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Before I became naturalized I went into the question of military service with especial care. An old friend of mine had for many years been at the head of a Recruiting Department. I went to him and laid the case before him, and he assured me categorically that in no event should I ever be called upon to serve in a war against England. Other people I consulted confirmed what he had said, and their testimonies removed the chief obstacle in my mind to naturalization. When the war broke out, no one ever dreamed that untrained men of my age, even Germans, would be called up. People remembered the days of 1870, which seemed such a tremendous war, when not even all the men available were sent to the front. But as the winter of 1914 deepened and the strain on Germany’s resources of man-power grew more and more severe, it became evident that no one of military age would escape service. At the beginning of March, 1915, all the able-bodied men of Germany were called up for medical inspection. I was examined and declared fit for the infantry. So, indeed, was every one else who was sound on his legs, including one-eyed men. A friend of mine who could not see across the room without his glasses was sent into the infantry, his eyes not even being looked at. Most of the other men were sent to the artillery, and one very bandy-legged man to the airship division. There was a general laugh at this; the man’s legs were curved like a barrel, and it was certain that to walk the length of a Zeppelin would be the limit of his powers. The number of absolute rejections was infinitesimal. Afterwards, however, a few obtained a respite of some months. The municipalities seemed to find it easy to get exemption for their cases. For instance, one man was released because he was the janitor to the new municipal Girls’ School. Even an English tribunal could scarcely have found a more trivial reason than that. Heads of large and important businesses managed to get off, but there was no exemption for the small man, even though military service meant for him absolute ruin. Bribery was frequent, and I knew of many cases where a timely present secured the transference of a soldier from the much-dreaded infantry to an artillery regiment. The German non-commissioned office staff are generally to be bought, except where an educated man happens to be appointed.

ALSATIANS

As soon as I was declared fit for the infantry, I took what steps I could to avoid military service. I protested to the Oberkommando at Coblenz, giving them the full details of my history. The Rector of the University supported my protest with a very vigorous letter. As a result I was ordered to a regiment at Cassel, where Alsatians were being trained, who were destined like myself for the Russian front. If the Alsatians we had are typical of their race, then Germany’s cause is hopeless in the two provinces. Our Alsatians could be divided into two classes—the talkative, who were few, and the reserved, who were many. The talkative oozed patriotism, they were bubbling over with it, and were so obviously insincere that the Germans thought of them only with contempt. By far the greater part were taciturn, gloomy, and hard. No exception could be taken to anything they did or said, but they were obviously with us but not of us. They never joined in singing our songs, except “O Strassburg,” and that they used to sing with wonderful pathos. One little Alsatian was the butt of all our N.C.O.s. He was only half-witted, and had been sent into the interior of Germany because he was considered dangerous in Alsace. He was so stupid that he could never learn the simplest thing, and he was always going off to sleep wherever he might happen to be. Our instructors, with the brutality of the peasant, used to find in him a source of endless jokes. It was interesting to watch the other Alsatians while this was going on. They would go white and tremble with suppressed emotion, and their eyes would flash dangerous fire. Afterwards, when they were sure that they were alone, they would gather round their unfortunate countryman and do their best to comfort him. When the poor man arrived at the front, he was at once sent back to the garrison as unfit for service in the field. Soldiers who fought in France in August, 1914, told me that their reception in Alsace was quite different from what it was in Germany. All along the railway line down to the boundary of Alsace they had been welcomed by cheering crowds, and gifts had been showered upon them at every station. But the moment they entered Alsace, everything was changed. They were met with cold looks and a dogged, sullen silence. The Alsatian regiments at the very beginning of the war were thrown across to the Russian front. The general testimony was that they did brilliant service there, and I could only gather one instance of desertion en masse.

LUSITANIA

My military career was rather abnormal, because at the very beginning I sprained my leg badly and had to go to hospital for six weeks. It was an interesting experience, because here I met soldiers from all fronts and learned a great deal about the war. We were miserably fed, and but for supplies from home would have starved. There was a curious comradeship among us. The working men used to come and say to me, “It isn’t so bad for us, this starvation, but it must be awful for you. You are not used to it.” While I was there, the news of the sinking of the Lusitania came. A scene ensued that I shall never forget. Some one was reading all about it from a newspaper. First the bare news, at which there was some excitement, not much; then an account of the ammunition destroyed, at which there were cheers; and then the announcement of the deaths of women and children. The whole room went mad with delight; cheers, mingled with roars of laughter as at a good joke, were loud and long. The very horror of the massacre increased their satisfaction at it. A few French prisoners of war were being treated in the same hospital. We were forbidden to speak to them, and they always took their walks when we were indoors. But at some risk I managed to smuggle in French newspapers to them, especially one containing the announcement that Italy had declared war. They were obviously more cheerful after receiving these papers, and wanted to express their thanks, but I had to make them signs not to take any notice of me. The Germans at that time were said to be mollycoddling their French prisoners and trying to make them hate the English. At Freiburg a French prisoner of war used to give lectures at the University. He was conducted to his lecture-room by sentries with fixed bayonets, who waited outside the door, and then took him back again at the conclusion of the lecture.

I was kept far too long at the hospital. I enjoyed the opportunity of taking walks in the beautiful parks of Cassel, and, as I was not seriously ill, I could go to the theatre as often as I liked. From time to time the doctor asked me if my foot still troubled me. To a question so naif there could be only one answer. One early learns to play the old soldier. Finally, however, he sent me back to the regiment with a recommendation that I should have an easy time of it for a week or so. For a whole fortnight I was employed on “Innendienst,” that is to say, I worked in the barracks itself. Every morning we would go up to the lumber-room and fold blankets. When we had folded all that there were to be folded, the sergeant would come along, kick them all to the ground, and we had to do it over again. It was not malice on his part, but necessity. He had to find work for us, and that was all he could do. My companions were working-men, and they were very much amused because I wanted to work and objected to doing nothing all day. They were always quoting a proverb—

“Wer Arbeit hat und sich nicht drückt,

Der ist verrückt.”

(“Who has got work and does not shirk,

He is a fool.”)

The whole art of life, not only of these working-men but of all other German working-men I met, could be summed up in that proverb. The mere fact of being idle afforded an exquisite pleasure to these people. The sergeant in time took pity on me and dispensed me from the necessity of coming at all. And so my poor feet, which were supposed to be too weak for marching, used to carry me over hill and dale, by forest and meadow, through all the surroundings of Cassel. By the time I had finished, I was “some” malingerer.

TRAINING

It would take me too long to detail all the delightful accidents that befell me. Suffice it to say that it was not till the middle of July that I began my full training, and on the 17th August I was sent to the front. At that time I had never been on patrol, or dug a trench, or seen a bomb. I had fired about ten rounds of live ammunition, and I scarcely knew one end of the bayonet from another. It is true that when I came out of hospital I had to go to a bayonet class. I had never been there before, and of course could not handle a bayonet properly. The instructor shouted, “Here, you there, you know nothing about bayonets, go back to the ranks.” He was only a country policeman, and it did not seem to strike him that the less I knew the more he had to teach me. Once the lieutenant in his tour of inspection invited me to have a fencing match with him. I suppose he thought that as an educated man I would have learnt my drill, and that we should give the company a high-class exhibition of fencing with the bayonet. Instead of which, I went for him like a wild cat and chased him round the quad. He came back, panting and tired, but quite good-natured, and he seemed rather to have enjoyed the experience.

I had never been taught any of those thousand and one things which are so necessary in the field. I could not roll my mantle, the N.C.O. had to do that for me, when I set out for the front. I had only once taken a rifle to pieces and cleaned it. All this means little to the layman, perhaps, but the soldier will read it with a grim smile. The fact was all the corporals said, “You’ll not go out with us, you are too far behind. You must wait and get trained with the next lot.”

I had tried to get transferred to a stretcher-bearer corps, but the sergeant-major said I must first finish my training, and that would take me three months yet. The same day he reported me as fit to go to the front. I protested to the captain that I was quite untrained, and he only answered, “You have been reported to me as fit to go to the front, and to the front you must go.”

Much has been written about the severe discipline of the German Army, but I noticed very little of it. The feeling which ruled among the officers was, here are people who are about to face death and unheard-of privations for the Fatherland, we must treat them well while they are still at home. Punishments were rarely given, except for gross disobedience. All sorts of things were winked at, which in times of peace would have brought us days of arrest. We had one fiery little lieutenant, who was continually losing his temper and inflicting on us extra drill, but we always ignored him, and so did the corporals, whose business it would have been to stay behind and superintend the drill. Some of the sergeants were abominably lazy. They would march us into the forest, select a likely place, tell us to lie down, and then wander about picking wild raspberries, first placing a sentry to see what the captain was doing. Suddenly a hoarse stage-whisper would be heard, “Herr Feldwebel, der Herr Hauptmann kommt!” (Sergeant, the Captain is coming), and the Feldwebel would roar in his best “command-voice,” “Sprung, auf, marsch, marsch,” and we would disappear into the depths of the forest. Once when we were idling like this by the side of a grassy lane, the General Commanding the Corps rode by. The silence became electric, we expected a great storm, and our expectations were heightened when he suddenly stopped his horse and ordered one of the men to rise and come to him. But the Great Man only pointed out that a strap was wrongly buckled, and then rode on.

Mr. Wells has made much in “Mr. Britling” of the stupid mistakes committed by the officers training English troops. Ours were no better. Nearly all our sham fights went wrong. One night we had orders to attack a certain party, but not finding them, marched away home. The “enemy,” meanwhile, had received no orders of any sort, so they remained on the “field of battle” for hours. Finally they took their courage in both their hands and marched home too. Such mistakes were always being committed. I do not say that our officers were especially stupid. It is only that blunders are inseparable from any form of human activity. Those made by English officers, which so much excite Mr. Wells, could be paralleled in any European country during the war. In one thing the English War Office did not blunder—that is, when they refused the offer of Mr. Wells’s services as a soldier, until they had got the younger men trained.

The spirit of the men was excellent. They were keen to learn what it was necessary to know; but as our curriculum was so meagre that it could be mastered in a month, they did not see why they should bother too much about repeating things they could do already. One aspect of military life bored us intolerably. With the idea of enlivening our existence, games were introduced, such as blind-man’s buff, hunt-the-slipper, and similar drawing-room fooleries. The men got so tired of these that they preferred to go to the front to do a man’s work. I need hardly say that such games as football were never heard of. We had, of course, all kinds of gymnastics, which would have been very good if carried out properly. But here discipline was at its slackest. One of the exercises, for example, was to climb a steep boarding fifteen feet high and then drop down on the other side as best one could. Those who were afraid were allowed to indulge their luxury of fear, no constraint being put on them whatever. A rage of disgust and contempt used to fill me at times when I saw how perfunctorily we were trained. The men were still intensely patriotic and confident of a quick and crushing victory. Drink and drabbing were looked down upon as unsoldierly by the majority of the men, but in this I think we were exceptional. From all that I could hear of other recruiting depôts, the war served with the majority of soldiers as an excuse for throwing restraint to the winds. The Government was on its guard, and in certain towns—for instance, Cologne—sentries were posted at the entrances to disreputable streets, and no soldier was allowed to pass. But in our depôt the soldiers were nearly all over thirty, and they were mostly married men. There was among them an exalted feeling of devotion to the Fatherland and of comradeship. When the call came to go to the front, many volunteered who could successfully have pleaded some physical ailment as an excuse for staying at home. I am proud to recall my association with these troops. We were a real band of brothers. Rich and poor, high and low, educated and uneducated, all mingled together on terms of simple and unaffected equality. I did not find it so afterwards. At the front and in captivity social distinctions played a great part in embittering the relations between the “kameraden.” It is true that in order to take your place in this society, you had to employ rather drastic methods. I remember once having a quarrel with the two soldiers who shared my locker with me. They were going off on a week’s holiday, and insisted on taking the key with them. It is no good being a gentleman in cases like this. I simply called them every bad name I could lay my tongue to, and in the army you learn some bad names. After I had finished (which was not soon), they handed me the key with every appearance of respect, and whenever afterwards trouble appeared to be brewing for me, they used to say, “Here, you leave that man alone: he is our friend.”

BARRACKS

Their patriotism is the more to be wondered at, because there is no doubt they were made to endure much hardness. For the first ten days of our training we all had to live in barracks. I shall never forget this time; not even the squalor of a Russian prison has left such an impression on my mind. There were far more soldiers than beds, so some of us had to sleep on mattresses on the floor. At the beginning there were many men with infectious diseases. The man who slept next to me was in an advanced state of tuberculosis, and he coughed all night. On the other side of this man was a soldier suffering from syphilis. We complained about his being put with us, and the doctor only shrugged his shoulders and answered that his was not a very infectious case. However, he was at last taken to hospital for treatment. We were never certain of getting the same bedding every night, and we were supposed to share washhand-basins. My first serious quarrel came when I insisted on washing myself under the tap. This was felt as a reflection on my partners in the washhand-basin.

The food was miserably insufficient for an active open-air life, and most of the men had to get supplies from home. Tea and coffee were dark slops scarcely to be distinguished from one another. On the other hand, the bread and sausage supplied were excellent—the best to be got in Germany at that time. We used to receive two loaves of bread a week, and when I took mine home the servant-girls all along the streets used to offer to buy them from me. We were paid about sixpence a day, but out of this we had to buy blacking, brushes, polishing materials, and several other odds and ends. We had two meals a day—dinner about twelve, and supper, a very light meal, at seven. Besides, coffee was supplied first thing in the morning. I am certain that no soldier who confined himself to the rations supplied could have held out for a week. After the first ten days those who could afford it received permission to live out.

TRAINING

We used to get up every morning at five or six o’clock. Then there would be a march to the drill-ground, some four miles away, and we would do our exercises and be home by eleven or twelve. We never practised any attacks in massed formation, we were always sent forward in open lines. One of our officers had captured a Russian position by making the men crawl towards the enemy one at a time. He had taken the position with the loss of only eight wounded. We used to curse this officer from the bottom of our hearts. Crawling is terribly hard work, especially when you are in full kit, and still more so when you have to go through whatever mud, dirt, or puddles lie in your way. So many lives had been lost at the front by people being afraid to dirty their uniforms, that we were told to get ours very dirty. And to have a foul-mouthed peasant of a corporal shouting insults at you while you are wriggling in the mud, makes you feel a very worm.

From eleven to two we were free. From two to three we had “instruktion,” that is to say, some portion of the Infantryman’s Manual was explained to us. Four times out of five the subject was the duty of patrols. We were supposed to know all this off by heart. Patrols were considered so important that everything else was subordinated to them in “instruktion.” Generally the instructor was so tired of the subject that he used to amuse us by stories of the war, or of the pranks he used to play when he was a young recruit twenty years before. If everything else failed, the half-witted Alsatian was dragged out and tortured to make a German holiday. After “instruktion” came two hours more. These were employed either in the drawing-room games I have already mentioned, or in gymnastics, or in sighting-exercises; that is to say, for two hours on end we had to practise sighting our rifles in the three positions—standing, kneeling, lying. I have seen the way the Russian soldier was taught these things, and I should say the Russian was beyond comparison better trained than the German. The Russian targets were much better, much more like the real thing, and much more care was taken. Sometimes the route-march and the exercises took place at night, in which case we had a slack morning. All our marching was made to assimilate as near as possible to war conditions. Our knapsacks were filled with sand, and the weight of our equipment was about what we had to bear in the field (75 lbs.). Our great lack was in service rifles. Most of us had rifles captured from the Russians, and great big heavy things they are, too. For some time, indeed, I had a rifle which bore the date 1820, and had probably been made in England. The strain of these exercises was severe, and I must confess that I was never so tired at the front as I was sometimes at home.

In one respect they had the advantage of probably any army in the world—in the songs they sang. Not only was the whole wealth of the German “Volkslied” open to us, but the special soldiers’ songs, “O Strassburg,” or “Ich hatt’ ein’ kameraden,” are all of good quality, while one (“Die drei Lilien”) is superb. These songs provided me with unforgettable experiences. I have already mentioned how the Alsatians used to sing “O Strassburg.” It seemed as if they could express themselves in no other way but by singing that. Although I had lived in Germany for many years, I never understood what a “Volkslied” was till I heard the soldiers sing. They were all peasants, and the impulse which created the ballad never seems to have died out in their class. They sang “Die drei Lilien,” a ballad of high imaginative power, with the most intimate understanding. Indeed, every time they sang one of the old songs it seemed like a fresh creation. And all the while new songs are being composed, and the various joys and woes of a soldier’s life are receiving an expression that is nearly always striking and effective. The stuff composed during the war itself, however, was beginning to show the influence of the music-hall and was getting to be desperately vulgar.

SERGEANT-MAJOR

I think we should all have been a very happy family if it had not been for the company sergeant-major. This personage is the greatest power in the company. He may be rude to the captain, but the captain dare not be rude to him; for if he is, things begin to go wrong in the company, headquarters get to know of it, and the reprimand falls, not on the company sergeant-major, but on the captain. Our man took a special pleasure in making us feel his power. His great sport was to get men sent to the front. He would make the lives of the other N.C.O.s such a hell to them that in wild desperation they would volunteer for active service long before their time. His favourite trick with the rank and file was to spoil their Sundays. The captain would sign our leave-tickets for Sunday, but as soon as his back was turned, the sergeant-major would take them all and throw them into the waste-paper basket. If the captain was away, he would fix a parade for 2.30 on Sunday afternoon. Punctually to time he would send some one to see if we were all there; but the great man himself would not appear till an hour or two later. Then we might be sent home, but far too late for the married men to collect their wives and children and get to their favourite coffee-garden in the suburbs. And all this was done with such an insolent expression of mocking pity on his face, that I sometimes wondered that we did not club him with our rifles. If he ever went to the front at last, I am certain he was shot in the back by his own men before he had been there long.

My experiences allowed me to test the real estimation in which a soldier is held. On duty we all had to wear the same sort of uniform. When we were off duty we could wear a better sort, if we chose, made for us by our own tailor. Going home through the streets in my dirty service uniform taught me a good deal. All well-dressed people gave me a very wide berth. I got home, bathed and changed into my private uniform. It would be ungallant to say what a difference it made. But in time of war I would allow no flapper on the streets of a garrison town except in a strait waistcoat and a muzzle.