Part 15 (2/2)

An interesting point in the censors.h.i.+p debate was the disclosure of the fact that the local censors do what they please. Herr Seyda protested against the peculiar persecution of the Poles. He remarked that at Gnesen no Polish paper has been allowed to appear for the past two years.

But as significant as anything was Herr Stadthagen's account of the recruiting for the political police. He said that the police freely offer both money and exemption from military service to boys who are about to become liable for service. He gave a typical case of a boy of seventeen. The police called at his home and inquired whether he belonged to any Socialist organisation and whether he had been medically examined for the Army. A police official then waylaid the boy as he was leaving work and promised him that, if he would give information of what went on in his Socialist a.s.sociation, he could earn from 4 pounds to 4 pounds 10 s.h.i.+llings a month and be exempt from military service.

There is a peculiar connection between censors.h.i.+p and police. The evil effect of the censors.h.i.+p of their own Press by the German Government is to hypnotise the thousands of Government bureaucrats into the belief that that which they read in their own controlled Press is true.

No people are more ready to believe what they want to believe than the governing cla.s.s in Germany. They wanted to believe that Great Britain would not come into the war. They had got into their heads, too, that j.a.pan was going to be an ally of theirs. They wrote themselves into the belief that France was defeated and would collapse.

Regarding the Press, as they do, as all-important, they picked from the British Press any articles or fragments of articles suitable for their purpose and quoted them. They are adepts in the art of dissecting a paragraph so that the sense is quite contrary to that meant by the writer.

But the German Government goes further than that. It is quite content to quote to-day expressions of Greek opinion from Athens organs well known to be subsidised by Germany. Certain bribed papers in Zurich and Stockholm, and one notorious American paper, are used for this process of self-hypnotism. The object is two-fold. First, to influence public opinion in the foreign country, and, secondly, by requoting the opinion, to influence their own people into believing that this is the opinion held in the country from which it emanates. Thus, when I told Germans that large numbers of the Dutch people are pro-Ally, they point to an extract from an article in _De Toekomst_ and controvert me.

These methods go to strengthen the hands of the police when they declare that in acting severely they are only acting against anarchistic opinions likely to create the impression abroad that there is disunity within the Empire.

Never, so far as I can gather, in the world's history was there so complete a machine for the suppression of individual opinion as the German police.

The anti-war demonstrations in Germany range all the way from the smas.h.i.+ng of a few food-shop windows to the complete preparations for a serious crippling of the armies in the field by a general munition strike.

Half-way between were the so-called ”Liebknecht riots” in Berlin.

The notices summoning these semi-revolutionary meetings were whispered through factories, and from mouth to mouth by women standing in the food lines waiting for their potatoes, morning bread, meat, sugar, cheese, and other supplies. Liebknecht was brought to secret trial on June 27th, on the evening of which demonstrations took place throughout the city. I was present at the one near the Rathaus, which was dispersed towards midnight when the police actually drew their revolvers and charged the crowd.

The following evening I was at an early hour in the Potsdamer Platz, where a great demonstration was to take place. It was the second anniversary of the murder at Sarajevo. The city was clearly restless, agitated; people were on the watch for something to happen. The Potsdamer Platz is the centre through which the great arteries of traffic flow westward after the work of the day is done. The people who stream through it do not belong to the poorer cla.s.ses, for these live in the east and the north. But on this mild June evening there was a noticeably large number of working men in the streets leading into the Platz. I was standing near a group of these when the evening editions appeared with the news that Liebknecht had been sentenced. A low murmur among the workmen, mutterings of suppressed rage when they realised the significance of the short trial of two days, and a determined movement toward the place of demonstration.

I hurried to the Potsdamer Platz. The number of police stationed in the streets leading into it increased. The Platz itself was blue with them, for they stood together in groups of six, ten and twelve. I went along the Budapester Stra.s.se to the Brandenburger Tor, through which workmen from Moabit had streamed at noon declaring that they would strike. They had been charged by the mounted police, who drove them back across the Spree. There was a blue patrol along the Unter den Linden now. A whole army corps of police were on the alert in the German capital.

I returned to the Potsdamer Platz. It was thick with people now--curious onlookers. There were crowds of workmen in the adjacent streets, but they were not allowed to approach too near.

Again and again they tried, but, unarmed, they were powerless when the horses were driven into them, I saw a few of the most obstinate struck with the flat of sabres, and on others were rained blows from the police on foot. n.o.body hit Back, or even defended himself.

There was practically no violence such as one expects from a mob.

It was something else which impressed me. It impressed my police-lieutenant friend, also. That was the dangerous ugliness in the workmen. Hate was written in their faces, and the low growl in the crowd told all too plainly the growing feeling against the war.

The Government realised this. They had already seen that the unity they had so artificially created could only be held by force. They had used force in the muzzling of Liebknecht, and quietly they were employing a most potent force every day, the force of preventive arrest.

In July there was agitation for the great munition strike which was to have taken place on the day of the second anniversary of the war. The dimensions of the proposed rising were effectually concealed by the censors.h.i.+p. The ugly feeling in the Potsdamer Platz had taught the Government a lesson.

No detail was neglected in the preparations against the strike.

There was a significant movement of machine-guns to all points of danger, such as the Moabit district of Berlin, and Spandau, together with countless warnings against so-called ”anarchists.”

Any workman who showed the slightest tendency to be a leader in a factory group was taken away. The expressions of intention not to work the first four days of August became so strong that the Press issued a warning that any man refusing to work would be put into a uniform, and he would receive not eight or more marks a day as in munition work, but three marks in ten days. Even the Kaiser supplemented his regular anniversary manifestoes to the armed forces of the Empire and the civilian population with a special appeal to the workmen.

I was up and ready at an early hour on the morning of August 1st.

Again the city was blue with police. But this time they were reinforced. As I walked through streets lined with soldiers in the workingmen's quarters, I realised the futility of any further anti-war demonstrations in the Fatherland.

I stood in the immense square before the Royal Palace, and reflected that two years ago it was packed with a crowd wild with joy at the opportunity of going to war. There was unity. I stood on the very spot where the old man was jeered because he had said, ”War is a serious business, young fellow.”

On August 1st, 1916, there were more police in the square than civilians. On Unter den Linden paced the blue patrol. There was still unity in Germany, but a unity maintained by revolver, sword and machine-gun.

CHAPTER XVI

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