CHAPTER IXWHO PAYS?
Tothe traveller passing from the devastated regions of France to the hills and valleys of the Rhineland, there is something almost scandalous in the impression of wealth and solidity conveyed by the latter country. “These people have not suffered in the war at all,” said an English woman in Cologne to me indignantly; “look at the worldwide misery they have provoked; look at the state of France, and then see how lightly the Germans themselves have escaped: everything intact and their country untouched.”
But has Germany really escaped so lightly? Untouched her country may be; intact in one vital particular it certainly is not. Bricks and mortar can in time be replaced, shell holes can be filled in, and the plough pass again over the devastated fields. But at a date when the material destruction of France will be, let us hope, to a large extent repaired, Germany will still be paying for the sins of her rulers in the bodies of a generation a large proportion of which will be enfeebled and diseased. It is an insidious form of payment, lacking in obviousness or dramatic quality. But its ultimate thoroughness ought to satisfy even the moralists who demand that an entity called Germany should be punished, quite irrespective ofthe guilt or innocence of the actual person on whom the punishment falls.
A mile or more below the Hohenzollern bridge, where four kings of Prussia on their bronze horses survey a world fashioned now on other lines than those contemplated by Prussian arrogance, the Rhine flows along a ribbon of green strand which serves as a recreation ground for the children of the district. Here on a summer evening we sometimes walk and watch young Germany at play: children of all ages bathing, paddling, shouting, laughing, amusing themselves in a hundred different ways, while their parents sit in little groups, the women sewing or knitting, the men with their pipes.
Children abound in Germany. They swarm in droves in every direction. Surely, you say, these hunger stories must have been exaggerated! The rising generation does not appear to be much affected, judging by its numbers. To the casual observer there seems to be very little amiss with these Rhineland children. My first impression was that they compared favourably with many children in our own industrial centres. The German working-classes are self-respecting folk, and however slender their resources in food and clothing during the war, they made the most of them. Also it must be remembered the Rhineland is one of the richest provinces, agriculturally no less than commercially, in the Empire, and that the British Occupation had resulted in nine months of adequate feeding before I saw Cologne.
Nevertheless, after a time I found myself modifying my first favourable impression. The clothes of the poorest children are neat and tidy. But large numbers of thechildren, trim though their appearance, are pinched and pasty-faced. Under the short skirts bare legs are seen often thin and rickety. Little by little my attention was arrested by two facts: first, that these crowds of children were all apparently very much of an age; secondly, that the proportion of babies to children seemed extraordinarily small. Below the age of two and a half to three the juvenile population comes to an abrupt halt. After a time, intrigued during my walks by the relative absence of babies, I took to counting perambulators or babies in arms. The numbers were strikingly small. Motoring through Bonn one Sunday afternoon in 1919 when the family life of the town had turned out into the streets and gardens, I counted six babies in all. The explanation is simple. Statistics show that there has been a rise in the death rate of German children between two and six of over 49 per cent. during the years 1913-1917. Among school children from six to fifteen the death rate rose 55 per cent. in 1918 as compared with 1913. As for the older children, their apparent uniformity of age is largely due to arrested development. Many of them are much older than they seem. Of course there is no general rule. Some children look astonishingly well and plump if others are thin and pasty-faced.
Coming home one evening along the banks of the river, we passed two typical working-class families, each supplied with a perambulator. One held the fattest and rosiest baby imaginable. I admired Heinrich, and was told he was nine months old—born at the time of the Armistice. Whatever the prenatal conditions of the mother, the baby had not suffered. But the other child—a little girl of eighteen months—its memory haunts mestill. A tiny shrivelled face looked up at me under the bravery of a blue-and-white bonnet; tragic haunting eyes set in an emaciated body. My mind harked back, as I looked, to the devastated areas and to the cruel sufferings and losses of France. But here, on the frail body of this unhappy German child, war had set its seal as unmistakably as among the crater holes and shattered buildings of the line. Conqueror and conquered we looked at each other, till I the conqueror could look no more. Do any robust spirits still survive, I wonder, who take the view that an occasional war is a good thing—that it freshens every one up and makes for briskness and efficiency? Is it possible, after all we have endured and are still enduring, that large numbers of people in a mood of helpless fatalism are already talking about “the next war”; while many of them are actively encouraging policies and popular sentiments, the logical outcome of which is a future conflict even more ghastly than the last one?
Meanwhile, the martyred child life of Europe cries to heaven against this theory. The sufferings of the Central Empires in this respect have been heaviest. “Tu l’as voulu, Georges Dandin.” Germany, in pulling down the pillars of Europe, has involved all this for her own people. But why, one asks, should the heaviest toll be paid by those who have least measure of responsibility? Why should the Junkers and horrid old gentlemen covered with decorations, who made the war, be living comfortably on their estates while the children of the working-classes have perished? It is the natural instinct of every decent person to shield a child from suffering, and as I watch the boys and girls playing on the banks of the Rhine, the whole question of the war takes on an aspect from whichevery vestige of glamour and chivalry and romance has vanished. These merry children at their games: it is on them that the hand of Britain’s sea-power, however unwittingly, has rested in its heaviest form. The British people would repudiate with anger any idea of making war on children. But war has a horrible vitality of its own and goes its own way, moulding men more than it is moulded by them. These things follow inexorably from the very character of modern warfare, which is no more a struggle between armies, but between nations. Noncombatants have ceased to exist, and those who make wars must reckon on babies as cannon fodder.
So long as there are wars, the weapon of the blockade is inevitable. We were fighting for our lives and had no choice but to use it. The German submarine campaign was directed to the starvation of England, and bitterly though they complain of our blockade, their own minds were set on identical ends so far as we were concerned. But blockade means infant mortality on an appalling scale, and if statesmen and militarists are indifferent to such things, it is to be hoped the democracies of the world will view matters differently. So far as Germany is concerned it is through her children she is hit.
The Occupied Areas have suffered the least of any in Germany. Yet even in this relatively favoured land the state of affairs is bad enough. In Bonn, for some reason, things seem to have been worse than in Cologne. I shall never forget the feeling of utter helplessness with which I saw a group of rickety-looking Bonn children staring hungrily into the windows of a chocolate shop. We took them in and gave them sweets; there were no cakes or buns to be had, and bread is rationed. Poor children,they gathered round us in a state of frantic excitement when we produced slabs of chocolate. The fatuity of our own action was miserably apparent. For these children were only typical of hundreds of thousands of cases all over Europe, and even so their circumstances were far better than what obtains in many other countries. Children, of course, cannot grow up and be healthy without milk, and milk is unobtainable in the towns. The municipality doles out a limited supply to invalids, nursing mothers, and babies, but children above a certain age never see fresh milk, and tinned milk is too expensive a luxury to figure in the daily dietary of the working-classes. Most German children have nothing but “ersatz” coffee to drink in its unqualified nastiness. The distribution of food on fair lines has proved a great failure in Germany, and the prolonged malnourishment of the children is likely to have consequences of the gravest character.
A shattered house, a ruined village tell their own very obvious tale. Physical deterioration is a subtle thing far less easy to recognize or to estimate. It is only little by little that one realises the state of affairs produced by the blockade and the degree to which the morale of the whole nation has been undermined by starvation. It is true that the Germans cling desperately to what sorry comfort they can derive from the theory that their armies in the field were never defeated—that they were brought down at the last by hunger. They still assure you their armies were magnificent—never were there such soldiers. But towards the end rations failed, and morale broke through stories of starvation at home. “We had not plenty of bully beef like you,” said a German soldier to us; “you did not get letters saying your wife and children hadnothing to eat. We could have gone on fighting if we had had food.” He spoke with that curious lack of resentment which is a constant puzzle among these people. Consistent and growing hunger spread over a term of years is not a pleasant experience. Germany, unlike France, has been spared the horrors of the invader on her soil. But no mistake could be greater than to imagine that the war she provoked has proved a frolic for her, while all the rest of the world suffered.
A Report by Professor Starling and two British colleagues, on “Food and Agricultural Conditions in Germany,” gives the results of an official inquiry made by the British Government as to food and health questions in the spring of 1919. The Report shows an increased number of deaths among the civilian population, from 1915 to 1918, of more than three-quarters of a million persons as compared with normal pre-war estimates. In plain language, three-quarters of a million people have died from starvation or the consequences of underfeeding. In the last year of the war the civilian death rate was up 37 per cent. The infant and child mortality figures quoted above are taken from this Report. To the number of deaths must be added the very much larger proportion of children and adults who survive with constitutions permanently impaired. Discoursing learnedly of the number of calories required to keep a normal man in normal health, Professor Starling shows that the Germans were living on just half the necessary amount. There were great inequalities between town and country, owing to the reluctance of the country districts to surrender the food they produced. The urban populations, of course, suffered most.
The three British investigators give a sorry account of the children they examined in the schools, hospitals, public kitchens. Some people may say that the fewer German babies in the world the better. I feel certain, however, that no theoretical holder of that view would act upon it when brought face to face with some of these hollow-eyed children you see in the streets. Professor Starling and his colleagues visited Berlin and Upper Silesia, as well as the Occupied Territories. Everywhere they found the same condition of mental and moral prostration, of apathy, and lowered vitality. Disease has flourished, of course, in the wake of starvation. The statistics of consumption show an alarming increase in the percentage of people attacked. Enfeebled bodies, young and old, cannot resist the inroads of infectious complaints. Matters grow steadily worse as the eastern frontiers are approached. Beyond, in Poland and Russia, a state of affairs exists about which most people, happily for themselves, have not sufficient imagination to form a clear picture.
German conditions have not sunk to levels of misery so profound as those which exist elsewhere, but they are bad enough to afford a useful standard as to the situation in Austria, Russia, and other countries. That luxury and great extravagance exist side by side with dire want and starvation is a feature of the fatal coil which is throttling the economic life of Europe. Thoughtless travellers are often misled by a superficial appearance of prosperity in the main streets of big towns. Newspaper correspondents seek from time to time to decry the existing misery by giving accounts of the gay life in some cities and the excellent food obtainable at a price in largerestaurants. The fact that food of such a kind can be had does not prove the unreality of starvation. All that it proves is a complete breakdown in rationing, and failures in distribution operating most unfairly in favour of the rich. The good dinner paid for at a fancy price is only a link in the chain. At the other end are families whose destitution is the greater because the inefficiency of control has made the serving of such a dinner possible.
When the history of the war comes to be written, the question of food production and distribution in Germany will prove a suggestive no less than a tragic page. The German machine, admirable for carrying out a carefully devised military policy, was useless for meeting unforeseen contingencies which call for public spirit rather than for regulation. The failure to grapple with the food question was complete. German officialism seems to have collapsed helplessly before the problem of distribution and rationing. Though fresh milk is unobtainable in Cologne to-day—except the special supplies rationed by the municipality—it can be had in the country ten miles out. Considerable efforts were made during the war to provide a limited amount of milk for children and nursing mothers. But with better distribution the supplies available might have gone much further. The Government of a country cannot have it both ways, as the Prussian autocrats found to their cost. It cannot at one and the same time exact and obtain docile obedience to a machine and simultaneously develop that free spirit of public co-operation which was the salvation of England during the war. In our own country public opinion rose to the occasion with a will. All classes worked together to make rationing a success, and the brilliant improvisationsof the Ministry of Food carried the nation over a crisis of unparalleled magnitude in a manner highly creditable to every one concerned.
Let us admit at once that our food problem did not approach that of the Germans in difficulty. For one thing, the problem of distribution was largely solved for us by the fact that we relied mainly on imported supplies on which the Food authorities could lay their hands at the ports. In Germany, on the contrary, 85 per cent. of the food was produced within her own borders. Self-producers firmly determined to be self-consumers are not easy to deal with. Then again, though there was shortage and inconvenience, we were never really hungry. Greedy and selfish people exist among all classes and nations, and we had our share of both. But making the largest allowance for the greater difficulties of the Germans, the moral is, I think, striking as regards the spirit which a free people can show in a time of stress as against the dragooned temper of a military nation. Military rules could not deal with the food question. In a matter which necessarily was independent of sabre-rattling, no pressure of an independent public opinion seems to have filled the gap.
The struggle between town and country to get possession of the food supplies was severe. Every German is full of complaints about the selfishness of the country people. Not only did they keep enough food for themselves—which, after all, was natural—but they lived in plenty while the towns starved. It may be said broadly that there was no hunger or any particular suffering among the people on the land. Among the industrial classes, estimated at from twenty-eight to thirty millionsof the population, the suffering on the other hand was severe. But even to this rule there were many exceptions. Wealth, always a weapon of dominant value, is of supreme importance when hunger is abroad, and this weapon was used mercilessly by the prosperous classes. The working-classes who were earning large wages were in many cases able to pay for additional food; the people who bit the dust were primarily the minor professional and official classes.
Among the words added to the German vocabulary by the war is that of Schleichhandel—illicit trading. Schleichhandel permeated the whole national life. The Schleichhändlers—the little brothers of the Schiebers or profiteers—were rampant. The Schiebers and other wealthy families had Schleichhändlers in their pay whose business it was to find them food. From highest to lowest the same spirit obtained. All accounts agree as to the extraordinarily demoralising consequences of illicit trading on the morale of the race. Professor Starling states that, had the existing food supplies been distributed on a fair and equitable basis, there would have been enough to go round, and the effects of the blockade might to a large extent have been countered. If the attempt was made, it failed lamentably. The terrible winter of 1916-1917, known as the “swede winter”—owing to the failure of potatoes—will never be forgotten by the present generation of Germans.
Matters have improved somewhat during the year 1919-1920. But the prices of food and necessaries of life are still so high that, despite the considerable rise in wages, many working-people cannot afford to pay for adequate nourishment. The present food shortage is still greatand, owing to the absence of feeding stuffs and manures, stock and land have both deteriorated. Supplies remain, therefore, at a level far below that of pre-war production, a circumstance aggravated by the world shortage and the financial chaos of the country.
Three special consequences have resulted from this state of affairs. There has been, in the first place, an extraordinary embitterment of feeling between town and country; the urban classes bear the agriculturists a deep grudge for the part they played in the war and the prosperity they acquired by exploiting their neighbours.
Secondly, there has been a great intensification of class hatred as between rich and poor. The ordinary German artisan or shopkeeper speaks with intense bitterness of the upper classes. They were selfish, they were hard, they were greedy, they did nothing for the poor, they lived in comfort while others starved. The well-to-do classes apparently were shameless at grabbing at all they could get. The average German does not believe any rich person could or would act otherwise. Talking to Germans about our respective war shortages, I have mentioned more than once that I had various friends in England who, having farms and producing food, kept their own households on the rationed allowance and sent the rest to market. The look of absolute incredulity on their faces made me realise they thought I was pitching a fine but wholly preposterous tale to the credit of my own country. It was obvious they did not believe a word I said. The behaviour of the German upper classes in this time of testing has had, and is likely to have, very considerable reactions on the political situation. That the Junkers and militarists have brought this particular form of discrediton themselves is all to the good. It will tell heavily against such doubtful chances as exist of their achieving even a measure of political rehabilitation.
An English person brought in contact with these melancholy facts can only reflect with legitimate pride on the different spirit shown in our own country. No aristocracy in Europe has come through the war with credit so high as that of the British upper classes. From the throne downwards, men and women alike, they pulled their weight in the boat as good citizens, bore their full share of death and suffering, and contributed an adequate quota to the united effort of the nation. I have found no evidence in Germany of that mutual goodwill between classes which was a hopeful and encouraging feature in our own land. German life in this, as in many other respects, has to be reconstituted from the foundations upwards.
The third outstanding social reaction of the war is the degree to which ordinary standards of honesty and fair dealing have broken down between man and man. The food shortage, and the cheating to which it led, appears to have entered largely into the matter. Thoughtful Germans deplore the moral debacle which has overtaken the country. Profiteering has been quite shameless. The “Schiebers” have exploited a disastrous economic situation, and many large fortunes were made during the war. The strange paradox of extremes of wealth and poverty goes on side by side. Even the official classes have shown themselves on occasions as selfish as the landowners and the profiteers, and no less unscrupulous in exploiting the advantages of their position. So late as August 1920 ugly charges were brought by the Socialists against the Mayor of Cologne and other City Fathers with reference to themilk and butter supply of the town. The facts which came to light proved that there had been, at the very lowest, culpable slackness in administration and gross favouritism in the distribution of available supplies. City councillors had milk while sick children had none. The anger created by these revelations is easily understood.
While corruption permeates the upper and middle levels, robbery and crime are widespread among the working-classes. Thieving has become a normal quantity in daily life; crimes of all kinds are common. Official figures were published in Cologne during July 1920, showing the large increase in criminality throughout the district as compared with the previous year. Serious crimes had increased by 45 per cent., housebreaking 44 per cent., robberies in shops, warehouses, etc., 95 per cent., minor robberies 85 per cent. Every man’s hand is against his neighbour; suspicion and fear poison the whole spirit of communal life. Hunger, and the general sense of demoralisation born of defeat and downfall, are responsible in the main for the increase in petty thefts. Railway wagons and warehouses containing food are robbed systematically. War is not a good school for enforcing the catechismal injunction about keeping your hands from picking and stealing. An invading army takes what it wants where it can find it, and the habit once acquired is not easily lost.
Every class of society in Germany to-day feels that, bad as things are, much worse probably has yet to come. A sentiment akin to despair is widespread. The business community, confronted with an economic situation quite hopeless in its outlook, give way in many cases to helpless fatalism about the future. Restraints are thrown off, anddespair expresses itself frequently in wild extravagance. With the sword of an indefinite indemnity hanging over them, wealthy Germans feel that a spell of riotous living in which their capital disappears is preferable to handing over the latter to their enemies. The working-people, confronted not only with food shortage, but with the abnormal cost of clothing and other necessaries, grow more and more restless. All this is a dangerous temper, not only hostile to economic and social recovery, but a premium on revolution. If Allied policy is directed to creating this temper, then it must be congratulated on a success not always conspicuous as regards its efforts in other fields. The policy pursued, however, has its dangers. A hungry country, balancing the possible advantages of revolution, can pay no indemnity nor make reparation for damage done. One or two axioms in this matter are self-evident. If Germany is to pay her indemnity, she must work; she cannot work unless food and raw materials are forthcoming in adequate quantities; with her finances in ruins she cannot begin to reorganise them unless told what definite charges she has to meet; if she is to carry out her obligations, she must have a stable government which commands confidence at home and is treated with some consideration abroad. It is quite easy to pursue a policy which will make the fulfilment of all or any of these conditions impossible. But how far a deepening of the present confusion will serve the ends of the Allies, let alone promote the cause of peace, is a mark of interrogation hung in menacing fashion to-day over the welter of Europe.