My Four Years in Germany Part 16

This young Talleyrand to whom I have referred and who was a.s.signed to the American Red Cross unit, although he was a German by nationality, did not wish to fight in this war against France in which country he had so many friends and relations and, therefore, this a.s.signment to the American Red Cross was most welcome to him.

On the arrival of the American doctors and nurses in Berlin, it was decided to send both units to the East front and to put one in the small Silesian town of Gleiwitz and the other in the neighbouring town of Kosel. Count Talleyrand went with these two units, Goldschmidt Rothschild being attached to the Prussian Legation in Munich.

We had a reception in the Emba.s.sy for these doctors and nurses which was attended by Prince Hatzfeld, Duke of Trachenberg, who was head of the German Red Cross, and other Germans interested in this line of work. The Gleiwitz and Kosel units remained in these towns for about a year until the American Red Cross withdrew its units from Europe.

At about the time of the withdrawal of these units, I had heard much of the sufferings of German prisoners in Russia. I had many conversations with Zimmermann of the German Foreign Office and Prince Hatzfeld on this question, as well as with Prince Max of Baden, the heir presumptive to the throne of that country; and I finally arranged that such of these American doctors and nurses as volunteered should be sent to Russia to do what they could for the German prisoners of war there. Nine doctors and thirty-eight nurses volunteered. They were given a great reception in Berlin, the German authorities placed a large credit in the hands of this mission, and, after I had obtained through our State Department the consent of the Russian Government for the admission of the mission, it started from Berlin for Petrograd.

The German authorities and the Germans, as a whole, were very much pleased with this arrangement. Officers of the Prussian army were present at the departure of the trains and gave flowers to all the nurses. It is very unfortunate that after their arrival in Russia this mission was hampered in every way, and had the greatest difficulty in obtaining permission to do any work at all. Many of them, however, managed to get in positions where they a.s.sisted the German prisoners. For instance, in one town where there were about five thousand Germans who had been sent there to live one of our doctors managed to get appointed as city physician and, aided by several of the American nurses, was able to do a great work for the German population. Others of our nurses managed to get as far as Tomsk in Siberia and others were scattered through the Russian Empire.

Had this mission under Dr. Snoddy been able to carry out its work as originally planned, it would not only have done much good to the German prisoners of war, but would have helped a great deal to do away with the bitter feeling entertained by Germans towards Americans. Even with the limited opportunity given this mission, it undoubtedly materially helped the prisoners.

On arriving in Berlin on their way home to America from Gleiwitz and Kosel, the doctors and nurses of these American units were all awarded the German Red Cross Order of the second cla.s.s and those who had been in Austria were similarly decorated by the Austro-Hungarian Government.

Among those who devoted themselves to works of charity during this war no one stands higher than Herbert C. Hoover.

I cannot find words to express my admiration for this man whose great talents for organisation were placed at the service of humanity. Every one knows of what he accomplished in feeding the inhabitants of Belgium and Northern France. Mr. Hoover asked me to become one of the chairmen of the International Commission for the Relief of Belgium and I was happy to have the opportunity in Berlin to second his efforts. There was considerable business in connection with the work of the commission. I had many interviews with those in authority with reference to getting their ships through, etc. Mr. Hoover and I called on the Chancellor and endeavoured to get him to remit the fine of forty million francs a month which the Germans had imposed upon Belgium. This, however, the Chancellor refused to do. Later on in April, 1915, I was able as an eye-witness to see how efficiently Mr. Hoover's organisation fed, in addition to the people of Belgium, the French population in that part of Northern France in the occupation of the Germans.

Mr. Hoover surrounded himself with an able staff, Mr. Vernon Kellogg and others, and in America men like Mr. A. J. Hemphill were his devoted supporters.

Early in 1915, Mr. Ernest P. Bicknell, who had first come to Germany representing the American Red Cross, returned representing not only that organisation but also the Rockefeller Foundation. With him was Mr. Wickliffe Rose, also of the Rockefeller Foundation; and with these two gentlemen I took up the question of the relief of Poland. Mr. Rose and Mr. Bicknell together visited Poland and saw with their own eyes the necessity for relief. A meeting was held in the Reichstag attended by Prince Hatzfeld of the German Red Cross, Director Guttmann, of the Dresdener Bank, Geheimrat Lewald, of the Imperial Ministry of the Interior, representing the German Government, and many others connected with the government, military and financial interests of Germany.

The Commission for the Relief in Poland, of which I was to be chairman, was organised and included the Spanish Amba.s.sador, His Excellency the Bishop of Posen, the Prince Bishop of Cracow, Jacob H. Schiff of New York, and others. Messrs. Warwick, Greene and Wadsworth were to take up the actual executive work.

In conjunction with Messrs. Rose and Bicknell, I drew up a sort of treaty, having particularly in mind certain difficulties encountered by the American Relief Commission in Belgium. The main point in this treaty was that the German Government agreed not to requisition either food or money within the limits of the territory to be relieved, which territory comprised that part of Poland within German occupation up to within, as I recall it, fifty kilometres of the firing line. The one exception was that a fine might be levied on a community where all the inhabitants had made themselves jointly and severally liable according to the provisions of the Hague Convention. The Rockefeller Foundation on its part agreed to pay all the expenses of the executive work of the commission. This treaty, after being submitted to General Hindenburg and approved by him, was signed by Dr. Lewald, representing the German Government, by Mr. Bicknell, representing the Rockefeller Foundation, and by me, representing the new commission for the relief of Poland.

Work was immediately commenced under this arrangement and, so far as possible, food was purchased in Holland and Denmark, but there was little to be had in these countries. The Allies, however, refused to allow food to enter Germany for the purpose of this commission, and so the matter fell through. Later, when the Allies were willing to permit the food to enter, it was the German Government that refused to reaffirm this treaty and refused to agree that the German army of occupation should not requisition food in occupied Poland. Of course, under these circ.u.mstances, no one could expect the Allies to consent to the entry of food; because the obvious result would be that the Germans would immediately, following the precedent established by them in Northern France, take all the food produced in the country for their army and the civil population of Germany, and allow the Poles to be fed with food sent in from outside, while perhaps their labour was utilised in the very fields the products of which were destined for German consumption.

There is no question that the sufferings of the people of Poland have been very great, and when the history of Poland during the war comes to be written the world will stand aghast at the story of her sufferings. It is a great pity that these various schemes for relief did not succeed. The Rockefeller Commission, however, up to the time I left Germany did continue to carryon some measure of relief and succeeded in getting in condensed milk, to some extent, for the children of that unfortunate country. These negotiations brought me in contact with a number of Poles resident in Berlin, whom I found most eager to do what they could to relieve the situation. I wish here to express my admiration for the work of the Rockefeller Commission in Europe. Not only were the ideas of the Commission excellent and businesslike but the men selected to carry them into effect were without exception men of high character and possessed of rare executive ability.

As I have said in a previous chapter, I was ridiculed in the American newspapers because I had suggested, in answer to a cable of the League of Mercy, that some work should be done for the prisoners of war. I do not know whether the great work undertaken by Dr. John R. Mott and his a.s.sociates was suggested by my answer or not; that does not matter. But this work undertaken by the American Y. M. C. A. certainly mattered a great deal to the prisoners of war in Europe. Dr. Mott after serving on the Mexican Commission, has gone to Russia as a member of the Commission to that country.

The Y. M. C. A. organisation headed by Dr. Mott, who was most ably a.s.sisted by the Reverend Archibald C. Harte, took up this work, which was financed, I have been told, by the McCormick family of Chicago, Cleveland H. Dodge, John D. Rockefeller and others. Mr. Harte obtained permission from the German authorities for the erection of meeting halls and for work in German camps.

When he had obtained this authorisation from Germany he went to Russia, where he was able to get a similar authorisation.

At first in Russia, I have heard, the prisoners of war were allowed great liberty and lived unguarded in Siberian villages where they obtained milk, bread, b.u.t.ter, eggs and honey at very reasonable rates. As the war went on they were more and more confined to barracks and there their situation was sad indeed. In the winter season, it is dark at three in the afternoon and remains dark until ten the following morning. Of course, I did not see the Russian prison camps. The work carried on there was similar to that carried on in the German camps by Mr. Harte and his band of devoted a.s.sistants.

I was particularly interested in this work because I hoped that the aid given to the German prisoners of war in Russia would help to do away with the great hate and prejudice against Americans in Germany. So I did all I could, not only to forward Mr. Harte's work, but to suggest and organise the sending of the expedition of nurses and doctors, which I have already described, to the Russian camps.

Of course, Mr. Harte in this work did not attempt to cover all the prison camps in Germany. He did much to help the mental and physical conditions of the prisoners in Ruhleben, the English civilian camp near Berlin. The American Y. M. C. A. built a great hall where religious exercises were held, plays and lectures given, and where prisoners had a good place to read and write in during the day. A library was established in this building.

The work carried on by the Y. M. C. A. may be briefly described as coming under the following heads: religious activities; educational activities; work shops, and gardens; physical exercises and out-door sports; diet kitchens for convalescents; libraries and music, including orchestra, choruses, and so on.

When I left Germany on the breaking of diplomatic relations, a number of these Y. M. C. A. workers left with me.

The German women exhibited notable qualities in war. They engaged in the Red Cross work, including the preparation of supplies and bandages for the hospitals, and the first day of mobilisation saw a number of young girls at every railway station in the country with food and drink for the pa.s.sing soldiers. At railway junctions and terminals in the large cities, stations were established where these Red Cross workers gave a warm meal to the soldiers pa.s.sing through. In these terminal stations there were also women workers possessed of sufficient skill to change the dressings of the lightly wounded.

On the Bellevuestra.s.se, Frau von Ihne, wife of the great architect, founded a home for blinded soldiers. In this home soldiers were taught to make brooms, brushes, baskets, etc.

German women who had country places turned these into homes for the convalescent wounded. But perhaps the most noteworthy was the National Frauendienst or Service for Women, organised the first day of the war. The relief given by the State to the wives and children of soldiers was distributed from stations in Berlin, and in the neighbourhood of each of these stations the Frauendienst established an office where women were always in attendance, ready to give help and advice to the soldiers' wives. There there were card-indexes of all the people within the district and of their needs. At the time I left Germany I believe that there were upwards of seven thousand women engaged in Berlin in social service, in instructing the women in the new art of cooking without milk, eggs or fat and seeing to it that the children had their fair share of milk. It is due to the efforts of these social workers that the rate of infant mortality in Berlin decreased during the war.

A war always causes a great unsettling in business and trade; people no longer buy as many articles of luxury and the workers engaged in the production of these articles are thrown out of employment. In Germany, the National Women's Service, acting with the labour exchanges, did its best to find new positions for those thrown out of work. Women were helped over a period of poverty until they could find new places and were instructed in new trades.

Many women engaged in the work of sending packages containing food and comforts to the soldiers at the front and to the German prisoners of war in other countries.

Through the efforts of the American a.s.sociation of Commerce and Trade, and the Emba.s.sy, a free restaurant was established in Berlin in one of the poorer districts. About two hundred people were fed here daily in a hall decorated with flags and plants.

This was continued even after we left Germany.

At Christmas, 1916, Mrs. Gerard and I visited this kitchen with Mr. and Mrs. Wolf and General von Kessel, Commander of the Mark of Brandenburg, and one of his daughters. Presents were distributed to the children and the mothers received an order for goods in one of the department stores. The German Christmas songs were sung and when a little German child offered a prayer for peace, I do not think there was any one present who could refrain from weeping.

Many of the German women of t.i.tle, princesses, etc., established base hospitals of their own and seemed to manage these hospitals with success.

CHAPTER XVI

HATE

On my way from Berlin to America, in February, 1917, at a dinner in Paris, I met the celebrated Italian historian, Ferrero. In a conversation with him after dinner, I reminded him of the fact that both he and a Frenchman, named Huret, who had written on America, had stated in their books that the thing which struck them most in the study of the American people was the absence of hate.

Ferrero recalled this and in the discussion which followed and in which the French novelist, Marcel Prevost, took part, all agreed that there was more hate in Europe than in America; first, because the peoples of Europe were confined in small s.p.a.ce and, secondly, because the European, whatever his rank or station, lacked the opportunities for advancement and consequently the eagerness to press on ahead, and that fixing of the thought on the future, instead of the past, which formed part of the American character.

In a few hours in Europe it is possible to travel in an automobile across countries where the people differ violently from the countries surrounding them, not only in language, customs and costumes, but also in methods of thought and physical appearance.

The day I left Berlin I went to see Herr von Gwinner, head of the Deutsche Bank, with reference to a charitable fund which had been collected for widows and orphans in Germany. In our talk, von Gwinner said that Europeans envied America because we seemed to be able to a.s.similate all those people who, as soon as they landed on our sh.o.r.es, sought to forget their old race hatreds and endeavoured, as speedily as possible, to adopt American clothes, language and thought. I told him I thought it was because in our country we did not try to force anyone; that there was nothing to prevent a Pole speaking Polish and wearing Polish dress, if he chose; that the only weapon we used against those who desired to uphold the customs of Europe was that of ridicule; and that it was the repressive measures such as, for example, the repressive action taken by Prussia against the Poles and the Danes, the Alsatians and the Lorrainers, that had aroused a combative instinct in these peoples and made them cling to every vestige of their former nationality.

At first, with the coming of war, the concentrated hate of the German people seemed to be turned upon the Russians. Even Liebknecht, when he called upon me in order to show that he had not been shot, as reported in America, spoke of the perils of Czarismus and the hatred of the German people for the Russians. But later, and directed by the master hand of the governing cla.s.s, all the hatred of the Germans was concentrated upon England.

The cartoon in _Punch_ representing a Prussian family having its morning "Hate" was, in some aspects, not at all exaggerated.

Hate in Germany is cultivated as a n.o.ble pa.s.sion, and, during the war, divines and generals vied with each other in its praise.

Early in 1917, the Prussian General in command at Limburg made a speech in which he extolled the advantages of hate and said that there was nothing like getting up in the morning after having pa.s.sed a night in thought and dreams of hate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THIS PAGE FROM THE SCURRILOUS PUBLICATION OF MARTEN AND HIS COLLEAGUES SHOWS THE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE WREATH AND THE c.r.a.pE-DRAPED AMERICAN FLAG.]

The phrase "Gott strafe England" seemed to be all over Germany.

It was printed on stamps to be affixed to the back of letters like our Red Cross stamps. I even found my German body servant in the Emba.s.sy affixing these stamps to the back of all letters, official and otherwise, that were sent out. He was stopped when discovered. Paper money was stamped with the words: "Gott strafe England," "und America" being often added as the war progressed and America refused to change the rules of the game and stop the shipment of supplies to the Allies.

Everyone is familiar with Lissauer's "Hymn of Hate." It is not extraordinary that one man in a country at war should produce a composition of this kind; but it is extraordinary as showing the state of mind of the whole country, that the Emperor should have given him the high order of the Red Eagle of the Second Cla.s.s as a reward for having composed this extraordinary doc.u.ment.

Undoubtedly at first the British prisoners of war were treated very roughly and were starved and beaten by their guards on the way from the front to the concentration camps. Officers, objects usually considered more than sacred in Germany, even when wounded were subjected to brutal treatment and in the majority of their prisons were treated more like convicts than officers and gentlemen.

As the Germans gradually awoke to the fact that President Wilson was not afraid of the German vote and that the export of supplies from America would not be stopped, this stream of hate was turned on America. There was a belief in Germany that President Wilson was opposed by a majority of people of the United States, that he did not represent the real sentiment of America, and that the sentiment there was favourable to Germany.

Unfortunately many Americans in Germany encouraged the German people and the German Government in this belief. Americans used to travel about, giving lectures and making speeches attacking their own country and their own President, and the newspapers published many letters of similar import from Americans resident in Germany.

One of the most active of these was a man named Maurice Somborn, a German American, who represented in Germany an American business house. He made it a practice to go about in Berlin and other cities and stand up in cafes and beer halls in order to make addresses attacking the President and the United States. So bold did he become that he even, in the presence of a number of people in my room, one day said that he would like to hang Secretary Bryan as high as Haman and President Wilson one foot higher.

The American newspapers stated that I called a servant and had him thrown out of the Emba.s.sy. This statement is not entirely true: I selfishly kept that pleasure for myself.

The case of Somborn gave me an idea and I cabled to the Department of State asking authority to take up the pa.s.sports of all Americans who abused their own country on the ground that they had violated the right, by their abuse, to the protection of a pa.s.sport. The Department of State sustained my view and, by my direction, the consul in Dresden took up the pa.s.sports of a singer named Rains and a gentleman of leisure named Recknagel who had united in addressing a letter to the Dresden newspapers abusing the President.

It was sometime before I got Somborn's pa.s.sport and I later on received from him the apologies of a broken and contrite man and obtained permission from Washington to issue him a pa.s.sport in order to enable him to return to America.