day. But even that part was usually too long. When the card in the window said, "Open from 8 to 12," it usually meant that at nine o'clock there would not be a morsel of food on the counters and shelves. The members of the food-line who had not managed to gain access to the store by that time would get no food that day.
At first the retailer would regret this very much. But he soon began to feel his oats. Women, who had stood in line for several hours, wanted to know why he had so small a quantity on hand. The man would often become abusive and refuse an explanation.
Now and then some resolute woman would complain to the police. The retailer was arrested and fined. But the woman would never again get any food from him. That was his way of getting even and disciplining the good customers upon whom at other times he had waited hand and foot.
The fine relations between customer and retailer of yore were gone by the board. The era of hoarding and greed was on. The good-natured Vienna and BerlinKleinkrämergrew more autocratic every time he opened his store. People had to come to him or go hungry, and it was ever hurtful to put the beggar on horse-back.
Occasional visits to the lower courts proved very interesting and entertaining, though the story that was told was always the same. The retailer had lost his sense of proportions completely.No sergeant of an awkward squad ever developed so fine a flow of sarcastic billingsgate as did the butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers of the Central states in those days. Almost every case had its low-comedy feature, and often I came away with the impression that the sense of humor in some people is hard to kill, especially when some serious judge pronounced the maximum sentence for an offense about whose quaint rascality he was still chuckling.
But the dear public was not as stupid as the retailers and their ilk thought. Almost everybody had a relative, friend, or acquaintance in the country, and when this was not the case one had a city friend who had such a country connection.
Sunday excursions into the country became very popular, and week-days could not be put to better use. The many holidays called for by religious observance, and now and then a victory over the enemy, came to be a severe strain upon the country's food reserve. The trains coming into the city often carried more weight in food than in passengers.
After all, that was the best way of laying in supplies. Why go to the retailer and stand in line when the farmers were willing to sell to the consumer direct?
A high tide in hoarding set in. Everybody filled garret and cellar with the things which the farm produces. Flour was stowed away in all possible and impossible places. Potatoes wereaccumulated. Butter and eggs were salted away, and so much fruit was preserved that sugar ceased to be obtainable in countries which had formerly exported much of it.
The authorities knew full well what would happen if the private route from farm to kitchen direct was not made impossible. Existing regulations already permitted the searching of trains. When the inspectors descended upon the hoarding holidayers there was much surprise, gnashing of teeth, and grumbling. But that did not help. The food illicitly brought in was confiscated, and the slightest resistance on the part of those having it in their possession brought a liberal fine and often a day or two in jail.
The parcel post was used next by the private food-hoarders. The government wanted to be easy on the population and had for this reason closed its eyes to the packages of butter and other concentrated foods that went through the mails. But the good consumers overreached themselves. The result was that the postal authorities turned over all food found in the mails to the Food Commissions and Centrals.
Next thing was that the farmer who came to market had to be curbed. That worthy man would enter town or city with a good load of eatables. By the time he had gone a few blocks he had disposed of everything. It was like taking up a drop of ink with a blotter.
The first measures against this resulted in smuggling. Every load of produce that came into a population center had in it packages ofother good things, especially butter and lard, and later eggs, when these fell within the scope of regulation.
But the hoarding that was going on would have to be stopped if the food-supply was to last. Those who hoarded lost no chance to buy for their current consumption in the legal market, drawing thus doubly on the scant food-supplies. The authorities began to exercise their right of search. The food-inspector became an unwelcome visitor of households.
The practice of hoarding was well enough for the well-to-do. But it left the poor entirely unprovided. The average wage-earner did not have the means to buy food at the fancy prices that governed the illicit food market, and the food that went to the hoarder cut short the general supply upon which the poor depended for their daily allowance. It was quite the regular thing for the wife of a poor man to stand in line three hours and then be turned away. The retailer would still have food in the cellar, but that was to go out by private delivery. The food cards held by the women were no warrant on the quantities they prescribed, but merely the authorization to draw so and so much if the things were to be had. The woman had to take the retailer's word for it. When that august person said, "Sold out," there was nothing to do but go home and pacify the hungry children with whatever else the depleted larder contained.
Meanwhile much food was spoiling in the cellars and attics of the hoarders. People whonever before in their lives had attempted to preserve food were now trying their hand at it—with unfortunate and malodorous results.
An acquaintance of mine in Vienna had hoarded diligently and amply. The man had on hand wheat flour, large quantities of potatoes, butter in salt, and eggs in lime-water, and conserved fruits and vegetables which represented an excess consumption in sugar. He had also laid in great quantities of honey, coffee, and other groceries. There was food enough to last his family two years, so long as a little could be had in the legal market each day.
Though the store on hand was ample, the man continued to buy where and whenever he could. One day he shipped from Agram several mattresses—not for the sake of the comfort they would bring of nights, but for the macaroni he had stuffed them with. I think that of all the hoarders he was the king-pin.
The man had three growing boys, however, and allowance has to be made for that. He did not want those boys to be stunted in their growth by insufficient nourishment. Obliged to choose between paternal and civic duty, he decided in favor of the former, for which we need not blame him too much, seeing that most of us would do precisely that thing in his position. But to understand that fully, one must have seen hungry children tormenting their parents for food. Description is wholly inadequate in such cases.
That there were others who had growing children may have occurred to the man, but meantnothing to him. So he continued to buy and hoard.
The storage methods employed were wrong, of course, and facilities were very limited. The potatoes froze in the cellar and sprouted in the warm rooms. Weevils took birth in the flour, because it was stored in a wardrobe only some four feet away from a stove. The canned goods stood on every shelf in the place, littered the floors and filled the corners. Faulty preserving methods or the constant changes of temperature caused most of them to ferment and spoil. Every now and then something about the apartment would explode. The man had bought up almost the last of olive-oil that could be had in Central Europe. That, too, turned rancid.
As I remember it now, he told me that of all the food he had bought—that he had hoarded it he never admitted—he had been able to use about one-third, and the annoyance he had from the spoiled two-thirds killed all the joy there was in having saved one-third. Hoarding in this case was an utter failure.
So it was in most cases. To preserve food is almost a science, and suitable storage facilities play an important rôle in this. The private hoarder had no proper facilities. That it was unlawful to hoard food caused him to go ahead storing without asking advice of people familiar with the requirements; and the possibility that agents of the food authorities might come to inspect the quarters of the hoarder made hiding imperative. Often the servants would becomeinformers, so that the food had to be hidden from them in barrels, trunks, and locked chests. The result of this can be easily imagined. There was a time when more food was spoiled in Central Europe by hoarding than there was consumed. The thing was extremely short-sighted, but everybody was taking care of himself and his own.
There was no reason why food should spoil on the hands of the retailer. He never had enough to go around. But it was different with the wholesaler. This class was eternally holding back supplies for the purpose of inducing the government to increase the maximum prices. As time went on, the authorities had to do that, and the quantities then held in the warehouses benefited. The agitation of the producers for better minimum prices was water on the mill of the wholesaler. The government was eternally solicitous for the welfare of the farmer, and lent a ready ear to what he had to say. The minimum price was raised, and with it the consumer's maximum price had to go up. All quantities then held by the wholesalers were affected only by the increase in food prices that was borne by the consumer, not the increase that had to be given the farmer. It was the finest of business, especially since an increase of 5 per cent. in legitimate business meant an increase of another 15 per cent. in illicit traffic.
In the spring of 1916 I made a canvass of the situation, and found that while the farmers were getting for their products from 10 to 15 per cent.more than they had received in 1914, food in the cities and towns was from 80 to 150 per cent. higher than it had been normally during five years before the war. I found that the dealers and middlemen were reaping an extra profit of approximately 80 per cent. on the things they bought and sold, after the greater cost of operation had been deducted. Small wonder that jewelers in Berlin and Vienna told me that the Christmas trade of 1915 was the best they had ever done. These good people opined that their increase in business was due to the general war prosperity. They were right, but forgot to mention that this prosperity was based on the cents wrung from the starving population by the buyers of the diamonds and precious baubles.
Naturally, the dear farmer was not being left just then. He sold when he pleased for a time—until the government took a hand in moving his crops. But this interference with the affairs of the farmer was not entirely a blessing by any means. The brave tiller of the soil began to hoard now. Little actual loss came from this. The farmer knew his business. No food spoiled so long as he took care of it. All would have been well had it not been that the farmer was the very fountainhead of the hoarding which in the cities resulted in the loss of foodstuffs.
There were still many loose ends in the scheme of food regulation. While the farmer was obliged to sell to the middleman, under supervision of the government Food Centrals, all cereals and potatoes which he would not need for his own useand seeding, the estimates made by the Food Central agents were generally very conservative. This they had to be if the government was not to run the risk of finding itself short after fixing the ration that seemed permissible by the crop returns established in this manner. The farmer got the benefit of the doubt, of course, and that benefit he invariably salted away for illicit trading.
But illicit trading in breadstuffs was becoming more and more difficult. The grain had to go into a mill before it was flour. The government began to check up closely on the millers, which was rather awkward for all concerned in the traffic of the food "speak-easy."
A way out was found by the farmers. They were a rather inventive lot. I am sure that these men, as they followed the plow back and forth, cudgeled their brains how the latest government regulation could be met and frustrated.
Butter and fat were very short and were almost worth their weight in silver. They sold in the regulated market at from one dollar and sixty to one dollar and eighty cents a pound, and in the food "speak-easy" they cost just double that.
Why not produce more butter? thought the farmer. He had the cows. And why not more lard? He had the pigs. A bushel of grain sold at minimum price brought so much, while converted into butter and lard it was worth thrice that much. Grain was hard to sell surreptitiously, but it was easy to dispose of the fats.
Inthis manner hoarding took on a new shape—one that was to lead to more waste.
None of the Central European governments had reason to believe that its food measures were popular. Much passive resistance was met. The consumer thought of himself in a hundred different ways. To curb him, the secret service of the police was instructed to keep its eyes on the family larder. Under the "War" paragraphs of the constitutions the several governments of Central Europe had that power. In Austria it was the famous "§14," for instance, under which any and all war measures were possible.
Government by inspection is not only oppressive; it is also very expensive. It is dangerous in times when authorities are face to face with unrest; at any time it is the least desirable thing there is. It was not long before both government and public discovered that. To inspect households systematically was impossible, of course. The informer had to be relied upon. Usually, discharged servants wrote anonymous letters to the police, and often it was found that this was no more than a bit of spite work. If a servant-girl wanted to give a former mistress a disagreeable surprise she would write such a letter. Some hoards were really uncovered in that manner, but the game was not worth the candle.
To get at the men who were hoardingen massefor speculation and price-boosting purposes, an efficient secret service was needed. But this the Central European governments do not possess.The police of Germany and Austria-Hungary plays an important part in the life of man. But it does this openly. The methods employed are bureaucratic routine. The helmet shows conspicuously. Wits have no place in the system.
One cannot move from one house to another without being made the subject of an entry on the police records. To move from one town to another was quite an undertaking during the war. Several documents were required. A servant or employee may not change jobs without notifying the police authorities. All life is minutely regulated and recorded on the books of the minions of the law.
In matters of that sort the Central European police is truly efficient, because the system employed has been perfected by the cumulative effort and experience of generations. Detective work, on the other hand, is out of the reach of these organizations. The German detective is as poor a performer and as awkward as certain German diplomatists. He is always found out.
Why the German and Austro-Hungarian detective services did not succeed in finding the commercial hoards I can readily understand. One could recognize the members of the services a mile off, as it were. It seemed to me that they were forever afraid of being detected. In the detective that is a bad handicap. Now and then the German detective could be heard.
As a foreigner I received considerable attention from the German, Austrian, and Hungarian police forces in the course of three years. Mycase was simple, however. I looked outlandish, no doubt, and since I spoke German with a foreign accent it really was not difficult to keep track of me. In the course of time, also, I became well known to thousands of people. That under these circumstances I should have known it at once when detectives were on my trail can be ascribed only to the clumsy work that was being done by the secret-service men. In Berlin I once invited a "shadow" of mine to get into my taxicab, lest I escape him. He refused and seemed offended.
But there is a classic bit of German detective work that I must give in detail, in order to show why the food speculator and his ilk were immune in spite of all the regulations made by the government.
I had been in Berlin several times when it happened. I knew many men in the Foreign Office, and in the bureaus of the German general staff, while to most of the Adlon Hotel employees I was as familiar a sight as I well could be without belonging to their families.
I had come over the German-Dutch border that noon, and had been subjected to the usual frisking. There had also been a little trouble—also as usual.
The clerk at the desk in the Adlon did not know me. He was a new man. He had, however, been witness to the very effusive welcome which thechef de réceptiongave me.
That did not interest me until I came down from my room and approached the desk for thepurpose of leaving word for a friend of mine where I could be found later.
The clerk was engaged in earnest conversation with a stockily built man of middle age. I had to wait until he would be through.
After a second or so I heard my room number mentioned—237. Then the sound of my name fell. I noticed that the clerk was fingering one of the forms on which a traveler in Central Europe inscribes his name, profession, residence, nationality, age, and what not for the information of the police.
"He is a newspaper correspondent?" asked the stocky one.
"So he says," replied the clerk.
"You are sure about that?"
"Well, that is what it says on the form."
"What sort of looking fellow is he?" inquired the stockily built man.
"Rather tall, smooth shaven, dark complexion, wears eye-glasses," replied the clerk.
I moved around the column that marks the end of one part of the desk and the beginning of another part that runs at right angles to the first.
The clerk saw me and winked at the man to whom he had been talking. The detective was in the throes of embarrassment. He blushed.
"Can't I be of some assistance to you?" I remarked in an impersonal manner, looking from clerk to detective. "You seem to be interested in my identity. What do you wish to know?"
There was a short but highly awkward pause.
"Iam not," stammered the detective. "We were talking about somebody else."
"I beg your pardon," said I and moved off.
I have always taken it for granted that the detective was a new man in the secret service. Still, I have often wondered what sort of detective service it must be that will employ such helpless bunglers.
It may be no more than anidée fixeon my part, but ever since then I have takencum grano salisall that has been said for and against the efficiency of the German secret service, be it municipal or international. At Bucharest there was maintained for a time, allegedly by the German foreign service, a man who was known to everybody on the Calea Victoriei as the GermanOberspion—chief spy. The poor devil cut a most pathetic figure. All contentions to the contrary notwithstanding, I would say that secret service is not one of the fortes of the Germans. They really ought to leave it alone. That takes keener wits and quicker thinking on one's feet than can be associated with the German mind.
The Austrians were rather more efficient, and the same can be said of the Hungarian detective forces. In both cases the secret-service men were usually Poles, however, and that makes a difference. There is no mind quite so nimble, adaptive, or capable of simulation as that of the Pole. In this the race resembles strongly the French, hence its success in a field in which the French are justly the leaders.
For the food sharks the German detective wasno match. He might impress a providentHausfrauand move her to tears and the promise that she would never do it again. The commercial hoarder, who had a regular business besides and kept his books accordingly, was too much for these men. So long as no informer gave specific details that left no room for thinking on the part of the detective, the food shark was perfectly safe. The thousands of cases that came into the courts as time went on showed that the detectives, and inspectors of the Food Authorities, were thoroughly incorruptible. They also showed that they at least were doing no hoarding—in brains.
Somber as this picture of life is, its background was nothing less than terrifyingly lurid.
For some minutes I had stood before a barn in Galicia. I was expected to go into that barn, but I did not like the idea. Some fourscore of cholera patients lay on the straw-littered earthen floor. Every hour or so one of them would die. Disease in their case had progressed so far that all hope had been abandoned. If by any chance one of the sick possessed that unusual degree of bodily and nerve vigor that would defeat the ravages of the germ, he would recover as well in the barn as in a hospital.
The brave man wishes to die alone. Those in the barn were brave men, and I did not wish to press my company upon them in the supreme hour. Still, there was the possibility that some might question my courage if I did not go into the barn. Cholera is highly contagious. But when with an army one is expected to do as the army does. If reckless exposure be a part of that, there is no help.
Istepped into the gloom of the structure. There was snow on the ground outside. It took a minute or two before my eyes could discern things. Some light fell into the interior from the half-open door and a little square opening in the wall in the rear.
Two lines of sick men lay on the ground—heads toward the wall, feet in the aisle that was thus formed. Some of the cholera-stricken writhed in agony as the germ destroyed their vitals. Others lay exhausted from a spasm of excruciating agony. Some were in the coma preceding death. Two were delirious.
There was an army chaplain in the barn. He thought it his duty to be of as much comfort to the men as possible. His intentions were kind enough, and yet he would have done the patients a favor by leaving them to themselves.
As I reached the corner where the chaplain stood, one of the sick soldiers struggled into an upright position. Then he knelt, while the chaplain began to say some prayer. The poor wretch had much difficulty keeping upright. When the chaplain had said "Amen" he fell across the body of the sick man next to him.
The exertion and the mental excitement had done the man no good. Soon he was in a paroxysm of agony. The chaplain was meanwhile preparing another for the great journey.
The dead had been laid under one of the eaves. A warm wind had sprung up and the sun was shining. The snow on the roof began to melt. The dripping water laved the faces of the dead.Out in the field several men were digging a company grave.
So much has been written on the hardships endured by the wounded at the front that I will pass by this painful subject. What tortures these unfortunates suffered is aptly epitomized by an experience I had in the hospital of the American Red Cross in Budapest.
The man in charge of the hospital, Dr. Charles MacDonald, of the United States Army, had invited me to see his institution. I had come to a small room in which operations were undertaken when urgency made this necessary. During the day a large convoy of very bad cases had reached Budapest. Many of them were a combination of wounds and frostbite.
In the middle of the room stood an operation-table. On it lay a patient who was just recovering consciousness. I saw the merciful stupor of anesthesia leave the man's mind and wondered how he would take it. For on the floor, near the foot end of the operation-table, stood an enameled wash-basin, filled with blood and water. From the red fluid protruded two feet. They were black and swollen—frostbite. One of them had been cut off a little above the ankle, and the other immediately below the calf of the leg.
The amputation itself was a success, said the nurse. But there was little hope for the patient. He had another wound in the back. That wound itself was not serious, but it had been the cause of the man's condition, by depriving himtemporarily of the power of locomotion. When he was shot, the man had fallen into some reeds. He was unconscious for a time, and when he recovered his senses he found that he could no longer move his legs.
He was lying in a No Man's Land between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian lines. For two days his feeble cries were unheard. Finally, some ambulance-men came across him. By that time his feet had been frozen. The wound in his back was given some attention at a first-aid station behind the line. The surgeons decided that the amputation of the feet could wait until Budapest was reached. Meanwhile the poison of gangrene was gaining admission to the blood.
The man's face was yellow. His whole body was yellow and emaciated. The lips no longer served to cover the teeth.
He was breathing pantingly—in short, quick gasps.
Slowly his mind shook off the fetters of the ether. A long breath—a faint sigh. The eyes opened.
They were Slav eyes of blue-gray. I saw in them the appeal of the helpless child, the protest of a being tortured, the prayer for relief of a despairing soul.
The man's lips moved. He wanted to say something. I bent over to catch the sibilant tones.
I had not caught them, and indicated that by a shake of the head. The man repeated. Hespoke in Polish, a language I do not know. To assure the man that I would find means of understanding him, I patted his cheek, and then called an orderly.
"He says that he would like you to fetch his wife and his children," said the orderly-interpreter, as he righted himself. "He says he is going to die soon, and wants to see them. He says that you will have to hurry up. He says that he will say a good word to the Lord for you if you will do him this favor."
"Ask him where they live," I said to the orderly. If it were at all possible I would do the man this kindness.
It was some village near Cracow. That was a long way off. If the man lived for two days his wish could be met.
"Tell the man that I will telegraph his wife to come as quickly as possible, but that she can't be here for a day or so," I instructed the interpreter.
A shadow of disappointment swept over the patient's face.
"Ask him if he knows where he is," I said.
The man did not know. I told the orderly to make it clear to him that he was in Budapest, and that his home in Galicia was far away. He was to be patient. I would bring his wife and children to him, if it could be done at all. Did the wife have the money to pay the railroad fare?
The patient was not sure. I read in his eyes that he feared the woman would not have the money. I eased his mind by telling him that I would pay the fares.
Deepergratitude never spoke from any face. The poor fellow tried to lift his hands, but could not. To assure him that his wish would be granted I once more patted his cheeks and forehead and then left the room, followed by the orderly and the wash-basin.
"There is no use telegraphing," said Doctor MacDonald. "He won't live longer than another hour, at the most."
Ten minutes later the man was dead. The operation-table was being wheeled down the corridor by the orderly. I had just stepped out of a ward.
The orderly stopped.
"You won't have to bring the woman here," he said, as he lifted the end of the sheet that covered the face.
As reward for my readiness to help the poor man, I have still in my mind the expression of relief that lay on the dead face. He had passed off in gladsome anticipation of the meeting there was to be.
I covered up the face and the orderly trundled the body away.
Some months later I sat in a room of the big military hospital in the Tatavla Quarter of Constantinople. On a bench against the wall opposite me were sitting a number of men in Turkish uniform. They were blind. Some of them had lost their eyes in hand-to-hand combat, more of them had been robbed of their sight in hand-grenade encounters.
Doctor Eissen, the oculist-surgeon of the hospital,was about to fit these men with glass eyes. In the neat little case on the table were eyes of all colors, most of them brownish tints, a few of them were blue.
One of the Turks was a blond—son of a Greek or Circassian, maybe.
"These things don't help any, of course," said Doctor Eissen, as he laid a pair of blue eyes on a spoon and held them into the boiling water for sterilization. "But they lessen the shock to the family when the man comes home.
"Poor devils! I have treated them all. They are like a bunch of children. They are going home to-day. They have been discharged.
"Well, they are going home. Some have wives and children they will never see again—dependents they can no longer support. Some of them are luckier. They have nobody. The one who is to get these blue eyes used to be a silk-weaver in Brussa. He is optimistic enough to think that he can still weave. Maybe he can. That will depend on his fingers, I suppose. It takes often more courage to live after a battle than to live in it."
The dear government did not provide glass eyes. Doctor Eissen furnished them himself, and yet the dear government insisted that a report be made on each eye he donated. The ways of red tape are queer the world over.
"And when the blind come home the relatives weep a little and are glad that at least so much of the man has been returned to them."
In the corridor there was waiting a Turkishwoman. Her son was one of those whom Doctor Eissen was just fitting with eyes. When he was through with this, he called in the woman. The young blindaskerrose in the darkness that surrounded him.
Out of that darkness came presently the embrace of two arms and the sob:
"Kusum!" ("My lamb!").
For a moment the woman stared into the fabricated eyes. They were not those she had given her boy. They were glass, immobile. She closed her own eyes and then wept on the broad chest of the son. The son, glad that hiswalidehwas near him once more, found it easy to be the stronger of the two. He kissed his mother and then caressed the hair under the cap of theyashmak.
When the doctor had been thanked, the mother led her boy off.
Blind beggars are not unkindly treated in Constantinople. There is a rule that one must never refuse them alms. The least that may be given them are the words:
"Inayet ola!" ("God will care for you!").
Not long after that I sat on the shambles at Suvla Bay, the particular spot in question being known as the Kiretch Tépé—Chalk Hill.
Sir Ian Hamilton had just thrown into the vast amphitheater to the east of the bay some two hundred thousand men, many of them raw troops of the Kitchener armies.
Some three thousand of these men had been left dead on the slopes of the hill. As usual,somebody on Gallipoli had bungled and bungled badly. A few days before I had seen how a British division ate itself up in futile attacks against a Turkish position west of Kütchük Anafarta. The thing was glorious to look at, but withal very foolish. Four times the British assailed the trenches of the Turks, and each time they were thrown back. When General Stopford finally decided that the thing was foolish, he called it off. The division he could not call back, because it was no more.
It was so on Chalk Hill.
A hot August night lay over the peninsula. The crescent of a waning moon gave the dense vapors that had welled in from the Mediterranean an opalescent quality. From that vapor came also, so it seemed, the stench of a hundred battle-fields. In reality this was not so. The Turkish advance position, which I had invaded that night for the purpose of seeing an attack which was to be made by the Turks shortly before dawn, ran close to the company graves in which the Turks had buried the dead foe.
There is little soil on Gallipoli. It is hardly ever more than a foot deep on any slope, and under it lies lime that is too hard to get out of the way with pick and shovel. The company graves, therefore, were cairns rather than ditches. The bodies had been walled in well enough, but those walls were not airtight. The gases of decomposition escaped, therefore, and filled the landscape with obnoxious odor.
I had been warned against this. The warningI had disregarded for the reason that such things are not unfamiliar to me. But I will confess that it took a good many cigarettes and considerable will-power to keep me in that position—so long as was absolutely necessary.
When I returned to Constantinople everybody was speaking of the stench in the Suvla Bay terrain. There were many such spots, and returning soldiers were never slow in dwelling on the topic they suggested. The war did not appear less awesome for that.
But the shambles that came closest to the general public was the casualty lists published by the German government as a sort of supplement to the BerlinNorddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, the semi-official organ of the German Imperial Government. At times this list would contain as many as eight thousand names, each with a letter or several after it—"t" for dead, "s v" for severely wounded, "l v" for lightly wounded, and so on.
It was thought at first that the public would not be able to stand this for long. But soon it was shown that literally there was no end to the fortitude of the Germans.
I was to spend some time on the Somme front. I really was not anxious to see that field of slaughter. But certain men in Berlin thought that I ought to complete my list of fronts with their "own" front. Hospitals and such no longer interested me. Wrecked churches I had seen by the score—and a ruined building is a ruined building. I said that I would visit the Somme frontin case I was allowed to go wherever I wanted. That was agreed to, after I had signed a paper relieving the German government of all responsibility in case something should happen to me "for myself and my heirs forever."
The front had been in eruption three weeks and murder had reached the climax when one fine afternoon I put up at a very unpretentiousaubergein Cambrai.
The interior of the Moloch of Carthage never was so hot as this front, nor was Moloch ever so greedy for human life. Battalion after battalion, division after division, was hurled into this furnace of barrage and machine-gun fire. What was left of them trickled back in a thin stream of wounded.
For nine days the "drum" fire never ceased. From Le Transloy to south of Pozières the earth rocked. From the walls and ceilings of the old citadel at Cambrai the plaster fell, though many miles lay between it and the front.
Perhaps the best I could say of the Somme offensive is that none will ever describe it adequately—as it was. The poor devils really able to encompass its magnitude and terrors became insane. Those who later regained their reason did so only because they had forgotten. The others live in the Somme days yet, and there are thousands of them.
I could tell tales of horror such as have never before been heard—of a British cavalry charge near Hebuterne that was "stifled" by the barbed wire before it and the German machine-guns inits rear and flanks; of wounded men that had crawled on all-fours for long distances, resting occasionally to push back their entrails; of men cut into little pieces by shells and perforated like sieves by the machine-guns; and again of steel-nerved Bavarians who, coming out of the first trenches, gathered for a beer-drinking in an apple orchard not far from Manancourt.
But that seemsde trop. I will leave that to some modern Verestchagin and his canvases.
There is a "still-life" of death that comes to my mind.
Not long after that I was in the Carpathians. General Brussilow was trying out his mass tactics.
The slaughter of man reached there aspects and proportions never before heard of. It was not the machine murder of the West Front—that is to say, it was not so much a factory for the conversion of live men into dead as it was a crude, old-fashioned abattoir.
On the slope of a massive mountain lies an old pine forest. In the clearings stand birches, whose white trunks pierce the gloom under the roof of dense, dark-green pine crowns. Where the clearings are, patches of late-summer sky may be seen. Through the pale blue travel leisurely the whitest of clouds, and into this background of soft blue and white juts the somber pine and the autumn-tinged foliage of the birch.
The forest is more a temple of a thousand columns than a thing that has risen from the little seeds in the pine cones. The trunks arestraight and seem more details of a monument than something which has just grown. There is a formal decorum about the trees and their aggregate. But the soft light under the crowns lessens that into something severely mournful.
The forest is indeed a sepulcher. On its floor lie thousands of dead Russians—first as close together as they can be packed, and then in layers on top of one another. It would seem that these bodies had been brought here for burial. That is not the case, however. The wounds in the tree trunks, cut by the streams of machine-gun bullets from the red trenches at the edge of the forest, indicate what happened. The first wave of Russians entered the forest, was decimated, and retreated. The second one met a similar fate. The third fared no better. The fourth came. The fifth. The sixth—twice more the Russian artillery urged on the Russian infantry.
Here they lie. Their bodies are distended by progressing dissolution. Narrow slits in the bloated faces show where once the merry and dreamy Slav eye laughed. Most mouths are open, still eager for another breath of air. Distended nostrils tell the same tale. From one mouth hangs a tongue almost bitten off. A face close by is but a mask—a shell splinter has cut off the back of the head, which now rests on the shoulder of the man.
To-morrow will come the Austro-Hungarian burial parties, dig holes and bury these human relics. Meanwhile the pines sough sorrowfully, or maybe they soughed like this before.
Stilla little later I was standing at an ancient stone bridge in the Vörös Torony defile in the Transylvanian Alps. It was a late afternoon in the late fall. In the defile it was still, save for an occasional artillery detonation near the Roumanian border, where the fight was going on.
The red of the beeches and oaks fitted well into the narrative I heard, and the song of the Alt River reminded that it, too, had played a part in the drama—the complete rout of the Second Roumanian army, a few days before. The breeze sweeping through the defile and along its wooded flanks brought with it the odor of the dead. The underbrush on each side of the road was still full of dead Roumanians. The gutter of the road was strewn with dead horses. Scores of them hung in the tree forks below the road. On a rock-ledge in the river dead men moved about under the impulse of the current.
The narrative:
"Do you see that little clearing up there?"
"The one below the pines?"
"No. The one to the left of that—right above the rocks."
"Yes."
"I was stationed there with my machine-guns," continued the Bavarian officer. "We had crept through the mountains almost on our bellies to get there. It was hard work. But we did it.
"At that we came a day too soon. We were entirely out of reach of Hermannstadt, and didn't know what was going on. For all weknew the Roumanians might have turned a trick. They are not half-bad soldiers. We were surprised, to say the least, when, on arriving here, we found that the road was full of traffic that showed no excitement.
"We heard cannonading at the head of the gorge, but had no means of learning what it was. We had been sent here to cut off the retreat of the Roumanians, while the Ninth Army was to drive them into the defile.
"For twenty-four hours we waited, taking care that the Roumanians did not see us. It was very careless of them, not to patrol these forests in sufficient force, nor to scent that there was something wrong when their small patrols did not return. At any rate, they had no notion of what was in store for them.
"At last the thing started. The German artillery came nearer. We could tell that by the fire. At noon the Roumanians began to crowd into the defile. A little later they were here.
"We opened up on them with the machine-guns for all we were worth. The men had been told to sweep this bridge. Not a Roumanian was to get over that. We wanted to catch the whole lot of them.
"But the Roumanians couldn't see it that way, it seems. On they came in a mad rush for safety. The artillery was shelling the road behind them, and we were holding the bridge almost airtight. Soon the bridge was full of dead and wounded. Others came and attempted to get over them. They fell. Still others pressed on,driven ahead by the maddened crowd in the rear.
"The machine-guns continued to work. Very soon this bridge was full of dead and wounded as high as the parapet. And still those fools would not surrender. Nor did they have sense enough to charge us. There were heaps of dead in front of the bridge, as far as the house over there.
"That should have been a lesson to them. But it wasn't. On they came. Some of them trampled over the dead and wounded. Those more considerate tried to walk on the parapet. The machine-guns took care that they did not get very far.
"By that time those shot on top of the heap began to slide into the river. Those not under fire scrambled down to the river and swam it—those who could swim; the others are in it yet. You can see them down there and wherever there is sand-bank or rock-ledge. But those who swam were the only ones that escaped us. That crowd was so panicky that it didn't have sense enough even to surrender. That's my theory.
"It was an awful sight. Do you think this war will end soon?"
In private life the narrator is a school-teacher in a little village in the Bavarian highlands.
Napoleon had a poor opinion of the hungry soldier. But it is not only the man-at-arms who travels on his belly—the nation at war does the same.
I have found that patriotism at a groaning table in a warm room, and with some other pleasant prospects added, is indeed a fine thing. The amateur strategist and politician is never in finer mettle than when his belt presses more or less upon a grateful stomach and when the mind has been exhilarated by a good bottle of wine and is then being tickled by a respectable Havana.
But I have also sat of nights—rainy nights at that—in the trenches and listened to what the men at the front had to say. They, too, were reasonably optimistic when the stomach was at peace. Of course, these men had their cares. Most of them were married and had in the past supported their families with the proceeds of their labor. Now the governments were feeding these families—after a fashion. What that fashion was the men came to hear in letters from home. It made them dissatisfied and often angry.
Isat one night in the bombproof of an advanced position on the Sveta Maria, near Tolmein. My host was an Austrian captain whose ancestry had come from Scotland. A certain Banfield had thought it well to enter the Austro-Hungarian naval service many years ago, and the captain was one of his descendants.
Captain Banfield was as "sore" as the proverbial wet hen. He hadn't been home in some fourteen months, and at home things were not well. His wife was having a hard time of it trying to keep the kiddies alive, while the good Scotchman was keeping vigil on the Isonzo.
That Scotchman, by the way, had a reputation in the Austrian army for being a terribleDraufgänger, which means that when occasion came he was rather hard on the Italians. He would have been just as ruthless with the profiteers had he been able to get at them. Most uncomplimentary things were said by him of the food sharks and the government which did not lay them low.
But what Captain Banfield had to complain of I had heard a thousand times. His was not the only officer's wife who had to do the best she could to get along. Nor was that class worse off than any other. After all, the governments did their best by it. The real hardships fell upon the dependents of the common soldier.
I had made in Berlin the acquaintance of a woman who before the war had been in very comfortable circumstances. Though a mechanical engineer of standing, her husband had not beenable to qualify for service as an officer. He was in charge of some motor trucks in an army supply column as a non-commissioned officer. The little allowance made by the government for the wife and her four children did not go very far.
But the woman was a good manager. She moved from the expensive flat they had lived in before the mobilization. The quarters she found in the vicinity of the Stettiner railroad station were not highly desirable. But her genius made them so.
The income question was more difficult to solve. A less resourceful woman would have never solved it. But this one did. She found work in a laundry, checking up the incoming and outgoing bundles. Somebody had to suffer, however. In this case the children. They were small and had to be left to themselves a great deal.
I discussed the case with the woman.
"My children may get some bad manners from the neighbors with whom I have to leave them," she said. "But those I can correct later on. Right now I must try to get them sufficient and good food, so that their bodies will not suffer."
In that kind of a woman patriotism is hard to kill, as I had ample opportunity to observe.
At Constantinople I had made the acquaintance of the Baroness Wangenheim, widow of the late Baron Wangenheim, then ambassador at the Sublime Porte. Hearing that I was in Berlin, the baroness invited me to have tea with her.
Teais a highly socialized function, anyway, but this one was to be the limit in that respect. The repast—I will call it that—was taken in one of the best appointedsalonsI ever laid eyes on. Taste and wealth were blended into a splendid whole.
The maid came in and placed upon the fine marquetry taboret a heavy old silver tray. On the tray stood, in glorious array, as fine a porcelain tea service as one would care to own.
But we had neither milk nor lemon for the tea. We sweetened it with saccharine. There was no butter for the war-bread, so we ate it with a little prune jam. At the bottom of a cut-glass jar reposed a few crackers. I surmised that they were ancient, and feared, moreover, that the one I might be persuaded to take could not so easily be replaced. So I declined the biscuit, and, to make the baroness understand, offered her one of my bread coupons for the slice of bread I had eaten. This she declined, saying that the day was yet long and that I might need the bread voucher before it was over.
"I am no better off than others here," the baroness explained to me in reply to a question. "I receive from the authorities the same number of food cards everybody gets, and my servants must stand in line like all others. The only things I can buy now in the open market are fish and vegetables. But that is as it should be. Why should I and my children get more food than others get?"
I admitted that I could not see why she shouldbe so favored. Still, there was something incongruous about it all. I had been the guest of the baroness in the great ambassadorial palace on the Boulevard Ayas Pasha in Pera, and found it hard to believe that the woman who had then dwelt in nothing less than regal state was now reduced to the necessity of taking war-bread with her tea—even when she had visitors.
"If this keeps up much longer the race will suffer," she said, after a while. "I am beginning to fear for the children. We adults can stand this, of course. But the children...."
The baroness has two small girls, and to change her thoughts I directed the conversation to Oriental carpets and lace.
Her patriotism, too, is of the lasting sort.
But the very same evening I saw something different. The name won't matter.
I had accepted an invitation to dinner. It was a good dinner—war or peace. Itspièce de résistancewas a whole broiled ham, which, as my hostess admitted, had cost in the clandestine market some one hundred and forty marks, roughly twenty-five dollars at the rate of exchange then in force. There was bread enough and side dishes galore. It was also a meatless day.
The ham was one of several which had found the household in question through the channels of illicit trade, which even the strenuous efforts of the Prussian government had not been able to close as yet. The family had the necessary cash, and in order to indulge in former habitsas fully as possible, it was using that cash freely.
After living for several days in plenty at the Palads in Copenhagen, and ascertaining thatpaling—eel—was still in favor with the Dutch of The Hague, I returned to Vienna. Gone once more were the days of wheat bread and butter.
One rainy afternoon I was contemplating the leafless trees on the Ring through the windows of the Café Sacher when two bodies of mounted police hove into view on the bridle path, as if they were really in a great hurry. I smelled a food riot, rushed down-stairs, caught a taxi on the wing, and sped after the equestrian minions of the law. Police and observer pulled up in the Josephstadt in the very center of a food disturbance.
The riot had already cooled down to the level of billingsgate. Several hundred women stood about listening to the epithets which a smaller group was flinging at a badly mussed-up storekeeper, who seemed greatly concerned about his windows, which had been broken by somebody.
The police mingled with the crowd. What had happened? Nothing very much, said the storekeeper. That remark fanned the flame of indignation which was swaying the women. Nothing much, eh? They had stood since high noon in line for butter and fat. Up to an hour ago the door of the shop had been closed. When finally it was opened the shopkeeper had announced that he had supplies only for about fifty fat coupons. Those who were nearest hisdoor would be served and the others could go home.
But somehow the crowd had learned that the man had received that morning from the Food Central enough fat to serve them all with the amount prescribed by the food cards. They refused to go away. Then the storekeeper, in the manner which is typically Viennese, grew sarcastically abusive. Before he had gone very far the women were upon him. Others invaded the store, found the place empty, and then vented their wrath on the fixtures and windows.
I was greatly interested in what the police would do with the rioters. But, instead of hauling the ringleaders to headquarters, they told them to go home and refrain in future from taking the law into their own hands. Within ten minutes the riot resolved itself into good-natured bantering between the agents of the law and the women, and the incident was closed, except for the shopkeeper, who in court failed to clear up what he had done with the supplies of butter and fat that had been assigned him for distribution. He lost his license to trade, and was fined besides.
Talking with several women, I discovered that none of them held the government responsible. The "beast" of a dealer was to blame for it all. This view was held largely because the police had gone to work in a most considerate manner, according to the instructions issued by an anxious government.
In a previous food riot, in the NineteenthMunicipal District, the gendarmes had been less prudent, with the result that the women turned on them and disfigured with their finger-nails many a masculine face—my visage included, because I had the misfortune of being mistaken for a detective. A muscularHausmeisterin—janitress—set upon me with much vigor. Before I could explain, I was somewhat mussed up, though I could have ended the offensive by proper counter measures. It is best to attend such affairs in the Austrian equivalent for overalls.
Some weeks before, the Austrian premier, Count Stürgkh, had been shot to death by a radical socialist named Adler. In his statements Adler said that he had done this because of his belief that so long as Stürgkh was at the helm of the Austrian ship of state nothing would be done to solve the food situation.
There is no doubt that Adler had thoroughly surveyed the field of public subsistence. It is also a fact that he did the Austrian government a great service by killing the premier. The right and wrong of the case need not occupy us here. I am merely concerned with practical effects.
Count Stürgkh was an easy-going politician of a reactionary type. He gave no attention of an intelligent sort to the food problem, and did nothing to check the avarice of the food sharks, even when that avarice went far beyond the mark put up by the war-loan scheme. His inertia led during the first months of the war to much waste and later to regulations that could nothave been more advantageous to the private interests of the food speculators had they been made for them expressly. No statesman was ever carried to his grave with fewer regrets. In the Austrian government offices a sigh of relief was heard when it became known that Adler had shot the premier.
A revolution could not have been averted in Austria had Stürgkh continued at his post much longer. At first he was attacked only by theWiener Arbeiter Zeitung, a socialist daily controlled by the father of Adler, who, in addition to being the editor-in-chief of the publication, is a member of the Austrian Reichsrath and the leader of the Austrian Socialist party. But later other papers began to object to Stürgkh'sdolce far nienteofficial life, among them the rather conservativeNeue Freie Presse. Others joined. Ultimately the premier saw himself deserted even by theFremdenblatt, the semi-official organ of the government.
Though charged with incompetency by some and with worse by others, Count Stürgkh refused to resign. Emperor Francis Joseph was staying his hands and this made futile all endeavor to remove the count from his high office. The old emperor thought he was doing the best by his people, and had it not been that the Austrians respected this opinion more than they should have done, trouble would have swept the country.
A new era dawned after Count Stürgkh's death. But his successors found little they could put in order. The larder was empty.Premier Körber tried hard to give the people more food. But the food was no longer to be had.
The loyalty of the Austrian people to their government was given the fire test in those days. Now and then it seemed that the crisis had come. It never came, however.
Other trips to the fronts presented a new aspect of the food situation. It was an odd one at that. The men who had formerly complained that their wives and children were not getting enough to eat had in the course of time grown indifferent to this. It was nothing unusual to have men return to the front before their furloughs had expired. At the front there were no food problems. The commissary solved them all. At home the man heard nothing but complaints and usually ate up what his children needed. Little by little the Central Power troops were infected with the spirit of the mercenary of old. Life at the front had its risks, but it also removed one from the sphere of daily cares. The great war-tiredness was making room for indifference and many of the men had truly become adventurers. So long as theGoulaschkanoneshot the regular meals every day all was well. The military commissaries had succeeded by means of the stomach in making the man at the front content with his lot. Food conditions in the rear always offered a good argument, inarticulate but eloquent, nevertheless, why the man in the trenches should think he was well off. In the case of the many husbands andfathers no mean degree of indifference and callousness was required before this frame of mind was possible. But the war had taken care of that. War hardly ever improves the individual. Out of sight, out of mind!
It was the craving stomach of the civil population that caused the several Central European governments most concern.
In the past, newspapers had been very careful when discussing the food question. They might hint at governmental inefficiency and double-dealing, but they could not afford to be specific. The censors saw to that. When the food situation was nearing its worst the several governments, to the surprise of many, relaxed political censorship sufficiently so that newspapers could say whatever they pleased on food questions. First came sane criticism and then a veritable flood of abuse.
But that was what the authorities wanted. Hard words break no bones, and their use is the only known antidote for revolution. Abuse was in the first place a fine safety valve, and then it gave the authorities a chance to defend themselves. To-day some paper would print an article in which, to the satisfaction of the reader, it was shown that this or that had been badly managed, and to-morrow the food authorities came back with a refutation that usually left a balance in favor of the government. The thing was adroitly done and served well to pull the wool over the eyes of the public.
Free discussion of the food problem was theorder of the day. The light was let in on many things, and for the first time since the outbreak of the war the food shark had to take to cover. The governments let it be known that, while it was all very convenient to blame the authorities for everything, it would be just as well if the public began to understand that it had a share of responsibility. Informers grew like toadstools after a warm rain in June. The courts worked overtime and the jails were soon filled. The food situation was such that the lesser fry of the speculators had to be sacrificed to the wrath of the population. The big men continued, however, and pennies were now to be mobilized through the medium of commodities. It was no longer safe to squeeze the public by means of its stomach if patriotism was to remain an asset of the warring governments. The masses had been mulcted of their last by this method. Others were to supply the money needed for the war.
I feel justified in saying that the craving stomach of the Central states would have served the Allied governments in good stead in the fall of 1916 had their militaro-political objectives been less extensive and far-reaching. The degree of hunger, however, was always counteracted by the statements of the Allied politicians that nothing but a complete reduction of Germany and Austria-Hungary would satisfy them. I noticed that such announcements generally had as a result a further tightening of the belts. Nor could anybody remain blind to the fact that thelean man is a more dangerous adversary than the sleek citizen. Discipline of the stomach is the first step in discipline of the mind. There is a certain joy in asceticism and the consciousness that eating to live has many advantages over living to eat.
The Central Power governments did not lose sight of this truth.