Читать книгу The Iron Ration: Three Years in Warring Central Europe - George Abel Schreiner - Страница 7

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Press and government in the Entente countries were sure that Germany and Austria-Hungary could be reduced by hunger in some six months after the outbreak of the European War. The newspapers and authorities of the Central Powers made sport of this contention at first, but sobered up considerably when the flood of contraband "orders in privy council" began to spill in London. At first conditional contraband became contraband. Soon non-contraband became conditional contraband, and not long after that the British government set its face even against the import into Germany of American apples. That was the last straw, as some thought. The end of contraband measures was not yet, however. It was not long before the neutrals of Europe, having physical contact with the Central Powers, were to find out that they could not export food to Germany without having to account for it.

Small wonder then that already in September of 1914 it was asserted that the elephants of the Berlin Zoo had been butchered for their meat. I was then stationed at The Hague, as correspondent for an American telegraphic news service, and had a great deal to do with the "reports" of the day. It was my business to keep the American public as reliably informed as conditions permitted.

I did not publish anything about the alleged butchering of elephants and other denizens of the Berlin zoological establishments, knowing full well that these stories were absurd. And, then, I was not in the necessary frame of mind to look upon elephant steak as others did. Most people harbor a sort of prejudice against those who depart from what is considered a "regular" bill of fare. We sniff at those whom we suspect of being hippophagians, despite the fact that our hairier ancestors made sitting down to a fine horse roast an important feature of their religious ceremonies. I can't do that any longer since circumstances compelled me once to partake of mule. Nor was it good mule. Lest some be shocked at this seeming perversity, I will add that this happened during the late Anglo-Boer War.

The statement, especially as amended, should serve as an assurance that I am really qualified to write on food in war-time, and no Shavianism is intended, either.

Food conditions in Germany interested me intensely. Hunger was expected to do a great deal of fighting for the Allies. I was not so sure that this conclusion was correct. Germany had open-eyedly taken a chance with the British blockade. That left room for the belief that somebody in Germany had well considered this thing.

But the first German food I saw had a peculiar fascination for me, for all that. Under the glass covers standing on the buffet of a little restaurant at Vaalsplatz I espied sandwiches. Were they real sandwiches, or "property" staged for my special benefit? It was generally believed in those days that the Germans had brought to their border towns all the food they had in the empire's interior, so that the Entente agents would be fooled into believing that there was plenty of food on hand.

Vaalsplatz is the other half of Vaals. The two half towns make up one whole town, which really is not a whole town, because the Dutch-German border runs between the two half towns. But the twin communities are very neighborly. I suspected as much. For that reason the presence of the sandwiches in Vaalsplatz meant nothing. What assurance had I that, when they saw me coming, the sandwiches were not rushed across the border and into Germany, so that I might find the fleshpots of Egypt where the gaunt specter of famine was said to have its lair?

This is the manner in which the press agents of starvation used to work in those days. And the dear, gullible public, never asking itself once whether it was possible to reduce almost overnight to starvation two states that were not far from being economically self-contained, swallowed it all—bait, hook, line, and sinker.

My modus operandi differed a little from this. I bought three of the sandwiches for ten pfennige—two and a quarter cents American—apiece, and found them toothsome morsels, indeed. The discovery was made, also, that German beer was still as good as it always had been.

My business on that day took me no farther into Germany than the cemetery that lies halfway between Vaalsplatz and Aix-la-Chapelle. There I caught on the wing, as it were, the man I was looking for, and then smuggled him out of the country as my secretary.

I had seen no other food but the sandwiches, and as I jumped from the speeding trolley-car I noticed that they were digging a grave in the cemetery. Ah! Haven of refuge for a famine victim!

I said something of that sort to the man I was smuggling into Holland. Roger L. Lewis looked at me with contempt and pity in his eyes, as the novelist would say.

"Are you crazy?" he asked. "Why, the Germans have more food than is good for them. They are a nation of gluttons, in fact."

With Mr. Lewis going to London I could not very well write of the sandwiches and the grave in the cemetery. These things were undeniable facts. I had seen them. But the trouble was that they were not related to each other and had with life only those connections they normally have. The famine-booster does not look at things in that light, though.

Four weeks later I was in Berlin. The service had sent me there to get at the bottom of the famine yarns. There seemed to be something wrong with starvation. It was not progressing rapidly enough, and I was to see to what extent the Entente economists were right.

In a large restaurant on the Leipzigerstrasse in Berlin I found a very interesting bill of fare and a placard speaking of food. The menu was generous enough. It offered the usual assortment of hors-d'œuvre, soup, fish, entrée, relevée, roasts, cold meats, salads, vegetables, and sweetmeats.

On the table stood a basket filled with dinner rolls. The man was waiting for my order.

But to give an order seemed not so simple. I was trying to reconcile the munificence of the dishes list with the legend on the placard. That legend said—heavy black letters on white cardboard, framed by broad lines of scarlet red:

SAVE THE FOOD!

The esteemed patrons of this establishment

are requested not to eat unnecessarily. Do

not eat two dishes if one is enough!

The Management.

It was my first day in Berlin, and having that very morning, at Bentheim, on the Dutch-German border, run into a fine piece of German thoroughness and regard for the law, I was at a loss what to do under the circumstances. While I knew that the management of the restaurant could not have me arrested if I picked more than two dishes, I had also ascertained that the elephant steak was a fable. I was not so sure that ordering a "regular" dinner might not give offense. That is the sort of feeling you have on the first day in a country at war. I had seen so many war proclamations of the government, all in heavy black and red on white, that the restaurant placard really meant more to me than was necessary.

I asked the waiter to come to my assistance. Being a native of the country, he would know, no doubt, how far I could go.

"You needn't pay any attention to that sign, sir!" he said. "Nobody does any more. You can order anything you like—as many dishes as you please."

I wanted to know whether the placard was due to a government regulation.

"Not directly, sir. The government has advised hotels and restaurants to economize in food. The management here wanted to do its share, of course, and had these signs printed. At first our patrons minded them. But now everybody is falling back into the old eating habits, and the management wants to make all the money it can, of course."

The war was then about two months old.

What the waiter said was enough for me. I ordered accordingly and during dinner had much of the company of the serving-man. It seemed that to a great deal of natural shrewdness he had added, in the course of much traveling, a fair general education. When I left the restaurant I was richer by a good picture of food conditions in Berlin, as these had been influenced up to that moment by the intentions of the Prussian government.

So far the authorities had done very little to "regulate" food questions, though problems were already in sight and had to be dealt with by the poor of the city. That economy had to be practised was certain even then. The government had counseled economy in consumption, and various patriotic societies and institutions of learning had given advice. But actual interference in public subsistence matters had so far not taken place.

The German government had tried to meet the English "business-as-usual" with a policy of "eating-as-usual." It was felt that cutting down on food might put a damper on the war spirit. To be enthusiastic when hungry may be possible for the superman. It is hard work for the come-and-go kind of citizen.

Nor had anybody found cause to abandon the notion that the European War would not last long. True enough, the western front had been congealed by Marshal Joffre, but there was then no reason to believe that it would not again be brought into flux, in which case it was hoped that the German general staff would give to the world a fine picture of swift and telling offensive in open-field operations. After that the war was to be over.

Of the six months which the war was to last, according to plans that existed in the mouths of the gossips, two were past now, and still the end was not in sight. An uncomfortable feeling came upon many when seclusion undraped reality. That much I learned during my first week at the German capital.

I must mention here that I speak German almost perfectly. Armed in this manner, I invaded markets and stores, ate to-day in the super-refined halls of the Adlon and shared to-morrow a table with some hackman, and succeeded also in gaining entrée into some families, rich, not-so-rich, and poor.

In the course of three weeks I had established to my own satisfaction, and that of the service, that while as yet there could be no question of food shortage in Germany, there would soon come a time when waists—which were not thin then by any means—would shrink. The tendency of food prices was upward, and, as they rose, more people increased the consumption of food staples, especially bread. Since these staples were the marrow of the country's economic organism, something would have to be done soon to limit their consumption to the absolutely necessary.

The first step in that direction was soon to be taken. War-bread—Kriegsbrot—made its appearance. It was more of a staff of life than had been believed, despite its name. To roughly 55 per cent. of rye was added 25 per cent. of wheat and 20 per cent. of potato meal, sugar, and shortening. The bread was very palatable, and the potato elements in it prevented its getting stale rapidly. It tasted best on the third day, and on trips to the front I have kept the bread as long as a week without noticing deterioration.

But the German had lived well in the past and it was not easy to break him of the habits he had cultivated under a superabundance of food. The thing had gone so far that when somebody wanted to clean an expensive wall-paper the baker would be required to deliver a dozen hot loaves of wheat bread, which, cut into halves lengthwise, would then be rubbed over the wall-paper—with excellent results as regards the appearance of the room and the swill-barrel from which the pigs were fed.

On this subject I had a conversation with a woman of the upper class. She admitted that she herself had done it. The paper was of the best sort and so pleasing to her eyes that she could not bear having it removed when discolored from exposure to light and dust.

"It was sinful, of course," she said. "I believe the Good Book says that bread should not be wasted, or something to that effect. Well, we had grown careless. I am ashamed when I think of it. My mother would have never permitted that. But everybody was doing it. It seems now that we are about to pay for our transgressions. All Germany was fallen upon the evil ways that come from too much prosperity. From a thrifty people we had grown to be a luxury-loving one. The war will do us good in that respect. It will show us that the simple life is to be preferred to the kind we have been leading for some twenty years now."

Then the countess resumed her knitting, and spoke of the fact that she had at the front six sons, one son-in-law, and four automobiles.

"But what troubles me most is that my estates have been deprived of so many of their laborers and horses that I may not be able to attend properly to the raising of crops," she continued. "My superintendents write me that they are from two to three weeks behind in plowing and seeding. The weather isn't favorable, either. What is going to happen to us in food matters, if this war should last a year? Do you think it will last a year?"

I did not know, of course.

"You ought to know the English very well," said the countess. "Do you think they really mean to starve us out?"

"They will if the military situation demands this, madame," I replied. "Your people will make a mistake if they overlook the tenacity of that race. I am speaking from actual experience on the South African plains. You need expect no let-up from the English. They may blunder a great deal, but they always have the will and the resources to make good their mistakes and profit by them, even if they cannot learn rapidly."

The countess had thought as much.

I gained a good insight into German food production a few days later, while I was the guest of the countess on an estate not far from Berlin.

The fields there were being put to the best possible use under intensive farming, though their soil had been deprived of its natural store of plant nutriment centuries ago.

I suppose the estate was poor "farmland" already when the first crops were being raised in New England. But intelligent cultivation, and, above all, rational fertilizing methods, had always kept it in a fine state of production. The very maximum in crops was being obtained almost every year. Trained agriculturists superintended the work, and, while machinery was being employed, none of it was used in departments where it would have been the cause of a loss in production—something against which the ease-loving farmer is not always proof.

The idea was to raise on the area all that could be raised, even if the net profit from a less thorough method of cultivation would have been just as big. Inquiry showed that the agrarian policy of the German government favored this course. The high protective tariff, under which the German food-producer operated, left a comfortable profit margin no matter how good the crops of the competitor might be. Since Germany imported a small quantity of food even in years when bumper crops came, large harvests did not cause a depression in prices; they merely kept foreign foodstuffs out of the country and thereby increased the trade balance in favor of Germany.

Visiting some small farms and villages in the neighborhood of the estate, I found that the example set by the scientifically managed Gut of the countess was being followed everywhere. The agrarian policy of the government had wiped out all competition between large and small producers, and so well did the village farmers and the estate-managers get along that the Gut was in reality a sort of agricultural experiment station and school farm for those who had not studied agriculture at the seats of learning which the bespectacled superintendents of the countess had attended.

I began to understand why Germany was able to virtually grow on an area less than that of the State of Texas the food for nearly seventy million people, and then leave to forestry and waste lands a quarter of that area. There was also the explanation why Germany was able to export small quantities of rye and barley, in exchange for the wheat she could not raise herself profitably. The climate of northern Germany is not well suited for the growing of wheat. If it were, Germany would not import any wheat, seeing that the area now given to the cultivation of sugar-beets and potatoes could be cut down much without affecting home consumption. As it is, the country exported before the war almost a third of her sugar production, and much of the alcohol won from potatoes entered the foreign market either in its raw state or in the form of manufactured products.

But the war had put a crimp into this fine scheme. Not only was the estate short-handed and short of animal power, but in the villages it was no better. Some six million men had then been mobilized, and of this number 28 per cent. came directly from the farms, and another 14 per cent. had formerly been engaged in food production and distribution also. To fill the large orders of hay, oats, and straw for the army, the cattle had to be kept on the meadows—pastures in the American sense of the word are but rarely found in overcrowded Europe—and that would lead to a shortage in stable manure, the most important factor in soil-fertilizing.

The outlook was gloomy enough and quite a contrast to the easy war spirit which still swayed the city population.

Interviews with a goodly number of German government officials and men connected with the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture confirmed the impressions I had gained in the course of my food investigation. For the time being, there was enough of everything. But that was only for the time being.

Public subsistence depends in a large measure on the products of animal industry. There is the dairy, for instance. While cows can live on grass, they will not give much or good milk if hay and grass are not supplemented by fat-making foods. Of such feed Germany does not produce enough, owing to climatic conditions. Indian corn will not ripen in northern Europe, and cotton is out of the question altogether. In the past, Indian corn had been imported from Hungary, Roumania, and the United States mostly, and cotton-seed products had been brought in from the United States also. Roumania still continued to sell Indian corn during the first months of the war, but Great Britain had put cotton-seed cake and the like under the ban of contraband. If the bread-basket was not as yet hung high, the crib certainly began to get very much out of reach.

One day, then, I found that every advertisement "pillar" in the streets of Berlin called loudly for two things—the taking of an animal census throughout Prussia, and the advice that as many pigs as possible should be killed. Poor porkers! It was to be wide-open season for them soon.

Gently, ever so gently, the Prussian and other German state governments were beginning to put the screws on the farming industry—the thing they had nursed so well. No doubt the thing hurt. But there was no help. Animal feed was discovered to be short. The authorities interfered with the current of supply and demand for the first time. Feed Commissions and Fodder Centrals were established, and after that the farmer had to show cause why he should get the amount of feed he asked for. The innovation recoiled on the lowliest first—among them the pigs.

Into them and upon them had been heaped a great deal of fat by purposeful feeding with an ulterior motive. The porkers stood well in the glory for which they are intended. But the lack of fattening feed would soon cause them to live more or less on their own stores of fat. That had to be prevented, naturally. By many, a butchered two-hundred-pound porker is thought to be better than a live razorback. The knife began its deadly work—the slaughter of the porcine innocents was on.

To the many strange cults and castes that exist we must add the German village butcher. He is busy only when the pork "crop" comes in, but somehow he seems to defy the law that only continued practice makes perfect. He works from November to February of each year, but when the next season comes he is as good as before, seemingly.

But in 1914 the village butcher was busy at the front. Thus it came that men less expert were in charge of the conservation of pork products. The result could have been foreseen, but it was not. The farmers, eager not to lose an ounce of fat, and not especially keen to feed their home-raised grain to the animals, had their pigs butchered. That was well enough, in a way. But the tons of sausages that were made, and the thousands of tons of pickled and smoked hams, shoulders, sides-of-bacon, and what not, had been improperly cured in many cases, and vast quantities of them began to spoil.

It was now a case of having no pigs and also no pork.

The case deserves special attention for the reason that it is the first crevasse that appeared in the levee that was to hold back the high-flood of inflated prices and food shortage.

The affair of the porkers did not leave the German farmers in the best frame of mind. They had needlessly sacrificed a goodly share of their annual income. The price of pork fell to a lower level than had been known in twenty years, and meanwhile the farmer was beginning to buy what he needed in a market that showed sharp upward curves. To this was being added the burden of war taxation.

But even that was not all. Coming in close contact with the Berlin authorities, I had been able to judge the quality of their efforts for the saving of food. I had learned, for instance, that the Prussian and other state governments never intended to order the killing of the pigs. The most that was done by them was to advise the farmers and villagers to kill off all animals that had reached their maximum weight and whose keep under the reduced ration system would not pay.

Zealous officials in the provinces gave that thing a different aspect. Eager to obey the slightest suggestion of those above, these men interpreted the advice given as an order and disseminated it as such. The farmer with sense enough to question this was generally told that what he would not do on advice he would later be ordered to do.

I was able to ascertain in connection with this subject that all which is bad in German, and especially in Prussian, government has rarely its inception in the higher places. It is the Amtsstube—government bureau—that breeds the qualities for which government in the German Empire is deservedly odious. At any ministry I would get the very best treatment—far better, for instance, than I should hope to get at any seat of department at Washington—but it was different when I had to deal with some official underling.

This class, as a rule, enters the government service after having been professional non-commissioned officers for many years. By that time the man has become so thoroughly a drill sergeant that his usefulness in other spheres of life should be considered as ended. Instead of that, the German government makes him an official. The effect produced is not a happy one.

It was a member of this tribe who once told me that I was not to think. I confess that I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I heard that.

The case has some bearing on the subject discussed here, and for that reason I will refer to it briefly.

At the American embassy at Berlin they had put my passport into proper shape, as they thought. A Mr. Harvey was positive that such was the case. But at the border it was found that somebody was mistaken. The Tenth Army, in whose bailiwick I found myself, had changed the passport regulations, and the American embassy at Berlin seemed not to have heard of the change.

A very snappy sergeant of the border survey service wanted to know how I had dared to travel with an imperfectly viséd passport. There was nothing else to say but that I thought the passport was in order.

"Sie haben kein Recht zu denken" ("You have no right to think"), snarled the man.

That remark stunned me. Here was a human being audacious enough to deny another human being the right to think. What next?

The result of some suitable remarks of mine were that presently I was under arrest and off for an interview with the Landrat—the county president at Bentheim.

The Landrat was away, however—hunting, as I remember it. In his stead I found a so-called assessor. I can say for the man that he was the most offensive government official or employee I have ever met. He had not said ten words when that was plain to me.

"Ah! You thought the passport was in order," he mocked. "You thought so! Don't you know that it is dangerous to think?"

There and then my patience took leave of me. I made a few remarks that left no doubt in the mind of the official that I reserved for myself the right to think, whether that was in Germany or in Hades.

Within a fortnight I was back in Berlin. I am not given to making a mountain out of every little molehill I come across, but I deemed it necessary to bring the incident at Bentheim to the attention of the proper authorities.

What I wanted to know was this: Had the race which in the past produced some of the best of thinkers been coerced into having thinking prohibited by an erstwhile sergeant or a mensur-marked assessor?

Of course, that was not the case, I was told. The two men had been overzealous. They would be disciplined. I was not to feel that I had been insulted. An eager official might use that sort of language. After all, what special harm was there in being told not to think? Both the sergeant and the assessor had probably meant that I was not to surmise, conclude, or take things for granted.

But I had made up my mind to make myself clear. In the end I succeeded, though recourse to diagrams and the like seemed necessary before the great light dawned. That the German authorities had the right to watch their borders closely I was the last to gainsay. Nor could fault be found with officials who discharged this important duty with all the thoroughness at their command. If these officials felt inclined to warn travelers against surmise and conjecture, thanks were due them, but these officials were guilty of the grossest indecency in denying a rational adult the right to think.

Those who for years have been hunting for a definition of militarism may consider that in the above they have the best explanation of it. The phrase, "You have no right to think," is the very backbone of militarism. In times of war men may not think, because militarism is absolute. For those that are anti-militarist enough to continue thinking there is the censorship and sedition laws, both of which worked smoothly enough in Germany and the countries of her allies.

The question may be asked, What does this have to do with food and such? Very much, is my answer.

The class of small officials was to become the machine by which the production, distribution, and consumption of food and necessities were to be modified according to the needs of the day. This class was to stimulate production, simplify distribution, and restrict consumption. No small task for any set of men, whether they believed in the God-given right of thinking or not.

It was simple enough to restrict consumption—issue the necessary decrees with that in view, and later adopt measures of enforcement. The axiom, You have no right to think, fitted that case well enough. But it was different with distribution. To this sphere of economy belongs that ultra-modern class of Germans, the trust and Syndikat member—the industrial and commercial kings. These men had outgrown the inhibitions of the barrack-yard. The Feldwebel was a joke to them now, and, unfortunately, their newly won freedom sat so awkwardly upon their minds that often it would slip off. The class as a whole would then attend to the case, and generally win out.

A similar state of affairs prevailed in production. To order the farmer what he was to raise was easy, but nature takes orders from nobody, a mighty official included.