[From Time Stood Still by Paul Cohen-Portheim]

EPILOGUE

I ARRIVED in Holland in February 1918, and I left it in November, but when I got there I did not know how long my stay would last. In this the situation was like my previous experience, insecure and unsettled. One never knew whether it would be worth while to begin or try for anything, as everything might change at any moment. In that sense one was as much a prisoner as ever, at the mercy of the decisions of some authority or other. In every other way imprisonment was over,. for the few restrictions did not count and were not taken too serious­ly. Once the situation had been legalised, the Dutch authorities left one in peace as long as one left them in peace, nor did the German ones bother at all. True they insisted on seeing my birth-certificate, so apparently they were not quite reassured about my identity, and this led to a true comedy-scene such as Georges Courteline might have invented. I had written and asked my mother to get me a copy of that precious document, the original of which was in England. When she obtained and sent it, it was returned to her ; she was only allowed to send it through the German Consulate. So in due course the Consulate advised me that a registered letter was awaiting me, but when I went to fetch it they refused to hand it to me unless I could show them a document of identi­fication-a birth certificate, for instance ! ::They were quite firm about this, but in the end the Consul found a solution : on my opening the letter in his presence the certificate was revealed and I handed it to him and he handed it back to me plus the envelope, and so that matter got settled and I was officially recognized as being I.

[214[Otherwise, however, one could forget that one was technically still a prisoner ; the situation was not only modified, it was reversed. When I had been interned I had had to adapt myself to an entirely new life, and it had taken me many months to achieve the adaptation to existence behind barbed wire, indeed, I had only become definitely adapted and reconciled to it a very few weeks before it came to an abrupt end. What had followed was not, however, a return to an existence formerly familiar to me, or to anything like my pre-war life, it was something quite new and different again. I found that a new adaptation was demanded from me, that it was quite impossible to slip back to where I had stood before my internment. Not only were all outward circumstances changed, but I myself was no longer the same man. It was only after the camp had receded into remote distance that I realized how strong was its hold on me. If I had found it hard to get used to, I found it at least as hard to free myself from its influence, nor did I wish to free myself from it altogether. My new-found Freedom seemed very alarming to me in many ways, and I found it as difficult to stand on my own feet again as it had been to become a number. Even the simplest actions I had to decide on seemed fraught with a terrible .weight of responsibility. Camp life kills one's will, and recovering it is not an easy matter at all. I think the others felt as I did, and it was quite a time before any one of us ventured out alone. We stuck together as we had done in the first days of internment ; we had not been personal friends at all, but we dared not stand alone and face the unknown, and this only changed very gradually and never entirely.

[215This new world was formidable, but it was not formidable in the way I had expected it to be. Naturally I had often wondered whether it would not be difficult to get used to a normal life again, and was convinced that it would not be easy. But it was not the things I had dreaded which troubled me now, but others I had never thought of at all. I had thought, for instance, that I should be most alarmed by traffic, by cars and trams and the roar of the streets. I had not crossed a street for nearly four years ; I had hardly seen a car ; surely that would be a terrifying experience. What I found was that it impressed me as little as if I had never left London or Paris and that I never gave it a thought. There were quite different problems to be faced instead. I found stairs a great trial, for instance, and living on an upper floor at the hotel quite terrifying after living on ground­level for years. Moreover, I could not get used to staying in my room at all, since it had become second nature to rush out every ten minutes or so and walk quickly round the camp. And when I did go out, I found myself turning mechanically after a few yards — walking straight ahead was alarming — where did the road lead to, how was one to get back ? — it seemed abnormal to continue in a straight line. I remember finding it extremely difficult to make up my mind to enter a shop. One only knew one shop, and now there were hundreds and how should one know which to choose ? But most terrifying of all was the fact that one was surrounded by thousands and thousands of strange faces. For years now I had been used to seeing only people I knew, at least by sight ; even at a distance one recognized every face. That had seemed bad enough, but now I found the other thing infinitely worse. This absolute indifference was uncanny, anything might happen to one without anybody taking the slightest notice ; these people did not know one, they did not even know that one was interned [216]I felt as if I must stop the people I met in the street and tell them all about it : ' I have just come out of a prisoners' camp, you know.' Then they would be sympathetic or at least interested, and no longer simply ignore one as if one was invisible. It was wrong, it was inhuman that people should take no notice of each other like this ! The first stranger I had talked to outside the hotel, where they knew all about one, was the barber I visited the first day, and I simply had to tell him at once. The only result was that he became distinctly frigid in manner. This hurt my feelings, but it was, I suppose, quite natural. The Dutch had only one desire, which was to keep out of the war. They did not wish to get mixed up with anyone belonging to a belligerent nation, for no good to them could come out of that. They wished to forget the war as far as possible, they did not want to hear anything anyone connected with it had to say, and they wished to see as little of either German or English prisoners as circumstances would allow.

I was still suspect, I soon realized ; all foreigners were suspect, but particularly those whom war had touched. They might be all right in their own countries, they might even be heroes or martyrs or something or other admirable, but in Holland they were like people with a disease, which might be--one never knew-catching. And in all probability they were spies. That was, indeed, the Leitmotiv of life in Holland, and it was almost impossible to escape from it. The subjects of the belligerent nations were confined to different places English officers and, I believe, civilian prisoners were at the Hague, German officers in Arnhem, and civilian prisoners in Rotterdam, but the innumerable people of all countries who were not prisoners could not be con­fined to any one place and were bound to meet. So unwritten laws came into being. [217]People of the allied nations stayed at certain hotels, visited certain restaurants or cafes only, the Germans or Austrians adopted others. You might have thought that you would be out of the atmosphere of suspicion if you stayed in the places prescribed to you, but not at all ; they were, one was told, full of spies. The Dutch who came there might be spies, and who knew if the Germans there were really German or in foreign pay ? Be most careful about your correspondence, one was told, for the portier of your (German) hotel is known to be in allied pay. Don't talk above a whisper in the cafe ; what do you know about the waiters ? So it really made no difference where one went, for people were sure to think that you were either spying or being spied on, or most likely both. No doubt there were really any amount of spies about in Holland as in all neutral countries, and the Dutch, who were quite powerless to prevent this, were naturally irritated by it, but to me this was very horrible. If you went to the park there were the British convoys lying alongside it, and suspicious eyes watching you ; if you went in the other direction there was the colony of Belgian refugees living on barges, and were you perhaps trying to get into contact with them ? So really the best thing to do was to talk to no one and go nowhere, though perhaps if you stayed at home all day that would stamp you as a most terribly dark horse ! One felt unwanted, insecure, and helpless.

But even if there had not been that spy-mania I should have found it hard to get used to this world which was so unlike the one I had just left behind, but seemed also quite unlike the pre-war world as I remembered it. From that pre-war stage I seemed to have moved away in one direction and the world in another, and so we were very far apart indeed. I discovered 'civilization' as if I had been a savage from the bush or a monk from Tibet, as if I had never seen it before, and I thought it bewildering and rather horrible. It is only long habit and thought­lessness which make one quite satisfied with it; things are taken for granted and don't worry much unless one happens to be a social reformer, which I never have been. Now all seemed new and terribly crude. I had looked forward to a return to civilized conditions once I should have left barbed wire behind, but what I found seemed to me quite as barbaric and far more incurably so.

On the first night we went to a good restaurant and ordered a real dinner. This was what everyone was agreed on as the first thing one would wish to do as soon as one was free. It would be marvellous, one thought, not only the food and wine and real coffee and liqueurs, but the white napkins and silver and glass and waiters and well-dressed people round one: Well here we were, the dream had come true, but I felt unhappy and disgusted. After the first course and the first glass of wine I felt I wanted no more, for the stomach was no longer used to it, and then I began to think of the people in Wakefield who had not enough to eat. I thought of the millions of prisoners, the more millions of civilians who had no food and I felt r could not go on eating. It was all wrong, it was wasteful, it was inhuman to have such meals. This may seem morbid; it almost, if not quite, seems so to me now, for one just accepts such matters as millions on the verge of starvation as inevitable and knows that it would make no difference to them if one lived on bread and margarine too. But I felt very differently then. I had become used to a system where everyone got equal treatment and where there was the same amount of food for all, and I had rather despised the people who tried by hook or crook to do better than the others. [219]So now this seemed too shockingly unjust. I had had a naive notion of everyone living on equal rations in all countries while the war lasted, just as the prisoners were doing, but I soon discovered that rationing was a farce. Lots of articles of food were not rationed, and lots of people got far more than their share of the others ; it was purely a question of money, and one could have everything one wanted if one paid enough, and lots of people were prepared to do this. The nouveaux riches, the profiteers, had come to flourish while time was standing still at Wakefield, and there was nothing then to restrain them. Not in Holland, at any rate, for it was, as all neutral countries, coining money out of the war. This again was but natural according to the modern ethical standard ; for was there any nation or any class of people who would refuse to grow rich if they had the chance ? But to my savage mind it seemed disgusting, and instead of being grateful to the Dutch for their hospitality I started loathing them. In the distance, almost every day, one heard the guns in Flanders ; all Europe was torn and bleeding, and here were these people, getting ever more fat and stolid and prosperous and with but one wish : not to be reminded of the war. How very much nearer one's ` enemies ' were to one, who were going through the same experiences, sharing the same fate. Surely if there was such a thing as civiliza­tion, not to mention Christianity, people would send all their surplus food and clothing and money to the sufferers somewhere, no matter where their sympathies lay. They were just hogs, I thought, but really they were perfectly ordinary human beings with a normal, everyday egoism and lack of imagination to keep them happy. They were worrying about dying babies without milk in Germany or starving prisoners in Russia or women shiver­ing with cold in Belgium just about as much as we do when we read of starvation in China.[220] Same people would send a contribution, most would hardly bother to read about it. Civilization is not founded on either charity or justice, and the Dutch Were sending a lot of fish and butter and vegetables, the Swiss any amount of milk to all belligerents-if they could pay for them. If besides that they cared to send gifts as well, they would, but evidently there existed no such obligation. And of course they did not realize the paramount importance of food, for no one can who has enough of it. It is con­sidered rather greedy and somewhat sordid to think and talk much about it-as long as one has plenty of it, and here there was plenty. In camp it was a predominant problem, in Germany and Austria it was, as I was to find later, the one thing which occupied all people's thoughts, but in Holland at that time it was rather tactless to allude to it, just as people who invite poor relations do not want to hear stories about their misery.

My first reaction to this was to write to the families of my different friends to urge them to send food, and to send food myself when and where I could, but I did not find this as easy as I. had imagined. One could only send parcels through the Red Cross and most foodstuffs were not allowed to be exported ; the people in Germany could send nothing from there, and could also only send though the Red Cross. So that is what one did, but the parcels I sent never got there. The Red Cross, no doubt, did their best, but they had no control over matters : ships might be sunk, parcels might be stolen, prisoners might have been transferred, as all those at Wakefield were to the Isle of Man some time in 1918.

It was not only food and its distribution or-which is almost the same-wealth and its distribution which seemed all wrong to me in these first weeks, everything else seemed topsy-turvy too: I remember what a disastrous impression I received from the first place of entertainment I visited. [221]Rotterdam is not a city of much refinement, it is a big port with a wealthy bourgeoisie which goes to the Hague — not many miles off when it wishes to enjoy itself. The music-halls and cabarets and dancing-saloons of Rotterdam, of which there are many, cater for primitive tastes. That again would neither surprise nor impress one under normal circumstances, but I was still labouring under the delusion that I had left barbaric surroundings to return to culture, and I had forgotten some aspects of that culture. It seemed like a madhouse. There was an orchestra of huge fat women, labelled Viennese, there were 'suggestive ' French diseuses, so-called funny men and acrobats ; it was as if the world had stood still since about 1880, and there was a noisy, none-too-sober audience. No trace of art, wit, or even luxuriousness about it ; it was just stupid, tedious and vulgar, and it seemed ghostly as well to me, for I had imagined that the war had killed all that. The real trouble was, of course, that I believed the world to be more or less as the papers had represented it to be for years, for no matter how sceptical a reader one may be, one is bound to be impressed by the papers when one can't judge for oneself. I had not seen the world for years, and I thought of it as a place where everything had given way to the one great preoccupation. The men were in the army or doing war-work, the women nurses, all had cast aside all other things. If there still remained any gaiety it was kept up for the soldiers on leave, other­wise all countries were places of-mourning, if not without pride in their mourning and sacrifices. I had, in fact, believed that the wax had changed human nature and that the world had become full of tragic nobility, so it came as a shock to discover that it had simply deteriorated all round. For the time being I thought, however, that such deterioration was limited to the neutral countries, that it was the price they had to pay for their material enrichment.

[222]I found the peace of mind I had at last arrived at in camp absolutely shattered ; I could not work, I no longer knew what to think about it all nor where I stood, and instead of writing or thinking I spent the days reading the newspapers of all nations. One could compare them here, those of both sides and the neutral ones, but that only made me all the more confused, for the two sides were in full contradiction and the neutral papers partial to one side or the other.

When I had been in Rotterdam for two months I received my mother's visit which was, of course, a great joy after so long a separation, even if the news she had to relate were mostly of a sad nature. It made me realize that some ties at least were what they always had been and that a few things could not be affected by the war. That visit was all too short, and after it Rotterdam seemed worse than ever. By now one had lost nearly all contact with one's former fellow-prisoners ; they also had had their relations to see them and began to feel again that there lay their real affinities ; there was no longer any feeling of belonging together, we had re-become strangers. So I was quite alone, and if that was in a way wholesome and a step towards the normal, it was at the same time rather difficult to bear in surroundings so antagonistic to me.

I made up my mind to a bold step and asked to be allowed to live in a seaside place when spring came. I hoped for Scheveningen, which has the advantage of being so near the Hague with its galleries and other interests, but that was forbidden as being in the British prisoners' zone, nor was I allowed Zandvoort, where German friends had offered to put their summer-house at my disposal, but Noordwijk was at last permitted, as it had already been to a certain number of interned. [223]So I travelled to Noordwijk, which was but a very short journey, and I was thankful when I saw the sea, the miles of sands and dunes and breathed the pure fresh air.

I have the very pleasantest recollections of Noordwijk in every way. This was exactly what I had been longing for in camp : an unlimited horizon, perfect quiet, broken only by wind and waves, and no human being near one if one had no wish for company. It was May and there were as yet hardly any visitors, nor would there be many before July, and this was a place where it was good to be alone. There was hardly anyone in the big white hotel facing the sea, which I chose, except the very pleasant family it belonged to, and when I sat on my covered balcony I had only sand, sea, and sky before me. I have always had a strong longing for the sea, and even as a child always tried to walk to it, being sure it must lie behind any hill or rising ground which hid the horizon, and no other type of scenery has ever given me any satisfaction. Why that should be, I cannot imagine, and it can certainly not be attributed to any heredity, nor does my desire go any farther than the seashore !' I am a very bad sailor and don't like being on the sea at all, but besides that, it seems to shrink in an unaccountable manner once you are on it : from the shore it is immense, from a ship it looks measurable ; also it is very varied in the first and very monotonous in the second case.

Noordwijk was for all these reasons an ideal place for me to be in, and it brought me definitely back to health and sanity. If I had not had that long period of rest and calm I don't think I should have managed to get over the years which were to follow it. [224]I was there from May till far into October, but here again was a place where time stood still, as it had done at Wakefield. Altogether in a sense I now began again where I had left off there. I got books again, I began to try to re-write what I had had to leave behind. I went for long walks along the firm sands, and after a time I got bold and visited some of the Dutch towns, though that was strictly prohibited. I discovered the many beauties of Holland and grew to like the country very much. There were peaceful old cities, like Haarlem, Delft, and Leyden, and each held astonishing galleries. Leyden in particular, which was fortunately quite near and 'allowed,' has the most charming museums in the world, for the art-treasures are housed in a number of beautiful old homes and not in a cold structure erected for that purpose. Visitors are few, guardians pleased to see one and ready to fetch out anything one wishes to inspect, and there are astonishing Egyptian and Chinese treasures to be seen there. I went to the Hague, which is a charming, super-clean, stiff little Resident, forming the strongest contrast to noisy and dirty Rotterdam (those cobbled quays !), and even as far as Amsterdam, which is surely one of the most fascinating capitals of Europe. I saw green pastures and cows and windmills and the acres of tulips and hyacinths in flower, and always there was the sea to return to.

The summer months brought many visitors, nearly all Dutch, and the hotel was full. There were quite a number of very pleasant people among them, and meeting them on this footing I found the Dutch very likable. I made some good friends, one of whom managed to arrange my Paris affairs for me to some extent, and all of whom were as helpful as they could be. For the first time for four years I felt I had re-become an individual whom people liked, or perhaps disliked, for what he was, instead of being something abstract like an enemy alien or an interned civilian.[225] If this society was not my society of former times it was at any rate a normally composed one of which I formed a unit. There were families, mothers with children, old people, young people, babies. Some were business people, some artists or on the stage, and some just human beings. They were, in fact, a very average lot, but that is just why they were the best company I could have found, for slowly and without my being aware of it at the time their good humour and common sense restored my mental equilibrium. I began to paint again, but only landscapes or rather sea-scapes, and they were about as simple and subdued as my pre-war work had been complicated and coloured. That summer restored my physical health and my mental equilibrium almost completely.

But when summer began to fade into autumn I got restless. I was feeling strong enough to wish to return to a more active mode of life, and Noordwijk was losing its charm. The war showed no sign of ending, it might well continue for another winter, for years possibly, and what was I to do meanwhile ? All this was costing a good deal of money too, and I ought to try to make some, which was quite impossible there. I began to think about the future and the prospects seemed dark and uncertain enough. Visitors had departed, most hotels were closing, autumn gales made the windows rattle, and the walls seemed to shake with their fury. The seas were wild and magnificent, but it was far too stormy to be out for long, and painting out of doors had become quite impossible. Noordwijk was a sad place now, and it got worse when that strange epidemic called Spanish influenza, which swept all over Europe, made its appearance there. [226]No air could be purer, no place cleaner or less congested, yet the disease raged and there were many deaths among the fishermen and their families, who were now the only inhabitants of the place.

The short days, nights of howling storms, the emptiness, sadness, and mournfulness depressed me terribly, and coupled with the incertitude of general and personal prospects made me feel quite suicidal and the sea inviting-looking for that purpose. Why should one go on with this any longer, and what chance was there of better times returning? In September, when autumn had begun to threaten, I had asked to be allowed to move to Amsterdam, for that was the only place which held out a possibility of finding work, or, failing that, of finding congenial company. The different friends I had made during the summer lived in Amsterdam, and I felt I should not be utterly lost there. Only the family of the hotel-proprietor remained in the house now, and though they never said so and were most kind, I quite realized that they would be glad to see me go, for this was their holiday-time. I did not enjoy being an unwanted guest, having been in that position now for more than four years in one way or another. I could, however, do nothing but wait and hope for the best. Though there was no imaginable reason why I should be refused permission to move to Amsterdam I had not the shadow of a right to claim it. No answer came to my letter, and I could not think where the difficulty lay. I suppose there really was none, and that the delay was purely accidental, but October was nearly over when I was informed that my demand had been granted and that I could move to Amsterdam on a certain date in November.

The great offensive of the Allies was well under way then, but I did not for a moment imagine that the end of the war could be in sight. One had heard that story far too often from both sides : if that battle was victorious or that place captured or that offensive successful-then that would mean the beginning of the end. [227]And all it had meant was that new positions had been taken up, and everything had gone on as before. I never doubted that the war would continue through that winter, and that winter I would pass at Amsterdam.

When I arrived there the first thing that met my eyes on leaving the railway station was a newspaper poster, the most startling one I have ever seen : The Emperor of Germany had taken refuge in Holland !

I went to the hotel feeling utterly dazed. How long did I intend to stay, they asked there; how long indeed, I wondered. What was going to happen now, what did this mean to all the world and to me in particular ? Even the stolid Dutch seemed quite agitated for once, and everyone was discussing the probable consequences of the event and the chances of peace. The next day brought the news that the Crown Prince too had fled to Holland, and after that all became rumour and confusion. Revolution had broken out in Germany, that much was certain, and traffic had stopped, but no one knew what was really happening. Probably Bolshevism had conquered the country, so one believed, for it was the only precedent to go by. Sailors' revolts, army soviets the telegrams spoke of, the whole of the army in Flanders and France in full retreat, they said-a disaster of immeasurable propor­tions. What was happening to my relatives, what would be the fate of the country, what that of people like my­self? Could one return, should one return, or urge them to flight, and where did one stand meanwhile ?

I paid a visit to the German Commission for the interned and found the place as good as deserted and the few military officials there quite as puzzled as myself. [228]They had no news, they knew nothing, and the Embassy at the Hague knew less — it did not even know if it was still an embassy and if so whom it was supposed to represent ! This was the end of the world as far as all these institutions and authorities were concerned, they were no longer responsible to anybody or for anything. The Dutch Commission shrugged their shoulders : surely they could not be expected to know ! There was nothing; for it but to wait. I have but the haziest recollections of what happened during the following weeks. One learnt that a provisional government had been formed in Berlin consisting; of Socialists of the warring factions and that an armistice was being negotiated. One read accounts of fighting in German papers, which began to appear again,, and read in them tales of imaginary revolutions in other countries. The allied papers got their news from Holland or Switzer­ land, and there no one knew anything. The Dutch them­selves got restless, there were rumours of revolution in Holland and they crystallized to this in the end : the revolution would break out in Amsterdam on the follow­ing Thursday at midday. The leader of the Dutch Communist Party would arrive at the Town Hall with his revolutionary army, hoist the red flag and declare Holland a Soviet Republic. Incredible as it may appear, this took place exactly according to schedule ! At midday on Thursday the leader appeared with flag and followers and found the square guarded by troops and crowded with innumerable burghers who wanted to witness events, When he saw the troops, he declared that there was nothing doing, and left again. But the crowd was so disappointed and disgusted that something had to be done, so the Queen came over from the Hague in great haste and got the greatest reception she ever had in her life and made a speech from the balcony of the Town Hall, after which the people cheered themselves hoarse and then dispersed peacefully.

[229]But if the situation in Holland was thus sufficiently reassuring, the news from Berlin and Vienna, where my people were, got ever more alarming and confused. I could not possibly leave my mother, an old lady, to face such a state of affairs even if her answers to my wires had been reassuring. Wires passed, but no letters, and wires too were probably censored. But how could one get there ? No trains running, and how could one get across the frontier, now more strictly guarded than ever — by the entire Dutch army, without a passport, without a. permit ? I paid another visit to that patient Dutch Commission, besieged all day by people asking un­answerable questions. There was progress to report, they said. The provisional German government had sent a representative and they were negotiating about a. transport to Germany. One should have patience. After that, of course, one went to bother them every day Armistice had been concluded long ago, and the Dutch were only too eager to send all prisoners out of the country at the very earliest date, especially the Germans, for these were now all looked on as potential Bolsheviks. That was the last form but one under which I was a suspect during the war and perhaps the most unexpected of all ! But it was only natural that Holland at that moment was anxious and suspicious, between the Emperor on one side (for whose extradition and execution the Allies were clamouring), and the red menace on the other, and the deserters and the prisoners_ into the bargain, no wonder they cursed the whole lot of them and wished to cease all intercourse.

So I am sure it was not their fault if it was only at the end of November that I could leave the country. Having no memory for dates I have forgotten on which day this happened, yet I should remember it as the last day of my imprisonment. [230]Once again and for the last time I reassumed the part of a parcel to be forwarded and became one of a crowd under direction. Two endlessly long trains were waiting in Amsterdam station to trans­port both the military and the civilian interned. I met my friend Count E. again, who had been in Holland for some time, and we got into the same carriage. We got no further than the corridor though, for the train was terribly overcrowded.

That last ' transport ' showed the mismanagement and muddle apparently inseparable from everything connected with internment. The train was to go as far as a small German frontier-station in the north of the country and far from any of the main lines. We left in the morning and it was about eight p.m. when the train stopped at a tiny and almost dark station. All got out, all the luggage was taken out ; this was, we thought, the last of Holland. But it was not quite the last, as we soon discovered, for the Dutch had decided that there must be a douane and that all luggage must be examined. There were two or three douaniers to accomplish that task, there were about two thousand prisoners, each of whom had several pieces of baggage and all that baggage was piled up in untidy masses on the dark platform. We got there at eight, we were still standing there at midnight, and they had managed to sort out and examine a few dozen pieces by that time ! Then, God knows why, they suddenly decided that they had had enough. It would certainly have taken them another twenty-four hours at that rate. We were handed over to the German escort and led across the rails to a pitch-dark train. The guards wore remnants of uniforms with patches of red sown on the sleeves, their headman wore a large red sash, they called themselves red guards.[231] I cannot say that the headman, the only one whose face I saw then, corresponded to my ideas of what a red guard would look like ; he was very fat, wore a short beard and looked rather jolly. The train consisted of cattle-trucks with a few benches put in, and it took ages before men and luggage had all been stowed into it in the dark. It was, we were told, going to take us as far as Bremen.

At last it began to move and slowly it rattled and groaned along ; it was pitchdark inside the carriages and outside. It seemed as if that night would never end, and though I was tired enough, having stood on my feet since the morning, I found sleep impossible. At last dawn came and in its murky light one saw empty level plains partly covered with snow. We stopped at a small station and were given the first food since Amsterdam, consisting of pea soup, which made one feel a bit less frozen. About mid-day the train stopped for about an hour at Oldenburg, and I had time to look at our crowd which was odd enough. There were some dozen red guards, mostly quite young men or boys, looking very ragged and emaciated ; their revolutionary get-up mixed with that of the military prisoners returning, officers and men. Some of the officers were very smartly turned out and now naturally feeling extremely uncomfortable. Then there were men in civilian dress of all sorts, from breeches to morning-coats. It was an anxious and sub­dued crowd-being let out of prison strangely resembled being taken to it. I tried to talk with one of the red guards and to learn something about the state of affairs in Germany, but he was far too suspicious to say much. All I gathered was that 'we,' as he called it, that is, the reds, were masters of Bremen. I felt I was once more suspect, having just ceased to be a potential revolutionary in Holland, I had probably become a contra-revolutionary bourgeois and capitalist. [232]I did not feel very cheerful. My friend E. who sat by me when the train moved on looked very gloomy too. He had harboured anything but friendly feelings towards the British when at Wake­field, the Dutch he had detested and declared they were without doubt the dullest boors in the world, but now he murmured to me : ' I don't think this country is going to suit me in the least,' and that remark cheered me up considerably. It was all so absurd, it was like it had been all these long years : absurd and tragic, and it was better to concentrate one's thoughts on the absurd side of things.

That twofold note was well in evidence when late in the afternoon we at last arrived at Bremen. We were officially received, by the authorities and by the Red Cross. The authorities consisted of more red guards, massed on one side of the large station-vestibule. As far away from these as they could stood the members of the Red Cross, a few elderly ladies and gentlemen, mostly in black, and looking the very essence of what had now become the ancien regime. There was but one thing both groups had in common, they both looked grey and starved. There were two, fortunately very short, speeches of welcome ; we were told by the red guards that all the luggage, except what we were carrying, would be handed out on the following morning. Then the red crowd left and the black crowd left — and there we were.

I looked at E. and he looked at me. Then I said 'Well, I suppose this is freedom !' and he said something rather strong. The obvious first step was to find a hotel. We went out into the station square, and the first thing I saw were some guns facing the building and more red soldiers on guard. [233]No vehicle of any sort was in sight, nor a porter, and as the things we carried were heavy we decided to try the nearest hotel. There are a number in that square, but we found them full, as many had preceeded us on that quest. So we had to take what we could get, and it came as a bad shock. No matter how much one had read or heard about the state of things in Germany, now that one saw it one was dumbfounded. ( Germany had always been extremely clean, orderly, well-kept, and no town more so than Hanseatic Bremen (it is, by the way, truly miraculous how thoroughly the country regained that character as soon as circumstances allowed it). The hotel was filthy, the beds covered with a kind of sacking which looked dirty and grey, most of the furniture was broken, there were various insects. It was pitiable. We had been given food-cards, and so we went out to get dinner and discovered the meaning of the word Ersatz ('substitute'). It was terrible, nothing was what it way called and in some cases looked like. The bread was some gritty stuff, the meat something stringy and tasteless, the coffee made of acorns, the sugar saccharine, and something served with it which looked like whipped cream tasted like lather. It was not lather, however, for the soap in the lavatory was as hard as stone and could not be made to produce any lather whatsoever. Moreover, that meal was terribly, incredibly expensive, it seemed to us. The mark had already started its downward rush, but at that time no one comprehended that fact which was tomake life a misery for many years after; one did not realize that money had lost its value, one still thought goods had terribly risen in price. And if that was the food a good deal of money could procure, what could the. poor people's food be like

A short walk through the streets next morning was enough to make me see that collapse and catastrophe had. been inevitable, [234]The shop-windows showed empty packages, the shoe-shops wooden clogs, the streets were. full of men in worn and mended or tattered uniforms, both men and women, still more the children, were thin and worn-looking, and their skin had that yellowish-grey tinge I had first seen at Wakefield. The atmosphere was one of listlessness and dumb despair. It almost made one's heart stand still to realize the immense tragedy of great people.

The station was besieged by people anxious to get away, but no trains were running at all. Towards the afternoon I learnt that there was to be a train to Hamburg and I decided to take it as that would be bringing me nearer Berlin. It was a slow train, but as the distance is but short I got to Hamburg a few hours later. Hamburg seemed if anything worse than Bremen. The great vestibule of the Central station was crowded with people camping there, waiting for trains to run again. I was told that there might be a train to Berlin in the night. The city was dark and deserted. Hamburg had been hit particularly hard by the war, its port having lost nearly all traffic, and just then its greatest shipping­rnagnate, Albert Ballin, head of the Hamburg-America line had committed suicide. His giving way to despair had a profoundly demoralizing influence on the population who believed themselves faced by complete ruin. It was a place of mourning, and the gaunt, half-finished new office building of the Hamburg-America seemed its fitting symbol. I dined in a deserted restaurant for some fabulous sum and went back to the station to see if the promised train would materialize.

After waiting several hours it was announced that the train would actually start, and then began the wildest stampede and rush I have ever seen. [235]I don't know how I ever got into that train, one was literally crushed into it, and it is yet more extraordinary that my luggage was put. into it and nothing was lost. Of course, the train did not start for hours, but in the end it did. We were nineteen in a compartment built for eight and perhaps it was as well that the windows were broken or one would have been stifled. All that could be removed had gone from that railway-carriage : window-straps, seat-covers, even the netting of the racks. It was an awful journey, and it seemed endless, actually we took about twelve hours where normally one travels in three. Every now and again we halted for a long time and feared that the engine had broken down. It did definitely break down in a suburban station just outside Berlin, so one had to get out and leave one's luggage there. I found a tram which took me part of the way, the rest I walked.

Berlin was not as the other cities had been. They had seemed dead, Berlin was delirious. The streets were packed with half-starved looking men, there were innumerable war-invalids and still more beggars, there were very many sailors — for the sailors had led the revolution and were at that time occupying the Imperial Palace. Every few minutes motor-vans rattled past, full of red guards with machine-guns, and skulls were painted on these vans. Intermittent street-fighting was going on in different parts of the city and one heard the rattle of machine-guns and sometimes the deeper sound of artillery. Endless queues of grey-looking women lined the pavements in front of all food stores ; agitators were haranguing crowds in the squares. It was my return from war to peace ; it seemed more like a return from peace to war, but whatever the future might hold in store, one chapter of my life had come to an end and time stood still no longer.

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