The Land of Deepening Shadow Part 9

across the table, who, I may add, is fifty-two years of age, and has not had a day's military training in his life.

"And look," said Frau Lang, "these men are not even Oberammergauers."

She pointed to one of the ill.u.s.trations which depicted a small group of rather vicious-looking Prussians, with rifles ready peering over the rim of a trench. The picture was labelled "Four apostles now serving at the Front."

"And see," continued the perplexed woman, "there is Johann Zwinck, the Judas in the play. It says that he is at the front. Why, he is sixty-nine years old, and is still the village painter. Only yesterday I heard him complain that the war was making it difficult for him to get sufficient oil to mix his paint."

I was at a loss for words. "When one compares such terrible untruths with our German White Book," declared Frau Lang, "it is indeed difficult for the American people to understand the true situation."

I felt that it would be useless for me at that moment to explain certain very important omissions in the German White Book.

Anything would look _white_ in comparison with the yellow journal I had just read. But I knew, and tried to explain that the particular newspaper combination which printed such rubbish was well known in America for its inaccuracies and fabrications, and although it was pro-German, it would sacrifice anything for sensation. But the good woman, being a German, and consequently accustomed to standardisation, could not dissociate this newspaper from the real Press.

CHAPTER X

SUBMARINE MOTIVES

The German submarines are standardised. The draughts and blue prints of the most important machinery are multiplied and sent, if necessary, to twenty different factories, while all the minor stampings are produced at one or other main factory. The "a.s.sembling" of the submarines, therefore, is not difficult.

During the war submarine parts have been a.s.sembled at Trieste, Zeebrugge, Kiel, Bremerhaven, Stettin, and half a dozen other places in Germany unnecessary to relate. With commendable foresight, Germany sent submarine parts packed as machinery to South America, where they are being a.s.sembled somewhere on the west coast.

The improvement, enlargement, and simplification of the submarine has progressed with great rapidity.

When I was in England after a former visit to Germany I met a number of seafolk who pooh-poohed extensive future submarining, by saying that, no matter how many submarines the Germans might be able to produce, the training of submarine officers and crew was such a difficult task that the "submarine menace," as it was then called in England, need not be taken too seriously.

The difficulty is not so great. German submarine officers and men are trained by the simple process of double or treble banking of the crews of submarines on more or less active service. Submarine crews are therefore multiplied probably a great deal faster than the war destroys them. These double or treble crews, who rarely go far away from German waters, and are mostly trained in the safe Baltic, are generally composed of young but experienced seamen.

There are, however, an increasing number of cases of soldiers being transferred abruptly to the U-boat service.

The education of submarine officers and crew begins in thorough German fashion on land or in docks, in dummy or disused submarines, accompanied by much lecture work and drill. Submarine life is not so uncomfortable as we think. With the exception of the deprivation of his beer, which is not allowed in submarines, or, indeed, any form of alcohol, except a small quant.i.ty of brandy, which is kept under the captain's lock and key, Hans in his submarine is quite as comfortable as Johann in his destroyer.

Extra comforts are forwarded to submarine men, which consist of gramophone records (mostly Viennese waltzes), chocolate, sausages, smoked eels, margarine, cigars, cigarettes, and tobacco, a small and treasured quant.i.ty of real coffee, jam, marmalade, and sugar.

All these, I was proudly told, were extras. There is no shortage in the German Navy.

I learned nothing of value about the largest German submarines, except that everybody in Germany knew they were being built, and by the time the gossip of them reached Berlin the impression there was that they were at least as large as Atlantic liners.

Now as to German submarine policies. The part that has to do with winning the war will be dealt with in the next chapter. But there is also a definite policy in connection with the use of submarines for winning the "war after the war."

The National Liberal Party, of which Tirpitz is the G.o.d, is at the head of the vast, gradually solidifying mammoth trust, which embraces Krupps, the mines, shipbuilding yards, and the manufactures. Now and then a little of its growth leaks out, such as the linking up of Krupps with the new shipbuilding.

The scheme is brutally simple and is going on under the eyes of the British every day. These people believe that _by building ships themselves and destroying enemy and neutral shipping_, they will be the world's shipping masters at the termination of the war. In their att.i.tude towards Norwegian shipping, you will notice that they make the flimsiest excuse for the destruction of as much tonnage as they can sink. It was confidently stated to me by a member of the National Liberal Party, and by no means an unimportant one, that Germany is building ships as rapidly as she is sinking them. That I do not believe; but that a great part of her effort is devoted to the construction of mercantile vessels I ascertained beyond the shadow of a doubt.

I have met people in England who refuse to believe that Germany, battling on long lines east and west, and constructing with feverish haste war vessels of every description, can find sufficient surplus energy to build ships which will not be of the slightest use until after the war is finished. I can only say that I personally have seen the recently completed Hamburg-America liners _Cap Polonio_ and _Cap Finisterre_ anch.o.r.ed in the Elbe off Altona. They are beautiful boats of 20,000 and 16,000 tons, a credit to the German shipbuilding industry, which has made such phenomenal strides in recent years. At Stettin I pa.s.sed almost under the stem of the brand new 21,000 ton Hamburg-South America liner, _Tirpitz_--which for obvious business reasons may be re-named after the war.

Both at Hamburg and Lubeck, where the rattle of the pneumatic riveter was as incessant as in any American city in course of construction, I was amazed at the number of vessels of five or six thousand tons which I saw being built. Furthermore, the giant North German, Lloyd liner, _Hindenburg_, is nearing completion, while the _Bismarck_, of the Hamburg-America Line will be ready for her maiden trip in the early days of peace.

Another part of the National Liberals' policy is the keeping alive of all German businesses, banks and others, in enemy countries.

Some people in England seem to think that the Germans are anxious to keep these businesses alive in order to make money. Many Germans regard John Bull as extremely simple, but not so simple as to allow them to do that. So long as the businesses are kept going until after the war, when they can again start out with redoubled energy, the Germans desire nothing more. The Deutsche Bank, for example, which bears no comparison to an English or American bank, but which is an inst.i.tution for promoting both political and industrial enterprise, is entrenched behind so powerful an Anglo-German backing in London, I was informed on many occasions, that the British Government dare not close it down. The mixture of spying and propaganda with banking, with export, with manufacture, seems so foreign to Anglo-Saxon ways as to be almost inconceivable.

Coincident with the destruction of foreign shipping, and the maintenance of their businesses in enemy countries (England and Italy especially) is the exploitation of the coal and other mines, oil wells, and forests in occupied enemy territory. The French and Belgian coalfields are being worked to the utmost, together with the iron mines at Longwy and Brieux. Poland is being deforested to such an extent that the climate is actually altering.

It is a vast and definite scheme, with such able leaders as Herr Ba.s.sermann, the real leader of the National Liberal Party, Herr Stresemann, and Herr Hirsch, of Essen. "We have powerful friends, not only in London, Milan, Rome, Madrid, New York, and Montreal, but throughout the whole of South America, and everywhere except in Australia where that _verdammter Hooges_ (Hughes) played into the hands of our feeble, so-called leader, von Bethmann-Hollweg, by warning the people that the British people would follow Hughes'

lead."

So much for the commercial part of submarining.

U-boating close to England has long ceased to be a popular amus.e.m.e.nt with the German submarine flotilla, who have a thoroughly healthy appreciation of the various devices by which so many of them have been destroyed. The National Liberals believe that the British will not be able to tackle long-distance submarines operating in the Atlantic and elsewhere. Their radius of action is undoubtedly increasing almost month by month. From remarks made to me I do not believe that these submarines have many land bases at great distances--certainly none in the United States. They may have floating bases; but this I do know--that their petrol-carrying capacity altogether exceeds that of any earlier type of submarine, and that their surface speed, at any rate in official tests, runs up to nearly 20 knots.

The trip of the _Deutschland_ was not only for the purpose of bringing a few tons of nickel and rubber, but for thoroughly testing the new engines (designed by Maybach), for bringing back a hundred reports of the effects of submersion in such cold waters as are to be found off the banks of Newfoundland, for ascertaining how many days' submerged or surface travelling is likely to be experienced, and, indeed, for making such a trial trip across the Atlantic and back as was usual in the early days of steamships.

CHAPTER XI

THE EAGLE AND THE VULTURE

AS enthusiastic, war-mad crowd had gathered about an impromptu speaker in the Ringstra.s.se, not far from the Hotel Bristol, in Vienna, one pleasant August evening in 1914. His theme was the military prowess of Austria-Hungary and Germany.

"And now," he concluded, "j.a.pan has treacherously joined our enemies. Yet we should not be disturbed, for her entrance will but serve to bring us another ally too. You all know of the ill-feeling between the United States and j.a.pan. At any moment we may hear that the great Republic has declared war." He called for cheers, and the Ringstra.s.se echoed with _Hoch! Hoch! Hoch_! for the United States of America.

That was my introduction to European opinion of my country during the war. During my four weeks in the Austro-Serbian zone of hostilities, I had heard no mention of anything but the purely military business at hand.

The following evening from the window of an "American-Tourist-Special Train" I looked down on the happy Austrians who jammed the platform, determined to give the Americans a grand send-off, which they did with flag-waving and cheers. A stranger on the platform thrust a lengthy typewritten doc.u.ment into my hands, with the urgent request that I should give it to the Press in New York. It was a stirring appeal to Americans to "witness the righteousness of the cause of the Central Powers in this war which had been forced upon them." Three prominent citizens of Vienna had signed it, one of whom was the famous Doctor Lorenz.

Berlin, in an ecstasy of joyful antic.i.p.ation of the rapid and triumphal entrance into Paris, was a repet.i.tion of Vienna. True, in the beginning, Americans, mistaken for Englishmen by some of the undiscerning, had been roughly treated, but a hint from those in high authority changed that. In like manner, well-meaning patriots who persisted in indiscriminately mobbing all members of the yellow race were urged to differentiate between Chinese and j.a.panese.

So I found festive Berlin patting Americans on the back, cheering Americans in German-American meetings, and prettily intertwining the Stars and Stripes and the German flag.

"Now is your opportunity to take Canada," said the man in the street. In fact, it was utterly incomprehensible to the average German that we should not indulge in some neighbouring land-grabbing while Britain was so busy with affairs in Europe.

The German Foreign Office was, of course, under no such delusion, although it had cherished the equally absurd belief that England's colonies would rebel at the first opportunity. The Wilhelmstra.s.se was, however, hard at work taking the propaganda which it had so successfully crammed down the throats of the German citizen and translating it into English to be crammed down the throats of the people in America. This was simply one of the Wilhelmstra.s.se's numerous mistakes in the psychological a.n.a.lysis of other people.

But the Wilhelmstra.s.se possesses the two estimable qualities of perseverance and willingness to learn, with the result that its recent propaganda in the United States has been much more subtle and very much more effective.

The American newspapers which reached Germany after the outbreak of war gave that country its first intimation that her rush through Belgium was decidedly unpopular on the other side of the Atlantic.

Furthermore, many American newspapers depicted the Kaiser and the Crown Prince in a light quite new to German readers, who with their heads full of Divine Right ideas considered the slightest caricature of their imperial family as brutally sacrilegious.

But the vast majority of Germans never saw an American newspaper.

How is it, then, that they began to hate the United States so intensely? The answer is simple. In the early winter of 1914-15, the German Government with its centralised control of public opinion turned on the current of hatred against everything American as it had already done against everything British, for the war had come to a temporary stalemate on both fronts, and the Wilhelmstra.s.se had to excuse their failure to win the short, sharp pleasant war into which the people had jumped with antic.i.p.ation of easy victory. "If it were not for American ammunition the war would have been finished long ago!" became the key-note of the new gospel of hate, a gospel which has been preached down to the present.

Just before I left Germany the "Reklam Book Company" of Leipzig issued an anti-American circular which flooded the country. The request that people should enclose it in all their private letters was slavishly followed with the same zest with which the Germans had previously attached _Gott strafe England_ stickers to their correspondence.

The circular represented a 7000-ton steamer ready to take on board the cargo of ammunition which was arranged neatly on the pier in the foreground. The background was occupied by German troops, black lines dividing them into three parts, tagged respectively--30,000 _killed_, 40,000 _slightly wounded_, 40,000 _seriously wounded_. This, then, is the graphic ill.u.s.tration of the casualties inflicted upon the German Army by a single cargo of one moderate-sized liner.

Since at such a rate, it would take less than two hundred cargoes of this astoundingly effective ammunition to put the entire German Army out of action, one wonders why Britain troubles herself to convert her industries.

Ere the first winter of war drew to a close the official manipulators of the public opinion battery had successfully electrified the nation into a hate against the United States second only to that bestowed on Great Britain. And so it came about that the Government had the solid support of the people when the original submarine manifesto of February 4th, 1915, warning neutral vessels to keep out of the war zone, threatened a rupture with the United States. When two weeks later Washington sent a sharp note of protest to Berlin, the Germans became choleric every time they spoke of America or met an American.

"Why should we let America interfere with our plan to starve England?" was the question I heard repeatedly. Their belief that they could starve England was absolute. What could be simpler than putting a ring of U-boats round the British Isles and cutting off all trade until the pangs of hunger should compel Britain to yield?