Trechos de Behind The German Veil (1918), de J.M. De Beaufort.
"We have nothing to hide," thundered Major Herwarth von Bitterfeld, of the Intelligence Service. "The German Veil is only another of the many inventions of our enemies, chiefly the English. You can see everything in Germany; go anywhere, everything is open and above board."
- - -
Germany would soon be short of everything - bread, copper, cotton, rubber, petrol - and, if you read some of the statistics given by your "experts" on German man-power, the German trenches ought to have been manned for the last six months by idiots and cripples.
- - -
Yes, perhaps Germany wants peace now, but only because she wants to have foundations left upon which to build a new organisation, a new stupendous war-machine, which in ten years from now would dwarf anything the world has yet seen, heard or imagined.
- - -
The Hindenburg letter worked like a charm; it proved a veritable golden key that unlocked almost every door, even that of General Staffs in the field. It acted like a magic carpet that transported me from Lodsz to Lille; from Wilhelmshaven to Kiel; from Hamburg to Munich; in fine, from East to West and from North to South. It was a pass on military trains; it procured me "express" motor-cars in places where it was "Strengstens Verboten" for any civilian to show his nose; it got me out of scrapes that even to-day make me feel hot and cold down my spine, and, finally, it seemed to open every German mouth from Generals down to cooks.
- - -
I have always maintained, and I do so now after several months spent in Germany, that every German is a potential spy. It is not in his character, it is his character. It lies in the Nietzschian doctrines in which he has been sedulously trained from early childhood. [...] "Win, no matter by what means, but win!"
- - -
A sub-editor, who had only recently been put in charge of the editorial department of one of the larger Berlin dailies, was reading up some of the old 1870-71 war despatches, probably to glean how to write a realistic battle-scene. It was during the fighting near Soissons. The young editor goes out to lunch and leaves one of the old clippings on his desk. Soon after the printer's foreman goes into the editorial offices and finds this cutting.
"It's awful," he exclaims, "how careless these young editors are nowadays. Here is a first-rate story, and he calmly goes out to lunch and lets it wait till after dinner." Whereupon the man sets to work, writes the headlines, edits it, and makes it fit for the press. Half an hour later Berlin gasps at the latest war news, which announces:
"The Battle of Metz. In the battles already referred to near Metz and the Vosges, the French lost in prisoners alone 173,000 men and 4,000 officers, including three Field-Marshals, one of them being Field-Marshal Bazaine."
- - -
At all times of the day and night you must be ready to answer the greeting (now de rigueur in Germany): "Gott strafe England," with an immediate: "Er strafe es" ("May He punish it"). [...]
If you happen to be alone, you can shout it down the telephone, and you will promptly receive the reply, made with great ferocity or sweetness, as the case may be, but always with enthusiasm: "Er strafe es!"
- - -
At a certain rather large dinner party, one man, who knew of some of my Luxembourg connections, leaned across the table and said: "Now your friends, the Luxembourgers, were more sensible than those stupid, hot-headed Belgians. Look at all the money Luxembourg is making these days!"
- - -
I was present at a reception the Kaiser got on his return to Berlin from a visit to the Eastern front. I was near the Friedrichstrasse Station. Never, except perhaps at American baseball and football matches, have I seen such absolutely frenzied crowds as I found that morning. The cheering seemed to make the very buildings shake. From house to house, from mouth to mouth, rang the "Hochs!" Men threw their hats up in the air, waved their sticks or umbrellas; women fluttered their handkerchiefs, and many of them, who had babies, held them up that they, too, might get a glimpse of their Sovereign. Every seat at the windows and on the roofs was occupied. The Kaiser, dressed in the simple grey field uniform, with the black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross in one of his buttonholes, entered his motor-car with a quick elastic step, at the same time bowing to left and right. His helmet, like that of every soldier and officer, was covered with the grey material which has become the fashionable colour in Germany.
- - -
Some of the most conspicuous [posters] were large yellow announcements about gold, urging everybody not to keep it in his possession, but to take it to the Reichsbank. It impressed upon you that by holding it back you were neglecting your duty to the Fatherland, and indirectly helping the enemy.
- - -
The Adlon Hotel lounge might safely be called one of the most interesting spots in all the belligerent countries. It was here that men and women of all nationalities, creeds, professions and classes foregathered. There were the hunters and the hunted; the active and the idle; journalists and journeymen; there were types that bore great resemblance to the roast-beef cheeks of merry England; there were Turks in their fez, slim Chinamen and robust Americans. Officers of all ranks and branches in their uniforms, accompanied by ladies, near-ladies and "unfortunate" ladies. All had their serious aims, and none trusted the other.
- - -
Whispering Charlie offered this same man, in my presence, to persuade the Kaiser himself to pose for his cinematograph, for the purely nominal sum of 2,000 marks (£100).
- - -
There are few articles for sale in the shops that are not decorated with a facsimile iron cross. You may buy postcards with the iron cross - natural size - on it to send to your friend at the front, or you can buy a cigarette-case with a miniature cross in one of the corners. There are pipes, pocket-books, mugs, walking-sticks, handkerchiefs, brooches, rings.
- - -
Always an interesting spot in Berlin is the corner of the Wilhelms and Dorothean Strasse, where the Staff College stands. It is now used for the administration of the casualty lists. Every new issue is pasted on the walls outside, and there you may find hundreds of people, too poor to pay the nominal sum charged for the latest copy of the casualty list, poring over them, searching for the name of son, father, husband, lover, or friend. If you remain there a little while you will usually witness some of those minor human tragedies which go to make up this stupendous one, when some old lady or man is led out of the crowd murmuring a beloved name, coupled to the final, hopeless word: "Tot, tot, tot" ("Dead, dead, dead").
- - -
At the Bavarian "Kriegsacademie" (Staff College), in Munich, which has been turned into a large hospital, I came across the first Allied prisoners of war. There were a large number of French and some English prisoners there. [They] assured me that they were being well treated and had nothing whatever to complain of.
- - -
The dear old Major, who was not at all a typical "Bavarian lion" and fire-eater, when I left suddenly asked: "Cannot America stop this wholesale murder?"
- - -
I also met the Lord Mayor of Munich, and had a long talk with him. His topic was the "Allied starvation scheme!" [...] There is only one way of bringing Germany to her knees, and that is by brute force, by successful military operations; in other words, by winning decisive battles.
- - -
One could discover the secret thought: "What else could we do but fight; we are tied to Prussia, and practically under her thumb."
- - -
The Germans are poor psychologists. A mass Zeppelin attack on London was looked upon as the greatest trump card Germany had up her sleeve. They fondly imagined that a few serious raids over London would make the British public squeal and clamour for peace!
- - -
"London is the heart and brain of this terrible war, and it should be given a taste of what war really is. A raid with some ten or fifteen of our latest Zeppelins would accomplish this thoroughly."
I was told that in February, 1915, twenty Zeppelins had been ready for a preliminary raid over London; but absolutely at the eleventh hour the plan had to be abandoned as the Kaiser refused his sanction.
- - -
"England's greatest strength, the fact of its being an island, is disappearing fast [due to the swift development of aircraft]."
- - -
Berlin is practically surrounded by Zeppelin sheds. They are at: Johannisthal (General Aerodrome), Tegel, Biesdorf, Potsdam.
- - -
Several posters and caricatures have, of course, been drawn playing on Zeppelin raids over England. Illustration facing this page is called "Zeppelinitis," and shows Nelson descending from his column to hide in the Underground Railway. Subtitle is, "The End of England's Sea-Power."
- - -
The German Intelligence Department claims exclusive knowledge of the preparation of a certain kind of sensitised paper for copying and photographing plans, maps, letters and other documents without a camera. Two pieces of glass are all that is needed. The sensitised paper and the document to be copied are placed between the glass, and at night, or in a darkened room, are exposed to candlelight for a matter of a few minutes.
- - -
Only in very rare cases, I think, have whole passports been forged. Why should they be when plenty of authentic ones can so easily be bought?
- - -
"Mobilisation of the kitchen." Since the Crown Princess coined this expression the term has become a regular German watchword. Woe betide the woman who has not answered the call to the kitchen or to the hospital, as the case may be.
One of the first things I noticed in Berlin was the entire absence of ladies - using the term here in its narrower social sense - in public places.
- - -
At the outbreak of war a great many women and girls with university degrees, stenographers, book-keepers, etc., working in offices, thought that at last their chance had come. They were going to show that they could replace the men at the heads of departments, or at whatever responsible duty might have to be performed.
- - -
"Another thing this war is teaching us, though, is that a political education is quite as necessary for women as for men. This war is going to revolutionise the position of women in this country, if not throughout the world." (Baroness von Bülow)
- - -
Most of the theatres are open in Berlin, but that also is more to keep up appearances than for business purposes. The salary of every actor and actress has been cut down to a half, sometimes to one-third. Dancers and members of the chorus receive an average of three pounds a month. At the department stores conditions are worse. Most of the girls in the stores of Wertheimer and Tietz, and in the "Kaufhaus des Westens," earn from ten to twelve shillings a week. The inadequate pay of so many women workers has had its inevitable effect on morals. The combined influences of poverty, temptation, and the nervous strain of war-time, have proved too much for many an unhappy girl.
- - -
My harvest of snapshots was prolific. It would have needed a wagon-load of films to take all the scenes I was invited to immortalise. Every one you came in contact with had something "sehr interessant," a "priceless" study to show you. Of course, nine times out of ten his own effigy was included.
- - -
I very nearly landed in prison for photographing a couple of Zeppelins. All my films were confiscated except one, an unexposed roll.
- - -
All persons who have taken photographs or moving pictures anywhere within the war zones must have three sets printed, and submit these to the Photograph Censor Department of the Great General Staff in Berlin. There they are inspected and stamped, and either passed for publication or refused.
- - -
At Insterburg, in East Prussia, where I risked a shave, the barber had decorated one of the chairs with a placard, "In this chair General von Hindenburg sat and had his hair cut." I sat in the same chair, but all I can say is, that if the General's hair was cut as atrociously as I was shaved, I think he will wait till after his triumphal march into London for the next.
- - -
A Jew was recommended for the Iron Cross. Hindenburg thought he would have his little joke with the man, and, incidentally, test the strength of his commercial instincts as compared with his patriotism. "Now tell me, comrade" asked Hindenburg, "which would you rather have - the Iron Cross or one hundred marks?"
- - -
French champagne, which, as I soon discovered, was the most popular beverage amongst the offficers of the Berlin General Staff.
Some of the most truthful information I obtained was over a bottle of Perrier-Jouet, Pol Roger, Pommery, and other French wines. If ever it needed proof, I found it in Germany that: "In vino Veritas."
- - -
A strange thing I noticed was the entire absence of beer. The strongest drink any grizzled paterfamilias was drinking was lemonade or soda-water. Naturally I at once jumped to the conclusion: "Aha! shortage." But I was wrong. When in an offhand manner I ordered a glass of "Münchener," the waiter promptly carried out my order. I was near a group of sergeants and saw them casting envious eyes at the frothing mug. Calling one of them over, I inquired about this curious phenomenon of Germans drinking lemonade. He soon explained it to me. Except at the front - that is, anywhere in the firing-line - soldiers cannot buy a drop of alcohol of any kind.
- - -
Until I met Hindenburg I always thought that the eyes of the Mexican rebel Villa were the worst and most cruel I had ever seen.
- - -
Goldap - a small East Prussian country town of some five or six thousand inhabitants - looked a bit upset. There had been considerable fighting in the streets and the neighbourhood. The Town Hall was destroyed, so was the only hotel, and the whole of one side of the market-place. The odour was not very pleasant, I must say, and evidently the process of cleaning had not yet begun. It needed it badly, because one could smell the offensive stench of dead bodies for miles around.
- - -
A Colonel of the Prussian Guards, von Arnim, showed me his sword, presented to him by a number of civil and military admirers. It seemed a magnificent piece of work. What interested me most, though, was the inscription on the blade. Translated, it read:
"Do not bare me without good reason. But when once you have drawn me from my scabbard, do not replace me till I have tasted blood."
- - -
At Allenstein large posters announced the appearance at the local cinema theatre of a film, "The Hound of the Baskervilles," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story. Evidently the tabooing of everything English does not include moving pictures.
- - -
"Present-day warfare, in which machine-guns play such a prominent part, demands greater physical and moral courage than was required in former wars."
- - -
The villages seemed to consist of snow houses, church spires - or what was left of them - tall factory chimney's, telegraph poles and modest wayside shrines - all were clad in a thick coat of frozen snow and ice. And all round us were the inevitable signs of old battlefields, and of an army in retreat. Shattered transport wagons, broken guns of all calibres, field kitchens, ammunition carts, sleighs, broken rifles, and leather accoutrements of all sorts, and, alas! the familiar simple wooden crosses by their hundreds and their thousands. Here and there one could still distinguish the inscriptions, but in most cases the weather had obliterated every mark of identity.
- - -
Hardly a stone's-throw from the altar stood a powerful motor-lorry, surmounted by a long-barrelled anti-aircraft gun. A bit further on a wireless telegraphy apparatus was fixed, and the operator in charge was in communication with one of the aviators flying overhead.
- - -
"Build railroads instead of forts." (Helmuth von Moltke)
- - -
To me there is nothing so pathetic, no story so human and sad, as that which is told by the four pairs of boot-soles staring at you from the back of an ambulance car.
- - -
I believe there is not another defence system in the world that can be compared with Germany's two-hundred-mile coast-line on the North Sea.
- - -
There is no organisation in Germany, not even the Navy, in which the German Army does not play some part.
- - -
Every unit of the entire system - i.e., every harbour, dockyard, fort, battery, nay, I believe almost every single large gun - is connected with the others by a strategical railroad, and, in a smaller degree, by a system of canals.
- - -
We walked back from the Casino to the Coal Harbour. Although it was after midnight, the place [Wilhelmshaven] was bristling with activity. Everything was prodigiously lighted up, and from the imperial shipbuilding yard close by came the sounds of hammering, mixed with a confused din of voices, steam-engines, and the murmurings of the sea. The air was alive, charged with electricity. You felt that here you were at the heart of things, listening to the pulse-beat of a stupendous machine, at the seat of history in the making.
- - -
One of them [Germans] had a little terrier with him. I liked him - the dog, I mean. [...] The dog was a trophy brought home by a relative of the present owner, who, serving on a submarine, had rescued him from the torpedoed Ville de Lille.
- - -
The day of my arrival in Kiel, I was invited to see some of the German warships in action - in Kiel Bay. My naval friend and another officer called for me at my hotel in a huge grey car, with Germany's coat-of-arms painted all over it. The car was a German Mercedes, and certainly built for speed. An orderly was seated next to the driver, and frequently blew a long horn of a peculiar but not unpleasant sound. Whenever the man sounded his "Ta-ri-ta-ta," man, woman, child and beast, within half a mile, ran for cover.
- - -
Herr Arthur von Gwinner, Managing Director of the Deutsche Bank; Germany's greatest financial genius; intimate friend of the Kaiser and the man behind the Bagdad Railroad:
"German militarism is nothing else but the German spirit, love of country, sacrifice."
- - -
Dr. [Walter] Rathenau expressed as his opinion that out of this war may, perhaps in the not too distant future, arise a "United States of Europe."
- - -
Krupps' man told me quite frankly that it was not copper they worried about, but the rubber and petrol supply. They are manufacturing a substitute for petrol, now called Benzol, a by-product of coke, but it also requires other ingredients, and those seem to be getting short. As for rubber, many professors of chemistry have been working for months trying to find a substitute for it. Up to a few weeks ago their efforts do not appear to have been successful.
Already early in 1915 every private car and most of the taxis had disappeared from Berlin streets. After eleven at night it is very difficult to get a conveyance of any kind.
The same informant, who must remain anonymous, said to me shortly before I left Germany: "If anything is going to break our neck, it will be rubber and petrol."
- - -
"We are all going to be losers, we are all going to be very much poorer. France will become a second-class power, Russia will have to face a revolution, and England will get off with a black eye. Austria will suffer a set-back of twenty years, and it will probably take us the best part of ten years to regain our pre-war position."
- - -
Germany would soon be short of everything - bread, copper, cotton, rubber, petrol - and, if you read some of the statistics given by your "experts" on German man-power, the German trenches ought to have been manned for the last six months by idiots and cripples.
- - -
Yes, perhaps Germany wants peace now, but only because she wants to have foundations left upon which to build a new organisation, a new stupendous war-machine, which in ten years from now would dwarf anything the world has yet seen, heard or imagined.
- - -
The Hindenburg letter worked like a charm; it proved a veritable golden key that unlocked almost every door, even that of General Staffs in the field. It acted like a magic carpet that transported me from Lodsz to Lille; from Wilhelmshaven to Kiel; from Hamburg to Munich; in fine, from East to West and from North to South. It was a pass on military trains; it procured me "express" motor-cars in places where it was "Strengstens Verboten" for any civilian to show his nose; it got me out of scrapes that even to-day make me feel hot and cold down my spine, and, finally, it seemed to open every German mouth from Generals down to cooks.
- - -
I have always maintained, and I do so now after several months spent in Germany, that every German is a potential spy. It is not in his character, it is his character. It lies in the Nietzschian doctrines in which he has been sedulously trained from early childhood. [...] "Win, no matter by what means, but win!"
- - -
A sub-editor, who had only recently been put in charge of the editorial department of one of the larger Berlin dailies, was reading up some of the old 1870-71 war despatches, probably to glean how to write a realistic battle-scene. It was during the fighting near Soissons. The young editor goes out to lunch and leaves one of the old clippings on his desk. Soon after the printer's foreman goes into the editorial offices and finds this cutting.
"It's awful," he exclaims, "how careless these young editors are nowadays. Here is a first-rate story, and he calmly goes out to lunch and lets it wait till after dinner." Whereupon the man sets to work, writes the headlines, edits it, and makes it fit for the press. Half an hour later Berlin gasps at the latest war news, which announces:
"The Battle of Metz. In the battles already referred to near Metz and the Vosges, the French lost in prisoners alone 173,000 men and 4,000 officers, including three Field-Marshals, one of them being Field-Marshal Bazaine."
- - -
At all times of the day and night you must be ready to answer the greeting (now de rigueur in Germany): "Gott strafe England," with an immediate: "Er strafe es" ("May He punish it"). [...]
If you happen to be alone, you can shout it down the telephone, and you will promptly receive the reply, made with great ferocity or sweetness, as the case may be, but always with enthusiasm: "Er strafe es!"
- - -
At a certain rather large dinner party, one man, who knew of some of my Luxembourg connections, leaned across the table and said: "Now your friends, the Luxembourgers, were more sensible than those stupid, hot-headed Belgians. Look at all the money Luxembourg is making these days!"
- - -
I was present at a reception the Kaiser got on his return to Berlin from a visit to the Eastern front. I was near the Friedrichstrasse Station. Never, except perhaps at American baseball and football matches, have I seen such absolutely frenzied crowds as I found that morning. The cheering seemed to make the very buildings shake. From house to house, from mouth to mouth, rang the "Hochs!" Men threw their hats up in the air, waved their sticks or umbrellas; women fluttered their handkerchiefs, and many of them, who had babies, held them up that they, too, might get a glimpse of their Sovereign. Every seat at the windows and on the roofs was occupied. The Kaiser, dressed in the simple grey field uniform, with the black and white ribbon of the Iron Cross in one of his buttonholes, entered his motor-car with a quick elastic step, at the same time bowing to left and right. His helmet, like that of every soldier and officer, was covered with the grey material which has become the fashionable colour in Germany.
- - -
Some of the most conspicuous [posters] were large yellow announcements about gold, urging everybody not to keep it in his possession, but to take it to the Reichsbank. It impressed upon you that by holding it back you were neglecting your duty to the Fatherland, and indirectly helping the enemy.
- - -
The Adlon Hotel lounge might safely be called one of the most interesting spots in all the belligerent countries. It was here that men and women of all nationalities, creeds, professions and classes foregathered. There were the hunters and the hunted; the active and the idle; journalists and journeymen; there were types that bore great resemblance to the roast-beef cheeks of merry England; there were Turks in their fez, slim Chinamen and robust Americans. Officers of all ranks and branches in their uniforms, accompanied by ladies, near-ladies and "unfortunate" ladies. All had their serious aims, and none trusted the other.
- - -
Whispering Charlie offered this same man, in my presence, to persuade the Kaiser himself to pose for his cinematograph, for the purely nominal sum of 2,000 marks (£100).
- - -
There are few articles for sale in the shops that are not decorated with a facsimile iron cross. You may buy postcards with the iron cross - natural size - on it to send to your friend at the front, or you can buy a cigarette-case with a miniature cross in one of the corners. There are pipes, pocket-books, mugs, walking-sticks, handkerchiefs, brooches, rings.
- - -
Always an interesting spot in Berlin is the corner of the Wilhelms and Dorothean Strasse, where the Staff College stands. It is now used for the administration of the casualty lists. Every new issue is pasted on the walls outside, and there you may find hundreds of people, too poor to pay the nominal sum charged for the latest copy of the casualty list, poring over them, searching for the name of son, father, husband, lover, or friend. If you remain there a little while you will usually witness some of those minor human tragedies which go to make up this stupendous one, when some old lady or man is led out of the crowd murmuring a beloved name, coupled to the final, hopeless word: "Tot, tot, tot" ("Dead, dead, dead").
- - -
At the Bavarian "Kriegsacademie" (Staff College), in Munich, which has been turned into a large hospital, I came across the first Allied prisoners of war. There were a large number of French and some English prisoners there. [They] assured me that they were being well treated and had nothing whatever to complain of.
- - -
The dear old Major, who was not at all a typical "Bavarian lion" and fire-eater, when I left suddenly asked: "Cannot America stop this wholesale murder?"
- - -
I also met the Lord Mayor of Munich, and had a long talk with him. His topic was the "Allied starvation scheme!" [...] There is only one way of bringing Germany to her knees, and that is by brute force, by successful military operations; in other words, by winning decisive battles.
- - -
One could discover the secret thought: "What else could we do but fight; we are tied to Prussia, and practically under her thumb."
- - -
The Germans are poor psychologists. A mass Zeppelin attack on London was looked upon as the greatest trump card Germany had up her sleeve. They fondly imagined that a few serious raids over London would make the British public squeal and clamour for peace!
- - -
"London is the heart and brain of this terrible war, and it should be given a taste of what war really is. A raid with some ten or fifteen of our latest Zeppelins would accomplish this thoroughly."
I was told that in February, 1915, twenty Zeppelins had been ready for a preliminary raid over London; but absolutely at the eleventh hour the plan had to be abandoned as the Kaiser refused his sanction.
- - -
"England's greatest strength, the fact of its being an island, is disappearing fast [due to the swift development of aircraft]."
- - -
Berlin is practically surrounded by Zeppelin sheds. They are at: Johannisthal (General Aerodrome), Tegel, Biesdorf, Potsdam.
- - -
Several posters and caricatures have, of course, been drawn playing on Zeppelin raids over England. Illustration facing this page is called "Zeppelinitis," and shows Nelson descending from his column to hide in the Underground Railway. Subtitle is, "The End of England's Sea-Power."
- - -
The German Intelligence Department claims exclusive knowledge of the preparation of a certain kind of sensitised paper for copying and photographing plans, maps, letters and other documents without a camera. Two pieces of glass are all that is needed. The sensitised paper and the document to be copied are placed between the glass, and at night, or in a darkened room, are exposed to candlelight for a matter of a few minutes.
- - -
Only in very rare cases, I think, have whole passports been forged. Why should they be when plenty of authentic ones can so easily be bought?
- - -
"Mobilisation of the kitchen." Since the Crown Princess coined this expression the term has become a regular German watchword. Woe betide the woman who has not answered the call to the kitchen or to the hospital, as the case may be.
One of the first things I noticed in Berlin was the entire absence of ladies - using the term here in its narrower social sense - in public places.
- - -
At the outbreak of war a great many women and girls with university degrees, stenographers, book-keepers, etc., working in offices, thought that at last their chance had come. They were going to show that they could replace the men at the heads of departments, or at whatever responsible duty might have to be performed.
- - -
"Another thing this war is teaching us, though, is that a political education is quite as necessary for women as for men. This war is going to revolutionise the position of women in this country, if not throughout the world." (Baroness von Bülow)
- - -
Most of the theatres are open in Berlin, but that also is more to keep up appearances than for business purposes. The salary of every actor and actress has been cut down to a half, sometimes to one-third. Dancers and members of the chorus receive an average of three pounds a month. At the department stores conditions are worse. Most of the girls in the stores of Wertheimer and Tietz, and in the "Kaufhaus des Westens," earn from ten to twelve shillings a week. The inadequate pay of so many women workers has had its inevitable effect on morals. The combined influences of poverty, temptation, and the nervous strain of war-time, have proved too much for many an unhappy girl.
- - -
My harvest of snapshots was prolific. It would have needed a wagon-load of films to take all the scenes I was invited to immortalise. Every one you came in contact with had something "sehr interessant," a "priceless" study to show you. Of course, nine times out of ten his own effigy was included.
- - -
I very nearly landed in prison for photographing a couple of Zeppelins. All my films were confiscated except one, an unexposed roll.
- - -
All persons who have taken photographs or moving pictures anywhere within the war zones must have three sets printed, and submit these to the Photograph Censor Department of the Great General Staff in Berlin. There they are inspected and stamped, and either passed for publication or refused.
- - -
At Insterburg, in East Prussia, where I risked a shave, the barber had decorated one of the chairs with a placard, "In this chair General von Hindenburg sat and had his hair cut." I sat in the same chair, but all I can say is, that if the General's hair was cut as atrociously as I was shaved, I think he will wait till after his triumphal march into London for the next.
- - -
A Jew was recommended for the Iron Cross. Hindenburg thought he would have his little joke with the man, and, incidentally, test the strength of his commercial instincts as compared with his patriotism. "Now tell me, comrade" asked Hindenburg, "which would you rather have - the Iron Cross or one hundred marks?"
- - -
French champagne, which, as I soon discovered, was the most popular beverage amongst the offficers of the Berlin General Staff.
Some of the most truthful information I obtained was over a bottle of Perrier-Jouet, Pol Roger, Pommery, and other French wines. If ever it needed proof, I found it in Germany that: "In vino Veritas."
- - -
A strange thing I noticed was the entire absence of beer. The strongest drink any grizzled paterfamilias was drinking was lemonade or soda-water. Naturally I at once jumped to the conclusion: "Aha! shortage." But I was wrong. When in an offhand manner I ordered a glass of "Münchener," the waiter promptly carried out my order. I was near a group of sergeants and saw them casting envious eyes at the frothing mug. Calling one of them over, I inquired about this curious phenomenon of Germans drinking lemonade. He soon explained it to me. Except at the front - that is, anywhere in the firing-line - soldiers cannot buy a drop of alcohol of any kind.
- - -
Until I met Hindenburg I always thought that the eyes of the Mexican rebel Villa were the worst and most cruel I had ever seen.
- - -
Goldap - a small East Prussian country town of some five or six thousand inhabitants - looked a bit upset. There had been considerable fighting in the streets and the neighbourhood. The Town Hall was destroyed, so was the only hotel, and the whole of one side of the market-place. The odour was not very pleasant, I must say, and evidently the process of cleaning had not yet begun. It needed it badly, because one could smell the offensive stench of dead bodies for miles around.
- - -
A Colonel of the Prussian Guards, von Arnim, showed me his sword, presented to him by a number of civil and military admirers. It seemed a magnificent piece of work. What interested me most, though, was the inscription on the blade. Translated, it read:
"Do not bare me without good reason. But when once you have drawn me from my scabbard, do not replace me till I have tasted blood."
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At Allenstein large posters announced the appearance at the local cinema theatre of a film, "The Hound of the Baskervilles," Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story. Evidently the tabooing of everything English does not include moving pictures.
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"Present-day warfare, in which machine-guns play such a prominent part, demands greater physical and moral courage than was required in former wars."
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The villages seemed to consist of snow houses, church spires - or what was left of them - tall factory chimney's, telegraph poles and modest wayside shrines - all were clad in a thick coat of frozen snow and ice. And all round us were the inevitable signs of old battlefields, and of an army in retreat. Shattered transport wagons, broken guns of all calibres, field kitchens, ammunition carts, sleighs, broken rifles, and leather accoutrements of all sorts, and, alas! the familiar simple wooden crosses by their hundreds and their thousands. Here and there one could still distinguish the inscriptions, but in most cases the weather had obliterated every mark of identity.
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Hardly a stone's-throw from the altar stood a powerful motor-lorry, surmounted by a long-barrelled anti-aircraft gun. A bit further on a wireless telegraphy apparatus was fixed, and the operator in charge was in communication with one of the aviators flying overhead.
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"Build railroads instead of forts." (Helmuth von Moltke)
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To me there is nothing so pathetic, no story so human and sad, as that which is told by the four pairs of boot-soles staring at you from the back of an ambulance car.
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I believe there is not another defence system in the world that can be compared with Germany's two-hundred-mile coast-line on the North Sea.
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There is no organisation in Germany, not even the Navy, in which the German Army does not play some part.
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Every unit of the entire system - i.e., every harbour, dockyard, fort, battery, nay, I believe almost every single large gun - is connected with the others by a strategical railroad, and, in a smaller degree, by a system of canals.
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We walked back from the Casino to the Coal Harbour. Although it was after midnight, the place [Wilhelmshaven] was bristling with activity. Everything was prodigiously lighted up, and from the imperial shipbuilding yard close by came the sounds of hammering, mixed with a confused din of voices, steam-engines, and the murmurings of the sea. The air was alive, charged with electricity. You felt that here you were at the heart of things, listening to the pulse-beat of a stupendous machine, at the seat of history in the making.
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One of them [Germans] had a little terrier with him. I liked him - the dog, I mean. [...] The dog was a trophy brought home by a relative of the present owner, who, serving on a submarine, had rescued him from the torpedoed Ville de Lille.
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The day of my arrival in Kiel, I was invited to see some of the German warships in action - in Kiel Bay. My naval friend and another officer called for me at my hotel in a huge grey car, with Germany's coat-of-arms painted all over it. The car was a German Mercedes, and certainly built for speed. An orderly was seated next to the driver, and frequently blew a long horn of a peculiar but not unpleasant sound. Whenever the man sounded his "Ta-ri-ta-ta," man, woman, child and beast, within half a mile, ran for cover.
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Herr Arthur von Gwinner, Managing Director of the Deutsche Bank; Germany's greatest financial genius; intimate friend of the Kaiser and the man behind the Bagdad Railroad:
"German militarism is nothing else but the German spirit, love of country, sacrifice."
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Dr. [Walter] Rathenau expressed as his opinion that out of this war may, perhaps in the not too distant future, arise a "United States of Europe."
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Krupps' man told me quite frankly that it was not copper they worried about, but the rubber and petrol supply. They are manufacturing a substitute for petrol, now called Benzol, a by-product of coke, but it also requires other ingredients, and those seem to be getting short. As for rubber, many professors of chemistry have been working for months trying to find a substitute for it. Up to a few weeks ago their efforts do not appear to have been successful.
Already early in 1915 every private car and most of the taxis had disappeared from Berlin streets. After eleven at night it is very difficult to get a conveyance of any kind.
The same informant, who must remain anonymous, said to me shortly before I left Germany: "If anything is going to break our neck, it will be rubber and petrol."
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"We are all going to be losers, we are all going to be very much poorer. France will become a second-class power, Russia will have to face a revolution, and England will get off with a black eye. Austria will suffer a set-back of twenty years, and it will probably take us the best part of ten years to regain our pre-war position."
