This time I had no difficulty about the frontier whatever. I simply put on the costume of a British admiral and walked in.
"Three Cheers for the British Navy!" said the first official whom I met. He threw his hat in the air and the peasants standing about raised a cheer. It was my first view of the marvellous adaptability of this great people. I noticed that many of them were wearing little b.u.t.tons with pictures of Jellicoe and Beatty.
At my own request I was conducted at once to the nearest railway station.
"So your Excellency wishes to go to Berlin?" said the stationmaster.
"Yes," I replied, "I want to see something of the people"s revolution."
The stationmaster looked at his watch.
"That Revolution is over," he said.
"Too bad!" I exclaimed.
"Not at all. A much better one is in progress, quite the best Revolution that we have had. It is called-Johann, hand me that proclamation of yesterday-the Workmen and Soldiers Revolution."
"What"s it about?" I asked.
"The basis of it," said the stationmaster, "or what we Germans call the Fundamental Ground Foundation, is universal love. They hanged all the leaders of the Old Revolution yesterday."
"When can I get a train?" I inquired.
"Your Excellency shall have a special train at once, Sir," he continued with a sudden burst of feeling, while a tear swelled in his eye. "The sight of your uniform calls forth all our grat.i.tude. My three sons enlisted in our German Navy. For four years they have been at Kiel, comfortably fed, playing dominos. They are now at home all safe and happy. Had your brave navy relaxed its vigilance for a moment those boys might have had to go out on the sea, a thing they had never done. Please G.o.d," concluded the good old man, removing his hat a moment, "no German sailor now will ever have to go to sea."
I pa.s.s over my journey to Berlin. Interesting and varied as were the scenes through which I pa.s.sed they gave me but little light upon the true situation of the country: indeed I may say without exaggeration that they gave me as little-or even more so-as the press reports of our talented newspaper correspondents. The food situation seemed particularly perplexing. A well-to-do merchant from Bremen who travelled for some distance in my train a.s.sured me that there was plenty of food in Germany, except of course for the poor. Distress, he said, was confined entirely to these. Similarly a Prussian gentleman who looked very like a soldier, but who a.s.sured me with some heat that he was a commercial traveller, told me the same thing: There were no cases of starvation, he said, except among the very poor.
The aspect of the people too, at the stations and in the towns we pa.s.sed, puzzled me. There were no uniforms, no soldiers. But I was amazed at the number of commercial travellers, Lutheran ministers, photographers, and so forth, and the odd resemblance they presented, in spite of their innocent costumes, to the arrogant and ubiquitous military officers whom I had observed on my former visit.
But I was too anxious to reach Berlin to pay much attention to the details of my journey.
Even when I at last reached the capital, I arrived as I had feared, too late.
"Your Excellency," said a courteous official at the railway station, to whom my naval uniform acted as a sufficient pa.s.sport. "The Revolution of which you speak is over. Its leaders were arrested yesterday. But you shall not be disappointed. There is a better one. It is called the Comrades" Revolution of the Bolsheviks. The chief Executive was installed yesterday."
"Would it be possible for me to see him?" I asked.
"Nothing simpler, Excellency," he continued as a tear rose in his eye. "My four sons,-"
"I know," I said; "your four sons are in the German Navy.
It is enough. Can you take me to the Leader?"
"I can and will," said the official. "He is sitting now in the Free Palace of all the German People, once usurped by the Hohenzollern Tyrant. The doors are guarded by machine guns. But I can take you direct from here through a back way. Come."
We pa.s.sed out from the station, across a street and through a maze of little stairways, and pa.s.sages into the heart of the great building that had been the offices of the Imperial Government.
"Enter this room. Do not knock," said my guide. "Good bye."
In another moment I found myself face to face with the chief comrade of the Bolsheviks.
He gave a sudden start as he looked at me, but instantly collected himself.
He was sitting with his big boots up on the mahogany desk, a cigar at an edgeways angle in his mouth. His hair under his sheepskin cap was s.h.a.ggy, and his beard stubbly and unshaven. His dress was slovenly and there was a big knife in his belt. A revolver lay on the desk beside him. I had never seen a Bolshevik before but I knew at sight that he must be one.
"You say you were here in Berlin once before?" he questioned, and he added before I had time to answer: "When you speak don"t call me "Excellency" or "Sereneness" or anything of that sort; just call me "brother" or "comrade." This is the era of freedom. You"re as good as I am, or nearly."
"Thank you," I said.
"Don"t be so d.a.m.n polite," he snarled. "No good comrade ever says "thank you." So you were here in Berlin before?"
"Yes," I answered, "I was here writing up Germany from Within in the middle of the war."
"The war, the war!" he murmured, in a sort of wail or whine. "Take notice, comrade, that I weep when I speak of it. If you write anything about me be sure to say that I cried when the war was mentioned. We Germans have been so misjudged. When I think of the devastation of France and Belgium I weep."
He drew a greasy, red handkerchief from his pocket and began to sob. "To think of the loss of all those English merchant ships!"
"Oh, you needn"t worry," I said, "it"s all going to be paid for."
"Oh I hope so, I do hope so," said the Bolshevik chief. "What a regret it is to us Germans to think that unfortunately we are not able to help pay for it; but you English-you are so generous-how much we have admired your n.o.ble hearts-so kind, so generous to the vanquished..."
His voice had subsided into a sort of whine.
But at this moment there was a loud knocking at the door. The Bolshevik hastily wiped the tears from his face and put away his handkerchief.
"How do I look?" he asked anxiously. "Not humane, I hope?
Not soft?"
"Oh, no," I said, "quite tough."
"That"s good," he answered. "That"s good. But am I tough ENOUGH?"
He hastily shoved his hands through his hair.
"Quick," he said, "hand me that piece of chewing tobacco.
Now then. Come in!"
The door swung open.
A man in a costume much like the leader"s swaggered into the room. He had a bundle of papers in his hands, and seemed to be some sort of military secretary.
"Ha! comrade!" he said, with easy familiarity. "Here are the death warrants!"
"Death warrants!" said the Bolshevik. "Of the leaders of the late Revolution? Excellent! And a good bundle of them! One moment while I sign them."
He began rapidly signing the warrants, one after the other.
"Comrade," said the secretary in a surly tone, "you are not chewing tobacco!"
"Yes I am, yes I am," said the leader, "or, at least, I was just going to."
He bit a huge piece out of his plug, with what seemed to me an evident distaste, and began to chew furiously.
"It is well," said the other. "Remember comrade, that you are watched. It was reported last night to the Executive Committee of the Circle of the Brothers that you chewed no tobacco all day yesterday. Be warned, comrade. This is a free and independent republic. We will stand for no aristocratic nonsense. But whom have you here?" he added, breaking off in his speech, as if he noticed me for the first time. "What dog is this?"
"Hush," said the leader, "he is a representative of the foreign press, a newspaper reporter."