CHAPTER X
FROM RUSSIA BY SWEDEN AND GERMANY
On our way from Saratov on the Volga, to Reval, the interesting old capital of Esthonia, my colleagues and I discussed the possibility of returning to London via Berlin. Dr. Haden Guest and I were especially interested in the condition of child-life in the German cities, he from the point of view of a humane medical man, I as a member of the Executive Committee of the Save the Children Fund, charged with the administration of large sums of money for the relief of the suffering children of Europe. A view of the problem at close quarters would be valuable to our various committees, and useful to ourselves as propagandists.
Reval is a quaint old city, with odd winding streets and cobbled roads. Its harbour is very fine; but at the time of our visit in June, 1920, it showed very few signs of an awakening commerce. The position of the Border Republics was very uncertain, both politically and militarily, and the social condition of the people was lamentable. The fear and hatred of Bolshevism was upon them. The minefields of the Baltic had not been cleared up, which added difficulties to the trade with Sweden, prolonging the voyages and reducing the number of sailings owing to the necessity of careful and roundabout navigation. Finland was too poor to attempt to sweep them; and perhaps a little reluctant through fear of Russia, her powerful neighbour. The Allies were indifferent, and still giving aid and comfort to counter-revolutionaries of all sorts. Anything which added to the miseries of Russia they were slow to destroy; but Russia’s near neighbours suffered also.
Poverty and hunger abounded in Esthonia. The shops were almost empty of goods. The value of money was incredibly low. Enough roubles to paper a room could be bought for an English pound. The British Military Mission was obliged to have a large part of its necessary stores sent from home or from Denmark on account of the scarcity; which added to the cost of the mess and made the hospitality so freely and graciously offered a gift of more than ordinary value.
What extraordinarily good fellows were those British officers in Reval! It would be invidious to mention names; but it was perfectly clear why they were so universally popular. A well known and genuine interest in the people they had come to help was the foundation of it.
Mr. Leslie, the able and courteous young British Consul, facilitated our departure from Reval to the best of his ability, and we cast off from all Russian or related contacts on the third day after our arrival in the city. Our destination was Stockholm, where we hoped to get the necessary visa for Germany.
No words can adequately describe the voyage through those lovely Finnish islands. The nearest approach to it is the trip through the Canadian Lake of the Woods or the Greek Archipelago. The little islands stood out like emeralds against the clear horizon line of glowing pink, yellowing into the deep blue of the night sky, with its crescent moon and evening star. The ice-blue waters were as placid as a lake, and no sound but the swish of the ship’s propeller disturbed the heavenly stillness that held us through the greater part of the night. Wealthy Americans who rush to Europe to see beauties which abound in their own country might do a service to mankind by popularizing this tour.
We were compelled to submit to medical examination both in Reval and Stockholm, but this being satisfactory, we proceeded to our hotel. The trip to Russia obliged us to spend two weeks in Stockholm, one week each way, because of the infrequency of boats to Russia; which gave us the opportunity of making some interesting acquaintances, and seeing with some degree of thoroughness the most beautiful city of Northern Europe, well wooded and spotlessly clean, and threaded through and through with canals and waterways—a veritable “Venice of the North.”
Amongst these new acquaintances was a lady I first met in Geneva at the conference of the Save the Children Fund. The Countess Wilamowitz-Moellendorf is a lovely woman of about thirty-two years of age, tall and graceful as a lily, with a lily’s whiteness in her skin, and a lily’s pale gold in her hair. She has a soft voice and a gentle blue eye, which occasionally sparkles with pure mischief. She possesses the elegance and simplicity of manner of the ancien régime, to which she belongs, and has the gift of humour, suggestive of the Irish strain that is actually hers. Her distinguished husband died during the war at Bagdad and lies buried there. She has an only child, a graceful girl of sixteen growing up into the likeness of her beautiful mother.
This charming woman and devoted mother, Swede by birth and German by marriage, is giving herself without stint to the work of saving the starving babies of Europe. She also has ideas on Labour and International questions which would raise the ghosts of many of her departed friends did they but know these. She attended with me a meeting at the Volkshaus in Stockholm to hear an address by a Labour speaker, and I saw with what regard she is held by the Radical forces of the city.
One day she came to the British Labour delegation to ask their interest in a matter of relief. The Swedish Red Cross, hearing of the epidemics in Russia, and particularly in Petrograd, organized a relief expedition comprising sanitary engineers, plumbers, doctors and nurses to the number of almost a hundred, with supplies of medicines, soaps, disinfectants, and all the equipment of a sanitary and medical expedition. Prince Charles, President of the Red Cross, was extremely anxious that the Mission should set out. He had written twice to the Russian Foreign Office offering his gift; but, although weeks had passed, there was no reply. Would it be possible for us to see Tchicherine and get something definite from him, either an acceptance or a rejection, so that in the event of the latter the Mission might proceed elsewhere?
Some of us saw Prince Charles and heard the story from his own lips. His sincerity was impressive. We promised to do what we could. This grave Swedish prince is a man of distinguished appearance, with a manner of great reserve. He is tall, grey haired and blue eyed, with strong, fine hands. His royal reserve melted for a moment and his blue eyes softened with appreciation when I ventured softly to commiserate him on the death of Sweden’s popular Crown Princess, who had died the preceding day. We left his presence reinforced in the belief that humane feeling and practical social service are the disposition and occupation of no particular class. They are the characteristics of the generous and refined of all classes. We told the story to Tchicherine when we saw him; but I very much doubt if the royal gift were accepted. The Russians trust only the Society of Friends. All other relief organizations do propaganda against the Soviet Government, they allege.
One of the most interesting personalities I met in Stockholm was the great traveller and scientist, the friend of kings and kaisers, the distinguished supporter of Germany, Sven Hedin. I lunched at his house in company with some of my fellow delegates. It is a lovely home, especially his own room. This room is lined with exquisitely bound books and filled with curios of priceless value collected during many marvellous journeyings. Signed photographs of numerous monarchs stand in the recesses and on tables. Rich Oriental carpets cover the floor, and precious hangings of rarest quality add colour and character to the room.
He is a remarkably handsome man, with a mass of raven hair slightly tinged with grey, brushed but rebellious; and brilliant eyes, flashing thought. He has a happy manner, full of little gallantries. He possesses the great and saving gift of humour, can be gaily ironical and ironically severe. He is unmarried; but is tenderly devoted to his adoring family of aged mother and gifted sisters. He has an astounding capacity for work, sleeps a little in the afternoon and then works till 4 o’clock every morning. We had great argument with him, which changed neither his opinion nor our own. But there was no crudity of speech or manner on either side to spoil our reputation in a neutral city, or to lessen the quality of his generous hospitality.
The Countess succeeded in getting permission for us to go to Berlin. She introduced us to the German Minister to Sweden, and Prince Wied of the Legation, who were touched by our interest in the children of Berlin. The tax upon aliens entering Germany—at this time about 60 marks—was graciously remitted in our case as we were going on relief work, and we booked our places on train and steamer and began to pack our bags.
The last day in Stockholm was spent most happily with Mr. Branting and his gifted wife at their country house two hours’ distance up the straits. Mr. Branting was at this time Prime Minister of Sweden, whose Government was preponderatingly Social Democratic. He and his colleagues in the Cabinet had richly entertained the British delegates to Russia on their way out. This meeting of the great man in his home was of a more precious and intimate character.
The good-natured statesman at home is all that his kindly personality promised it would be. Considerate of the guest who took no wine he had provided specially for her needs. We had lunch in the garden, our table shaded by trees from the hot sun and placed in view of the quiet waters of the channel. Neighbouring houses embedded in foliage peeped at us from leafy bowers. There was no trace of a wind. Bright sunshine filtering through the leaves made a pattern upon the short smooth grass. It was an ideal place for a tired politician seeking to escape for a while from the sordid squabbles and bitter feuds of his profession.
The first time I saw Mr. Branting was at an Allied Socialist Conference in London. His burly form and erect grey hair, standing squarely off a broad forehead, as if seeking to escape from the brush of a pair of fierce, shaggy eyebrows, his large powerful hands and the broad shoulders of a Viking gave him a command over the assembly which a rather weak voice and a slow and deliberate speech might otherwise have diminished. He speaks several languages well, although one who speaks these better, an impish member of the fraternity of the press, whispered to me in Berne that “Mr. Branting confuses the delegates admirably in seven languages!”
On this occasion his wife was dressed in forget-me-not blue, which matched her eyes and set off her fair skin to perfection. Her light, fluffy hair was softly tucked under a large garden hat designed for the sun. She has the strong prejudices mingled with the charm of the French-woman that I am told she is. Mr. Branting is her second husband, and her son has adopted the name of his step-father. She is a writer of books with some claim to serious attention, but I have the misfortune not to have read any of them. She is a delightful hostess, a devoted wife and a very charming woman.
Branting was at this time gravely concerned about the effects of the Peace of Versailles and the Allied policy towards Russia. His Allied predilections during the war entitled his opinions to the gravest consideration, and he expressed himself of the opinion that the conduct of both France and England towards Germany and Russia was conceived in a spirit hostile to true internationalism, and was calculated to produce new wars by reviving old hates. The claim was being made that Russia should pay for the damage due to her withdrawal from the war. Russia retorted by demanding payment for damage done in Russia by counter-revolutionaries paid by England and France. Branting agreed there was logic in the retort. Anti-Bolshevik to the last ounce of him, he none the less regretted a policy which he believed could only have the effect of strengthening the Bolshevik power.
We bade farewell to our good friends at the water’s edge and boarded the steamer for Stockholm and the night journey towards Berlin. The Countess accompanied us, and she and I shared a compartment. The swift Swedish express brought us by morning to the Trellborg-Sassnitz steamer which conveyed us across waters as smooth as a lake to the German side.
We could only spend four days in Berlin. We had therefore carefully to map out a programme so as to accomplish as much as possible. There were the courtesy calls at the British Embassy and the British Military Mission to be made first. At both places the greatest interest was manifested in our trip to Russia. We told the story to Lord Kilmarnock over a pleasant cup of tea at the Embassy, and repeated it to General Malcolm and his staff at the Military Mission during lunch.
But I was extremely anxious, if it could be done in the time, to see representative men and women of every shade of German politics. The Countess was of the greatest possible help in bringing us into touch with one section. The German Foreign Office was equally obliging. British newspaper men gave a hand, with the result that we actually accomplished our desire in this respect, and left Berlin having seen the spokesmen of every party in the Reichstag. We found time to visit the Reichstag in session, and had the experience of hearing the speech of Herr Fehrenbach and seeing the dignified temper of the Assembly under circumstances of extreme trial and provocation.
The Allied representatives in Berlin were seriously concerned at the time with Germany’s alleged defaulting in the matter of disarmament. Our generous Britons, with not an ounce of ignorant hate in them, were not quite sure that Germany was not playing a game of gigantic bluff. It was impossible for me to believe that, after talking with many cultivated and sincere Germans. Fear of Communists on the part of the middle classes as strong as the fear in France of Germany; fear of the Junkers and the middle classes on the part of the Communists (of whom it was alleged there are 500,000 in Germany), was responsible for the charges of concealed guns and hidden rifles freely made by both sides. The Communists had thousands of rifles hidden in the woods, it was wildly said. The Junkers had quantities of ammunition and machine-guns secretly stored for future use against the common people was the counter-charge. It was this fear that put the Englishman Phillips Price on the side of the Allies in their demand for Germany’s complete disarmament. This interesting character has given up his wealth in England, embraced political Communism and married a German workgirl. When I saw him he looked very happy, rejoicing in the birth of a child to him. He, as guileless as many another, believed that France would disarm when the Germans were made helpless. With a truer estimate of the realities Germany refused to be convinced. Hence the passionate plea from her political leaders for more consideration of her difficulties, which had been interpreted by the Allies as a crafty attempt to evade the terms of the Treaty.
Amongst the politicians I saw in Berlin was a little group of German Nationalists. The most distinguished of them was the uncle of my gentle Swedish friend, a scholar of international reputation whom the great Universities of this country delighted to honour before the war, Professor Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. He is a proud and gentle old man, whose white hair only gives the impression of many years, with a grave scholarly manner, and an air of great distinction. His reasonable and proper regret was that scholarship and culture should have steeped itself in the vulgar passions of the slum and the gutter during the years of war, forgetting their dignity and worth in the disgusting welter of political hates. All the time his speech about England was courteous and kind, and though his Oxford friends had given him just cause for resentment, he kept his happier memories of her green. His was not the anger of that other scholar, Herr Edouard Meyer, half mad with the sense of injustice and wrong.
This little group of German Nationalists met me in the splendid lobby of one of the big Berlin hotels, and in a quiet corner we discussed the then political situation and the ominous signs of the times. There was the usual keen interest in the Russian adventure. Professor Wilamowitz-Moellendorf was not present on this occasion.
The most remarkable personality of the group was a tall soldierly man whose stern expression of face and grey hair were possible relics of bitter war experiences. After a few idle phrases in complimentary vein, he turned suddenly upon me and demanded fiercely: “Mrs. Snowden, why have you come to Germany?”
The sudden question startled me, but I concealed my surprise and replied: “Ever since the publication of the Peace Treaty I have been trying to come to Germany to tell the people here that there are men and women in England who do not break their pledged word and who want a square deal even for their foes. I want to shake hands with everybody here who is willing, along with us, to help to mend a broken world.”
His reply was startling: “When I came into the room just now I shook hands with you and I am still suffering from the surprise of it. I had taken a vow that never again would I touch the hand of an English person, man or woman. I had believed in your nation. I had thought it would honour its pledged word. I was foolish enough to think that British statesmen meant what they said, and that Wilson’s programme was seriously intended. I was wrong. I made that vow. And I took your hand just now. I was wrong again.”
“I think I understand,” I murmured. “In the same circumstances I should have felt as you feel.”
“Do you understand, I wonder? Do you understand that for us Germans there is nothing left but black despair? Do you realize that our children are dying of hunger? Do you understand that our young men have no careers open to them? Do you understand the pain of being spat upon, the torment of being thrust down every time you attempt to rise? Do you know what it is to be robbed of your faith in idealism, your belief in goodness, your hope for mankind? I find it difficult to believe that you understand.”
The pain in his voice, the look in his eyes hurt. He went on: “If there is any gleam of hope for Germany to be found anywhere it lies in religion. No, no,” he said hastily, noting my glance of inquiry, “I do not mean the Churches, although there must be Churches to give form and substance to the thing. The Churches must remain, but they must be reformed and reformed from within. By religion I mean that looking and striving upwards for better things without which the world perishes. If my unhappy people can lay hold again of that and keep it, there may be a little hope for them. For myself there is no hope. Everything is gone. My country is utterly destroyed. There is nothing left to live for, unless”—and here a new and fiercer light came into his tired eyes—“unless after all the Communists are pointing the way. Russia’s untold millions and our officers. It may be so.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I do not like Communism. I do not want to see Communism in Germany But when our position is so bad that nothing we can do will make it worse and something we may do might make it better, what would you?”
Another and a longer pause, and then came his final word: “If our enemies refuse to give us a gleam of hope for the future, and if the Communists of Russia have shown us the only way to throw off the intolerable burden of insult and oppression, I go with them. And there are many like me in Germany.”
And I learnt before leaving Berlin that of the many like him, General Ludendorff was one.
From this interesting gathering I betook me to the house of the Socialist President of the German Republic, President Ebert. I found him seated in a comfortable library chair, in a pleasant room overlooking a garden, a plain-spoken simple old man, of a natural and pleasing dignity. He could speak no English, but there was an interpreter present. Also, the Ex-Chancellor Müller, looking much better in health than when I saw him in Berne, stood behind the President’s chair whilst we talked. Once more we related our adventures in Russia and drew from the President that the Communists of Germany were a troublesome and incalculable element, complicating the situation woefully for those desirous of keeping order till Germany was out of her difficult debate with the Allies.
I could not help comparing President Ebert with the two other Socialist Presidents of my acquaintance, Herr Seitz of Austria and Herr Eisner of Bavaria. Herr Seitz was professional in style, well dressed and bourgeois in appearance; Herr Eisner was Bohemian in appearance, not very clean in his dress and style. President Ebert was suggestive of the typical English Trade Union leader, good-tempered and comfortable looking, as good as most and not so clever as many, less liable to rouse antagonism than a more brilliant person; more apt to steer the ship of a troubled country across a stormy sea than a steersman given to taking risks with rocks and whirlpools in order to reach the haven a little sooner. I must say I liked the homely President of the new Germany.
That same evening we assembled in one of the private rooms of the Kaiserhof the leading lights of the Independent Socialists. To our regret Herr Kautsky was in Vienna, but there came to drink coffee with us the Herren Breitschied, Dittmann, Ochme, Kuenzer and Oscar Cohn, an amiable and interested group. We wanted them to talk about Germany, but they preferred to ask us questions about Russia. Most of them were about to leave for Russia on a similar expedition to our own. We answered their questions rather wearily, for the story had become very stale by this time. These men left us with two distinct impressions. The first was that the Socialists of Germany are for the most part disinterested in the Peace Treaty, and their minds are not engrossed to an appreciable extent with such questions as the distribution of coal, the assessment of reparations, the disarmament of Germany, or the mad designs of French Imperialists. They look upon all these things as so many inevitable steps in the dissolution of the old order. They see representatives and supporters of the old order, as if maddened with lust and revenge, doing their very best to make sure the passing of their authority, and they smile and pursue their various avocations, calm amid the storms that stir the breasts of the petty bourgeoisie and the impoverished aristocrats. Their only apparent political interest lies in the future and how that is to be shaped. Shall they follow the leadership of Russia? Or shall they make their own way in their own fashion out of the chaos which the world’s capitalists and militarists have created? As a matter of fact, the same debate is exercising the Socialists of every country, and the Second International (Berne) and the Third International (Moscow) are the symbols of the conflict.
To my regret there were no Socialist women in this little party. The rush into Berlin without letting anybody know I was coming, and the rush out again at the end of a few days, made it difficult to see all those it would have been pleasant and useful to see. In the Reichstag building I had counted seven women members of Parliament seated at their desks, and thought of our hard-working and courageous Lady Astor still unsupported by a single woman colleague. I believe there are many more than seven women in the German Parliament, though exactly how many at the moment I cannot say. But they looked very normal and thoroughly competent, and mingled with their fellows in an accepted comradeship of political labour very pleasing to observe.
I met Herr Dernburg at the Club House of the Democratic Party. He assembled a few like-minded people to meet us. Most of them spoke excellent English, all appeared to understand it. I like Dernburg very much; but for some he has an unfortunate manner which makes enemies. His frankness is regarded as mere brutal bad manners. It is nothing of the sort, and I like it. It makes for clearer understanding than the polite pretences of the less courageous. I cannot reproduce in his exact words what Herr Dernburg said, but the substance of part of his long and able discourse was the cruelty of the starvation policy of the Allies and in particular in its effect upon the children. “Your people come to Germany and report that we are pretending to be poor. They see our good clothes, neatly brushed, and our generally tidy appearance and they say that Germany is better clothed than they are. They do not realize that we are reaping now the reward of our habits of thrift. The clothes that we are wearing are many years old, taken out of wardrobes and altered as best might be to suit the fashion of the hour. Women’s dresses are frequently made out of the dyed linen, bed and table, which every German girl begins to accumulate for her marriage as soon as she leaves school or earlier. Many of our children wear paper clothes or garments woven of grasses. Always are our clothes kept well brushed and used with care. It is a feature of the German character, this neatness, cleanliness and industry. Look at Berlin. Would you think that a city so full of woes could find time and heart to be so clean and trim? And yet, compared with the Berlin of pre-war days, she is soiled and stained almost beyond knowledge to those who knew and loved her well. Our hotels are crowded with rich gourmands chiefly from foreign lands; but go into our little homes, the homes of the miners in the Ruhr, the homes of the workers in Leipzig, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Hamburg, and see in the wan, pinched faces of the children and their mothers what the peace is doing to those whom the war did not kill.”
There were those in Berlin who had carefully preserved the speeches of British statesmen during the war. One such drew out of his pocket a whole note-book full of phrases from the speeches of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith. “Listen to me,” he said, “and I will read you what your rulers said, and what the new-born Germany believed, to its present sorrow.” He fingered the loose news-cuttings and selected one from the rest. Clearing his throat he began: “Mr. Lloyd George on January 5, 1918. ‘The destruction or disruption of the German people has never been a war aim with us from the first day of this war to this day.... Our point of view is that the adoption of a really democratic Constitution by Germany would be the most convincing evidence that in her the old spirit of military domination had indeed died in this war and would make it much easier for us to conclude a broad democratic peace with her!’ Mr. Lloyd George on November 12, 1918. ‘No settlement which contravenes the spirit of justice will be a permanent one. We must not allow any sense of revenge, any spirit of greed, any grasping desire to override the fundamental principles of righteousness.’ Mr. Lloyd George on the same date: ‘We shall go to the Peace Conference to guarantee that the League of Nations is a reality!’ Mr. Bonar Law, September 24, 1914: ‘We have no desire to humiliate the German people.’ Mr. Lloyd George, September, 12, 1918: ‘We must not arm Germany with a real wrong. In other words, we shall neither accept nor impose on our foe a Brest-Litovsk treaty.’”
“Enough,” I said, “I know all these speeches by heart. It has hurt me just as much as you that the Peacemakers have departed from their promises!”
“No, no,” he said sharply, “not so much, not nearly so much. It has hurt your pride, but it is killing our children. Where is the comparison?” And he turned away in disgust.
The Hôtel Adlon is like the Hôtel Belle Vue in Berne and the Bristol in Vienna, full of the oddest assemblage of human curiosities that the storms of war have tossed together. The Countess and I dined there one evening after the opera to amuse ourselves with the spectacle. Every table was crowded. It was with the greatest difficulty that we secured places. Eventually, and with the aid of a little English silver, we were invited to take seats in the corridor leading to the main dining-room. Herr Stinnes, the great man of industrial Germany, the coal king, iron master, high financier, newspaper proprietor, political “boss,” millionaire—large-eyed, impressive—the most powerful magnate in Central Europe at the present moment—sat at the next table to our own. In the corner was a famous dancer, impudent and vivacious, a dainty profligate. There were the German nouveaux riches in unaccustomed corsets and high-heeled shoes, hot and miserable under the brilliant lights. A group of fresh-looking British officers gave the wholesome touch to a hectic scene. Hysterical women, half-dressed, sang snatches of accompaniment to the waltz strains of the orchestra. A French officer made undisguised love to a fascinating brunette at a near table. Two out of three had the brilliant eyes and swarthy skin of the Jew. Every language under the sun could be heard. It was a veritable Tower of Babel. It suggested nothing so much as a company of condemned criminals spending a last riotous night before the hanging in the morning.
A pleasanter meal was eaten at the House of the American High Commissioner. America still being at war with Germany had no ambassador, but his equivalent, Mr. Drexel, was our courteous host on this occasion, and at the same table I met my old acquaintance of the American Legation in Berne, Mr. Hugh Wilson. Mr. Wilson is a delightful young American diplomat of wide sympathies and progressive views. I made his acquaintance through the kind offices of our friend in common, Mr. William Bullitt, the courageous young American who resigned his position as part of the American Delegation to Paris when he discovered that the Peace Treaty violated every one of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points.
Mr. Wilson is small and slim, with a winning smile of extreme good nature; but he is very impatient, and properly so, with the selfish dogmatists who do not mind if the world be destroyed if only they may attempt to force everything and everybody within the four corners of their particular creed. America’s diplomacy is rich in talent if it possesses many young men as able as Mr. Hugh Wilson and his friend, Mr. Bullitt.
In one of the children’s clinics in Charlottenburg I saw the saddest sight since my visit to Vienna, crowds of little girls and boys, stripped for the doctor one by one, pitiful pale faces, ribs sticking through their bodies, hollow chests, fleshless arms—doomed to die from pulmonary disease, the helpless innocent victims of the war and of the peace. The physician received us coldly, and we could see that he felt bitter; but his manner was correct, and he warmed a little as he gradually realized that no impertinent curiosity but a real desire to understand and help had brought us to his clinic. “The next generation of Germans will be three parts diseased,” he said in a dead level voice more terrible than passion. “Is that what your people wish?” I assured him that our people did not know what was happening, but that it would be our business to tell them. Since that time the British miners alone have subscribed more than £12,000 to the fund for relief. And it may be the miners, whose standard of living is threatened at this time, who will be the first great body of workmen to learn, and the first to teach the connexion between foreign politics and the daily circumstances of their lives. The ruin of the English export trade in coal is the direct outcome of that part of the Treaty of Versailles which provides that Germany shall supply to France coal so much in excess of her needs that, not only need she not import coal from this country, but she can export it to other countries which were formerly our customers.
With the artistic life of Berlin I was not able in the short time I was there to get into close contact. Some day it will be my object to do so. The world of politics is not the only world, nor the best. The world that interprets the world, the world that takes you out of the world, the world of art is the best of all worlds. And when the passions of living men, tearing and wounding the innocent, sicken the soul, the exploits of the dead, read by the fireside, or rendered in song and dance and drama, offer a refuge for weary body and mind, tired with their fruitless protest against cruelty and wrong.
One interesting artist of Germany I may call my friend, Karl Vollmoeller, author of The Miracle produced in London at Olympia in 1911. He is sometimes spoken of as the “Voltaire of Würtemberg” because of his physical likeness to Voltaire. He is small and pale, with fair hair, and thin, rather pinched features. I imagine he is very delicate in constitution. He is a scholar, a poet, a man of the world, one of the leading German neo-romanticists. He spoke to me and another of the time when Lord Northcliffe, whom the flighty young Radical intellectuals of this country have dubbed, “Alfred and Omega,” ironical of his pretended omniscience, boomed The Miracle, turning what threatened to be a failure into an overwhelming success. Whimsically he spoke also of Charles Cochran, who organized the Olympia “Miracle” season of Max Reinhardt, and who is now supposed to be the leader of the campaign against German plays.
Vollmoeller told many amusing stories of the rehearsals at Olympia, of Engelbert Humperdinck, the composer, Maria Carmi, the actress who played the Virgin, Max Pallenberg, the greatest comic actor of the German stage, Trouhanowa, the dancer, and so on.
Some time later Vollmoeller’s Turandot was produced at the St. James’s Theatre and The Venetian Night at the Palace. The latter caused considerable friction with the Lord Chamberlain. The performances were stopped for a day or two. Finally there was a compromise, and the performances were resumed. These reminiscences of the artist were full of a quaint interest. They revealed the utter folly of war and materialism in the light of the universality and beauty of art.
At the end of our four days we left Berlin, travelling via Cologne. There was a compulsory break of twelve hours there. It gave us an opportunity of seeing the city under Allied occupation, and of taking a trip up the Rhine. There were no outward and visible signs of unhappiness in the people; but I have long since learnt that the broad highway is not the place where respectable misery flaunts itself. That hides itself behind closed curtains and thrusts its children out of sight of the pitying eye of the foreigner. Still, the general appearance of the people was better here than in Berlin. They had more colour. They were not so thin. The middle-class crowds which came on to the steamer at Bonn and other towns as we sailed up the beautiful river to the cherry country of the Drachenfels were glowing with health by comparison with the anæmic Berliners, dragging tired feet along the hard and unsympathetic pavements. The Rhine is a glory. And the view from the top of the Drachenfels exhibited a panorama of soft wooded beauty which made the hot air of the city cafes a nightmare memory.
From Cologne to Antwerp, a ten hours’ journey through land almost literally flowing with milk and honey! Belgium is the richest war country in Europe. Her fields were brown with waving corn. Her fruit trees were laden with fruit. The restaurant on the train was packed with food, ample supplies of rich butter and milk and cream; eggs in abundance. Coming straight from the starving cities of Germany and Russia, the abundance of Belgium was a relief to the mind. And there are generous hearts in Belgium (as in France) which some of her politicians belie.
There is nothing so disgusting about war psychology as the willingness with which decent men and women will listen to any story which discredits the enemy. Whether it be true or not is no concern of theirs. They believe it could be true. So it must be true!
A rumour was set afloat in the Allied countries that Germany was converting the money which was being raised in America for relief purposes to political uses through the German Embassy in the United States. What was the fact? It was simply that the money raised in America was used by the German staff for its own expenses, and an equal amount credited to relief accounts by the Government in Germany in order to avoid the risks from torpedo activity of sending the money by ship. The rumour was, of course, an attempt to prevent relief being sent to little German children. But it failed; as it deserved to fail.
Thank God, there is one thing which unites the great masses of men and women of all nations, whether in peace or in war; and that is a tender concern for children. When Nature fails there, and children are deliberately sacrificed to satisfy the ambitions of men, the end of the world will come, even though all the guns be cast into the midst of the sea, for the belief in immortality, which is implicit in the love of men and women for children, will have given place to a calculating materialism in which the be-all and end-all is self. And selfishness is of the very essence of corruption.