CHAPTER XIIHOW WE AMUSED OURSELVES

“Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacée,”

and the sentries of some Jäger regiment will catch the sound of thin voices floating across the night. They will be still arguing over the same old questions, those two foolish ghosts, those questions whose solution the rest of the world has long since decided to ignore.

“But look here now, honestly, surely Brooke is not too bad; listen to this ...” and the faint words of “Mamua” would be borne over last year’s leaves.

But the elder ghost would shake his head; and a thin reedy voice would pipe—

“No, it won’t do, old man, won’t do, only a whispering gallery.” And they would pass on, still arguing, still differing, and still, apparently, very good friends.

And the two German sentries would look at one another sympathetically.

“Kriegs-gefangeners, Fritz,” one would say, “captured in the great war. There were a lot of ’em here, and those two, you’ll always see them walkin’ up and down there talking the most awful rot, all about poetryand things. Poor fellows! probably a little wrong in the head, they were, a bit maddish you know; they look a bit that way.”

And it is not for me to deny it.

Inonly one province did Colonel Westcott, our genial factotum, place a voluntary check upon his own activities. His sphere, he decided, was confined within the elastic boundaries of education, moral conduct and Pan-Saxon philosophy. And he accepted these limitations with the quiet resignation of one who owns three-quarters of the globe, and deems the remainder to be a land of frost and snow. In other hands he laid the responsibilities of the sports and entertainments committees. And for this reason, perhaps, they were the two most productive bodies.

For the averageGefangener, however, games were hard to get. Germany is not athletic in the sense that we are. Militarism hasmade muscular development the supreme good of all outdoor exercises, and in consequence the authorities thought they had sufficiently catered for our physical propensities by the erection of a horizontal bar, and the largess of some iron weights. Well, that is hardly our idea of sport; and as a nation I do not think we shall ever show much enthusiasm for Swedish drill, P.T., trapezes, and the various devices of a gymnasium, that leave so little room for individuality. The allegiance to a green field and a leather ball, small or big as the season demands, will not be shaken. And at Mainz there were neither green fields nor leather balls.

The gravel square was the only open space we had, and it was uncommonly hard to fall on. There was one football in the camp, belonging to an orderly, that was from time to time the centre of an exhilarating display. But it was a dangerous pastime; every game resulted in at least three injuries, and a scraped elbow was no joke in a country

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devoid of medicine. Only the very daring played, and soon most of them were “crocked.”

For a month hockey enjoyed an ephemeral popularity, and a league was arranged, in which nearly every room entered a side. While they lasted those games were great fun, and they were capital exercise. But before very long all the sticks had been smashed, and all efforts to replace them were unavailing, and though a few individuals who had had sticks sent out from England were able to get an occasional game, for the great mass of us hockey ceased almost as soon as it had begun.

The only other game was tennis. As there is no rubber in Germany, this had to be delayed till the late summer, by which time balls and racquets had arrived from England. But what is one court among six hundred? Only a very limited section of the camp could play, and those whose abilities were slight did not feel themselves justified in engaging the court to the exclusion of their more able brethren. And thewhole business really amounted to this: that although a newcomer to the camp would see the square at nearly all moments of the day occupied by some game or other, for the averageGefangenerthe athletic world did not exist. His sole form of exercise was the grey constitutional round the square; and just before the closing of the gates at night, it was as if a living tube was being moved round within the wire. Five hundred odd officers were walking in couples round a square, with a circumference of four hundred yards; words cannot give an impression which can only be caught in terms of paint. For the populace billiards was the one athletic outlet.

And as the two chief resources of the average subaltern are athletics and the theatre, this suppression of one channel, diverted to the stage the entire enthusiasm of the camp. Of course each of us thinks his own little part of the world the best: our school, our company, our battalion, they seem to each individual one of us perfect

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and unique. It is only natural that we should think the P.O.W. Theatre, Mainz, the absolute Alhambra of theGefangenenlagers. However bad our shows had been we should have thought them supreme. But really, considering that every costume had to be improvised, every piece of scenery painted on flimsy paper, and that female attire was unpurchasable, I do not think that its shows could have been better staged. Certainly the scenic effects towards the end of our captivity were better than anything one would have seen at a provincial pantomime, though that is in itself hardly a recommendation.

Programmes began modestly enough in the days of soup and sauerkraut. We were hungry then and had little spare vitality. But a concert party was formed that called itself the “Pows,” and which gave performances every Saturday. There were many difficulties, the chief one being an entire lack of revue music. In order to get a song the aid of many had to be invoked. Acommittee of six would sit round a table trying to remember the words of “We’ve got a little Cottage” or “When Paderewski plays.” Each person remembered a stray line or phrase, and gradually like a jigsaw puzzle the fabric was completed. And then the music had to be written, and luckily the “Pows” possessed in Aubrey Dowdon a musical director who could write music as fast as he could write a letter. He scored the parts, and the musician strummed them out. The result was a most amusing vaudeville performance. There were some excellent voices, romantic and humorous; Aubrey Dowdon was himself no mean vocalist, and there was Milton Hayes.

Indeed it is hard not to make the account of those early performances a mere chronicle of Milton Hayes. He was the supreme humorist. All he had to do was to stand on the stage and smile, and the audience was happy. It was a wonderful smile, that unconscious innocent affair that only childhood is supposed to know. And to watchHayes perform was like watching a child play with bricks. It was as if he were making his jokes simply for his own pleasure, building up his toy palace of fun, and then turning to his audience to ask them how they liked it. A small stage and a small room give scope for a far deeper intimacy than is possible in the large proscenium of a London hall, where the artist can see before him only a dull blur of faces through the dusk. At Mainz Milton Hayes could see and, as it were, speak to each individual present, and before he had been on the stage five minutes one felt as if he were an old friend that one had known all one’s life. He caught the true spirit of intimacy, the kindredship with his audience, that is the whole secret of the music-hall profession.

During the first two months the programme did not change much. There would be always some slight variety in a new stunt by Hayes, a new tune by Dowdon, or a topical sketch. But the old numbers continually cropped up. “The Money Moon” and “When you’re a long way from Home”—these never left us. Still, they received a hearty welcome. The audience in anOffiziergefangenenlageris not too captious. It goes not to criticise but to be amused. And so for the first two months the “Pows” continued to entertain us every Saturday. After a while the stress of private composition caused Milton Hayes to drop out more or less, but the company went on with an undiminished vigour. And then suddenly a rumour went round the camp that a rival company was being formed, and that in a fortnight’s time the “Shivers” would start their continental tour.

The general good being the one standard by which to judge any collective innovation, the enterprise of the “Shivers” must be considered the greatest benefit the camp received. Competition roused the ambition of the “Pows.” Each party swore to outdo the other. There ensued a race of progressive excellence. Each performance was producedwith a more lavish outlay of the public funds; each time the curtain rose a deeper gasp paid homage to scenic artists; and the composers ceased to rely for their material on the work of other men. They began to write their own songs and their own music; the old ragtime and coon melodies disappeared, and instead we had original airs and topical numbers. And here the “Pows” had a great advantage, for their musical director, who in these pages shelters himself beneath the pseudonym of Aubrey Dowdon, had a gift for libretto that we soon expect to see on the playbills of the Alhambra, and his company finally beat all records with a musical operetta entitledThe Girl on the Stairs. All the songs were original, and it was marvellously staged. There were eastern grottos, and the gleam of white shoulders through the dusk. There was a long serenade to the Jehlum River girl, in which brown tanned slaves prostrated themselves before the half-naked form of a sylph arrayed in veils. There were humourand naughtiness, horseplay and burlesque. It was a triumph of impromptu and ingenuity, after which the activities of the “Shivers” fell woefully flat.

From the psychological standpoint the professional jealousy of those weeks of hectic rivalry provided food for much deliberation. The rivalry once definitely acknowledged, the camp did its best to foment contention. The manager of the “Shivers” would be told that, unless he was careful, he would be absolutely washed out by the “Pows,” and the same story was carried to Dowdon. There were few things more amusing than to sit behind either party during a rival performance. They would simulate great enthusiasm, but all the time they would be exchanging shy and nervous glances. There would be whispers of—

“Do you think it’s good?”

“Rather cheap that, isn’t it?”

“What a chestnut!”

And if the piece did make a hit, what colossal “wind-up,” what profound trepidation!And with what eager haste was the next show rehearsed. From the point of view of the public, this was entirely excellent. We got excellent shows, for there is no goad like jealousy.

But competition is a dangerous tool, and I often used to wonder where all this frenzy would end, and to what point it was leading. It had got beyond the well-defined limits of a good-humoured race. If it had been a case of nations, it is quite plain what the result would have been. Competition would have become contention, jealousy would have bred hatred, and there would have been a war, of which the real issue would have been, shall we say, the prop-box. But of course the companies themselves would not have fought; they had started the war, that would have been enough for them. And the ordinaryGefangener, who had quite unconsciously fanned this flame, by scratching at the sore place and aggravating the little itch, would find himself enrolled under one standard or the other, and involvedin a war of which he was the unwitting cause.

And he would be told—well, what would he be told? That he was fighting for a prop-box? That would never do. There might come a time when he would not consider a prop-box worth the surrender of his liberty. No, the manager would have to find some striking and impersonal cause, “not for passion, or for power.” A theme must be found fitting for high oratory, a framework constructed that would bear the weight of many sounding phrases. Let the poorGefangenerbelieve that he is fighting for the freedom of the English stage; let the old catchwords rip, “Art against Vulgarity,” “The Drama against the Vaudeville,” “Shakespeare against A Little Bit of Fluff.” And then....

But fortunately we were not nations armed with a pulpit and a Press, we were simply prisoners of war, and this competition produced some very delightful entertainment. But all the same, I still wonderwhere things would have ended, if we had stayed there much longer. We were riding for a smash. We had exhausted our limited resources; for one man cannot compose, stage and produce a new musical comedy every fortnight, and the rivalry of the two parties had developed at such an alarming pace that we were faced with the prospect of a return to “The Money Moon,” when Milton Hayes returned to the stage, and, in his own phrase, “let loose the light that set the vault of heaven on fire.”

For some weeks Milton Hayes had been living the retired life of an author, architect or other student. For he had found the effort of repeated performances in an unnatural atmosphere a very real strain on his nerves.

“No Sanatogen,” he said, “that’s what does it. I can’t act without Sanatogen. I used to try champagne once, but it left me like a rag afterwards. Sanatogen’s the stuff.”

As a traveller in this commodity he would have made quite a hit. He never wearied of singing its praises, and we used to ask him why he did not forward to the firm one of those credentials that begin, “Since using your admirable tonic....”

“Why don’t you try it, Milton?” we used to say. “It would be a jolly good advertisement. ‘Milton Hayes, the author of theGreen Eye, says....’ You’d have your name placarded all over the kingdom.”

But he would none of it.

“No,” he said, “that’s far too obvious. Any beginner tries that stunt, or men that are ‘has beens.’ I might invent a mixture. But no, not the other thing. It’s not the sort of publicity one wants.”

But whatever commercial advantage Sanatogen may have lacked as an advertising agent, its absence in Hayes’s life certainly affected his nerves. It is a compound that he found palatable only in milk, and even condensed milk was a rare commodity. The result was that Milton Hayes joined the bandof Wordsmiths in the Alcove, and spent his time working on his lyrics and on a musical comedy.

This programme satisfied him well enough for a couple of months. In France he had spent much of his time organising concert parties, and in his heart of hearts he was not sorry to be quit for a time of grease paints and the greenroom. But it could not last; and within a short time he was longing for fresh worlds to conquer. And, at the suggestion of a friend, he altered and abbreviated his musical comedy into a farcical libretto calculated to run for about a hundred minutes. This composition he laid in all good faith before the Entertainments Committee, suggesting that he should choose his cast from the pick of the “Pows” and the “Shivers,” and should himself produce the show. It was a simple proposal; but he had not calculated upon the extent to which professional rivalry had imprisoned the dramatic activities of the camp.

While all the world slept momentous thingshad happened. A scheme of regulations had been drawn up for the guidance of the managing directors, which in a way resembled the qualifications of League Football. To prevent poaching it had been decided that, once a performer had figured on the playbills of one company, he could not transfer his allegiance elsewhere. No assistance was to be given by one party to another; only the piano, the orchestra and the prop-box were common property. There was a sort of trade boycott afoot in which only neutral waters were free from tariff.

And then into this world of regulated commerce Milton Hayes entered like the bold bad buccaneer of Romance, demanding free ports and free transport, the very pirate of legality.

Well, what the committee’s opinion on this subject was, we can only conjecture. What it did is a matter of common knowledge. It absolutely refused to lend its support: why, we can but guess. Perhaps they were a little piqued at the infrequency of Hayes’s appearance on the vaudevillestage; perhaps they had advanced so far into the land of tabulated orders that they could see no safe withdrawal. Perhaps.... But it is unfair to impute motives to any one. One can merely state facts, and register one’s personal opinion that collectively humanity is rather stupid, and that if committees are allowed a free hand, they usually do manage to mess things up somehow; and that the conclusions at which they arrive do not at all represent the opinions of those individuals framing them.

I remember that some four and a half years ago I received a sufficiently severe beating from the School’s Games Committee, on the ground that I had played roughly in a house match; and that within a week six of the seven members of that committee had apologised to me in person for their assault. This, as a testimonial to my moral worth, was no doubt comforting; but as an alleviation for the pain of those fourteen strokes, it was an inadequate recompense. And the treatment of Milton was not very different.

The committee, which consisted of ten officers, refused him their support; but each individual member of the community considered it a grave injustice, and one and all they came up to Hayes with apologies to the tune of—

“Awfully sorry, old man, about this show of yours. I wish we could have helped you. I’d love to myself, only the committee won’t let me. Beastly nuisance I call it, a man isn’t his own master any longer. Awfully sorry, old man.”

By the time the tenth member had expressed a similar regret, Milton Hayes began to wonder whether the committee was a blind force, with a will independent of its component parts. He was naturally gratified to receive so many sympathetic condolences, but they did not materially assist him in his task of finding a company to produce his libretto. However, he beat the by-ways and hedges, and finally amassed a nondescript community, which for want of a better name he called the “Buckshees.”

The company numbered thirty-two, and was supported by voluntary contribution. The “Pows” and the “Shivers” had drawn within their folds the pick of the vocalists and humorists; two dramatic societies had gleaned after them. The remaining stubble was a sorry sight, and as an insignificant member of that distinguished caste, I must confess that I viewed the first mustering of the “Buckshees” with an eye of profound misgiving. All of them were strangers to one another; and though it is easy to talk of flowers “that blow unseen,” in a community such as a prison camp one is usually aware pretty early of those whom the Fates have endowed with talents. There had been little selection. Affairs had taken a course something like this. Hayes had been walking across the square when he had been accosted by a total stranger.

“I say, Hayes,” he would say, “you are getting up a show or something, aren’t you?”

“Yes; like a part in it?”

“Well, that’s what I really came up for.”

“Done any acting?”

“Oh, not much, you know, a few charades.”

“Well, what do you fancy?”

“Low comedy.”

“Right, then I’ll put you down for the drunken slaveboy. First rehearsal to-morrow at ten in the lecture hall; thanks so much. Cheerioh.”

And so the “Buckshees” were formed.

But the difficulties did not lie merely in the calibre of the artists. There was the staging, the scenery, the music. Hayes had written the songs, but who was to score the melodies? The versatile Dowdon had promised to overrule the committee and orchestrate the parts, but what of the piano? For the only two musicians had been collared by the “Pows” and the “Shivers.” There were, of course, numerous strummers, but there was no composer. And it was amusing to watch the way Hayes set to work.

First of all he would write the lyric, and beat out a rhythm. He would then go andrecite his composition to one Radcliffe, who could play the piano, but could not score a part; Radcliffe would get the drift of Hayes’s idea, and would in the course of hours compose a harmony of sorts, which he would play to his friend Gladstone, who could score a part but could not play a piano. Gladstone would jot down the notes; and behold a finished song, the result of a sort of Progressive Whist.

The troubles of staging were less difficult. The experts had, it is true, been already commandeered by the other societies. But a serviceable quartet of carpenters was discovered, and some decorative artists procured. All these arrangements Hayes left in charge of others. He knew the art of delegating responsibility, and he certainly had his hands full with his cast. For he relied for his success on vitality, innovations, and the quality which he always dubbed as “punch.” He did not ask for elaborate scenery. He knew he could not expect to equal effect ofThe Girl on the Stairs.He simply demanded an adequate setting. He would do the rest.

With a company endowed with mediocre ability Hayes did wonders. He decided to have a beauty chorus, and with curses and entreaties he beat sixteen ungainly males into a semblance of the charm and delicacy of an Empire revue. It suffered a great deal, that chorus; it was cursed, and excommunicated. It was made a target for all the unmentionable swears. If it had been composed of girls, it would have spent half its time in tears. But eventually it emerged, in all its nudity, a machine. There was a big joyboard, running well into the auditorium; and on this it affected all the airs and graces of the courtesan. It cajoled and pleaded; it undulated with emotion. It swayed to each breath of melody, and it was not too unpleasant a sight, for Hayes had wisely transported it to an Eastern

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island, to a harem, and the kindly veils of Ethiopian modesty. Through a mist of white calico it was impossible to discern the razored roughness of a cheek, and the unrazored blackness of an upper lip. The chorus was a triumph.

And the same tribute must be accorded to the leading ladies. Nature had provided them with pleasing features. Under Hayes’s tuition they learnt the art of the glad eye and the droop of the lower lip. To see those beauties was to be back again in the gay world of colour and revue. A breath of femininity quivered about the rough-cast masculinity of Mainz. So much so, indeed, that on the night of the first performance a distinguished field officer, who had drunk deeply not only of romance, was observed chasing round the corridor behind the flying feet of an inclement Venus, and murmuring between his gasps, “Don’t call me Major, call me Jim”; and even the most hardened misogynists were not unconscious of a thrill when “Leola,” the daughter of theHesperides, tripped down the joyboard, and sang with outspread, enticing arms, that beckoned to the audience—

“Come to Sonalia with me.”

The plot of the play was extravagantly simple. The curtain went up, revealing a harassed author searching among his papers for a hidden plot. The show was billed to start at two o’clock, but the play was lost, what should he do? And then the machinery of Romance began. An Arabic inscription gave the key. “Why should they not wish for the plot?” Faith would remove mountains, and Faith caused to emerge from the back of the stage a green-faced being, who called himself “The King of Wishland.”

From then onwards it was plain sailing: the barrier between the phenomenal and the real was torn aside, and we were in the world of fancy. And it was no surprise when this obliging monarch produced a strange device which he called a “thoughtoscope,” through which could be observedthe hurried arrival from New York of the Financier who was to find a plot. Through this mendacious lens we saw him cross from Halifax to London. He was in an aeroplane, he was over Holland, he was coming down the Rhine, he had landed in Mainz, and look, amid gigantic enthusiasm the gates of the theatre were flung open and Milton Hayes, disguised as Silas P. Hawkshaw, was observed charging across the square, waving a stick and a suitcase.

What followed was sheer joy. The company rose to the occasion. With perfect equanimity we received the news that, in order to find the plot, we should have to be transported to Wishland. In Silas P. Hawkshaw we placed a blind unquestioning trust, and before we knew where we were, the curtain was down, and the chorus was regaling the audience, while the scene-shifters did their noble work.

When next the curtain rose it revealed a tropical island splashed in sunshine. Through a vista of palms gleamed the azure stretchesof some ultimate shoreless sea. But no one would have willingly set sail. The island was too full of charm. There were singing girls and dancing girls, a sultan’s harem, and an American bar, and the story lost itself in a riot of intrigue. The plot abandoned all coherence. It was a fairy dream, in which a magic ring changed hands innumerable times, involving disastrous loves and deserted widows.

And through all this medley of incidents Hayes wandered, first in one garb, then in another. As a Scotsman he swallowed whisky, as a Welshman took two wives, as a padre wandered into a harem, and as “Leda was the mother of Helen of Troy, and all this was to him but as the sound of lyres and flutes.” It was for him a great triumph, and perhaps the most supreme moment was, when he proffered marriage to a much-married widow, and suggested that they should spend their holiday in a bungalow, in a duet of which the first verse is too good to be forgotten—

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There were four more verses, in the main topical, and the play ran its way through the complete gamut of upheavals, matrimonial and domestic. It was impossible to tell who was allied to whom. It was a complete and utter socialism, and even the great Plato himself would have been satisfied with that community of wives.

But it had to end; and, to carry the spirit of burlesque to its conclusion, we finished with a pantomime procession. The chorus came on, as choruses always do, in couples beating time with their heels. And in their hands they brandished banners on whichwere inscribed the names nearest to the northern heart, “Preston,” “Wigan,” “Johnnie Walker,” “Steve Bloomer.” Then the protagonists appeared, each with an appropriate tag, the lovers with a curtsey and a bow—

“And so through every kind of weatherWe two will always cling together.”

The gay lady still naughtily impenitent—

“Although I haven’t chanced to find a feller,I crave your pity; pity poor Finella.”

The evil genie of the piece, his brows wrinkled with gloom—

“You see my work I never shirk,For I’ve done all the dirty work.”

And, last of all, Milton Hayes with a wand, a simper and a skirt—

“Without my aid where would poor Jack have been?So please reward the little fairy queen.”

And after that was sung once again the opening chorus, and the curtain was rung down on the most enjoyable show of the P.O.W. Theatre, Mainz, which by a strangeand lucky coincidence also happened to be the last. For within a day or two the armistice was signed, and the companies and committees were scattered. It remains now for Milton Hayes to give once more to London audiences the pleasure that he gave to us. But because sentiment lies so near to the human heart, I think his association with the “Buckshees” will recall to Milton Hayes more pleasant memories than those of his other and perhaps more universal successes. At a time when life was grey and tedious, he provided us with interest, with employment and amusement. We can only hope that he enjoyed himself as much as we did.

Sincemy return, so many people have asked me whether prisoners of war had any idea of the turn affairs were taking during the autumn, that it would be as well to state here exactly what our sources of information were. There were only two papers printed in English, theAnti-Northcliffe Timesand theContinental Times. The former I never saw, and it cannot have had a very large circulation. But theContinental Times, which appeared three times a week, was to be found in every room in the camp. It was the most mendacious chronicle. It was printed at Berlin, and was published solely for British prisoners of war; a more foolish production can hardlybe imagined. Its views, political and military, changed with each day’s tidings, and its chief object was to impress on British prisoners the relative innocence of Germany and perfidy of the Entente. But it was so badly done that it can never have achieved its ends. It was far too violent, and so obviously partial. Its only interesting features were the reproductions from the English weeklies of articles by men like Ivor Brown and Bertrand Russell; once they even paid me the doubtful honour of a quotation, a tribute considerably enhanced by the appearance of the poem under the name of Siegfried Sassoon.

But no one took theContinental Timesseriously, and the paper that we relied on for our news was theFrankfurter Zeitung, the representative organ of the Rhine towns. There were two issues daily. The morning one contained the Alliancecommuniqués, and the evening one the Entente. Like all other German papers, it was under the strictest censorship of the military bureaucrats,but it maintained nevertheless an extraordinary impartiality. It rarely indulged in heroics, and except for a little “hot air” on March 22nd it kept its head remarkably well. It is, of course, the most moderate paper in the country, and theBerliner Tageblattis considerably more hectic. But theFrankfurter Zeitungwas, certainly during the period of my captivity, more restrained than any British daily publication. It can be most fittingly compared, in tone though not in politics, with our sixpenny weekly papers whose appeal is to the educated classes.

From this paper we could get a pretty fair idea of how things were going; but even without the paper we should have been prepared for the debacle of November. For we could see what the papers do not show—and that is the psychology of the people. For so long their hopes had been buoyed up by the expectations of immediate victories in the field; they had been told that the March offensive would most surely bringthem this peace; and on this belief had rested their entire faith. For this they had maintained a war that was crippling them. They had endured sufferings greater than those of either France or England. Their casualties had been colossal, the civilian population had been starved. But yet they had hung on, because they had been told that victory would bring them peace; and then Foch attacked; their expectations were overthrown; the Entente were still fresh and ready to fight. There was talk of unlimited resources, and Germany was faced with the prospect of a long and harassing war that could end only in exhaustion and reverse; and that the German people were not prepared to endure.

For there will always come a point at which the individual will refuse to have his interests sacrificed for a collective abstraction with which he has not identified himself. Mankind in the mass has neither mind nor memory, and can be swayed and blinded by a clever politician; it can be led to thebrink of folly without realising what road it follows. Collectively it is capable of injustice which in an individual it would never countenance; but sooner or later the collective emotion yields before the personal demand, and the individual asks himself, “Why am I doing this? Am I benefiting from it; and if I am not benefiting from it, who is?” For, of course, by even the most successful war the position of the individual is not improved. The indemnities and confiscations that the treaty brings never cover the expenses and privations previously entailed. And collective honour is perishable stuff. But as long as the war is successful, the politicians are able to persuade the people that they are actually gaining something from it. They can say, “We have got this island and that; here our frontier has been pushed forwards, and in return for that small concession, look, behold an indemnity.” And because mankind has neither mind nor memory it is prepared to forget the millions of poundsthat had to be spent first, and the quantity of blood that had to be spilt.

That is when the war is successful; but when defeat looms near, whatever the courtly ministers may urge, the individual will contrast in his own mind the ravages, that another two years of warfare will entail, with the possible emoluments that may lie at the end of them. He will say to himself, “It is reasonable to expect that, by fighting for another two years, we may eventually get better terms than we should get now, if we signed a peace. But to me personally, is the difference sufficient to warrant the sufferings of a protracted war?” And the answer, as often as not, is “No.” That is, as far as one can judge, the sort of argument that presented itself to the individual German in the weeks following Foch’s resumption of the attack. And in determining the forces that went to the framing of that “no,” the most important thing to realise is that Germany was actually starving.

That this is so, a certain portion of thePress has, during the last month, attempted to deny; and it is rumoured that the armies of occupation have found the German towns well stocked with food. If this last report is true, I do not profess to be able to explain it; but of one thing there can be no doubt, while we were prisoners in Mainz the German people there were not merely hungry, they were starving. It is true that meat was obtainable in restaurants, but only at a price so high as to be well beyond the means of even the moderately wealthy. A dinner, consisting of a plate of soup and a plate of meat and vegetables, would in places cost as much as twelve to fifteen marks, and the majority of men and women had to exist entirely on their rations. Of many of the necessaries of life it was impossible to get enough, especially in the case of butter and milk and cheese. Of meat there was very little, and flour could only be bought at an exorbitant price. The bread ration was small, and eggs were rarely obtainable. Potatoes alone were plentiful, and two yearsof such a diet had considerably lowered the nation’s vitality.

In times of sickness this weakness produced heavy fatalities, especially among the children. A German father even went to the lengths of offering an English officer a hundred marks for a shilling packet of chocolate to give to his son who was sick. And all the children born during the last two years are miserably weak and puny; some of them even having no nails on their toes and fingers.

“You are not a father, so you will not understand,” a German soldier said to me. “But it is a most terrible thing to watch, as I have watched during the last four years, a little boy growing weaker and paler month after month; and I can tell you that when I look at my little boy, all that I want is that this war should end, I do not care how.”

And it is only natural that the individual parent should feel like this, and I do not think that in England we quite realise all that Germany has suffered. I rememberone morning after the signing of the armistice that some small boys of about seven years old climbed up the outside of the citadel, and asked us for some food. We gave them a few biscuits; they were very hard and dry, but I have never seen such excitement and joy on a child’s face before. It was a most pathetic sight. A child of that age cannot feign an emotion, and those children were absolutely starving.

And the knowledge that this was so must have had a very saddening effect on the German soldier at the front. For one of the very few consolations that were granted to a British soldier in the line was the certainty that his wife and family were well and safe. But the German soldier must have been faced continually with the thought that, whatever sufferings he might himself endure, he could not protect those he loved from the hunger that was crushing them, and for him those long cold nights and lonely watches must have been unrelieved by any gleam of hope.

It is not natural that any nation should bear such hardships for an instant longer than they appeared absolutely needful, and when it became quite clear that the Entente had not only survived the March offensive, but had emerged from it with undiminished powers, the Germans began to agitate for an instant peace. At the beginning they were not aware of their weakness in the field, and when the first armistice note was sent the terms expected were very light.

“We shall probably have to evacuate France and Belgium,” they said, “and perhaps Italy and Palestine. That’s all the guarantee that will be required.”

And at this point, as far as we could gather, there was very little animosity against the Kaiser.

“Of course,” they said, “this sort of thing must not happen again. We shall have to tie him down a good deal. Ministers will have to be responsible to the Reichstag and not to him. That should ensure us.”

There was hardly any talk of a republic.

But when the Austrian and Bulgarian armies crumpled up, and Foch began to threaten invasion from every side, it was as if a sort of panic seized the Germans. They felt that they must have an armistice at any cost, and were terribly afraid it would not be granted them. They thought that the French would demand revenge for every indignity and injustice they had suffered in 1871; and when they realised that the Entente was not prepared to treat with the Kaiser, they clamoured for his abdication. It was an ignoble business. Even theFrankfurter Zeitungjoined in the tumult. There was a general terror which gave birth to the revolution.

The revolutionists arrived at Mainz on Friday, November 8th, and the first intimation we received of their presence was the arrival on morning parade of the German adjutant in a civilian suit. He had apparently spent the previous evening at Köln,where all officers had been advised either to leave the town as speedily as possible, or else change into mufti. This gallant officer did both, and for the first time since we were captured, we were dismissed without anappel.

During the whole of that day the camp was possessed of rumours. At any moment we were told the revolutionaries might present themselves before the gates; we should be in their hands; our whiskered sentries would have neither the power nor the inclination to protect us. Thoughts of Bolshevism worked disquietingly within our minds; we pictured a sanguinary contest between the military and socialist parties, and we were a little nervous lest the caprice of the moment should ally us with one or other of the warring parties. The town was clearly under the power of the Red Flag. German officers were not allowed in the streets in uniform, and it was a pleasant sight to see the General robing himself in a suit of mustard-coloured cloth beforeventuring beyond the gate. But I must own that personally I was considerably alarmed about my safety. However deep-rooted may be one’s objections to constitutions and their rulers, however much one may sympathise with the ἰδέα of rebellion, one does prefer to view these calamitous upheavals either from the safety of a hearthrug, or from a distance of two hundred yards.

And it seemed more than likely that, on the signing of the armistice, we should have to beat a very hasty retreat which would involve the dumping of the greater part of our kit; and we had received no information of what we might take with us. This was very disquieting. During the eight months of my confinement I had written some two-thirds of a novel, and had no wish to discover that manuscript was contraband. Tarrant viewed my troubles with complete composure.

“My dear Waugh,” he said, “as I’ve told you more than once before, that novel is quite unprintable, and if it is published,it will plunge both you and your publisher into disaster. You’d do much better to leave it here.”

But with this I could naturally not agree, and in a state of some perturbation carried my heart-searchings to the German adjutant. He received me most affectionately.

“Ah, Mr. Waugh,” he said, “things are not as serious as all that. It will be all right. If, of course, you had been exchanged, it would have been a different thing. But now you can take what you like, and I am sure that anything you write would be quite harmless.”

“Quite harmless”.... I thought of all the scholastic fury that had been split over Gordon Carruthers, I thought of Mr. Dames-Longworth who had called it “pernicious” stuff, of Canon Lyttelton who had spoken so much and to such little purpose, and who had given me so royal an advertisement. And I thought of that long stream of correspondents who had signed themselves “A mere schoolmaster,” and I thought of whatthey will say of my new book if it ever sees the light of day; and it seemed to me that of all the adjectives both of appreciation and abuse that may be attached to that sorry work, “harmless” is certainly the one it will never receive again.

During the remainder of the day rumours bred at an alarming pace. It was reported that the revolutionaries had taken charge of the camp, and that although the armistice was still unsigned, they had told us to make our own arrangements about repatriation. Already negotiations had been opened with a shipping firm that was to take us down the Rhine to the Dutch frontier. We had visions of England within a week.

As to the state of affairs in the town only conjecture was possible; but from the top windows of Block II, the slate roofs presented the same somnolent appearance, and it was hard to realise that beneath that placid landscape Democracy was lighting its flaming torch.

Most of our information came from themedical orderly. In pre-war days he had been a waiter at the Carlton, and he had not forgotten how to swear in English. He was one of the most complete terrorists.

“Europe is overrun with Bolshevism,” he said. “It is everywhere. You have it in England. Do you know that you have soldiers’ councils in England? You have. Did you know that the British Fleet sailed into Kiel Harbour flying the Red Flag? It did. Soon the whole world will be having revolutions. There will be no safety, none at all.”

He was most hectic, and on the day of the armistice his anger exceeded all bounds.

“Why do you give us terms like this?” he said. “We have got rid of our roundheads, our Kaiser, our Ludendorf. Why do you not get rid of yours? Ah, but Bolshevism will come, and do you know what your soldiers’ councils have done, they have wired to us not to sign the armistice. But the wire came too late. Still, it will be all right in time, your soldiers’ councils will see to that.”

Where the Germans got the idea that there were soldiers’ councils in England, I do not know. It certainly did not appear in theFrankfurter Zeitung. But an enormous number of Germans were under the impression that a corresponding state of affairs existed in England. Probably it was a point of the revolutionaries’ programme.

By November 11th the revolution, as far as Mainz was concerned, had more or less adjusted itself; and the people’s attention was so occupied by the new regime that the news of the armistice was not received with as much excitement as might have been expected. The terms were a great deal harder than they had hoped for, but they were so glad the war was over that this did not greatly trouble them. They had ceased to care for collective honour. The only man I met who was really conscious of the defeat was the professor who used to take French and German classes. Of course, all his life it had been his business to instil imperialisticpropaganda into the boys and girls under him, and no doubt he himself must have considerably absorbed the Pan-German doctrines, and he did feel acutely the ignominy of his country’s position.

“What hurts our pride more than anything else,” he said, “is the thought that we release prisoners instead of exchanging them. It shows us so clearly that we are beaten.”

But the people themselves were not at all worried about this. The only thing that troubled them was the doubt whether they would be able to get enough to eat after the surrender of so many wagons. The grippe was raging very fiercely among them, and the need for food was being very keenly felt. They had also hoped that one of the conditions of the armistice would have been the removal of the blockade.

“You have beaten us,” they said. “We cannot fight any more. Why must you continue the blockade? We have done everything you asked for; the Kaiser has gone; we have a new Government.”

For they have not yet realised the extent to which the previous deceit of their military rulers has discredited them in the eyes of Europe. They do not realise that every political movement they make has come to be regarded with suspicion.

With us the revolution produced fewer ludicrous situations than it did in some other places, and a most amusing story is told about the camp at Frankfurt. A few days after the signing of the armistice the senior British officer and his adjutant presented themselves before the German Commandant, with the request that they might be allowed out in the town on parole. There they found their late tyrant, sitting down in his shirt-sleeves, cutting the epaulettes off his tunic. On their arrival, however, he put on his greatcoat and made an attempt to recover his dignity.

“Yes, gentlemen,” he said, with his courtly foreign grace.

The senior British officer explained his errand. “As we’re no longer prisoners,”he said, “we may surely go out for walks?”

The German looked a little awkward.

“Well,” he said hesitatingly, “the fact is, I really am not the person to ask. You see, the soldiers’ council are in command. You must go and ask Herr Bomenheim, he is the representative.”

And besides being representative of the revolution, Herr Bomenheim was also the window cleaner; it is a strange world in which a colonel takes his orders from his batman.

At Mainz we were less democratic, as our affairs were run by a sergeant-major. But for all that we had no truck with the old regime, and the “Soldaten Raht” proved its independence by court-martialling the Prussian General. For that deed alone the prisoners of Mainz bear to the revolutionaries a debt of everlasting gratitude. And the escapade that led to this retribution provides a fitting example of all that is most aggressive and inhuman in the Berlin military caste.

At this time there was a very great deal of sickness in Mainz, and the hospitals were crowded both with civilians and British officers. It was also a time at which congestion of the railroads had delayed the arrival of our Red Cross parcels. The British authorities in the camp had in consequence collected as large a supply of food as possible, to be sent to the hospital and divided not only among our own invalids, but among those of the civilian population whose condition was really critical. This consignment was loaded on a handcart, and surrounded, by sentries, was to proceed into the town.

At the gates, however, it was met by the General, who, by the courtesy of the revolutionaries, was now allowed to wear his uniform. He immediately stopped the handcart and asked where it was going; on being informed of its destination he ordered that the food should be returned at once to the officers who had collected it, as he could in no wise countenance such a proceeding.It was pointed out to him that the condition of several officers in the hospital was most serious, and that meat stuffs were urgently required. But he would have none of it.

“My permission was not asked first,” he said, “and I cannot allow it. If you had come to me, it would have been different. But I cannot have you behaving as though you were under your own rule.”

And it is to the credit of the soldiers’ council that they took instant steps in the matter. The General was informed that he only occupied his position on tolerance and had no active authority whatsoever. And within two days he was removed from the camp, and is now, I believe, awaiting court-martial on a charge of “inhumanity and callousness.”

And all the while rumours about our release bred at an alarming rate. The German authorities had told us that it would be impossible for them to provide us with a train for at least a fortnight, but that if weliked we could make our own arrangements, and charter a steamer that would take us up the Rhine. These were days of furious conjecture. The complete technique of a pleasure trip was exhaustively discussed. How long did it take a steamer to coal? how long to get up steam? And then of how many knots an hour was it capable? Sums were worked out on the old methods of, Letxbe the rate of the steamer, andythe speed of the Rhine. We roughly gauged that it would take twenty-seven hours. But then, of course, the Dutch Government had to be considered. However delightful we might be as individual companions, we were not at all sure whether a neutral country would welcome the sudden arrival of 500 guests. Of course they had received the Kaiser, but that was not quite the same thing. There was an inconvenient margin of doubt.

It was a most disquieting time. Each hour was filled with conflicting rumours, and after a while one ceased to believe in anyof them. We assumed that on the arrival of the army of occupation we should be liberated, and it appeared as if we should have to wait till then.

On November 17th, however, we were given an official permit to go into the town, and from then onwards the burden of waiting was light.

Aftera confinement of eight months it was a wonderful thing to be able to walk through the streets unguarded. To be free again; no longer to be fenced round by barbed wire, to be shadowed by innumerable eyes; no longer to be under the rule of an arrogant Prussian. It was almost impossible to grasp it; that we were free, free. Every moment I expected to feel a heavy hand fall on my shoulder, and to hear a gruff voice bellow in my ear, “Es ist verboten, Herr Lieutenant.”

And this sense of unreality was increased by our reception outside the gates. Whether the children had been given a half-holiday in honour of their recent naval operations,I do not know, but it did seem as though the entire infantile population had assembled outside the citadel; and no sooner did an officer appear than he was surrounded by urchins of both sexes, up to the age of twelve, all yelling for biscuits and chocolate. It was an absurd and pitiable sight; and it was terrible to think that a people had so far lost their self-respect as to allow their children to beg for food from their enemies. It was often quite hard to get rid of them; they would hang on to an arm or to the end of a coat, and simply refuse to let go till actually forced.

Considering that the nation, of which it formed a part, had just sustained a defeat practically amounting to unconditional surrender, Mainz presented a spectacle of strange jubilation. I had expected to find an atmosphere of a more or less passive resignation, of disappointment only partially relieved by the cessation of hostilities; whatever the individual might feel, officialdom surely, we had thought, would assume a woeful countenance.But instead of that we found a town robed as for a carnival. Flags were hung from the windows of every house, the children in the streets waved penny ensigns, and every few minutes a lorry full of troops would clatter through, the guns decked with banners, the men shouting and singing. It was as though a victorious army were returning home, and after all it was only right that the men should receive a proper welcome. For over four years they had waged on many fronts a war that had conferred much honour on their arms. They had been at all times brave and resolute. They had fought to the very end. It was not their fault that Germany had been steeped in ruin.

The reception we received from the civil population was very friendly. At first it was only with the most extreme diffidence that we entered cafés and restaurants, but we soon saw that there was little or no animosity against us. In the streets civilians were always ready to show us the way,and displayed no resentment at our presence amongst them. In the cafés German soldiers even came up and spoke to us. There was such general delight at the war being over, that the Germans felt it impossible to harbour any ill-will against any save those whom they held directly responsible for their sufferings, and it was typical of their attitude that, when a German soldier introduced himself, his first remark was, “I am not a Prussian.”

The question of the army of occupation was very keenly discussed, and everywhere was to be found the same opinion, “We do not want the French.” It seemed as if that hereditary hate was as keen as ever; for the English and Americans they entertained very neutral emotions. But the French were too nearly neighbours; and it seems as if only the long passage of uneventful years could assuage this spirit of vindictiveness, that has been artificially fostered in the nursery and in the schoolroom.

But between us and the Germans, at anyrate in the Southern States, there is no reason why this hate should outlive the war. That is, of course, if the attitude of the people of Mainz can be taken as in any way representative of the other Rhine towns. For we could not have been more hospitably received. There are those, of course, who will say, “Ah, but they were pulling your leg, they were only trying to see what they could get out of you. You spent money in their cafés, that was what they wanted; and you gave them chocolate and soup, that’s what they were after.” I have not the slightest doubt that a great many Germans attached themselves to us solely for ulterior purposes. But as a whole I believe that the civilians in Mainz were quite honestly pleased to be able to do for us anything they could, as a sort of proof that they had altered their Government, that the war was over, and that they had no wish to nourish any ill-feeling against us. And those who see behind this display of friendship the calculated deceit of a political stunt, are, it seems tome, merely seeing their own reflections in the looking-glass of life.

The Germans themselves were immensely enthusiastic about the revolution; they saw in it a complete social panacea.

“Everything will be all right now,” one of them said to me. “We shall abolish our big standing army, and our big fleet, and so we shall be able to cut down our taxes. Before the war our lives were being crushed out of us, so that generals could retire on large pensions. But now every one will have to work. We shall be really democratic.”

“And,” he said, “we are not going to have our children overworked in the schools. We shall cut down the hours. Before, it was so hard to earn a living in Germany, that children had to work like that or they would have been left behind. Competition was ruining us. But now....”

There was there the blind optimism that is born by the glimmering of a hope however far withdrawn. The only real dreadthey had was that, when the troops returned, Bolshevism might break out.

“You see,” he went on, “at the front the troops were well fed. Of course they had no delicacies, but they had enough; while now they are returning to a country that is practically starving. They will have to share with us; we are no longer militarists, and we do not see why they should have the best of everything. It is possible that there will be trouble. But whatever we do, we shall not be like Russia. We have more common sense, we are better educated, we are not religious maniacs, we shall not be swayed by a few demagogues. We are too sane to go to such extremities.”

And it was quite clear that they had no intention of restoring the Kaiser. Having once decided to choose him as their scapegoat, they had done the business thoroughly. On him they laid the whole burden of their adversities.

“He led us into this, and he kept the truth from us. If we had known that itwould come to this, we would have made peace months ago. We should not have let our children die for want of food.”

But, as regards actual liberty, the revolution had merely substituted one tyranny for another, and that a military one. No doubt things will adjust themselves shortly, and at this time strong discipline was clearly essential. But the individual had very little freedom. The patrols of the Red Guard paraded the streets all day with loaded rifles; at eleven o’clock they entered and cleared the cafés. After that hour they arrested any one they found in the streets. Moreover, they had authority to raid private houses whenever they liked, a privilege of which they frequently availed themselves. Altogether this government of the people by the people did not seem to me so desirable an Utopia, though as a revolution it might be a triumph of order and moderation.

Our week of liberty in Mainz passed quickly and pleasantly. It was a coloured, leisured life, a continual drifting from onecafé to another; we played innumerable games of billiards, listened to the music in the Kaiserhof, sampled all the cinemas, and heardDer Troubadourat the theatre. Just off the main street was a small restaurant where we took all our meals. It was in rather an out-of-the-way spot, and as we were the only officers to discover it, we became during that week a sort of institution. The proprietor struck up quite a friendship with us, and whenever we came in, he used to produce from his cupboard a bottle of tomato sauce. It bore the name of Crosse & Blackwell, and he was very proud of his possession. To offer us a share in it was the greatest compliment he could pay.

Our last night there I shall never forget. We came in rather late for dinner, and by the time we had finished it was well after ten, but the proprietor insisted on us staying a little longer. He set us down at the same table as his friends and produced a vast quantity of wine. They were hospitablefolk, and two hours’ companionship over a bottle had removed all tendencies to reserve.

Opposite me was a German officer who had spent the greater part of his life in England; and his flow of words bore irrefutable testimony to the potency of Rhine wine.

“I have lived among you all my life,” he said; “I do not wish to fight against you. I have no quarrel with the English. It is only the French I hate, the bloody French. I would do anything I could to harm them. They hate us and we hate them,” and a man generally speaks the truth when he is drunk.

The end of the evening was less glorious. It was well after eleven before we managed to escape after countlessAufwiedersehens, and no sooner had we got outside the house than we walked straight into a patrol of the Red Guard, by whom we were arrested, and returned to the citadel under an armed escort.

Next morning we were marched down intoa train for Metz. All the German officers from the camp and a considerable number of civilians came to see us off. As I leant out of the window, to catch a last glimpse of the cathedral, it was hardly possible to realise that the war was over and that we were going home. It was the day to which we had looked forward for so long, the day of which we had dreamt so much during the cold and loneliness of the nights in France. It had been then immeasurably remote, a flickering uncertain gleam, too far away for any tangible hope. And the mind had fastened upon those nearer probabilities of leave,—a blighty, or a course behind the line. And now that day had really come, I could not grasp its significance. I was almost afraid to look forward, and my mind went back to the earlier days of our captivity, to the hunger and the depression, to the intolerable tedium and irritation. And yet, for all that, a wave of sentimentality partially obscured the sharpness of those memories. We had had somegood times there in the citadel; that grey monochrome had not been entirely unrelieved. There had been certain moments worth remembering; and I thought that, when the incidents of the past four years had settled down into their true perspective, I should be able to look back, not without a certain kindliness, towards that unnatural life, that strange world of substitute and sauerkraut.

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