Part 22 (1/2)

He told me to go out to Potsdam with caution, and he warned me that I should have the utmost difficulty in getting anywhere near the military sidings of the railway station there.

I asked another usually extremely well-informed friend if there was anything particular happening in the war, and told him that I thought of going to Potsdam, and he said, ”What for? There is nothing to be seen there--the same old drilling, drilling, drilling.” So well are secrets kept in Germany.

The 4th of August is the anniversary of what is known in Germany as ”England's treachery”--the day that Britain entered the war in what the German Government tells the people is ”a base and cowardly attempt to try and beat her by starving innocent women and children.”

On that sunny and fresh morning I looked out of the railway carriage window some quarter of a mile before we arrived at Potsdam and saw numerous brown trains marked with the Ked Cross, trains that usually travel by night in Germany.

There were a couple of officers of the Guard Cavalry in the same carriage with me. They also looked out. ”_Ach, noch 'mal_”

(”What, again?”) discontentedly remarked the elder. They were a gloomy pair and they had reason to be. The German public has begun to know a great deal about the wounded. They do not yet know all the facts, because wounded men are, as far as possible, hidden in Germany and never sent to Socialist centres unless it is absolutely unavoidable. The official figures which are increasing in an enormous ratio since the development of Britain's war machine, are falsified by manipulation.

And if easy proof be needed of the truth of my a.s.sertion I point to the monstrous official misstatement involved in the announcement that over ninety per cent. of German wounded return to the firing line! Of the great crush of wounded at Potsdam I doubt whether any appreciable portion of the serious cases will return to anything except permanent invalidism. They are suffering from sh.e.l.l wounds, not shrapnel, for the most part, I gathered.

As our train emptied it was obvious that some great spectacle was in progress. The exit to the station became blocked with staring peasant women returning from the early market in Berlin, their high fruit and vegetable baskets empty on their backs. When I eventually got through the crowd into the outer air and paused at the top of the short flight of steps I beheld a scene that will never pa.s.s from my memory. Filmed and circulated in Germany it would evoke inconceivable astonishment to this deluded nation and would swell the malcontents, already a formidable ma.s.s, into a united and dangerous army of angry, eye-opened dupes. This is not the mere expression of a neutral view, but is also the opinion of a sober and patriotic German statesman.

I saw the British wounded arrive from Neuve Chapelle at Boulogne; I saw the Russian wounded in the retreat from the Bukovina; I saw the Belgian wounded in the Antwerp retreat, and the German wounded in East Prussia, but the wounded of the Prussian Guard at Potsdam surpa.s.sed in sadness anything I have witnessed in the last two b.l.o.o.d.y years.

The British Neuve Chapelle wounded were, if not gay, many of them blithe and smiling--their bodies were hurt but their minds were cheerful; but the wounded of the Prussian Guard--the proudest military force in the world--who had come back to their home town decimated and humbled--these Guards formed the most amazing agglomeration of broken men I have ever encountered. As to the numbers of them, of these five Reserve regiments but few are believed to be unhurt. Vast numbers were killed, and most of the rest are back at Potsdam in the ever growing streets of hospitals that are being built on the Bornstadterfeld.

One of the trains had just stopped. The square was blocked with vehicles of every description. I was surprised to find the great German furniture vans, which by comparison with those used in England and the United States look almost like houses on wheels, were drawn up in rows with military precision. As if these were not enough, the whole of the wheeled traffic of Potsdam seemed to be commandeered by the military for the lightly wounded--cabs, tradesmen's wagons, private carriages--everything on wheels except, of course, motor-cars, which are non-existent owing to the rubber shortage. Endless tiers of stretchers lay along the low embankment sloping up to the line. Doctors, nurses, and bearers were waiting in quiet readiness.

The pa.s.sengers coming out of the station, including the women with the tall baskets, stopped, but only for a moment. They did not tarry, for the police, of which there will never be any dearth if the war lasts thirty years, motioned them on, a slight movement of the hand being sufficient.

I was so absorbed that I failed to notice the big constable near me until he laid his heavy paw upon my shoulder and told me to move on. A schoolmaster and his wife, his _Rucksack_ full of lunch, who had taken advantage of the glorious suns.h.i.+ne to get away from Berlin to spend a day amidst the woods along the Havel, asked the policeman what the matter was.

The reply was ”_Nichts hier zu sehen_” (”Nothing to be seen here.

Get along!”). The great ”Hus.h.!.+ Hus.h.!.+ Hus.h.!.+” machinery of Germany was at work.

Determined not to be baffled, I moved out of the square into the shelter of a roadside tree, on the principle that a distant view would be better than none at all, but the police were on the alert, and a police lieutenant tackled me at once. I decided to act on the German military theory that attack is the best defence, and, stepping up to him, I stated, that I was a newspaper correspondent.

”Might I not see the wounded taken from the train?” I requested.

He very courteously replied that I might not, unless I had a special pa.s.s for that purpose from the _Kriegsministerium_ in Berlin.

I hit upon a plan.

I regretfully sighed that I would go back to Berlin and get a pa.s.s, and retracing my steps to the station I bought a ticket.

A soldier and an Unteroffizier were stationed near the box in which stood the uniformed woman who punches tickets.

The Unteroffizier looked at me sharply, ”No train for an hour and a half,” he said.

”That doesn't disturb me in the least when I have plenty to read,”

I answered pleasantly, at the same time pointing to the bundle of morning papers which I carried, the _Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_ of the Foreign Office, on the outside.

I knew Potsdam thoroughly, and was perfectly familiar with every foot of the station. I knew that there was a large window in the first and second-cla.s.s dining-room which was even closer to the ambulances in the square than were the exit steps.

I did not go directly to the dining-room, but sat on one of the high-backed benches on the platform and began to read the papers.

The Unteroffizier looked out and found me fairly buried in them.