The Land of Deepening Shadow Part 7

When the Verdun offensive came to a standstill a spirit of restlessness developed which was reflected in the Reichstag, where a few Social Democrats attacked the Government because they believed that Germany could now make peace if she wished, and that further bloodshed would be for a war of conquest, advocated by the annexationists.

During the succession of German military victories, especially in the first part of the war, there was plenty of "front copy" both as news and filler. Some of the accounts were excellent. The reader seldom got the idea, however, that German soldiers were being killed and wounded, and after a time most of the battle descriptions contained much of soft nocturnal breezes whispering in the moonlight, but precious few real live details of fighting.

Regarding this point, a German of exceptional information of the world outside his own country expressed to me his utter amazement at the accounts appearing in the British Press of the hard life in the trenches. "I don't see how they hope to get men to enlist when they write such discouraging stuff," he said. After the Battle of the Somme opened, the German newspapers used to print extracts from the London papers in which British correspondents vividly described how their own men were mown down by German machine-guns after they had pa.s.sed them, so well was the enemy entrenched. On that occasion one of the manipulators of public opinion said to me, "The British Government is mad to permit such descriptions to appear in the Press. They will have only themselves to blame if their soldiers soon refuse to fight!"

This is one of the many instances which I shall cite throughout this book to show that because the German authorities know other countries they do not necessarily know other subjects.

As weeks of war became months and months became years, the censors.h.i.+p screws were twisted tighter than ever, with the result that docile editors were often at their wits' end to provide even filler.

On July 14, for example, with battles of colossal magnitude raging east and west, the _Berliner Morgenpost_ found news so scarce that it had to devote most of the front page to the review of a book called "Paris and the French Front," by Nils Christiernssen, a Swedish writer. I had read the book months before, as the Propaganda Department of the Foreign Office had sent it to all foreign correspondents.

It became noticeable, however, that as food portions diminished, soothing-syrup doses for the public increased. Whenever a wave of complaints over food shortage began to rise the Press would build a d.y.k.e of accounts of the trials of meatless days in Russia, of England's scarcity of things to eat, and of the dread in France of another winter. The professors writing in the Press grew particularly comforting. Thus on June 30 one of them comforted the public in a lengthy and serious article in the evening edition, of the _Vossische Zeitung_ with "the revelation that over-eating is a cause of baldness."

The cheering news of enemy privations continued to such an extent that many Americans were asked by the more credulous if there were bread-tickets in Kew York and other American cities. In short, Germany is being run on the principle that when you are down with small-pox it is comforting to know that your neighbour has cholera.

The key-note of the German Press, however, has been to show that the war was forced on peace-loving Germany. Of the Government's success in its propaganda among its own people I saw evidence every day. The people go even one step farther than the Government, for the Government sought merely to show that it was forced to declare war upon Russia and France. Most of the German people are labouring under the delusion that Russia and France actually declared war on Germany. This misconception, no doubt, is partly due to the accounts in the German papers during the first days of August, 1914, describing how the Russians and French crossed the frontier to attack Germany before any declaration of war.

A German girl who was in England at the outbreak of war, and who subsequently returned to her own country, asked her obstinate, hard-headed Saxon uncle, a wealthy manufacturer, if Germany did not declare war on Russia and France. She insisted that Germany did, for she had become convinced not only in England but in Holland.

Her uncle, in a rage, dismissed the matter with: _Du bist falsch unterrichtet_. (You are falsely informed.)

An American in Berlin had a clause in his apartment lease that his obligations were abruptly and automatically terminated should Germany be in a state of war. Yet when he wished to pack up and go his German landlord took the case to court on, the ground that Germany had not declared war.

The hypnotic effect of the German newspapers on the German is not apprehended either in Great Britain or in the United States. Those papers, all directed from the Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstra.s.se, can manipulate the thoughts of these docile people, and turn their attention to any particular part of the war with the same celerity as the operator of a searchlight can direct his beam at any part of the sky he chooses. For the moment the whole German nation looks at that beam and at nothing else.

In the late afternoon of an autumnal day I stopped at a little wayside inn near Hildesheim. The place had an empty look, and the woman who came in at the sound of my footsteps bore unmistakable lines of trouble and anxiety.

No meat that day, no cheese either, except for the household. She could, not even give me bread without a bread-ticket--nothing but diluted beer.

Before the war business had been good. Then came one misfortune after another. Her husband was a prisoner in Russia, and her eldest son had died with von Kluck's Army almost in sight of the Eiffel Tower.

"You must find it hard to get along," I said.

"I do," she sighed. "But, then, when fodder got scarce we killed all the pigs, so bother with them is over now."

"You are not downhearted about the war?" I asked.

"I know that Germany cannot be defeated," she replied. "But we do so long for peace."

"You do not think your Government responsible at all for the war?"

I ventured.

"I don't, and the rest of us do not," was her unhesitating reply.

"We all know that our Kaiser wanted only peace. Everybody knows that England caused all this misery." Then she looked squarely and honestly into my eyes and said in a tone I shall never forget: "Do you think that if our Government were responsible for the war that we should be willing to bear all these terrible sacrifices?"

I thought of that banquet table more than two years before, and the remark about creating public opinion. I realised that the road is long which winds from it to the little wayside inn near Hildesheim, but that it is a road on which live both the diplomat and the lonely, war-weary woman. They live on different ends, that is all.

CHAPTER VIII

CORRESPONDENTS IN SHACKLES

Towards the end of 1915 the neutral newspaper correspondents in Berlin were summoned to the _Kriegs-Presse-Bureau_ (War Press Bureau) of the Great General Staff. The official in charge, Major Nicolai, notified them that the German Government desired their signature to an agreement respecting their future activities in the war. It had been decided, Major Nicolai stated, to allow the American journalists to visit the German fronts at more or less regular intervals, but before this was done it would be necessary for them to enter into certain pledges. These were, mainly:--

1. To remain in Germany for the duration of the war, unless given special permission to leave by the German authorities.

2. To guarantee that dispatches would be published in the United States precisely as sent from Germany, that is to say, as edited and pa.s.sed by the military censors.h.i.+p.

3. To supply their own headlines for their dispatches, and to guarantee that these, and none others, would be printed.

After labouring in vain to instruct Major Nicolai that with the best of intentions on the part of the correspondents it was beyond their power to say in exactly what form the _Omaha Bee_ or the _New Orleans Picayune_ would publish their "copy," they affixed their signatures to the weird doc.u.ment laid before them. It was signed, without exception, by all the important correspondents permanently stationed in Berlin. Two or three who did not desire to hand over the control of their personal movements to the German Government for an unlimited number of years did not "take the pledge," with the result that they were not invited to join the personally conducted junkets to the fronts which were subsequently organised.

Nothing that has happened in Germany during the war ill.u.s.trates so well the va.s.salage to which neutral correspondents have been reduced as the humiliating pledges extorted from them by the German Government as the price of their remaining in Berlin for the practice of their profession.

It was undoubtedly this episode which inspired the American Amba.s.sador, Mr. Gerard, to tell the American correspondents last summer that they would do well to obtain their freedom from the German censors.h.i.+p before invoking the Emba.s.sy's good offices to break down the alleged interference with their dispatches by the British censors.h.i.+p. When the Germans learned of the rebuff which Mr. Gerard had administered to his journalistic compatriots, the Berlin Press launched one of those violent attacks against the Amba.s.sador to which he has constantly been subject in Germany during the war.

As I have shown in a previous chapter the German Government attaches so much importance to the control and manufacture of public opinion through the Press that it is drastic in the regulation of German newspapers. It is therefore comprehensible that it should strive to enlist to the fullest possible extent the Press of other countries. At least one paper in practically every neutral country is directly subsidised by the German Foreign Office, which does not, however, stop at this. The attempt to seduce the newspapers of other nations into interpreting the Fatherland as the Wilhelmstra.s.se wishes it to be interpreted leads the investigators to a subterranean labyrinth of schemes which would fill a volume.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a.s.sa.s.sinated on June 28, 1914. Long before that Dr. Hammann, head of the _Nachrichtendienst_ of the German Foreign Office, had organised a plan for the successful influencing of the Press of the world. In May, 1914, the work of a special bureau under his direction and presided over by a woman of international reputation was in full operation.

The following incident, which is one of the many I might cite, throws interesting light on one method of procedure. The head of the special bureau asked one of the best known woman newspaper reporters of Norway if she would like to do some easy work which would take up very little of her time and for which she would be well paid.

The Norwegian reporter was interested and asked for particulars.

"Germany wishes to educate other countries to a true appreciation of things German. Within a year, or at most within two years, we shall be doing this by sending to foreign newspapers articles which will instruct the world about Germany. Of course, it is not advisable to send them directly from our own bureau; it is much better to have them appear to come from the correspondents of the various foreign newspapers. Thus, we shall send you articles which you need only copy or translate and sign."

This has been the practice in German journalism for years, and its extension to other countries was merely a chain in the link of Germany's deliberate and thorough preparations for the war.

With a few exceptions, German reporters and correspondents are underpaid sycophants, mere putty in the hands of the Government.

Therefore, the chagrin of the officials over the independence and ability of the majority of the American correspondents is easy to understand. The Wilhelmstra.s.se determined to control them, and through them to influence the American Press. Hence the rules given above.

When a man signs an agreement that he will not leave Germany until the end of the war, without special dispensation, he has bound himself to earn his livelihood in that country. He cannot do this without the consent of the Government, for if he does not write in a manner to please them they can slash his copy, delay it, and prevent him from going on trips to such an extent that he will be a failure with his newspaper at home. His whole success depends therefore upon his being "good" much after the manner in which a German editor must be "good." If he expresses a wish to leave Germany before the end of the war and the wish is granted, he feels that a great favour has been conferred upon him and he is supposed to feel himself morally bound to be "good" to Germany in the future.

The American journalistic colony in Germany is an entirely different thing from what it used to be in pre-war days. Before 1914 it consisted, merely of the representatives of the a.s.sociated Press and United Press, half a dozen New York papers (including the notorious _New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung_), and the well-known and important Western journal, the _Chicago Daily News_. To-day many papers published in the United States are represented in Berlin by special correspondents. The influx of newcomers has been mostly from German-language papers, printed in such Teutonic centres as Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee, etc. Journals like the _Illinoiser Staats-zeitung_, of Chicago, which for years past has barely been able to keep its head above water, have suddenly found themselves affluent enough to maintain correspondents in Europe who, for their part, scorn lodgings less pretentious than those of the _de luxe_ Hotel Adlon in Unter den Linden.

The bright star in the American journalistic firmament in Berlin is Karl Heinrich von Wiegand, the special representative of the _New York World_. The _New York World_ is not pro-German, but von Wiegand is of direct and n.o.ble German origin. Apart from his admitted talents as a newspaper man, his Prussian "von" is of no inconsiderable value to any newspaper which employs him. Von Wiegand, I believe, is a native of California. Persons unfriendly to him a.s.sert that he is really a native of Prussia, who went to the United States when a child. Wherever he was born, he is now typically American, and speaks German with an unmistakable Transatlantic accent. He is a bookseller by origin, and his little shop in San Francisco was wiped out by the earthquake. About forty-five years of age, he is a man of medium build, conspicuously near-sighted, wears inordinately thick "Teddy Roosevelt eye-gla.s.ses," and is in his whole bearing a "real" Westerner of unusually affable personality. Von Wiegand claims, when taunted with being a Press agent of the German Government, that he is nothing but an enterprising correspondent of the _New York World_.

I did not find this opinion of himself fully shared in Germany.

There are many people who will tell you that if von Wiegand is not an actual attache of the German Press Bureau, his "enterprise"

almost always takes the form of very effective Press agent work for the Kaiser's cause. He certainly comes and goes at all official headquarters in Germany on terms of welcome and intimacy, and is a close friend of the notorious Count Reventlow.

My personal opinion, however, is that he is above all a journalist, and an exceedingly able one.

Von Wiegand's liaison with the powers that be in Berlin has long been a standing joke among his American colleagues. Shortly after the fall of Warsaw in August, 1915, when the stage in Poland was set for exhibition to the neutral world, he was roused from his slumbers in his suite at the Adlon by a midnight telephone message, apprising him that if he would be at Friedrichstra.s.se Station at 4.30 the next morning, with packed bags, he would be the only correspondent to be taken on a staff trip to Warsaw. Wiegand was there at the appointed hour, but was astonished to discover that he had been hoaxed. The perpetrators of the "rag" were some of his U.

S. _confreres_.