TO RUHLEBEN -AND BACK

GEOFFREY PYKE

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TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

TO RUHLEBEN —AND BACK

A GREAT ADVENTURE IN THREE PHASES

BY

GFniTT?!; Y PYKE

LONDON

CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, LTD.

1916

TO RUHLEBEN —AND BACK

A GREAT ADVENTURE IN THREE PHASES

BY

GEOFFREY PYKE

LONDON CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, LTD.

1916

FRATERNALLY

TO

EVELYN

AND

RICHARD LIONEL PYKE

A 2

" I wasn't afraid of sometliing happening. I was afraid of nothing ever happening — ^nothing ever happening for all God's eternity."

He drained his glass and called for more whisky. He drank it, and went on :

" And then something did happen. Buck, it's the solemn truth, that nothing has ever happened to you in your life. Nothing had ever happened to me in my life."

" Nothing has ever happened ! " said Buck, staring. " What do you mean ? "

" Nothing has ever happened," repeated Barker, with morbid obstinacy. " You don't know what a thing happening meems ! You sit in your office expecting customers, and caqtomers come ; you walk in the street expecting friends, and friends meet you ; you want a drink, and get it. You feel inclined for a bet, and make it. You expect either to win or to lose, and you do either one or the other. But things happening ! " and he shuddered ungovernably.

" Go on," said Buck shortly. " Get on."

" As we walked wearily round the comers, something happened. When something happens, it happens first, and you see it afterwards. It happens of itself and you have nothing to do with it. It proves a dreadful thing — that there are other things besides oneself. I can only put it in this way. We went round one turning, two turnings, three turnings, four turnings, five. Then I lifted myself slowly up from the gutter where I had been shot half senseless, and was beaten down again by living men crashing on top of me, and the world was full of roaring, and big men rolling about like ninepins."

G. K. Chestkbton, The Napoleon oj Notting Hill.

PREFACE

In September of 1914, two months after war had started between Germany and England, I set out to reach Berlin in order, it is hardly necessary to add unknown to the Grerman authorities, to act as a correspondent on behalf of the Daily Chronicle of London. I had also been asked to write letters for the Cambridge Magazine. Ruhleben was not then in existence as a prison camp, and I should certainly have had no intention of going there even if it had been. My object was to go to Berlin and see what there was of interest going on there, and then to travel across to the Rhine and the industrial districts of the West and South . I reckoned a couple of months would see the whole thing done, and that if I felt matters were becoming hot and unpleasant I would bolt as quickly as possible. It must be remembered that the desire to know the truth of what was going on at that time in the interior of Germany was intense. At the words Krieg, Mobil, the floodgates of news had clanged to, and not a word that could be pre- vented, or had not a purpose in it, was leaving Germany. At home masses of information were being produced in newspapers of all complexions;

viii TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

most of it contradictory, often to itself. One section of the Press told us that Berlin was a city of old men and children, of a darkness like that of Egypt and — ^triumph above everything else — of women tram drivers ; yet when I arrived there a few weeks later one of the first things I found was young men not merely working but young men doing nothing, young men drinking, young men laughing, young men going about with young women, young men, in fact, who were committing the supreme crime of being young, while the arc lights of the Linden worked as merrily as ever ; and it was not untU months later, in January, 1915, when I was driven across Berlin, that I saw from behind the grille of Black Maria the quintessence of Grerman ignominy in a female manipulating a tram- car. A well-known journalist with American con- nections told us of women clamouring for bread and screaming loudly for food outside the royal palace, yet I discovered from people who had actually been on the spot that here an isolated shout and there a lonely scream had represented the sum- total of that howling mob. Economic pressure, economic necessity, impossibility of import, neces- sity of export, ruin of industry — imemployment — howling mobs again — all these were phrases juggled with to make them mean first one thing and then another. But Grermany was silent, and refused to show to the outside world what was going on within her frontiers, and rumours spread and grew, and

PREFACE ix

phraseology grew more redundant and more pompous, and of less, and still less meaning. The Grerman Army marched from Liege to Namur and from Namur to Mons and further, and Economic Necessity and Economic Pressure, the effect of our water-tight blockade, and again and again the howling mobs of unemployed men and bereaved women were supposed to be just treading on the tracks of the victorious hordes, about to bring the whole machine on which it depended for its life's breath crashing to the ground. It was the truth and probability of this that I set out from London to investigate, and for a time the fates were good to me, and let me wallow lazily in the sun of the Economic Pressure and Economic Necessity that were to pull down Germany to the dust ; but soon they for- sook me. I was caught up in the vast mechanism that has been created by, and intervenes in the lives of 67,000,000 human beings, who live within the bounds of the Grerman Empire, and was tossed from one part to another, was beaten, crushed and hammered first by one great section and then by another, finally to be tossed aside as useless and harmless while the great machine went on its way whirring, screaming and groaning as it worked. The way was long and weary and took long to wend. From the contemplation of itself, the machine took me and threw me into jail, and then into another jail, and then into another, and then back into the first, finallj?^ vomiting me, in a fit of

X TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

either weariness, mercy or disgust, to this day I know not which, into a concentration camp for interned civilians.

This book, then, is a collection of pictures of the road thither, there and — thence. Half-way along Fate again was kind, and gave me a trusted friend in Mr. Edward Falk, District Commissioner in the PoHtical Service of Nigeria. Together we travelled the last stretch. With him I escaped from Ruhleben on July 9th, 1915, nearly ten months after I had started out in quest of economic necessity, and to him I feel as only those who have been hunted for together, who have lain shuddering in hiding with a price upon their heads, can feel.

Unfortunately it has been necessary for me to be discreet. This I regret, because it necessitates effort. On my part to preserve discretion, and on my readers to pierce it. Had only the four and a half thousand other inhabitants of Ruhleben escaped at the same time, in a species of general stampede, and one or two other people in Berlin and elsewhere died or been killed off, matters might have arranged themselves very satisfactorily. But while the Gterman Government follows the policy of " Vergeltungs massregeln " or " retaliatory measures," I deeply regret that on behalf of my friends whom I have left behind me I must say that discretion is the better part of valour.

G. N. P.

CONTENTS

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Chapter I.
>>	II.
j>	III.
M	IV.
it	V.
»	VI.
»	VII.
>J	VIII.
>>	IX.
}>	X.
«	XI.
»»	XII.
»	XIII.
»	XIV.
l>	XV.
)>	XVI.
J>	XVII.
>>	XVIII.
>}	XIX.
»	XX.
>>	XXI.

Vll

Wanted, — A Correspondency . . 1

En Route for Berlin . . .11

Bamboozlement . . , 24

The Second Mobilisation against the Russians . . . . 35

The Crash . . . . 50

Prison . . . . 62

Waiting to be Shot . . . 66

A Product of Civilisation . . 83

Sanity and Madness . . . 99

The Impressions of a Lunatic on Release from Solitary . .120

The City op Futility . . .130

The Inner Meaning of Organisation 136

The Categorical Imperative

Which Way 1 What Means 1

Free

Berlin once more

The First Day

Across Northern Germany

Burglary

A Corpse

Gunpowder and Cavalry

144 160 169 178 188 197 207 215 227

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

RuHLEBEN : British Civilian Prisoners

AND their Quarters . . . Frontispiece

A German Patrol on the Tender of

A Transport Train . . . To face p. 38

Sing Sing Prison. Locking many Doors

with One Movement . . . „ „ ^ too

(As it was not possible to obtain a photo- graph of a German State Prison, this photograph of the largest State Prison in New York has been included as con- veying the best impression o'" an up-to- date German prison).

Camp Commander Baron Taube with his Staff in the English Civilian Camp at Ruhleben . . . „ „ A i44

TO RUHLEBEN-AND BACK

CHAPTER I

WANTED, — A CORRESPONDENCY

Yes, the Great Man was in, but busy, please to wait a moment.

^ons passed, and the Great Man ceased for a few moments to be busy, and could spare a minute or so.

" Yes, yes, what is it you want ? Quickly please, I've got no time to spare," and the Great Man who looked surprisingly young took up two telephone receivers, shouted instructions for foreign telegrams into each, rang a beU cunningly hid under the edge of the table, glanced about him in all directions at once, first at a row of large clock dials showing the hour in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Petrograd, Berne, Madrid, Belgrade, Antwerp, and Amsterdam, frowned, looked at the large wall map, gave instruc- tions to a pallid, overworked clerk for yet another foreign cable to go, and repeated, " Yes, quickly, please, I'm busy."

He truly was a great man.

Half an hour's conversation followed. The Great Man of surprising youthfulness was silent for three minutes. Then he spoke. He spoke for the remain- B 1

2 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

ing twenty-seven minutes. His imagination carried him along. He put one leg over the arm of his swivel chair and his hands behind his head, he got up and walked up and down. Schemes were dis- cussed and thrown aside, details on which success or failure might depend were balanced airily and then disposed of — sometimes down one of the tele- phones. The Great Man was unable to make up his mind at once, he must consult, he must think, he must talk things over, he must recapitulate, he must reconsider — he must telephone. Of course to get into Germany — and out — during war was a difficult thing to do. Besides, he thought it risky. Of course, it must be distinctly understood that he could under- take no responsibility of any sort and yet the thing was most distinctly enterprising and he liked enter- prise ; in fact he was something of an enterprising man himseK. He went on talking, and his eyes laughed as he thought of the possibility of columns of " real news " hot from Berlin or Cologne. He had nice eyes. In fact this Great Man was really the devil of a fellow. The idea of a regular column from " our special correspondent in Berlin " — our very extra special correspondent — tempted him. The possibility of success, the Great Man felt, though faint was worth it. He said " Righto ! let's leave it at that," and began talking again. For another thirty minutes he talked of what there might and might not be going on inside Germany. We rushed up and down and all over the country, and the

WANTED —A CORRESPONDENCY 3

possibility of events. Berlin — the attitude of the social democrats — especially the opinions of the large working population in the north of the city. — Munich — what were the Bavarians saying ? — was it true their privileges in the imperial army system were being taken away? — What were the women saying and doing ? — What impressions had the losses made ? — How were our own people who had been unable to get out of Germany being treated ? — Any- thing that was obtainable about the Zeppelins. — London was going to be darkened soon for fear of them. — How were the people taking the invasion of Prussia ? — The main lines, Berlin, Hanover, Essen, Crefeld, Aix la Chapelle, something of possible interest on them all. If feasible see what Hamburg is like. How do they like the blockade ? Doberitz. — ^English prisoners. A good deal of interest was sure to arise about the young Grand-Duchess of Luxembourg. There were rumours that despite all the guarantees and undertakings of the Germans she had been taken away and incarcerated in some Schloss in the interior. — Where was the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, the Empress — Prince Joachim ? It was said the former had died suddenly from illness, the second assassinated, that the Empress was prostrated by the shock, and that Prince Joachim had been killed. The daily life of Berlin would also be of interest, in view of the fact that there was supposed to be neither food nor light.

The Great Man gave me carte blanche as to where

4 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

I went and what I did. If I felt things getting too

hot, cut and run, — if there was stUl time . As I

left the Great Man he was still talking, and the last I heard was the clatter of his feet as he stumbled over a chair in order to talk down two telephones simultaneously, and probably on different topics.

It is an odd sensation, to be in perfect safety and yet feel the fear of danger upon one, to know that nothing but at worst a motor-bus or at best a wild newspaper boy on a bicycle can do you any hurt, and yet feel the sweat stealing out from you as if already entangled in risks and dangers from which there is no visible escape. It feels queer to come from the warm busy brilliance of a newspaper oflQce, with the telephones ringing, and passages filled with boys running here and there with proof-sheets, the organized industry of scores, to the darkness of Whitefriars Street and Fleet Street, with the cold wind blowing round one's face, and the seeming business of hundreds, all scurrying, determined- looking, ant-like, fatuous. The knowledge that to-day it is to be London and next week to be the borders of the German Empire, — frontier guards, wiliness, alertness, microscopic care and precaution, food-getting and worse, — news-getting, made Fleet Street look a row of ramshackle monstrosities embracing pandemonium, and oneself a regrettable ass. Everything seemed a mess. The world was in a most decided mess, the German cavalry were at most twenty-five miles off Paris, and it appeared as

WANTED —A CORRESPONDENCY 6

if they must be in occupation of the town over the week-end. London seemed hot, stuffy, grey and altogether thoroughly beastly, it was too hot to do this, it was too cold to do that, it was too damp for something else, and too dry for some other anathema, and if I did not go on this beastly German ex- pedition, I didn't know what I was going to do. I reviewed the past and felt savage. I reviewed the present and felt worse. I reviewed the future and just managed not to explode. I was absolutely determined to be a correspondent somewhere. I remembered how I had gazed at the map, how assiduously I had examined the newspapers. I thought it possible that the ubiquitous corre- spondent of the papers had not been sent to Rekjavick, and I looked avidly to see if there were any messages from our special correspondent at Timbuctoo ; I tried to think of arguments by which I could persuade an editor that the war was likely to develop suddenly in the Region of Lhassa or Krim Tartary. Not that I was particularly anxious to go to Rekjavick or even Timbuctoo. Lhassa tempted me not overmuch, and Krim Tartary seemed to have its drawbacks, but all the billets at the front, at Dieppe, at Paris, Bordeaux, Petrograd, and at Warsaw were full, and filled well. Suddenly it came to me. We had no correspondents in Berlin. Supreme ass of all asses — of course — Berlin ; the very place ; no competition ; no editor could say with an air of tired resignation that he was already

6 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

very well served there, and had no necessity for further assistance, though of course he was very grateful, etc. etc. No difficulty at all, except of getting there, and out again — and a day's thought ought to settle that. Of course, if the Germans were expecting English journalists to come into Germany after war had broken out, — then I should probably get caught. But the point was, were they ? Would they be as wide awake as all that ? If one was really careful and really wily, what were the chances ? Certainly the hardest part of the problem was solved — a country of some interest was found and editors of London newspapers would not have a dozen or so correspondents already there. Then suddenly every- thing changed. Glory of glory at having something to do that seemed impossible, something necessi- tating all the virtues and all the vices imaginable, something for which one would have to be alert and cautious, receptive and sceptical, something that would necessitate twenty-four hours' work and twenty-five hours' watchfulness a day, and above all things the colossal humour of the idea. The fatuity of the Fleet Street crowd, the danger, the consequences, the general madness of the scheme, all were forgotten or roughly pushed aside as belonging to another being of another age, and immediately began a search that took a week for information concerning the German fron- tiers, and how they were guarded. It was a whirl from one end of the Kingdom to the other, chasing

WANTED —A CORRESPONDENCY 7

a man here who had got out before declaration of war, a man there who had got out by trick just after, a man released quite lately. Getting a clue here and there, often resulting in nothing but a wild-goose chase. Some knew a little, most knew nothing, one knew a lot. The whirl ceased, and I returned to town to perfect matters and to see the Great Man once more. But little more remained to be done. A book or two on Germany to be consulted, the latest files of the newspapers to be searched for any extra scrap of information, a code to be worked out for use in case of necessity, and then — off. A code if it be used frequently is a fairly easy thing to detect, though difficult to interpret. But for the first few occasions on which it needs be used the chances are in favour of its success.

Now, strange and astounding as it may seem now, one of the events the most probable for which it was most desirable to be in Berlin was for the reception of the Russians. It was known that on the incursion into East Prussia there had been something like a panic in Berlin, and it was thought that in the event of a further advance threatening there would be another — and worse. Many a paper and many an individual believed in the possibility of this firmly. It was therefore arranged that a message asking for money should be sent over the frontier, and even if caught and suspected it would convey nothing as to what it meant or from whom it came. There were roughly three directions from

8 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

which the Russians might advance. From East Prussia, from Posen, or after the fall of Cracow, from the south. Their distance from the metropolis could be designated in one of three sections. The ensuing panic which these facts were sure to cause, and they were equally sure to leak out, might be put down as serious, very serious, or as a regular stampede. Primitive as this may appear, it would convey the main facts of the proximity of the Russians as known in Berlin and the effect. The Berliners' opinion as to the whereabouts of the enemy was alone likely to be of interest and import- ance— especially if it differed from the real state of affairs. It was a matter of no little difficulty to predict the events most likely to occur. In those days of ignorance and of bliss, of London decorated with placards saying " Breslau threatened, fall of Cracow imminent," the investment of Berlin was often discussed as a possibility within two months, and my very ingenuous self was filled to the brim with hopes that I should be the last person — most certainly the last Englishman — ^to leave the doomed city. The first portion of the telegram I meant to despatch the moment I was back over the frontier rose with inky vividity before my eyes. Dreams of the booms of Russian camion on the east side of Berlin as I left it by the west came easily to my imagination ; and my mind once more went back to that despatch which was to adorn, yes — I confess — I decided it was to adorn a whole page of the

WANTED,— A CORRESPONDENCY 9

morning paper. Little things such as the German military and the German police did not worry me. I dismissed them as minutiae whom I could deal with later, at my convenience. MeanwhUe, however, I had to get my ticket for Newcastle.

After two days of agony on the sea, Bergen presents a great contrast to Newcastle.

The Bergen-Christiania Railway is a thing by itself. It is easy to forget the maddest of mad schemes ; fear and hope and all other human faculties will alike disappear before the influence of what it brings you to. Moonlight mountains, huge lakes are but words that have been rendered meaningless by advertisements of tourist resorts, and there are no words and never can be any that will tell of the sensation that the fresh cold air of these great boulders, two, three, four and five thousand feet high, the pale darkness of the Northern night, and the lap, lap, lapping of the great lake as it ripples backwards and forwards between one great rock and another, give to men. Voss, where the train stops to allow the other to pass, that comes dashing down from the snowy heights, from amid glaciers and ice drifts, is shrouded in darkness, but out beyond it stands this view, strong and bold in its outline. A quietness that can be felt, a quietness preaching the immensity of distance, closes in upon one from aU sides. The hissing of the train and all the hustling crowd within her die away, and there is no sound beyond the lisping of the

10 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

waters of the lake, and no sight but the moon above and its image below. The jagged line of the granite hill marks the meeting-place of heaven and earth. But otherwise all is dark, and all is quiet, and as I trudge back to the bright-lit train, the question Why go ? Why go ? rings in my ears, but as the whistle shrieks, I jump in, laughing at the joy of doing something hard to do effectively, at the notion of being an Englishman in Germany.

CHAPTER II

EN ROUTE FOR BERLIN

He was very loquacious. He was also very angry! The last may have been the cause of the first, but I surmise that both were produced by independent facts, and that the result of the former was con- tinual. He was either unmarried, which was im- probable, for he looked just the sort of man a woman in her ignorance might call masterful and therefore marry, or divorced, which was possible, since he never stopped talking. He opened the carriage door with a flick of his hand and wrist, and closed it with a slam. He stamped as if he were on parade, and then shook himself as if he had just come off it. He undid his belt and swung it and the bayonet viciously on to the rack. Then he began. It was twenty -three and a haK minutes before he stopped, and then it was only to take breath. He seemed very happy in his anger. It fitted him as well as did his trousers badly, and chiefly for the same reason, that he was too big for both. He had a habit of spitting at what, from a grammatical aspect, was the crucial point of every sentence. The German Government being largely managed by men who smoke, have, in their omniscience, provided spittoons, two to every one of their railway carriages.

11

12 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

My friend, however, just ignored them. I drew my legs up under me. He seemed to experience a momentary surprise, and then spat succinctly right across me out of the window. It takes a long time to come from one of the northern frontiers of Germany to the capital, if you travel by bummel- zug,^ and not by the dashing through express. The police have a habit of watching that express on its arrival at Stettin, and very few of its inhabitants escape their vigilant eyes, while the bummelzug, only coming from a short distance away in an inordinately long time, necessitating an almost incredible amount of changing, has for the traveller from a distance aspects of safety and obscurity about it that make it attractive. My friend seemed to realise the time that lay at his disposal and at mine, for his next halt for breath was after thirty-three minutes. The subject of his dissertation and com- plaints was a " gefreiter " by name " der schwein- hund,"2 alias " verfluchte schafskopf."^ He occa- sionally asked questions, or, what was the same, expected replies to statements : " So. Ach so. Naturlich. Ja, ja. Doch. Ach. So. " So, all seemed to please and satisfy him. I only hoped that my interruptions uttered in a manner betoken- ing a common sympathy between the oppressed and downtrodden against all the bloody tyrants of life, whether gefreiters^ or unter-offiziers,* would not

^ Slow local train. * Lance-corporal.

^ Terms of abuse. * Corporal.

EN ROUTE FOR BERLIN 13

evoke questions as to my own particular martjrrdom. During the turgid stream of oaths, epithets, stamp- ings, shoutings and splutterings, I searched vainly for the cross it might be most advisable for me to be bearing in this world, should my sympathy have proved excessive, but the only thing that came persistently to my mind was the agony of his conversation. My next " Ja, ja. So. Doch,"didnot come with that blood-curdling note of pathos I put into my earlier utterances. The later editions intimated that perhaps there might be something to be said for the other side, that possibly the martyr was not so blameless as his sweating face, his porcine bristle of a moustache, and his pink neck would naturally lead one to believe. This called for argument and justification on his side to demon- strate that not merely was the gefreiter a swine, and his father, grandfather and great-grandfather swines also, but that his mother was a sow, and that, there- fore, the probability was that he was not born in holy wedlock, which quite obviously put him altogether put of court. I attempted to fall asleep, but before I had come to the point when my first snore was due, he had tapped me firmly on the knee, nearly making me swear in English, which was the only thing, I believe, that would have stopped his talking of his martyrdom and his continual demands for my sympathy.

Gradually the sun began to sink, and this human organism, kept awake by passion, slipped gently

14 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

into a sleep horrible to behold. And I turned from him in disgust and relief, towards the setting sun, as the train jolted shakily towards the next little station. On each side great forests of pine tree grew out of Prussia's sandy plain, and the sun glowed red between them. A mile or so and aU would be barren. Fields would take the place of pine, and the sound of the hoe that of silence. It is September, and war has endured for but six or seven weeks, and already every inch of soil that before lay untouched for its poverty is now turned over and over, to prepare for the crop it must yield to its owners. The women are serious. For them work is something serious, and their sons are at the war ; and even as they work a great sUence reigns. It is odd how here, of aU the places in Europe furthest from the battle- field, the war seems to be but behind the next hedge, and that the peasants are working in its presence in fear of it. White and anxious faces follow the letter-bag to the post office. At each village station the process is repeated, and, as the train pulls out into the distance, the village post- man, generally a greybeard — for even at this early date the German Government had begun its policy of denuding the country in order to spare the towns — was to be seen trudging back to the post office, followed by all the women of the neighbourhood. To them he was the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

At a later station, as the train began to move, the monstrosity of fat awoke from his sleep in the

EN ROUTE FOR BERLIN 15

corner with a start, shouting at me to know if this

was S . " Ja, ja," I replied, " das ist da,"

pointing to the rapidly receding platform. With a roar of awakened rage, in which he suddenly seemed to remember the porcine gefreiter, he flung himself against the door, and, wrenching open the handle, jumped down on to the line. He immediately laid his hands on his stomach, and feeling that his belt was not there, grew purple in the face as he tried to keep up by the side of the train, bawling and scream- ing to me to throw it him. I reached up on to the rack, and leant out of the window with it, and he ran still faster. The next instant I had caught him beautifully right across the shins with the hardest part of the bayonet scabbard, and I congratulated myself on a remarkably good shot. I then drew in my head, leaving the somewhat befogged creature striving to surround himself with the belt. I threw myself back, delighted to have so easily got rid of what might have been a very unpleasant nuisance,

chuckling at the idea that the station of S was

as yet fifteen miles ahead.

In half an hour's time we arrived there, and, this being a spot where I had to change, I thought I might just as well start getting used to German life by having some dinner. It was some moments before I could pluck up courage to march into a restaurant, but eventually, with the Berliner Tage- hlatt tucked very ostentatiously under my arm, I strolled in. Far from being noticed by anyone, the

16 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

whole world, including waiters, appeared bent upon ignoring me. Here was a quandary. My train was due to go in twenty-six minutes, and I had not eaten since the night before, when I was still the other side of the frontier. To call " Herr ober "* and to ask him what the devil he meant by being so slow was the obvious thing to do. Nor was it difficult. I might omit the complaints, and merely intimate by tone of voice that I was very annoyed, and that a gratuity in proportion to his speed would be his reward. My experience in the carriage had given me lessons in tones of voice, but never- theless I felt horribly uncertain. I was now really in Germany. This was Germany, all around me. This great hall was German, this table was German, and these were Germans all around me. Ugh ! what would not they say if they knew I was English. How fat that woman over there was ; she would be quite presentable otherwise. Several times the words rose in my throat, but each time they failed to get further. I tried looking angry, I tried looking pathetic, hungry, helpless, wealthy, hurried, im- portant, all to no purpose. The ober went busily on, taking a lager here, a schnitzeP there, calf sbraten, ^ omelet, sauerkraut, leberwurst,* cervelartwurst,* schlappwurst® to everyone but myself. I grew angry ; I grew desperate ; suddenly I heard my

* Waiter. * Liver sausage. ' Cutlet. ' Brain sausage.

* Roast veal. ' A kind of sausage.

EN ROUTE FOR BERLIN 17

own voice ringing out sharp and clear across the room " Herr ober." The deed was done. It was like jumping into a cold swimming bath. I had stood ten minutes shivering on the brink, but I found no difficulty when I was once in, and the ordering of my meal went smoothly, and my accent failed me not, though I was wisely laconic. I had carefully studied the prices on my menu, or speise- karte as, by the royal command, it is now called, to see if there was any rise of the price of eatables, but as I was not absolutely convinced jof the ordinary price of these particular eatables, I was unable to make up my mind whether there had been any appreciable rise or not. I had carefuUy learnt by heart the ordinary price of a pound of beef, mutton, veal, pork or ham, but I had forgotten to find out what fraction of a hog a pork cutlet repre- sented, or how many ounces a mutton chop weighed. Fish I noticed on my menu had been altered to a higher price, and I was glad to feel right in the centre of Germany that the British fleet was achieving success. Yes, that dinner was certainly most fortifying. As my old bummelzug, I found, did not reach Berlin till eight the next mornings and there were no sleeping berths, I decided to go second instead of third class. I took my ticket with a whimsical feeling that if my accent was good enough for a waiter, it would have to do for a book- ing clerk. Nevertheless, the latter gentleman looked at me keenly before he gave me the ticket, but I

18 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

stared him out of countenance and he gave me my ticket and took to examining the notes I had given him instead. So, so, I thought, booking clerks have orders to look at people before they give them tickets, have they. I shall have to be a bit careful. So then, in the solitude of my second-class compart- ment, I practised my ch's diligently for twenty minutes, by which time I was indiflFerent as to whether they were perfect or not, as long as I did not have to rasp the back of my throat any more. All along the line strings of trucks labelled Brom- berg. Thorn, Allenstein, ehowed that at any rate no rolling stock had been left behind for the Russians to take. Most of the trucks were filled with turnips and potatoes, though beans of various sorts were occasionally to be seen by the flicker of the station lights. The latter had been dulled, and only an occasional gas lamp served to mark, to any Russian airmen who might venture so far, the position of the railway in that great wide plain of Northern Germany.

I was kept awake all through the night, chilled to the bone, jolted to pieces by the continual shunt- ing in order to pick up trucks at each station, which our doing duty for two trains necessitated. As dawn stole over the sky I looked out and could soon distinguish trees, fields and then houses. Gradually the carriage began to fill up, and I felt it advisable, after my experience of the previous evening with the CDnversationalist incorrigible, to

EN ROUTE FOR BERLIN 19

ward off all conversation by dropping off to sleep. In a few moments a genteel suggestion of a snore tickled the ears of the clerks, shopmen, school teachers, commercial travellers, petty officials who came and went as we halted at station after station. To enter into conversation with a stranger in a railway carriage is very nearly the crime in Germany it is in England. You are liable to be regarded as a crook or a crank, both equal objects of aversion to the worshippers of ordentlichkeit,^ unless you be a university professor, in whom any vice is excused. AH the inhabitants of the carriage wore that air of seriousness that pervades Germany, an air inti- mating that the Devil and his laughter do not exist, or that he is just about to take the hinder- most. This must, I suppose, be excessively annoy- ing to the Devil, but to an Englishman it is agony. While in England, even though death stare him in the face, it is forbidden to man to speak to a fellow- creature without an " introduction," in Germany it is forbidden by the custom of the people to give that inane suggestion of a smUe that in England affords you such a kindly welcome, should you survive their frigid and aggressive stare at your insolent assertion of the right to travel, after having paid for a ticket. In Germany it is wisest, unless you wish to appear exotic, to bury yourseK in a trade newspaper, or to stare in a fashion, more bovine than considerate, at your neighbour or his

^ Orderliness,

20 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

boots. If you be wearing the uniform of His Majesty the Kaiser, talkativeness is permitted you, as your status can be seen at a glance, while as the poor civilian does not wear his rank or his banking account on his sleeve, there is always the risk that he might enter into conversation with somebody with whom his dignity or his cheque-book do not permit him to converse. Therefore I maintained silence. And for another reason also. Any citizen of the Empire is at liberty to cross-examine any other citizen of the Empire as to who he is, what he is, and why he is. At the commencement of the war appeals were issued to the young to help their elders by exercising their intelligence. Anyone, they were told, who might be " English, French or Roosian " was straightway to be taken under a species of arrest and conducted to the nearest police station. The population of the German Empire is 67,000,000. Of these about one-half, one may surmise, are female. It is impossible, however, to gauge the proportion of boys in the other half. Possibly 99-9 per cent is an exaggeration, yet their activity was something so frightful, so intense, so Semitic in its persistency that the impression of many an English- man in Germany at the commencement of war was that there were nothing but boys behind, on the right, on the left, and in front of him, and that to the end of the war he would be unable to eat or sleep without these little angel faces looking at him, to see if be be threatening the safety of the Empire.

EN ROUTE FOR BERLIN 21

On one occasion I heard of a man whose grand- father had become a naturalised Englishman ; his father and himself, though they had lived most of their lives in Germany, still remained English. His mother was pure German. This poor wretch was dressed in a German suit, and he had grown a beard any German professor might have been proud of, and yet, when about to take his ticket at a station he had never been in previously, a cherub of some sixteen summers walked up to him, and laying his hand upon the poor fellow's arm said : " Was sind sie fiir landsmann ? Sie sind Englander, nicht war ? ^ Aha, so, ah," and he promptly marched him off through the town to the local police station, his features stern with pride, patriotism and duty. It was full half an hour before my friend, who had papers permitting him to leave the district on that specific day, by that particular train, could obtain his release. The boy, however, refused to let him out of his sight until he had left the town, and accompanied him back to the station, where they both enjoyed themselves by walking moodily up and down the platform for two hours. When the train left the station this miserable wretch, even though he had lived years in Prussia, absent- mindedly turned round and tipped that boy — two- pence. He was married but had no sons. The boy rushed off to the police station again (and he had

* ' ' What is your Nationality ? You are an Englishman, aren't you ? "

22 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

had no lunch) to report this case of bribery of an official.

A boy stepped into our carriage. I shuddered. He trod on everybody's toes and then collapsed on to the seat opposite me. We stared at each other with our intense mutual dislike ill-concealed. What he thought I was going to do to him, Heaven knows. I knew what he was going to do to me. He would start asking me questions in a loud, patriotic voice. I should reply satisfactorily, according to arrangement (mine). The rest of the carriage would then continue the cross-examination. I should foil them with the greatest ease, but the boy, being a boy and therefore not in the habit of acqui- escing in the existent, would detect some flaw that his elders, including myself, were too ponderous to perceive. As likely as not he would snuggle up into the corner and console himself by merely re- iterating that he was sure I was a Russian, or possibly a Jap — notwithstanding my 6 ft. 1 in. I knew there would be no gainsaying him, and if he decided I was a Jap, well I should have to be one, to the best of my English ability. If I leant out of the window, he would probably pull the com- munication cord, and accuse me of dropping bombs on the railway. Being a boy, and therefore un- biased, he would tell me the cut of my coat was English — though it was made in Germany — or that my boots were of Russian leather, though in truth they came from London, that my handkerchief or

EN ROUTE FOR BERLIN 23

my necktie was Parisian — though they came from Berlin, that my felt hat was Serbian — which in truth it was. Even now I was sure he was looking at me over and even through the school books which he was only pretending to study. I could see by the way his eyes wandered in a peculiarly vacant manner that he was thinking of something else. I was sure that I was that something. He would tear me limb from limb if he could. He would throw me out of the window, and then accuse me of suicide, if he thought he could prove I was a foreigner. I saw by that vacant stare in his eye and the un- conscious movement of his lips as he looked at me over the top of his book that he was reciting all the crimes I was to be accused of, or the various nation- alities I was to be damned with : there are such a lot that lead you straight to Hell in Germany at the present day. Yes, I was sure of it, he would give me no peace until I was safely under lock and key, and booked to face a firing squad — with him- self present by special permission — the next morning.

He would He didn't. He got out at the next

station.

In this manner then, did I enter into the city of Berlin, a humble traveller by bummelzug.

CHAPTER III

BAMBOOZLEMENT

The first thing to do in Berlin is to go to a beer cafe ; the second thing to do in Berlin is to go to a beer cafe ; and the third thing to do in Berlin is to go to a beer caf6. Not to drink beer. No. For even though the beer is light as the fluff off a dove's wing, and is served so cool, that the hot moisture of the crowded room causes the sides to drip, never- theless it is wiser but to drink so much that you shall not be thought an unsociable curmudgeon, who buys beer and drinks it not, by your neigh- bours around the room. But take a sip here, and listen; a sip there, and listen again; smack your lips occasionally and loudly, and you will cast off any suspicion that may rest upon you, and will be looked upon as a temperate drinker, who enjoys his drink to the uttermost. And also you will hear many interesting things. There are two places in Germany for finding things out, one is the raUway carriage, the other is the cafe. One soldier always talks to another, in order to compare notes as to their proximities to HeU, and Germany is all soldiers. People often travel in pairs, especially to business of a morning, and Mankind has a habit of shouting in trains, and the German has a habit of

24

BAMBOOZLEMENT 25

shouting over his food. For instance, just previous to the 10th of July of this year (1915) I was un- intentionally informed that the High Seas fleet was no longer in Kiel Harbour — a useful piece of know- ledge, had I been able to make any use of it. So I spent the first day in cafes. Berlin, I had been told, was despondent. Berlin, I had been assured, was in a panic. " All lights out — a city of old men and boys." I listened to the men talking in cafes. I heard no despair. They were inclined to be some- what boisterous in their lack of it. I listened to the women, and then I thought I detected a different note, though the same phrases fell from their lips as did from those of the men. It was curious how familiar everyone seemed with war, yet there was no one there who had fought in 1870. There was no one there who could even remember it distinctly. Over fifty-five years of age has a habit of staying at home, instead of going to cafes. They talked of war and nothing else, though fourteen days before, when I had landed from Denmark at Greenock, the whole population seemed to be playing goK and collecting coppers for the relief of those who were too poor to pay income tax. It was all — What was Hindenburg going to do, or what the lieutenant had said to Fritz. The Kaiser was not much mentioned. The idea that held sway in those first wonderful days, when reactionary had clasped socialist by the hand — the latter had just previously had a notice served on him that if he offered any opposition to the Govern-

26 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

ment plan he would go to prison and stay there — and the Kaiser had said, amid a Reichstag frenzied with devotion — " Ich kenn kein partei, nur Deutsche,"^ that the nation had been given not merely a born leader in their Emperor, but also an inspired strategist and organiser, had dis- appeared unnoticed. It was felt that though His Majesty had for years led the ship of State with but one object in his mind — ^unity — in the presence of this new and miraculous killing machine, the quintessence of man's creative ability, the Emperor's duty, as much as that of the humblest subaltern, e.g.. Lieutenant Forstner of Zabern, lay in self- effacement. Without observing it, other heroes were springing up and being created. Names never heard before in Germany were mentioned as frequently as the Emperor's in time of peace, without the recog- nition of a change. There was no criticism from the men. The Eiserne Kreuz^ prevented that. In England we distinguished the exceptional in the form of the superlative. In Grcrmany they dis- tinguished the exceptional in the form of the incompetent. The Iron Cross is given to every man in ten. " How did so and so get the Iron Cross ? " one often hears in Berlin. " Oh, he went out and held an umbrella upside down, and into it fell an Iron Cross." Thus a man who fails to get the Iron Cross is marked down as not being one of the upper tenth, and with an army of six to eight mUlious the

* " I kuow no party, only German*." ' Iron Cross.

BAMBOOZLEMENT 27

number in the upper tenth is about the male and female adult and infantile population of Newcastle- on-Tyne and Sheffield added together. Now, from the day a man is born, or, at most, from the time of his examinations at sixteen to the day of his death, his status in the State and his income are, with the usual reservations as to exceptions, fixed, and it is rare that his most desperate efforts can make any change. This is a somewhat sweeping state- ment, but it holds good as a rule. When a man is sixteen, he has only got to turn up a table of logarithms to find out what wiU be his pension when he is sixty. The women of Germany are these people's wives. They are not given orders. They share those of their husbands. Frau Geheimrath,^ Frau Untersuchungsrichter,^ Frau Gefangnisz- direktor.3 The men of Germany are ruled by a ribbon, and the ribbon is not a woman's. For that ribbon in his button-hole — and he never takes it off, except to change it with his coat — a man will sell his soul. An old prison director I came to know- later on, and who had the Iron Cross of 1870 (which was hard to get then) used, I am sure, to go to bed in it. I always imagined it pinned to his night-dress — he was much too old to wear pyjamas^ ust out of the way of his large grey beard. He must have looked quite odd dressed like that, with a hard shiny head on top, pince-nez balancing on his stern nose, and the order heaving on his bosom. All the

* Privy Couucillor. ' Examining Magistrate. ' Prison Director.

28 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

independent criticism of which Germany is now full comes from the women. The stories of placards with " Give us back our husbands and sons," " Give us back our sons," are not by any means myths, though their importance has been vastly exagger- ated. The men, come what will, are bamboozled into being coerced, and it may yet be that the change in the character of the German Empire will come because its rulers forgot to bamboozle the women as well as the men. The whole country, women included, were swept off their feet at the beginning of all this by the question " Will you have the Cossack in yoiir homes ? " but the women have recovered theirs, the men have not, — quite. They seemed unto themselves as attacked by the Russian, and that France and then England joined in against them when they were thus beset. Their rulers commenced the war with the cry of the Cossack, and continued it on the perfidy of Albion.

And Albion with his cry of nationalities, allied with the nation that envelops in her suffocating grasp millions of unliberated Finns, Swedes, Roumanians, Poles, Armenians, and above all the joint crime of Persia. Where is Persia's nationality ? The Englishman and above all the Cockney is a being both remarkable and in many respects unique. For instance, the continental, and especially the Prussian, is unable to fight without either hate or enthusiasm. He must have either one or the other. He goes into battle with " Gott mitt uns " on his

BAMBOOZLEMENT 29

belt, " Gott strafe England " in his heart. He means them both. If they were absent he would at once sit down and begin asking himself why he is fighting and untU he had settled on a reason in a manner thoroughly satisfactory he would cease doing so. The Englishman, on the other hand, fights as a rule without any hate or enthusiasm, and while he is deciding the question as to exactly why he is fight- ing he decides it is best to continue the process. " Will you have the Cossack in your homes ? " they said to the citizens of Prussia. " Look what he has done in Prussia, and now when we are fighting against these waves of barbarism flowing in from the East, Albion comes and stabs us whilst in the very midst of this heroic fight, perfidiously, stealthily, hypocritically in the name of nationality. Albion, who deprived of nationality the Boers for the sake not of necessity — but of her financiers. France we can understand fighting us, have they not always sacrificed to their idea of revenge the product of their death-strewn evolution — De- mocracy. They the apostles of Liberty, of Equality, of Fraternity unite with the representative of sup- pression. But Albion ! ! ! " The Prussians are

above all a purposeful people. They have a dream and they try to fulfil it. The English don't care what they do so long as they do it in the manner of a gentleman.

It is not the docility but the independence of the German that js remarkable. If the Englishman

30 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

could but stretch his imagination, so as to feel how difficult it must be to think and be otherwise than the influences around you make you, when from the day he enters the world to the day he leaves it, all that he learns, all that he sees, nearly all that he hears, and the majority of what he reads all comes or is controlled by one power with but one object. Disraeli tried to differentiate between the English method of government and the Prussian by remark- ing that we bamboozle the people, and that Bis- marck coerced them. But in the Grennany of to-day bamboozlement is the necessary corollary of coercion. It was a few days later that I heard an obviously broad-minded Prussian make the remark that the difference between the tasks of the German and English Governments, as it appeared to him, was that the first had to drive sheep and the second had to lead donkeys. With the possibility of an ultimate appeal to force, the latter is impossible without the former. Bismarck's greatness lay not in his tricks of diplomacy, or even in his unification of Saxon and Prussian, Hanoverian and Bavarian, but in his perception that this unity, that this conception of the State as a purposeful State, which he had built up, could not live unless accom- panied by the control of the thoughts of the whole population. History, a subject regarded in England as of secondary importance, is taught in every school, and in the manner that the Government wish. For certificates allowing a man to teach are

BAMBOOZLEMENT 31

issued by the State, and by the State alone. The newspapers are independent, but within a limit. The first day I arrived in Berlin I was shown a notice of the Kommandantur of Berlin, forbidding the publication of Vorwdrts until such a time as he should think fit. It was a civil matter entirely, no military information ever gets near the papers. As the educated grow up, those that are fit to pass on the coloured facts they have acquired are drawn in to the protection of the State whose bidding they serve, and from whom they draw the sustenance of life. What wonder that the leaders of thought cannot show much independence. There is one man, however, in Germany who is big enough to criticise, and yet too big to go to prison. He is nofc a German. His real name, which I have forgotten, ends in " ski," and his father came from Poland. But he is not a Pole. He goes by the name of Maximilian Harden, and is by race a Jew. In his paper. Die Zukunft (The Future), he attempts to give Germans that impartial standpoint that is the very antithesis to the wishes of the Government, who desire the man in the street to think as ordered. His language, though extremely involved, — he often begins a sentence on one page and ends it up four pages on, without any anacoluthon — is generally apposite. He discusses quite freely *' Why is the German so disliked ? " and makes long quotations from American and other foreign newspapers in an attempt to elucidate this difficult problem. I re-

32 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

member seeing a number, I think the March number, of his paper that had been suppressed. He attacked the Government for withholding news, and finally taxed it directly with downright lying and falsifica- tion of reports. Everybody reads the Zukunft, most people agree with it. Nothing happens, for nothing can happen, since their agreement is use- less and academical.

I wandered from one caf6 to another. During the whole day I had a beer tankard to my lips, and viewed the world through its glass bottom. Every- where were people talking, and in the course of that, my first day in Berlin, I heard close on a hundred conversations. Sometimes I wanted to interrupt and ask questions, but I knew after a time — that is to say by midday, — I had but to move on to another caf6, and sooner or later I should get the informa- tion I wanted. I was particularly anxious to get some idea of how our blockade was really telling on the economic life of the country, and I knew there were sure to be caf4s near the Bourse, to which business men were in the habit of going. It was necessary, however, to go into a lavatory to consult my Baedeker to see exactly where the Bourse was, as to have asked would have been next door to an invitation to be arrested, and after losing my way, and having to spend numerous pence popping in and out of lavatories, I eventually reached the type of caf6 I wanted. I ordered the inevitable tankard of^beer. I stayed in that cafe for forty minutes, and

BAMBOOZLEMENT 33

then I went to another close by, where I did the same. Both were crowded with business men, who dis- cussed everything there was under the sun, — except business. And as I, an Englishman, sat there amid the great big turrets of flesh, a possible Daniel in a veritable den of lions, I saw how all the prophecies so nicely indulged in, in England were wrong. I saw those cropped heads, the skin just scintillating through the stubble, the two little compact ears, and at the back those great rolling waves of fat, that surmounting the top of the collar, lolled in great laps over the edge. I saw that a country that could support so much superfluous flesh at the back of its head, could go on a long time before forced to its knees and compelled to cry pax through want of sustenance. Like camels, I murmured to myself, they will consume aU this, they will live upon it. It will all be done at the allotted time, in the allotted manner. Ordentlichkeit,^ Piinktlichkeit.^ Have you ever noticed, oh, reader, wherein it is that the Prussians are different from other races ? When you have been in Grermany you will probably have noticed that the Prussian has no back to his head. By this I do not mean to say that there is just a frayed edge there, encircling a hollow, but that the whole job is finished off smoothly, as a sheer drop from the top. A Frenchman or an Englishman, and above all the Italians have a kind of a bulge. The Prussian, however, continues his neck until it folds 1 Orderliness. '■* Punctuality.

34 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

over on to the upper part of his forehead. This gives his face and his head, when viewed in profile, a parallel appearance, both rising perpendicular to unknown heights. Thus is the head of a Prussian.

CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND MOBILISATION AGAINST THE RUSSIANS

Just before I had got over the frontier I had been what I regarded then as singularly unfortunate, but now that I am far enough away from the workings of Fate to be able to admire her, I admit that what I had deemed misfortune was the luckiest thing that could have happened. I had been given an introduction to General von Bernhardi, asking him, if possible, to hand me on to his august master. In fact, in those far-off days of a week ago, I had chortled at the prospect of being a guest of the Emperor's. General von Bernhardi was, I knew, an old friend of His Majesty's, and invitations are freely given to the royal quarters. Whether His Majesty was on the East or the West front, it mattered little to me, and in those days, being very young, and a firm believer that everything was possible till proved the opposite by oneself, and that the madder the scheme, the better the chances of success, I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of travelling to the Imperial Head-quarters with a letter from the famous Bernhardi in my pocket. Bernhardi, by the way, is famous, but only in England. Practically nobody has heard of him in Prussia. He had a successful career in the war of '70, and is now a

96

36 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

snow-white-haired old gentleman of great benignity. People over there cannot see what there is in his book to make such a fuss about. It simply expresses the ordinary opinion of the ordinary army man in Prussia. J'accuse, even if written by a German, is quite unnecessary after General von Bemhardi's Oermany and England. It is an accusation in itself, and no better indictment of all that is bad in Prussian life could have been penned by Prussia's bitterest enemy. The only good quality that the opinions in the book possess is their ingenuous naivet6, and it is this that the military Prussian is by education, and possibly by nature, incapable of perceiving. His comment all through the book, at points that make the Englishman, whose political morality is so much higher than that of all other countries, gasp with astonishment, is " natiirlich, ganz richtig so,^ ganz richtig so," and he has no wish to waste his time reading a book that expresses nothing more than he knows at present. Neverthe- less, when the opportunity arose of meeting the General, and then probably of going on to quarters quite celestial, I jumped at it. I actually had the letter in my pocket, but I was unwise in those days, not knowing that Fate, being a woman, is never to be trusted to be logical. I went to see the acquaintance in Scandinavia who had given me the note, once more before I left. To my very badly concealed disappointment he asked me if I still had the letter,

' Naturally, quite right

THE SECOND MOBILISATION 37

and I stupidly answered that I had. His wife, or his sister, or his mother, or his aunt, or something, it seems, had quarrelled either with the General, or his wife, if he had one, and had rebuked my friend for being so tactless. If I had had any acuteness I should have lied brazenly, and said that I had posted it in advance, had I not told him the evening before, when he gave it me, that I intended calling with it at the Kriegsministerium^ immediately I arrived in Berlin. I might have changed my mind, it is true, and posted it to Berlin, and I paid the penalty for not being quick enough at diplomacy (or lying), and had perforce to hand back the note with the best grace I could. And so closed a long vista of great and wondrous possibilities. And as I left my friend's house, I laughed to think how the Great Man would have stood on his head for three minutes, to have had an account of an interview with the Kaiser by his special correspondent. However, it is just as weU, I think, that I did not get that letter, as I should have been shot, beyond the slightest shadow of doubt, had the truth been discovered. Nevertheless, I might have been unsuspected in quarters so high, and I shall always regret that I was unable to bring off what really would have been a great coup.

But though I had missed this opportunity, I determined I would do the best I could to make up for it. I had reckoned that the Russian advance

1 War Office.

38 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

would necessitate a large calling out of reserves, and a great transference of troops, in fact, a new mobilisation. Now the main artery to the west from Berlin rims through the suburb of Charlotten- burg, and just beyond Charlottenburg are the Charlottenburg woods, and just beyond the Char- lottenburg woods, somewhat to the north, runs the railway. So on Sunday I took train to Charlotten- burg, and so did the whole of Berlin. Knowing that this was its habit, I knew I should be safe. And as I walked through the woods, I heard a great rumble, and then a silence that was great beside it. A long pause, and then another rumble, and I realised I was drawing nearer to it ; but it died away before I reached the spot whence it came. And then I came to the edge of the wood, and over the clearing that confronted me was the railway line, and far away down the line was the great iron bridge that crossed the Havel. Keeping well within the shadow of the trees, I looked hard at that bridge, and saw what I had expected — five landsturm, two at each end, and an unter-offizier. Thus far and no further, thought I. It was from here that the rumble had come. I took out my packet of lunch, and sat down just inside the trees. I also took out two bottles of Pilsener beer from the bundle I had brought. I looked a perfect Berliner. Suddenly came the rumble again. It could not have been more than seven or eight minutes aft«r the last had died away. In a few minutes a long train of forty-four luggage trucks

THE SECOND MOBILISATION 39

had dashed past. At the rear were two ordinary carriages. The sliding doors of the vans were pushed back, and inside I saw were packed row after row of soldiers. They stood at the door, leaning out over one another's shoulders, singing cheerfully and sturdily those wonderful Grerman marching songs that make one's very breathing keep time to them. Each truck sang the same, and right down the train — more than a quarter of a mile long — rose and fell the words of the " Watch am Rhein." God ! with what fervour they shouted it, and yet it was still music. Next would come the prayer for Franz Joseph, and next " Die beide Grenadier," and then again " Die Wacht am Rhein," and again and again, and it is the last notes that I can stUl hear ringing in my ears when the next train comes rushing along, and the last that I can hear from them is the same, and so on. And it remains a vista, those trucks decorated with green branches, and those jolly-looking men leaning out of them, singiag, singing, singing. And all day long those trainloads of men passed and passed, and when I came back the next day they were still passing. Every ten minutes they came, and they never varied by more than twenty seconds. But the place where aU this was being worked from was miles away, in a room in the Kriegsministerium of Berlin, and there, at any moment, they knew where every train ought to be, or actually was, which was generally the same thing.

40 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

It is as long ago as 1 903, that the plans for mobilisa- tion were last altered on a large scale, and it was then that they were finally moulded to their present shape. One of the fundamental necessities for the smooth working of organisation to the Teutonic mentality, is not merely sheep-like docility, com- bined with the technical ability bred of the latest continuation school and polytechnics, but also the fact that the whole thing, or something like it, has been done before. It is generally considered safer, by superiors in Government services in Prussia, that inferiors should be able to recognise as an old friend, or tormentor, any order that should be given them. It saves them the trouble of understanding it. This was the case of the Prussian mobilisation. Every summer for the last twelve years, every station- master, the head of every locomotive depot, and every inspector in every district, every station in the Empire, received three large official envelopes, which he had already received instructions were to be put into his safe, and there kept " until they should be necessary." The first of these envelopes that dis- appeared behind lock and key, had inscribed on the cover in large printed capitals : ** to be opened in THE EVENT OF WAR WITH FRANCE." On the second of these documents was printed : " to be opened IN the event of war with RUSSIA"; and the third:

" TO BE OPENED IN THE EVENT OF WAR WITH FRANCE

AND RUSSIA." There was no fourth. No envelope

with : " TO BE OPENED IN THE EVENT OF WAR WITH

THE SECOND MOBILISATION 41

FEANCE, RUSSIA AND GREAT BRITAIN." Every year a gold-laced official would come round to collect these envelopes, and carefully scrutinise them, to see that they were untampered with. Unfortunate station-master, or locomotive depot inspector, if they were. An organisation knows no mercy. Then, when satisfied, the gold-braided official with a sword dangling from his waist, would hand out three new envelopes, and exact receipts with solemn formality. He would pass away on to other station-masters, a silent figure, handing out three envelopes, always exacting three in return. Year after year this serious formality would be gone through ; then came " the day." " You wiU do this, and that." " Trains wUl pass through your station at the following times." " Signalmen to be instructed to lower their signals so many minutes before each train." " The times for the signalmen at your station will, therefore, be as follows." " You wiU hand him the enclosed time table." To the engine- drivers. " You will move out of your shed at ."

" You will maintain an average speed of twenty miles per hour." " On no account must the speed be relaxed or increased."

No engine-driver knew where he was bound for. His duty was to take his train along the lines on which he found himself, and he does so, maintaining his average speed of twenty miles an hour, his one anxiety being lest he should not " keep station," for at every important station inspectors with

42 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

useless swords at their sides are sitting at tele- phones ready to report to the next head-quarters that train No. 206 is two minutes late. Unstopping, un- stoppable, he goes blindly forward, until a signal t«lls him to go no further, and he may find himself relieved. All over the vast (Jerman Empire on three occasions has this happened within the last twelve months. On the day appointed, and not tUl then, are the envelopes torn open. For the great German General Staff knows better than anyone the value of secrecy as regards its dispositions, and it is treason to tear open any of those envelopes con- taining sheets with countless repetitions of " You wiU " . . . " You will "... " You will " . . .

It is in this manner that all of the three great efforts were prepared for months beforehand. For the last effort that cleared Galicia, it was probably March that saw a whole staff of the ablest and stiffest young men, straight from Staff Colleges, and full of ambition, sit down under the direction of a snow-white-haired old general or so, and carefully plot out with huge diagrams the exact time at which each train and each wagon was to leave its position, from where it was to be gathered in, and where it was to be concentrated, and whither it was to go. It is largely to these young men in spectacles, sitting in Berlin, that General von Mackensen owes his victories. At any rate, he could not possibly accomplish them without.

And thus noisy, and monotonous in their noise.

THE SECOND MOBILISATION 43

for three days and three nights in October, and again in December, and finally in June for five days and five nights, without any sort of pause, there stole forth across the eastern plains of Germany, train after train, with just ten minutes between each, of troops or munitions, bearing death to the Russians, all unable to prepare in time defences of the same kind to stem off the avalanche that was descending upon them.

I came out again the next day and did the same thing. I strolled back to the station calculating out how many men had gone east in the thirty-eight hours that trains must have been running like that. There were about a thousand men on each ; and there were six trains to the hour, and there were twenty-four hours to the day. " But," I said to myself, " they won't overburden this one line like this unless the others also are burdened in the same manner, and there are the other lines by Magdeburg and Eisleben, that could be used with the greatest ease. Therefore, allowing so many trains for stores and ammunition, half a million men must be in the process of being hurled from one side to the other. I'll remember that. I must get that home somehow." I got into an empty third-class carriage, but I was not long undisturbed. The door was suddenly flung open, and my guilty conscience caused every muscle to tighten up, as I waited to see what happened. A couple of officers got in. They bowed, or rather nodded, in a curt manner to

44 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

myself, and I returned it in a manner befitting a civilian. They talked for a bit, and then stopped. " What's wrong ? " I thought. " Is my hat insuffi- ciently Teutonic, or is my tie wrong ? " for they both kept turning round and staring at me. As is so often the case when one comes across reality, it is so much safer, though so much more unpleasant, to be brave. I therefore returned the stare fixedly, and remarked it was a fine day, though even as I said it I could not prevent my eyes wandering out of the window to see if it had been raining. They agreed, and suddenly turned to one another and began talk- ing again, to avoid my conversation. There is just that chance in Prussia, that, though you must not converse with a stranger as a matter of course, as you do in the Latin countries, yet you may exchange certain definite snippets concerning facts material to the comfort of travelling, such as the weather, or the beer you can get at the station of so and so. I began to take stock of the officer nearest to myself. He was a handsome-looking fellow, though not so handsome as his friend, who was a good deal older. The younger one was listening. The other was talking, like a machine-gun with a first-class man behind it, never stopping, clipping his words rather sharp at the end, though keeping his voice rather low. They still occasionally glanced towards me, and would then stop talking and look out of the win- dow, but the vista that seemed to interest them most was myself. Once the elder one began, " Bitte "

THE SECOND MOBILISATION 45

Here goes, I thought, as I answered, " Herr Kapi-

tan ? " But it was only to ask me to close the

window. Nevertheless, they did not seem comfort- able in my presence, so soon I began to emit a delicate genteel suggestion of a snore. Then they began to talk again, this time the younger one spoke. At first their words didn't reach me, and I dared not stop the gentle rasping at the back of my throat meant to indicate deep slumber. After a time the pitch of their voices rose, and some of the words came through to me. It was about the mobilisation last year. A breakdown — the Cologne bridge — Russian spies — shooting — mistake — quite young

man — good Prussian family — thousand pities "

Then the train came out of the cutting in which it had been, and I could hear clearer. " Yes, then, by Jove, I was sent east to a place called Czezin, on the other side of the Karpathians. We had the devil of a time there, though we gave the other beggars as good as we got. Our fellows used to get a bit confused at first by the way the Russians fight." Here the younger one interrupted, to say he'd been stationed at Lille doing transport work since the taking of the town. " Oh, of course, of course, so you have," the elder went on. " Oh, then, you don't know what these beggars are like. WeU, the most extraordinary thing about them is the imagination with which they fight. Naturally, our organisation and efficiency knockedthem out completely in the end, and they could not answer our ammunition, but they

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had a go or two at us first. They were always appear- ing exactly where we wouldn't expect them. You'd dash up with reinforcements, and they'd dash away with half a regiment's horses, and you'd get Hell from the Colonel. This was in the north by Gumbinnen, where we were for a month ; I always swore to the old man it shouldn't happen again, until one day he got caught napping himself, and was taken prisoner. The same thing happened to myself later on. The whole lot of us got roped in. There were no trains to spare to take us to the rear, best luck, and so we were put under a temporary guard on the spot. They told us if we attempted to move, there would be shooting, and all that sort of thing. Our beggars drove them back later, and I managed to do a bolt. Got pinked in the flesh of my arm, as I ran. But meanwhile, I saw them managing their guns. You should have been there, my dear fellow. There these men were, great big, blond masses of humanity, handling the shell as if they had blue Hell behind them ; slam would go the breech case, and almost before the shot had reached its mark, they'd have the thing open again. I'm not a gunner, as you know, but I thought they were quite sharp at it. They'd do this five, possibly six times, not often more, and then like monkeys, they would jump at the thing as if to tear it limb from limb. Pushing at the muzzle, pulling and pushing at the wheels, swinging it round bit by bit, until they get it turned, and with a rumble they tear off

THE SECOND MOBILISATION 47

down the hill, and up another further along. Then once more they'd open fire, but after a while our boys did begin to get the range, and just as things were beginning to get too hot for them, their officer, quite a boy, would shout something, and there they were at it again. In fact, they often didn't wait for the officer boy to say anything, but they'd seem to know by instinct when it was time to move, and all leapt at once without any hesitation. Maybe, how- ever, the officer boy didn't try and stop them, but just followed, knowing he would only upset the apple cart by trying to shout them back to their positions. They came back to the hill we were on, after having been to every other knoU within the three-mile radius, and had had things made too hot for them. They suddenly appeared from nowhere, and opened up at once at three thousand, fired the usual half-dozen rounds, and then found they couldn't move the gun. Then they were superb, you should have seen them. Each man became frigid with desperation. Each with his shoulder to the wheel, not a word : not a sound : just a sob as one would take a new breath, preparing for effort still greater. Our men were getting the range closer and closer, and at last one shell burst about thirty yards. I wondered what was going to become of me, and the idea that this was probably the last bit of fighting I should see passed through my mind. Then, suddenly, they broke. Their nerves couldn't stick it, so I thought. But no ; now they were pulling and

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pushing in all directions at once, as it seemed, trying to shake the thing out of the mud it had stuck in. This time there was no silence. This time I knew that if they failed to move the beast, they really would run, for never have I heard such a shower of language. I don't understand a word of Russian, but I understood those oaths perfectly. Not a man kept his tongue quiet for half a second. Even the boy officer, who I should say had never needed a razor, his fair hands bleeding, and his legs scrambling in the dust, as he showed that last extra half-ounce he did not know he had in him, swore as profusely as any old grey-beard, steeped in wickedness. There was nothing left in them when they had got it out. They could not run, even though our last shell had wounded two men who were dripping blood, but they rushed the thing at walking pace, till they felt better, and then they began to take the brute along at a jog-trot. I must admit I felt sorry for the fellows, when suddenly they ran up against a huge lump of rock. If they'd had horses it would have been all right, but it seems we landed a shell right among them earlier in the day, and had killed the lot." Here the train stopped at the Berlin terminus, and I " woke up " with a start. We aU got up, but the elder one still went on with his description as they walked along together. And as I kept close to them, I heard him continuing : " For a fraction of a second they stopped, and I could see the savage fury that possessed each one. Suddenly,

THE SECOND MOBILISATION 49

with a shout, as of seven thousand devils, they were at it again. Shoving, pulling, pushing, dragging, shaking. First they tried one side, then the other. If the wheel wouldn't go round the right side of the rock, then it must go round the left, and if it wouldn't go round the left side, it must go over the rock. If the worst came to the worst, it must go through the rock. A shriU scream from the boy in an officer's uniform, and the noise stopped. Every shoulder was pushing somewhere against the gun, including his own. It was a picture for Rodin to have im- mortalised in marble — an effort of the giants. Muscle and sinew strained and cracked, as backs and legs became almost as one with rigidity. A sudden shaking of the earth, and the thing had moved, and they are off once more, a joUy sweating crowd, and all I could hear as they died away into the distance, to go through again what they had already done, till Death should catch them, was one long, loud blasphemy."

Yes, my friend, I thought, you are a bit different from the men who have not yet been to the front in your estimation of the men you have to fight.

CHAPTER V

THE CRASH

And then, quite suddenly, I was arrested. I was sitting in the room that I had taken, writing my first article in the shape of a letter to the Great Man, when suddenly the door opened and in walked a tall man with a long, flowing black beard. I noticed as I looked into them that he had very beautiful eyes. He wore a dark overcoat and there were one or two stains down the front. There was another man somewhere. " Bitte, kommen Sie mit ? "^ " Aber wollen Sie nicht Platz nehmen ? Wer sind Sie ? "2 I replied, making the only attempt that my numbed brain could think of as a counter-move to this direct order. The door was open and the passage was black outside. The other man stood by his side. This man's face was fat and stupid. Thoroughly pleasant and homelike — all that a wife could desire, I was sure. It looked so fat I wanted to slap it. "Dank schon, nein. Kommen Sie mit ? " And then after a pause, " Jetzt."^ Sud- denly I felt I was standing with my back to the chair and that my fingers were gripping it hard, I

' ' * Come with me, pleaae ! "

' " But won't you sit down ? Who are you ? "

» '• Now."

SO

THE CRASH 51

could feel my pulse in them. It was going very fast. The blood was pressing me hard round the windpipe, I could feel the air coming down into my lungs fresh and cool. I laughed shortly, and as I did so I felt that my voice would tremble the next time I spoke. " Ach, gut," I replied. But inside I could hear myself repeating, "You're in for it now. You're in for it now. Now you've been and done it. Phew. . . . You were being shadowed after all. You're in for it now. The letter, the letter, in English too ! Well, now you've been and done it. You're in for it now." And as I asked him " why " — he really had got fine eyes, dark and deep, — I knew my hand was stealing out over the back of the chair, — I had not noticed previously that the chair had a smooth leather back — on to the desk beyond, searching, groping for that letter. " Warum ? "^ I asked again, for I was conscious he had replied but realised I had not noticed what. We were about six feet apart. He had just had supper, at least so one corner of his beard an- nounced. And my hand was still groping from one side to the other for that terrible letter written in English. It must be further on, for I could feel it was neither to the left nor to the right. I dared not stretch further back, he would notice my shoulder moving. What could I ask him ? I might be able to find it within a couple of sentences. He had very fine eyes. I wondered whether any

I "Why?"

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wretched criminal with guilt m his soul had been arrested by this basilisk. * ' Where is your authority? " I asked, and I felt pleased that the impudence of the request had made my voice firm and loud. But Btill I could not feel the letter, though I touched and reached and stretched for it till my biceps ached. I must get that letter. I must get that letter. To faint backwards and fall on top of it was too old a trick. They would spot it in no time. They were probably used to this kind of thing. What a thing life must be for them. Imagine the day of three meals punctuated by arrests in between for occupa- tion, and each criminal feeling it with an intensity that life could never give either of them, not even you with those deep eyes and the leonine mane swept back from off your high forehead, until the day, when should a miracle occur you yourselves are arrested. You, you thing with cheeks like a mutton chop and a moustache like a tooth brush. You, you would ... I must get that letter. I must reach it, I will. I can feel it, I can just touch it, but I can't get hold of it. I can just touch the comer of it, and the joint of my middle finger cracks as I strive to reach for it. I paw for it, like a restive horse. I scratch for it, like an irritated dog. If only I could wet my finger — but he would notice where my hand was. Minutes must be passing. Why does he stand like that ? why doesn't he say something ? why don't I ? Think, think, you fool, say something, — anything. Ask him why again.

THE CRASH 53

Remember you have still that letter to get. You are touching it now but you've not moved it yet. At any rate you've found it, which is better than minutes ago. " Here is my authority," he said, and produced a small round disc with a number and a crest on it. " So," I articulated, and I couldn't make out what my voice expressed, whether satisfaction, or doubt as to that little brass disc. " Bitte sehr, kommen Sie mit." The room was very still. I could hear no sound. " Unmittelbar, — immediately," he added. My finger was still scratching, my arm ached. I could not reach it. An inch more, a centimetre more ; — I suddenly remembered the fact that there were 2-54 centi- metres went to the inch. " Which is sufficiently accurate for all purposes that the student is likely to come across," I could hear my brain ticking out. The dark eyes were coming nearer to mine. He was coming towards me. Now, he had walked a whole step. It would not be long before he had done another. In four steps he would be touching me. He would be able to see over my shoulder ; see that I was doing something ; see what I was doing. He would be on me like a flash. His hands would seize my arm — would twist it back. Ju-jitsu. They teach the police that sort of things in con- tinental countries. He would call out to the other fellow. They would both give vent to long guttural "ach so/' and would give a short laugh recipro- cally. He had finished the second step. He was

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commencing the third. Life was flowing past me very quickly, my face must be very close to the stream. I could see every detail, details I had never seen before. I made my next effort for the letter, the greatest. I couldn't reach it. I ceased to try for it. . . .

*' Gut," I remarked and stepped quickly in between them for the door. They thought I was trying to run from them and took a step after me. I hit at the switch and managed to bang it out and stopped just outside. They both came out and I felt better. They had not seen that letter. But he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. "Well, that settles it finally," I said. "He's not going to put that key in his pocket, unless he's coming back to examine the place. S'pose he'll go round Sherlock Holmesing, microscope business and all that. Well, thank Heaven that won't help him much, everything's German from the dust to the dirt. But I am fairly dished as regards that letter. One thing, he did not find it while I was there. I could not have stuck the agony of it. Should I have tried to explain it away, or should I have just kept silence ? What a ghastly silence it would have been ! What explanation could I have given ? Well, well, that's all over. I suppose this means getting shot to-morrow morning or the next. I wonder what getting shot is like. I don't feel any effects from the prospect at present ; weU, I dare say I shall when it comes a bit closer to the thing itself.

THE CRASH 55

That'll be rather a nasty moment while they're aiming, and before the officer says ' fire.' I won't have my eyes bandaged. That'll make matters ten times worse. I should be able to feel the whole length of eternity in the dark, and the world will consist of myself. No, thanks, not for me. And how odd, they'll call it bravery or pluck or gump- tion or some such name. Just like they did that

Florentine, L used to tell me of, who said if he

was going to be decapitated he would certainly not be done in the ordinary way. Not he, he would put the back of his neck on the block and the axe should come down underneath his chin, on his throat. I suppose I shall feel in an awful funk when it comes to the thing itself, all kind of wobbly in the throat, and that sort of thing, and the officer in command will ask me if I've any last request to make. What shall I say ? " And as I was thinking through all this a voice came out of the dark and I realised it was my friend of the face like David, who had his arm in mine. The thing with a face like a mutton chop walked along behind in bovine satisfaction and admiration for his chief.

He sometimes trod on my heels and then apolo- gised profoundly. I took delight in shortening my stride and then suddenly lengthening it, so that he kicked it hard and had to apologise all over again. I enjoyed it. It was childish. " Where have you been to-day ? " said my friend who had his arm in mine. He wore dark suede gloves. " To Potsdam,"

56 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

I replied, " to see the pictures. There is a remark- ably fine Velasquez there." And then I found that my companion of the fine eyes knew everything there was to know about Velasquez. When not arresting criminals he absorbed himself in Velasquez. There was fervour in his voice as he mentioned the name. It was his hobby, so he told me, and it was a pleasure to him to meet somebody who took an interest in the great master. It was refreshing to be able to take one's mind entirely away from what might be termed the more pressing business of whether I was going to be shot the next morning, or what was going to happen to me otherwise. Now you, whoever you are, who are reading what I write, unless you have experienced something of the same sort of thing yourself, will regard aU this as very exciting. I noticed the following day on thinking over it, and I also remember it so now, that the whole process from the moment when the quietness of my room was suddenly disturbed by the sudden rattle of the door handle to the moment which I'll describe later when I walked into a cell whose shape and dimensions I had to discover by feeling blindly with my hands, was not in the least exciting. The relations between the imagination and reality are such that the mental picture of an event may be infinitely more exciting — that is to say — if influenced by self -consciousness, and without the latter there can be no " excitement " — than when it comes to reality itself. I had thought of

THE CRASH 57

this scene dozens of times in a casual manner, and I had latterly avoided the thought as I found that I became " excited " under its influence, while reality left me untouched. This, as far as my own experience goes, is the psychology of adventure. My captor let go my arm, as to discuss his hobby with a prisoner was, I suppose, infra dig., and to take the arm unasked of an admirer of Velasquez, was a piece of impertinent familiarity of which he could never be guilty. Thus I surmised. We talked energetically for half an hour as we wandered I knew not whither. Wishing to forget my some- what unpleasant position, as thinking about it could do not the slightest good, I raked up all the little scrappy bits of knowledge I had about paint- ing and invented on Velasquez opinions galore.

Soon, after passing down numbers of streets deserted except for a cold wind that caught one round the throat, we came opposite a great arch. We passed under it, and through a small side door into an office where numbers of police officers with bellies pro- portionate to their importance were lolling about in undress uniform and a mixed smell of stale tobacco and fresh sausage. I was told to sit down, while my captor went into another room to see a mys- terious " chief." At first the lolling forms said nothing, until one turned round and said, " You'll be shot, you know," at which they all laughed great bellowy sort of laughs that seemed to originate in their intestines. They seemed to know all about

58 TO RUHLEBEN— AND BACK

me. " I don't thinlc," I replied. I thought it best to appear to treat my own crime as lightly as possible. I had committed the supreme crime of being young and I saw that here was a rare oppor- tunity of turning, what was really hardly my fault all things considered, to advantage. So I laughed and asked them why, at which they all laughed also and stared bovinely at each other over lapping cheeks, and laughed again. This sort of infantile sparring went on for about twenty minutes. It was late now, and yet these portly tubs seemed to have nothing to do, except drink beer, eat sausage, turn a roaring gas still higher so that the very sausage began to sweat, and to spit contem- platively and repeatedly in a manner betokening the general good-fellowship that existed among all mankind at that moment. Occasionally one would jump up at the sound of a whistle from the inner office, and after a time bow himself out, and I could hear his repeated " Ja, Herr Kapitan," and the short sharp business-like tone of the otherwhom Ineversaw. It was not very long before my friend of the black beard appeared again. " Ja, Herr Kapi- tan," he said as he closed the door. " You," he said, turning to the mutton-chop face that had accompanied him before, ** you will take Herr " — he paused a second and looked at me — " Herr Pyke to Alexanderplatz. You will go by cab. Have you any money on you ? " " Yes," I replied. " Then you will pay for the cab." He accompanied

THE CRASH 69

us to the door. " Herr Pyke," he said to me quietly, " I hope it may be that we shall meet again. Adieu." He looked me full in the face. " Auf wiedersehen," I replied emphatically, raising my eyebrows inter- rogatively. He gave the slightest shrug to his shoulders and said, ** Auf wiedersehen — I hope." He certainly was one of the handsomest men I've ever seen. Things look bad, I thought, and turned to follow the Mutton Chop. " I must warn you," the latter remarked, and gave a little porcine laugh, " that in war-time we carry revolvers and that if you attempt to escape," — and he repeated the porcine giggle as he showed me the butt of an automatic pistol in his hip pocket. In the cab he at once began what I knew was inevitable, — a long discourse on the iniquities of Sir Edward Grey or Sir Gry, as he called him. He paused, and then confessed very seriously that he was sorry but he must regard Sir Gry and the Devil as synonymous. "So," I replied, thinking it wiser not to be more committal, " das ist sehr interessant."^ " Yes," he said after another pause for fruitful thought, " didn't I think Sir Edward Grey a devil ? " " Well," I replied carelessly, " perhaps what you say is right. Though not perhaps ein Teufel, aber vielleicht ein Teufelchen,^ — a devilkin." He looked at me for a moment suspiciously and then con- tinued on the same subject — Sir Gry !

* " That is very interesting."

^ " Not perhaps a devil, but a devilkin."

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It was now nearly midnight. The cab was slow. We had already been in it for half an hour and Sir Gry had formed a never-ending topic for the Mutton Chop to discourse on in long words sparsely supplied with vowels. I tried to get him to shut his mouth. I had begim to remark, " My dear Sir, in all prob- ability to-morrow is going to see me shot. I have no wish for the echo of your voice to waft me into eternity, so for God's sake hold your tongue " : when I remembered that my pose was that I was going to be released almost immediately, so I stopped, not thinking the two quite compatible. The horse — a euphemism — pulled one leg after the other, in dreary repetitive stumbles, until we rolled into a tremendous courtyard of red brick roofed in with green glass. It was immensely high. It was the quintessence of gloom, and of all that was windy and cold. It was Hell — done in red brick and glazed. I paid the cabman. I remember giving him the colossal tip of fifty pfennige, with the thought that money was not going to be of much use to me now and he might care to have some. My companion was impatient and asked me why I should give the cabman a tip. Did I always give tips ? he asked, looking at me. " No," I replied, " I think it the most loathsome, dishonouring," etc. etc. etc.

By one o'clock, all my money, everything from a safety pm to a piece of masticated india-rubber, had been written out on a list, ticketed, and later on was taken away from me and locked away in a pigeon-

THE CP \SH 61

hole. I was given one slip and told to take it with me. My imperial passport into heaven, I thought. I was quite bewildered by the number of passages we passed along, the doors we went through, and each was carefully unbolted and then re-locked as we passed through. Finally we found ourselves in another bureau, and here Mutton Chop handed a slip of paper over the counter, and also a vast dossier. He then remained wandering about the room, looking phenomenally stupid, his cheeks looking more like mutton chops than ever. He had been handed a receipt, signed and stamped for the delivery of myself, and I failed to perceive for what he was waiting. Suddenly a mad rush of whimsi- cality seemed to possess me, and as a warder came into the office to take me away somewhere, I rushed up to the Mutton Chop and pressed fifty pfennige into his hand. Then I said in a stage whisper, *' Thanl5;s awfully, ein kleines Trinkgeld,i ein kleines Trinkgeld." And I shaU never forget his face as the warder came and took me by the arm and told me to come with him. And when a second later I looked over my shoulder back through the doorway there was the Mutton Chop gradually turning a dull purple in the light — paralysed — overcome — dumb- founded— accable — annihilated. It was magnificent. It was superb.

^ A small tip.

CHAPTER VI

PRISON

It was quite dark, and the footsteps were dying away into the distance. There was a patch of light high up on the wall, which came from a hole above the door. The footsteps had almost vanished away. Their owner wore a metal band on his heel to stop it wearing away too quick . . . Economy. It made a slight clang as they made pace after pace down the length of that long gallery, with its glass floor, like in the front of London shops. Everjrthing was quite dark. There were a lot of little noises, like a hundred fiddles in an orchestra. They served to make the darkness darker. The light patch high up showed the wall was green and shiny. Nevertheless, it was a darkness that could be felt. I was somehow in great pain, but I did not know whence it came, or what it was. It was pain. There was a slight move- ment somewhere, where I could not teU, for it was very dark. I listened. I could hear nothing, but I knew there was noise, even though, as I say, I could not hear it. I waited ; and eternity passed over me. I felt Time. My hand touched a wall on my right. I supposed I must have moved, but I had not noticed it. It was a smooth waU, but with little ruts and pimples aU over it. I thought I could hear

62

PRISON 63

something, and I shut my eyes, so as to listen more intently. They were useless in any case, for there was nothing that I could see with them, though they were staring rigidly into the massive darkness. The noise grew stronger. I thought it sounded very far away, and I wondered what creature of God's it was, for there was something living about it. Sud- denly I knew it was quite close to me. It was going to touch me. I must not move. What was it ? Everything was very dark. Still I could hear the noise ; though I had to hold my breathing, for this drowned it. Then I decided the noise was a big noise far away — quite far away, and that there was nothing at all close to me. I must be calm. I was covered with sweat. Quicker than the pulsations of my heart, was the changing of mind as to where It was, whether It was near me, or far away. What It was mattered not, but Fear rushed in upon me like the rush of blood, when I no longer decided It to be distant. Now I was hardly breathing, but my heart pounded in my ears, and thundered in my brain. It was more distinct. It was loud now — quite loud. Why can't I interpret It ? What is It ? What is It ? I have ears and I can hear It, but I don't know what It is. Oh, what is It ? What is It ? I leant against the waU. I waited. I could feel, and know that I was feeling, six hundred different things. I could think, and reverse my thoughts a dozen times before one half-second of time had passed through the lives of creatures far

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away. Eternity came and went, I knew that there was yet more to come. I must wait and let time pass . . . but again the noise. It was a dog. It was a dog howling softly to itself, like a child crying its heart out. It rose and fell. It changed from some- thing plaintive and piteous. It was a howl : a howl like the moaning of a hopeless man in pain, and — alone. It breathed, and I could hear the coarse rasping of its throat, as with deliberation it pulled the air down into its lungs. But the way it com- menced each howl showed it was a dog. I could imagine it, also in darkness, its head lifted on high, its eyes closed, its consciousness of life — of time and space — intense, agonising, its paws trembling in the dark, rigid, not daring to move amid the darkness overwhelming it. And then it was a child once more, moaning pleadingly for help. It sobbed, and choked, as it cried and begged for some forgiveness I knew naught of. But the prayer stayed in its throat, as with a flashing change howl after howl, each more shrill than the last, swelled up and echoed away. They grew stronger and stronger, each overwhelming the last, till they could go no further, they were so loud, so shrill. They were barked out, one after the other. I could hear no laboured intakings of breath now. The howls were coming ever faster, faster, faster. The universe was emptied of all other noise, and this alone rang through space. It was a dog. No ! no ! no ! No dog could howl like that ; it was not howling, it was

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screaming — screeching ! It was talking ! It was sajring something ! There was a word in that last howl. No, impossible. Yes. No. Yes — again and again. They were torturing someone. ... It was a Man. He was howling, screaming, yelling, jibbering, foaming ; but why so like a dog, why ? I heard the warder go down some stairs and kick at a door, and curtly order sUence. The howls died down, and became a child's whimpering again. It choked, and spoke to itself. The howls grew softer . . . softer. They died away. There was noise ; but I could hear nothing. There was movement. It was very dark. . . .

CHAPTER VII

WAITING TO BE SHOT

It was a glorious day when I woke up. The sun was shining brightly, and the sky was blue. It was somewhat cold, for it was still early in the morning. The consciousness of where I was gradually stole in upon me, as it had done tentatively once or twice during the night, as I met with obstacles such as the top or bottom of the bed, a couple of iron railings running down the side, a mattress at once rocky and mountainous, a coverlet that could cover nothing completely, and a wonderful triangular pillow — the shape of a slice of cake. A bell was ringing. There were a lot of noises, to which I could not fix names at the time. Then in the distance I heard a key unlocking a door. It was a double lock. Then another, and another, in quick succession. It was getting nearer ; louder and louder it grew, as the person with the key pushed it hurriedly into the lock, turned it twice with remarkable rapidity, and passed on to the next, almost before the noise of the first had died away. He was saying something to each as he flung the door open. At last I could hear it at the door next to mine. Bang, bang, went my locks, and I in my shirt waited expectantly to see what would happen. Bang, went the door. " Krug

66

WAITING TO BE SHOT 67

heraus/ Krug heraus," he cried, and I leapt for the brown pitcher that I saw standing there, and placed it outside on the glass-floored gaUery that ran right the way round this long, high, narrow hall. There was a space left in between in the centre, and down below I could see another row of little doors, and up above was another glass gaUery, and then I could see the dull shadow of somebody's feet. It was a flash — ^the view of four seconds, and then the door was banged to, and the locks fell into place once more.

The place I was in was about the size of a biUiard table, though probably not so long. It was high, with an arched roof ; the window was six feet from the ground. The walls were painted a light green, and were shiny. About seven feet from the ground a narrow dark green band ran round the waUs. I used to hate that band. Almost the whole ceU was occupied by the bed — about two-thirds of its length and breadth. There was a four-legged wooden stool, and a latrine, which suddenly, by some mysterious force, began flushing as I looked at it. There were a couple of shelves at one point on the waU, and on them, arranged with meticulous neatness, were an enamel basin, a battered and duUed enamel spoon, eating bowl; salt, and soap. At the side hung a comb, and a white strip of paper, the list of things, down to the last speck of dust, that had been taken from me, and which, as the list remarked, was to be

I "Jug outside."

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returned to me, on leaving. The whole thing was really wonderful. I got down the large enamel basin and washed. The soap was a unique and sorry specimen. It had the appearance of a piece of Gorgonzola cheese nicely rounded off at the comers and carefully smoothed down at the sides ; after copious rubbing an occasional bubble would be bom, and a smell abominable would be generated. I used it, faute de mieux. When dressed, I made my bed. It is a regrettable fact, oh reader mine, that you have not yet been sent to jail. I don't say that you ever will be, but nevertheless, while for the course of a couple of hundred pages, you and I are bound together by this odd sort of companionship, I must say I regret the fact extremely. You could under- stand so much better, on reading my attempts at description, what it all looked like, and above all, what it felt like to be looking at it. Imagine now, if it interests you at all to know what the conscious- ness of one of those creatures whom you, as a citizen and a voter of an English constituency, send to dreary months and even years of penal servitude, hard labour, and the rest of the bag of tricks, punishments that future generations will throw overboard as worthy only of the century that tolerated them ; what you yourself would feel like if you were to go into your most resplendent and most luxurious lavatory, and to lock the door. For the cell in which I was placed was nothing more than a lavatory with a bed in it, and I understand

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they are not peculiar to Prussia. In fact, I have heard the opinion expressed that the Prussian ones are a trifle better than most. After a couple of hours you would feel rather bored. What would you feel like after a couple of months ? Imagine walking up and down two and a half steps — five paces — and then back again. Imagine doing this two dozen times, and then try to imagine doing it two thousand dozen times. It is not the months that count in solitary confinement, but the quarters of an hour. Every ten minutes is eternity, and the weeks go past like days.

Suddenly, I remembered that the chances were that I was going to be shot. But here, again, though I repeated the words to myseK several times, and gave a little nervous laugh after each occasion, it all meant nothing to me. I found nothing in the air denoting that in a short time I was likely to be incorporeal. It seemed just as airy. Water seemed just as wet. Everything, in fact, seemed just the same. They had not even offered to send the padre along. Nevertheless, a residue of true Cambridge logic told me I was liable to it. I repeated the fact to myself several times, but dis- covered nothing new. It seemed too impossibly silly that I was reaUy going to be shot. I somehow felt it did not sound quite respectable ; that if I had been up at coUege I should have been fined for getting into a " position derogatory to the dignity of the college," that a don of sorts would have

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complained, that really the present generation — that the senior tutor would consider getting shot, when in an utterly defenceless position, surrounded on all sides with the barrels of rifles pointing at your heart, as something the irregularity of which appalled him. I remember thinking at this point, that after Cambridge — where, at the outbreak of war, I had been in the middle of my second year — ^the reality of prison was quite refreshing ; though I followed it up somewhat grimly with the thought, that after the reality of prison, Cam- bridge would not be unwelcome. And yet nothing that I could think — the most serious subjects had as little effect as the lightest — would bring the reality of the situation within my con- sciousness. I felt that it was all too stupid ; that there do not really exist people who would deliber- ately and without object, cut down a young tree just begun to grow. I seemed to have forgotten there was a war going on somewhere.

And then I remembered that I was in Germany, and I imagined myself standing, rather bewildered and inwardly feeling very forlorn, in a large hall, with a great quiet reigning, while a string of stiff Prussians, with no backs to their heads, and bellies just kept within the bounds of respectability, line in in order of rank, and take their seats in a ridicu- lously pompous manner, ask me questions pomp- ously, and tell me, decently, in an absolute cataclysm of pomp, that I must be shuffled off this

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earth as soon as pomp would allow. I am trying to give some idea of what one feels like on an occasion of that sort, and I am conscious of utter failure. I oddly enough felt no fear, though I no longer had anything distracting to occupy my attention. Having absolutely nothing to do, I was walking up and down. When about to leave King's Cross, I had felt like a hob iron searing my soul the fear of this very thing, of this very possibility, of this very moment, — " the morning before." — The world is only known through the senses, and yet the merging of the individual in what, at the moment, as far as concerns him, is reality, depends possibly on the liver, the amount of sleep, breakfast, dinner, lunch, tea, wife, uncle, aunts, cousins, the strength of the light, the blood pressure in one's brain, — anything — everything. But reality may be per- ceived— ^possibly fourth dimensionally ; — a kind of kink, not in space, but in time. It may be that the reality of a collection of circumstances is impinged upon an individual consciousness before the per- ception, that is to say, the five senses have received the impression, and before the brain has collated them. Unfortunately, this would involve pre- destination, which would be a bore.

And then breakfast came. What more could man desire ? I heard it coming from a distance. Leagues away, doors were being unlocked with that extra- ordinary flick of the wrist : four or five, one after the other, and then shut slowly as breakfast was taken in.

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In forty seconds the door would have opened, and I should have a glimpse outside again, and then in fifty seconds it would have shut again, and I should be alone with my breakfast, whatever that repast was going to be. It came : " Krug herein, herein,"^ and I pulled in my pitcher of water, and held out my mug at the same time, simultaneously taking a diaphanous slice of bread. It was quite a feat. Then the door closed.

The Grermans are a wonderful folk, as most people agree. At that breakfast at their expense they not only supplied me with bread made, not out of wheat, but out of potatoes, but also with coffee made, not out of coffee beans, but out of acoms. In fact, it can shortly be expected that they will create a substitute for water out of some other combination than that of two parts hydrogen and one oxygen.

I tried to drink the coffee. I failed. I tried again, and succeeded, though when I found my mouth chock-a-block full of some gritty substance, I had to stop. I looked into my mug, and found the bottom solid with dregs. That was enough. The opening and shutting of doors had stopped. It had passed away from me into a far-away distance and then had gradually increased as it came down the other side opposite, and then disappeared into gpace once more. For a moment I was under the impression that silence reigned, and then I became

1 " Jug inside."

WAITING TO BE SHOT 73

conscious of a number of small ingurgitatory noises from aU quarters. For a fraction of a second I was puzzled ; then I saw light. — ^The prison was having its breakfast. It was very pleasing to find I had companions, and I grew quite cheerful with the prospect of seeing them. However, I thought it just as well to remind myself that, for all I knew, I was going to get shot that day or the next, and it was better not to be too cheerful, as, if it turned out to be true, I should feel the contrast. At this moment I noticed that the peep-hole in the door had moved, and that somebody had just been looking at me. A second's pause, and then the door opened and a warder came in. There was hardly room for two of us. He showed me that the bed folded up into a table, the two ends which were solid forming the surface. He was surly, but quite nice. " What was that ghastly row last night ? " I asked casually, watching him closely. " Oh, that," he said. " Oh, No. 23 has got D.T. He's often been in here before. He'll go to an institution this time. It generally lasts about thirty-six hours like that. Sweep out your cell, and put the dust in the comer, and see that everything is clean, bowl, mug, soap-dish, etc." And he shut the door, and locked it. I did as he told me to ; then for ten minutes or so I walked up and down, up and down. What happened next, I wondered. It was now half -past seven. I waited. It became, as I reckoned, for my watch had been taken away, five-and-twenty to eight. I waited. . . .

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At half-past eleven a bell was hit once with a metal hammer ; immediately I heard funny little mice -like scurryings. Then silence. Suddenly a door was imlocked, and then another, and another, and then began that machine-gun sort of noise that I had heard before breakfast. It grew nearer, and I felt it approaching me. I leapt for my enamel bowl, in the hope of lunch. The door opened, and I thrust out my bowl. It was filled. The door closed, and the noise passed on. I used to be hungry in those days, and I ate up the pottage of beans as quickly as possible. It certainly was a large helping, and if you could get it down, you were all right for some time to come. I washed out the bowl and spoon, put them back on the shelf, and waited, waited — and went on waiting.

It had not yet struck midday, and I waited for it to do so every moment, but I was five minutes out. I was beginning to feel tired and oppressed. Suddenly the latrine flushed noisily, and then silence till the sun went down at six o'clock. Eighteen hours in a lavatory ! It certainly was very exhausting.

At half-past six came tea, an exact repetition of breakfast. Then a solitary clang of the beU, and the door was double bolted. It was dark. I felt for the beaker of water, washed out the acorn dregs, and found the shelf. It was dark. I was utterly exhausted, and sitting on my stool, my head had sunk down on to the iron table between my

WAITING TO BE SHOT 76

hands. I could still just smile at the whole situa- tion— only just. At any rate, I was still alive. They had not shot me yet. How long would they be making up their minds ? how long ? It was only a little past six, and though I could hear the noise of iron beds being let down, I felt that sleep would never come to me if I were to lie down now. Out- side I could hear BerUn throbbing with the noise of motors and trams. I thought of all those people, free, and with lives to lead. I thought of them anxious about relatives at the front, anxious about the next meal, anxious about their own fate in the far-off future, uncertain whether they should marry somebody, cheat somebody, benefit somebody, wondering what would happen to them if they were married, cheated, or what they would do with money if left them, and if it would be necessary to return a kindness if done them by the living. I envied them their doubts. I solved their problems for them. I lived their Uves for them, directing their energies. I married them ; I divorced them ; I was mother and father to their children ; son and daughter to their parents. I gave them fortunes ; I helped them spend it. I gave them poverty ; I helped them bear it. I gave them politics ; I made them sociaUsts. I gave them philosophies, and made them super- men. I gave them a hundred religions, and but one commandment. — ^Thou shalt not kill. I gave them everything they could want and took it away again immediately, that they should know its value.

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I gave them|knowledge offgood, and twice as much of evil. I created worlds, in which men lived with intensity, and any tendency towards becoming a moral and mental jelly-fish was followed with death by inanition. I moulded a universe and put in it worlds other than ours, and beings unlike us, and superior to us ; I destroyed it. I ... I awoke with a sob, as my head slipped off my hands, and I fell against the opposite wall.

It was cold, and I knew not how late, until I remembered it was probably a case of how early. I could see one wall, because of the light patch from the beam of light coming through the hole above the door. The window also I could perceive, for the sky was bright with search- lights, probing everywhere for hostile aircraft. I clambered up at the window, and looked at these through the bars. I began to wake up. Bed I felt was impossible. I never felt less like sleep. I was very tired and I knew that I should have to get still more weary before I should find rest. Suddenly there was a complete change, and I know not how to describe it. I felt crushed by the walls. ReaUty rushed in upon me, and for the first time since I had left London I not merely saw, but felt, the intense seriousness of the situation I was in. I held my breath, and I suddenly realised I had changed to a different being. I no longer felt immune ; I no longer felt that it would be a supremely stupid thing to shoot me. On the contrary, it appeared most

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obviously sensible. I no longer regarded being shot as a somewhat humorous and possibly a rather nervy incident in life. I felt it to be merely the first act in something unpleasantly novel. In fact, the whole thing, I decided, was a bore, and the sooner the matter ended one way or the other, the better. I suddenly found I had forgotten all about the Great Man, and thereupon set to work, without a shadow of justification, to curse his existence with the utmost vigour. I rushed to the door, and tried to pull it open, but there was no handle, and I tore my nails as I tried to insert them between it and the door- post. I strode in two steps to the window, to see the thickness of the wall. I counted the thick iron bars inserted there, and longed for daylight to see if the joints at the brick-work had rusted or loosened at all. I slapped the side wall, and then stopped dead in case the next-door occupant should hear me. Yes, he had : back came an answering slap, though very softly. I was delighted. Of course this was the proper thing to do in prison, at least, as far as I remembered my Dumas. I slapped again, but this time no answer came. I could not bear to lose my new-found friend, so I slapped once more, and a knock was again returned. It was most distinctly intriguing. I surmised that my neighbour was in bed, and that he was knocking with his elbow. We continued this childish game for some time. I finally got into bed, and whenever I felt so incUned I gave the wall a resounding thwack, and waited for

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an answer. He did the same, and whenever we felt lonesome we would thwack walls in mutual sympathy. It was, I suppose, to see if the other was still there, though what probability there was of either disappearing, I am at a loss now to under- stand.

I saw my friend the next morning when we came to put our jugs out to be filled. All that I saw of him as I poked my own head out of the door was a bare leg and foot, and about four feet up was a head protruding, and half-way between the two, a hand holding the jug. His face — a, most distinct euphemism — lacked one eye, his nose was spUt as the result of some blow, and coagulated blood ornamented it at decorous intervals. He had not shaved for a considerable time, and then his attempts must have been with a view to copying an ornamental yew tree. All the kindness that society had left in the man overspread his battered features, in an extraordinary species of a grin. He smUed, so to speak, in sections. I imagined the battered nose in some way necessitated this. One corner would be quite refulgent with embryonic laughter, the contiguous centimetre stern with the pain that the comer created. The next millimetre would suggest humour, and the succeeding one a like amount of agony. He was toothless, and therefore appeared to be without lips, or, at any rate, if not, he grew a most bristly stubble on them. The upper stubble and the lower stubble had some difficulty in inter-

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digitating when he shut, what I suppose, poor feUow, he called his mouth. His one eye beamed sympathy and kindness blearily, but nevertheless, in the four seconds that my view of him lasted, I had an overpowering wish to jump the pace that separated us, and to embrace him tenderly in brotherly affection. It was by pure accident that later we got a few seconds' conversation, and asked each other why we were there. I put myself down under the general head of " Politik " ; he described himself as an incendiary, and added that he would probably get ten years. He said it quietly, and there was a dull sort of beseeching agony in the one eye. I said nothing ; I wanted to say how sorry I was, and that I hoped he would get ofiE after aU, but some- how I couldn't manage it. I suppose I still had some of the feeling of false shame, that the education of a gentleman imposes upon Enghshmen. Later on, I was to free myself from this and to learn how refreshing it is, even in a conversation that only lasts forty seconds, to be able to say you are " in " because you snatched a bag from ofi a lady's wrist, or because you beat or broke the bones of your wife, who is a nagging devil and you hope it hurt. It made me ponder quite a lot on the day when, after sweep- ing out my cell, I was told to put the broom outside, and I found somebody else doing the same who hoarsely whispered, " Warum sint Sie hier ? " at the same time lifting his eyebrows while he imitated picking a pocket. For a moment I hesitated, and

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then I nodded and whispered, " Yes." I liked the idea ; I found I was liable to be considered stuck-up and dangerous if I announced myself as coming under " Politik." Respectable crime was infinitely preferable. I got rather to admire pick-pockets, especially bag-snatchers. There is something really brave — ^not merely " sporting " — ^in snatching a bag off somebody's wrist, when you know that a second later there will be a general hullabaloo, and that you will be running as fast as your panting breathing will allow you, with a rabble of respectable people thundering and shouting after you. You have only got to see a real man-hunt once in your life, for all your sympathy to go to the hunted. The curious who wish to witness such will probably come across one in the streets of London one night, and it can always be seen at any really good public school.

The only unbearable people in prison are the warders, with the exception of the Governor, Respectability's sole representatives, who have never even thought of committing a crime. Their virtues, such as brutality, aloofness, sneering, pin- pricking, were legion, but they could all be herded together under the splendid heading of Duty. They were not merely virtuous : they were stupid. Nine- tenths of the criminals who had not been drunkards had double their wits, thrice their originality, and a hundred times their mental and moral honesty. Even the drunkards, I should think, could give them points, when sober.

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A second day had broken, and I felt partly regenerated. I ate my breakfast with magnificent self-control ; that is to say, I chewed every mouth- ful forty times, and absolutely refused to allow each to be more than the amount of bread which could be thrust into one's mouth up to the first molar; such are the important things in a day of one's life in jail. I managed to make breakfast last for sixteen minutes (approx.). I then dusted and swept out the cell. I did it twice over, and then, pretending it was still not clean — the whole thing was speckless — ^I did it a third time. Then the latrine flushed.

I rejoiced at having such a clock. I would notice to-morrow morning if I finished the dusting at exactly the same moment, or if the latrine flushed later. I remember being most distinctly tickled with the fact that it was manu- factured by Greorge Jennings and Co. G. J. was now my one and only connection with the United Kingdom. Verily did I cherish his name.

Lunch came and went. Tea came and went — very quickly — and still they had not come to take me away. I heard steps approaching, and I would take down my hat and coat from the pegs under the shelf, and put the boldest face I could on the matter — quite the right sort of face to be shot in ; the steps would pass my door, and I would hang up the coat and hat, and take the face off. That is to say, when steps approached, I would assume an air of

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lofty and confident indifference ; on their passing I would return to a state of rather puzzled anxiety. As time wore on, I argued that it was getting rather late in the afternoon for shooting, and that if they had not come for me in half an hour, I might consider myself fairly safe for that day. Ten seconds later I heard some shouting from the head warder, — I surmised he was head warder, because he shouted loudest and called everybody " schwein " — and heard steps approaching the door. I felt that this was It this time. I felt rather as if I was standing on the edge of a swimming bath, wonder- ing what cold water felt like. However, they passed, and I could count on living for another twelve hours. All the morning long I had heard the warders shouting out numbers, and doors being imlocked, and their denizens taken away through the locked door at the entrance to the hall into what for all of us was a great and mysterious beyond. Later on I was to know what those con- tinual lockings and unlockings meant. Meanwhile, the second day came to an end. I had spent forty- eight hours in this private lavatory, without books, without writing material, without artificial light, without companionship of any sort, without exercise. If this were going to continue for many days longer, I should go mad. I couldn't stand it. — At least, so I thought.

CHAPTER VIII

A PEODUCT OF CIVILISATION

On the third day I became convinced that if they didn't come to take me away to be shot that day or the next, they weren't going to do it at all. Why I should fix on four days as the maximum they would keep a man alive, before putting him up against a wall to face a firing squad, I know not, but I felt that the German government was not going to waste 4d. on my keep if it was going to be faced with burial expenses on the fifth day. At any rate I felt that, for my own peace of mind, it was better to fix a time after which I might consider myself safe from death, and if, after aU, I turned out to be mistaken, it would be no harder to go through with the business.

I did not find this altogether an advantage, for now I had nothing on earth to think about, where before I had the joy of weighing all the pros and cons, taking first one view, then the other, abandoning and resuming both, playing with them as friends, keeping them always with me as companions. I was now also ravenously hungry. The good food I had had before being caught had prevented my feeling it very badly the first couple of days, but now, solitude and scarcity

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began to have their effect. I forgot all about my resolves to eat slowly, and at breakfast I pushed the bread into my mouth as far as it would go ; I ate it with just as many bites as I felt inclined for. Nothing mattered as long as I got it down into my inside. When I had finished, I began to feel rather serious, because hunger — ^real hunger — not your going without afternoon tea, or no-eggs-at-breakfast sort of affair — can, when a man is utterly without occupation, make life one continual aching weary desire. If the desire is not satisfied, or does not abate of its own accord (as it very often does), it can have disastrous effects on a man's mind. It has been known to make men think very seriously about the rights of property, and a few have become 80 imbalanced as to become socialists. It used to be thought that when socialism should make its appearance as a practical force, and its value questioned, the normally filled stomachs, being utterly unbiased by want and of perfect balance, would be able to form a sound judgment on the rights of property. Nevertheless, it was a hungry man who first made the remark that property was theft. I had had previous experience of what real hunger meant, when tramping about on a few shillings a week in the North of France, and in Norway, and I knew, when one has not even a mosquito to torment one, how overpowering can become the lust for food of no matter what sort. That day I thought the mess of pottage that Esau

A PRODUCT OF CIVILISATION 85

would probably not have looked at, equivalent, if not superior, to "peche Melba." It was not until I had finished scraping my own bowl so spotless that it was hardly worth whUe washing it, that I heard the whole prison echoing with everybody else doing the same. Again I had the sensation of companion- ship, though most of those whom I heard would never know of my existence, and I might never see them.

It was about a quarter to twelve. ... I had not been able to spin lunch out for more than a quarter of an hour, and I should now have to wait until half- past eleven the next day before I got my next solid meal. To-morrow I absolutely must make it last tiU the clock struck midday. The situation was ceasing to be humorous. I began to wonder if, granting I was not shot, I should be able to keep sane much longer. At present I was finding it rather hard to grin, while bearing it. I longed for books. I tried not to think of the hHls in Norway and the plains of Normandy. I tried to forget the glowing atmosphere of the Cambridge fens. I clenched my teeth at the memory of the joUy evenings spent in the rooms of a weU-known philo- sopher and cleric there. I rushed up and down, striding great paces. I would stare out of the window at the waU opposite. I would think of the barbarity of prison. I would . . . but before I had time to stop it, the thought of Cambridge, of Norway, of Switzerland, of Denmark, of France

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had slipped through my guard, and I was back again, spending my holidays tramping about with a riicksack on my back. Once I thought of the sea, and I went sick and dizzy with misery. The raw, intoxicating smeU, and the great gusts of wind of the North Sea came blowing into my mind. And I could do nothing, nothing, but walk up and down, labouring to push these images aside. I began to have conversations with friends. They became longer ; they grew interesting. I no longer walked up and down ; I no longer tried to keep these images away. I sat, and the same conversation would flow and reflow through my mind until I could almost hear the voices, and could foresee the points where laughter, jibe, criticism, agreement, pause, uproar were to come. Over and over the same conversation I would go, improving it, making it more logical, more intuitive, wittier, more youthful, more energetic, more life-like. I would get half- way ; I would turn back to make some alteration, review the handiwork of my imagination and then continue. Trivial were the things I thought of. 1 would meet a friend, and chat with him a moment, and then pass on. I would be rowing in one of the College eights, and would feel almost furious with the swearing of the coach on the bank. — " Get that fat little pot of yours down, will you. Shove with your legs, don't pull with those lobst^er-like arms of yoiu-s. Shove, damn you, shove. You're not a blooming passenger. Do some work." And my

A PRODUCT OF CIVILISATION 87

arms almost ached as I pictured myself sweating away at an oar, and quite distinctly there appeared to me the back of stroke — for I rowed seven — and I noted the texture of his vest as the sweat oozed through it in patches, as dimly, almost unseen, the banks of the river went past me. Grassy Comer, I remember, was intensely vivid. Bow side have to puU extra hard there, to get her nose round. We neared the railway bridge ; soon there would be an echo of the oars as we passed under it, and the coach, being on a bike, would disappear behind a pillar for a moment, and would start bellowing away and cursing twice as hard to make up for his absence. Again bow side had to pull a bit harder to get round the bend, again . . . and I almost sobbed with the pain of reality as I came back to earth. I was sweating as if I had reaUy rowed it, and my fists were clenched between my legs as if round an oar. My legs ached, as they only can ache after rowing. My heart was racing, and I was gasping for breath. I laughed haK bitterly as I got up to walk up and down once more, and found myself walking with that roll peculiar to after-rowing stiffness. It was striking midday.

I was going out for exercise. There were four or five of us being assembled at the end of the long hall. We were on the glass and iron balcony that ran right round the hall. There was another above

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us, and below was the ground floor. It was a week ago, one hundred and sixty-eight hours, that I had been at this end of the prison last. For one hundred and sixty-eight hours I had lived in between the four walls of that cell along there, about half-way down. I must look at the plate above my door, and see what number I am when we come back. We were supposed not to talk. The door was un- locked. Down seven flights of stone stairs we went, a turn to the right, through another locked door, and into the bureau, where an eternity ago I had tipped a member of the Royal Prussian Detective Force fifty pfennige. I still felt humorous about it. We were five. The clerk behind the desk counted us solemnly. " Fiinf Spatzierganger "^ called out our guard. " Gut. Fiinf," responded the clerk, and out through another locked door we went to a dirty yard. It was a bit of a road, seventy-five paces right round. One end went out under an archway to a large yard, and a side entrance led out through a door — on to the street. Opposite both these stood a policeman with a revolver in his belt. At first we all walked funereally, five paces between each. Then I stepped off the curb, and putting all the defiance I could into my step, raced round with legs and arms flying, at five miles an hour. The two policemen, fat, blue, and authoritative, expostulated at first, and then waved their hands airily. They seemed vastly amused. I don't believe they had

* "Five for walking."

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ever seen a man walk quickly before. The clerk, and an assistant from the bureau, came to the window and stared. I was so out of condition that I began to sweat and feel tired almost immediately, but it was impossible to give up the idea now, so I padded away as if I thought I was going to get out by doing so. As I went by the others, I would drop a whisper as I passed. " How long have you been here ? . . . Why ? . . . Have you seen the Direktor ? . . . What's the number of your ceU ? . . .What's your warder like ? . . . Any news ? . . . Any news ? . . . Any news ? " We aU thought each other spies, and were very cautious. We none of us knew why we were there, and our ignorance caused all of us mutually to affix the most horrible crimes. I was quite convinced that one man was at least a murderer. He was released the next day. " It's ghastly," one man remarked. " How do you kiU time ? " he whispered. " I don't," I replied unconsciously, " it kills me." I thought this such a joke that the humour of it lasted me for a whole day. I would occasionally chuckle with laughter for about ten minutes at a time, and feel a desire to tell the warder what a first-class jeu de mot I had given birth to.

I should explain here that this prison wa,s the Polizeigefangnis, Alexanderplatz, the great prison where criminals, as yet merely accused, are kept before they are taken to be examined. And not really good criminals are kept here either : drunkards, vagabonds, wife-beaters, politicals, pick-pockets,

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bag-snatchers, were the ordinary run. Nothing so interesting as a forger or embezzler, though I once, when waiting to see the doctor, who refused to examine me because I was an Englishman, met a most charming incendiary, the second of his race, who was in for ten years. We only had a few seconds' whispered conversation, and he told me he was suspected of insanity. " Are you ? " I asked, and he said he didn't think so, but of course one couldn't be sure, and then added, " since one doesn't know what sanity is."

"No," I replied, ** I suppose one doesn't." We were both quite serious. Now that I am safe here in England, I still hope for my friend, as I did then, that he will go mad. It is a much pleasanter medium in which to go through with pain than is sanity. If he goes mad, he will be cared for during the rest of his life and will live among his own delusions, instead of among ours. Instead of coming out at the end of ten years into the light of the world, blinking at its strangeness, with his mind too seared and numbed even to wonder at its hard unsympathetic cruelty, he will remain in his present consciousness for ever. He, like every other jail-bird, is unconsciously doing aU he can to adapt himself to his environment. He is straining to alter his nature, to deaden his ability to feel joy, as man once lost his monkey's tail for want of the necessity to hang on by it. Soon " nice " and '* nasty," " pain " and " pleasure,"

A PRODUCT OF CIVILISATION 91

" joy " and " agony " will aU be unmeaning terms to him, and he will go about with his mind a blank, no longer able to hope, unable to feel the joy of any hope satisfied. Gradually even that numb aching background to his daily waking and sleeping will disappear, and he will become an automaton, fed, clothed, and housed at humanity's expense, a living monument to humanity itself. Ten years hence, when this which I now write has long been in the dust-consumer, and you who read it will have experi- enced more sensations than there are hairs to your head, will have profited by them, will have lost by them, wiU at any rate, have felt them, enjoyed them, or suffered under them, there will come out from under an arched door, that wiU clang behind him and give him not one single second's joy by doing so, a smooth-faced man. He will do nothing for a time, and he wiU then move off almost unconscious of the streets that he saw last ten years ago, and of which, for ten years, he has been within one hundred yards, till he blunders once more in a dull, aching misery that freedom will revive within him, into the arms of Justice, under the chariot wheels of the Law. . . . Good luck to you, my friend. We who have passed under those chariot wheels know fuU well that I am wishing you the best of luck when I wish you madness, quick, fiery, strong, absorbing. (This, I would like to tell you if I could but reach you in that cell you are at this moment pacing up and down, as a message

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from that admirable outside world I have reached, and which you will never see with any joy in your heart, is black immorality. Your sanity, like your life, must be preserved in order that you may con- template to the full the enormity of your crime, and the fitness of the punishment which humanity has imposed upon you. Besides, my dear fellow, society has to protect itself against you and your sort.)

I no longer even had any rooted objection to insanity. I was fast getting to that point where the doubt arises as to whether after all madness is not the true sanity. It seemed as if the really im- portant things were those that the world ignored : that the world was reaUy thinking huge fat thoughts about nothing and inventing yards of elaborate phrases to attach to the vacuity. I had a strong temptation to go forward and make great new discoveries of Truth in this unknown region.

That day was remarkable in another respect. A small porcine rotundity rambled methodically round the cells of those who had been there a week or more, and took down a list of the food they wanted to buy. Bread, cheese, butter was permitted. He slammed the door, and twenty-four hours later ib was flung open, and out of a large basket was handed you your behests. Everything was entered in a book and checked, signed by the Direktor, and checked again ; given out to the prisoners, and checked again. The book was then sent to the clerk in the

A PRODUCT OF CIVILISATION 93

bureau downstairs, and the money spent entered in each prisoner's account. They were scrupulously honest about money matters, and I remember a terrific fuss because one pfennig (yVd.) was missing, or superfluous, or had failed to behave itself in a manner proper to pfennige. That clerk would rather have died than that he should be so inaccurate as to mislay a pfennig.

I had been in solitary confinement for about a fortnight, without books, without artificial light, without writing material, without speaking except to the walls, when, on being gathered together at the end of the balcony at half -past two for our half- hour's exercise, which had now become a regular institution, I saw that after having varied from one to five, and back again to one, our company had now swollen to the largest proportions hitherto known to the place. The whole company, I noticed, were obviously politicals, and, on the whole, they did not appear German. One, indeed, dressed in a blue suit and with brown boots and moustache to match, was typical of the Prussian's conception of an Englishman. For some reason — probably due to the bad food — I immediately put him down as a bounder. Why, I know not, for he turned out to be the most charming fellow. When the jailer had unlocked aU the doors upon his list, the main door at the end was unlocked, and we all jostled down- stairs, and as we ran down we managed to exchange many a word under cover of the shuffle of feet on

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the stone steps. For days we were all awfully sus- picious of one another, and got quite convinced that we were spies, put there by the authorities to exact confessions under the seal of fellowship. This, we all knew, was the kind of thing the Prussians would call " praktisch." I cannot remember how many we were in all, but as we went round and round that yard, we gradually closed up behind one another, until within talking distance. I got the latest news of the war. We must have closed up a bit too much, for one of the policemen shouted at us, and we had to spread out, and thus conversation for that day ended.

But the next day we continued it. Walking round and round that yard, with each of us doing his best to express angelic innocence with his face, at the same time preventing his lips from appearing to move, there would arise a gradual and gentle hum of conversation. From whence it came, it was impossible to say. Everybody was looking in different directions, and if a lip did appear to move, it was the forerunner of a violent fit of coughing. Occasionally one of the two monumental edifices would roar out, "Das conversatzion ist streng Verboten. Ruhe ! "^ and a number of faces as blank as chorus-girls would turn round in complete sur- prise and injured innocence. Soon that subtle ethereal hum would arise again. " Ruhe " would bawl Tweedledum, " Das conversatzion ist streng

' " CoQversatioD is Btrictly forbidden. Silence ! "

A PRODUCT OF CIVILISATION 95

Verboten," would roar Tweedledee. Again that row of faces would turn with a unison that would please a music-hall manager. " Conversation. . . . Why, who wanted to talk ? "

It reaUy was first-class sport, almost as good as trying to train a fly to do the goose step, when one got into the ceU through lack of vigilance on the part of the warders. It reminded us all of that diabolic torture of schoolmasters indulged in by boys, who start all together, saying " bzzzz bzzzzzzz " in a pontifical undertone. The poor wretch they have set on thereupon looks up in fury, surprise, or just with a horrible sort of quietness, according to his nature and ex- perience. Any remark on his part is met with " Noise, sir ! What noise ? Where, sir ? " or " It must have been a bee, sir, bzzz." " Ruhe ! " would shout one stentor, and a dozen or so astonished faces would turn towards him. " Das conversatzion ist streng Verboten," would roar the other, and the dozen surprised faces would turn towards him. They both ignored this completely. We enjoyed it immensely, almost as much as do schoolboys.

After we had been taken back into the bureau, and one of our guardians had roared " Dreizehn Spatzier- ganger "^ and the clerk had counted us, and replied *' Gut, dreizehn Spatzierganger," we went up the eighty-five stairs and seven landings to our cells. We went theoretically in twos, but, as a matter of "Thirteen walkers."

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fact, w© used to go up in a most coagulatory fashion, all talking in whispers at once. My companions were always expecting to be released the next day, for two of them were attaches to the American Embassy. They were both English, but had, at the request of the American Ambassador, taken over the management of the committee for the relief of the British destitute in Grermany, and the censoring of letters sent to relatives in England via the Embassy. They, and the whole committee, all of whom were under the protection of the Embassy, were suddenly arrested one evening when at work in their office, and, except for the general suspicion of espionage, they were never told for what they were imprisoned. The two leaders received the most brutal treatment, and were in prison for, altogether, nineteen weeks, most of the time in solitary. I saw them when they both came out. They were sorry wrecks. The others were released earlier.

After they had been there three weeks, and I had been there five, still without books and light, etc., and the days getting shorter, shorter, and shorter, they were told they would be removed to a military prison the next day. The next day was Sunday. Now, the Prussians, being firm Christians, believe that Sunday should be differentiated from other days. The prisoners, therefore, had no walk. We got up at half -past six, and waited until we went to bed_^again at half -past six. In addition to this,

A PRODUCT OF CIVILISATION 97

on Sunday morning at nine o'clock we were subjected to the torture of hearing German criminals from another building sing hymns. Have you ever heard German criminals sing hymns ? . . .

That afternoon is one of those I should like not to remember. At half-past three I heard doors being unlocked, and I knew that the others were being moved to Templehof or some such place where they would be allowed books, etc., at least so they thought. One after another, they went past my door, and I waited for the key to be inserted into my lock. One banged my door with his shoulder as he went by. That was his adieu.

Later in the day, a charming fellow of a warder, full of deep religious feeling derived from hymn- singing with criminals, came into the cell and started jeering at me because the others had gone, " some to be released, ' ' and I had been left there. He told me I was going to be shot the next day but one. My satiric smile rather annoyed him, and, after shouting somewhat, he started smUing also, with a kind of you-wait-and-see sort of air, and so we were both left smiling at each other in this fashion, with no visible means of ever being able to stop. How- ever, my grin was fixed, and his, after becoming somewhat feline, faded away into gloom and a hop, skip and jump, as the step of the head warder was heard approaching.

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One day before my friends had arrived I had been coming up the stairs with no companion but a sUent warder, when I espied a female form on the flight above me kneeling on a mat washing the steps. As I came up to her, she got up to let us pass and I saw that she had no face. I had a sudden tendency to stop and rush back, but instead I hurried past. She had eyes, cheeks, nose and mouth, and yet there was no face. These were mere lumps of shaped flesh. There was not an expression in any of them. Her eyes were blue, but they no longer recorded even that she felt boredom. I saw that in reality she was already dead. I had passed an automaton. The warder noticed nothing. He had been there some time.

CHAPTER IX

SANITY AND MADNESS

I FORGET now how many times I saw the Direktor of the prison, though at the time, the days on which I did were as distinct to me as wounds, which a man cannot see, but which he knows individually and intimately. In order to obtain audience of this gentleman, it was necessary, when the warder un- locked the door at 6.30 and the pitchers were put out, to ask to see the Herr Direktor. At half-past nine you were taken out of the cell, let through the door at the end down one flight and through to the floor which you could see over the railings of the balcony. Here again you were put into a cell, and the door was locked, and time passed by. Nothing else happened. In half an hour, or an hour, you were lined up in the passage with any others who also had requests. One by one you would go into that little office. You would bow at the entrance. " Ja ? " would remark the bald- headed old grey-beard, with an Iron Cross of '70 hanging from his coat. " Ja ? " And you would state your request. A vast ledger opposite him, the old bird, for he looked exactly Hke the Jackdaw o! Rheims, would enter and sign and countersign in it. His decision was given in a curt " Ja " or " Nein,"

99

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or " Das geht nicht,"^ and you would be standing in the line outside, among those whose chance had not yet come. You had succeeded ; you had failed — ^who knows what luck would attend you on these expeditions. Every request to write a letter had to be made in this manner. The shiny-headed old bird, with the head jailer in attendance his hand stiffly at his sword, would enter your name, the name of the addressee, and the reason for writing it, in his vast ledger. " Ja ? Nein. Das geht nicht," and it is all over. Time after time I craved permission to write to His Excellency the American Ambas- sador, to request him to tell my people at home that I was alive. It was granted at the third request. What agony were those mornings, pacing up and down in the cell downstairs, waiting to be put into line. What could I say to the old boy to persuade him? Hundreds of passionate words rose in my mind, as I paced up and down that cell, waiting for the moment. " Bitte, Herr Direktor, kann ich ein brief schreiben ? "^ was all that I could stammer out, almost before I had reached the threshold of his ofiBce. " Ja ? Nein. Das geht nicht," and I, after staring at him with eyes like a rabbit's fastened on a snake, unable to find words to say more, aching with the dull misery of refusal, have passed away, giving place to someone else who, in his turn, also succeeds or fails.

' " That is impossible."

••* " Please, Herr Direktor, may I write a letter ?"

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I used to try once a fortnight, and though I have since discovered that even the letters I wrote were never sent, yet nevertheless I always had a hope of their getting through. Regularly as clock- work every other Monday, after the Hell of Sun- day, I would request to see the Direktor. For the first ten weeks, I persevered in this. Then suddenly I began to go to pieces. I missed one Monday, and put oft asking the old bald-pate until Tuesday. When the moment came round on the Tuesday morning, I funked it again. Wednesday came, and again I funked. On Thursday, I managed to push the words asking to see the Direktor from between my lips. Then with a rush, realising there was no going back, I felt all courage return to me. My head became as clear as a bell, and arguments to meet every objection of the Direktor's came to my mind. He had let me write several times previously, and I had not troubled him now for seventeen days. I was confident. Again I repeated my request gently to myself. . . . Suddenly I realised I was standing before him, and that I must speak. I must say something. I had come there to say something. Unless I asked him something, he would say I was not to be brought before him again. My eyes fixed on the large pimple on the top of his head. I could not take them away. The pimple was not quite in the centre of the cranium, but occupied, so to speak, the position half-way betwixt centre-forward and

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right outside. He wore it where a comedian wears a top hat the size of a five-shilling bit in attempts to be funny. My thoughts followed it. It was unique, and magnificent. " Have you any super- fluous hair ? " I thought. I should love to breathe very gently on the shiny surface, just to see if it becomes misty, or whether it still shines through everything. I wondered if it was very sensitive, so sensitive that he could feel what was reflected in it, or whether it was pachydermatous, and safe to dig pins into. He was going to move. He was just finishing ofiE the entry he was making in the ledger. He was going to look up at me and say, " Ja wohl ? " — Speak, say something — speak — speak. . . .

It was evening. I was in my cell. The light was fading fast. I was thinking how on the mor- row I would try again, how it only needed careful preparation, and I should be as able as anybody to say what I wanted to, — to speak.

After you have been in solitary for some time, it becomes increasingly difl&cult to retain your judg- ment. I know that first I would make up my mind that I was going to be in prison for two years, and then a great and irresistible hope would arise within me, that I should be sent to a concentration camp called Ruhleben, that I had had a whisper of from my friends. I had hoped for some sort of a trial

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to know how long I was going to remain where I was. Every day that passed at ten o'clock, when I imagined that anyone, before whom I might be brought, had come down to his office, I would put on the one collar I had. Every day at six I would take it o£E again, preserving it for the next day. At times I became convinced that, because I was not yet of age, I was to be kept for a few months more, and that the day after my twenty-first birthday, I was to be sentenced to some ghastly sort of punishment, like solitary for two years, or for life. (There seemed absolutely no difference between these two, and I dreaded the one as much as the other. Both appeared interminable, and I had no hopes of coming out sane, even after the shorter period. I pictured myself moaning about the London Law Courts in a celluloid collar, picking up a little copying work here, and a little there, until I finally sank into a mumbling old age at twenty-five, and died in delirium tremens at thirty.)

Another fact made me terribly despondent, and, fight how I would, was gradually making me utterly hopeless. About fourteen days after my companions of the British Rehef Committee had gone, a new-comer had arrived. He spoke Grerman absolutely perfectly, but with an Austrian accent. I. had heard him say something to the warder. I will not tell his story, for he is at the present moment in another prison in BerHn, though not in solitary, and

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is, I know, writing his reminiscences in readiness for when the war shall come to an end. Let it suffice, however, to say that he had been discovered, soon after war broke out, writing articles for a London paper. He was arrested at the flat he happened to be living in, and, after a large amount of palaver, was given twenty-four hours to leave the country in. He was accompanied to the frontier. Within a fort- night he was back again. He had gone to London, had seen his paper, had come back to Holland, and at the frontier had pretended to be an Austrian waiter who had been expelled from England. He so exasperated his interrogators at the frontier by his eternal repetition of his ill treatment at the hands of his dastardly English employers, that they finally let him pass. However, in the end he was caught — as we all are — and recognised. He had been told that he was to be sent to this place Ruhleben, and, when one day he disappeared, I naturally surmised that he had been taken there. He was very good to me, for he had managed to get permission to buy fruit ; I had been refused it. So he used to buy double the quantity, and daily, on going down the stairs, smuggle me an apple. " If he," I argued, " who has done this thing twice, and who is hoary with old age (he was about thirty-five), gets sent to this camp Ruhleben, after being here for three weeks, and I, who have only done it once, and am not yet of age, and have been here nine weeks, and have not been sent there, then there is

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no hope of my ever getting there. They would have sent me there by now, were they going to do so at all." Afterwards, I found, of course, that he had never been sent anywhere near Ruhleben, but simply to another prison. I heard the most wonderful stories about his doings there, from a friend who was sent to prison for a time. He would appear for exercise dressed in flamboyant pink running shorts, a vest and socks to match — and a top hat. What on earth for ? Well, if the walls of prison don't supply you with humour or whimsicality, you must undertake the task yourself.

The best of luck to him. He probably thinks I am still in that Polizeigefangnis.

For some time I had been the oldest inhabitant of the prison. The usual denizen of the place came for a day or two, and then went on his way through that process called Law and Justice. My position gradually came to give me tiny little privileges. For instance, they became quite convinced that I was going mad, for, apart from my habit of walking round and round the exercise yard at nearly five miles per hour, every night I would repeat the Jabberwocky. It had taken me a whole week with my broken-down memory to piece together the odd bits of lines and verses that I still carried in my head ; and another week to evolve Mr. Kipling's "If." I would suddenly shout loudly into the solid blackness that " All mimsey were the borrow- groves and the moamwraths outgrabe," I knew

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quite well that borrogoves was the correct litany, but I preferred borrow-groves ; so borrow-groves it was. ** One two, one two and through and through the vorpel blade went snicker snack. He left it dead and with its head he went galumphing back," and I would make that " snicker snack " all slow and creepy, like Captain Hook ; and would rise to a triumphant roar as I announced the fact that he " galumphed " back, in preference to any other form of locomotion that might have been available, glorying at his ability to resist tempta- tions such as taxi-cabbing, taking the tube, or walking, and, above aU, the insidious run.

" If you can make one heap of all your winnings, And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss, And lose ; and start again at your beginnings. And never breathe a word about your loss."

// (and I shouted as if I was praying for life itfielf)

" If you can force your heart, and nerve, and sinew

To serve their turn, long after they are gone, And so hold on, when there is nothing in you. Except the will, which says to them, * hold on.' "

And I would repeat it softly to myself, until loudly again, pacing madly up and down the cell, I would argue, " Yes, that's all very well, you know, but your will is the very thing that suffers before your heart and nerve and sinew are anywhere near gone. Why, it's the very base, the very foundation of all things, that is attacked, and then what are you going to do, Mr. Rudyard ? " Nevertheless, I found

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an odd sort of comfort, and they were nearly always my prayer to the setting sun as the darkness stole in.

I also used to hum, whistle, and sing. This was strictly forbidden by one of the thirty-three regula- tions pasted on the back of the door. One night in December, when the darkness had been extra oppressive, — ^I was in darkness for eighteen out of the twenty-four hours — and I had been singing loud enough for the warders to hear, one came up and, rapping on the door, said that such behaviour was forbidden, nevertheless, he would ask the Herr Direktor as an especial favour, if I might be per- mitted to whistle occasionally. This is what comes of being the oldest inhabitant of a jail. The next day there was solemnly filled into the ledger by the chief warder, and countersigned by the Direktor, " Erlaubnis zu nummer acht und fiinfzig zu singen und zu pfeifen."^

I shall never forget the day on which, after thirteen weeks, in January, 1915, I left prison — to go to another. Nothing, I was convinced, could be more of a living Hell than those thirteen weeks at the Polizeigefangnis. I was escorted out into the street. There was snow upon the pavements : it had been summer when I saw them last. Our route lay round the comer. Here, after passing through a low door in an immensely thick wall, once again I found myself in an atmosphere, not merely of 1 " Permit to Number 68 to sing and to whistle."

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red tape, but of the very essence from which tape, and redness, are made. Those innumerable bureaux: those ticketings, docketings, searching of clothes, etc., occupied a couple of hours, until I found myself in a bright and beautiful cell thirteen feet by six. This was the famous Stadt Vogtei prison. " Vogtei," literally translated, means a bailiff's office, but why a prison should be called " The City BailifiE's Office," or why the city baihff's office should be a prison, I am at a loss to say.

Notwithstanding the bailiff, it was quite a good prison. Large numbers of English people — five to six hundred in all — had been here before they were sent to Ruhleben " for purposes of quarantine " as the official report says. It was a gentleman's prison ; it was intended for those who had sentences for minor offences to serve, e.g. two to three months. But this did not frighten me, as I knew of its character as a depot for Ruhleben. I was full of hope. We had two meals of skilly a day instead of one. I was allowed to talk to the others during the two hours' exercise they were good enough to allow, and I could buy almost anything I wanted — bar newspapers,

I had another experience here that nearly killed me. There was the usual shelf for bowl, spoon, etc., and from the side hung a fat little book with one hundred and thirty-three rules. It con- tained all the pTinishments for all the various main crimes, worked out in permutations and combina-

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tions. Things such as " for not cleaning out of the cell for the first time the prisoner is to be punished by the three days' withdrawal of the midday hot meal, or instead one day withdrawal of the hot meal, and a second day withdrawal of the cold meal (breakfast), or, in lieu thereof ... In addition to which ... or as an alternative ... in substitute thereof . . . But for the second offence, or dirti- ness of a second degree, or unpunctuality of the third degree, or noise of the twentieth degree, the prisoner shall be punished by withdrawal of . . . whereof ... in lieu of this can be substituted ..." etc. etc. Now, on the outside of this little fat book with its one hundred and thirty-three rules was a diagram of the shelf from which it hung, show- ing exactly in what order the washing bowl, the eating bowl, the spoon, the fork, the soap were to be placed. And not merely was there a front view, but also two side views were given : one showing the side of the shelf with one towel hanging somnolently from a nail, and the other side view showing the other end of the shelf with the booklet itself hanging even more somnolently from another nail. But yes, there was something more : for not merely was there a picture of the booklet, but the picture of the booklet had the picture of the booklet pasted on the booklet's cover, and, what is more, the side which bore this diagram faced outwards, and the right- hand top corner was against the waU. Thus was it according to the picture. But it so happened that

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this was impossible, for the two were incompatible. Either the picture had to face inwards, or the left- hand top corner must touch the wall. But both together was contrary to the nature of the book. Feeling rather jolly at my new environment, I pointed this out to the jailer, who wasn't a bad sort of fellow, when he came in. At first he didn't grasp it, but when he did, he took serious note of it with pen and ink. Next day, in came the prison governor, a military-looking fellow, and he went straight to the booklet at the side of the cupboard, and examining the diagram on the cover, studied the incompatibility carefully for a long time. He turned round, and after looking whimsically at me, and then at the warder for some time, as if trying to make up his mind as to who was the biggest fool, said, " H'm," very definitely, and went away.

Alas, I only remained here five days. I had hardly finished breakfast when the warder came round with a list and said I was to " pack up," though, since I had nothing to pack, his orders were rather superfluous. Again weary hours of waiting in the bureau, and then, for the first time in my life, I saw the inside of Black Maria.

I had imagined it to have cells all the way down the side, but there were only two. There were seven of us, including a woman and a police- man. Heaven knows what the woman was " in " for, and though I several times formulated the question mentally, I could never manage to get

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it out. The policeman was quite a nice fellow, and let us talk, and joined in himself with an air of a busy man sparing a moment to play with some children. It soon became plain that one of the men was the woman's husband, or ought to have been if he wasn't. The others were gentlemen, sentenced for petty offences, who were being taken to the town hall to be enlisted in the army. They did not seem to relish the prospect, but " at any rate," they said, " it would be a change." I looked through the grille to see what I could of Berlin streets. There were not many people on them, and the greater number were women and in black, but the quietness of the place was nothing to what I was to see later. There were a few luxury-selling shops, such as flower sellers, that were closed, but the majority seemed able to get along. That Teutonic spectacle, extraordinary but obviously sensible, of women going about without hats could be seen everywhere. And then we suddenly drove into the inevitable yard. Two gates unbarred and locked themselves automatically as one passed. It was my third jail. It was the great prison — Moabit. A huge central haU surmounted by a dome, with wings going in aU directions and the end of each wing connected by another great building, each with six storeys of cells, and each of these with its iron balcony with glass flooring. There was noise, and clanging of doors everywhere. I was told to stand at the commencement of one of the wings, just off the

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dome. There was a huge clock, and I noticed it had a bell attached to it. At any rate, I thought, I shall hear the hour strike. The number of my cell, I can remember it now, was 1603, " the year Queen Elizabeth died," I remarked to myself, as it was unlocked, and I went in. It was a larger cell than I had hitherto had — about fourteen feet by six. There was electric light and a table and seat that folded down from the wall. The window was, as usual, above my head, but this time it was made of frosted glass. There was a horrid suggestion of permanency about the place that made me feel rather bad. I asked the warder who gave me my prison underclothing — I was allowed to keep my own suit — whether one was always in solitary here, and for how long one came. " Immer im einzel- haft " — always in solitary, — and for three to four months and upward, he said. " Never less ? " I asked. " No, never," he replied. ' Come with me," he continued, and I was taken down into the very bowels of this terrible edifice, till, finally, I joined a vast squad of criminals. He left me. We then filed down devious passages once more, and finally were led into a vast room with about two hundred and seventy showers in it. When bathed, I was locked into a large, bare cellar just opposite, and here I was soon joined by two others, one an elderly middle- aged man of about fifty-six, and the other an evil- looking devil of about thirty-four. They sat down on the bench. I was walking up and down. They

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were an interesting couple. They were about to be examined by an Untersuchungsrichter, or examining magistrate, and the younger one was coaching the other in what to say. The elder seemed too numbed to agree or disagree, though he seemed to have a tendency towards the truth, which the other promptly suppressed, but just sat there, his hands on his knees, seemingly deaf. Once the younger strode up to him threateningly as if to hit him. He ground his teeth and swore that by God, if the old

man were to say that he'd Then he tried a

different tack ; he argued, he elucidated, he showed the simplicity of his ideas, and how, above all, it would help themselves.

When the young one became bellicose I had felt no inclination to help the old man. Why, I know not. I think I felt that nothing, least of aU truth, should stand in the way of man's sal- vation from that place, and that if the old man hadn't got enough gumption to tell what seemed to be a few weU-concocted lies, weU, he ought to be made to, since it involved the fate of the younger man, who was not yet reduced to the state of an incapacitated jelly. It was the same old story : Fate had beaten the old man, but had not succeeded in persuading the young one that he also was beaten ; the young one refused to acknow- ledge it. It was blind instinct that told him to lie, though he knew with clever lawyers against him, and, worst of all opponents, the law, the chances of

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his getting through to freedom were remote. I had noticed hitherto that it was always the young men who felt the strain most, seemed most conscious of the inhuman cruelty of prison, and I was to find out later that it was generally the young ones who recovered easiest. Sometimes the older ones don't recover. A man I was to meet later was afflicted with sudden decay of the optic nerve, and is now gradu- ally going blind, purely as a result of solitary.

The door opened suddenly, and they were taken out, and as they passed me I saw the younger and villainous one look at the old man, in a manner in which threats, prayers, and above all, the desire to instil the wish to live were all inexpressibly mixed. They passed. I never saw them again. I often wonder where they are. There are lots like them.

I was taken back to my ceU. I was now sinking fast. I saw little hopes of recovery. I was quickly becoming a broken-down creature, and though physically I should have lasted out for years, mentally I saw there was a crash not far ahead. I had seen it happen with other men before. As it was, mentally I was fast becoming a species of cow. I would stand for hours at a time, leaning my head into the comer, my hands in my pockets, staring at the floor. I would find that for hours I had been saying to myself " My dear sir " — I always called myself " my dear sir " when talking out loud, — " you really must make an effort to get out. I mean it's simply too stupid to spend the best years of your

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life in a box like this. Use your wits. Do some- thing. Go on, you juggins, get out somewhere. Think ! " and so on, from twelve till three. I became absolutely impersonal, and found it difficult to have likes and dislikes about anything. I absolutely forgot what flowers smelt like. Milk I could not imagine. Fruit, tobacco, fish, were mere names to me. I had forgotten what they were. I could not understand the meaning of the term " red."

Though I longed to be free, I felt that human beings would be perfectly unbearable. I no longer considered myself as one. I felt perfectly decorporealised : I was merely a mind contempla- tive and a poor one at that. And yet I longed for their company. I still kept up my nightly habit of repeating a few verses from any poem I could remember, and after the light had gone out — ^for here there was electric light — ^I would rise solemnly in the dark, and make the most fiery of speeches to the Cambridge Union — ^poor Cambridge Union. I would then proceed to oppose my own motion, pick holes in it, show up the proposer as an impostor and a charlatan. A seconder would then arise, who with all the sarcasm of a Voltaire would rend the immediate speaker adjective from substantive, verb from adverb, until quivering with the lacera- tion received, the latter would be thrown, a bleed- ing proposition, into the waste deserts of verbosity.

It was just about this time that I nearly got

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myself shot for attempted murder. I was so used to the darkness that I found electric light rather trying to the eyes, and therefore turned the bracket upwards toward the ceiling in order to have but reflected light. A little later in came the warder. He saw the upturned bracket, and lifting the hilt of his sword, hit me sharply over the head. In a flash I was on him. I had raised my fists on each side for a smashing blow on his temples. He was unable to get away, for he was so short that my arms could have nailed him as he tried. He saw there was no escape, and the sight of my face blazing with fury and wretchedness made him drop his sword. I relished that moment, I gloated over it. I kept my fists going backwards and forwards nearly touching his temples, but never quite. I tried to imagine the agony in his rabbit-like mind, waiting for the crushing blow to fall upon him, and wonder- ing what it would feel like. Suddenly he turned a sickly green. His hat was knocked all on one side. I saw beneath his uniform a fat little vulgar bourgeois, incapable of a thought outside the satisfying of his own senses. He turned from green to a pasty yellow. He glanced piteously up into my distorted face. I drove him back towards the door, growling and hissing at him, my fists going like a steam hammer on each side of his head. His agony became worse. His eyes flew from one side to the other, like a rabbit looking for escape. His little pointed flaxen beard wobbled and, such was bis

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panic, so did his stomach. Suddenly my mind changed, and taking him by the shoulders, and putting my knee, as far as it was possible, into his belly, I pushed him backwards, and he sat down violently and disconsolately in the passage outside, his sword underneath him, and his hat roUing away into the darkness. I slammed the door, and after a time he got up and locked it, I knew nothing would happen to me, for he was not permitted to hit me, but had I hit him back, I gasp to think of the number of years I should now be doing.

This, the third prison I had been in, was the worst. Physically it was slightly better : there was more space, light, two good meals a day, but the very last drop of individuality was taken away from you. It was not permitted even to arrange the bowls on the shelf as you liked. I never saw daylight, for our exercise took place at haH-past six in the dark. It was now the 20th of January : I had been arrested in the early days of October. Since then I had been residing in a lavatory. I found it duU.

Despite the warder's announcement that nobody ever came there for less than three or ioui months, I was suddenly taken away again after five days, and Black Maria drove me back once more to the Polizeigefangnis of the Alexanderplatz. I was too miserable by now to care where I was sent or what they did to me. I was beginning to lose the power of appreciating anything — whatever its nature. I found some new arrivals at Alexanderplatz. The

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place was full as usual with neutrals who were under suspicion : Dutch, Swedes and Danes. One Dutchman had been there for seven weeks in solitary. I was just reaching the final depths of despair when, one night, just as I had got my first foot into bed, the door was flung open, and into the gloom a voice shouted " 'raus."^ I *' raused " timidly and in my night-shirt, and was told to dress quickly. I did so, surmising I was to go to another prison. I began to feel quite numb, and I no longer hoped for anything. Downstairs in the bureau a very pleasant policeman took charge of me, and after having signed the receipts for the accept- ance of my carcase, he made the usual remark, " Kommen Sie mit," and off we went. I thought it odd that we should go alone : they usually fetch the criminals in batches. " Where are we going to ? " I asked. " Ruhleben," he said.

For a moment I could hardly feel. I hardly dared feel. I just breathed quietly to myself, and thought how nice the air tasted. I was going to see human beings again. For a time the words were rather mean- ingless, and then I gradually began to revive under their warmth. We went out into the street to the Alexanderplatz station. I had a fine opportunity to run away here, though I should have been a fool to have done so, and to have invited prison again. In any case, I had no glasses with me, and I was very short-sighted. We had gone up on to the 1 "Out"

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platform, and I was chuckling and giggling like a schoolgirl at seeing life once again, when the police- man discovered it was the wrong one. " Run," he said, " there's our train over there." I ran like a leopard. In ten bounds I had slipped through the crowd and had lost him. I ran on down the stairs, and into the street. How glorious it all seemed, and I roared aloud with laughter, at which a sallow-faced woman in black seemed offended and turned round to stare. I rushed on, up the other set of stairs and in time my captor appeared. The idea of bolting had just entered my head and flown, but " no," I said, " wait till we get to Ruhleben, and have got tired of that, then we'U see what can be done."

Meanwhile, I stared out into the darkness from the brightly-Ut carriage as we steamed through the suburbs of Berlin. I got a glimpse of a tiny room, in which numbers of steaming dishevelled women were crowded together bending over machines and needle- work. They were being sweated. That was their daily life. They, too, lived in what was really a prison, though no law stopped them roaming whence they would. I was in the world once more. . . .

CHAPTER X

THE IMPRESSIONS OP A LUNATIC ON RELEASE FROM SOLITARY

So much has been written about Ruhleben ; so much from the outside : so little from the inside. From the point of view of accurate description, there is only one side of the wire fence that can be considered the right side. From other points of view, the matter can be said to be reversed. The first time I saw Ruhleben, it was already dusk. There was six inches of snow upon the ground, and several degrees of frost. The soles of my boots were worn away from walking up and down the cell. I reckoned I had altogether walked 1730 miles up and down those eleven feet. I walked with my socked feet upon the ice and snow. It was very cold. After we had passed along a long brick wall, and had been admitted at a door half-way along, I found myself in a square. In the centre of the square was an electric standard with an arc light which flickered. Beneath this arc light walked up and down hundreds of dark couples. They walked energetically, and seemed to have some object in doing so. I learnt later that it was in order to keep warm. I was taken away to fill up my name on a slip, and for the poUceman to hand over my money. I was given a receipt for the greater part of it, and

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was handed over about 30 marks in cash. There was a large map in the office, and for the first time since October I saw where the line was on the Western front. The last news that I had had, was just before I got over the frontier. Then the great retreat of the Grermans from the Mame to the Aisne was in full swing. Of this, the Grerman public heard nothing, but that their " right wing had slightly altered its position backwards " — " am strategische griinde,"^ and then, much later, it was noticed that the daily reports contained mention of places that had been captured in the great advance. Gradually, the idea filtered through to the mind of the Grerman public that they had retreated. The map with its flags and pins absorbed me immensely ; I had not seen anything like it for more than four months.

Then a soldier took me. We went down alleys, through doors. Everywhere there were people. The place was crowded with them. We arrived at a tiny office, where somebody, after having been wakened up, gave me a white shaving bowl with K.G. on it, and a blanket that was at the same time diaphanous and wet. He then took me to what he called my barrack. I did not notice the outside in the dark, but the interior was a long concrete- floored passage, with a couple of electric lights. On each side were huge sliding doors. In this passage were a collection of unshaven individuals, wrapped up in vast rugs, overcoats, sweaters,

^ For reasons of strategy.

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mufflers, Norwegian ski-ing caps, all stamping vast iron-hoofed feet upon the ground. A great noise of chatter filled the air. I felt rather dazed by it all. Somebody came up to me and remarked he was the " captain " of the barrack, and he supposed I had better sleep upstairs. There was no room in a box downstairs, and little in the loft. However, I must manage as best I could. Everybody, frightfully keen to hear what anybody frpm what they were good enough to term the outside, had to say, crowded round and cross-examined me, fed me with bread, which was plentiful in those days, and stuffed sausage, jam and cake down my throat. I found Bpeech difficult, and kept reversing all my words. It took a few days to get rid of this. I was the last packet of news from England — somewhat delayed in arrival. What were the people like at home ? Were things as black as they were painted. " My dear sir," I was forced to reply, " I haven't seen the

paint yet. The last I saw of England was ," etc.

I went outside into the snow, and up a staircase outside. I sat on a straw sack on the floor, and so did everyone. I Uved for months in that place. It was impossible to stand upright in it, and at one spot the snow came gently through the roof. It was here I slept. The atmosphere was as thick as cheese ; the whole place stank, and you could take the air, and cut it into chunks, throw it about and stamp on it, and yet it seemed about the same viscidity as mud. Nobody took their clothes off, or,

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at best, changed into others. We were so closely packed that it was impossible to put one's arms above one's head. The light went out, and an hour later there was silence. I could not sleep. The singularly inharmonic method of snoring that reigned supreme made the whole loft vibrate with these exgurgitatory sounds. It was intensely cold. There was no air. I reckoned that there was one half square inch of window space per man, and my own particular half square inch was eighteen feet away and round the comer. The air was very thick. This particular loft had a wood floor, and the vast chunks of snow that were carried up by the wooden clogs that everyone wore, had made the wood soft with damp. Humanity, when compressed, stinks abominably, and this wet that pervaded everything made matters worse. It got into the straw sacks, and either the straw or the canvas had been used before ; the past purposes must have been distinctly aromatic. These lofts in which we slept were the gables of the stables. Large beams ran in all directions, supporting the roof, which sloped to within two feet of the floor. In this loft there were two hundred people in four rows ; two back to back in the centre, and one on each side. The people on the side, if tall, were unable to stand upright. To anybody awake at that time, the scene was extraordinary ; one Ught, that was left burning in case of fire, showed it up. The floor could not be seen for huddled forms that covered it. The atmosphere was thick and misty.

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but through it could be seen an avenue of clothing and personal belongings hanging from the low roof and beams, fading away into darkness in the far distance. Here an overcoat looked like a man hanging by the neck, relieved by the whiteness of a pair of pants hanging by one leg. Here, one man had put on all his spare clothing, and a cadaverous face projected out of the top of what appeared to ba a diver's suit. Numbers wore Norwegian ski-ing caps, like polar explorers, and nothing but frozen tips of rubicimd noses projected from out the woollen oval. Some, on the other hand, had scattered their spare clothing, if they had any, underneath or over them- selves, and shirts in great sprawling embraces hid many a poor shiverer. Occasionally a word or so of conversation drifted up from the other end, and all night long the doors at the end banged, with people going out to the latrines, and every time great flakes of wind-borne snow would rush in, and swirl about, finally settling down evanescent and wet on some huddled form. So close were we all that there was hardly any gangway, and heads and feet got kicked and trodden on, and curse and prayer, like the serpentine wanderings of sparks in soot, accom- panied any riser making his way to the door. " Damn your bloody soul, why the hell can't you look where you're going to ? " or, " Oh, for God's sake don't knock all my rugs off. You might at least put them on again when you have done so," or, " Look here, I'm wet enough as it is : if anybody

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else bloody well opens the door to go out again to- night, I'll go and bag their places while they are gone. I'U risk the lice. At any rate, they'll keep me warm." Coughs of every sort went to make up that chorus of noise. Occasionally a great rumble comes from the deepest valleys of a man's lungs, and myriads of little yapping sore throats rasp away in attempts to attain a status satisfactory, and all the while the discordant hum of vibrating tonsils forms a background to every other noise. Nearly two hundred forms, just animate, lay there, each with two square yards in which to live, to eat, to sleep. No one will ever know how much hope, how much despair, how much determination, how much sufEering was hid in each of those two hundred huddled heaps. For a time I lay awake, thinking, to the tune of my neighbour's breathing, of the new order of things in which I found myself, but gradually as a feeling of thankfulness that at last the worst was over, and that I had got out of that ghastly solitary, spread over me, I fell into a doze, only interrupted by occasional urgent messages from my feet that they were aching with cold, and would I kindly pull the coat over them. I was awakened by a sore throat, a general noise of people getting up, and a soldier walking round, with a searching eye for lie-a-sacks. Dim forms were shedding clothing of all sorts, and I, perforce, rose up and joined them in the process. I was doubtful as to where one washed, or, in fact, whether one washed at aU, until

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I saw semi-nude forms with basins going past in the gloom. I joined them after charitably being asked to share a basin and sponge, and rushed outside into the snow, and round into the concrete passage below, where two taps did duty for the whole three hundred and sixty of us. We formed a great queue of semi-naked forms, towels hanging round our necks, shivering almost harmonically, dragging one heavily clogged foot after the other over the rough- laid concrete, as we gradually approached towards the slowly running tap. It would have formed an interesting subject for sociological investigation, to have noted the percentage of those who washed and those who didn't, and to have classified, analysed and accounted for the latter. It was a task that, as I neared the tap, I intended to perform, and as I left the latter, with my basin slopping the water all over me, I decided had no value.

Dressing finished, I followed the general run of affairs as best I could. People, I noticed, were taking their white enamelled bowls, and rushing out at the door at the end. I did the same. Out- side on the ladder staircase the blackness of the sky was changing to dark blue, and the stars were begin- ning to fade. The snow on the ground made the scene look bright. On one side, as far as I could see, was a collection of long, low-roofed buildings, their roofs covered with snow that overhung their edges and dripped great icicles to the white ground below. The red-bricked walls, the small windows, the

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snow, and muffled figures moving to and fro without the noise of footsteps, all contrived to give the scene the air of one of Carmen Sylva's stories of the old Grerman villages on Christmas Day in the mountains. This impression lasted me a minute, and I was swept away into the crowd below. " Form up in fours ; form up in fours " was the repetitive formula with which people were consoUng themselves, in a manner like that of lugubrious churchwardens. By a process of accretion, the little square block gradually took up the form of a vast rectangle of humanity. To give any sympathetic description of that crowd is a thing I defy anybody to do. Let it be said, however, that to a lunatic just released from solitary, or a man of sanity just interned there, these vast crowds, which could be seen dotted about various parts of the grounds, appeared like a cross between a London crowd of imemployed and a gang of criminals en route for Siberia. The re- semblance to both was striking, for, not only were they formed up in the same manner as the latter, but they were dressed in the manner of the former. The whole mass swayed from one foot to another, so that their heads, viewed from above, appeared like the crests of choppy waves. The movement suggested the boredom habitual in those listening to a speech for the hundredth time, and, at the same time, a desire in those who are cold and are not allowed to move from the spot on which they stand, to become warm ; as indeed was the case.

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" Antreten — ^line up, line up in fours," would run the moaning litany, with occasionally an emphatic shout, as someone lined up in fives. " Oh, see, there's the blokeoo arrived larst nite from prisn. Myat don't ee arf look a sod ! Thai putim in prisn fer sixteen bloody weeks, all by is bloody self, yes thai did, you arsk im if thai didn't. Ee woz in England for the fust two months of war, and then ee comes hover ere." " Ee didn't ! " " Ee did." " Well, ee must be a bloody fool." — " Oh, good morning ; I hear you arrived last night. Allow me to introduce myself." — " Hullo, mate, find this a bit different from chokey. Little