Part 19 (2/2)
The modern German Bible is the _Zeitung_ (the rough translation of which is ”newspaper”) and German women are even more fanatical than the men, if possible, in their wors.h.i.+p of it.
On one occasion, when I candidly remarked that von Papen and Boy-Ed came back to the Fatherland for certain unbecoming acts, some of which I enumerated, a Frau Hauptmann jumped to her feet and, after the customary brilliant manner of German argument, shrieked that I was a liar. She declared that their _Zeitung_ had said nothing about the charges I mentioned, therefore they, were not true. She furthermore promised to report me to Colonel ------ at the _Kriegsministerium_ (War Office), and she kept her word.
The neglect, and, in some cases refusal, to attend the British wounded by German nurses are a sign both of their own intensity of feeling in regard to the war and their entirely different mentality. Again and again I have heard German women say, ”In the event of a successful German invasion of England the women will accompany the men, and teach the women of England that war is war.”
Their remarks in regard to the women of my own country are equally offensive. Indeed, States that Germany regards as neutral, and who are treated by the officially controlled German Press with a certain amount of respect, are loathed by German women. Their att.i.tude is that all who are not on their side are their enemies.
American women who are making sh.e.l.ls for the British, French, and Russians are just as much the enemies of Germany as the Allied soldiers and sailors. One argument often used is that to be strictly neutral America should make no munitions at all, but it would not be so bad, say the Germans, if half the American ammunition went to Germany and half to the Allies.
I lost my temper once by saying to one elderly red-faced Frau, ”Since you have beaten the British at sea, why don't you send your s.h.i.+ps to fetch it?” ”Our fleet,” she said, ”is too busy choking the British Fleet in its safe hiding places to afford time to go to America. You will see enough of our fleet one day, remember that!”
Summing up this brief and very sketchy a.n.a.lysis of German femininity in the war, I reiterate views expressed on previous visits to Germany, that German women are not standing the anxiety of the war as well as those of France and Britain.
They have done n.o.ble work for the Fatherland, but the grumblings of the lower third of the population are now such as have not been heard since 1848. German officials in the Press Department of the Foreign Office try to explain the unrest away to foreign correspondents like myself, but many thinking Germans are surprised and troubled by this unexpected manifestation on the part of those who for generations have been almost as docile and easily managed as children.
CHAPTER XX
THE WAR SLAVES OF ESSEN
Essen, the noisiest town in the world, bulks largely in the imagination of the Entente Allies, but ”Essen” is not merely one city. It is a centre or capital of a whole group of a.r.s.enal towns.
Look at your map of Germany, and you will see how temptingly near they are to the Dutch frontier. Look at the proximity of Holland and Essen, and you will understand the Dutch fear of Germany. You will grasp also the German fear, real as well as pretended, that the battle of the Somme may one day be accompanied by a thrust at the real heart of Germany, which, is Westphalia--Westphalia with its coal and iron and millions of trained factory hands.
I saw when in Germany extracts from speeches by British politicians in which the bombing of Essen by air was advocated. Perhaps the task would have been easier if the bombing had come first and the speeches afterwards. Forewarned, forearmed; and Essen is now very much armed.
All German railroads seem to lead to this war monster. Attached to almost every goods train in Germany you will see wagons marked ”Essen--special train.” Wagons travel from the far ends of Austria and into Switzerland, which is showing its strict neutrality by making munitions for both sides.
On the occasion of my second visit to Essen during the war I arrived at night. It was before the time of the bombing speeches, and, though it was well into the hours when the world is asleep, the sky glowed red with a glare that could be seen for full thirty miles. My German companion glowed also, as he opened the carriage window and bade me join him in a peep at what we were coming to.
”This is the place where we make the stuff to blow the world to pieces,” he proudly boasted. ”If our enemies could only see that the war would be over.”
I suggested that Essen was not the only a.r.s.enal. There were, for instance, Woolwich, Glasgow, Newcastle, Creusot, and in my own strictly neutral country Bethlehem, Bridgeport, and one or two other humble hamlets. He brushed aside my remarks, ”But we have also here is this very region Dortmund, Bochum, Witten, Duisburg, Krefeld, Dusseldorf, Solingen, Elberfeld and Barmen.”
As we approached nearer, freight trains, military trains and pa.s.senger trains were everywhere. Officers and soldiers crowded the station platforms, and though it was night the activity of these Rhenish-Westphalian a.r.s.enal towns impressed me with the belief that unless the British blockade can strictly exclude essentials, such as copper and nickel, especially from their roaring factories, the war will be needlessly protracted.
It is not necessary to be long in Rhineland and Westphalia to realise that a shortage in these and other essentials is much more disturbing to the heads of these wonderful organisations than the fear of aerial bombs.
On the occasion of my first war-time visit to Essen it would have been easy to have bombed it. There is an old saying that a shoemaker's children are the worst shod, and the display of anti-aircraft guns which has since manifested itself was then non-existent. The town was ablaze. It is still ablaze, but the lighting has been cunningly arranged to deceive nocturnal visitors, and any aeroplanes approaching Essen at a height of twelve or fifteen thousand feet would find it hard to discover which was Essen, and which Borbeck, and which was Steele.
Mulheim is easily found, because it is close to the River Ruhr. We had to halt a long time outside the station of Essen, so great was the pressure of traffic. The cordon surrounding the entrance to the city is some distance away, and having pa.s.sed that safely I had no fear of being again interrogated.
I told the hotel manager that I was a travelling newspaper correspondent, and should like to see as many as possible, of the wonders of his town. After praise of his hostelry, which, as the sub-manager said, was too good for the Essenites, I set out on my travels to see the sights of the city, foremost among them being the regulation statue of William I.
It was easy to find Krupps, for I had only to turn my steps towards the lurid panorama in the sky. As I came nearer, not only my sense of sight but my sense of hearing told me that Germany's great a.r.s.enal was throbbing with unwonted life. The crash and din of mighty steam hammers and giant anvils, the flame and flash of roaring blast furnaces, the rumbling of great railway trucks trundling raw and finished products in and out, chimneys of dizzy height belching forth monster coils of Cimmerian smoke, seem to transport one from the prosaic valley of the Ruhr into the deafening realm of Vulcan and Thor. The impression of Krupps by night is ineffaceable. The very air exudes iron and energy. You can almost imagine yourself in the midst of a thunderous artillery duel. You are at any rate in no doubt that the myriad of hands at work behind those carefully guarded walls are even more vital factors in the war than the men in the firing line. The blaze and roar fill one with the overpowering sense of the Kaiser's limitless resources for war-making. For you must roll Sheffield and Newcastle-on-Tyne and Barrow-in-Furness into one clanging whole to visualise Essen-on-the-Ruhr.
In some way Essen is unlike any other town I have visited. It has its own internal network of railways, running to and from the various branches of Krupps, and as the trains pa.s.s across the streets they naturally block the traffic for some minutes. They are almost continuous and the pedestrians' progress is slow, but it is exciting, for it is here that one realises what it means to be at war with Germany. If the resolution of the German people were as rigid as the steel in the great cranes and rolling mills, the Allied task would be impossible.
The brief noon-tide rush of the workpeople resembles our six o'clock rush in America towards Brooklyn Bridge. I can say no more than that. There is nothing like it in London. The home-going crowd round the Bank of England does not compare with the Essen crowd, because the crowd at Essen is for a few minutes more concentrated. Old and young, men and women, refugees and prisoners of several nationalities (I saw no British), Poles and Russians predominating, grimy, worn, and weary, they pour out in a solid ma.s.s, and cover the tramcars like bees in swarming time. The pedestrians gradually break up into little companies, most of them going to Kronenberg and other model colonies founded by Frau Krupp--”Bertha,” as she is affectionately called throughout Germany. The highest honour the Germans can bestow upon her is to name their 16-inch howitzer ”Fat Bertha.” Frau Bertha Krupp, it may be well to recall, was the heiress to the great Krupp fortune, and on her marriage in 1906 to Herr von Bohlen und Halbach, a diplomatist, he changed his name to Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.
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