The war diary of a diplomat

Foreword

This Journal was not composed with the purpose of publication; its entries were jotted down as interesting events occurred, and were sent from week to week to my wife, who was unable to leave our St. Louis home, and who in this way was able to keep posted as to my observations and doings.

A book so written can of course claim neither depth of matter nor charm of style; but being so written — hot on the heels of the events described — its pictures of France in war-time for that very reason may be the more vivid and convincing. It is because friends who have read the Journal say it possesses this sort of interest that I venture to submit it to the public.

Lee Meriwether.

Paris, October 17, 19 18.

Preface

At the very beginning of the World War the United States undertook a work intended not only to better the condition of war prisoners but to remove from the minds of their families and friends the fear that they are badly treated. To appreciate the enormous value of this work one has only to consider how, had a similar task been performed by some neutral power during our Civil War, the North and South would have come together twenty years sooner than they did.

This statement may seem extravagant but its truth will not be doubted by those who remember how for a generation after the war of the 'sixties there was a constant and a bitter debate over the question whether prisoners at Andersonville and Libby had, or had not, been barbarously treated by the Confederate government. Obviously those years of bitter debate would have been avoided if during the Civil War the representatives of, say, England or France, had frequently visited Andersonville and Libby and reported on conditions existing there. Had the conditions been as bad as claimed by the North they would have been bettered by the Confederate authorities the moment they knew that foreign diplomats would visit the prisons and tell the world in general, and the Washington Government in particular, what was going on. On the other hand, if the conditions were not bad, if the reports reaching Washington were untrue, that fact would have been made known, and thus, in either case, years of bitter recrimination and hate-breeding accusations would have been avoided.

Probably those long years of heated controversy over An-

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dersonville and Libby suggested to the American government the good that might result from preventing such a dispute in the present war; whatever the reason, as I have said, at the very outset of the World War the Department of State at Washington undertook the task of looking after the prisoners of war in France, Russia, Germany, etc., and it continued that task down to the day that Germany's conduct forced America to abandon its neutrality and enter the war on the side of the Entente Allies, i. e., down to Sunday, February 4, 191 7.

As a Special Assistant to our Ambassador to France I saw a good deal of this work which, now that it has ended and we have entered the war, may be described without official impropriety and perhaps even with profit to the public. For only good can come from having the world know how unselfishly America strove to protect the interests of the very government which even then was secretly paying a host of spies to incite strikes in our factories, to blow some of them up with dynamite, to plant bombs in steamers sailing from our harbors, and which a little later openly destroyed American women and children on the Lusitania and ran rough shod over American rights on every one of the globe's seven seas! It will be well, too, for the world to know that, with a few unimportant exceptions, the Allies with whom we are now, or soon will be, fighting have all along played the game fair; that they treat the war prisoners in their hands humanely and strive to make their condition as comfortable as it can be to men deprived of their liberty.

Indeed, so well are the German prisoners treated, so much easier is their lot in French prisons than in German trenches, few of the hundreds with whom I talked seemed at all sorry to be captives. I refer here of course to the private soldiers; officers, especially the Prussians, do not take imprisonment so complacently. Even in captivity they retain their abnormal sense of superiority to the rest of the world and it fills them with bitterness to find themselves in the hands of men they

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deem so infinitely beneath them. That the sacred caste of Prussian officers, supermen from BerUn, should be ordered about by a mere Frenchman — Ach Gott! What was the world coming to? This was very different from the Kaiser's going to Paris in six weeks and there dictating to the miserable people of France how many millions they should pay their conquerors. In the case of Prussian officers this feeling amounts to a disease, to megalomania.

There are two kinds of war prisoners, military and civil. The first of course are soldiers captured in battle; the second class comprises all male enen y aliens who resided in France, or who happened to be traveling in France in August, 19 14. Camps of these civilians are to be found in all parts of the republic from the mountains of Corsica in the south to the bleak islands in the north off the coasts of Brittany and Normandy. Before the war Germans loved to come to France. The French say they came to serve as spies and be in a position to help the Kaiser when he got ready to ravish Belgium, plunder France and steal some more French provinces. Perhaps many did come for that purpose, but the majority came because of the better opportunities France afforded for earning a livelihood, and some of these married French women and their children grew up wholly ignorant of the German tongue. Perhaps these Germans became French in their sympathies — but they neglected the formality of becoming French by law. And so in August, 19 14, they were bundled off to some detention camp, there to fret away as many years as this senseless and bloody war may last.

On the Isle of Tatihou, off the coast of Normandy, I saw a Monsieur Hermann L., who, although born in Vienna, had come when a child to Paris, where for a quarter of a century he was the head of a large electrical machinery concern. His partners were French, so too were all his friends and affiliations. But Monsieur L. had neglected to become naturalized as a Frenchman, consequently, at the time I saw him in xii PREFACE

January, 191 7, he was a prisoner on a barren island, where he had been more than two years and where he is likely to remain for a very long time to come. Interned on this same island are several hundred other Austrians and Germans, some of whom, like Monsieur L., are French in their sympathies; but the majority, having come more recently to France, are pro-German in their feelings, and hence they look with both disgust and hate upon "French "-Germans like Monsieur L. Indeed, so bitter is the feeling between the German- Germans and the "French"-Germans that their discussions, always heated, sometimes become violent and end in blows.

At the time of my visit to Tatihou several men were undergoing cell punishment because of brawls over this question of German-born men sympathizing with France, and so keenly did the French- Germans feel the taunts and sneers of the other faction, they begged me to intercede with the Commandant and persuade him to give them separate quarters. The Commandant said he would be glad to do this if it were possible; the constant strife between the two factions had caused him a world of trouble. At news of a German victory the cheers of the "German"-Germans angered the French- Germans; and similarly when the French armies delivered a smashing blow upon the Crown Prince's forces before Verdun, prisoners like Monsieur L. would celebrate and cheer in a way that set the real Germans wild.

"You may imagine, Monsieur," said the Commandant, "that this is excessively annoying, but the number of prisoners, already enormous, grows by leaps and bounds after every battle, so that it is not possible to provide separate quarters to suit the men's different political convictions."

I asked why it was necessary to intern men so pro-French that they were willing for the sake of their allegiance to France to suffer the sneers and even the blows of their fellow countrymen.

"Monsieur," replied the Commandant, "France does not

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trust men who, though living under her flag, do not love her enough to become Frenchmen."

"Had Monsieur Hermann L. become a French citizen would he have retained his freedom?" I asked.

"Yes. This particular man would not have been disturbed; he was my neighbor on the Rue Copemic in Paris. Many Frenchmen knew him and could vouch for his sincerity. But not all Germans could be trusted, even though they took out naturalization papers. You see. Monsieur, a man may take out papers for the special purpose of being able to betray us. We are so close to Germany the information which a spy could acquire and pass on to the enemy might cause grave trouble. France's very life is at stake, hence we must take no chance, absolutely none, no matter what hardship, what injustice may be done the individual citizen."

That this is necessary is recognized even by some of its victims. For instance, Monsieur L. frankly said to me that he did not blame the French for interning him.

"/ know I love France," he said. "I know that I would cut off my right arm rather than harm her, for I have come to regard France as my own country. I left Vienna when I was a child. I know no one there. All my life, all my friends are centered in Paris. Is it not natural that my love should be for France? But a man's heart cannot be read by others as they read a book. So many Germans do come to France to spy, the French say 'Perhaps this man is a spy, too.' And so they lock me up. I cannot complain. It is natural. But nonetheless. Monsieur, this is a frightful fate to bear!"

With a gesture Monsieur L. indicated the long, cold, cheerless barrack in which we were standing, and the straw sack on a wooden bunk where he slept. At the head of the bunk was a shelf on which were placed the few things he had been permitted to bring from Paris.

"Look at this," he said, "then compare it with the pretty place I had on the Rue Copernic. Is it not enough to make xiv PREFACE

me melancholy? One day I was in the most beautiful city of the world ; a profitable business, a lot of friends, everything that makes life worth living was mine. Then, in a day, in an hour, my business is ruined, my friends become my enemies, and I am brought to this wind-swept island to remain for only God knows how many years! The suddenness with which this incredible catastrophe overwhelmed me was stupefying, appalling! For months after coming here it was hard to realize that it was not all a frightful nightmare, that in the morning I would not awake in Paris in my beautiful apartment on the Rue Copernic!"

The impression made upon me by Monsieur Hermann L. was that of thorough sincerity; he undoubtedly really loves France. Nevertheless, he must fret his life away in prison, because France cannot afford to "take any chances." Such is one of the little by-products of war — war the monster that crushes out the Hves and breaks the hearts of the innocent along with the guilty.

Before describing the prisons for captured Germans let me begin at the beginning, i. e., at the moment when the German becomes a prisoner. In the case of civilians that moment was on August 4, 19 14. Of course, for several days prior to that date Germany's action was a foregone conclusion, so that France had at least a little time in which to make her preparations. Within a dozen hours after Baron von Schoen delivered the Kaiser's message to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, declaring war and demanding his passports, the French police began rounding up Germans in every nook and corner of the republic.

At first there was some confusion and much discomfort; when, without an hour's notice, a government feels itself obliged to tear thousands of men from their homes, from their stores, from their banks and offices, confusion and discomfort are inevitable. And it is small wonder that in those dreadful August days of 1914 many men made desperate efforts to

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cross the Pyrenees into Spain or the Rhine into Germany. A few succeeded, but the great majority failed to elude the lynxeyed police. An instance of this latter nimiber is that of Herr Mumm, known to champagne drinkers all over the world as one of the richest wine men in Rheims.

On that fatal fourth of August, 1914, Mr. Mumm lingered just one hour too long. His affairs were of such magnitude, so many things needed attention before he left on such short notice on so indefinite a trip, Herr Mumm unwisely thought he might remain just an hour longer. But that hour proved his undoing, for it gave the police time to arrest him; when he went to the railway station to board the last train that was to leave for the east, there at the station waiting for him were two policemen and several soldiers. And so, ever since that fateful day, Herr Mumm, instead of being in the land of his birth across the Rhine, has been in an internment camp in Western France.

To offset this instance of a failure to escape I will mention the case of one who succeeded in escaping — but not by the prosaic means of a railroad train or an automobile flying to the frontier. Baroness Reuter, widow of the founder of the well-known European News Agency, has lived for many years in Paris, and while not all German women were interned, no doubt the Baroness would have been confined because of her prominence and her connections in Germany. To avoid this unpleasant fate — and at the same time to avoid the necessity of leaving her beloved Paris — as soon as war was declared the Baroness promptly married James Gordon Bennett, owner of the New York Herald. Automatically this made her in the law's eyes an American, immune from internment, and she has remained in Paris without let or hindrance. To the mere mortal eye the Baroness is the same charming woman now as before August, 19 14, but to the eye of the law the few words spoken in the marriage ceremony effected so complete a transformation that she who one moment was subject to xvi PREFACE

arrest and years of imprisonment, was the next moment absolutely immune — all because she changed her name from Reuter to Bennett! And yet Shakespeare says there is nothing in a name!

Having arrested all the Germans in France within a few hours, or at most a few days after war was declared, the next step was properly to care for them. And this task was facilitated because of the great number of vacant convents and monasteries which the expulsion of the religious orders a few years ago left in the hands of the French government. Usually these ancient monastery buildings are perched on high peaks and the life led in them by the motley crowd of prisoners, drawn from all walks of life and from all parts of Europe, is fully as interesting as the life of their former occupants in bygone centuries. Presently I shall give a detailed word picture of some of these curious places, but first a few words concerning military prisoners. These of course are captured in battle, usually after the French artillery creates an impassable barrage of heavy shells between the German front line and base. When this happens Fritz leaps to his feet, thrusts both hands high in the air and cries:

"Kamerad ! Kamerad ! "

Once he does this he is no longer reckoned as a fighting unit in this war. There is no exchange of prisoners. As a fighter friend Fritz is done for and the advancing French pay him little more attention. They know he won't run away, for there is no place he can run to. He can't go back to his own people; the barrage of shot and shells would cut him to pieces. Moreover, nine times in ten Fritz is delighted at being a prisoner; as a prisoner he will be out of danger and have more to eat than as a soldier, and so Fritz, thankful to the French who have captured him, finds his own way back to the rear of the French front lines, and presently, when not otherwise occupied, his captors detail a small guard to conduct him to some big base depot like those at Rouen or Havre. Later

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on he is sent from the base depot to wherever labor is most needed, to the coal mines of central France, to towns along the Seine where ships are unloading, to the vineyards and fields of all parts of the republic.

Once at his permanent place of work, Fritz' life down to the last detail is governed by rules agreed on between France and Germany; he must have precisely so many ounces of bread a day, so many grams of salt, so many ounces of vegetables, etc. A written list of the kind and quantity of articles he is entitled to have is posted on the door of the kitchen where every prisoner may see it. Failure to receive his proper rations is at once made the subject of a complaint by the prisoner to the Commandant of the prison camp, who seldom fails to remedy the matter. However, there are Commandants and Commandants; occasionally where a man shot all to pieces and with a case of bad nerves, or where a man naturally harsh or even cruel, has been placed in charge of a prison camp, unnecessary and illegal hardships may be imposed upon the Germans. To prevent this, or at least to make it as rare an exception as possible, I made frequent and unexpected visits to prison camps in all parts of France, and my observations were reported to Ambassador Sharp and to the State Department at Washington, and by them to Ambassador Gerard in Berlin.

Often in some mysterious way reports would reach the German government that its prisoners in such or such a place were being barbarously treated, and then our Paris Embassy would receive a "hurry-up" call to make an investigation. For example, one day in December, 1916, we received through Ambassador Gerard a Note Verbale saying the German Foreign Office was informed that some two hundred German officers immured in the fortress at Brest were being most inhumanly treated. It was stated that the walls of the fortress, fifteen feet in thickness, were damp and covered with fungi; water trickled down from the ceiling upon the prisoners' straw xviii PREFACE

sleeping sacks, making sleep difficult and life a painful burden. Berlin was told that unless speedily removed from this damp dungeon these unhappy officers would all lose their health and many would lose their lives. Such barbarities could not be permitted and unless at once discontinued reprisals would become necessary: a similar number of French officers, prisoners in Germany, would be thrust into the most unsanitary dungeon that could be found in the Empire or in any of the Empire's allies.

Such was the substance of the German Foreign Office's communication which we were desired to make known to the government of the French Republic. Before taking the matter up with the French Minister for Foreign Affairs obviously the first thing to do was to go to Brest and learn at first hand the conditions there. Accordingly, grabbing my heavy rug to keep out at least a little of the cold in the freezing French railway cars, I summoned a taxi to take me to the Gare Montparnasse, and soon was speeding across France to Brittany's bleak, wind-swept coast. Travelers who have traversed France only in the tourist season, in spring or summer, will have little realization of what such a trip means in the dead of winter, particularly in war time when coal costs $80 a ton and when even the slightest degree of heat in railway coaches and hotels is considered a luxury not to be thought of. A fifteen-hour railway journey in America involves no hardship, or at least none on account of the cold. On the contrary, the discomfort most often found when traveling in America results from the way in which the cars are overheated.

But there is no overheating in France in winter and during this war. Normandy and Brittany, lovely enough to look upon in summer time, had no charms for me on that long journey to Brest. The cold was penetrating, inescapable, and was made worse by the dampness. A cold rain beat all day against the window of my compartment, and when late at night Brest was reached, and I drove to the Hotel Continental, the room

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given me was as damp and cold and depressing as a tomb. There was no fire in the hotel and had been none for months, except in the kitchen stove. As I hurriedly undressed and got into bed — the only place where there was even half a chance to get warm — I thought with pity of the German officers in the gloomy fortress of the Chateau d'Anne. If I suffered so in Brest's best hotel, what must be the fate of those unhappy men immured in a dungeon with walls fifteen feet thick and dripping with humidity so great that fungi grew on the sides and ceiling as in a subterranean cave?

Next day investigation proved that my sympathy was entirely wasted. It was true that the walls were very thick, ten feet at least. They were built in the thirteenth century when thick walls were the fashion as a protection against the puny cannon of that uncivilized age. But within those walls I found not a bit of dampness. Red-hot stoves kept the casemates warm as well as dry and electric lamps gave abundant light. The quarters of those German officers were warmer and dryer than the room in which I had slept at the Hotel Continental. After satisfying myself of this fact, visiting all the casemates, feeling the walls and bedding with my hands and finding no dampness, I asked both the French Commandant and the German prisoners how Berlin could have gotten such a report as that which had brought me hurrying across the whole width of France?

"Monsieur," said the Commandant, "I have long since ceased to attempt to explain the false reports Berlin sends out to the world."

"Do you think Berlin knows that this report about the Chateau d'Anne is false?" I asked. The Commandant's reply was an eloquent shrug of the shoulders; that shrug and the look which accompanied it said as plainly as words could have done that he did believe Berlin knew the report to be false; indeed, had the Commandant ventured to speak freely, I believe he would have said that Germany herself invents such

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reports in order to justify her own harsh treatment of French prisoners. I myself do not believe this; I think it probable the Berlin Foreign Office did receive the report which had been transmitted through Ambassador Gerard to us in Paris, for on numbers of occasions I myself have caught German war prisoners writing letters to their families at home telling them tales of incredible cruelty on the part of their French guards, tales which I personally knew to be untrue. For example, one German, although located in one of the best prison camps in France, a camp well drained, with wooden barracks heated by stoves and lighted by electricity, wrote his wife in Munich that he was being slowly tortured to death, that he was half starved and never expected to get back to Germany alive.

When confronted with this letter, its falsity manifest in face of the prisoner's excellent physical condition and in face of the physical condition of the camp, so excellent as to be seen at a mere glance, the mendacious German merely grinned and squirmed and twisted his cap in his hands; no amount of questioning elicited from him a reason for his conduct. Was the fellow moved merely by a foolish spirit of egoism? Did he seek sympathy? Did he wish to appear when he returned to Munich as a hero snatched from the very jaws of Death? This may be the explanation — or it may be that the German government's policy is to have prisoners spread reports of barbarous treatment in order to keep alive the hatred of the German people for France, and also to discourage German soldiers from surrendering. The German soldier who thinks that being captured by the French means plenty to eat, a warm barracks to sleep in and safety from shrapnel and shell may feel like giving up the fight a good deal quicker than the soldier who is made to believe that capture will mean slow death through cold, dampness and starvation!

Whatever the explanation, it is a fact that in no case did I find conditions as bad as Berlin said they were; and seldom, indeed, did I find them bad enough to warrant any real con-

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demnation. The Germans with whom I talked in the Chateau d'Anne said they were as content there as they could be in any prison; some of them had been previously confined in other camps and these said they preferred the Chateau d'Anne because, although its walls and floors were of stone, the big stoves kept them so dry and warm ! And yet Berlin threatened savage reprisals on the French officers in its hands because of the "dampness and fungi" on the walls of the casemates in the Chateau d'Anne!

Of course Berlin was informed of the true conditions at Brest, and it is to be hoped our report prevented a great wrong being done to several hundred unhappy French officers in German prisons. Only a hope can be expressed, for soon after my visit to Brest America severed diplomatic relations with Germany and since then not much reliance can be placed upon such scraps of news as filter out from Berlin to the rest of the world. America's entry into the war was inevitable, but it was a great blow to the thousands of war prisoners whose welfare was the care of our diplomats abroad.

Introduction

By Edouard de Billy,

Deputy High Commissioner of the French Government

to the United States.

Mr. Lee Meriwether, Special Assistant to the American Ambassador to France in 191 6, 1917 and 19 18, noted from day to day with ready pen his impressions — thanks to which the Hterature of the war is enriched by a delightful book which it has been a joy for me to read, and for which I am glad to write these introductory lines.

Mr. Meriwether visited the German and Austrian prison camps in France in the name of the American government, which at the beginning of hostilities had offered to ascertain for the belligerents how their prisoners were treated. During a rigorous winter he traveled throughout France, going from place to place in unheated trains, staying in hotels whose temperature was glacial, in order to carry out his researches. A task, assuredly, but a fascinating task because if it permitted the American Diplomat to make sure that the prisoners of war were being well treated in France, it also gave him opportunity from North to South, from East to West, in her great cities, in her straggling villages, in her rural districts, to see France at war. And at contact with the Nation, valiant beneath her wounds, heroic in her resistance, the traveler felt a clutching at his heart!

A profound and sincere emotion gushes forth from every page of this Journal. This emotion makes of it a book that moves, a book that one can not relinquish once it is begun, and that one closes with regret, not without several times having felt one's eyes wet with tears. Now it is the word of a xxiv INTRODUCTION

peasant expressing the love of the people of France for their country, their absolute confidence in her victory, which Mr. Meriwether renders with respectful emotion. Now it is a visit to the wounded, heroic in their sufferings. Now it is the arrival of soldiers on leave. A few days later it is their departure for the front — all these tableaux are soberly traced, full of sorrowing pity for the victims of the war, full of admiration for its heroes! Elsewhere it is France at work — deep in its mines, or in the war factories, or in the great gun works at Creusot. Again it is a visit to the front — to the martyred cities, Rheims, Luneville, Herimenil, Gerbeviller, with the recital of German atrocities by witnesses still vibrant from the crimes of yesterday.

As the recital advances one feels the growth in the author of indignation against the aggressor, and of love for France. In one paragraph written before the United States entered the war he says: