The German and Austro-Hungarian purchasing bureaus in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are similarly organized. Many members of their staffs are indeed civilians, but that does not change anything, since all shipments of food entering Central Europe fall immediately under the control of the government Food Commissions, if not under that of the military commissaries direct.
To the military, then, the Central states civilian population had to look for such food as could be imported.
There was the case of Bulgaria. That country is still essentially an agricultural state. Of the five and a half million inhabitants fully 90 per cent. engage in farming and animal industry. The products of the soil constitute the major portion of Bulgaria's exports. That meant that she could ease to some extent the food shortage in Germany and Austria-Hungary.
An acquaintance of mine, a Captain Westerhagen,formerly a banker in Wall Street, was in charge of the German purchasing bureau in Sofia. He bought whatever was edible—wheat, rye, barley, peas, beans, potatoes, butter, eggs, lard, pork, and mutton. His side lines were hides, wool, flax, mohair, hay, and animal feed-stuffs.
Indirectly, he was also an importer. Under his surveillance were brought into Bulgaria the manufactured goods Bulgaria needed, such as iron and steel products in the form of farm implements, farm machinery, building hardware, small hardware, and general machinery, glassware, paper products, instruments, surgical supplies, railroad equipment, medicines, and chemicals generally.
When the German army needed none of the food Captain Westerhagen bought, the civilian population was the beneficiary of his efforts. The fact is that my acquaintance bought whatever he could lay hands on. Now and then he bought so much that the Bulgarians began to feel the pinch. In that event the Bulgarian general staff might close down on the purchasing central for a little while, with the result that the Germans would shut down on their exports. It was a case of no food, no factory products. This sort of reciprocity led often to hard feeling—situations which Colonel von Massow, the German military plenipotentiary at Sofia, found pretty hard to untangle. But, on the whole, the arrangement worked smoothly enough.
It was so in Turkey.
The Germans had in Constantinople one of their most remarkable men—and here I must throw a little light on German-Ottoman relations. The name of this remarkable man—remarkable in capacity, energy, industry, and far-sightedness—is Corvette-Captain Humann, son of the famous archeologist who excavated Pergamum and other ancient cities and settlements in Asia Minor.
Captain Humann was born in Smyrna and had early in life made the acquaintance of Enver Pasha, now Ottoman Minister of War and vice-generalissimo of the Ottoman army. Raised in the Orient, Humann knew the people with whom he was to deal. The viewpoint of the Orient and the Turk was an open book to him. He had the advantage of being looked upon as half a Turk, for the reason that he was born in Turkey. To these qualifications Captain Humann added great natural ability and a perseverance without equal.
Officially, Captain Humann was known as the commander of the German naval base in Constantinople and as naval attaché. Actually, he was the alpha and omega of German-Ottoman relations.
There always was a great deal of friction between the Turks and the Germans. The Turk often could not see the need for speed, while the German was eternally in a hurry, from the Oriental point of view. The Turk was inclined to do things in a slovenly manner. The German insisted upon everything, in matters economic,military, and diplomatic, being in its place. German officers who had a great deal to do with these things had not always the tact and forbearance necessary. Bad blood would come of this. To make matters worse, the Turk was forever under the impression that he was being exploited. The Germans, also, refused tobakshishthe officials of their ally, and more trouble came from that.
It is hard to say what the general result of this would have been had not Captain Humann been on the spot. He was ondu—thou—terms with Enver Pasha, and when things refused to move at all he would call on his friend in the Harbiyeh Nasaret in Stamboul and set them into motion again. That Turk and German did not come to blows during the first year of the war is largely due to the genius of Captain Humann. So great was the man's influence in Constantinople that the successor of Ambassador Baron von Wangenheim, Prince Metternich, grew jealous of him and had him removed to Berlin, where in the Imperial Naval Office Captain Humann chewed pencils until conditions in Constantinople were so bad that the German Emperor had to send him back, despite the prejudices he held against him. Captain Humann is not a noble, and in those days the powers that be in Prussia and Germany were not yet ready to have a commoner, no matter how able, take away glamour from the aristocratic class.
Though purchasing in Turkey was not one of the duties of Captain Humann, he was oftenobliged to take charge of it. I knew of one hundred and twenty thousand pounds of wool which the Germans had bought, but which the Turks were not willing to surrender because they were not satisfied with the price after the bargain had been closed. The case was ticklish in the extreme. Everybody had gone as far as safety permitted and the Turks had meanwhile grown more obdurate. In the end the matter had to be brought to the attention of the ambassador. He, too, decided that nothing could be done. Captain Humann was appealed to and succeeded in securing delivery of the wool.
I have quoted this case to show that very often the exchange of commodities between the Central allies was attended with much friction and difficulty. More merchandise moved over and across the Danube as personal favors done than by virtue of the commercial treaties that had been made. Personal equation was everything in the scheme, especially at times when Germany's allies were in no pressing need for arms and ammunition. The very fact that Germany was the "king-pin" in the Central European scheme caused the lesser members of the combination to be sticklers in matters affecting their rights and sovereignty.
On one occasion the predecessor of Captain Westerhagen in Sofia was said to have boastfully made the statement that what he could not get from the Bulgarians voluntarily he would find means to get, anyhow. General Jekoff, the chief of the Bulgarian general staff, heard of this,and promptly shut down on all exports. For two weeks not a thing moved out of Bulgaria, and when the two weeks were over there was a new man in charge of the German purchasing bureau in Sofia. The methods of the Prussian barrack-yard would not do south of the Danube. It took many a lesson to bring this home.
Austria and Hungary were two separate economic units in the war. When food was scarce in Austria it did not necessarily follow that the Hungarians would make good the deficiency. It took a special permit to export and import from and into Hungary, and the same rules were enforced by Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey in the case of all shipments made by civilians, so long as these had a hand in this inter-allied exchange of necessities and commodities.
Little need be said of the German purchasing centrals in Austria and Hungary. The war was not very old before these countries had nothing to spare. Thereafter, exchange was limited entirely to materials needed in the manufacture of arms and ammunition. Austria and Hungary continued to exchange medical supplies, chemicals, and machinery for food and the like, respectively. They also managed now and then to get a little of the food in Bulgaria and Turkey, though the latter country could sell food only on rare occasions. Constantinople continued to live on Roumanian wheat, until the total cessation of activity by the Russian Black Sea fleetmade navigation in those waters possible for the Turks and brought wheat and other food from northern Anatolia.
The food secured by Germany in other markets was also under military control, as I have stated before. Exchange in this case depended even more upon reciprocity in kind than in the instances already cited. At one time the Swiss government was ready to close its borders against the export of food to Central Europe entirely. Nothing came of the intention. The German government informed the government at Bern that this would lead to an embargo on coal along the Swiss borders. France and Italy had no coal themselves, and Switzerland had to have fuel.
It has been said that the incident in question was staged for the purpose of illustrating what the position of the Swiss actually was. At any rate, they would have no coal, not so much as a shovelful, if to-morrow they refused to export to the Germans and Austrians dairy products and animal fats. The same is true of iron products and chemicals.
Holland is in the same position. Great Britain needs all the coal she can mine, and the Germans refuse to supply the little they can spare without getting something in exchange—dairy products, animal fats, vegetables, and fresh and preserved fish. Holland also gets her coal-oil and gasolene in that manner. Iron and steel and chemicals are other strong arguments in this scheme. Denmark is in exactly the sameposition, and when German gasolene and benzine are not available the Norwegian fishermen have to stay at home. For each gallon of these fuels, which Germany exports from the Galician and Roumanian oil-fields, the Norwegians are obliged to turn over so many pounds of fish. Sweden has no food to give for the coal and liquid fuel she gets from Germany, but exchanges them for wood pulp, certain specialty ores, and on rare occasions reindeer meat.
That this commerce is strictly military those interested know, of course. But they have given up splitting hairs over it, because there is no way out. Coal and iron products, to say nothing of chemicals and medicines, are things which the European neutrals must have, and this need warring Central Europe has held over them as a whip. Incidentally, this traffic has done much toward keeping up the rate of the German mark. Central Europe would have been bankrupted long ago were it not that the neutrals must buy what these states have for sale and must buy it at prices fixed by monopoly.
The need of coal and iron has been a far more efficacious discipline for the European neutrals than the German armies that have lain along their borders. That these countries have never combined for the purpose of throwing off this yoke is due to the influence of racial affinity—the sentiment upon which in the past has thriven Pan-Germanism. Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, rising simultaneously,could overnight cause the defeat of the Germans and their allies. But the ties of blood and kinship militate against that step, despite the dislike felt in these countries for certain aspects of German political life.
To the plow was yoked an ox and harnessed a horse. A tall and muscular woman was guiding it, while a small boy carried the whip. From the Isonzo front, not more than ten miles away, came the crash of heavy artillery.
Neither the woman nor the boy seemed to mind that war was so near. I concluded that they were from the village which I had just come through, bound for the front named. The inhabitants of that place had listened to the noise of battle for eighteen months and it was possible that now the crash of guns meant less to them than the sound of the vesper bell.
There was a tire blow-out. While the soldier-chauffeur was attending to that, I watched the woman draw furrows. Being somewhat of a farmer, I was interested in the quality of her work. It was good average plowing.
The plow continued to cut down one side of the field and up the other. The automobile did not interest the woman. She had serious business to attend to. War must have seemed toher a sort of folly, and fools all those connected with it—myself included. She was tilling the land to get something to eat for her brood and to raise the money for taxes which those idiots at the front would waste in powder and the like. Her "hees" and "haws" punctuated the rumble of artillery like words of command for the oxen in the trenches.
The woman behind the plow was a superb figure—the embodiment of nature herself.
I went on.
Toward evening I returned over the same road. The woman was still plowing, but now she had a little girl holding the whip. The sirocco had blown a heavy mist in from the Adriatic. Where the woman was plowing the vapors floated in layers of uneven density—the veils of evening. The plowers passed into them and out again, loomed now and then dwindled in the mist as the moods of light pleased.
It struck me that it would be worth while to have a few words with this woman. She was so close to the war and yet, seemingly, so far from it that almost anything she could say promised to have an unusual color.
"These people here are Slovenes, sir!" remarked my soldier-chauffeur when I had sought his advice. "They do not speak German, as a rule. But we can try."
It was love's labor lost. The woman spoke some Slovene words in greeting and I replied in Bulgarian, of which language I know a few words. The chauffeur was no better off.
I dug into a furrow with the tip of my shoe and said:
"Dobro!"
She nodded recognition of both my "remark" and appreciation of her work.
To show the woman that I knew what I was talking about, I took the plow out of her hands and drew a furrow myself. It was her turn to say:
"Dobro!"
The fact that she limited her conversation to this word, as I was obliged to do, showed that she was a woman of understanding.
When I was back at the road I shook hands with the woman and her child and hurried off to Adelsberg, where General Boreovic, commander of the Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army, expected me for dinner.
"Ah, she is a worker," said the old veteran, as I mentioned the incident to him. "Her husband is dead, you know. Was killed in the war. She is a remarkable woman. I have talked to her several times. She is worth a dozen of anything in skirts you can find in Vienna, or anywhere else, for that matter."
I thought so, too, and think so yet, and,Deo volente, I will picture the plow-woman better some other time.
In the Manfred Weiss works at Budapest thousands of women are engaged in the manufacture of ammunition. The little girls and older women who watched the infantry-ammunition machines did not greatly interest me.They were all neatly dressed and did no more than watch the mechanical contrivances that made cartridge-cases out of sheets of brass and bullet-casings out of sheets of nickel-steel.
In the shell department of the establishment I saw quite another class of women.
They were large and brawny and strong enough to handle the huge white-hot steel nuggets with ease. By means of a crane two of them would seize one of the incandescent ingots, swing it under the trip-hammer, and then leave the fate of the shell in the making to two others, who would turn the thing from side to side, while a fifth operated the hammer itself.
At the far end of the shed, in flame-raked gloom, other women of the same type were engaged in casting. The ladle was operated by them with a dexterity that showed that neither strength nor skill were lacking.
These daughters of Vulcan were stripped to the waist. Their labor seemed to be the only dress they needed. In fact, it never struck me that there was anything unconventional about this costume—the whole and total of which was a large leather apron and skirt of something that resembled burlap. Nor did they seem to mind me.
It is impossible to say to what extent man's place in labor was taken by woman in Central Europe during the war. On the farms the women had always done much of the hard work. They had been employed in large numbers in the factories, stores, and offices, so that it was generally a case of employing more women instead of surrendering to them departments which heretofore had been entirely in the hands of men. It is true that women were working on street-car lines as conductors, and in a few cases as drivers, and that more of them found employment in the railroad and postal service, but the work they did was well within the capacity of any healthy woman. Woman's work during the war was to have results quite foreign to those immediately in prospect.
Photograph from Henry Ruschin WOMEN CARRYING BRICKS AT BUDAPEST A pathetic aspect of the policy "Business as Usual" inaugurated at the outbreak of the European War. Central European women worked hard before the war, however.Photograph from Henry RuschinWOMEN CARRYING BRICKS AT BUDAPESTA pathetic aspect of the policy "Business as Usual" inaugurated at the outbreak of the European War. Central European women worked hard before the war, however.
Photograph from Henry Ruschin VILLAGE SCENE IN HUNGARY These women and children struggled to keep food production close to normal, but failed.Photograph from Henry RuschinVILLAGE SCENE IN HUNGARYThese women and children struggled to keep food production close to normal, but failed.
Thefact that women were employed in foundries and steel-works, in the manner stated above, is chiefly remarkable for the evidence furnished that woman is able to do much of the work for which in the past she has been thought unsuited, especially if her deficiency in bodily strength is discounted by the use of machinery. At the Weiss works I was told that the women doing heavy work with the aid of mechanical energy were in every respect the equal of the men who had done the same thing before the war.
The war, then, has demonstrated in Central Europe that the woman is far less the inferior of man than was held formerly. To that extent the status of women has been bettered. When a man has seen members of the frail sex fashion steel into shells he is thereafter less inclined to look upon that sex as a plaything which an indulgent Scheme provided for him. Over his mind may then flash the thought that woman is, after all, the other half of humanity—not only the mother of men, but their equal, not a merecomplement of the human race, but a full-fledged member of it.
A little later I was the guest of Halideh Edib Hannym Effendi at her private school in the Awret Basar quarter of Stamboul, Constantinople. The Turkish feminist and promoter of education had asked me to take a look at the establishment in which she was training Turkish girls and boys along the lines adhered to in the Occident. She had arrived at the conclusion that themedressi—Koran school system—was all wrong, for the reason that it sacrificed the essential to the non-essential. Though her influence with the Young Turk government and the Sheik-ul-Islam was great, she had not asked that her experiments with Western education be undertaken at the expense of the public. Her father is wealthy.
Several teachers had been invited to the tea. Like Halideh Hannym they were "Young Turk" women, despite the fact that most of them still preferred the non-transparent veil—yashmak—to the transparent silkbüründshük.
I commented upon this fact.
"Theyashmakdoes indeed typify the Old Turkey," said Halideh Hannym. "But is it necessary to discard it because one takes an interest in the things identified as progress? To theyashmakare attached some of the best traditions of our race; it comes from a period when the Turk was really great, when he was still the master of a goodly share of Europe—when he ruled, instead of being ruled."
All of which was true enough.
I pointed out that thebüründshük, however, was the promise that the Turkish woman would soon be able to look into the world—that seclusion would before long be an unpleasant memory. To that my hostess and her other guests agreed.
"The war has been a good thing for the Turkish woman," I ventured to remark.
"It has been," admitted Halideh Hannym. "As an example, the university has been opened to women. Three years ago nobody would have thought that possible. To-day it isun fait accompli. The world does move—even here."
Halideh Hannym did not mention that she was largely responsible for the opening of the Constantinople University to women. Modesty is one of her jewels. Nor would she admit that her novels and her trenchant articles in theTaninhad much to do with the progress made in the emancipation of the Turkish woman.
"If Turkey is to be regenerated, her women must do it," said Halideh Hannym, when we had come to speak of the necessity of better government in the Ottoman Empire.
That one sentence comprises at once the field of endeavor and the motive of the woman. She believes that there is much good in her race, but that its old-time position of conqueror and ruler over subject races had been fraught with all the dangers of ease and idleness.
"We must work—work—work," she said. "The race that lies fallow for too long a time gives the weeds too much chance. Our weaknessesand shortcomings are deep-rooted now. But I believe that the plowing which the race had during the present war will again make it a fertile field for the seeds of progress."
Not long before that Sultan Mahmed Réchad Khan V. had told me the same thing.
"We of the Orient are known to you Westerners as fatalists," remarked the old monarch in the course of the audience. "The fatalist is accepted to be a person who lets things drift along. This means that any fatalist may be no more than a lazy and shiftless individual. In our case that is not true. Our belief in the Fates—Kismet and Kadar—is to blame for what backwardness there is in the Ottoman Empire. But it will be different in the future. It is all very well to trust in God, but we must work."
I told Halideh Hannym that probably his Majesty had read some of her writings. My reason for doing this was largely the fact that as yet this gospel of work was little known in Turkey.
"That is not impossible," thought the woman. "At any rate, we must work, and it is the women of Turkey who must set the example. When the Turks have more generally embraced the idea that all there is worth while in life is labor, they will come to understand their non-Osmanli fellow-citizens better. I look upon that as the solution of the Ottoman race problems. Labor is the one platform upon which all men can meet. My objective is to have the races in the empire meet upon it. Turk, Greek, Armenian, and Arab will get along together only when theycome to heed that old and beautiful saying of the Persians, 'How pleasantly dwell together those who do not want the ox at the same time.' That means that each of us must have his own ox—work ourselves, in other words."
And Halideh Hannym applies this to herself. There is no reason why she should write novels and articles to make money—she does not need it, so far as I know, if town houses and a country seat on the island of Prinkipo mean anything at all. Halideh Hannym works for the satisfaction there is in knowing that duty is done and done to the limit of one's ability, and within that limit lies the seizing of one's opportunity. Hers came with the war, and while others stood by and lamented she set to work and wrung from ungenerous man that which under the pressure of the times he thought unimportant. Halideh Hannym and her friends and co-workers gathered these crumbs, one by one, and then made a loaf of them, and that loaf is not small. Some future historian may say that the emancipation of the Turkish woman was due to the Great War. I hope that he will not overlook Halideh Edib Hannym Effendi.
The women of Central Europe have always worked hard, but at best they have been kept at drudgery. They have done what man would not do, as deeming it below his masculine dignity, or what he could not do. The result of this has not been a happy one for the women. The "lord of the household" has in the course of time come to look upon his wife as a sort ofinferior creature, fit indeed to be the first servant in the house, but unfit to be elevated above that sphere. The rights of equality which he takes from his mate he generally bestows upon his daughters, and later he is inconsistent enough to have them enter the servitude of his wife. Thus it came that the majority of all women in Central Europe thought of nothing but the stomach of the lord and master, and when this was attended to they would put in their spare moments knitting socks.
The picture of the GermanHausfraumay appeal to many. It does not to me. Nothing can be so disheartening as to spend an evening with a family whose women will talk to the accompaniment of the clicking of the knitting-needles. The making of socks should be left to machinery, even if they are intended to warm the "Trilbys" of the lord and master.
I am glad to report that a large crevasse was torn into thisHausfraunotion by the war. With millions of men at the front, the women had to stand on their feet, as it were. The clinging ivy became a tree. Though the ubiquitous knitting-needle was not entirely dispensed with, it came to be used for the sake of economy, not as the symbol of immolation on the altar of theHerr im Hause.
The woman who has fought for bread in the food-line is not likely to ever again look upon the breadwinner of the family with that awe which once swayed her when she thought of "his" magnanimity in giving her good-naturedlywhat she had earned by unceasing effort and unswerving devotion.
Thus has come in Central Europe a change that is no less great and sweeping than what has taken place in Turkey. All concerned should be truly thankful. The nation that does not give its women the opportunity to do their best in the socio-economic sphere which nature has assigned them handicaps itself badly. Not to do that results in woman being little more than the plaything of man, or at best his drudge, and, since man is the son of woman, no good can come of this. The cowed woman cannot but have servile offspring, and to this we must look for the explanation why the European in general is still ruled by classes that look upon their subjects as chattels. A social aggregate in which the families are ruled by autocratic husbands and fathers could have no other than an autocratic government. I believe that a pine forest is composed of pines, despite the fact that here and there some other trees may live in it.
The war has upset that scheme in Central Europe. While the labor of woman was valuable to the state, through its contributions to the economic and military resources of the nation, it also fostered in the woman that self-reliance which is the first step toward independence. Of this the plow-woman and the women in the steel-works are the factors and Halideh Hannym the sum. While the plow-woman and steel-workers were unconsciouslyactive for that purpose, the Turkish feminist had already made it the objective of a spreading social policy.
What poor pets those women in the steel-mill would make!
Harassed by the shortage in everything needed to sustain life, plagued by the length of the war and the great sacrifices in life and limb that had to be made, and stunned by the realization that Germany had not a friend, anywhere, aside from her allies and certain weak neutrals, the German people began to take stock of their household and its management. It seemed to many that, after all, something was wrong.
I ran into this quite often in 1916.
During the Somme offensive in August of that year I was talking to a German general—his name won't matter. The man could not understand why almost the entire world should be the enemy of Germany. I had just returned to Central Europe from a trip that took me through Holland, Denmark, and parts of Norway; I had read the English, French, and American newspapers, with those of Latin Europe and Latin America thrown in, and I was not in a position to paint for the soldier the picture he may have been looking for. I told him that the outlook was bad—the worst possible.
He wanted to know why this should be so. I gave him my opinion.
Not far from us was going on a drumfire which at times reached an unprecedented intensity. The general looked reflectively across the shell-raked, fume-ridden terrain. He seemed to be as blue as indigo.
"Tell me, Mr. Schreiner, are we really as bad as they make us out to be?" he said, after a while.
The question was frankly put. It deserved a frank reply.
"No," I said, "you are not. Slander has been an incident to all wars. It is that now. The fact is that your government has made too many mistakes. War is the proof that might is right. Your government has been too brutally frank in admitting that and suiting its action accordingly. Belgium was a mistake and the sinking of theLusitaniawas a mistake. You are now reaping the harvest you sowed then."
My questioner wished to know ifsansBelgium,sans Lusitaniathe position of Germany would be better.
That question was highly hypothetical. I replied that an opinion in that direction would not be worth much in view of the fact that it could not cover the actual causes of the war and its present aspects, of which the case of Belgium and the work of the submarine were but mere incidents.
"Seen objectively, I should say that the invasion of Belgium and the use of the submarineagainst merchantmen has merely intensified the world's dislike of much that is German. I doubt that much would have been different without Belgium and without theLusitania," was my reply. "This war started as a struggle between gluttons. One set of them wanted to keep what it had, and the other set wanted to take more than what it had already taken."
Not very long afterward General Falkenhayn, the former German chief of staff, then commander of the Ninth German Army against the Roumanians, asked a similar question at dinner in Kronstadt, Transylvania. He, too, failed to understand why the entire world should have turned down its thumb against the Germans. My reply to him was more or less the same.
A regular epidemic of introspective reasoning seemed to be on. At the Roumanian end of the Törzburger Pass I lunched a few days later with Gen. Elster von Elstermann. He also wanted to know why the Germans were so cordially hated. Gen. Krafft von Delmansingen, whose guest I was at Heltau, at the head of the Vörös Torony gorge, showed the same interest.
"It seems that there is nothing we can do but make ourselves respected," he said, tersely. "I am one of those Germans who would like to be loved. But that seems to be impossible. Very well! We will see! We will see what the sword can do. When a race has come to be so thoroughly detested as we seem to be, there is nothing left it but to make itself respected. I fear that in the future that must be our policy."
I made the remark that possibly it was not the race that was being detested. The general is a Bavarian—at least, he was commanding Bavarian troops.
"So long as these shouters can make common cause with autocratic Russia, they have no reason to fasten upon the Prussians every sin they can think of. I am not one of those who think that everything in Germany is perfect. Far from it. We have more faults than a dog has fleas. Never mind, though! To lie down and beseech mercy on our knees is not one of these faults."
I believe that Gen. Krafft von Delmansingen spoke for the army on that occasion without knowing it. What he said was the attitude of the vast majority of officers and men.
Shortly before I had interviewed Baron Burian, then Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, on that and related subjects. I will state here that he was the most professorly foreign minister I have met. His voice never rose above the conversational tone. Though a Magyar, he was evenness of temper personified.
"I suppose there is nothing we can do in that direction," he said, slowly. "What the world wishes to believe it will believe. We cannot change that. Whether it is true or not has nothing to do with the cause and the outcome of this war. And what difference will it make in the end whether we are called barbarians or not? I know that a good many people resent what they say in the Entente newspapers, andI suppose the Entente public resents a great deal of what is being said in our newspapers. That is a small matter. There is nothing to be done, for what we could do would be a waste of effort. Let them talk. No! There is nothing I wish to say in connection with that. Our position is quite defensible. But to defend it would merely stir up more talk. By the time the hostile American newspapers have taken care of all that is being said against us, they must have used so much paper that it would be a shame to get them to use more on refutation."
Dr. Arthur Zimmermann, at that time Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was more aggressive when I suggested the subject for the substance of an interview. Backing his position with certain documents that were found in the Belgian state archives, according to which there was some understanding between the British, French, and Belgians for the contingency of a German invasion, he held that Germany was entirely right in demanding access to France through Belgian territory. He was not sure, however, that doing this had been a good move politically. The military necessity for the step was something he could not judge, he said.
Doctor Zimmermann said that the sinking of theLusitaniawas a bad blunder. Responsibility for the act he would not fix, however. The thing was not within his province. So far as he knew, it had not been the intention to torpedo the ship in a manner that would cause her immediate sinking. If a ship was torpedoed in the fore oraft holds she would float for hours and might even be able to reach port under her own steam.
"There is a great deal of mania in this Germanophobe sentiment that is sweeping the world," he said. "For the time being, we are everybody'sbête noire. The world must have somebody on whom it can pick. Right now we are that somebody. Quite recently, during the Boer War, it was Great Britain. During the Japanese War the entire world, Germany excepted, made common cause with the Japs against the Russians, forgetting somehow that this was a war of the yellow race against the white. To-day we are it. To-morrow it will be somebody else. It is always fashionable to hate somebody."
That was the cool, diplomatic view of it.
But the Central European public was more inclined to take the view of the officer I had met on the Somme front. It was chagrined, disappointed, grieved, stunned.
The question was asked whether the invasion of Belgium had been really necessary. Many held that the German general staff should have concentrated a large force on the Belgian border, with orders not to invade the country until the French had done so.
There can be no doubt that this would have been the better policy. The contention of the German government that the French contemplated going through Belgium and had for the act the consent of the Belgian government and the acquiescence of the British government will notinvalidate my assertion in the least. Granted that such an agreement had been really made for the purpose of giving the French army certain tactical advantages, it would be the policy of any wise and calm government to wait for the execution of the plan. There would be no Belgian question at all to-day if the Germans had given the French the chance they are said to have sought. That the French reached out for the German borderviaBelgium would not have made the least difference in the sum of military operations, since it was first a question of keeping the French army out of Germany, and, secondly, of defeating the French forces wherever met.
The few days gained, and the slight military advantages alleged to have been procured, were certainly not worth what Belgium was in the end to cost the Germans. This is all the more true when it is considered that the reduction of Liège and other Belgian fortifications might have never become a necessity, in view of the fact that the documents found in Brussels have never convinced me that the Belgian government was acting in bad faith.
It seems that many have overlooked the fact that, between tentative arrangements made by the Belgian general staff and the allied governments and an authorization by the Belgian parliament that war should be declared against Germany, there is a great difference. The former existed; the latter had yet to be obtained. In case it had been obtained, in order to give the French troops marching through Belgium the status theyneeded, there was still time for the Germans to do what they did, under martial conditions that would have declared the French troops in Belgium mere raiders, on the one hand, and Belgium a violator of her neutral status, on the other. Belgium permitting the use of her territory by French troops about to fall upon Germany would have been obliged to also admit German troops, or declare war against Germany. That case is so simple that few can understand it, as a rule.
That such might have been the initial events of the war began finally to dawn upon all thinking Germans. It occurred to many now that there was ample front in Alsace-Lorraine; so much, in fact, that the French succeeded in taking and holding quite a little of it. There was, also, Luxembourg.
Though mobilizations are like the avalanche that starts at the mountain-top and thereafter obeys but one law, gravity, it was not impossible for the German general staff to divert south-ward the troops bound for the Belgian border. A day might have been lost. But even that seems uncertain, since troops were needed along the Belgian border, anyway, in view of what Berlin claims to have known. No matter how the thing is looked at, in the end it resolves itself into the question whether or not there was a difference in meeting French troops in Belgium or on their own soil. It was the objective of the Germans to defeat the French army. Whether that was done in the line of the French fortifications along the Franco-Belgian border, ascame to pass, or whether that was done in the line of the fortifications along the German-Belgian border, could make little difference to a government and general staff able to think on its feet.
Since governments at war must of necessity take it for granted that only the men at the head of affairs have the right to think, this aspect of the invasion of Belgium has been but rarely treated in public print in Germany. I will say, however, that several military writers have attempted to speak on the subject, and have usually been called to task for their hardihood.
To-day the average German is not at all sure that "Belgium" was necessary. He has no interest in Belgium, differing in this from his industrial and commercial lords. Most men and women with whom I discussed the subject were of the opinion that "one Alsace-Lorraine is enough."
The greatest shock the German public received was the news that theLusitaniahad been sunk. For a day or two a minority held that the action was eminently correct. But even that minority dwindled rapidly.
For many weeks the German public was in doubt as to what it all meant. The thinking element was groping about in the dark. What was the purpose of picking out a ship with so many passengers aboard? Then the news came that the passengers had been warned not to travel on the steamer. That removed all doubt that the vessel had not been singled out for attack.
The government remained silent. It had nothing to say. The press, standing in fear of the censor and his power to suspend publication, was mute. Little by little it became known that there had been an accident. The commander of the submarine sent out to torpedo the ship had been instructed to fire at the foreward hold so that the passengers could get off before the vessel sank. Somehow that plan had miscarried. Either a boiler of the ship or an ammunition cargo had given unlooked-for assistance to the torpedo. The ship had gone down.
The defense made by the German government was based largely on points in international law that govern the conduct of raiding cruisers. But the submarine was not a cruiser. It could not save many lives under any circumstances.
People shook their heads and said nothing. It was best to say nothing, since to speak was treasonable.
Nothing weaned the German public so much away from the old order of government as did theLusitaniaaffair. The act seemed useless, wanton, ill-considered. The doctrine of governmental infallibility came near being wrecked. The Germans began to lose confidence in the wisdom of the men who had been credited in the past with being the very quintessence of all knowledge, mundane and celestial. Admiral Tirpitz had to go. Germany's allies, too, were not pleased. In Austria and Hungary the act was severely criticized, and in Turkey I found much disapproval of the thing.
Whilethe greater part of the Central European public accepted that there had been some necessity for the sinking of the ship, seeing that she carried freight of a military character, there were many who thought that in such cases politics and not military necessity should govern conduct. These people were better politicians than those in the government. But the others were better militarists and militarism was in control, being seated more firmly as each day brought more enemies, open and potential. The case was much like that of a family that may have difficulties within, but which would set in concerted action upon any outsider who might think it well to intervene.
This was to be the fundamental quality of German public sentiment throughout the course of the war. As the ring of enemies grew stronger and tightened more upon the military resources of the empire, the public grew harder and harder. The pressure exerted being concentric, it grouped the German public closer and harder to its center—the government. It was no longer the absolute devotion of other years which the Germans brought their government—hardly that. It was the determination to win the war despite the government and despite what others thought and held of that government. The fact that government there must be is too clear to the German to make him act toward hisObrigkeitwith the impetuousness that has characterized events in Russia, where this was possible only because for decades many there have held theview that the time of anarchical society was at hand.
This state of mind made possible the acceptance of the heavy sacrifices which were demanded by the war. The very private in the trenches felt that he would have to risk all against a world of enemies.
Self-pity in the individual leads usually to maudlinism. The trait is not foreign to German temperament. Self-pity in the aggregate is a totally different thing. It is the quality that makes martyrs of men, so long as there is an audience. It is sentiment minus all sickly self-indulgence, and that is fortitude—the thing that will cause men to adhere to an idea or principle even in the face of the stake at theauto da fé.
It was this spirit, also, that caused the German multitude to bear with patience the many deprivations and burdens due to the war.
In Austria things were slightly different. The Austrian-German is probably more of Celtic than of Germanic blood. He is more volatile. Great issues do not hold his attention long. He becomes easily a slave to habit.
To the Austrian-German the war was never more than a nuisance. It interfered with his business; above all, his enjoyments; it drove him from his favorite café and his clandestine lady-love. It upset life for him thoroughly. What was the preservation of the Austrian Empire to a man who shared that empire with Czech, Pole, Ruthene, Slovene, Croat, Italian, Bosniak Mussulman, and in a sense with theMagyar and Roumanian? The feeling of race interest would have to remain foreign to such a man, just as it was a stranger to all the others who fought at his side. Of the ten races in the Dual Monarchy only the Slav group could understand one another without special study of the other's language. Czech, Pole, Ruthene, Slovene, Croat, and Bosniak could with little difficulty master one another's language. German, so far as it was not familiar in the form of military commands, was unknown to most of them. Magyar was a total stranger to Slav and German alike, and Italian and Roumanian meant nothing to any of these.
I remember philosophizing a bit at the execution wall of the fortress of Peterwardein in Hungary. To the left of me stood a little gallows—one of those peculiar strangulation implements they use in Austria-Hungary—descendant of the Spanishgarrote, I believe. On the ancient brick wall were the marks left there by chipping steel bullets. Many a Serb seditionist had seen the light of day for the last time in that old moat. More of them were behind the grilled peepholes of the casemate. That morning two or three had died where I stood.
In that there was nothing unusual, perhaps. But on my right was a large poster, framed with the Hungarian national colors, red, white, and green. The poster drew attention to a certain paragraph of the treason laws. It defined treason poignantly, precisely.
I read the paragraph in German, concludedthat the Hungarian said the same, surmised that the Slav languages in the country did not differ greatly from one another, found that Roumanian I could almost read, and saw that the Italian version said the same thing as the German. I suppose French had been left off the poster for the reason that the Austro-Hungarian inter-monarchical classes, which now use that language instead of Latin, as in the days of Marie Therese, did not need to have their attention drawn to the danger of sedition.
The gallows and execution wall seemed fit companions to that poster. One might not have missed the other when seeing the one, but still there was harmony between the two. People who do not understand one another, be that a question of language or temperament, have no business to live together. But the thing happens often in wedlock, and governments at peace and leisure say that it is perfectly feasible from the viewpoints of state interests.
I found thatDas Reich—the empire—had no meaning to any member of the Austro-Hungarian group. But what held that conglomerate together? The Emperor-King.
Soon I found that nothing had changed in Austria-Hungary since the days when the Empress-Queen Marie Therese, with her infant son in her arms, and tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, had implored the Magyar nobles to come to her assistance against Frederick the Great. The Magyar nobles tore off their furkalpacks, drew their swords, and cried:
"Moriamur pro rege nostro, Maria Theresa!"
That was still the mass psychology in the dual monarchy. The old Emperor-King called to battle, and that was enough. Later the new Emperor-King renewed the call, and it was still enough.
What the soldiers did in the trenches the civilian population did at home—a little half-heartedly at times, a little slovenly occasionally, but reliably at all times.
"We must help our Macedonian brothers. The Bulgars can no longer remain deaf to their prayers to be relieved of the oppression of the Serbs," said the Bulgarian Premier, Doctor Radoslavoff, to me in February, 1915.
In October of the same year he said during an interview:
"There is not enough room for two strong states on the Balkan peninsula. Yet there must be a strong state if the Balkan problem is to be eliminated. That strong state will be either Bulgaria or Serbia.Wedesire that it be Bulgaria. It will be Bulgaria when the Macedonians are permitted to join her. The time has come when they can do that. For that reason we go to war on the side of the Central Powers."
The two statements picture Bulgarian mass psychology exactly. The Bulgar wanted the Macedonian to be one with him nationally, as he is racially. He wanted the ancient Bulgar capital of Monastir to lie again within Bulgarland. With that in perspective he had driven the Turkfrom the peninsula; for that purpose he wanted to make the Serb small.
I found the same iron determination throughout Bulgaria and in all walks of life. Theshopefarmer, the shepherd in theplanina, the monks at Rila Monastir, the fishermen at Varna, the city and towns people, were all for that idea. And in so stern a manner! To me the Bulgar will always be the Prussian of the Balkan. He is just as morose, just as blunt, and just as sincere.
I had occasion to discuss Turkey's entry into the European War with his Majesty, Sultan Mahmed Réchad Khan V., Ghazi, Caliph of all the Faithful, etc., etc., etc.
"They [the Allies] deny us the right to exist," said the old man. "We have the right to exist and we are willing to fight for that. I have led a very peaceful life always. I abhor bloodshed, and I am sincere when I say that I mourn for those who died with the ships [the crews of the battleshipsBouvetandIrresistiblewhom I had seen go down with their ships on March 18th, an event which the Sultan had asked me to describe to him]. It must be hard to die when one is so young. But what can we do? The Russians want the Bosphorus, this city, and the Dardanelles. They have never belonged to the Russians. If there is anybody who has a better right to them than we have, it is the Greeks. We took these things from them. But we will not give them up to anybody without the best fight the race of Osmanli has yet put up."
Like Scheherazade, I then continued my account of the bombardment.
Said Halim Pasha, then Grand Vizier, expressed himself somewhat similarly. He was more diplomatically specific.
"The hour of Turkey was come," he said. "That conflagration could not end without the Allied fleet appearing off the Dardanelles, and the Russian fleet off the Bosphorus. That would be the smash-up of the Ottoman Empire. The Entente governments offered us guarantees that for thirty years Ottoman territory would be held inviolate by them. Guarantees—guarantees! What do they amount to! We have had so many guarantees. When Turkey gets a guarantee it is merely a sign that there is one more pledge to be broken. We are through with guarantees. We joined the Germans because they offered none."
All this in the most fluent Oxford English a man ever used. Said Halim is an Egyptian and somewhat directly related to the Great Prophet in the line of Ayesha.
Enver Pasha, the Prussian of the Ottoman Empire, Minister of War, generalissimo, Young Turk leader, efficiency apostle, Pan-German, and what not, told me the same thing on several occasions.
"Nonsense, nonsense!" he would say in sharp and rasping German. "We are not fighting for the Germans. We are fighting for ourselves. Mark that! They told us we'd be all right if we stayed neutral. Didn't believe it. Nonsense!Russians wanted Constantinople. We know them. They can have it when we are through with it. It was a case of lose all, win all. I am for win all. Fired five thousand of the old-school officers to win this war. Will win it. Country bled white, of course. Too many wars altogether. First, Balkan War, Italian War. Now this. Better to go to hell with Germans than take more favors from Entente. Those who don't like us don't have to. Nobody need love us. Let them keep out of our way. May go down in this. If we do we'll show world how Turk can go down with colors flying. This is Turkey's last chance."
It took Talaat Bey, then Minister of the Interior, now Grand Vizier, to epitomize Turkey for me. He is a man of the plainest of people. When the Turkish revolution of 1908 came Talaat was earning 150 francs a month as a telegraph operator in Salonica. He saw his chance, and he and Dame Opportunity have been great friends ever since. At that, he is not a lean bundle of nerves like Enver Pasha, his great twin in Young Turkism. He is heavy, good-natured, thick-necked, stubborn, bullet-headed, shrewd.
"Très bien, cher frère" ("We meet on the same pavement"), he said to me in the best of Levantine French. "I can't say that this war is any too popular with some of our people. They have had enough of wars, and revolutions, and trouble, and taxes, and exploitation byconcessionnaires, and all that sort of thing. I suppose I would feelthe same way about it were I a Greek or an Armenian. But I am Turk. We Turks felt that the European War would be the last of us. The Russians want Constantinople and its waterways. The Italians want Cilicia, forgetting entirely that the Greeks have priority in claim. I suppose Thrace would have gone to the Bulgars when lot was cast for the shreds of the mantle of the Osmanli, and Great Britain would have taken what was left, which would have been not so little.
"When a man is up against that he does the best he can. That's what we are doing. It's a mighty effort,cher frère, but there is no way out. We Turks are not ready yet to bow to the audience. We would still remain in the play awhile. And we are willing to play accordingly. We have all confidence in the Germans. Some people don't like them. They are terrible competitors, I have been told. So far we have not done so poorly with them. We have abolished the capitulations. That is something for a start. When this war is over we hope to be more the masters of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles than we have been since the days of Grand Vizier Köprülü. It'll be a hard row to hoe before the end is reached. But we will come out on top. After that we and the Germans will try to make something of our natural resources. We will build railroads and factories, irrigate wherever possible, and establish the finest agricultural schools to be found anywhere. But we will see to it that Turkey is developed for thebenefit of the Ottoman. Tobacco monopolies and foreign public-debt administrations we hope to banish."
Such is the aim of the Turk. To speak of mass psychology in the Ottoman Empire is not possible, for the reason that it has more races than Austria-Hungary and no central personage to hold them together. The old Sultan is a myth to fully two-thirds of the Ottoman population. To the Greeks and Armenians he is no more than any other high official of the government.
I have seen much comment on the increase of sexual laxness in the Central European states, owing to the influence of the war. Those who have written and spoken on the subject have, as a rule, proclaimed themselves handicapped by either prejudice or ignorance—two things which are really one.
Much breath and ink has been wasted on certain steps taken by the several German and Austro-Hungarian governments for the legitimization of natural offspring by giving the mother the right to set the prefixFrau—Mrs.—before her maiden name. I have also run across the perfectly silly statement that the Central European governments, in allowing such women the war subsistence and pension of the legitimate widow and children, were purposely fostering that sort of illicit relations between men and women for the purpose of repeopling their states. On that point not much breath need be wasted, for the very good reason that each child is indeed welcome just now in Central Europe, and that the government's least duty is to take care ofthe woman and child who might ultimately have been the wife and legitimate offspring of the man who lost his life in the trenches. Sex problems are the inevitable result of all wars in which many men lose life and health. I may also say that in other belligerent countries this problem has as yet not been dealt with half so intelligently and thoroughly.
Monogamy and polygamy are usually economic results rather than purely social institutions. A stay of nine months in Turkey showed me that polygamy in that country is disappearing fast, because the Turk is no longer able to support more than one wife. In the entire Bosphorus district, in which Constantinople lies and of which it is the center, there were in 1915 but seventeen Moslem households in which could be found the limit of four legitimate wives. Of the entire population of the district only seven per thousand Turks had more than one wife, so that, on the whole, legalized polygamy made a better showing in sex morality than what we of the Occident can boast of, seeing that prostitution is unknown among the Turks.
That the war increased illicit sexual intercourse in Central Europe is true, nor was that increase a small one. It did not take on the proportions, however, which have been given to it, or which under the circumstances might have been looked for.
In the first place, many of the slender social threads that restrain sex impulse in the modern state snapped under the strain of the war. Theirplace was taken by something that was closely related to the Spartan system of marriage. Free selection was practised by women whose husbands were at the front. The men did the same thing. The water on the divorce-mill took on a mighty spurt—evidence that this looseness did not always find the consent of the other party, though often his or her conduct may not have been any better.
This is a case in which generalization is not permissible. The good stood beside the bad and indifferent, and reference to the subject might be dispensed with entirely were it not that public subsistence is closely related to sex morality.
War takes from his home and family the man. Though the governments made some provision for those left behind, the allowance given them was never large enough to keep them as well as they had been kept by the labor of the head of the family. So long as the cost of living did not greatly increase, the efforts of the wife and older children met the situation, but all endeavor of that sort became futile when the price of food and other necessities increased twofold and even more. When that moment came the tempter had an easy time of it. From the family had also been taken much of the restraint which makes for social orderliness. The man was away from home; the young wife had seen better times. Other men came into her path, and nature is not in all cases as loyal to the marriage vows as we would believe. In many cases the mother,now unassisted by the authority of the father, was unable to keep her daughters and sons in check.
War has a most detrimental effect upon the mind of the juvenile. The romance of soldiering unleashes in the adolescent male every quality which social regulation has curbed in the past, while the young woman usually discards the common sense of her advisers for the sickly sentimentalism which brass buttons on clothing cut on military lines is apt to rouse in the female mind. Soon the social fabric is rent in many places and governmental efforts at mending are hardly ever successful.
We have of this an indication in the remarkable increase in juvenile delinquency which marked the course of the European War. In thousands of cases the boys of good families became thieves and burglars. Even highway robbery was not beyond them, and, odd as it may seem, nearly every murder committed in the Central states in the last three years had a lone woman of wealth for a victim and some young degenerate, male or female, as perpetrator. In the cases that came to my notice the father or husband was at the front.
But apart from these more or less spontaneous failings of young men and women, there was the category of offenses in which external influence was thecausa movens. Desperate need caused many to steal and embezzle; it caused many women to divest themselves of that self-respect which is decency and the glory of thefille honnête.
Nothingcan be so cynical as the laws of social administration. That was shown on every hand by the war, but especially did it become apparent in the gratification of the sexual appetite by that class which has nothing but money. While the father and husband was at the front, fighting for the state, and heaping the wealth of the community into the coffers of a rapacious industrial and commercial class, his daughter and wife were often corrupted by that very wealth. Nor was it always bitter want that promoted the lust of the wealthy profligate. The war had shaken the social structure to its very foundations. So great was the pressure of anxiety that the human mind began to crave for relief in abandonment, and once this had been tasted the subject would often become a confirmed "good-time" fiend.
There was a certain war purveyor of whom it was said that he seduced a virgin once a week. The class he drew upon was the lowest. Most of his victims were factory-girls, and, such being the case, nobody thought much of it at a time when calamity had roused in all the worst qualities that may be wakened in the struggle for self-preservation. It was a case of the devil take the hindmost, and his Satanic Majesty did not overlook his chance.
For a few days these girls would be the paramours of their masters. When, finally, they saw themselves cast off in favor of a prettier face, they would for a while frequent cafés where they would meet the officers on leave and small fry of civilians,and not long after that they did business on the street with a government license and certificate showing that they were being inspected by the authorities in the interest of public health.
That was the usual career of one of these war victims. But the thing did not end there. The thousands who had grown rich on war contracts and food speculation began to tire of the very uninteresting sport of ruining factory-girls and shop-women. They reached out into those social classes in which refinement made a raid so much more delectable. To physical debauch had to be added moral and mental orgy. Taste had been stimulated to a degree where it demanded that social destruction should accompany lustful extravagance. And that only the woman of the better class could give. The gourmand became an epicure. Times favored him.
What proportions this state of affairs reached may be illustrated by the "personal" advertisements carried at one time by one of Vienna's foremost newspapers, theTagblatt. Throughout the week that paper would carry from forty to ninety inches, single column, of personal ads., each of them requesting a woman, seen here or there, to enter into correspondence with the advertiser for "strictly honorable" purposes. On Sundays the same paper would carry as much as two whole pages of that sort of advertising. Soon the time came when often as much as a quarter of these ads. would be inserted by women who disguised a heartrending appeal to some wretch in whatever manner they could.
Emperor Charles deserves the highest credit for finally putting his foot down on that practice. The "personals" in theTagblattbegan to irritate him, and one day he let it become known to the management of the publication that further insertion of that sort of matter would lead to the heavy hand of the censors being felt. That helped. After that theTagblattran only matrimonial advertising. Yet even that was not wholly innocuous. The daughter of a colonel was corrupted by means of it. I am glad to say that the old soldier took the law in his own hand. He looked up the man who had seduced the young woman and shot him dead in his tracks. The government had good sense enough to dispose of the case by having the colonel make a report.
To my own attention came, in Budapest, the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who had been sold by her own mother to a rich manufacturer. The woman had advertised in a Budapest newspaper that did business along the lines of the ViennaTagblatt. The girl knew nothing of it, of course. There was a sequel in court, and during the testimony the woman said that she had sold her daughter to the manufacturer in order to get the money she needed to keep herself and her other children. Josephus mentions in hisWars of the Jewshow a woman of Jerusalem killed, then cooked and ate, her own child, because the robbers had taken everything from her, and, rather than see the child starve, she killed it. He also mentions that the robbers left the house horror-struck. The war purveyor and food sharkdid not always have that much feeling left in them.
Poor little Margit! When my attention was drawn to her she was a waitress in a café in Budapest, and her patrons used to give her an extrafilleror two in order that she might not have to do on her own account what she had been obliged to suffer at the behest of her raven mother. As I heard the story, the manufacturer got off with a fine, and the mother of Margit was just then sorting rags in a cellar, with tuberculosis wasting her lungs.
Society at war is a most peculiar animal—it is anarchy without the safeguards of that anarchy which fires the mind of the idealist; for that system and its free love would make the buying of woman impossible.
But there were sorts of sexual looseness that were not quite so sordid, which at least had the excuse of having natural causes as their background. Rendered irresponsible by sexual desire and the monotony of a poverty-stricken existence, many of the younger women whose husbands were in the army started liaisons,Verhältnisse, as they are called in German, with such men as were available. It speaks well for the openness of mind of some husbands that they did not resent this. I happen to know of a case in which a man at the front charged a friend to visit his wife. After I learned of this I came to understand that progress, called civilization, is indeed a very odd thing. The Spartans when at war used to do the same thing, and it was the practice of commandersto send home young men of physical perfection in order that the women should beget well-developed children. The offspring was later known aspartheniæ—of the virgin born. But the laws of the Spartans favored an intelligent application of this principle, while in Central Europe no regulation of that sort could be attempted.
An effort was made by the several governments to check this tendency toward social dissolution. For the first time in many years the police raided hotels. Now and then offenders were heavily fined. But authorities which in the interest of public health had licensed certain women were prone to be open-minded to practices due to the war. It was realized that the times were such that latitude had to be given; in the end it was felt that just now it did not matter how children were born. The state began to assume what had formerly been the duty of the father and proceeded with more vigor than ever against the malpractice of physicians. One of them, convicted on the charge of abortion, was given a two-year sentence of penal servitude.
It cannot be said, however, that the woman who had made up her mind to remain a loyal wife or innocent was not given ample protection. The state was interested in the production of children, but had little patience with illicit sexual intercourse that did not result in this. There is the theory that the child whose father does not take some loving interest in the mother is not of as much value as that which has been born in the "wedlock" of love. With that in view,the government took what precaution there was possible. The profligate androuéwere given a great deal of attention, though little good came of this, since the times favored them entirely too much. But there is no doubt that the eyes of the law saw where they could see.