Colours of war

Preface

THIS book is the material of a picture, not a picture. When watched from far, war appears as a quarrel, a few battles, and some manifestations of human nature. It is easily grasped and painted. Books on war written at a distance have unity.

Seen from very near, the outlines get rough ; details expand, spoiling the great features ; and the colours dissolve into blotches. A picture might best represent what happens in war; colours in confusion on a palette best convey what is seen.

Some of the matter here appeared in the London Westminster Gazette and the London Fortnightly Review; some in American journals ; but the book is not a reprint of articles.

Contents

Chapter p AGE

I. Germany 1

II. Lost Russians 26

Chapter I Germany

I AST memories seldom match first memj ories. On 7th August, a week after Germany went to war, I reached Holland from Berlin. At a station near the frontier were the station-master, a sentry, and a boy. Soldiers in uniform, reservists still in civil dress, and policemen had swarmed in the stations to the east. The boy, who was pale and dirty as few Prussians are, wore a helmet and he swung a toy sword far too long. He watched, with sleepy eyes; and he sang, provocatively, as if he knew who was in the train, the "Watch on the Rhine," Fest steht und treul Fourteen years before, I entered Germany by another frontier. School children, welcoming at the station a Hohenzollern prince, sang the "Watch on the Rhine." The children were small; half of them were girls; and the warlike music

seemed incongruous. After that I never heard

l children singing war-songs. Now, even with battles and sieges almost within hearing, there was something incongruous in the boy, his martial squeak, and the sword as long as himself.

Some people were thrown out of Prussia. We went with songs. The platform at Hanover was occupied by soldiers of the reserve, tired and dusty men, who might have walked all night. In came the train with the missions of England and Belgium. The reservists demonstrated with the "Watch on the Rhine"; and some menaced. After that there was singing all the way. Soldiers sang out of passing trains. Reservists, laden with parcels, sang as they filed into the stations; and children joined in. At Wuntsdorf, drawn up as soldiers, Red Cross nurses waved flags, and welcomed us, waiting for our songs. The English enemies, and the Belgians, stared. A conductor got out of the train; a whisper went round; and the nurses began to sing. They sang " Deutschland, Deutschland iiber Alles" to the hymn music of Haydn; when they reached the end "Flourish, German Fatherland!" they began again; they sang three times, mechanically in soldier fashion; and in the same soldier fashion they sang the "Watch on the Rhine." The nurses kept order; none threatened; but their faces were spiteful and pained; and as the train moved they waved us ironically away. When we stopped in the night, the silence was broken by singing in the distance; by disciplined shouts that the Watch on the Rhine stood fast and true; and that Germany is over everything on earth.

This singing at night was the first thing that gave colour to the war. Things had gone too fast for colouring. Before Wednesday the 29th July the crisis was not understood. After the mobilisation in four military districts of Russia, clear-headed men expected war; but it needed news of frontier skirmishes and air raids, published before the result of the Ultimatum was known, to convince the public that war had come. On Friday, the Emperor moved from Potsdam to Berlin. Martial law was proclaimed. Many foreigners first heard of it when they used their own languages in telephone conversations. Only German might be spoken. In the afternoon white martial law posters appeared. They appealed for order, and promised a mild administration. Notices in the Post Offices regulated correspondence. For frontier provinces only open letters in German were passed. Beyond this, my corner of Berlin showed no sign of war.

In the centre there were no demonstrations. Men stared at the Russian Embassy in Unter den Linden. The French and British Embassies attracted no attention. In the east of Unter den Linden near the Palace, on the Palace Bridge, in the Lustgarten, and in the square north of the Palace, a crowd waited. People were quiet; they read the afternoon editions; and except for an attempt, which led to nothing, to sing "Deutschland, Deutschland iiber Alles," they were silent. At six o'clock an officer came to a window of the Kaiser's rooms, and said that the Kaiser would speak. The Kaiser with the Empress and his sons Adalbert and Oscar walked on to the balcony.

I saw him for the first time since trouble began. He was yellow, but erect and calm; he wore the grey-green uniform and the spiked helmet covered with uniform cloth which in the next days were seen everywhere. He spoke without emphasis, very low, and I heard nothing but the beginning: "A heavy storm . . ." and the sentence, "They have thrust a sword into my hand" — "Man driickt mir das Schwert in die Hand." The Kaiser said that the envy of neighbours had made war imminent; that war would cost the people much blood and goods; and that the foe would learn what it was to attack Germany. He told the people to go to the churches and pray for the army. Later he drove down Unter den Linden in a yellow motor-car. The crowd cheered, and the trumpeting which clears a path in peace time failed. Next day the Kaiser's movements were hampered by crowds; and the Biirgermeister asked that the demonstrations should cease.

On Friday, the German Government instructed the Ambassador at St. Petersburg to say that if Russia within twelve hours did not cease preparations for war, Germany would mobilise. France was asked to say within eighteen hours what she would do in case of war between Germany and Russia. On Saturday, the Declaration of War to Russia was not known. The Foreign Office had no information. Communication with St. Petersburg ceased. The Russian Ambassador, M. Sverbeyeff, told me he had not been at the Foreign Office since Friday morning. There had been a demonstration; members of the Embassy feared to go out. I told them that good order was kept. Events proved them to be right; they were attacked as they started from Berlin.

At a quarter to six, when I left the Embassy, Unter den Linden was crowded. A civilian proclaimed from the top of a motor-cab that war had begun. The crowd cheered. The speaker was a member of the Reichstag. War had been declared at St. Petersburg on the preceding midnight. This evening red posters flamed on the pillars. The posters gave the order of the first days of mobilisation; and ended, "and so on," leaving the duration of mobilisation in doubt. The Kaiser again spoke from the Palace. He said that he forgave those who had spoken ill of him; and that he knew no parties, only Germans.

From this day Berlin felt the social and economic reaction of war. The city was cut off; the train service ceased; no foreign letters were delivered, and few German. In some places the issue of internal money orders was suspended. Letters from West Europe were delayed at Cologne; money from abroad could not be had. Foreign cheques had no exchange. Speculating bankers paid three-quarters of the peace value; and booked the balance. The run on Savings- Banks and on banks for gold soon ceased; but little gold could be had. Mobilisation carried off workmen. The City Railway, the Underground, and the tramways shortened their services. Women trained as conductors, and conductors too old to fight learned to drive. Motorcabs and horse-cabs disappeared. They were mobilised as men were. When a motor-cab's hour came, it made for the Templehof Field in South Berlin. There, cabs were massed in companies, taught to advance, to retreat, to thread their ways in curves like manoeuvring war-ships. Drivers took fares up to the last minute. The order was good.

The demeanour of the people was confident but depressed. I heard some cheering, and in cafes much singing; but there were many anxious faces. In German acquaintances I found dread of the coming sorrows and losses. There was no newspaper sensationalism. The reports of frontier fighting were reserved; the first report said, "We lost two wounded; enemy's loss unknown." Most wars begin with paper victories. The public's nerves were strained. On Saturday the story spread that the Crown Prince had been murdered by two Russians. A citizen with a reputation for truthfulness described the deed, as he saw it; such is war psychosis.

Nervousness grew; and many lost their heads. The Ministry of War asked the people to look for spies and to prevent attempts against railways and telegraphs. Railway carriages were posted with warnings. The public set itself to help. Russians drew suspicion; later other foreigners were watched; and at last Germans. Sharp-eyed men seized an officer who wore with a faded tunic suspiciously new trousers; and, sure that he was a Frenchman supposed to have poisoned wells at Metz, dragged him to the police. In peace time the officer would have slashed his assailants' faces. A builder's cashier who had himself chased spies in Wilmersdorf drew suspicion. He protested. His accent proved he was a Dresdener. Spies, said the spy-chasers, always speak fluent German. The spy-chasers searched, and found no money. This proved he was a spy. They continued to search, and unearthed small notes. The notes, the crowd reasoned, were bribes for soldiers. An American journalist was seized at Gumbinnen. He appeared in the newspapers as a Russian Grand Duke. Patriots of South Germany searched for an imaginary automobile which carried from France to the Russian Treasury five million pounds in gold.

Trouble was threatened by the food question. There was food for a fortnight, and freight traffic ceased. Prices rose, and attempts were made to exploit need. Housekeepers were frightened into paying a mark a pound for flour. Such cases were few. The Commandant in the Mark, General v. Kessel, fixed maximum prices of 30,

27, and 20 pfennings for wheaten flour, rye flour, and salt. The timidity and selfishness of citizens who had no notion of war took forms of humour. Someone asked the Foreign Office whether war could be postponed — he wanted to search Leipzig. A druggist's sufferings were real. He sold an elixir for making artificial sunburn. In the week of crisis pillars glowed with puffs of the bottled sunshine. The soldiers with martial law proclamations covered the posters up. The druggist, saying that he had secrets, gained admittance to Kessel, and begged the general to make his bill-posters take the proclamations down. Under Nationalist agitation, sign-boards and notices in French, afterwards in English, were removed. A "Cafe Frangais" was among them. The sign-board was sold as old wood; the buyer, a joiner, who knew no French, pleased by the decorative letters, set it in his garden, and caused a local war. After the first days, the mobilisation was seen. Through the streets in fours, in civilian dress, without arms, marched men of the reserve and Landwehr. All carried brown cardboard boxes of the kind used by tailors' packers. These were town reservists, not very strong, puffy and dull-eyed; warlike only by their tramp and the zeal in their songs. Women and children walked beside them, and showed no feeling. The cheers were weak. There was no hilarity, sporting war spirit, or no drunkenness. The reservist columns stopped traffic, wound into barrack yards, and came out in uniform, mixed with active soldiers. The active soldiers were brighter and stronger. The physical gains of soldiering quickly pass.

The spirit was good. All who had to serve, and all who could serve, rushed to serve. The old men, women, and children were proud when their kinsmen left. At the declaration of war a student whom I knew, an untrained member of the replacement reserve, was sailing on Lake Constance. His parents and sister dreaded that he would come late, and be disgraced; at his return they showed more joy than if he had come safe from battle. I heard that a Landsturm man, not called up, offered to personate a friend in the Landwehr whose family conditions made service a hardship. The offer was not taken. I heard, too, of a deserter who returned from France when the negotiations looked dangerous. He had run away through hatred of army life. He refused to report to the War Office, and take advantage of amnesty, because if war were avoided he would have to complete his term. He was a weak man, ready to help his country in war, but not in peace. The officers behaved well. I saw many, in field uniform with the cloth cap which did not always hide the helmet spike. Their conduct was a reproach to some civilians, who mishandled enemy subjects. The newspapers condemned these outbreaks.

In the first days there was a rush to the churches. For marriages of soldiers formalities were relaxed. Before I left Berlin there were some thousands of war weddings. Outside a church in southwest Berlin, couples waited in queues. There were soldiers in uniform; reservists in civil dress with bandboxes; girls by themselves keeping places for bridegrooms who came late; and bridegrooms waiting for brides. Some brides were rich girls; some, servants with red arms, straight from work. In this way were wed the Kaiser's sons, Adalbert and Oscar; and Moltkes, Biilows, Bluchers, Delbriicks, and Siemenses. With some the God of War dealt hardly. An officer found on reaching Berlin that his betrothed had gone to Chemnitz, his garrison town. The trains passed; the officer, unwed, left for the front. In a church of Teltow, a bride fell dead as the wedding-ring was put on her finger. The soldier bridegroom saluted, and walked out of the church.

In politics I was struck by the indifference to England. The question which seemed most important, whether England would support Russia and France, caused no debate. Perhaps newspapers were asked not to raise it. I believe the first article in a Berlin newspaper appeared on Tuesday morning; it was written by Count Reventlow, who predicted that England would join Germany's foes, and said that it mattered little. More than three days before English and German publics knew, I was told by a German official that we were in the war. The story casts light on diplomatic history. .

On Saturday, not aware that Germany and Russia were formally at war, I called on the Director of the English Department of the Foreign Ministry. I did not know this official; I knew that he was working with the Chancellor on the negotiations with England; that he knew England well; and that he had friendly relations with Englishmen. Without telling me that a declaration had been delivered to Russia at midnight, he spoke as if war between Russia and Germany was a fact; and he said that England was on the side of Russia. Germany could do nothing to prevent this. I asked whether he was speaking of accomplished facts, or forecasting the future on the basis of present conditions. He repeated that England was in the war, and said he was sorry. What I heard later in other quarters convinced me that our Government had come to no decision; or that if it had, it had not let Germany know. On Sunday, hoping to clear up the mystery, I again called. It was still two and a half days before our Ultimatum. This time the same official told me without doubt that England was in the war. It was all over; nothing could be done; and no purpose would be served by discussion. I showed him a Berlin morning paper with quotations from a London newspaper which is looked on by Germans as the organ of the Foreign Office. The London newspaper made clear that no decision had been come to; it implied, if anything, that England would keep out. The Director of the English Department refused to read this; he made a gesture which suggested surprise that any one should consider England's participation an open question, and said, "It's no use.

It's all over." I assumed that negotiations with England had ceased. I asked when our Embassy would leave. Could newspaper correspondents leave with it? They could, I was told, if the Embassy consented. At the Embassy I heard that there was no question of leaving. Negotiations were proceeding amicably; and the statement of the Foreign Office caused surprise. I learned next morning that a colleague, who visited the same official two days before the Ultimatum, was told the same story. The incident made a stir; I believe it provoked a protest from our Embassy. The motive of the Foreign Office remained a puzzle. After our declaration of war the reason, though not the motive, became plain. While the negotiations for our neutrality proceeded, the higher officials of the German Foreign Office must have known that England would intervene. They knew that their army was to march through Belgium; and that this, independently of other causes, meant war with England. Probably the Government was influenced into accepting the Staff's plan by the belief that, Belgium or no Belgium, it would face to fight England. It can hardly be doubted that a Government so well informed as the German knew more than the British public knew of Anglo-French and Anglo- Russian negotiations. After war between Germany and the Dual Alliance began, the formality of negotiation with England had to be observed; otherwise the plan to march through Belgium would be revealed. Germany was able to prepare for certain action against us at sea, at a time when our mind was not made up. The incautiousness of the Foreign Office official might have upset this calculation; a sharp thinker might have guessed that the violation of Belgian neutrality, the certain cause of British intervention, had been decided on beyond recall.

At the beginning of the crisis British residents prepared to leave Berlin. Few got away. The last train for Flushing left at midday on Monday. Early in the morning I found at the Zoological Garden station, the nearest station to the British quarter, about a hundred British subjects. They had enough luggage to fill ten vans. The train had one van. At the central Friedrichstrasse station conditions were the same. Refugees who made for the Silesian terminal station saved themselves and their property. At the other stations, mountains of trunks, with the belongings of British governesses and music students, were left behind.

On Tuesday morning public buildings were guarded. The police feared bombs. The central telegraph office in Franzosischestrasse was closed. In other offices telegrams for England were refused; later, telegrams in German were taken; later we heard that England was rejecting telegrams in German. At one o'clock the Reichstag met in the Palace to hear the Emperor's Speech from the Throne. The Socialists stayed away. At three I went to the sitting in the Reichstag building in Konigsplatz. The sitting lasted till six. The Chancellor spoke for half an hour. The Reichstag unanimously voted a War Credit of two hundred and fifty million pounds. Other war laws passed. These legalised maximum prices and compulsion to sell; provided for the support of soldiers' families; for securing the solvency of Sick Insurance Bureaux; for amendment of the Imperial Debt Law. The Chancellor thanked the Reichstag; the Reichstag cheered for Emperor and Fatherland, and adjourned.

The sitting showed that the Social-Democratic party supported the Government; and that Belgium had been chosen as the path of attack on France. The invasion of Belgium, the Chancellor said, was a breach of international law; he said that France had planned to invade by Belgium; and he pleaded necessity. Feeling that war with England was near, I watched the members. I judged that they did not see that England was in the war, or did not measure the seriousness of the fact. The policy of the Socialists was foreseen. Before the war, the party newspaper Vorwdrts condemned Austrian policy towards Servia; preached that Germany must bring Austria to reason, and that she need not support an obstinate ally. This policy offended Socialists, with whom patriotism had begun to melt cosmopolitan ice. The Russian Wing, the extreme Left, composed partly of Russian exiles, hated Russia. After Russia mobilised, the Vorwdrts wrote against Tsarism. On Tuesday morning the Socialist deputy, Dr. Siidekum, told me that the party was united; an hour later the spokesman, Dr. Haase, pronounced for the War Credit. He said that the party was not responsible for policy; it worked with French comrades for peace; the defence of the Fatherland was now the only question; Social-Democratic Internationalism upheld state independence; and the Socialists would not leave the Fatherland in the lurch. The party was against a war of conquest; it required peace whenever the enemy was ready. This, the only speech, was cheered by all parties. In the Socialist party outside the Reichstag there was a patriotic reaction. Some members who had served in the army asked for admission into the monarchical, anti-Socialist Veterans' Unions, called by the Kaiser his army in mufti. This caused no surprise to students of politics and human nature, who knew how thin lies the new soil of Internationalism over the stone of race.

This evening I went to the office of the Telegraph Agencies in Zimmerstrasse to see the statement on British policy made to the House of Commons on Monday night. All the afternoon the speech came in in sections; the midday papers had none of it; and the short extract in a morning paper did not give the sense. On leaving the agencies' building, I found bulletins of the Berliner Tageblatt with the news that our Ambassador had asked for his passports. I went by Wilhelmstrasse to the Embassy. The house was under siege. The crowd, mostly well-dressed citizens of the doubtful Friedrichstadt class, stretched far south in Wilhelmstrasse, and on the north overflowed into Unter den Linden. Demonstrators hunted a cab which had left the Embassy. Three policemen, too few to disperse the crowd, rode up and down. A dozen men were at work. They hoisted one another to the window-ledges. The windows were broken with sticks or stones. I did not risk entering the Embassy. A Spanish diplomatist who left later was mistaken for our Ambassador, threatened, and forced to take refuge in a hotel.

While this siege was under way the police raided English dwellings. They arrested Englishmen, often with the ceremony which in peace time is enjoyed by native Germans. Englishmen while under arrest were threatened by a crowd; the police drew revolvers on the crowd. Policemen entered the Hotel Adlon; called out the names of English newspaper correspondents and of an American who represented English newspapers, and carried the correspondents off. The charge against one was that he knew me. The police lost their heads. They arrested a German lady, wife of an officer at the front, whose daughter is married to an Englishman. At night a hundred British subjects were at the Police Presidency. They were given licences; and told to report themselves every three days. Later, the report system became stricter. Some Britons were sent to Spandau Citadel, the home of the War Treasure. I believe they were released. On returning to my apartment after I had closed it, I found a detective outside the door. He did not recognise me; and told me politely that I had left Berlin.

In society discourtesy was not shown. Friendships and business relations withstood the political storm. Germans known to me offered to take into their house an English lady who feared she could not get away in time. A servant who had taken an affection to this lady's child was willing to face any misfortune sooner than be parted from it; and went with the family in conditions of discomfort and danger over half of Europe. The hall porter of my house, who knew that foreigners had trouble to get money, refused to take payment for work done. There were cases of less agreeable kind; but the mob law and newspaper law which govern the fate of enemy subjects in some countries were not supreme.

In these days there was not much bitterness against England. France was ignored or painted as Russia's dupe. Enmity was against Russia; politicians, newspapers, and citizens held that Russia by mobilising had provoked war. When England declared war many newspapers expressed relief. Weeks passed before there was any understanding of England's part. Germans knew that with Austria-Hungary's help they could defeat the Dual Alliance. They foresaw the influence on trade and overseas supplies of England's intervention. They cared little for the naval threat against their colonies, because success in Europe would bring all the colonies they needed. The relief was due to the conviction that some day England and Germany would fight. A fight against England only meant the loss of colonies, and no gains. It meant defeat. A fight against England and the Dual Alliance would be determined by armies; and no doubt was felt that the German army would win. Most Germans believed, with the Chancellor, that England would send at most a few divisions. They had a clearer knowledge of the politics of war, of its material and moral dimensions, than any of their enemies; but they under-measured us here. The blunder would have caused their defeat had we not under-measured them and over-measured our allies.

In so far as it concerns their duty to their own country the conduct of Germans was creditable. Their bearing showed the merits of drill, of authority, of class, professional, and academic codes of honour. In the sovereign, ministers, and generals confidence was felt. The nation, not only the army, was ready. From many statements to the Reichstag, and to the Reichstag Budget Committee, the nation knew the measure of its personal and financial responsibilities in armaments and policy. The obligations of the alliance with Austria were known; and in 1913 and 1914 the Legislature was told with precision of the military and diplomatic combinations which Germany expected to face. Appeals to the electorate before the expiry of

Reichstag terms were all on the question whether the people would pay for the armaments which the empire's policy made necessary; the policy was plainly put to the nation, and the policy was approved. These gave the Germans a moral preparation for war which could not be expected in countries where armaments and policy are independent: the first, as an easy thing, public; the second secret, in the hands of infallible men.

In the great danger which Germany faced, indifference could not be conceived. For shirkers and cowards was the vicious military system which requires all men equally to defend their country. Dissension did not hinder military concentration. Before the war there were differences of economical and political kind; Socialism was strong; some were discontented with the Constitution because they wanted an increase of the state's power; others wanted parliamentary administration. These differences, except that they inspired less violence, were similar to the political differences of other countries. The effectiveness of the state in battle was not impaired by them; no foreign condition pleased any party better; the friends of a strong state did not want Russia's way; and the friends of parliamentarism did not want freedom corrupted into anarchy. Fortunate in not having to improvise armaments, the empire was fortunate again in not having to improvise unity. Englishmen who knew Germany agreed with me that we had a foe as formidable as our alarmist school preached, though not always formidable in the way it preached. They considered that Germany could be beaten only by well-prepared states with all material and moral resources under control of competent chiefs. It is unlucky that on this matter England was misled; that she was told of a Germany rent by Socialism and Particularism, undermined by corruption, and ruled by lunatics. It was natural that our ministers should know nothing; and excusable that ambitious men who have never been in Germany should make public their knowledge of German dissension, corruption, and lunacy. It was painful that men who knew the truth, and might usefully have warned, joined in the deception. Their excuse that the public wanted falsehood may have been true; they took their cue from above. I told the facts to a minister whom I found convinced that Germans were panting to help England to defeat their generals. He said that the Government knew its business; and that we were not fighting the German nation.

This was a Christian plan, but not pregnant with victory, as there was no shadow of doubt that the German nation was fighting us.

Relations with the police were so bad that newspaper correspondents, and others, due to leave with the Embassy spent Wednesday night at the Embassy house. Next morning soon after eight, the British Ambassador, the Minister of Belgium, the staffs of both missions, and a dozen correspondents of newspapers left from the Lehrter station. Measures were taken against demonstrations. Near the Embassy house passes were required, and policemen lined the road. The members of the Embassy drove by by-streets. A colonel of guards was in charge of the train; there were many officials and agents; and no undue delicacy was shown in foiling diplomatic designs feared against bridges. At the Elbe, windows were closed; once, the blinds were drawn. Armed men in civilian dress guarded the stations, bridges, and culverts. On the roads, trains of motor-cars carried military loads. At Doeberitz station, in heaps, lay aeroplane frames without motors or wings. They looked like rocs' skeletons. Trains with reservists passed, mostly going east.