The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War | Page 2

I momentarily looked away from their riveted eyes it was
only to be held transfixed by the scrutinising orbs of a sharp, neatly
dressed man who had been a passenger on the train. He plays the
double role of detective-interpreter, and he plays it in first-class
fashion.
While the man behind the desk was writing my biography, the
detective--or rather the interpreter, as I prefer to think of him, because
he spoke such perfect English--cross-examined me in his own way. As
the grilling went on I did not know whether to be anxious about the
future or to glow with pride over the profound interest which the land
of Goethe and Schiller was displaying in my life and literary efforts.
Had I not a letter from Count Bernstorff?
I was not thus blessed.
Did I not have a birth certificate? Whom did I know in Germany?
Where did they live? On what occasions had I visited Germany during
my past life? On what fronts had I already seen fighting? What
languages did I speak, and the degree of proficiency in each?
Many of my answers to these and similar questions were carefully
written down by the man at the desk, while his companions in the
inquisition glared, always glared, and the room danced with soldiers
passing through it.

At length my passport was folded and returned to me, but my
credentials and reference books were sealed in an envelope. They
would be returned to me later, I was told.
I was shunted along into an adjoining small room where nimble fingers
dexterously ran through my clothing to find out if I had overlooked
declaring anything.
Another shunting and I was in a large room. I rubbed elbows with more
soldiers along the way, but nobody spoke. Miraculously I came to a
halt before a huge desk, much as a bar of glowing iron, after gliding
like a living thing along the floor of a rolling mill, halts suddenly at the
bidding of a distant hand.
Behind the desk stood men in active service uniforms--men who had
undoubtedly faced death for the land which I was seeking to enter.
They fired further questions at me and took down the data on my
passport, after which I wrote my signature for the official files. Attacks
came hard and fast from the front and both flanks, while a silent soldier
thumbed through a formidable card file, apparently to see if I were a
persona non grata, or worse, in the records.
I became conscious of a silent power to my left, and turning my glance
momentarily from the rapid-fire questioners at the desk, I looked into a
pair of lynx eyes flashing up and down my person. Another detective,
with probably the added role of interpreter, but as I was answering all
questions in German he said not a word. Yet he looked volumes.
Through more soldiers to the platform, and then a swift and
comparatively comfortable journey to Emmerich, accompanied by a
soldier who carried my sealed envelope, the contents of which were
subsequently returned to me after an examination by the censor.
At last I was alone! or rather I thought I was, for my innocent stroll
about Emmerich was duly observed by a man who bore the
unmistakable air of his profession, and who stepped into my
compartment on the Cologne train as I sat mopping my brow waiting
for it to start. He flashed his badge of detective authority, asked to see

my papers, returned them to me politely, and bowed himself out.
My journey was through the heart of industrial Germany, a heart which
throbs feverishly night and day, month in and month out, to drive the
Teuton power east, west, north, and south.
Forests of lofty chimney-stacks in Wesel, Duisburg, Krefeld, Essen,
Elberfeld and Dusseldorf belched smoke which hazed the landscape far
and wide: smoke which made cities, villages, lone brick farmhouses,
trees, and cattle appear blurred and indistinct, and which filtered into
one's very clothing and into locked travelling bags.
But there was a strength and virility about everything, from the
vulcanic pounding and crashing in mills and arsenals to the sturdy
uniformed women who were pushing heavy trucks along railroad
platforms or polishing railings and door knobs on the long lines of cars
in the train yards.
Freight trains, military trains and passenger trains were speeding over
the network of rails without a hitch, soldiers and officers were
crowding station platforms, and if there was any faltering of victory
hopes among these men--as the atmosphere of the outside world may
have at that time led one to believe--I utterly failed to detect it in their
faces. They were either doggedly and determinedly moving in the
direction of duty, or going happily home for a brief holiday respite,