[From Time Stood Still by Paul Cohen-Portheim]

XV MINOR EVENTS AND MAJOR

It has been said that it is not events that happen to us but that we come across events, and certainly the latter is a better rendering of the impression produced on us. We pursue a road, it seems to us, and encounter people or events on our progress ; rightly or wrongly our impression is that we are moving. That is why in our memory one event, one experience takes its definite place before or after others. You remember that two years ago you want to Paris, that it was before then you published your book and after the journey that you got engaged, etc. Butt as soon as there is no change, all that alters, for without change time ceases to count, and that is why the years of my captivity have not remained in my memory as a proccession of happenings, but rather as something static. It was really a static condition to a very great extent, and if the other years of my life seem like the flowing on of a river those years seem like a stagnant pool. Of course, its waters were ruffled quite frequently, but, looking back, these interruptions seem much more simultaneous than successive in time, all of which is but another way of saying that there was no time. There was movement, as there was life, but movement which seemed without direction, like that of a boat swaying about, moved by winds and waves, but all the tire at anchor. There were events, both outer happenings and inner experiences, but I find it difficult to remember their sequence. [160]Did thiis happen before that ? - was it the summer of the second year ?-or the autumn of the third ? - I could not say any more than a man can say, on waking, which of his half­remembered dreams he dreamed first. Time, in fact, is just as unreal in the monotony of camp life as it is in a dream, and the events and happenings stand out as vaguely as the sensations of moments when one is half awake between one dream and another.

They were such very insignificant happenings, such minute events when considered from outside and from far away, but that again is relative and a mere question of proportion. In a quiet life a letter or a visitor or even a stranger passing by the window assumes great importance and i5 discussed for weeks ; in an agitated life dozens or hundreds of such incidents occur in a few hours, produce no impression at all, and are not considered worth men­tioning. There existence was lethargic, so every slight ripple produced an effect of considerable disturbance, of a brief awakening followed by renewed lethargy. It was a disturbing event to write one's weekly letter, even to make out one's weekly washing-list ; it was an event sufficient to mark a day when you received a letter or a parcel and were half-incredulously reminded of the fact that outside the wires life continued. A visit to another camp was an event : on Wednesday I shall go to the North Camp (that is across a gate) one said to oneself, as if one were going to cross to the continent ; a visit to the theatre was a great event. To some people the walks outside the camp were events of importance, but I only took part in one. Between military guards you were marched along a muddy road with miners' cottages on either side. The streets were full of people, sneering or indifferent, and I thought that it made one realize the fact that one was a prisoner and degraded far more vividly than life behind the wires did, and so I never went again.

The very great events were, of course, the visits one received, looked forward to and remembered for many weeks.[161] I do not remember how frequently one was allowed a visit, it may have been once a month or once every three months. I myself received a good many visits from one and only one friend who was nor put off by the petty annoyances and troubles such a journey vwl a visit of that kind entailed to an Englishwoman. Such a visit was at the same time very exciting and infinitely depressing, and it was probably worse for the visitor; than for the visited, for they felt and saw the changes prison life produced on their friends very much more than i lie prisoners themselves could notice them. What an unexpected. necessarily gloomy performance it was ! The visitors were placed on one side of a long table, then appeared their friends, husbands or brothers, heavily guarded as criminals, and sat down facing them. Officers in between, others wandering round, armed guards against the walls. Listeners all round you. Thus you were allowed 'conversation ' during twenty-five minutes. Of course both sides had memorized all they wanted to say or ask many times and got through that in great haste. One must not speak of the war, one must not speak of the camp or the talk would be interrupted. And so it often happened that during half that short time, looked forward to for ages, one found nothing to say. Strange how hard it was to catch the sound of a woman's voice - most of the visitors were women - it seemed so unreal. Difficult to understand each other at all, people of different worlds. One tried to find out whether one still appeared fairly normal, for one no longer knew. One suddenly awake to the fact that one was probably quite odd, that one hadwandered far away, but one could not tell. the sign made by an officer, and it was all over. The visitors filed out, seemed unreal as soon as they had gone. Slowly and under escort one returned to camp

[162]There the others met one, the crowd that had had no visitors. They had stood pressed against the gates like caged animals, seen the visitors file past. Some had been mournful, some had made dirty jokes, now they all wanted news : when will the war be over ? what do people think in London ?- and one had no news to give them. Often and often have I seen that procession pass by ; some of the women were crying, some looked straight ahead, seeing nothing, some cast curious looks. As the years went on the visitors grew fewer in number. A good many men had foreign wives or fiancees, and not all of them remained true. There is one incident I remember, the last visit the wife of a friend of mine paid him with her little daughter. He was a young Rhenish engineer, his wife was French and he adored her, and still more the child, so he told me I must be sure to look out for them. I saw a pretty young woman and a little girl of six years or so pass, and in passing the child pointed its finger at the rnen behind the wires and said : 'Dis, maman, c'est ça les Boches ? ' And shortly afterwards he told me she had left him and taken the child with her.

Of such nature were the visits, but between them one could read the diatribes of the papers against the thoughtless or criminal creatures who paid visits to the German prisoners, and dark hints about the scandalous scenes to be witnessed, and no one ever seemed to tell the public the truth.

These were the regular events recurring at more or less equal intervals, but all too often there were unforeseen events. All too often, for they were never of a pleasant nature ; a surprise was bound to be a disagreeable surprise, because the history of the internment camps is one of measures growing ever more severe and of sudden catastrophes. All that misery can be summed up in the one word 'reprisals.' Germany had enforced some restriction, England would adopt a similar one or one 'of equal value.' Each reproached the other with having 'begun first ' like a couple of little boys ; the prisoners on both sides were but pawns, the men who had to execute the orders but tools. As liberty was already restricted to the utmost and nearly everything interdicted anyway, there remained really only one field for punitive measures : food. One could write volumes about the importance food assumed under the circumstances. What was there for the vast majority of prisoners, torn from their work, their people, their interests, but sleep :md meals ? Food was their primary consideration from the start, but the scantier and the more unobtainable it became, the more it began to dominate all thought. Things became as I was to find them later on in half­famished Germany ; people talked of nothing but food, thought of nothing else, and same tried by all means, fair or foul, to obtain more than was legally theirs.

This food problem did not, however, develop in a atraight line, it passed through different phases. After the strict rationing of Knockaloe, Wakefield had seemed exqusitively luxurious at first. As everyone paid, plenty could be bought ; moreover, food parcels from England were allowed, and food parcels from Germany and Austria still very frequent. Had there been any sense of fairness left, it might have been thought that good and plentiful food, which the people, moreover, paid for was not too much to grant to people whose only crime was their nationality. But such considerations had disappeared long ago, prisoners were criminals and they were hostages us well. The press campaign against 'our pampered 'Huns ' began to bear fruit, the credulous and unimaginative public protested against this crying scandal. Things began to get worse gradually, and complaints addressed to the 'Neutrals ' supposed to look after these matters had no effect whatsoever. [164]It was all quite scientific. Vitamins had not yet been discovered ; the scientific slogan of the times was 'calories.' Food had to contain a certain number of calories to keep people in a sufficient state of nourishment, and we were assured that we were receiving exactly the.same number of calories as the prisoners in Germany. Whether these calories were contained in fresh meat and vegetables or in herring gone bad and frozen potatoes was apparently quite immaterial : that was not a scientific way of looking at it.

Things took a sudden and very decided turn for the worse after Germany had declared 'unrestricted sub­marine warfare.' Rationing began in England and rationing became very severe in the camps. There was now a justification for strict food economy, which the prisoners might have admitted if they had been less embittered. As it was, they considered, or professed to consider, the new restrictions as further proof of a policy of deliberate ill-treatment, and their mood became gloomier and more dissatisfied than ever. One article of diet after another vanished. Horseflesh made its appearance (it tastes like very tough and sugary beef), vegetables disappeared. Bread was gritty and mouldy, then it disappeared altogether for months and was re­placed by 'broken biscuit ' which is just like pebbles. Potatoes were frozen and sickeningly sweet, then there were no potatoes at all. Milk went, butter went. There was nothing now to be bought at the canteen and so one never got fruit. Every day or week made matters worse, until a time when one really always felt hungry. Everybody's health suffered and everybody's temper yet more. These privations do not sound so very terrible and there were certainly worse and greater hardships many had to bear in the world outside the wire. [165]But it was not so much the actual want that made people miserable but their absolute helplessness ; some anonynous power gave orders and these decided your fate. Bad as things were, they were sure to get worse, could only get worse. People got ever thinner, ever crosser, ever more listless, and they talked of, thought of, and lived for nothing but food.

It was then that commerce reverted to its primitive form of barter. Money became as good as useless, for people only wanted food, and that money could not buy. People hoarded and people bartered. If you still possessed two tins of sardines, you might exchange one for chocolate, half your bread ration might buy an apple. And as demands create supply, there appeared on the scene a number of barter-experts. They decided the value of the goods to be exchanged and their judgment wvs accepted as final. There was one little long-nosed man in our camp all went to when they could not agree :amongst themselves. He was deaf and they shouted into his ear-trumpet : 'How many cigarettes ought he to give me for this piece of cheese ? ' The arbiter looked very wise and decided after a pause : 'Four cigarettes and a box of matches.' If anyone wanted to argue, he became stone deaf. So things were 'quoted ' as on the stock exchange and their value fluctuated constantly. Why there was ever less to barter ; parcels from friends in England had been forbidden long ago, visitors were no longer allowed to bring presents, and parcels from Gerrnany and Austria had become very scarce, as rationing over there became extremely severe and prices for unrationed articles of food soared skywards. Sometimes one got quite a decent meal, more often one did not, and I shall never forget when one day my steward (there were a great many stewards by 1918) who always used the word 'we' brought my dinner with the remark, 'To-day we have one potato for dinner, with tomato sauce.' [166] One got very weak and one had to ration one's strength ; if one wanted to do any work, the best thing was to lie still half the day and work steadily for a few hours. The winter from '17-'18 was very hard, for one feels the cold very much more intensely when one is insufficiently nourished. The calories, in fact, refused to do the work their name implies. I suppose there was actually enough food given to the prisoners all the time if you adopt some sort of standard of weight or measurement without any regard to quality or composition. The German people were at the same time living under the same conditions on rations declared sufficient by the experts, but in spite of the experts' decision the people suffered semi-starvation on both sides. And the worst part of such a state of affairs is not the actual privation but the degradation which nearly always results from it. It is easy to 'have a mind above food ' when there is plenty to be had, but it is very difficult when it gets scarce and scanty. No one wants to be reminded of food after a plentiful meal, but after an insufficient one the 'thoughts continue to dwell on it. For more than a year after the war, until conditions improved gradually, Germany knew but one topic of conversation of supreme interest : food, and men or women of all classes thought of little else. Just the same happened in camp from 1917 on, and once people are reduced to that state the margin of difference between them and animals has become perilously narrow. In all probability the rumours of cases of cannibalism in certain remote corners of Germany, which were spread there during that period, were unfounded, but the fact alone that they had become believable shows the depths humanity had reached.

Hunger and fear of hunger was thus the great and ever-growing, disturbing menace. [167]It was the great catastrophe which came on slowly, the minor disturbances, however, were suddon. All seemed to run comparatively smoothly and then something happened. There was an attempt of escape by prisoners in the North Camp for instance, which upset things badly for a time. Like everything in camp life it was both tragic and ludicrous. Some inhabitants of a hut standing quite near the wire had taken up the boards of the floor and started to dig a tunnel. Every night they removed the boards and went on with their show underground work, and in the morning the boards were replaced. This went on for months without anyone knowing of it, and they had got well underneath the meadow outside the camp. They might have escaped from the camp, but for an unfortunate accident, though I don't know how they would have got out of the country. It rained hard for days and the rain loosened the soil, I suppose, and one day the ground gave way under a cow grazing on that meadow ; the existence of the tunnel was revealed and it was traced back to the hut. But who were the culprits ? For a short time people thought them heroes and their refusal to own up an excellent joke, but when all the camp or rather the three camps were punished by all manner of restrictions, people's temper changed rapidly, and the perpetrators of the deed were called fools and cowards. Then they owned up, or at least a sufficient number owned up ; the camps once more were allowed visitors, parcels, etc., but very few had any sympathy with the unfortunate re: oes and victims of this attempt for whom severe restrictions remained in force. There was always fear of something happening ; there were always rumours of unpleasant events ; there was always suspicion of fraud. The kitchen management of the North Camp was found out cheating and vanished in a hurry, for the rule was to send such culprits to another camp ; the chief captain of the West Camp disappeared for the same reasons.

There was a horrible scene when one man was accused of denunciation, rightly or wrongly, I don't know, and crowds assembled to stone him before he could be removed. He was in hospital with wounds on his head for some days and then vanished into the unknown. [168]There were terrible rumours about what was happening at the hospital; and what made all these rumours so terrifying was the impossibility of ever getting at the truth. The first story was this : the camp doctor and the German headman of the hospital had combined to prescribe injections for the patients which cost a lot of money ; that was how they enriched themselves. Could it be true ? Certainly lots of people got those injections ; it is also a fact that the German headman was removed in a hurry and that the injections ceased. More one never learnt, but if it remained vague, it was quite enough to make one tremble at the thought of being ill. The second rumour arose later when a new doctor appeared. His methods were so exceedingly strange that people complained to the commandant, and that doctor again vanished in a hurry, apparently into an asylum. And every single story of that kind, always distorted and magnified by rumour, yet never entirely without basis, increased that atmosphere of distrust all round and the fear of trouble ever impending, though one never knew when a blow would fall or where it would come from.

Everyone's great aim was, as I have already explained at length, to get some sort of privacy by partitioning himself off, by building a cubicle. This was, I believe, never actually and expressly permitted, though it was silently tolerated. But there was no security. For months, perhaps a ycar, nothing would happen, and then there would be a new commandant, or someone else decided to interfere, and partitions would have to be lowered or destroyed altogether. [169] Trifling, irritating vexations such things were, but they took on enormous proportions under the circumstances. The cubicle was a holy of holies, the one shred of individual existence and the proudest possession one had. To order its destruction was worse than ordering a man to destroy his house if he was at liberty and could build himself another. This uncertainty led to innumerable subterfuges ; partitions were made to double up to half their height when inspection should come ; lights - of which only a certain number were allowed, not enough to light all the cubicles - disappeared as if by magic, and even windows, to which the same rule applied, could be cleverly dissimulated. It was an incessant, embittered and schoolboyish campaign of deceit against a no less childish supervision. It seems almost too silly to write about, but it was of great importance at the time, for what is a trifling grievance under some conditions may be a stunning blow under others.

Some happenings there were that did not affect every­one but only a group of people. A young fellow died in hospital after a short illness ; another went out of his mind; and these events plunged their friends into still deeper depression, while those who had not known the victims remained almost unaffected. Not entirely, because to all came the fleeting thought that. they might meet a similar fate. How many more people would die there if that war went on and on ; how many become insane ? Sanity had, indeed, become a good deal more relative than it normally is, partly because the slight touch of insanity to be found in so many people remains their secret in normal life but becomes public property in camp, where nothing can escape detection, and partly because the strain had told on everybody's nerves and found expression in all manner of oddities. [170]There were some who talked to themselves loudly as soon as they were alone ; others who had to have their door opened for them for fear of meeting their double if they opened it themselves, or who never left their hut on certain days of the week, or, as in one case I knew, during autumn and winter. Such things were not discussed or argued but silently accepted and taken for granted, for no one could be sure how far he himself would still be considered perfectly sane and normal in the outside world : there was no standard of comparison to go by.

That it was not the mind or the reasoning power of the prisoners only which had become a little shaky, will be seen from an incident which happened to me and which in its absurdity verging on the tragic is extremely characteristic, I think. One day two guards appeared with the order to conduct me at once to the commandant. That only happened in extremely seriaus cases, for in all minor matters there was a complicated hierarchy which intervened between one and the supreme power. The whole camp got wildly excited and no doubt fantastic rumours spread during my absence. There had been no such agitation since some weeks earlier when a Zeppelin had thrown bombs in the near neighbourhood and the camp had been merged in darkness and fear. I myself could think of no possible explanation.

The commandant plunged straight into the heart of the matter. 'Your case is very serious indeed,' he addressed me, 'you have been carrying on a correspondence in cypher with the enemy.' I hadn't the slightest notion what he was talking about ! The only letters I had written abroad were addressed to my mother and never even remotely alluded to the war. What could I possibly have had to tell her, even if I had wanted to, that would have been of any interest to anybody?' And what on earth could he mean by a cypher? 'Surely there must be some mistake,' I said. He shook his head 'No, no mistake possible. Do you recognize this in your writing ? ' He handed me two of my letters to my mother. ` Certainly,' I said.'Then perhaps you can explain the meaning of these cypher-words,' he said and pointed to some words underlined by a censor's blue pencil. I read and the counter-climax was so great that I had great difficulty in repressing hysterical laughter. The words underlined were : Der Golem, Meyrinck, Das.grune Gesicht.'They are very easy to explain,' I said gravely, `Meyrinck is a famous author, and, my mother sent me two novels of his, one called Der Golem and the other Das grune Gesicht, for which I thanked her in one letter, while in the second I wrote that I had liked the first and did not think very much of the second.` 'I'ha Commandant looked relieved ; perhaps he would have got into trouble himself over this incident. 'Can you prove this? ' he asked. 'I can prove it at once,'I replied ' if you will send someone with me to whom I can give the two books.' He was really relieved now, and certainly I was.'That should be a sufficient explanation' he said, 'and I hope it will be accepted as such, for the authorities took an extremely serious view of the matter, let me tell you.' I was dismissed ; a guard took the novels to the commandant, and that was the last I heard about it. But God knows what would have happened to me if I had written about books which I could not have produced ! Such then were the happenings and events: which interrupted monotony; they were varied enough, but they were invariably unpleasant, and one was thankful when the grey sameness one once had found it so hard to get accustomed to continued uninterrupted by any such upheavals.

Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received The Editor HTML© F Coakley , 2021