Conditions in 1923 Germany - Part 3
How about the other classes? I took pains to see something of the industrial workers, especially in the smaller towns, on whose ancient pavements no tourists cast a shadow. The men I met were discontented, even savagely so; but they had work, and were fairly well fed, for I saw them eating. When, later in the fall, factories began to close down, the situation altered for the worse.
But the peasant class contrasted still more strikingly with the mental work-ers; for food prices were rising, and they had, many of them, saved money, in actual gold, during the earlier years of the war. To-day, I was informed, they had it, not in banks, but in stockings or coffers, hidden in the hay-mow. I spent some time with certain of these small peasant proprietors, working with them by day, and at night eating and drinking with their families. The supply of eatables and drinkables in their several homes was lavish. In the towns, among those fairly well off, one egg a day was considered an extravagance; cream was never seen; in fact, throughout all Europe, it was the hardest thing to come by at any price. And in Bavaria wine was not drunk, and cheese was eaten sparingly. But at the tables of the farmers a bottle of wine was a matter of course, and on one occasion champagne was drunk. They ate cheese in quantities. I saw a man eat six or eight eggs at one meal and drink all the cream he wanted.
Congenial as I found them, there were signs of demoralization; they showed the effect of this chance-come prosperity by their rude and heartless attitude to the poorer classes in the towns. When these latter came out to the country to market, the peasant refused, as often as not, to sell his goods, and the manner of his refusal was neither pretty nor polite. Why should he sell to these poor devils, when the great hotels, catering to the profiteer and tourist, would give him three times as much? One wishes it were not so; but this peasant piggishness must be put down with the rest.
As experience grew more and more complex, I wondered not a little what the general state of things really was. In Munich, on an evening in September, overhearing three workingmen speak of a Communist meeting to take place an hour later, I put on my roughest clothes, found the door, and began to shoulder my way in with the crowd. My card being demanded, I said I had none, but was an American; and, insisting upon this in the English tongue, I pushed my way in with the rest.
It was a roughish crowd, of perhaps fifteen hundred men, in a poorly lit hall, with many standing and much interruption. The speakers spoke to the point, especially the orator in chief.
The Republic as constituted was a shadow, bourgeois, makeshift; inefficient, idle, corrupt. The dictatorship of the Proletariat should take its place.
There was but one question debated while I was in the hall. When should they abolish the Republic? Between speeches, men spoke together in knots, and questions were put me in regard to American democracy. Having heard all I wanted of the Red Sunrise rushing up the political horizon, and neglecting common prudence, I answered plainly, and perhaps shortly, that American democracy was much more than a thousand years old; that it was an ancient, historic phenomenon, based on the temper of a single race, inimitable by other races, and no more to be understood of a class-conscious German proletariat than the Laws of Manu, to which indeed it bore no small resemblance.
I was promptly hustled out of the hall. If I recall the phrase correctly, an Irish orator on a like occasion stated that he was 'ejected with contumely and contusions.'
The following day I was permitted to attend a meeting of professional, military, and other highly educated men, where opinion on the whole was conservative. But here again there was only one subject under debate: 'Shall we wait for the inevitable revolution, or shall we anticipate it? In case the Reds rise, what action shall be taken?'
The general sense of the meeting was that law and order should at any cost be upheld; the Republic sustained; and the revolution dealt with to the best of their ability, when it came about. But no one had a good word for the administration, or the Republic as constituted. On the other hand, there was fiery denunciation of the murderers of Rathenau.
There were eminent men present, and what most impressed me was this certainty that revolution was to come and must be prepared for. Much was said of the difficulty of putting down possible riots with the means left at their disposal by the Interallied Commission of Control. I was not surprised, for in looking over the barracks of the Landwehr, or country police, I could not fail to observe that the machine-guns, three in number, lacked carriages; that there were no bayonets for the rifles; and that the permitted num-ber of rounds of ammunition was incredibly small. I am told that they hide their weapons of war. I imagine we should do so in like case. But as I write these lines, I see that the English general responsible for the finding out and destruction of concealed weapons of war makes light of any serious concealment.
'I don't know who or what you are, but if you're an American, you must be a revolutionist!'
I smiled and told him to go on.
'Well, this Republic we have is nothing; it's no Republic; it's a bourgeois; we're going to kick the guts out of it; and soon too; we [the proletarian industrials] are going to be the governing class, and nobody else is going to have a look in — not your educated kind, nor any other kind. You'll see! Your educated people have made a nice mess of it. We're done with you, damn you! We workers' — here he showed his hands — ' make the world, and we're going to rule the world.'
As he spoke, I recalled a gray morning of 1913, when I had met a gang of robust-looking workers in the meadows and beechwoods around the monastery of Andechs. Innocent of evil intention, I addressed them in the customary Bavarian phrase; 'Gruss Gott' (God keep you).
Their reply was instant and energetic:
'To Hell with God!'
In the Prinz Regenten Theatre that evening, I sat next to a young and delightfully dandified officer in civilian clothes. Between acts I conversed with the young man, and he presently said this:—
'You find fault with my country because we don't bow our heads in dust and ashes, because we are not repentant. I never heard that your Southern States repented. Didn't they simply accept the fall of the dice? Or did you Northerners compel them to weep in public, and acknowledge their transgressions?'
Before we parted, he said simply and seriously: 'I admire your countrymen, especially for their energetic conservatism. But in foreign affairs you seem to be wanting in good sense. Look at what is now happening. Your government and the English are driving us into the arms of Russia. I loathe Trotzky, but I had rather be a soldier in the Bolshevist army than an economic slave to the French.'
As October drew on, the evidences of suffering were more readily discernible. Women no longer young told me they dreaded the cold of winter more than the gnawing of unsatisfied appetite. Said one lady: 'I lie awake for hours and shiver and cry.'
'I fear we are a people about to be destroyed,' a Lutheran minister was saying in the course of his sermon. 'I fear we shall go the way Austria has gone. It is sure that we have sinned as a people; let us bow our heads and submit to the suffering God administers; worship God.'
Calling on my physician, a man eminent in science as well as medicine, and handing him his fee of two dollars, I was pained and embarrassed by the expression of his gratitude, for, on thanking me, he burst into tears. 'If you had not by chance come in,' he said, 'and consulted me, I should not have known where my children's dinner tomorrow would have come from.' And in the course of conversation he told me that he had just been at the death-bed of a patient, a lady of refinement and culture. She had not sent for him, though she had been down with pneumonia for ten days; but when she had lapsed into unconsciousness, her sister had called him in. It was too late. People of her class, he added, can no longer afford a physician; they die without one.
But the peasant class contrasted still more strikingly with the mental work-ers; for food prices were rising, and they had, many of them, saved money, in actual gold, during the earlier years of the war. To-day, I was informed, they had it, not in banks, but in stockings or coffers, hidden in the hay-mow. I spent some time with certain of these small peasant proprietors, working with them by day, and at night eating and drinking with their families. The supply of eatables and drinkables in their several homes was lavish. In the towns, among those fairly well off, one egg a day was considered an extravagance; cream was never seen; in fact, throughout all Europe, it was the hardest thing to come by at any price. And in Bavaria wine was not drunk, and cheese was eaten sparingly. But at the tables of the farmers a bottle of wine was a matter of course, and on one occasion champagne was drunk. They ate cheese in quantities. I saw a man eat six or eight eggs at one meal and drink all the cream he wanted.
Congenial as I found them, there were signs of demoralization; they showed the effect of this chance-come prosperity by their rude and heartless attitude to the poorer classes in the towns. When these latter came out to the country to market, the peasant refused, as often as not, to sell his goods, and the manner of his refusal was neither pretty nor polite. Why should he sell to these poor devils, when the great hotels, catering to the profiteer and tourist, would give him three times as much? One wishes it were not so; but this peasant piggishness must be put down with the rest.
As experience grew more and more complex, I wondered not a little what the general state of things really was. In Munich, on an evening in September, overhearing three workingmen speak of a Communist meeting to take place an hour later, I put on my roughest clothes, found the door, and began to shoulder my way in with the crowd. My card being demanded, I said I had none, but was an American; and, insisting upon this in the English tongue, I pushed my way in with the rest.
It was a roughish crowd, of perhaps fifteen hundred men, in a poorly lit hall, with many standing and much interruption. The speakers spoke to the point, especially the orator in chief.
The Republic as constituted was a shadow, bourgeois, makeshift; inefficient, idle, corrupt. The dictatorship of the Proletariat should take its place.
There was but one question debated while I was in the hall. When should they abolish the Republic? Between speeches, men spoke together in knots, and questions were put me in regard to American democracy. Having heard all I wanted of the Red Sunrise rushing up the political horizon, and neglecting common prudence, I answered plainly, and perhaps shortly, that American democracy was much more than a thousand years old; that it was an ancient, historic phenomenon, based on the temper of a single race, inimitable by other races, and no more to be understood of a class-conscious German proletariat than the Laws of Manu, to which indeed it bore no small resemblance.
I was promptly hustled out of the hall. If I recall the phrase correctly, an Irish orator on a like occasion stated that he was 'ejected with contumely and contusions.'
The following day I was permitted to attend a meeting of professional, military, and other highly educated men, where opinion on the whole was conservative. But here again there was only one subject under debate: 'Shall we wait for the inevitable revolution, or shall we anticipate it? In case the Reds rise, what action shall be taken?'
The general sense of the meeting was that law and order should at any cost be upheld; the Republic sustained; and the revolution dealt with to the best of their ability, when it came about. But no one had a good word for the administration, or the Republic as constituted. On the other hand, there was fiery denunciation of the murderers of Rathenau.
There were eminent men present, and what most impressed me was this certainty that revolution was to come and must be prepared for. Much was said of the difficulty of putting down possible riots with the means left at their disposal by the Interallied Commission of Control. I was not surprised, for in looking over the barracks of the Landwehr, or country police, I could not fail to observe that the machine-guns, three in number, lacked carriages; that there were no bayonets for the rifles; and that the permitted num-ber of rounds of ammunition was incredibly small. I am told that they hide their weapons of war. I imagine we should do so in like case. But as I write these lines, I see that the English general responsible for the finding out and destruction of concealed weapons of war makes light of any serious concealment.
1923 Germany - Part 4
At the noon hour of a cold September day, I ate my lunch with some ten or more factory hands, on the outskirts of a small town. We sat about on boilers, barrels, and kegs, and discussed the Kaiser, America, Hindenburg, and the Revolution. With one exception they were a genial lot, extremely curious as to America; the best of companions, as indeed their countrymen not infrequently are. The exception, a handsome, burly, sour-looking youngster, silent at first, presently spoke up.'I don't know who or what you are, but if you're an American, you must be a revolutionist!'
I smiled and told him to go on.
'Well, this Republic we have is nothing; it's no Republic; it's a bourgeois; we're going to kick the guts out of it; and soon too; we [the proletarian industrials] are going to be the governing class, and nobody else is going to have a look in — not your educated kind, nor any other kind. You'll see! Your educated people have made a nice mess of it. We're done with you, damn you! We workers' — here he showed his hands — ' make the world, and we're going to rule the world.'
As he spoke, I recalled a gray morning of 1913, when I had met a gang of robust-looking workers in the meadows and beechwoods around the monastery of Andechs. Innocent of evil intention, I addressed them in the customary Bavarian phrase; 'Gruss Gott' (God keep you).
Their reply was instant and energetic:
'To Hell with God!'
In the Prinz Regenten Theatre that evening, I sat next to a young and delightfully dandified officer in civilian clothes. Between acts I conversed with the young man, and he presently said this:—
'You find fault with my country because we don't bow our heads in dust and ashes, because we are not repentant. I never heard that your Southern States repented. Didn't they simply accept the fall of the dice? Or did you Northerners compel them to weep in public, and acknowledge their transgressions?'
Before we parted, he said simply and seriously: 'I admire your countrymen, especially for their energetic conservatism. But in foreign affairs you seem to be wanting in good sense. Look at what is now happening. Your government and the English are driving us into the arms of Russia. I loathe Trotzky, but I had rather be a soldier in the Bolshevist army than an economic slave to the French.'
As October drew on, the evidences of suffering were more readily discernible. Women no longer young told me they dreaded the cold of winter more than the gnawing of unsatisfied appetite. Said one lady: 'I lie awake for hours and shiver and cry.'
'I fear we are a people about to be destroyed,' a Lutheran minister was saying in the course of his sermon. 'I fear we shall go the way Austria has gone. It is sure that we have sinned as a people; let us bow our heads and submit to the suffering God administers; worship God.'
Calling on my physician, a man eminent in science as well as medicine, and handing him his fee of two dollars, I was pained and embarrassed by the expression of his gratitude, for, on thanking me, he burst into tears. 'If you had not by chance come in,' he said, 'and consulted me, I should not have known where my children's dinner tomorrow would have come from.' And in the course of conversation he told me that he had just been at the death-bed of a patient, a lady of refinement and culture. She had not sent for him, though she had been down with pneumonia for ten days; but when she had lapsed into unconsciousness, her sister had called him in. It was too late. People of her class, he added, can no longer afford a physician; they die without one.