Further Foolishness Part 17

"Pardon me!" said the General, and then, turning the subject with exquisite tact: "Do you remember Max?" he said.

"Do you mean the tall melancholy looking waiter, who used to eat the spare oysters and drink up what was left in the gla.s.ses, behind the screen?"

"Ha!" exclaimed my friend. "But _why_ did he drink them?

_Why?_ Do you know that that man--his real name is not Max but Ernst Niedelfein--is one of the greatest chemists in Germany? Do you realise that he was making a report to our War Office on the percentage of alcohol obtainable in Toronto after closing time?"

"And Karl?" I asked.

"Karl was a topographist in the service of his High Serenity the King Regnant of Bavaria"--here my friend saluted himself with both hands and blinked his eyes four times--"He made maps of all the breweries of Canada. We know now to a bottle how many German soldiers could be used in invading Canada without danger of death from drought."

"How many was it?" I asked.

b.o.o.benstein shook his head.

"Very disappointing," he said. "In fact your country is not yet ripe for German occupation. Our experts say that the invasion of Canada is an impossibility unless we use Milwaukee as a base--But step into my motor," said the Count, interrupting himself, "and come along with me.

Stop, you are cold. This morning air is very keen. Take this," he added, picking off the fur cap from the chauffeur's head. "It will be better than that hat you are wearing--or, here, wait a moment--"

As he spoke, the Count unwound a woollen m.u.f.fler from the chauffeur's neck, and placed it round mine.

"Now then," he added, "this sheepskin coat--"

"My dear Count," I protested.

"Not a bit, not a bit," he cried, as he pulled off the chauffeur's coat and shoved me into it. His face beamed with true German generosity.

"Now," he said as we settled back into the motor and started along the road, "I am entirely at your service.

Try one of these cigars! Got it alight? Right! You notice, no doubt, the exquisite flavour. It is a _Tannhauser_.

Our chemists are making these cigars now out of the refuse of the tanneries and glue factories."

I sighed involuntarily. Imagine trying to "blockade" a people who could make cigars out of refuse; imagine trying to get near them at all!

"Strong, aren't they?" said von b.o.o.benstein, blowing a big puff of smoke. "In fact, it is these cigars that have given rise to the legend (a pure fiction, I need hardly say) that our armies are using asphyxiating gas. The truth is they are merely smoking German-made tobacco in their trenches."

"But come now," he continued, "your meeting me is most fortunate. Let me explain. I am at present on the Intelligence Branch of the General Staff. My particular employment is dealing with foreign visitors--the branch of our service called, for short, the Eingewanderte Fremden Verfullungs Bureau. How would you call that?"

"It sounds," I said, "like the Bureau for Stuffing Up Incidental Foreigners."

"Precisely," said the Count, "though your language lacks the music of ours. It is my business to escort visitors round Germany and help them with their despatches. I took the Ford party through--in a closed cattle-car, with the lights out. They were greatly impressed. They said that, though they saw nothing, they got an excellent idea of the atmosphere of Germany. It was I who introduced Lady de Washaway to the Court of Franz Joseph. I write the despatches from Karl von Wiggleround, and send the necessary material to Amba.s.sador von Barnstuff. In fact I can take you everywhere, show you everything, and"

--here my companion's military manner suddenly seemed to change into something obsequiously and strangely familiar--"it won't cost you a cent; not a cent, unless you care--"

I understood.

I handed him ten cents.

"Thank you, sir," he said. Then with an abrupt change back to his military manner, "Now, then, what would you like to see? The army? The breweries? The Royal court?

Berlin? What shall it be? My time is limited, but I shall be delighted to put myself at your service for the rest of the day."

"I think," I said, "I should like more than anything to see Berlin, if it is possible."

"Possible?" answered my companion. "Nothing easier."

The motor flew ahead and in a few moments later we were making our arrangements with a local station-master for a special train to Berlin.

I got here my first glimpse of the wonderful perfection of the German railway system.

"I am afraid," said the station-master, with deep apologies, "that I must ask you to wait half an hour. I am moving a quarter of a million troops from the east to the west front, and this always holds up the traffic for fifteen or twenty minutes."

I stood on the platform watching the troops trains go by and admiring the marvellous ingenuity of the German system.

As each train went past at full speed, a postal train (Feld-Post-Eisenbahn-Zug) moved on the other track in the opposite direction, from which a shower of letters were thrown in to the soldiers through the window.

Immediately after the postal train, a soup train (Soup-Zug) was drawn along, from the windows of which soup was squirted out of a hose.

Following this there came at full speed a beer train (Bier-Zug) from which beer bombs were exploded in all directions.

I watched till all had pa.s.sed.

"Now," said the station-master, "your train is ready.

Here you are."

Away we sped through the meadows and fields, hills and valleys, forests and plains.

And nowhere--I am forced, like all other travellers, to admit it--did we see any signs of the existence of war.

Everything was quiet, orderly, usual. We saw peasants digging--in an orderly way--for acorns in the frozen ground. We saw little groups of soldiers drilling in the open squares of villages--in their quiet German fashion --each man chained by the leg to the man next to him; here and there great Zeppelins sailed overhead dropping bombs, for practice, on the less important towns; at times in the village squares we saw cl.u.s.ters of haggard women (quite quiet and orderly) waving little red flags and calling: "Bread, bread!"

But nowhere any signs of war. Certainly not.

We reached Berlin just at nightfall. I had expected to find it changed. To my surprise it appeared just as usual.

The streets were brilliantly lighted. Music burst in waves from the restaurants. From the theatre signs I saw, to my surprise, that they were playing _Hamlet_, _East Lynne_ and _Potash and Perlmutter_. Everywhere was brightness, gaiety and light-heartedness.

Here and there a merry-looking fellow, with a brush and a pail of paste and a roll of papers over his arm, would swab up a casualty list of two or three thousand names, amid roars of good-natured laughter.

What perplexed me most was the sight of thousands of men, not in uniform, but in ordinary civilian dress.

"b.o.o.benstein," I said, as we walked down the Linden Avenue, "I don't understand it."

"The men?" he answered. "It's a perfectly simple matter.

I see you don't understand our army statistics. At the beginning of the war we had an army of three million.

Very good. Of these, one million were in the reserve. We called them to the colours, that made four million. Then of these all who wished were allowed to volunteer for special services. Half a million did so. That made four and a half million. In the first year of the war we suffered two million casualties, but of these seventy-five per cent, or one and a half million, returned later on to the colours, bringing our grand total up to six million.

This six million we use on each of six fronts, giving a grand total of thirty six million.

"I see," I said. "In fact, I have seen these figures before. In other words, your men are inexhaustible."

"Precisely," said the Count, "and mark you, behind these we still have the Landsturm, made up of men between fifty-five and sixty, and the Landslide, reputed to be the most terrible of all the German levies, made up by withdrawing the men from the breweries. That is the last final act of national fury. But come," he said, "you must be hungry. Is it not so?"

"I am," I admitted, "but I had hesitated to acknowledge it. I feared that the food supply--"

b.o.o.benstein broke into hearty laughter.