The armies of occupation have been credited with the discovery of a new crime, one not even implied in the Ten Commandments. Indeed, misinformed mortals have usually listed it among the virtues. It is “fraternization.” The average American—unless his habitat be New England—cannot remain aloof and haughty. Particularly the unsophisticated doughboy, bubbling over with life and spirits, is given to making friends with whatever branch of the human family he chances to find about him. Moreover, he was grateful for the advance in material comfort, if not in friendliness, of Germany as compared with the mutilated portion of France he had known. He did not, in most cases, stop to think that it was the war which had made those differences. It was an every-day experience to hear some simple country boy in khaki remark to his favorite officer in a slow, puzzled voice, “Sa-ay, Lieutenant, you know I like these here Boshies a lot better than them there Frogs.” The wrangles and jealousies with their neighbors, on which the overcrowded peoples of Europe feed from infancy, were almost unsuspected by these grownup children from the wide land of opportunity. The French took alarm. There seemed to be danger that the sale Boche would win over les AmÉricains, at least the sympathy of the men in the ranks, by his insidious “propaganda.” As a matter of fact, I doubt whether he could have done so. The Germans rather overdid their friendliness. Particularly when it bore any suggestion of cringing, deliberate or natural, it defeated itself, for, simple as he may be in matters outside his familiar sphere, the American soldier has an almost feminine intuition in catching, eventually, a somewhat hazy but on the whole true conception of the real facts. But our allies were taking no chances. A categorical order—some say it emanated from Foch himself—warned the armies of occupation that there must be “no fraternization.”

The interpretation of the order varied. As was to be expected, the Americans carried it out more rigorously than did their three allies along the Rhine. Its application also differed somewhat in separate regions within our own area. At best complete enforcement was impossible. With soldiers billeted in every house, what was to hinder a lovelorn buck from making friends with the private who was billeted in her house and going frequently to visit him? On cold winter evenings one rarely passed a pair of American sentries beside their little coal-fires without seeing a slouchy youth or two in the ugly round cap without vizor which we had so long associated only with prisoners of war, or a few shivering and hungry girls, hovering in the vicinity, eying the soldiers with an air which suggested that they were willing to give anything for a bit of warmth or the leavings of the food the sentries were gorging. Whether they merely wanted company or aspired to soap and chocolate, there was nothing to prevent them getting warmer when there were no officers in sight.

The soldiers had their own conception of the meaning of fraternization. Buying a beer, for instance, was not fraternizing; tipping the waiter who served it was—unless he happened to be an attractive barmaid. Taking a walk or shaking hands with a German man was to disobey the order; strolling in the moonlight with his sister, or even kissing her under cover of a convenient tree-trunk, was not. The interrelation of our warriors and the civilian population was continually popping up in curious little details. To the incessant demand of children for “Schewing Kum,” as familiar, if more guttural, as in France, the regulation answer was no longer “No compree,” but “No fraternize.” Boys shrilling “Along the Wabash” or “Over There,” little girls innocently calling out to a shocked passer-by in khaki some phrase that is more common to a railroad construction gang than to polite society, under the impression that it was a kindly word of greeting, showed how the American influence was spreading. “Snell” had taken the place of “toot sweet” in the soldier vocabulary. German schools of the future are likely to teach that “spuds” is the American word for what the “verdammte EnglÄnder” calls potatoes. When German station-guards ran along the platforms shouting, “Vorsicht!” at the approach of a train, American soldiers with a touch of the native tongue translated it into their lingo and added a warning, “Heads up!” The adaptable Boche caught the words—or thought he did—and thereafter it was no unusual experience to hear the arrival of a Schnellzug prefaced with shouts of, “Hets ub!” In the later days of the occupation the Yank was more apt to be wearing a “Gott mit uns” belt than the narrow web one issued by his supply company, and that belt was more likely than not to be girdled round with buttons and metal rosettes from German uniforms, as the original American wore the scalps of his defeated enemies. Our intelligence police frequently ran down merchants or manufacturers guilty of violating the fraternization order by making or offering for sale articles with the German and the American flags intertwined, pewter rings bearing the insignia of some American division and the iron cross; alleged meerschaum pipes decorated with some phrase expressive of Germany’s deep love for America in spite of the recent “misunderstanding.” The wiseacres saw in all this a subtle “propaganda,” cleverly directed from Berlin. I doubt whether it was anything more than the German merchant’s incorrigible habit of making what he can sell, of fitting his supply to his customer’s wishes, however absurd these may seem to him.

Up to the 1st of February Americans on detached service in Germany ate where they chose. With the non-fraternization order came the command to patronize only the restaurants run by the army or its auxiliary societies. The purpose was double—to shut another avenue to the fraternizer and to leave to the Germans their own scanty food store. This question of two widely different sources of supply side by side required constant vigilance. When two lakes of vastly different levels are separated only by a thin wall it is to be expected that a bit of water from the upper shall spill over into the lower. A pound can of cocoa cost 50 marks in a German shop—if it could be had at all; a better pound sold for 1 mk. 25 in our commissary. A can of butter for which a well-to-do citizen would gladly have given a week’s income was only a matter of a couple of dollars for the man in khaki. A bar of soap, a tablet of chocolate, a can of jam, many of the simple little things that had become unattainable luxuries to the mass of the people about us, cost us no more than they did at home before the war. Even if there was no tendency to profit by these wide discrepancies—and with the vast percentage of our soldiers there was not—the natural tender-heartedness of America’s fighting-man moved him to transgress orders a bit in favor of charity. Much as one may hate the Boche, it is hard to watch an anemic little child munch a bare slice of disgusting war-bread, knowing that you can purchase a big white loaf made of genuine flour for a paltry ten cents.

There were curious ramifications in this “fraternization” question. Thus, what of the American lieutenant whose father came over from his home in DÜsseldorf or Mannheim to visit his son? By strict letter of the law they should not speak to each other. What advice could one give a Russian-American soldier whose brother was a civilian in Coblenz? What should the poor Yank do whose German mother wired him that she was coming from Leipzig to see him, little guessing that for him to be seen in public with any woman not in American uniform was an invitation to the first M. P. who saw him to add to the disgruntled human collection in the “brig”?

I chanced to be the “goat” in a curious and embarrassing situation that grew quite naturally out of the non-fraternizing order. It was down the river at Andernach, a town which, in the words of the doughboy, boasts “the only cold-water geyser in the world—except the Y. M. C. A.” A divisional staff had taken over the “palace” of a family of the German nobility, who had fled to Berlin at our approach. One day the daughter of the house unexpectedly returned, alone but for a maid. She happened to be not merely young and beautiful—far above the average German level in the latter regard—but she had all those outward attractions which good breeding and the unremitting care of trained guardians from birth to maturity give the fortunate members of the human family. She was exactly the type the traveler in foreign lands is always most anxious to meet, and least successful in meeting. On the evening of her arrival the senior officer of the house thought to soften the blow of her unpleasant home-coming by inviting her to dinner with her unbidden guests. The little circle was charmed with her tout ensemble. They confided to one another that she would stand comparison with any American girl they had ever met—which was the highest tribute in their vocabulary. She seemed to find the company agreeable herself. As they rose from the table she asked what time breakfast would be served in the morning. Thanks to the uncertainty of her English, she had mistaken the simple courtesy for a “standing invitation.”

The officers looked at one another with mute appeal in their eyes. Nothing would have pleased them better than to have their grim circle permanently graced by so charming an addition. But what of the new order against fraternization? Some day an inspector might drift in, or the matter reach the erect ears of that mysterious and dreaded department hidden under the pseudonym of “G-2-B.” Besides, the officers were all conscientious young men who took army orders seriously and scorned to use any sophistry in their interpretation. Furthermore, though it hurt keenly to admit such a slanderous thought, it was within the range of possibilities that the young lady was a spy, sent here with the very purpose of trying to ingratiate herself into the circle which had so naÏvely opened itself to her. It was known that her family had been in personal touch with the Kaiser; for all her “American manner,” she made no secret of being German through and through. What could have been more in keeping with the methods of Wilhelmstrasse than the suggestion that she return to her own home and pass on to Berlin any rumors she might chance to pick up from her unwelcome guests?

Plainly she must be gotten rid of at once. None of the officers, however, felt confidence enough in his German to put it to so crucial a test. Whence, it being my fortune to drop in on a friend among the perplexed Americans just at that moment, I was unanimously appointed to the gentle task of banishing the lady from her own dining-room.

It was at the end of a pleasant little luncheon—the sixth meal which the daughter of the house had graciously attended. The conversation had been enlightening, the atmosphere most congenial, the young lady more unostentatiously beautiful than ever. We reduced the audience to her coming humiliation as low as possible by softly dismissing the junior members, swallowed our throats, and began. Nothing, we assured her, had been more pleasant to us since our arrival in Germany than the privilege of having her as a guest at our simple mess. Nothing we could think of—short of being ordered home at once—would have pleased us more than to have her permanently grace our board. But ... fortunately our stiff uniform collars helped to keep our throats in place ... she had possibly heard of the new army order, a perfectly ridiculous ruling, to be sure, particularly under such circumstances as these, but an army order for all that—and no one could know better than she, the daughter and granddaughter of German high officers, that army orders are meant to be obeyed—wherein Pershing himself commanded us to have no more relations with the civilian population than were absolutely unavoidable. Wherefore we ... we ... we trusted she would understand that this was only the official requirement and in no way represented our own personal inclinations ... we were compelled to request that she confine herself thereafter to the upper floor of the house, as her presence on our floor might easily be misunderstood. Her maid no doubt could prepare her meals, or there was a hotel a few yards up the street....

The charming little smile of gratitude with which she had listened to the prelude had faded to a puzzled interest as the tone deepened, then to a well-mastered amazement at the effrontery of the climax. With a constrained, “Is that all?” she rose to her feet, and as we kicked our chairs from under us she passed out with a genuinely imperious carriage, an icy little bow, her beautiful face suffused with a crimson that would have made a mere poppy look colorless by comparison. We prided ourselves on having been extremely diplomatic in our handling of the matter, but no member of that mess ever again received anything better than the barest shadow of a frigid bow from the young lady, followed at a respectful distance by her maid, whom they so often met on her way to the hotel a few yards up the street.

If it were not within the province of a soldier to criticize orders, one might question whether it would not have been better to allow regulated “fraternizing” than to attempt to suppress it entirely. Our soldiers, permeated through and through, whether consciously or otherwise, with many of those American ideals, that point of view, which we are eager for the German Volk to grasp, that there may be no more kaisers and no more deliberately built-up military assaults upon the world, would have been the most effective propaganda in our favor that could have been devised to loose upon the German nation. Merely their naÏve little stories of how they live at home would in time have awakened a discontent in certain matters, spiritual rather than material, that would have been most salutary. But we committed our customary and familiar American error of refusing to compromise with human nature, of attempting impossible suppression instead of accepting possible regulation, with the result that those ineradicable plants that might have grown erect and gay in the sunshine developed into pale-faced, groveling monstrosities in the cellars and hidden corners. Our allies in the neighboring areas had the same non-fraternizing order, yet by not attempting to swallow it whole they succeeded, probably, in digesting it better.

There was a simple little way of fraternizing in Coblenz without risking the heavy hand of an M. P. on your shoulder. It was to just have it happen by merest chance that the seat of the FrÄulein who had taken your eye be next your own at the municipal theater. It grew increasingly popular with both officers and enlisted men, that modest little Stadttheater. The Germans who, before our arrival, had been able to drift in at the last moment and be sure of a seat, were forced to come early in the day and stand in line as if before a butter-shop. The Kronloge, or royal box, belonged now to the general commanding the Army of Occupation—until six each evening, when its eighteen seats might be disposed of to ordinary people, though the occupants even in that case were more likely than not to be girdled by the Sam Browne belt. Some observers make the encouraging assertion that there will be more devotees of opera in America when the quarter-million who kept the watch on the Rhine return home. There was a tendency to drift more and more toward the Stadttheater, even on the part of some whom no one would have dared to accuse of aspiring to “high-brow” rating, though it must be admitted that the “rag” and “jazz” and slap-stick to which the “Y” and similar well-meaning camp-followers, steeped in the “tired business man” fallacy, felt obliged to confine their efforts in entertaining “the boys,” did not play to empty houses.

The little Stadttheater gave the principal operas, not merely of Germany, but of France and Italy, and occasional plays, chiefly from their own classics. They were usually well staged, though long drawn out, after the manner of the German, who can seldom say his say in a few succinct words and be done as can the Frenchman. The operas, too, had a heaviness in spots—such as those, for instance, under the feet of the diaphanous nymphs of one hundred and sixty-five pounds each who cavorted about the trembling stage—which did not exactly recall the OpÉra in Paris. But it would be unfair to compare the artistic advantages of a city of eighty thousand with those of the “capital of the world.” Probably the performances in Coblenz would have rivaled those in any but the two or three largest French cities, and it would be a remarkable town “back in little old U. S. A.” that could boast such a theater, offering the best things of the stage at prices quite within reach of ordinary people. When one stopped to reflect, those prices were astonishing. The best seat in the Kronloge was but 5 mk. 50, a bare half-dollar then, only $1.25 at the normal pre-war exchange, and accommodations graded down to quite tolerable places in whatever the Germans call their “peanut gallery” at nine cents! All of which does not mean that the critical opera-goer would not gladly endure the quintupled cost for the privilege of attending a performance at the OpÉra Comique at Paris.

The question of fraternization and the ubiquitous one of German food shortage were not without their connection. Intelligence officers were constantly running down rumors of too much sympathy of our soldiers for the hungry population. The assertion that Germany had been “starved to her knees,” however, was scarcely borne out by observations in the occupied area. It is true that in Coblenz even the authorized quantities—seven pounds of potatoes, two hundred grams of meat, seven ounces of sugar, and so on per person each week, were high in price and not always available. Milk for invalids and those under seven was easier to order than to obtain. A notice in the local papers to “Bring your egg and butter tickets on Monday and get two cold-storage eggs and forty grams of oleomargarine” was cause for town-wide rejoicing. Poor old horses that had faithfully served the A. E. F. to the end of their strength were easily auctioned at prices averaging a thousand marks each, in spite of the requirement that a certificate be produced within a week showing where they had been slaughtered. There was always a certain Schleichhandel, or underhand dealing, going on between the wealthy in the cities and the well-stocked peasants. Rancid butter, to be had of excellent quality before the war at two marks, cost in “underground” commerce anything from fifty marks up which the happy man who found it was in a condition to pay. Contrasted with this picture, the wages of an eight-hour day were seldom over five marks for unskilled, or more than ten for skilled labor. The out-of-work-insurance system, less prevalent in our area than “over in Germany,” made it almost an advantage to be unemployed. A citizen of DÜsseldorf offered a wanderer in the streets eight marks for a day’s work in his stable. Many a man would gladly have done the task for three marks before the war. The wanderer cursed the citizen roundly. “You have the audacity,” he cried, “to ask me to toil all day for two marks!” “Two marks?” gasped the citizen; “you misunderstood me. I said eight.” “I heard you say eight,” shouted the workman, “and is not eight just two more than the six we get under the unemployment act? Pest with your miserable two marks! If you want to pay me ten for the day—that is, sixteen in all....” He did not add that by going out into the country with his unearned six marks he could buy up food and return to the city to sell it at a handsome profit, but the citizen did not need to be reminded of that oppressive fact.

It was under such conditions as these that the civilians about us lived while we gorged ourselves on the full army ration in the hotels and restaurants we had taken over. There was always a long and eager waiting line where any employment of civilians by the Americans carried with it the right to army food; in many cases it became necessary to confine the opportunity to war widows or others whose breadwinners had been killed.

A man who rented his motor-boat to our Marine Corps at forty-five marks a day and food for himself brought his brother along without charge, both of them living well on the one ration. The poor undoubtedly suffered. Where haven’t they? Where do they not, even in times of peace? So did we, in fact, in spite of our unlimited source of supply. For the barbarous German cooking reduced our perfectly respectable fare to something resembling in looks, smell, and taste the “scow” of a British forecastle. In France we had come to look forward to meal-time as one of the pleasant oases of existence; on the Rhine it became again just a necessary ordeal to be gotten over with as soon as possible. If we were at first inclined to wonder what the chances were of the men who had been facing us with machine-guns three months before poisoning us now, it soon died out, for they served us as deferentially, and far more quickly, with comparative obliviousness to tips, than had the garÇons beyond the Vosges.

The newspapers complained of a “physical deterioration and mental degeneration from lack of nourishing food that often results in a complete collapse of the nervous system, bringing on a state of continual hysteria.” We saw something of this, but there were corresponding advantages. Diabetes and similar disorders that are relieved by the starvation treatment had vastly decreased. My host complained that his club, a regal building then open only to American officers, had lost one-third of its membership during the war, not in numbers, but in weight, an average of sixty pounds each. Judging from his still not diaphanous form, the falling off had been an advantage to the club’s appearance, if not to its health. But one cannot always gage the health and resistance of the German by his outward appearance. He is racially gifted with red cheeks and plump form. The South American Indian of the highlands also looks the picture of robust health, yet he is certainly underfed and dies easily. In a well-to-do city like Coblenz appearances were particularly deceiving. The bulk of the population was so well housed, so well dressed, outwardly so prosperous, that it was hard to realize how greatly man’s chief necessity, food, was lacking. In many a mansion to open the door at meal-time was to catch a strong scent of cheap and unsavory cooking that recalled the customary aroma of our lowest tenements. Healthy as many of them looked, there was no doubt that for the past year or two the Germans, particularly the old and the very young, succumbed with surprising rapidity to ordinarily unimportant diseases. If successful merchants were beefy and war profiteers rotund, they were often blue under the eyes. An officer of the chemical division of our army who conducted a long investigation within the occupied area found that while the bulk of food should have been sufficient to keep the population in average health, the number of calories was barely one-third what the human engine requires.

The chief reason for this was that food had become more and more Ersatz—substitute articles, ranging all the way from “something almost as good” to the mere shadow of what it pretended to be. “We have become an Ersatz nation,” wailed the German press, “and have lost in consequence many of our good qualities. Ersatz butter, Ersatz bread, Ersatz jam, Ersatz clothing—everything is becoming Ersatz.” A firm down the river went so far as to announce an Ersatz meat, called “Fino,” which was apparently about as satisfactory as the Ersatz beer which the new kink in the Constitution is forcing upon Americans at home. Nor was the substitution confined to food articles, though in other things the lack was more nearly amusing than serious. Prisoners taken in our last drives nearly all wore Ersatz shirts, made of paper. Envelopes bought in Germany fell quickly apart because of the Ersatz paste that failed to do its duty. Painters labored with Ersatz daubing material because the linseed-oil their trade requires had become Ersatz lard for cooking purposes. Rubber seemed to be the most conspicuous scarcity, at least in the occupied regions. Bicycle tires showed a curious ingenuity; suspenders got their stretch from the weave of the cloth; galoshes were rarely seen. Leather, on the other hand, seemed to be more plentiful than we had been led to believe, though it was high in price. The cobbler paid twenty-five marks a pound for his materials, and must have a leather-ticket to get them; real shoes that cost seven to eight marks before the war ran now as high as seventy. A tolerable suit of civilian clothing, of which there was no scarcity in shop-windows, sold for three or four hundred marks, no more at our exchange than it would have cost on Broadway, though neither the material, color, nor make would have satisfied the fastidious Broadway stroller. After the military stores of field-gray cloth were released this became a favorite material, not merely for men’s wear, but for women’s cloaks and children’s outer garments. Paper was decidedly cheaper than in France; the newspapers considerably larger. The thousand and one articles of every-day life showed no extraordinary scarcity nor anything like the prices of France, far less self-supporting than Germany in these matters. Nor was the miscalled “luxury tax”—never collected, of course, of Americans after the first few exemplary punishments—anything like as irksome as that decreed on the banks of the Seine. That the burden of government on the mass of the people was anything but light, however, was demonstrated by the testimony of a workman in our provost court that he earned an average of seventy-five marks a week and paid one hundred and twenty-five marks a month in taxes!

An Ersatz story going the rounds in Coblenz shows to what straits matters had come, as well as disproving the frequent assertion that the German is always devoid of a sense of humor. A bondholder, well-to-do before the war, runs the yarn, was too honest or too lacking in foresight to invest in something bringing war profits, with the result that along in the third year of hostilities he found himself approaching a penniless state. Having lost the habit of work, and being too old to acquire it again, he soon found himself in a sad predicament. What most irked his comfort-loving soul, however, was the increasing Ersatz-ness of the food on which he was forced to subsist. The day came when he could bear it no longer. He resolved to commit suicide. Entering a drug-store, he demanded an absurdly large dose of prussic acid—and paid what under other conditions would have been a heartbreaking price for it. In the dingy little single room to which fortune had reduced him he wrote a letter of farewell to the world, swallowed the entire prescription, and lay down to die. For some time nothing happened. He had always been under the impression that prussic acid did its work quickly. Possibly he had been misinformed. He could wait. He lighted an Ersatz cigarette and settled down to do so. Still nothing befell him. He stretched out on his sagging bed with the patience of despair, fell asleep, and woke up late next morning feeling none the worse for his action.

“Look here,” he cried, bursting in upon the druggist, “what sort of merchant are you? I paid you a fabulous price for a large dose of prussic acid—I am tired of life and want to die—and the stuff has not done me the least harm!”

“Donner und Blitz!” gasped the apothecary. “Why didn’t you say so? I would have warned you that you were probably wasting your money. You know everything in the shop now is Ersatz, and I have no way of knowing whether Ersatz prussic acid, or any other poison I have in stock, has any such effect on the human system as does the real article.”

The purchaser left with angry words, slamming the door behind him until the Ersatz plate-glass in it crinkled from the impact. He marched into a shop opposite and bought a rope, returned to his room, and hanged himself. But at his first spasm the rope broke. He cast the remnants from him and stormed back into the rope-shop.

“You call yourself an honest German,” he screamed, “yet you sell me, at a rascally price, a cord that breaks under a niggardly strain of sixty kilos! I am tired of life. I wanted to hang myself. I....”

“My poor fellow,” said the merchant, soothingly, “you should have known that all our rope is Ersatz now—made of paper....”

“Things have come to a pretty pass,” mumbled the victim of circumstances as he wandered aimlessly on up the street. “A man can no longer even put himself out of his misery. I suppose there is nothing left for me but to continue to live, Ersatz and all.”

He shuffled on until the gnawing of hunger became well-nigh unendurable, turned a corner, and ran into a long line of emaciated fellow-citizens before a municipal soup-kitchen. Falling in at the end of it, he worked his way forward, paid an Ersatz coin for a bowl of Ersatz stew, returned to his lodging—and died in twenty minutes.