The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War | Page 4

all-day express train from Cologne to Berlin after it left Hanover. He was a naval officer of about forty-five, clean-cut, alert, clearly an intelligent man. His manner was proud, but not objectionably so.
The same might be said of the manner of the major who had sat opposite me since the train left Dusseldorf. I had been in Germany less than thirty hours and was feeling my way carefully, so I made no attempt to enter into conversation. Just before lunch the jolting of the train deposited the major's coat at my feet. I picked it up and handed it to him. He received it with thanks and a trace of a smile. He was polite, but icily so. I was an American, he was a German officer. In his way of reasoning my country was unneutrally making ammunition to kill himself and his men. But for my country the war would have been over long ago. Therefore he hated me, but his training made him polite in his hate. That is the difference between the better class of army and naval officers and diplomats and the rest of the Germans.
When he left the compartment for the dining-car he saluted and bowed stiffly. When we met in the narrow corridor after our return from lunch, each stepped aside to let the other pass in first. I exchanged with him heel-click for heel-click, salute for salute, waist-bow for waist-bow, and after-you-my-dear-Alphonse sweep of the arm for you-go-first-my-dear-Gaston motion from him. The result was that we both started at once, collided, backed away and indulged in all the protestations and gymnastics necessary to beg another's pardon, in military Germany. At length we entered, erected a screen of ice between us, and alternately looked from one another to the scenery hour after hour.
The entrance of the naval officer relieved the strain, for the two branches of the Kaisers armed might were soon--after the usual gymnastics--engaged in conversation. They were not men to discuss their business before a stranger. Once I caught the word Amerikaner uttered in a low voice, but though their looks told that they regarded me as an intruder in their country they said nothing on that point.
At Stendal we got the Berlin evening papers, which had little of interest except a few lines about the Ancona affair between Washington and Vienna.
"Do you think Austria will grant the American demands?" the man in grey asked the man in blue.
"Austria will do what Germany thinks best. Personally, I hope that we take a firm stand. I do not believe in letting the United States tell us how to conduct the war. We are quite capable of conducting it and completing it in a manner satisfactory to ourselves."
The man in grey agreed with the man in blue.
Past the blazing munition works at Spandau, across the Havel, through the Tiergarten, running slowly now, to the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof.
A bewildering swirl of thoughts rushed through my head as I stepped out on the platform. More than three months ago I had left London for my long, circuitous journey to Berlin. I had planned and feared, planned and hoped. The German spy system is the most elaborate in the world. Only through a miracle could the Wilhelmstrasse be ignorant of the fact that I had travelled all over Europe during the war for the hated British Press. I could only hope that the age of miracles had not passed.
The crowd was great, porters were as scarce as they used to be plentiful, I was waiting for somebody, so I stood still and took note of my surroundings.
Across the platform was a long train ready to start west, and from each window leaned officers and soldiers bidding good-bye to groups of friends. The train was marked Hannover, Koln, Lille. As though I had never known it before, I found myself saying, "Lille is in France, and those men ride there straight from here."
The train on which I had arrived had pulled out and another had taken its place. This was marked Posen, Thorn, Insterburg, Stalluponen, Alexandrovo, Vilna. As I stood on that platform I felt Germany's power in a peculiar but convincing way. I had been in Germany, in East Prussia, when the Russians were not only in possession of the last four places named, but about to threaten the first two.
Now the simple printed list of stations on the heavy train about to start from the capital of Germany to Vilna, deep in Russia, was an awe-inspiring tribute to the great military machine of the Fatherland. For a moment I believed in von Bethmann-Holweg's talk about the "map of Europe."
I was eager to see how much Berlin had changed, for I knew it at various stages of the war, but I cannot honestly say that the changes which