There is an aged saying to the effect that the longest way round is often the shortest way home. It applies to many of the crossroads of life. Toward the end of March I found myself facing such a fork in my own particular footpath. My “duties” with the Army of Occupation had slowed down to a point where I could only write the word between quotation-marks and speak it with a throaty laugh. I suggested that I be sent on a walking trip through unoccupied Germany, whence our information was not so meager as contradictory. It would have been so simple to have dropped into the inconspicuous garb of a civilian right there in Coblenz, and to have slipped noiselessly over the outer arc of our bridgehead. Eventually, I believe, the army would have adopted the suggestion. There were times when it showed an almost human interest in the project. But I am of an intensely selfish, self-centered disposition; I wanted to try the adventure myself, personally. Besides, there was no certainty that my grandson would care for that species of sport. He might be of quite the opposite temperament—a solid, respectable, church-going, respected citizen, and all that sort of thing, you know. Furthermore, I had not yet taken the first preliminary, indispensable step toward acquiring a grandson. Wherefore, in a lucid moment, I recalled the moth-eaten adage above plagiarized, and concluded that the easiest way 85to get “over into Germany” was to turn my back on the Rhine and return to France.

It may be that my offer to relieve Uncle Sam from the burden of my support caught the authorities napping. At any rate, the application sailed serenely over the reef on which I fully expected to see it hopelessly shipwrecked, and a week later I was speeding toward that village in central France known to the A. E. F. as the “canning factory.”

Relieved for the first time in twenty-three months of the necessity of awaiting authority for my goings and comings, I returned a fortnight later to Coblenz. It would not have been difficult to sneak directly over our line into unoccupied territory. I knew more than one forest-hidden loophole in it. But that would scarcely have been fair to my erstwhile colonel—and with all his faults the colonel had been rather decent. Besides, while that would have been the more romantic thing, it might not have led to as long and unhampered a stay in Germany as a more orderly and gentlemanly entrance.

Of the two neutralizing points, that to the north was reputed the more promising. The express to Cologne sped across white fields that belied the calendar and gave the heavily blossomed cherry- and apple-trees the appearance of being laden with clinging snow. The more brassy British khaki took the place of our own, the compartment groups changed gradually from American to English officers. The latter were very young, for the most part, and one scarcely needed to listen to their almost childish prattle of their work and things warlike to know that they were not veterans. Long freight-trains crowded with still younger Britishers, exuding the extreme callowness of the untraveled insular youth, rattled into town with us from a more northern direction, happy to take the place of the grim and grizzled warriors that were being demobilized. In the outskirts of the city Germans of both sexes and all 86ages were placidly yet diligently toiling in their little garden patches into the twilight of the long spring day.

The British, rating me a correspondent, billeted me in a once proud hotel in the shadow of the great cathedral. In the scurry of pursuing passport and visées in Paris I had found no time to change my garb to the kind that flaps about the ankles. In consequence my evening stroll was several times broken by as many of England’s boyish new guardsmen, their bayonets overtopping them by several inches in some cases, who pounded their rifle-butts on the pavement in salute and stage-whispered a bit tremulously:

“Officers is not to walk about too much by theirselves, sir.”

My query at the first warning had been answered with a:

“Three of them was badly cut up last night, sir.”

There were no outward signs of any such serious enmity, however; on the contrary, the populace seemed almost friendly, and at the officers’ club guests were checking their side-arms with the German doorman.

The tall and hearty Irish guardsman in charge of British Rhine traffic readily granted my request to go down the river in one of the daily steamers carrying troops back to “Blighty” for demobilization. That day’s boat floundered under the simple little name of Ernst Ludwig Gross Herzog von Hessen und bei Rhein! I believe the new owners called it Louie. A score of German girls came down to the wharf to wave the departing “Tommies” farewell. All day we passed long strings of barges flying the triangular flag of the Food Commission, bearing supplies for the Army of Occupation and the civilian population of the occupied region. The time was but a few weeks off when the arteries of the Third Army flowing through France would be entirely cut off. The food on board the Louie was not unlike our own army ration; the bunks supplied the officers were of 87a sort that would have moved our own more exacting wearers of the “Sam Browne” to start a Congressional investigation. The most noticeable differences between this Blighty-bound multitude and our own doughboys were three in number—their lack of inventiveness in amusing themselves, their lower attitude toward women, and the utter lack of care of the teeth, conspicuous even among the officers. We should have been hard put to it, however, to find a higher type than the youthful captains and lieutenants in charge of the steamer.

At five we halted for the night beside several huge barges anchored well out in the stream, their holds filled with very passable bunks—as soldiering goes. While the Tommies, pack-laden, clambered down the half-dozen narrow hatches to their light quarters, I dropped in on the families that dwelt in the stern of each. Those who have never paid a similar call might be surprised to find what homelike comfort reigns in these floating residences. Outwardly the barges are of the plainest and roughest, coal-carriers for the most part, with all the smudge and discomfort of such occupation. As the lower house door at the rear opens, his eyes are prepared to behold something about as inviting as the forecastle of a windjammer. Instead they are all but dazzled by the immaculate, housewifely cleanliness, the orderly comfort of the interior. The Rhine-plying dwelling is a close replica of a “lower middle-class” residence ashore—a half-dozen rooms, carpeted, lace-curtained, the walls decorated with family portraits, elaborate-framed mottoes and over-colored statuettes of the Catholic faith, a great square bed of inviting furnishings in the parental room, smaller though no less attractive ones in the other sleeping-chambers, easy-chairs, the latest thing in kitchen ranges, large lamps that are veritable chandeliers suspended from the ceiling—nothing was missing, down to the family cat and canary.

88It was noticeable that though the barges had been commandeered by their army and they never lost sight of the fact that their owners were “the enemy,” the English officers were meticulously courteous in requesting permission to enter the family cabins. Your Britisher never forgets that a man’s home is his castle. One could not but wonder just what the attitude of a German officer would have been under reversed conditions, for the same motto is far less deeply ingrained in the Teuton character. The barge nearest the steamer was occupied by a family with five children, the oldest aged fourteen, all born on board, at as many points of the vessel’s constant going and coming between Rotterdam and Mannheim. Two of them were at school in the town in which the family was registered as residents, where the parental marriage was on record, where the father reported when the order of mobilization called him to arms. The oldest had already been entered as “crew,” and was preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps—if the expression be allowed under the circumstances.

When they had arranged themselves for the night, the “Tommies” returned on board the steamer for a two-hour entertainment of such caliber as could be aroused from their own midst. There were several professional barn-storming vaudeville performers among them, rather out of practice from their long trench vigils, but willing enough to offer such talents as they still possessed. Nor were the amateurs selfish in preserving their incognito. It was simple fare, typified by such uproarious jokes as:

“’Ungry, are you? Well, ’ene, ’ere’s a piece of chalk. Go draw yourself a plate of ’am an’ eggs.”

But it all served to pass the endless last hours that separated the war-weary veterans from the final ardently awaited return to “the old woman an’ the kids.”

The tramp of hundreds of hobnailed shoes on the deck over our heads awoke us at dawn, and by the time we had 89reached the open air Germany had been left behind. It needed only the glimpse of a cart, drawn by a dog, occupied by a man, and with a horse hitched behind—a genuine case of the cart before the horse—trotting along an elevated highway, sharp-cut against the floor-flat horizon, to tell us we were in Holland. Besides, there were stodgy windmills slowly laboring on every hand, to say nothing of the rather unprepossessing young Dutch lieutenant, in his sickly gray-green uniform, who had boarded us at the frontier, to confirm the change of nationality of Father Rhine. The lieutenant’s duties consisted of graciously accepting an occasional sip of the genuine old Scotch that graced the sideboard of the youthful commanding officer, and of seeing to it that the rifles of the Tommies remained under lock and key until they reached their sea-going vessel at the mouth of the river—a task that somehow suggested a Lilliputian sent to escort a regiment of giants through his diminutive kingdom.

In the little cluster of officers on the upper deck the conversation rarely touched on war deeds, even casually, though one knew that many a thrilling tale was hidden away in their memories. The talk was all of rehabilitation, rebuilding of the civilian lives that the Great Adventure had in so many cases all but wholly wrecked. Among the men below there was more apathy, more silent dreaming, interspersed now and then by those crude witticisms with which their class breaks such mental tension:

“These ’ere blinkin’ Dutch girls always makes me think as ’ow their faces ’ave been mashed by a steam-roller an’ their bloomin’ legs blowed up with a bicycle pump, so ’elp me!”

The remark might easily be rated an exaggeration, but the solid Jongvrouws who clattered their wooden-shod way along the banks could not in all fairness have been called delicate.

90I was conscious of a flicker of surprise when the Dutch authorities welcomed me ashore without so much as opening my baggage—particularly as I was still in uniform. The hotel I chose turned out to be German in ownership and personnel. Steeped in the yarns of the past five years, I looked forward to at least the excitement of having spies go through my baggage the moment I left it unguarded. Possibly they did; if so, they were superhumanly clever in repacking the stuff as they found it.

If I had been so foolish as to suppose that I could hurry on at once into Germany I should have been sadly disappointed. The first of the several duties before me was to apply to the police for a Dutch identity card. Without it no one could exist at liberty in nor leave the flat little kingdom. As usually happens in such cases, when one is in a hurry, the next day was Sunday. The chief excitement in Rotterdam on the day of rest was no longer the Zoo, but the American camp, a barbed-wire inclosure out along the wharves about which the Dutchman and his wife and progeny packed a dozen rows deep to gaze at doughboys tossing baseballs or swinging boxing-gloves, with about as much evidence of the amusement as they might show before a Rembrandt or a Van Dyck painting. Naturally so hilarious a Sabbath passes swiftly for a man eager to be elsewhere!

There were, of course, the window displays of the closed shops, of unfailing interest to any one long familiar only with warring lands. No wonder these placid Dutchmen looked so full-cheeked and contented. Though a tradesman may have found some things missing, to the casual eye there were apparently none of the material good things of life that could not be had in superabundance. Butter, eggs, cakes, bonbons, fat bacon, meat of every species, sweets of all kinds, soap as good and as cheap as before the war, cigarettes, cigars, and tobacco enough to have 91set all France to rioting, all those little dainties which the gormands of the belligerent countries had ceased even to sigh for, were here tantalizingly spread out for block after block, street after street. Restaurants ostentated menu-cards offering anything a hungry man could pay for; milk was to be had every few yards at ten Dutch cents a glass. One had something of the sensation that would come from seeing diamonds and gold nuggets strewn along the way just around the corner from the abode of a band of unsuccessful yeggmen. With the caution bred of nineteen months in France I had filled the interstices of my baggage with chocolate and cigars. It was like carrying gloves to Grenoble. Nothing was more abundantly displayed in the windows of Rotterdam than those two articles.

A closer inspection, however, showed that Holland had not entirely escaped the secondary effects of the war. The milk that still sold so cheaply showed a distinct evidence now of too close an alliance between the herd and the pump. If the restaurants were fully supplied from hors-d’?uvre to coffee, the aftermath was a very serious shock to the financial system. There seemed, moreover, to be no place where the average rank and file of laboring humanity could get its wholesome fill for a reasonable portion of its income. The bonbons were a trifle pasty; the cigars not only as expensive as across the Atlantic—which means manyfold more than the old Dutch prices—they were far more inviting behind a plate-glass than when burning in front of the face. The clothing that was offered in such abundance usually confessed frankly to membership in the shoddy class. Suspenders and garters had all but lost their elasticity; shoes—except the more popular Dutch variety—had soared to the lofty realms to which all articles of leather have ascended the world over. Bicycles, the Dutchman’s chief means of locomotion, however, seemed as easily within 92reach as if the far-spread “rubber crisis” had never discovered this corner of Europe.

Yet on the whole these happy, red-cheeked, overfed Dutchmen did not seem to have a care in the world. Their attitude toward the American uniform appeared to be cold, at best not above indifference, though the new doughboy weekly credited them with genuine friendliness. One got the impression that they were pro-Ally or pro-Boche interchangeably, as it served their own interests—which after all is quite in keeping with human nature the world round. The most serious task of the American detachment was to prevent the supplies destined for hungry Europe beyond from dwindling under the hands of the Dutch stevedores who transhipped them. It would, perhaps, be unfair to call the stodgy little nation a war profiteer, yet there were suggestions on all sides that it had not always scorned to take advantage of the distress of its neighbors. I may be prejudiced, but I did not find the Hollanders what the Spaniards calls simpático, not even so much as I had fifteen years before. If I may so express it, the kingdom left the same impression one feels upon meeting an old classmate who has amassed wealth in some of the quicker, less laborious methods our own land affords. One rejoices, in a way, at his prosperity, yet one feels more in tune with the less “successful” old-time friend who has been mellowed by his fair share of adversities.

Monday, though it was the last day of April, shivered under a ragged blanket of wet snow. The line-up at the police station was international and it was long. Furthermore, the lieutenants behind the extemporized wickets were genuinely Dutch; they neither gossiped nor loafed, yet they did not propose to let the haste of a disorderly outside world disturb their racial serenity or jar their superb penmanship. They preserved the same sense of order amid the chaos that surrounded their tight little 93land as the magnificent policemen directing traffic in the main streets outside, who halted the stranger inadvertently following the wrong sidewalk with a courteous but exceedingly firm “You are taking a valk on the rhight side of the street, pleasse.” In the course of two hours I reached a wicket—only to find that I needed two photographs. By the time I had been mugged and reached the head of the international line again another day had drifted into the irredeemable past.

It was not easy to get the Hollander to talk of the war and its kindred topics, even when one found him able to speak some better-known tongue than his own. He seemed to hold the subject in some such abhorrence as cultured persons do the latest scandal, or, more exactly, perhaps, to look upon it as a highly successful soap manufacturer does the plebeian commodity on which his social superstructure is erected. Americans who had been in the country long enough to penetrate a bit below the surface were inclined to think that, if he had any other feeling than pro-Dutch, he leaned a little to the eastward. Especially, however, was he interested in seeing to it that both sides were given an equal opportunity of eating undisturbed at his table—and paying well for the privilege. In a mild way a clean and orderly hotelkeeper housing two rival football teams would have displayed the same attitude.

But gibes at either side were not wholly tabooed. At an alleged “musical comedy” in a local theater the scene that produced the most audible mirth depicted the erstwhile Kaiser and Crown Prince—excellently mimed down to the crippled arm of the one and the goat-face of the other—enjoying the bucolic hospitality of their land of refuge. The father, dressed in one of the most gorgeous of his innumerable uniforms, stood at a convenient block, splitting kindling with a one-handed hatchet; the son, in wooden 94shoes and a Zuyder Zee cap, sat on a pierhead serenely fishing. Above their heads stood a road-sign pointing in opposite directions to:

“PARIS—45,000 kilometers; CALAIS—75,000 kilometers.”

Their extended quarrel on who started the war, and why, brought no evidence of pro-German sympathy from the audience. It was easy to imagine the horrified protest from the German Legation which such a skit would have brought down upon the producer’s head a year before. A scene that caused little less mirth showed a Dutch frontier guard so hoary with service that their clothing had sprouted toadstools and their feet barnacles.

The more widely I inquired the more unlikely seemed the possibility of getting into Germany. This was in keeping with my experiences in other lands, had I stopped to think of it, where it had always proved simpler to dash forward on a difficult trip first and make inquiries afterward. Our consulate in Rotterdam had no suggestions to offer and advised me to see our Legation at The Hague. An excellent train, showing no evidence that the world had ever been at war, set me down at the Dutch capital an hour later.

“You want to get into Germany?” queried the Legation, with elevated eyebrows. “Well, all we can say is God bless you!”

A deeper probing, however, showed that this was only the official voice speaking.

“Personally,” continued the particular secretary to whom I had appealed, with a decided accent on the word, “I would suggest that you see the German Legation. Officially, of course, we do not know that any such place exists, but—I have heard—quite unofficially—that there is a Herr Maltzen there who.... But of course you could not call on him in American khaki....”

I came near making the faux pas of asking where the German 95Legation was situated. Of course the secretary could not have known officially. The first passer-by outside, however, readily pointed it out to me—just around the corner. By the time I had returned to Rotterdam and outfitted myself in civilian garb carefully adjusted to pass muster at so exacting a function as a German official visit and at the same time not to suggest wealth to fellow-roadsters should I succeed in entering the Empire, another day had been added to my debit column.

On the train to The Hague next morning I tested the disguise which exceedingly European clothing, a recently acquired mustache, and the remnants of a tongue I had once spoken rather fluently afforded by playing German before my fellow-passengers. To all outward appearances the attempt was successful, but try as I would I saw a German spy in every rosy-cheeked, prosperous Dutchman who turned his bovine eyes fixedly upon me. Herr Maltzen’s office hours were not until five in the afternoon. When at last I was ushered into his august presence I summoned my best German accent and laid as much stress as was becoming on some distant relatives who—the past five years willing—still dwelt within the Empire.

“The primary question, of course,” pronounced Herr Maltzen, in the precise, resonant language of his calling, “is, are you German or are you an American?”

“American, certainly,” I replied.

“Ah, then it will be difficult, extremely difficult,” boomed the immaculate Teuton, solemnly. “Up to nine days ago I was permitted to pass personally on the credentials of foreign correspondents. But now they must be referred to Berlin. If you care to make official application....”

“I hereby do so.”

“Unfortunately, it is not so simple as that. The application must be in writing, giving references to several persons of the responsible class in Germany, with a statement 96of your activities during the war, copies of your credentials....”

“And how soon could I expect the answer?”

“With the very best of luck in two weeks, more probably three or four.”

I returned to Rotterdam in a somewhat dazed condition, having left Herr Maltzen with the impression that I had gone to think the problem over. Nor was that a false impression. It was more of a problem than even the suave diplomat suspected. It happened that I had a bare six weeks left for a tramp “over in Germany.” If I frittered away three-fourths of them among the placid and contented Dutchmen, there would not be much left except the regret of having given up the privilege of returning home—eventually—under army pay and transportation. Moreover, rumblings from Paris indicated that by that time a trip through Germany would be of slight interest. I retired that night more nearly convinced than ever that I was more properly fitted to become a protectorate under the mandate of some benevolent league of managers for irresponsible persons than to attempt to continue as an autonomous member of society.

Some time in the small hours I was rapped on the forehead with a brilliant idea. So extraordinary an experience brought me to a sitting posture and full wakefulness. The Food Commission had a steamer leaving next day for Danzig. What could be more to my purpose than to drop off there and tramp back to Holland? Among my possessions was an elaborately non-committal letter—I had been given the privilege of dictating it myself—from the “Hoover crowd” in Paris, down toward the end of which it was specifically stated that, while I was not connected with the Food Commission, they would be glad if any courtesies could be shown me. Carefully read, it would have made a rather satisfactory prelude to the request of a starving 97and stranded American to be permitted to buy a half-pound of bacon. Carelessly perused, however, it might easily have been mistaken for a document of some importance, particularly as it was decorated with the imposing letterhead of the “Supreme Economic Council.” But I had scarcely expected it to be of use until I had succeeded in jimmying my way into unoccupied Germany.

The Rotterdam section of the Food Commission was quite willing that I go to Danzig—or any other place far enough away to make it impossible for me to further disturb their complicated labors. But their duties ceased when they had seen the relief-ships loaded. The ships themselves were under command of the navy. The buck having thus successfully been passed, I waded through a soggy snow-storm to the imposing Dutch building that housed our officers in blue. An exceedingly courteous naval commander gave the false impression that he was extremely sorry not to be able to grant my request, but the already overcrowded boat, the strict orders against carrying civilians.... In short, I should have realized that red tape is not confined to the khaki-clad half of our fighting forces. I shuffled my way back into the heart of the city in my most downcast mood, tempered far beneath by a sneaking little satisfaction that at least if I could not get into Germany I should run no risk of being boiled in oil by the dreadful Sparticists or tickled to death with garden rakes by a grinning band of almond-eyed Bolsheviki.

This would never do. The sun had already begun its last April descent, and I had surrendered nearly three weeks before the privilege of being able to sit idle and still draw a salary. I resolved that May should not catch me supinely squatting in Rotterdam. The chief bridge was soon burned. At the police station my identity card was stamped “out” so quickly as to have given a sensitive person the impression that the country was only too glad to be rid of him. At 98least I must leave Holland, and if I left in an easterly direction there was only one place that I could bring up. But what of Herr Maltzen? My dime-novel conception of international espionage pictured him as having set a half-dozen of his most trusted agents to dogging my footsteps. I would outwit them! I hastened back to the hotel and wrote the Teuton envoy an elaborate application for permission to enter Germany, with references, copies of credentials, and touching as gently as possible on my unseemly activities during the war. Unfortunately, I could recall the name and address of only one of those distant German relatives of whom I had boasted; the others I was forced to fake, arousing new misgivings in my penny-dreadful conscience. In conclusion I added the subtle misleader that while awaiting his reply I should make the most of my time by journeying about Holland and possibly elsewhere. Then I tossed into a straw suitcase a few indispensable articles, the confiscation of which I felt I could survive, and dashed for the evening train to the eastern frontier.

To carry out still further my movie-bred disguise I took third-class and mingled with the inconspicuous multitude. There was no use attempting to conceal myself in the coal-bin or to bribe the guard to lend me his uniform, for the train did not go beyond the border. On the platform I met an American lieutenant in full uniform, bound for Hamburg as a courier; but I cut our interview as short as courtesy permitted, out of respect for Herr Maltzen’s lynx-eyed agents. The lieutenant’s suggestion that I ride boldly with him in first-class comfort gave me a very poor impression of his subtlety. Evidently he was not well read in detective and spy literature. However, there was comfort in the feeling of having a fellow-countryman, particularly one of official standing, within easy reach.

Holland lay dormant and featureless under a soggy snow coverlet. Many of her hundreds of fat cattle wore canvas 99jackets. Every town and village was gay with flags in honor of the tenth birthday of the Dutch princess, a date of great importance within the little kingdom, though quite unnoticed by the world at large. The prosperous, well-dressed workmen in my compartment, having been inconspicuously let into the secret that I was a German, jokingly-seriously inquired whether I was a Sparticist or a Bolshevik. It was evident that they were too well fed to have any sympathy for either. Then they took to complaining that my putative fatherland did not send them enough coal, asserting that thousands had died in Holland for lack of heat during the past few winters. Beyond Utrecht the long stretch of sterile sand-dunes aroused a well-schooled carpenter whose German was fluent to explain why Holland could not agree to any exchange of territory with Belgium. To give up the strip of land opposite Flushing would mean making useless the strong Dutch fortifications there. The piece farther east offered in exchange looked all very well on the map, but it was just such useless heather as this we were gazing out upon. Holland could not accept a slice of Germany—Emden, for instance—instead, because that would be certain sooner or later to lead to war. Of course, he added, teasingly, Holland could beat Germany with wooden shoes now, but ten years hence it would not be so easy. Besides, the Dutch did not care for a part of Belgium, though the Flemish population was eager to join them. They were quite content to remain a small country. Big countries, like rich individuals, had too many troubles, aroused too much envy. He might have added that the citizens of a small country have more opportunity of keeping in close touch with all national questions, but his own speech was a sufficient demonstration of that fact. He knew, for example, just what portions of the Zuyder Zee were to be reclaimed, and marked them on my map. All the southern end was to 100be pumped out, then two other strips farther north. But the sections north and south of Stavoren were to be left as they were. The soil was not worth the cost of uncovering it and the river Yssel must be left an outlet to the ocean, a viaduct sufficing to carry the railway to the peninsula opposite.

It may have been the waving flags that turned the conversation to the royal family. A gardener who had long worked for them scornfully branded as canards the rumors in the outside world that the German consort was not popular. The prince was quite democratic—royalty radiates democracy nowadays the world over, apparently—and was so genuinely Dutch that he would not speak German with any one who knew any other tongue. He spoke most of the European ones himself, and in addition Tamil and Hindustani. He took no part whatever in the government—unless he advised the Queen unofficially in the privacy of their own chamber—but was interested chiefly in the Boy Scout movement, in connection with which he hoped to visit the United States after the war. They were a very loving couple, quite as much so as if they were perfectly ordinary people.

By this time the short northern night had fallen. With two changes of cars I rattled on into it and brought up at Oldenzaal on the frontier at a late hour. The American lieutenant put up at the same hotel with me and we discussed the pros and cons of my hopes of getting into Germany. They were chiefly cons. The lieutenant was quite willing for me to make use of his presence consistent with army ethics, and I retired with a slightly rosier view of the situation.

In the morning this tint had wholly disappeared. I could not stir up a spark of optimism anywhere in my system. Army life has a way of sapping the springs of personal initiative. To say that I was 99 per cent. convinced 101that I would be back in Oldenzaal before the day was over would be an under-statement. I would have traded my chances of passing the frontier for a Dutch cigar. I bought a ticket on the shuttle train to the first German station in much the same spirit that a poker-player throws his last dollar into a game that has been going against him since the night before.

As a refinement of cruelty the Dutch authorities submitted us to a second customs examination, even more searching than that at our arrival. They relentlessly ferreted out the foodstuffs hidden away in the most unlikely corners of the smallest luggage, and dropped them under the low counter at their feet. An emaciated woman bearing an Austrian passport was thus relieved of seventeen parcels, down to those containing a half-pound of butter or a slice of cheese. In her case not even her midday train lunch escaped. No one could complain that the blockade requirement against Holland reshipping to Germany was being violated at Oldenzaal. As we passed out the door to the platform a soldier ran his hands up and down our persons in search of suspicious lumps and bulges. My Dutch identity card had been taken away from me; I no longer had the legal right to exist anywhere. Once on the train, however, the food blockade proved to have been less watertight than it had seemed. As usual, the “wise ones” had found means of evading it. Several experienced travelers had provided themselves with official authorization to bring in ten or twelve pounds of Lebensmittel. A few others aroused the envy of their fellow-passengers—once the boundary was passed—by producing succulent odds and ends from secret linings of their baggage. One loud-voiced individual asserted that there was much smuggling through the forests beside us. It is not likely, however, that the food that escapes the Oldenzaal search brought much relief to the hunger of Germany.

102The thin-faced Austrian woman sat hunched in a far corner of the compartment, noiselessly crying. Two middle-aged Germans of the professor-municipal-employee caste whispered cautiously together on the opposite cushion. As we passed the swampy little stream that marks the boundary they each solemnly gave it a military salute, and from that moment on raised their voices to a quite audible pitch. One displayed a sausage he had wrapped in a pair of trousers. The other produced from a vest pocket a tiny package of paper-soap leaves, each the size of a visiting-card. He pressed three or four of them upon his companion. The latter protested that he could not accept so serious a sacrifice. The other insisted, and the grateful recipient bowed low and raised his hat twice in thanks before he stowed the precious leaves away among his private papers. They passed a few remarks about the unfairness of the food blockade, particularly since the signing of the armistice. One spoke scornfully of the attempt of the Allies to draw a line between the German government and the people—there was no such division, he asserted. But by this time we were grinding to a halt in Bentheim, in all probability the end of my German journey.

The passengers and their hand-luggage jammed toward a door flanked by several German non-coms. and a handsome young lieutenant. I pressed closely on the heels of the American courier. He was received with extreme courtesy by the German lieutenant, who personally saw to it that he was unmolested by boundary or customs officials, and conducted him to the outgoing waiting-room toward which we were all striving. Meanwhile a sergeant had studied my passport, quite innocent of the German visé, dropped it into the receptacle of doubtful papers, and motioned to me to stand back and let the others pass, exactly as I had expected him to do. How ridiculous of me to fancy I could bluff my way through a cordon of German 103officials, as if they had been French or Italian! Would they shut me up or merely toss me back on the Dutch? The last of my legitimate fellow-passengers passed on into the forbidden land and left me standing quite alone in the little circle of German non-coms. One of them rescued my passport and handed it to the handsome young lieutenant as he returned. He looked at me questioningly. I addressed him in German and slipped the weak-kneed Food Commission letter into his hands. Perhaps—but, alas! my last hope gave a last despairing gasp and died; the lieutenant read English as easily as you or I!

“You see,” I began, lamely, “as a correspondent, and more or less connected with the Food Commission, I wished to have a glimpse of the distribution from Hamburg—and I can catch one of their ships back from there to Rotterdam. Then as the lieutenant I am with speaks no German, I offered to act as interpreter for him on the way. I ... I....”

I was waiting, of course, to hear the attentive listener bellow the German version of, “You poor fish! do you think you can pull that kind of bull on me!” Instead, he bowed slightly in acknowledgment of my explanation and looked more closely at my passport.

“You should have had this stamped at the German Legation in The Hague,” he remarked, softly.

“I did not know until shortly before the train left that the lieutenant was coming,” I added, hastily, “so there was no time for that. I thought that, with the letter from the Food Commission also....”

Either I am really very simple—in my particular asinine moments I feel the certainty of that fact—or I have been vouchsafed the gift of putting on a very simple face. The German gazed an instant into my innocent eyes, then glanced again at the letter.

“Yes, of course,” he replied, turning toward an experience-faced 104old Feldwebel across the room. “Will you be kind enough to wait a moment?”

This gentle-voiced young officer, whom I had rather expected to kick me a few times in the ribs and perhaps knock me down once or twice with the butt of his side-arm, returned within the period specified and handed my papers back to me.

“I have not the authority myself to pass on your case,” he explained. “I am only a Leutnant, and I shall have to refer it to the Oberleutnant at the Schloss in town. I do not think, however, that he will make the slightest difficulty.”

I thought differently. The Ober would almost certainly be some “hard-boiled” old warrior who would subject me to all those brutalities his underling had for some reason seen fit to avoid. Still there was nothing to do but play the game through.

“I shall send a man with you to show the way,” continued the lieutenant. “You have plenty of time; the train does not leave for two hours. Meanwhile you may as well finish the other formalities and be ready to go on when you return.”

A customs officer rummaged through my hamper.

“No more soap?” he queried, greedily, as he caught sight of the two bars I possessed. Evidently he had hoped to find enough to warrant confiscation. His next dig unearthed three cakes of commissary chocolate. He carefully lifted them out and carried them across the room. My escapade was already beginning to cost me dearly, for real chocolate is the European traveler’s most valuable possession in war-time. He laid the precious stuff on a pair of scales, filled out a long green form, and handed it to me as he carefully tucked the chocolate back in my hamper.

“Forty-five pfennigs duty,” he said.

At the current exchange that was nearly four cents!

A second official halted me to inquire how much German 105money I had in my possession. I confessed to twenty-five hundred marks, and exhibited the thick wad of brand-new fifty-mark Scheine I carried like so much stationery in a coat pocket. There was no use attempting to conceal it, for just beyond were the little cabins where passengers were submitted to personal search. Luckily I had left some money behind in Rotterdam, in case they confiscated all of this. But the official was making out a new form.

“This,” he said, handing it to me, “is a certificate for the amount you are bringing in with you. When you leave Germany take this to any branch of the Reichsbank and get another permitting you to take out with you again whatever is left. Otherwise you can take only fifty marks.”

In the cabin next the one I entered a man was buttoning his trousers. Stories of skins being treated to a lemon massage to detect secret writing surged up in my memory. I had no concealed valuables, but I have never learned to submit cheerfully to the indignity of personal search. I turned a grim visage toward the not immaculate soldier who had entered with me.

“Hollander?” he asked, as I prepared to strip.

“American,” I admitted, for once regretfully. He would no doubt make the most of that fact.

“Indeed!” he said, his eyes lighting up with interest. “Have you any valuables on your person?” he continued, stopping me by a motion from removing my coat.

“None but the money I have declared,” I replied.

“Thank you,” he said, opening the door. “That is all. Good day.”

A thin soldier with a greenish-gray face and hollow eyes, dressed in field gray that had seen long service, was assigned to conduct me to the Schloss. Twice on the way he protested that I was walking too fast for him. A long alleyway of splendid trees led to the town, the population of which was very noticeably thinner and less buoyant of 106step than the Hollanders a few miles behind. At the foot of an aged castle on a hillock the soldier opened the door of a former lodge and stepped in after me. The military office strikingly resembled one of our own—little except the feldgrau instead of khaki was different. A half-dozen soldiers and three or four non-coms. were lounging at several tables sprinkled with papers, ink-bottles, and official stamps. Two typewriters sat silent, a sheet of unfinished business drooping over their rolls. Three privates were “horse-playing” in one corner; two others were loudly engaged in a friendly argument; the rest were reading newspapers or humorous weeklies; and all were smoking. The Feldwebel in charge laid his cigarette on his desk and stepped toward me. My guide sat down like a man who had finished a long day’s journey and left me to state my own case. I retold my story. At the word “American” the soldiers slowly looked up, then gradually gathered around me. Their faces were entirely friendly, with a touch of curiosity. They asked a few simple questions, chiefly on the subject of food and tobacco conditions in Allied territory. One wished to know how soon I thought it would be possible to emigrate to America. The Feldwebel looked at my papers, sat down at his desk with them, and reached for an official stamp. Then he seemed to change his mind, rose, and entered an inner office. A middle-aged, rather hard-faced first lieutenant came out with him. The soldiers did not even rise to their feet. The Ober glanced at me, then at my papers in the hands of the Feldwebel.

“I see no objection,” he said, then turned on his heel and disappeared.

When the Feldwebel had indorsed my passport I suggested that he stamp the Food Commission also. A German military imprint would give it the final touch within the Empire, at least for any officials who did not read English well. The under-officer carried out the suggestion 107without comment, and handed the papers back to me. I had permission to go when I chose.

Before I had done so, thanks to the continued curiosity of the soldiers, the Oberleutnant sent word that he wished to see me. I kicked myself inwardly for not having gone while the going was good, and entered his private office. He motioned me to a chair, sat down himself, and fell to asking me questions. They were fully as disconnected and trivial as many an interrogation of prisoners I had heard from the lips of American officers. My respect for the stern discipline and trained staff of the German army was rapidly oozing away. Like his soldiers, the C. O. of Bentheim seemed chiefly interested in the plenitude and price of food and tobacco in France and Belgium. Then he inquired what people were saying in Paris of the peace conditions and how soon they expected them to be ready.

“Sie kriegen keinen Frieden—they’ll get no peace!” he cried suddenly, with considerable heat, when I had mumbled some sort of answer. Then he abruptly changed the subject, without indicating just what form the lack of peace would take, and returned again to food.

“What will Wilson do about his Fourteen Points?” he interrupted, somewhat later.

“All he can,” I answered evasively, having had no private tip on the President’s plans.

“Yes, but what can he,” demanded the German, “against that other pair? We shall all be swamped with Bolshevism—America along with the rest of us!

“Luckily for you the train comes in the morning,” he concluded, rising to indicate that the interview was at an end. “You would not have found us here this afternoon. May first is a national holiday this year, for the first time. We are a republic now, with socialistic leanings,” he ended, half savagely, half sneeringly.

An hour later I was speeding toward Berlin on a fast 108express. I had always found that a dash at the heart of things was apt to be surer than a dilly-dallying about the outskirts. Once in the capital, I could lay my plans on a sounder foundation than by setting out on my proposed tramp so near the border. To be sure, I had not ventured to buy a ticket to Berlin at a wicket surrounded by a dozen soldiers who had heard me assert that I was going to Hamburg. But—Dame Fortune seeming to have taken me under her wing for the day—a Dutch trainman with whom I fell into conversation chanced to have such a ticket in his pocket, which he was only too glad to sell. As a matter of fact, I doubt whether the open purchase of the bit of cardboard would have aroused any comment, much less created any difficulties. Looking back on it now from the pinnacle of weeks of travel in all parts of the German Empire, by every possible means of locomotion, that teapot tempest of passing the frontier seems far more than ridiculous. It is possible that the combination of circumstances made admittance—once gained—seem easier than it really is. But I cannot shake off the impression that the difficulties were almost wholly within my own disordered brain—disordered because of the wild tales that had been dished out to us by the Allied press. It was, of course, to the advantage of the correspondents fluttering about the dovecote at the head of Unter den Linden to create the impression that the only way to get into Germany was to cross the frontier on hands and knees in the darkest hour of a dark night at the most swampy and inaccessible spot, with a rabbit’s foot grasped firmly in one hand and the last will and testament in the other. The blague served at least two purposes—perfectly legitimate purposes at that, from a professional point of view—it made “bully good reading” at home, and it scared off competition, in the form of other correspondents, whose timorous natures precluded the possibility of attempting the perilous passage.

109Though it sap all the succeeding pages of the “suspense” so indispensable to continued interest, I may as well confess here as later that I moved about Germany with perfect freedom during all my stay there, far more freely than I could have at the same date in either Allied or neutral countries, that neither detectives nor spies dogged my footsteps nor did policemen halt me on every corner to demand my authority for being at large. Lest he hover menacingly in the background of some timorous reader’s memory, embittering any dewdrops of pleasure he may wring from this tale, let me say at once that I never again heard from or of the dreadful Herr Maltzen. Indeed, the castle of Bentheim had scarcely disappeared below the wet green horizon of a late spring when I caught myself grumbling that these simple Germans had wrecked what should have been a tale to cause the longest hair to stand stiffly erect and the most pachydermous skin to develop goose-flesh. Saddest of all—let us have the worst and be done with it—they continued that exasperating simplicity to the end, and left me little else for all my labors than the idle vaporings of a summer tourist.

Contrary to my expectations, the train was an excellent Schnellzug, making rare stops and riding as easily as if the armistice conditions had not so much as mentioned rolling-stock. The plush covering of several seats was missing, as beyond the Rhine, but things were as orderly, the trainmen as polite and diligently bent on doing their duty as if they had been under the military command of an exacting enemy. In our first-class compartment there were two American lieutenants in uniform, yet there was not so much as a facial protest that they should be occupying seats while German men and women stood in the corridor. There was, to be sure, a bit of rather cold staring, and once what might have been called an “incident.” At Osnabrück we were joined by a cropped-headed young German, wearing 110the ribbon of the Iron Cross in the lapel of his civilian clothing, but whom a chance word informed us was still a captain, accompanied by two older men. They sat in expressionless silence for a time; then one of the older men said, testily:

“Let’s see if we can’t find a more congenial compartment. Here there is too much English spoken.” And the trio disappeared. As a matter of fact, the English they heard was being chiefly spoken by a Dutch diplomat who had fallen in with us. I could not reflect, however, that to have spoken German in a French train at that date would have been positively dangerous. The lieutenants and the diplomat asserted that they had never before seen any such evidence of feeling among the defeated enemy, and it is the only strained situation of the kind that I recall having witnessed during all my German journey. When we changed cars at L?hne soldiers and civilians gazed rather coldly, as well as curiously, at the lieutenants, yet even when people chatted and laughed with them there was no outward evidence of protest.

There were very few cattle and almost no laborers in the fields, though the holiday may have accounted for the absence of the latter. The landscape looked everywhere well cultivated and there were no signs that any except purposely pasture lands had been allowed to lie fallow. Near Hanover, with its great engine-works, stood hundreds of rusted locomotives which had been refused by the Allies. Among them were large numbers that the Germans had drawn from Russia and which were now useless even to the Teutons, since they were naphtha-burners, and naphtha was no longer to be had within the Empire. Acres upon acres of cars, both passenger and freight, filled another yard—cars from Posen, from Breslau, from München, and from K?nigsberg, from every corner of Germany. At Nauen the masts of the great wireless station from which 111we had picked up most of our German news during the war loomed into the evening sky, and beyond were some immense Zeppelin hangars bulking above the flat landscape like distant mountains. We reached Berlin on time and before dark. May-day had brought all city transportation to a standstill; neither taxi, carriage, nor tramcar was to be found—though it was reported that this first official national holiday had been the tamest in years. Farmers’ carts and beer wagons had been turned into carryalls and transported a score of passengers each, seated precariously on loose boards, from station to station. Hotels were as packed as they seem to be in all capitals in war-time. The magnificent Adlon, housing the Allied commissions, laughed in my face. For two hours I canvassed that section of the city and finally paid eleven marks for accommodation in a hotel of decayed gentility at the door of which an old sign read: “Fine rooms on the garden, two marks and upward.” To be sure, the rate of exchange made the difference considerably less than it seemed—to those who had purchased their marks in the foreign market.