GREAT BLUFF

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 41, 16 August 1918, Page 10

GREAT BLUFF

STATE OF AFFAIRS IN

GERMANY

BERLIN AND LONDON COMPARED

Mr. Ernest Lionel Pyke has been contributing a. series of articles on the internal conditions of Germany in the Daily Mail. He was released from Ruhleben Camp on 7th March, after being interned for three and a-half years. He enjoyed extraordinary opportunities for observing the state of affairs in Berlin, as he was allowed to visit the capital under escort twice or thrice a month in his capacity as kitchen inspector of the camp. Mr. Pyke, who is an estate agent, left London on 25th July, 1914, for Bad Homburg, where he was taking the cure when war broke out. Late of the 10th Mountain Battery of the Royal Artillery, he was for nine years a member of the Holborn Borough Council, and for eight years was on the Board of Guardians of St. Giles. He is also a Freeman of the City of London.

In his seventh article lie makes the following comparison between Berlin and London:— '

Someone said to me yesterday, "Don't you think London is beginning to look shabby?" No, Ido not think so. Berlin to-day is really shabby and unkempt. I have always in my mind the background of. the seventy or eighty visits I have paid to Berlin since my arrival at Ruhleben in 1914. Berlin at that time was not in the first flush of war fervour." That was passing away. Something had gone wrong with the war—exactly what the public did not know. The Army had not reached Paris according to the six-weeks' timetable allotted to that task. The populace was very frightened about Russia. The normal night life of Berlin, with its theatres, restaurants, and cabarets, was in full blast. Regiments, smartly dressed in new field-grey, swung through the streets, and there was music everywhere. The war would not be over by Christmas, as had been expected, but another three months would finish it. How, no one seemed to know.

All Germany's recent wars—the Danish, Austrian, and French—had finished rapidly. Nothing could withstand German might and "Deutschland über Alles." The trains still bore the insignia, London, Paris, or St. Petersburg. Even then soldiers entrained with their rifles 'Covered with oak leaves, and; tho cannon were also wreathed with the emblem of victory.

Here and \theve I met a doubting Thomas. England wao a ha.rd rut to crack. The coming of England into the war had enraged the Germans more than' any other happening in their history. However, they got over the shock of this great war factor, and had reached the stage when they were belittling England. They began to boast over their cups, which were then still full, that the Berlin policemen would be sufficient to tackle the British Army. The comic papers were filled with pictures of longtoothed "sportsmen" with big pipes and very 6hort kilts. CONTEMPT FOR "SPORTSMEN." Now if there is one word more than another which embodies German contempt when speaking of soldiering it is "sportsman." A nation of bad losers and bad winners has no conception of the chivalry of Anglo-Saxon games and sports. Horse-racing there is in Germany in plenty, but it is a matter of gambling. Trotting likewise. Massed gymnastics, in which 100 men move as one, appeal to them, but the. idea of a boxing contest in which the couple begin by shaking hands and end by shaking hands is something that they regard as absolute foolishness and as a sign of inferiority, just as they consider votes for women a sign of vulgarity and decay. So John Bull's little Army was a "contemptible little Army," and was written off the slate as of no account, except by the doubting Thomases, who, however, were very careful about expressing their views. i The American soldier is rogarded as of even less importance in the war than was the Britisher, for the reason that the Germans believe that their undersea boats will stop any considerable number of Americans from arriving in Europe. The Americans are also regarded as sportsmen, or money-grubbers bent on business only. Evidently by Government orders, the German papers, comic and otherwise, have been put to the task of making the Americans look ridiculous and contemptible in the eyes of the Germans. Berlin a few weeks ago was filled with photographs of seven captured Americans. I do not agree with Mr. Wile that the Germans are at all awake to the American situation. That they are disappointed in the result of the submarine warfare is beyond question. It has not starved England in twelve weeks as they had thought, but it will, they believe, certainly prevent the landing in France of Americans. Another theory of some is that the Americans should be allowed to land and then be starved by the sinking of the supply boats. Well, as to shabby Berlin : Little by little the ehadow of war fell across Berlin. Going into the town two or three times a month, and sometimes more, from Ruhlebcn, which is some eight miles from the city, I could always note some small change. Certain articles began to be difficult to get. Prices rose. There was a great increase in the number of wounded men that one saw in the Tiergarten on fine anornings. Shops began to shut up. More and more was the announcement on shop shutters : "Shop closed; proprietor gone to the war." At first the women did not wear mourning, or one saw very little of it; j but later on it was increasingly noticeable, until to-day one finds Berlin women very largely dressed in black. Motorcars' disappeared, then most of the taxicabs, then the few remaining taxicabs had no rubber for the wheels, horses ultimately vanished, and so at last Berlin, which is, I hear, gay by comparison with some of the provincial cities, began to seem empty. It resembles London on a dull Sunday, with no motor-omnibuses and only a few tramway-cars. HAGGARD FACES. Now as to the appearance of the people. 1 mentioned in a former article the reduction in the weight of Hacken schmidt, the Russian wrestling "lion." He is a man of large moans, yet he had to submit to the exhaustion of his physique and strength owing to food deprivations. I could see the difference in the; people with whom I came into contact at the various shops with which I dealt in the course of my affairs. The effect of the starvation diet on the women is to make the countenance of the average Berlin lady,, which usually _is not the Venus type, even more plain. At present to walk along the TJnter den Linden on a sunny morning is to meet face after face haggard and yellow, with deep dark rims round the eyes. It is not necessary here to dwell upon the effect of the impoverished diet upon motherhood and upon delicate people. The richest get to Switzerland or Holland if they can. There aro cunning rich peonlo who do obtain food by immense expense and underhand methods and risk of.-punishment. That fact is well known. The process is known by' the Gorman slang term of sclrieben, which means to "wangle" a thing by crooked methods. I was not so anxious to get into Berlin as I might othcrwiso have been, for my English parcels had given me a well-fed appearanco that caused many qucur

glances to be directed at a youngishlooking man (I am 4SJ) in mufti. I took care- to keep my military escort near me, and of coursa I carried my day's provisions with me.

Food grumbling is the curse of Germany to-day, and \Vhen the great smash comes I imagine that the Junker class will have a particularly bad time of it. For there ha* been n. great deal of war profiteering in Germany, open and flagrant. Food supplies have been'held back, •or a rise in prices; industrial companies have doubled, trebled, and quadrupled their dividends. The taxation of wealth has not been commensurate with the situation, and "victorious" Germany is full of bitterness. Thefts of food from trains and; shops have become as common a crime as -hoarding, which even after three and a half years of war is still going on. Pigs, geese, and rabbits are secretly fattened in cellars ajid sold to the Schieber (the people who buy >or soil food by illicit methods) at enormous pricee.

Just before last Christmas I wae glad to buy a secretly fattened fowl for 455. I was robbing one German of a good meal.

No, I cannot say tliat I see anything shabby in London, either in the appearance of the streets or the people. London seems as full of life^as on that 24th July, 1914, when I made my foolish summer trip to Homburg. . We had such constant accounts of the bombing of London in the German newspapers and from German gossips that when I arrived here the week before last'l expected to-find at least 6ome indication that the Germans had been here. Up to date, the visitor to London has great difficulty in finding any traces of where bombs have fallen. Our London shops are a sight for sore ftyes after the bare windows of Berlin.' Compare Harrod's or Selfrid'ge's with What plenty in the windows of these great London merchants! Or compare the country roads of England with those in Germany. Yesterday 1 actually passed a flock of sheep. Compare the restaurants. Just out of curiosity I asked in a London restaurant for •the following extras:—Pickles and chutney and Worcester sauce. They were supplied an al any other time. All the 'Berlin restaurants that remain open' use a fine camouflage bill of fare, but it all comes down to potatoes or swedes in some form or other. Tablecloths were long ago forbidden in Germany as involving the use of coal, bleaching chemicals, and labour. Around me in my London restaurant were men of between 40 and 50, well turned out, with stiff collars. Those same men, if in Germany, would have been running depots at the front—and with no starched collars, for Germany is starchless and washingless. People tell me that there are a number of men of military age in Government offices in England. Ido not believe that there is one man of military age in any Government office in Germany. Quite apart from the power of the Government, public opinion would render it impossible. Too many young Germans have been killed for the'public to tolerate any shirking. MORE PEARLS THAN PORK. How many men have been killedl? I am asked daily. Nobody knows. No one in Germany believes in the losses as published. It is not difficult for any person on the spot to ascertain that there are men of his own circle who have disappeared and. never been accounted for in any list. The Germans have a strange way of exaggerating their captures and minimising their losses. I should like to know how many of their alleged 45,000 prisoners the other day were medical men, orderlies, and wounded men who could not get away. To-day a little touch of brightness iv added to the Berlin scene by the costumes of Turkish, Austrian, and Bulgarian officers on leave. And on this point I believe that the officers of the German Army get longer leave than British' officers, the strain of this new kind of warfare being considered as rendering more leave necessary than formerly. Is London shabby? I should think not, and' especially are our women not shabby. If any of them grumble, let them realise that an English woman married to a well-off member of the Berlin Bourse told me that she had just made a dress for herself from a pair of curtains! Here, again, it was not a question of money but of famine of material. Yet one of the curious facts about the war is that furs seem more plentiful everywhere than normally. There is no, lack of furs or of fine diamonds in Berlin. Friedlander's, in the Unter den Linden, is ablaze with ferns and silver plate. Gratz, the wellnown jeweller of Charlottenburg, told me that he had never done such , business, despite the increase in the price of his wares. But, unfortunately for the German health, it is easier to get pearls than pork. j

Tho lack of traffic in Berlin streets, the melancholy look on the faces of the people, and the difficulty of getting about, form a contagious element of depression. Saddest and most disagreeable of all are the wan faces of tho children.

German child-life to-day is a tragedy, and when the inevitable crash comes the mob will not forget th» sufferings of their children at the hands of the military Moloch.

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