Since my return, so many people have asked me whether prisoners of war had any idea of the turn affairs were taking during the autumn, that it would be as well to state here exactly what our sources of information were. There were only two papers printed in English, the Anti-Northcliffe Times and the Continental Times. The former I never saw, and it cannot have had a very large circulation. But the Continental Times, which appeared three times a week, was to be found in every room in the camp. It was the most mendacious chronicle. It was printed at Berlin, and was published solely for British prisoners of war; a more foolish production can hardly be imagined. Its views, political and military, changed with each day’s tidings, and its chief object was to impress on British prisoners the relative innocence of Germany and perfidy of the Entente. But it was so badly done that it can never have achieved its ends. It was far too violent, and so obviously partial. Its only interesting features were the reproductions from the English weeklies of articles by men like Ivor Brown and Bertrand Russell; once they even paid me the doubtful honour of a quotation, a tribute considerably enhanced by the appearance of the poem under the name of Siegfried Sassoon.

But no one took the Continental Times seriously, and the paper that we relied on for our news was the Frankfurter Zeitung, the representative organ of the Rhine towns. There were two issues daily. The morning one contained the Alliance communiquÉs, and the evening one the Entente. Like all other German papers, it was under the strictest censorship of the military bureaucrats, but it maintained nevertheless an extraordinary impartiality. It rarely indulged in heroics, and except for a little “hot air” on March 22nd it kept its head remarkably well. It is, of course, the most moderate paper in the country, and the Berliner Tageblatt is considerably more hectic. But the Frankfurter Zeitung was, certainly during the period of my captivity, more restrained than any British daily publication. It can be most fittingly compared, in tone though not in politics, with our sixpenny weekly papers whose appeal is to the educated classes.

From this paper we could get a pretty fair idea of how things were going; but even without the paper we should have been prepared for the debacle of November. For we could see what the papers do not show—and that is the psychology of the people. For so long their hopes had been buoyed up by the expectations of immediate victories in the field; they had been told that the March offensive would most surely bring them this peace; and on this belief had rested their entire faith. For this they had maintained a war that was crippling them. They had endured sufferings greater than those of either France or England. Their casualties had been colossal, the civilian population had been starved. But yet they had hung on, because they had been told that victory would bring them peace; and then Foch attacked; their expectations were overthrown; the Entente were still fresh and ready to fight. There was talk of unlimited resources, and Germany was faced with the prospect of a long and harassing war that could end only in exhaustion and reverse; and that the German people were not prepared to endure.

For there will always come a point at which the individual will refuse to have his interests sacrificed for a collective abstraction with which he has not identified himself. Mankind in the mass has neither mind nor memory, and can be swayed and blinded by a clever politician; it can be led to the brink of folly without realising what road it follows. Collectively it is capable of injustice which in an individual it would never countenance; but sooner or later the collective emotion yields before the personal demand, and the individual asks himself, “Why am I doing this? Am I benefiting from it; and if I am not benefiting from it, who is?” For, of course, by even the most successful war the position of the individual is not improved. The indemnities and confiscations that the treaty brings never cover the expenses and privations previously entailed. And collective honour is perishable stuff. But as long as the war is successful, the politicians are able to persuade the people that they are actually gaining something from it. They can say, “We have got this island and that; here our frontier has been pushed forwards, and in return for that small concession, look, behold an indemnity.” And because mankind has neither mind nor memory it is prepared to forget the millions of pounds that had to be spent first, and the quantity of blood that had to be spilt.

That is when the war is successful; but when defeat looms near, whatever the courtly ministers may urge, the individual will contrast in his own mind the ravages, that another two years of warfare will entail, with the possible emoluments that may lie at the end of them. He will say to himself, “It is reasonable to expect that, by fighting for another two years, we may eventually get better terms than we should get now, if we signed a peace. But to me personally, is the difference sufficient to warrant the sufferings of a protracted war?” And the answer, as often as not, is “No.” That is, as far as one can judge, the sort of argument that presented itself to the individual German in the weeks following Foch’s resumption of the attack. And in determining the forces that went to the framing of that “no,” the most important thing to realise is that Germany was actually starving.

That this is so, a certain portion of the Press has, during the last month, attempted to deny; and it is rumoured that the armies of occupation have found the German towns well stocked with food. If this last report is true, I do not profess to be able to explain it; but of one thing there can be no doubt, while we were prisoners in Mainz the German people there were not merely hungry, they were starving. It is true that meat was obtainable in restaurants, but only at a price so high as to be well beyond the means of even the moderately wealthy. A dinner, consisting of a plate of soup and a plate of meat and vegetables, would in places cost as much as twelve to fifteen marks, and the majority of men and women had to exist entirely on their rations. Of many of the necessaries of life it was impossible to get enough, especially in the case of butter and milk and cheese. Of meat there was very little, and flour could only be bought at an exorbitant price. The bread ration was small, and eggs were rarely obtainable. Potatoes alone were plentiful, and two years of such a diet had considerably lowered the nation’s vitality.

In times of sickness this weakness produced heavy fatalities, especially among the children. A German father even went to the lengths of offering an English officer a hundred marks for a shilling packet of chocolate to give to his son who was sick. And all the children born during the last two years are miserably weak and puny; some of them even having no nails on their toes and fingers.

“You are not a father, so you will not understand,” a German soldier said to me. “But it is a most terrible thing to watch, as I have watched during the last four years, a little boy growing weaker and paler month after month; and I can tell you that when I look at my little boy, all that I want is that this war should end, I do not care how.”

And it is only natural that the individual parent should feel like this, and I do not think that in England we quite realise all that Germany has suffered. I remember one morning after the signing of the armistice that some small boys of about seven years old climbed up the outside of the citadel, and asked us for some food. We gave them a few biscuits; they were very hard and dry, but I have never seen such excitement and joy on a child’s face before. It was a most pathetic sight. A child of that age cannot feign an emotion, and those children were absolutely starving.

And the knowledge that this was so must have had a very saddening effect on the German soldier at the front. For one of the very few consolations that were granted to a British soldier in the line was the certainty that his wife and family were well and safe. But the German soldier must have been faced continually with the thought that, whatever sufferings he might himself endure, he could not protect those he loved from the hunger that was crushing them, and for him those long cold nights and lonely watches must have been unrelieved by any gleam of hope.

It is not natural that any nation should bear such hardships for an instant longer than they appeared absolutely needful, and when it became quite clear that the Entente had not only survived the March offensive, but had emerged from it with undiminished powers, the Germans began to agitate for an instant peace. At the beginning they were not aware of their weakness in the field, and when the first armistice note was sent the terms expected were very light.

“We shall probably have to evacuate France and Belgium,” they said, “and perhaps Italy and Palestine. That’s all the guarantee that will be required.”

And at this point, as far as we could gather, there was very little animosity against the Kaiser.

“Of course,” they said, “this sort of thing must not happen again. We shall have to tie him down a good deal. Ministers will have to be responsible to the Reichstag and not to him. That should ensure us.”

There was hardly any talk of a republic.

But when the Austrian and Bulgarian armies crumpled up, and Foch began to threaten invasion from every side, it was as if a sort of panic seized the Germans. They felt that they must have an armistice at any cost, and were terribly afraid it would not be granted them. They thought that the French would demand revenge for every indignity and injustice they had suffered in 1871; and when they realised that the Entente was not prepared to treat with the Kaiser, they clamoured for his abdication. It was an ignoble business. Even the Frankfurter Zeitung joined in the tumult. There was a general terror which gave birth to the revolution.

§ 2

The revolutionists arrived at Mainz on Friday, November 8th, and the first intimation we received of their presence was the arrival on morning parade of the German adjutant in a civilian suit. He had apparently spent the previous evening at KÖln, where all officers had been advised either to leave the town as speedily as possible, or else change into mufti. This gallant officer did both, and for the first time since we were captured, we were dismissed without an appel.

During the whole of that day the camp was possessed of rumours. At any moment we were told the revolutionaries might present themselves before the gates; we should be in their hands; our whiskered sentries would have neither the power nor the inclination to protect us. Thoughts of Bolshevism worked disquietingly within our minds; we pictured a sanguinary contest between the military and socialist parties, and we were a little nervous lest the caprice of the moment should ally us with one or other of the warring parties. The town was clearly under the power of the Red Flag. German officers were not allowed in the streets in uniform, and it was a pleasant sight to see the General robing himself in a suit of mustard-coloured cloth before venturing beyond the gate. But I must own that personally I was considerably alarmed about my safety. However deep-rooted may be one’s objections to constitutions and their rulers, however much one may sympathise with the ?d?a of rebellion, one does prefer to view these calamitous upheavals either from the safety of a hearthrug, or from a distance of two hundred yards.

And it seemed more than likely that, on the signing of the armistice, we should have to beat a very hasty retreat which would involve the dumping of the greater part of our kit; and we had received no information of what we might take with us. This was very disquieting. During the eight months of my confinement I had written some two-thirds of a novel, and had no wish to discover that manuscript was contraband. Tarrant viewed my troubles with complete composure.

“My dear Waugh,” he said, “as I’ve told you more than once before, that novel is quite unprintable, and if it is published, it will plunge both you and your publisher into disaster. You’d do much better to leave it here.”

But with this I could naturally not agree, and in a state of some perturbation carried my heart-searchings to the German adjutant. He received me most affectionately.

“Ah, Mr. Waugh,” he said, “things are not as serious as all that. It will be all right. If, of course, you had been exchanged, it would have been a different thing. But now you can take what you like, and I am sure that anything you write would be quite harmless.”

“Quite harmless”.... I thought of all the scholastic fury that had been split over Gordon Carruthers, I thought of Mr. Dames-Longworth who had called it “pernicious” stuff, of Canon Lyttelton who had spoken so much and to such little purpose, and who had given me so royal an advertisement. And I thought of that long stream of correspondents who had signed themselves “A mere schoolmaster,” and I thought of what they will say of my new book if it ever sees the light of day; and it seemed to me that of all the adjectives both of appreciation and abuse that may be attached to that sorry work, “harmless” is certainly the one it will never receive again.

During the remainder of the day rumours bred at an alarming pace. It was reported that the revolutionaries had taken charge of the camp, and that although the armistice was still unsigned, they had told us to make our own arrangements about repatriation. Already negotiations had been opened with a shipping firm that was to take us down the Rhine to the Dutch frontier. We had visions of England within a week.

As to the state of affairs in the town only conjecture was possible; but from the top windows of Block II, the slate roofs presented the same somnolent appearance, and it was hard to realise that beneath that placid landscape Democracy was lighting its flaming torch.

Most of our information came from the medical orderly. In pre-war days he had been a waiter at the Carlton, and he had not forgotten how to swear in English. He was one of the most complete terrorists.

“Europe is overrun with Bolshevism,” he said. “It is everywhere. You have it in England. Do you know that you have soldiers’ councils in England? You have. Did you know that the British Fleet sailed into Kiel Harbour flying the Red Flag? It did. Soon the whole world will be having revolutions. There will be no safety, none at all.”

He was most hectic, and on the day of the armistice his anger exceeded all bounds.

“Why do you give us terms like this?” he said. “We have got rid of our roundheads, our Kaiser, our Ludendorf. Why do you not get rid of yours? Ah, but Bolshevism will come, and do you know what your soldiers’ councils have done, they have wired to us not to sign the armistice. But the wire came too late. Still, it will be all right in time, your soldiers’ councils will see to that.”

Where the Germans got the idea that there were soldiers’ councils in England, I do not know. It certainly did not appear in the Frankfurter Zeitung. But an enormous number of Germans were under the impression that a corresponding state of affairs existed in England. Probably it was a point of the revolutionaries’ programme.

By November 11th the revolution, as far as Mainz was concerned, had more or less adjusted itself; and the people’s attention was so occupied by the new regime that the news of the armistice was not received with as much excitement as might have been expected. The terms were a great deal harder than they had hoped for, but they were so glad the war was over that this did not greatly trouble them. They had ceased to care for collective honour. The only man I met who was really conscious of the defeat was the professor who used to take French and German classes. Of course, all his life it had been his business to instil imperialistic propaganda into the boys and girls under him, and no doubt he himself must have considerably absorbed the Pan-German doctrines, and he did feel acutely the ignominy of his country’s position.

“What hurts our pride more than anything else,” he said, “is the thought that we release prisoners instead of exchanging them. It shows us so clearly that we are beaten.”

But the people themselves were not at all worried about this. The only thing that troubled them was the doubt whether they would be able to get enough to eat after the surrender of so many wagons. The grippe was raging very fiercely among them, and the need for food was being very keenly felt. They had also hoped that one of the conditions of the armistice would have been the removal of the blockade.

“You have beaten us,” they said. “We cannot fight any more. Why must you continue the blockade? We have done everything you asked for; the Kaiser has gone; we have a new Government.”

For they have not yet realised the extent to which the previous deceit of their military rulers has discredited them in the eyes of Europe. They do not realise that every political movement they make has come to be regarded with suspicion.

With us the revolution produced fewer ludicrous situations than it did in some other places, and a most amusing story is told about the camp at Frankfurt. A few days after the signing of the armistice the senior British officer and his adjutant presented themselves before the German Commandant, with the request that they might be allowed out in the town on parole. There they found their late tyrant, sitting down in his shirt-sleeves, cutting the epaulettes off his tunic. On their arrival, however, he put on his greatcoat and made an attempt to recover his dignity.

“Yes, gentlemen,” he said, with his courtly foreign grace.

The senior British officer explained his errand. “As we’re no longer prisoners,” he said, “we may surely go out for walks?”

The German looked a little awkward.

“Well,” he said hesitatingly, “the fact is, I really am not the person to ask. You see, the soldiers’ council are in command. You must go and ask Herr Bomenheim, he is the representative.”

And besides being representative of the revolution, Herr Bomenheim was also the window cleaner; it is a strange world in which a colonel takes his orders from his batman.

At Mainz we were less democratic, as our affairs were run by a sergeant-major. But for all that we had no truck with the old regime, and the “Soldaten Raht” proved its independence by court-martialling the Prussian General. For that deed alone the prisoners of Mainz bear to the revolutionaries a debt of everlasting gratitude. And the escapade that led to this retribution provides a fitting example of all that is most aggressive and inhuman in the Berlin military caste.

At this time there was a very great deal of sickness in Mainz, and the hospitals were crowded both with civilians and British officers. It was also a time at which congestion of the railroads had delayed the arrival of our Red Cross parcels. The British authorities in the camp had in consequence collected as large a supply of food as possible, to be sent to the hospital and divided not only among our own invalids, but among those of the civilian population whose condition was really critical. This consignment was loaded on a handcart, and surrounded, by sentries, was to proceed into the town.

At the gates, however, it was met by the General, who, by the courtesy of the revolutionaries, was now allowed to wear his uniform. He immediately stopped the handcart and asked where it was going; on being informed of its destination he ordered that the food should be returned at once to the officers who had collected it, as he could in no wise countenance such a proceeding. It was pointed out to him that the condition of several officers in the hospital was most serious, and that meat stuffs were urgently required. But he would have none of it.

“My permission was not asked first,” he said, “and I cannot allow it. If you had come to me, it would have been different. But I cannot have you behaving as though you were under your own rule.”

And it is to the credit of the soldiers’ council that they took instant steps in the matter. The General was informed that he only occupied his position on tolerance and had no active authority whatsoever. And within two days he was removed from the camp, and is now, I believe, awaiting court-martial on a charge of “inhumanity and callousness.”

And all the while rumours about our release bred at an alarming rate. The German authorities had told us that it would be impossible for them to provide us with a train for at least a fortnight, but that if we liked we could make our own arrangements, and charter a steamer that would take us up the Rhine. These were days of furious conjecture. The complete technique of a pleasure trip was exhaustively discussed. How long did it take a steamer to coal? how long to get up steam? And then of how many knots an hour was it capable? Sums were worked out on the old methods of, Let x be the rate of the steamer, and y the speed of the Rhine. We roughly gauged that it would take twenty-seven hours. But then, of course, the Dutch Government had to be considered. However delightful we might be as individual companions, we were not at all sure whether a neutral country would welcome the sudden arrival of 500 guests. Of course they had received the Kaiser, but that was not quite the same thing. There was an inconvenient margin of doubt.

It was a most disquieting time. Each hour was filled with conflicting rumours, and after a while one ceased to believe in any of them. We assumed that on the arrival of the army of occupation we should be liberated, and it appeared as if we should have to wait till then.

On November 17th, however, we were given an official permit to go into the town, and from then onwards the burden of waiting was light.