VIEW OF KIEL CANAL FROM NEARMOST TURRET OF THE "HERCULES"
VIEW OF KIEL CANAL FROM NEARMOST TURRET OF THE "HERCULES"
But although the General Naval Staff, and doubtless most of the senior officers of the German navy, realized from the outset that the High Sea Fleet would certainly be hopelessly outmatched in a gunnery battle and that their only chance of victory would have to come through a reduction of the strength of the Grand Fleet in capital ships by mine or torpedo, the greatest efforts were made to prevent any such comprehension of the situation finding its way to the lower decks. The men were constantly assured that their fleet was quite capable of winning a decisive victory at any time that the necessity arose, and there is not doubt that they believed this implicitly—until the day after Jutland. Then they knew the truth, and they never recovered from the effects of it. That was where Jutland marked very much more of an epoch for the German navy than it did for the British. The latter, cheated out of a victory which was all but within its grasp, was more eager than ever to renew the fight at the first opportunity. The several very salutary lessons learned at a heavy cost—and not the least of these was a very wholesome respect for German gunnery—were not forgotten. Structural defects were corrected in completed ships and avoided in those building. Technical equipment, which had been found unequal to the occasion, was replaced. New systems were evolved where the old had proved wanting. Great as was the Grand Fleet increase in size from Jutland down to the end of the war, its increase of efficiency was even greater.
With the High Sea Fleet, though several notable units were added to its strength during the last two years of the war, in every other respect it deteriorated steadily from Jutland right down to the mutinies which were the forerunners of the great surrender. This was due, far more than to anything else, to the fact that the real hopelessness of opposing the Grand Fleet in a give-and-take fight began to sink home to the Germans from the moment the first opening salvoes of the latter smothered the helpless and disorganized units of the High Sea Fleet in that last half-hour before the shifting North Sea mists and the deepeningtwilight saved them from the annihilation they had invited in trying to destroy Beatty's battle-cruisers before Jellicoe arrived. What the most of their higher officers had always known, the men knew from that day on, and, cowed by that knowledge, were never willing to go into battle again. From what I gathered from a number of sources I have no hesitation in affirming that, up to Jutland, the men of the High Sea Fleet would have taken it out in the full knowledge that it was to meet the massed naval might of Britain, and, moreover, that they would have gone into action confidently and bravely, just as they did at Jutland. But it is equally clear that, after Jutland, any move which the men themselves knew was likely to bring them into action with the British battle fleet would instantly have precipitated the same kind of revolt as that which started at Kiel last November and culminated in the surrender. It was the increasing "jumpiness" of the men, causing them to suspect that every sally out of harbour might be preliminary to the action which they had been living in increasing dread of every day and night for the preceding two years and a half, which finally made it practically impossible for the Germans to get out into the Bight sufficient forces to protect even their mine-sweeping craft. As a consequence, it is by no means unlikely that the continuation ofthe war for another few months might well have found the German navy, U-boats and all, effectually immobilized in harbour behind ever-widening barriers of mines.
By long odds the most reasoned and illuminative discussion I heard of German naval policy, from first to last, was that of an officer who was Gunnery Lieutenant of theDeutschlandat Jutland, and whom I met through his having had charge of the arrangements of the visits of the airship party of the Allied Naval Commission to the various Zeppelin stations in the North Sea littoral. Of a prominent militarist family—he claimed that his father was a director of Krupps—and a great admirer of the Kaiser (whom I once heard him refer to as an "idealist who did all that he could to prevent the war"), he was extremely well informed on naval matters, both those of his own country and—so far as German information went—the Allies. Harbouring a very natural bitterness against the revolution, and especially against the mutinous sailors of the navy, he spoke the more freely because he felt that he had no future to look forward to in Germany, which (as he told me on a number of occasions) he intended to leave as soon as the way was open for him to go to South America or the Far East. Also, where he confined himself to statements of fact rather thanopinion or conjecture, he spoke truly. I have yet to find an instance in which he made an intentional endeavour to create a false impression.
It was in the course of our lengthy and somewhat tedious railway journey to the Zeppelin station at Nordholz that Korvettenkapitän C—— first alluded to his life in the High Sea Fleet. "I was the gunnery officer of theDeutschlandduring the first two years of the war," he volunteered as he joined me at the window of the corridor of our special car, from which I was trying to catch a glimpse of the suburban area of stagnant Bremerhaven; "but I transferred to the Zeppelin service as soon as I could after the battle of Horn Reef because I felt certain—from the depression of the men, which seemed to get worse rather than better as time went on—that there would never be another naval battle. Although we lost few ships (less than you did by a considerable margin, I think I am correct in saying), yet the terrible battering we received from only a part of the English fleet, and especially the way in which we were utterly smothered during the short period your main battle fleet was in action, convinced the men that they were very lucky to have got away at all, and seemed to make them determined never to take chances against such odds again. I knew that if we ever got them into action again, it wouldhave to be by tricking them—making them think they were going out for something else—and that is why I felt sure the day of our surface navy was over, and why I went into the Zeppelin service to get beyond contact with the terrible dry-rot that began eating at the hearts of the High Sea Fleet from the day they came home from the battle of Horn Reef. What has happened since then has proved my fears were well founded, for the men, becoming more and more suspicious every time preparations were made to go to sea, finally refused to go out at all. And that was the end."
Commander C—— (to give his equivalent British rank) volunteered a good deal more about Jutland on this occasion, as well as of the strategy in connection with those final plans which went awry through the failure of men, but it will be best, perhaps, to let this appear in its proper sequence in a connected account of what he told, in the course of the several days we were thrown together, of the German naval problems generally, and his own experiences and observations at Horn Reef in particular.
"We were greatly disappointed when England came into the war," he said, "but hardly dismayed. We had built all our ships on the theory that it was the English fleet they were to fight against, and we felt confident that we had plansthat had a good chance of ultimately proving successful. But those plans did not contemplate—either at the outset, or at any subsequent stage of the war down to the very end—a gunnery battle to a finish. The best proof of that fact is the way the guns were mounted in our capital ships, with four aft and only two forward. That meant that theirrôlewas to inflict what damage they could in swift attacks, and that they were expected to do their heaviest fighting while being chased back to harbour. Since the British fleet had something like a three-to-two advantage over us in modern capital ships, and about two-to-one in weight of broadside, I think you will agree that this was not only the best plan for us to follow, but practically the only one.
"I think it will hardly surprise you when I say that, up to the outbreak of the war, we knew a great deal more about your navy than you did about ours. To offset that—and of much greater importance—is the fact that your knowledge of our navy and its plans during the war was far better than ours of yours. You always seem to score in the end. But at the outset, as I have said, we were the better informed, and, among other things, we knew that we had better mines than you had, and (as I think was fully demonstrated during the first two years) we had a farbetter conception in advance of the possibilities of using them—both offensively and defensively—than you had. During the first two years and a half your mines turned out to be even worse than we had expected, and it is an actual fact that some of the more reckless of our U-boat commanders used to fish them up and tow them back to base to make punchbowls of. In the last twenty months you not only had two or three types of mine (one of them American, I think) that were better than anything we ever had, but you were also using them on a scale, and with an effectiveness, we had never dreamed of.
"We also thought we had a better torpedo than you had—that it would run farther, straighter, keep depth better, and do more damage when it struck. I still think we have something of the best of it on that score, though at no time was our superiority so great as we reckoned. Your torpedoes ran better than they detonated, and—especially in the first two years—a very large number of fair hits on all classes of our lighter craft were spoiled by 'duds.' This, I am sorry to say, was not reported nearly so frequently during the last year and a half.
"HERCULES," WITH THREE V-CLASS DESTROYERS IN KIEL HARBOR
"HERCULES," WITH THREE V-CLASS DESTROYERS IN KIEL HARBOR
"But it was on the torpedo that we counted to wear down the British margin of strength in capital ships to a point where the High Sea Fleetwould have a fair chance of success in opposing it. We expected that our submarines would take a large and steady toll of any warships you endeavoured to blockade us with, and that they would even make the risk of patrol greater than you would think it worth while to take. Although we made an encouraging beginning by sinking three cruisers, we were doomed to heavy disappointment over the U-boat as a destroyer of warships. We failed to reckon on the almost complete immunity the speed of destroyers, light cruisers, battle-cruisers, and even battleships would give them from submarine attack, and we never dreamed how terrible an enemy of the U-boat the destroyer—especially after the invention of the depth-charge—would develop into. As for the use of the submarine against merchant shipping, to our eternal regret we never saw what it could do until after we had tried it. If any German had had the imagination to have realized this in advance, so that we could have had a fleet of a hundred and fifty U-boats ready to launch on an unrestricted campaign against merchant shipping the day war was declared, I think you will not deny that England would have had to surrender within two months.
"We also made the torpedo a relatively more important feature of the armament of all of ourships—from destroyers to battleships—than you did. They were to be our "last ditch" defence in the event of our being drawn into a general fleet action—just such an action, in fact, as the battle of Horn Reef was. We knew all about your gunnery up to the outbreak of the war, and the fact that the big-gun target practices were only at moderate ranges—mostly under 16,000 metres—told us that you were not expecting to engage us at greater ranges. But all the time we were meeting with good success in shooting at ranges up to, and even a good deal over, 20,000 metres, and so we felt sure of having all the best of a fight at such ranges. We knew that our 11-inch guns would greatly out-range your 12-inch (perhaps you already know that even the 8.2-inch guns of theScharnhorstandGneisenauout-ranged the 12-inch guns of theInvincibleandIndefatigableat the Falkland battle), and we hoped they might even have the best of your 13.5's. We also knew that our ships were better built than yours to withstand the plunging fall of long-distance shots, and we felt sure that our explosive was more powerful than your lyddite. I am not sure that this proved to be the case, though there is no question that our hits generally did more harm than yours because more of them penetrated decks and armour.
"Feeling confident, then, of having the best of a long-range action, our plan was, as I have said, to use the torpedo as a 'last ditch' defence in case the English fleet tried to reduce the range to one at which it could be sure of securing a higher percentage of hits and thus making the greater weight of its broadside decisively felt. In such a contingency we planned to literally fill the sea with torpedoes, on the theory that enough of them must find their targets to damage the enemy fleet sufficiently to force it to open out the range again, and perhaps to cripple it to an extent that would open the way for us to win a decisive victory. Theoretically, this plan was quite sound, for it was based on the generally recognized fact that from three to five torpedoes—the number varying according to the range and the interval between the targets—launched one after the other at a line of shipscannotfail to hit at least one of them, providing, of course, that they all run properly.
"Well, almost the identical conditions under which we had planned and practised to run our torpedo barrage were reproduced at Horn Reef when the British battle fleet came into action near the end of the day, but it failed because the English Admiral anticipated it—probably because he knew in advance, as you always seemed to know everything we were doing or intended to do, whatto expect—by turning away while still at the extreme limit of effective torpedo range. Most of our spare torpedoes went for almost nothing, so far as damage to the enemy was concerned, in that 'barrage,' and it would have gone hard with us had there been enough daylight remaining for the English fleet to have continued the action. Its superior speed would have allowed it to make the range whatever its commander desired, and—even before half of the battleships of it were firing—we were absolutely crushed by sheer weight of metal, and it would not have been long before every one of our ships would have been incapable of replying. You will see, then, that, in the sense that it postponed the brunt of the attack of the English battle fleet attack until it was too late for it to be effective, our torpedo barrage undoubtedly saved the High Sea Fleet from complete destruction.
"Our lavish expenditure of torpedoes at that juncture, though, compelled us to forgo the great opportunity which was now presented to us to do your fleet heavy damage in a night action. Darkness, as you know, goes far to equalize the difference in numbers of opposing fleets, and makes an action very largely a series of disjointed duels between ship and ship. In these duels the odds are all in favour of the ship with the best system of recognition, the most powerful searchlights, andthe most effective searchlight control. We believed that we had much the best of you in all of these particulars, and (although it was our plan to avoid contact as far as possible on account of our shortage of torpedoes) such encounters as could not be avoided proved this to be true beyond any doubt. You seemed to have no star shells at all (so far as any of our ships reported), and our searchlights were not only more powerful than yours, but seemed also to be controlled in a way to bring them on to the target quicker. It may be that the fact that our special night-glasses were better than anything of the kind you had contributed to this result. In any case, in almost every clash in the darkness it was the German's guns which opened fire first. Practically every one of our surviving ships reported this to have been the case, but with those that were lost, of course, it is likely the English opened up first. Another way in which we scored decisively in this phase of the action was through solving the reply to your night recognition signal, or at least a part of it. One of our cruisers managed to bluff one of your destroyers into revealing this, and then passed it on to as many of our own ships as she could get in touch with. We only had the first two or three letters of the reply to your challenge, but the showing of even these is known to havebeen enough to make more than one of your destroyer commanders hesitate a few seconds in launching a torpedo, only to realize his mistake after he had been swept with a broadside from the secondary armament of a cruiser or battleship which left him in a sinking condition. It was an English destroyer that hesitated at torpedoing theDeutschlanduntil I almost blew it out of the water with my guns, that afterwards launched a torpedo, even while it was just about to go down, that finished thePommern, the flagship of my squadron."
Commander C——'s account of his personal observations at Jutland threw light on a number of points that the Allied public—and even those to whom the best information on the subject was available—were never able to make up their mind upon.
"The English people," he said, "to judge from what I read in your papers, always deceived themselves about two things in connection with the battle you call Jutland. One of them was that the High Sea Fleet came out with the purpose of offering battle to the English fleet, or at least endeavouring to cut off and destroy its battle-cruiser squadron. This is not the case. Quite to the contrary, indeed; it was the English fleet that went out to catch us. We had been planning for sometime a cruiser raid on the shipping between England and Norway—which was not so well protected then, or even for a year and a half more, as it was the last year—and the High Sea Fleet and Von Hipper's battle-cruisers were out to back up the raiding craft. As usual, your Intelligence Bureau learned of this plan, and the English fleet came out to spoil it. It was Von Hipper, not Beatty, who was surprised when the battle-cruisers sighted each other. Beatty's surprise came a few minutes later, when two of his ships were blown up almost before they had fired a shot. That seemed to vindicate, right then and there, our belief in our superior gunnery and the inferior construction of the English ships. Unfortunately, there was nothing quite so striking occurred after that to support that vindication. The other English battle-cruiser, and the several armoured cruisers, sunk were destroyed as a consequence of exposing themselves to overwhelming fire. It was the chance of finishing off all the English battle-cruisers before the battle fleet came to their rescue that tempted Von Scheer to follow Beatty north, and as a consequence he was all but drawn into the general action that it was his desire to avoid above anything else.
"The other thing that the English naval critics (although I think your Intelligence Bureau musthave had the real facts before very long) deceived themselves and the public about was in the matter of Zeppelin reconnaissance during, and previous to, the Horn Reef battle. They have continued to state from that day right down to the end of the war that it was the German airships which warned Von Scheer of the approach of Jellicoe, and so enabled the High Sea Fleet to escape. Perhaps the most conclusive evidence that wedid nothave airship reconnaissance was the fact that Von Scheer was not only drawn into action with Jellicoe, but that he even got into a position where he could not prevent the English ships from passing to the east of him—that is, between him and his bases. I will hardly need to tell you that neither of these things would have happened if we had had airships to keep us advised of the whereabouts of your battle fleet. It was our intention to have had Zeppelin scouts preceding us into the North Sea on this occasion—as we always have done when practicable—but the weather conditions were not favourable. Wedidhave Zeppelins out on the following day, and these, I have read, were sighted by the English. But if any were reported on the day of the battle, I can only say it was a mistake. It is very easy to mistake a small round cloud, moving with the wind, for a foreshortened Zeppelin, especially if you are expectingan airship to appear in that quarter of the sky."
Of the opening phases of the Jutland battle Commander C—— did not see a great deal personally. "We were steaming at a moderate speed," he said, "when Von Hipper's signal was received stating he was engaging enemy battle-cruisers and leading them south—that is, in the direction from which we were approaching. As there were a number of pre-dreadnoughts in the fleet, its speed—as long as it kept together—was limited to the speed of these. In knots we were doing perhaps sixteen when the first signal was received, and even after forming battle line this speed was not materially increased for some time. I understood the reason for this when I heard that the engine-room had been ordered to make no more smoke than was positively necessary. We had given much attention to regulating draught, and on this occasion it was only a few minutes before there was hardly more than a light grey cloud issuing from every funnel the whole length of the line. The idea, of course, was to prevent the English ships from finding out any sooner than could be helped that they were being led into an 'ambush.' As long as we did not increase speed it was easy to keep down the smoke, and I am sure that thefirst evidence the enemy had of the presence of the High Sea Fleet was when they saw our masts and funnels. But we saw them before that—we saw the two great towers of smoke that went high up into the sky when two of them blew up, and we saw the smoke from their funnels half an hour before their topmasts came above the horizon. At this time, although all of the ships of the High Sea Fleet were coal burners, they were making less smoke than the four oil-burning ships of theQueen Elizabethclass, which we sighted not long after the English battle-cruisers. As soon as we began to increase speed, of course, we made more smoke than they did.
"The four remaining English battle-cruisers turned north as soon as they sighted us, and I do not think the fire of the High Sea Fleet did them much harm. They drew away from us very rapidly, of course, so that our 'ambush' plan did not come to anything after all. A squadron of English light cruisers, which were leading the battle-cruisers when we first sighted them, almost fell into the trap, though, or, at any rate, their very brave (or very foolish) action in standing on until they were but little over 10,000 metres from the head of our line gave us the best kind of a chance to sink the lot of them. That we did notdo this was partly due to the fact that most of the ships of our line were still endeavouring to reach the English battle-cruisers with long-range fire, and partly (I must admit it, though my own guns were among those that failed to find their mark) to poor shooting. These light cruisers did not turn until we opened fire at something over 10,000 metres; but although all our squadron concentrated upon them during the hour and more before the great speed they put on took them out of range, none of them were sunk, and I am not even sure that any was badly hit.
"When the four ships of theQueen Elizabethclass came into action there was a while when they were receiving the concentrated fire of practically the whole High Sea Fleet, and possibly some of that of our battle-cruisers as well. Yet it did not appear that—beyond putting one of them (which we later learned was theWarspite) out of control for a while—we did them much damage. The weight of our fire seemed to affect theirs a good deal, though, and at this stage of the fight they did not score many hits upon those of our ships—it was upon the squadron ofKönigsthat they seemed trying to concentrate—that they gave their attention to. Later, when the effort to destroy several of the newly arrived squadron ofEnglish battle-cruisers and armoured cruisers drew a part of our fire, their heavy shells did much damage.
"The High Sea Fleet's line became considerably broken and extended in the course of the pursuit of the English battle-cruisers and theQueen Elizabeths, the swifterKönigssteaming out well in advance in an effort to destroy some of the English ships before their battle fleet came into action, and my own squadron dropping a good way astern. That was the reason that my ship neither gave nor received much punishment in the daylight action. It was our battle-cruisers and the more modern battleships of the High Sea Fleet—principally the latter—which, tricked by the bad visibility, suddenly found themselves well inside the range of the deployed battleships of the main English fleet. I can only say that I am thankful that I did not have to experience at first hand the example they received of what it meant to face the full fire of that fleet. The English shooting, which opened a little wild on account of the mists, soon steadied down, and I have heard officers of four or five of our ships say that it was becoming impossible to make reply with their guns when darkness broke off the action. I have already told you how our torpedo 'barrage'—in forcing the English fleet to sheer offuntil it was too late for decisive action—saved a large part, if not all, of our fleet from destruction. What would have happened in the event that the attack had been pressed, no one can say. It would all have depended upon the extent of the damage inflicted by our torpedoes. I can only say that—as it was a contingency we had prepared for by long practice—Jellicoe would only have been playing into our hands in taking his whole fleet inside effective torpedo range, and I have confidence enough in the plan to wish that he had tried it. It would have meant a shorter war whatever happened, and, what is more, anything would have been better for us than what did come to pass—two years of gradual paralysis of the German navy, with a disgraceful surrender at the end.
"As I have said, we were anxious to avoid a night action on account of our shortage of torpedoes, however much such an action would have been to our advantage had not our supply of these been so nearly exhausted. So we were a good deal relieved when it became apparent that the enemy were not making any special effort to get in touch with us again after darkness fell. As a consequence of this disinclination of both sides to seek an engagement, such clashes as did occur were the sequel to chance encounters in the dark, and in most cases they seem to have been brokenoff by the common desire of both parties. Some of your destroyers persisted in their attacks whenever they got in touch with one of our ships, but we usually made them pay a very heavy price for the damage inflicted.
"Von Scheer took the High Sea Fleet back to harbour by passing astern of the English battle fleet, which had continued on to the south. I think I am correct in saying that none of the capital ships of either fleet were in action with those of the other after dark. There were two or three brushes between cruisers and a good many between destroyers and various classes of heavier ships. In fact, our principal difficulties arose through running into several flotillas of destroyers which seemed to have straggled from the squadrons to which they had been attached. My squadron, with a division of cruisers, ran right through a flotilla of about a dozen large English destroyers, and it would be hard to say which had the worst of it. We lost thePommern(it would have been my ship, theDeutschland, had not the line been reversed a few minutes previously) and a cruiser, and had two other cruisers badly damaged, one from being rammed by a little fighting-cock of a destroyer which must have committed suicide in doing it. We sank two or three of the destroyers by gun-fire, and left two or threemore stopped and looking about to blow up. Two of them were seen to be in collision, and there was also a report that they were firing at each other in the mêlée, but that was not corroborated. This fight only lasted a few minutes, and we saw no more English ships of any kind on our way back to harbour.
"In the matter of the losses at Horn Reef, we have never had any doubt that those of the English were much heavier than ours, even on your own admissions. And since we inflicted those losses with a fleet of not much over half the size of yours, we have always felt justified in claiming the battle to have been a German victory. TheLützowwas our only really serious loss, though the other battle-cruisers—especially theDerfflingerandSeydlitz—were of little use for many months, so badly had they been battered by gun-fire. The battleship and cruisers sunk were out of date, and we lost only one modern light cruiser. We may have lost as many destroyers as you did, though yours would have footed up to a greater tonnage, as they average larger than ours. We made a great mistake in concealing the loss of theLützowfor several days, for, after that, the people never stopped thinking that there were other and greater losses not announced.
"But although the English losses must havebeen much greater than ours, I am not sure that they were enough greater to offset the loss ofmoralein the men of the German fleet. As I have said, I do not think—unless we had tricked them into it, as we tried so hard to do at the end—that we could ever again have got them to take their ships out in the full knowledge that they were in for a fight to a finish with the English battle fleet. It would have been better that they had all been lost fighting at Horn Reef than that they should have survived to bring upon themselves and their officers a disgrace the like of which has never been known in naval history."
The German Naval Armistice Commission, perhaps as a reaction from its belligerent attitude at the first conference at Kiel, manifested an increasing amenability to reason with every day that passed, as a consequence of which the work of the Allied Commission was pushed to a rapid completion. The search of the warships was completed in a couple of days, and the decision to limit the inspection of air stations to those west of Rügen reduced the visits of this character to three, all easily reached by destroyers. Of the town of Kiel, nothing was seen at close quarters, visits in that vicinity being limited to the dockyard, ships in the harbour, and the seaplane station of Holtenau, near the entrance to the canal.
Although the Allied ships under embargo hardly arrived at Kiel for inspection at the rate promised, there was little to indicate that the Germans were endeavouring to evade their promise of doing everything possible to facilitate the return of these to the Tyne at the earliest possible moment. TheCity of Leeds, a powerfully engined little packetwhich had been on the Hamburg-Harwich run before the war, furnished the only glaring instance of deliberate bad faith. The German Shipping Commission, declaring that her crew had ruined her engines and boilers by pouring tar into them when she was seized, claimed that she had been quite useless since that time, and disclaimed any responsibility for reconditioning her. On inspection by the Allied Shipping Commission, the statement that the engines had been damaged by anything but use and neglect was proved to be absolutely false. Why the Germans should have told so futile a lie was not fully explained, though as a possible reason it was suggested that some private party, desiring to keep the ship in his hands, had made a false report of her condition to the Shipping Commission.
The arrival and departure of Allied prisoners of war was one of the most interesting features of the week in Kiel. The most of these were British—picked up by one or another of the destroyers at this or that port touched at—but there was one large party of French, from a camp near Kiel, and several Belgians, Serbs, and Italians from heaven knows where. These were all made as comfortable as possible in theHercules, and dispatched to England in the next mail destroyer. Except for a man now and then who was sufferingfrom a neglected wound, they were in fairly good condition, a fact, however, which did not lessen their almost rapturous enjoyment of the heaping pannikins of "good greasy grub" (as one of them put it) that was theirs for the asking at any hour of the day they cared to slip up to the galley. Their delight in the band, in the ship's kinema, in "doubling round" for exercise in the morning, in anything and everything in the life in this their halfway station on the road home was a joy to watch.
Some of the British prisoners came from the same towns or counties as did men of the ship's company, and the exchange of reminiscences often went on far into the night. Passing across the flat between the ward-room and the commission-room late one evening, I heard a Lancastrian voice from a roll of blankets on the deck protesting to a bluejacket in the hammock above that "Jinny X——" of Wigan didn't have yellow hair when he (the owner of the voice) used to know her, and that, in fact, he'd always thought her rather a "shy 'un."
"Thot was afore she worked in a 'T.N.T.' fact'ry," replied the "hammock," with an intonation suggesting that he felt that was sufficient explanation of both changes.
A good deal of rivalry developed between thefour escorting destroyers in the matter of picking up prisoners, and to hear their officers discussing their "bags" or "hauls" when they foregathered at night in the ward-room of theHerculesreminded one of campers drifting in at the end of the day and yarning of the ducks they had shot and the fish they had caught. "If we could have waited another half-hour twenty more were coming with us," claimsVenetia. "But even with those," repliesVidette, "you would not have been anywhere near our sixty-nine." It was this latter "bag," indeed, which proved the record one of the "season," both in numbers and "quality," for it consisted entirely of non-commissioned officers from a camp near Hamburg.
H. M. S. "HERCULES" AND H. M. S "CONSTANCE" IN KIEL LOCKS
H. M. S. "HERCULES" AND H. M. S "CONSTANCE" IN KIEL LOCKS
The same cringing attempts at ingratiation and conciliation which had been so much in evidence in the attitude of the civil population toward parties from the Commission when they met in streets or stations seem also to have been consistently practised in the case of prisoners about to be repatriated. Although the German takes naturally and easily to this kind of thing, just as he did to hisschrecklichkeitand general brutalities, there was much in the way he went about making himself pleasant to returning prisoners that bore the marks of official inspiration. Several men who came to theHerculesbrought copies of circularletters in English which, after pointing out that they had invariably been treated with the greatest courtesy and consideration possible under the very trying circumstances Germany found herself in on account of the blockade, hoped that they would bear no ill will away with them, and that the years to come might bring them back to Germany under happier circumstances. The screeds really had much the tone of an apologetic country host's farewell to guests whom he has had to keep on short commons on account of being snowed in or a breakdown on the line.
One of the best of them was addressed to "English Gentlemen," and went on as follows:—
"You are about to leave the newest, and what we intend to make the freest, republic in the world. We very much regret that you saw so little of what aroused our pride in the former Germany—her arts, sciences, model cities, theatres, schools, industries, and social institutions, as well as the beauties of our scenery and the real soul of our people, akin in so many things to your own.
"But these things will remain a part of the new Germany. Once the barriers of artificial hatred and misunderstanding have fallen, we hope that you will learn to know, in happier times, these grander features of the land whose unwilling guests you have been. A barbed wire enclosureis not the proper place from which to survey or judge a great nation. There will be no barbed wire enclosure in the Germany to which you will return a few months hence. In the meantime we feel that we can count upon you, forgetting the unpleasanter features of your enforced sojourn with us, to exert your influence to reunite the bonds of friendship and commerce which were bringing our countries ever closer and closer together before their unfortunate severance by the sword of war, and upon the knitting up again of which the future of both so greatly depends.
"Three cheers for peace and good will to all mankind!"
Rather a delicate little touch, that "bonds of commerce" one!
Unfortunately, the language in which most of the prisoners described the state of mind which this kind of thing left them in is not quite suited for publication. It was one of the mildest of them—a London cockney who seemed never quite to have got back all the blood he lost when his thigh was ripped open with shrapnel at the assault on Thiepval—who said that "Jerry" never would get over being surprised when "a bloke called 'im a b——y blighter arter 'e'd tried to shove aersatzfag on you an' 'oped you w'udn't be bearin' 'im any 'ard feelin's in the years to come."
The attitude that German girls and women appear to have adopted toward Allied, and especially British, prisoners from the time the armistice went into force is not a pleasant thing to write of, and I confine myself to a single observation which an old sergeant of the "Contemptibles"—one of the sixty-nine that theVidettebrought from Hamburg—made on the subject. It was one of the most witheringly biting characterizations of a nation I have ever heard fall from the lips of any man. He had been telling me in a humorous sort of way of "raspberry leaf tea,"ersatzcoffee of various kinds, paper sheets, and various and sundry other substitutes, and then, switched off to the subject by a question regarding a statement a German officer had been heard to make about the relations of prisoners and women of the country, he spoke of the ways of the girls of Hamburg since the armistice.
"There is no doubt," he said, "that the young of both sexes have been getting more and more shameless in their morals ever since the beginning of the war, but it is only since we were practically set free by the armistice that the state of things has come home to prisoners. I don't think that there are very many British prisoners—certainly no man that I know personally—who have had anything to do with these young hussies; but thatis not the fault of the girls, for they have pestered us only less in our camp than upon the street. It's principally because we have a bit of money now, and sometimes a bit of food that isn'tersatz. I don't think I'm exaggerating very much, sir, when I say that fifty per cent. of the girls of the lower classes in Hamburg would sell themselves for a cake of toilet soap or a sixpenny packet of biscuits.Ersatzfood andersatzwomen! By God, sir, Germany's a country of substitutes and prostitutes, and it's glad I am to be seeing the last of it!"
I have yet to hear the Germany of today summed up more scathingly than that.
Speaking of the moral degeneracy of Germany, a poster found by a member of the Commission in a train by which he was travelling sheds an interesting light on the subject. It was addressed to the "Youth of Wilhelmshaven and Rüstringen" by the Council of Workmen and Soldiers, and the following is a rough translation.
"The German youth has been a witness of the great liberating act of the German Revolution. It has witnessed how the fetters of the oldrégimewere burst and Freedom made her entry into the stronghold of reaction, the Prussian military state. And it is the youth of today which will reap the fruits of this great change. It will oneday find as an accomplished fact all that for which the best of the people have sacrificed themselves.
"Therefore the most serious duties are laid upon the youth of today, to which it is becoming increasingly necessary to draw their attention. Complaints are unfortunately increasing of late that the youth is lapsing more and more into moral anarchy, which carries with it the most serious dangers for the future. Revolution does not mean disorder, but a new order. Remember that the whole future of Germany depends upon you; you are the trustees of the future. Be conscious of the great responsibility which rests today upon your young shoulders.... You must now learn to be equal to the task which awaits you. Obey your teachers and leaders. That is the first demand made upon all today.
"We expect, therefore, that you take this warning to heart, and that we may not be forced to take stronger measures against those among you who either cannot or will not submit!"
*****
There was a suggestion of power and strength in the name itself, and in setting out to inspect the Great Belt Forts there were few in the party who had not visions of uncovering the secrets of something very much in the nature of a Baltic Gibraltar or Heligoland. "Number One" or the "International"sub-commission turned out in full strength in anticipation of what had generally been regarded as the crowning, as it was the concluding, event of the visit. The very protestations of the Germans only whetted their interest the keener, for it was a precisely similar line to one they had taken in the matter of the visit to Tondern, where therehadbeen something worth seeing. "Look out for surprises in connection with the 'Great Belt' inspection," was the word, and every one in any way entitled to attach himself to what was to be the last party landed before the return of the Commission to England made arrangements to do so.
Brave with swords, bright with brass hats, aglitter with aiguillettes was the imposing line of French, British, Italian, American and Japanese officers who filed across from theHerculesto theVerdunan hour before dawn on the morning of December 16. An hour after darkness descended, wet with rain, bespattered with mud, ashiver with cold, those same officers straggled back to theHerculesagain. This is the order in which one of them summed up the day's observation: "The most notable event of the inspection," he said as he warmed his chilled frame before the ward-room fire, "was the sight of the first pig we have clapped eyes on in Germany; the next so was meeting aHun with enough of a sense of humour to take us three miles round by a muddy road and over ploughed fields and deep ditches to a point he could have reached by a mile of comparatively dry railway track; and the third was a drive through ten miles of Schleswig countryside that was beautiful beyond words, even in the pelting rain. The Great Belt Forts? Oh, yes, we saw them. They were five holes in the ground on top of one hill, four holes in the ground on the top of another fifteen miles away, and a dozen or so ancient guns dumped into the hold of a tug. But—let's talk about the pig."
There is not much that I can add to the succinct summary of the inspection of the forts of the "Baltic Gibraltar." What the sub-commission saw—or rather failed to see—there went a long way toward confirming the impression (which had been growing stronger ever since the arrival of theHerculesat Wilhelmshaven) that Germany had depended upon mines rather than guns for the defence of her coasts. The porker mentioned was the one I alluded to in an earlier chapter as just failing to win the officer sighting it the pool which was to go to the first man who saw a pig in Germany, because an Irish-American member of the party had testified that it had "died from hog cholera an hour before it had been killed." Thelovely stretch of farming country driven through showed many signs of its Danish character, and at several windows I even saw the red-and-white flag of the mother country discreetly displayed. This region, of course, falls well north of the line that is expected to form the new Danish boundary.