Part 19 (1/2)
The lot of the German woman has been much more difficult than the lot of her sister in the Allied countries, for upon her has fallen the great and increasing burden of the struggle to get enough to eat for her household. In practically all cla.s.ses of Germany it has been the custom of the man to come home from his work, whether in a Government office, bank, or factory, for his midday meal, usually followed by an hour's sleep.
The German man is often a greedy fellow as regards meals. For him special food is always provided, and the wife and children sit round patiently watching him eat it. He expects special food to-day. The soldier, of course, is getting it, and properly, but the stay-at-homes, who are men over forty-five or lads under nineteen, still get the best of such food as can be got.
Exceptions to the nineteen to forty-five rule are very few indeed.
National work in Germany means war work pure and simple, and now the women are treated exactly as the men in this respect, except that they will not be sent to the front.
In January, 1917, Germany at length began formally to organise the women of the country to help in the war. Each of the six chief army ”commands” throughout the Empire now has a woman attached to it as Directress of the ”Division for Women's Service.” Hitherto, as in England, war work by women has been entirely voluntary. The Patriotic Auxiliary Service (Ma.s.s Levy) Law is not compulsory so far as female labour is concerned. German women, however, having proclaimed that they regard themselves liable for national service under the spirit if not the letter of the law, it has finally been decided to mobilise their services on a more systematic basis than in the past.
None of the countless revolutions in German life produced by the war outstrips in historical importance this official linking up of women with the military machine. Equally striking is the fact that the directresses of Women's Service, who hold office in Berlin, Breslau, Magdeburg, Coblenz, Konigsberg, and Karlsruhe, are all feminist leaders and promoters of the women's emanc.i.p.ation movement. The directress for the Mark of Brandenburg (the Berlin-Potsdam district) is an able Jewess named Dr. Alice Salomon, who is one of the pioneers of the German women's movement. The main object of the ”Women's Service” Department is to organise female labour for munitions and other work from which men can be liberated for the fighting line.
I have nothing but praise and admiration for the way in which the German women have thrown themselves into this struggle. Believing implicitly as they have been told--and with the exception of the lower cla.s.ses, after more than two years of war, they believe everything the Government tells them--that this war was carefully prepared by ”Sir Grey” (Lord Grey of Fallodon), ”the man without a conscience,” as he is called in Germany, they feel that they are helping to fight a war for the defence of their homes and their children, and the cynics at the German Foreign Office, who manufacture their opinions for them, rub this in in sermons from the pastors, novels, newspaper articles, faked cinema films, garbled extracts from Allied newspapers, books, and bogus photographs, Reichstag orations by Bethmann-Hollweg, and the rest of it, not forgetting the all-important lectures by the professors, who are unceasing in their efforts all over Germany.
To show how little the truth of the war is understood by the German women, I may mention an incident that occurred at the house of people of the official cla.s.s at which I was visiting one day. The eldest son, who was just back from the Somme trenches, suffering from slight sh.e.l.l-shock, brought home a copy of a London ill.u.s.trated paper, which had been thrown across the trenches by the English. In this photograph there was a picture of a long procession of German prisoners captured by the English. The daughter of the house, a well-read girl of nineteen, blazed up at the sight of this photograph, and showed it to her mother, who was equally surprised. The son of the house remarked, ”Surely you know the English have taken a great many prisoners?”
His mother, realising her mistake, looked confused, and simply said, ”I didn't think.” In other words, the obvious fact that Germans were sometimes captured had never been pointed out to her by the Government, and most Germans are accustomed to think only what they are officially told to think.
While there are an increasing number of doubters among the German males as to the accuracy of statements issued by the Government, in the cla.s.s with which I mostly came into contact in Germany, the women are blindfold and believe all they are told. So strong, too, is the influence of Government propaganda on the people in Germany that in a town where I met two English ladies married to Germans, they believed that Germany had Verdun in her grasp, had annihilated the British troops (mainly black) on the Somme, had defeated the British Fleet in the battle of Skagerrak (Jutland), and reduced the greater part of the fortifications, docks, and munition factories of London to ruins by Zeppelins.
Their anguish for the fate of their English relations was sincere, and they were intensely hopeful that Britain would accept any sort of terms of peace in order to prevent the invasion which some people in Germany still believe possible.
At the beginning of the war the click of the knitting needle was heard everywhere; shop-girls knitted while waiting for customers, women knitted in trams and trains, at theatres, in churches, and, of course, in the home. The knitting is ceasing now for the very practical reason that the military authorities have commandeered all the wool for the clothing of the soldiery. A further reason for the stoppage of such needlework is the fact that women are engaged in countless forms of definite war work.
Upon the whole it is beyond question that the German women are not standing the losses as well as the British women. I have been honoured in England by conversations with more than one lady who has lost many dear ones. The att.i.tude is quieter here than in Germany, and is not followed by the peace talk which such events produce in German households.
What surprises me in England is the fact that the word ”peace” is hardly ever mentioned anywhere, whereas in any German railway train or tramcar the two dominant words are Friede (peace) and Essen (food). The peace is always a German idea of peace--for the extreme grumblers do not talk freely in public--and the food talk is not always the result of the shortage, but of the great difficulty in getting what is to be obtained, together with the increasing monotony of the diet.
It must not be supposed, however, that the life of feminine Germany is entirely a gloomy round of duty and suffering. Among the women of the poor, things are as bad as they can be. They are getting higher wages than ever, but the food usury and the blockade rob them of the increase.
The middle and upper cla.s.ses still devote a good deal of time to the feminine pursuits of shopping and dressing. The outbreak of war hit the fas.h.i.+ons at a curious moment. Paris had just abandoned the tight skirt, and a comical struggle took place between the Government and those women who desired to be correctly gowned.
The Government said, ”In order to avoid waste of material, you must stick to the tight skirt,” and the amount of cloth allowed was carefully prescribed. Women's desire to be in the mode was, however, too powerful for even Prussianism. Copies of French fas.h.i.+on magazines were smuggled in from Paris through Switzerland, pa.s.sed from dressmaker to dressmaker, and house to house, and despite the military instructions and the leather shortage, wide skirts and high boots began to appear everywhere,
This feminine ebullition was followed by an appeal from the Government to abandon all enemy example and to inst.i.tute new German fas.h.i.+ons of their own making. Models were exhibited in shop windows of what were called the ”old and elegant Viennese fas.h.i.+ons.” These, however, were found to be great consumers of material, and the women still continued to imitate Paris.
The day before I left Berlin I heard an amusing conversation in the underground railway between two women, one of whom was talking about her hat. She told her friend that she found the picture of the hat in a smuggled fas.h.i.+on paper, and had it made at her milliner's and she was obviously very pleased with her taste.
The women in the munition factories, who number millions, wear a serviceable kind of uniform overall.
The venom of the German women in regard to the war is quite in contrast to the feeling expressed by English women. They have read a great deal about British and American women and they cordially detest them. Their point of view is very difficult to explain.
When I have told German women that in many States in my country women have votes, their reply is, ”How vulgar!” Their att.i.tude towards the whole question of women's franchise is that it is a form of Anglo-Saxon lack of culture and lack of authority.
The freedom accorded to English and American girls is entirely misunderstood. A Dutch girl who, in the presence of some German ladies, expressed admiration for certain aspects of English feminine life, was fiercely and venomously attacked by that never-failing weapon, the German woman's tongue. The poor thing, who mildly expressed the view that hockey was a good game for girls, and the fine complexions and elegant walk of English women were due to outdoor sports, was reduced almost to tears.
The intolerance of German women is almost impossible to express. I know a case of one young girl, a German-American, whose parents returned to Hamburg, who declined to repeat the ridiculous German formula, ”Gott strafe England,” and stuck to her point, with the result that she was not invited to that circle again.
To the cry ”Gott strafe England” has been added ”Gott strafe Amerika,” the latter being as popular with the German women as the German men. The pastors, professors, and the Press have told the German women that their husbands and sons and lovers are being killed by American sh.e.l.ls. A man who ought to know better, like Prince Rupert of Bavaria, made a public statement that half of the Allies' ammunition is American. After the British and French autumn offensive of 1915 the feeling against America on the part of German women became so intense that the American flag had to be withdrawn from the American hospital at Munich, although that hospital, supported by German-American funds, has done wonderful work for the German wounded.
Arguments with German women about the war are absolutely futile.
They follow the war very closely after their own method, and believe that any defeats, such as on the Somme or Verdun, are tactical rearrangements of positions, dictated by the wisdom of the General Staff, and so long as no Allied troops are upon German soil so long will the German populace believe in the invincibility of its army. I am speaking always of the middle and upper cla.s.ses, who are on the whole, but with increasing exceptions, as intensely pro-war as the lower cla.s.ses are anti-war.