This class, as a rule, enters the government service after having been professional non-commissioned officers for many years. By that time the man has become so thoroughly a drill sergeant that his usefulness in other spheres of life should be considered as ended. Instead of that, the German government makes him an official. The effect produced is not a happy one.
It was a member of this tribe who once told me that I was not to think.
I confess that I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I heard that.
The case has some bearing on the subject discussed here, and for that reason I will refer to it briefly.
At the American embassy at Berlin they had put my passport into proper shape, as they thought. A Mr. Harvey was positive that such was the case. But at the border it was found that somebody was mistaken. The Tenth Army, in whose bailiwick I found myself, had changed the passport regulations, and the American embassy at Berlin seemed not to have heard of the change.
A very snappy sergeant of the border survey service wanted to know how I had dared to travel with an imperfectly vised passport. There was nothing else to say but that I thought the passport was in order.
"_Sie haben kein Recht zu denken_" ("You have no right to think"), snarled the man.
That remark stunned me. Here was a human being audacious enough to deny another human being the right to think. What next?
The result of some suitable remarks of mine were that presently I was under arrest and off for an interview with the _Landrat_--the county president at Bentheim.
The _Landrat_ was away, however--hunting, as I remember it. In his stead I found a so-called assessor. I can say for the man that he was the most offensive government official or employee I have ever met. He had not said ten words when that was plain to me.
"Ah! You _thought_ the passport was in order," he mocked. "You _thought_ so! Don't you know that it is dangerous to _think_?"
There and then my patience took leave of me. I made a few remarks that left no doubt in the mind of the official that I reserved for myself the right to think, whether that was in Germany or in Hades.
Within a fortnight I was back in Berlin. I am not given to making a mountain out of every little molehill I come across, but I deemed it necessary to bring the incident at Bentheim to the attention of the proper authorities.
What I wanted to know was this: Had the race which in the past produced some of the best of thinkers been coerced into having thinking prohibited by an erstwhile sergeant or a _mensur_-marked assessor?
Of course, that was not the case, I was told. The two men had been overzealous. They would be disciplined. I was not to feel that I had been insulted. An eager official might use that sort of language. After all, what special harm was there in being told not to think? Both the sergeant and the assessor had probably meant that I was not to surmise, conclude, or take things for granted.
But I had made up my mind to make myself clear. In the end I succeeded, though recourse to diagrams and the like seemed necessary before the great light dawned. That the German authorities had the right to watch their borders closely I was the last to gainsay. Nor could fault be found with officials who discharged this important duty with all the thoroughness at their command. If these officials felt inclined to warn travelers against surmise and conjecture, thanks were due them, but these officials were guilty of the grossest indecency in denying a rational adult the right to think.
Those who for years have been hunting for a definition of militarism may consider that in the above they have the best explanation of it. The phrase, "You have no right to think," is the very backbone of militarism. In times of war men may not think, because militarism is absolute. For those that are anti-militarist enough to continue thinking there is the censorship and sedition laws, both of which worked smoothly enough in Germany and the countries of her allies.
The question may be asked, What does this have to do with food and such?
Very much, is my answer.
The class of small officials was to become the machine by which the production, distribution, and consumption of food and necessities were to be modified according to the needs of the day. This class was to stimulate production, simplify distribution, and restrict consumption.
No small task for any set of men, whether they believed in the God-given right of thinking or not.
It was simple enough to restrict consumption--issue the necessary decrees with that in view, and later adopt measures of enforcement. The axiom, You have no right to think, fitted that case well enough. But it was different with distribution. To this sphere of economy belongs that ultra-modern class of Germans, the trust and _Syndikat_ member--the industrial and commercial kings. These men had outgrown the inhibitions of the barrack-yard. The _Feldwebel_ was a joke to them now, and, unfortunately, their newly won freedom sat so awkwardly upon their minds that often it would slip off. The class as a whole would then attend to the case, and generally win out.
A similar state of affairs prevailed in production. To order the farmer what he was to raise was easy, but nature takes orders from nobody, a mighty official included.
II
WHEN LORD MARS HAD RULED THREE MONTHS
Germany had reared a magnificent economic structure. Her prosperity was great--too great, in fact.
The country had a _nouveau-riche_ aspect, as will happen when upon a people that has been content with little in the past is suddenly thrust more than it can assimilate gracefully. The Germany I was familiar with from travel and literature was a country in which men and women managed to get along comfortably by the application of thoroughness and industry--a country in which much time was given to the cultivation of the mind and the enjoyment of the fruits that come from this praiseworthy habit.
Those were the things which I had grouped under the heading, _Kultur_.
Those also were the things, as I was soon to learn from the earnest men and women of the country, for which the word still stood with most. But the spirit of the _parvenu_--_Protzentum_--was become rampant. The industrial classes reeked with it.
From the villages and small towns, still the very embodiment of thrift and orderliness, I saw rise the large brick barracks of industry, topped off with huge chimneys belching forth black clouds of smoke. The outskirts of the larger towns and cities were veritable forests of smoke-stacks--palisades that surrounded the interests of the thousands of captains of industry that dwelt within the city when not frequenting the international summer and winter resorts and making themselves loathed by their extremely bad manners--the trade-mark of all _parvenus_.
I soon found that there were two separate and distinct Germanys.
It was not a question of classes, but one of having within the same borders two worlds. One of them reminded me of Goethe and Schiller, of Kant and Hegel, and the other of all that is ultra-modern, and cynical.
The older of these worlds was still tilling the fields on the principle that where one takes one must give. It was still manufacturing with that honesty that is better than advertising, and selling for cost of raw material and labor, plus a reasonable profit.
In the new world it was different. Greed was the key-note of all and everything. The kings of industry and commerce had forgotten that in order to live ourselves we must let others live. These men had been wise enough to compete as little as possible with one another. Every manufacturer belonged to some _Syndikat_--trust--whose craze was to capture by means fair or foul every foreign field that could be saturated.
I have used the word "saturated" on purpose. Germany's industrials do not seem to have been content with merely entering a foreign market and then supplying it with that good tact which makes the article and its manufacturer respected. Instead of that they began to dump their wares into the new field in such masses that soon there was attached to really good merchandise the stigma of cheapness in price and quality. A proper sense of proportions would have prevented this. There is no doubt that German manufacturers and exporters had to undersell foreign competitors, nor can any reasonable human being find fault with this, but that, for the sake of "hogging" markets, they should turn to cheap peddling was nothing short of being criminally stupid--a national calamity.
I have yet to be convinced that Germany would not have been equally prosperous--and that in a better sense--had its industry been less subservient to the desire to capture as many of the world's markets as possible. That policy would have led to getting better prices, so that the national income from this source would have been just as great, if not greater, when raw material and labor are given their proper socio-economic value.
Some manufacturers had indeed clung to that policy--of which the old warehouses and their counting-rooms along the Weser in Bremen are truly and beautifully emblematic. But most of them were seized with a mania for volume in export and ever-growing personal wealth.
Germany's population had failed to get its share of this wealth. Though the _Arbeiter-Verbande_--unions--had seen to it that the workers were not entirely ignored, it was a fact that a large class was living in that peculiar sort of misery which comes from being the chattel of the state, on the one hand, and the beast of burden of the captains of industry, on the other. The government has indeed provided sick benefits and old-age pensions, but these, in effect, were little more than a promise that when the man was worked to the bone he would still be able to drag on existence. The several institutions of governmental paternalism in Germany are what heaven is to the livelong invalid. And to me it seems that there is no necessity for being bedridden through life when the physician is able to cure. In this instance, we must doubt that the physician was willing to cure.
The good idealists who may differ with me on that point have probably never had the chance to study at the closest range the sinister purpose that lies behind all governmental effort that occupies itself with the welfare of the individual. The sphere of a government should begin and end with the care for the aggregate. The government that must care for the individual has no _raison d'etre_, and the same must be said of the individual who needs such care. One should be permitted to perish with the other.
The deeper I got into this New Germany, the less I was favorably impressed by it. I soon found that the greed manifested had led to results highly detrimental to the race. The working classes of the large industrial centers were well housed and well fed, indeed. But it was a barrack life they led. At best the income was small, and usually it was all spent, especially if a man wanted to do his best by his children. It was indeed true that the deposits in the German savings-banks were unusually high, but investigation showed that the depositors were mostly small business people and farmers. These alone had both the incentive and the chance to save. For all others, be they the employees of the government or the workers of industry, the sick benefit and old-age pension had to provide if they were not to become public charges when usefulness should have come to an end.
I found that Germany's magnificent socio-economic edifice was inhabited mostly by members of the _parvenu_ class, by men and women who dressed in bad taste, talked too much and too loud, and were forever painfully in evidence.
For the purpose of illustrating the relative position of the two worlds I found in Germany, I may use the simile that the new world inhabited all the better floors, while the old was content with the cellar and the attic. In the cellar lived the actual producers, and in the garret the intellectuals, poor aristocracy, government officials, professional men, and army officers.
Food being the thing everybody needs, and, which needing, he or she must have at any price, the men who in the past had "saturated" foreign markets turned of a sudden their attention to matters at home. The British blockade had made exports impossible. The overseas channel of income was closed. Exploitation had to be directed into other fields.
The German government saw this coming, and, under the plea of military necessity, which really existed, of course, began to apply a policy of restriction in railroad traffic. More will be said of this elsewhere.
Here I will state that from the very first military emergency was well merged with socio-economic exigency.
The high priest of greed found that the government, by virtue of being the owner of the railroads, was putting a damper on the concentration of life's necessities and commodities. But that, after all, was not a serious matter. So long as the food shark and commodity-grabber owned an article he would always find the means to make the public pay for it.
Whether he sold a thing in Cologne, Hanover, Berlin, or Stettin made little difference in the end, so long as prices were good. All that was necessary was to establish a _Filiale_--a branch house--at the point and all was well.
But as yet there was no actual shortage. Things were only beginning to be scarce at times and intervals.
The population had begun to save food. The counters and shelves of the retailers were still full, and the warehouses of the wholesalers had just received the harvest of the year.
Hoarding had as yet not been thought of to any extent. Germany had not been at war for forty-three years, and normally the food-supply had been so generous that only a few pessimists, who saw a long war ahead, thought it necessary to store up food for the future.
It was not until the fourth month of the war that prices of food showed a steady upward tendency. That this should be so was not difficult to understand, and the explanation of the authorities appeared very plausible indeed. Whenever the possibility of a shortage had at all to be intimated, the government took good care to balance its statement with the assertion that if everybody did what was fit and proper under the circumstances there would never be a shortage. If people ate war-bread, a lack of breadstuffs was said to be out of the question.
That was very reassuring, of course. Not a little camouflage was used by the merchants. I never saw so much food heaped into store windows as in those days. On my way back and forth from my hotel to the office of the service, I had to pass through the Mauerstrasse. In that street four food-venders outdid one another in heaping their merchandise before the public gaze. One of them was a butcher. His window was large and afforded room for almost a ton of meat products.