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Page 21
"Damn!" I swore savagely under my breath, but I put out my hand again to
find out what had hurt me. My fingers encountered the cold iron of a
latch. I pressed it and it gave.
A door swung open and I found myself in another little area with a
flight of stone steps leading to the street.
* * * * *
I was in a narrow lane driven between the tall sides of the houses. It
was a cul-de-sac. At the open end I could see the glimmer of street
lamps. It had stopped raining and the air was fresh and pleasant.
Carrying my bag I walked briskly down the lane and presently emerged in
a quiet thoroughfare traversed by a canal--probably the street, I
thought, that I had seen from the windows of my bedroom. The Hotel Sixt
lay to the right of the lane: I struck out to the left and in a few
minutes found myself in an open square behind the Bourse.
There I found a cab-rank with three or four cabs drawn up in line, the
horses somnolent, the drivers snoring inside their vehicles. I stirred
up the first and bade the driver take me to the Caf� Tarnowski.
Everyone who has been to Holland knows the Caf� Tarnowski at Rotterdam.
It is an immense place with hundreds of marble-topped tables tucked away
among palms under a vast glazed roof. Day or night it never closes: the
waiters succeed each other in shifts: day and night the great hall
resounds to the cry of orders, the patter of the waiters' feet, the
click of dominoes on the marble tables.
Delicious Dutch caf� au lait, a beefsteak and fried potatoes, most
succulent of all Dutch dishes, crisp white bread, hot from the midnight
baking, and appetizing Dutch butter, largely compensated for the thrills
of the night. Then I sent for some more coffee, black this time, and a
railway guide, and lighting a cigarette began to frame my plan of
campaign.
The train for Berlin left Rotterdam at seven in the morning. It was now
ten minutes past two, so I had plenty of time. From that night onward, I
told myself, I was a German, and from that moment I set myself
assiduously to _feel_ myself a German as well as enact the part.
"It's no use dressing a part," Francis used to say to me; "you must
_feel_ it as well. If I were going to disguise myself as a Berliner, I
should not be content to shave my head and wear a bowler hat with a
morning coat and get my nails manicured pink. I should begin by
persuading myself that I was the Lord of creation, that bad manners is a
sign of manly strength and that dishonesty is the highest form of
diplomacy. Then only should I set about getting the costume!"
Poor old Francis! How shrewd he was and how well he knew his Berliners!
There is nothing like newspapers for giving one an idea of national
sentiment. I had not spoken to a German, save to a few terrified German
rats, prisoners of war in France, since the beginning of the war and I
knew that my knowledge of German thought must be rusty. So I sent the
willing waiter for all the German papers and periodicals he could lay
his hands on. He returned with stacks of them, _Berliner Tageblatt,
K�lnische Zeitung, Vorw�rts;_ the alleged comic papers, _Kladderadatsch,
Lustige Bl�tter_ and _Simplicissimus;_ the illustrated press, _Leipziger
Illustrirte Zeitung, Der Weltkrieg im Bild,_ and the rest: that
remarkable caf� even took in such less popular publications as Harden's
_Zukunft_ and semi-blackmailing rags like _Der Roland von Berlin._
For two hours I saturated myself with German contemporary thought as
expressed in the German press. I deliberately laid my mind open to
conviction; I repeated to myself over and over again: "We Germans are
fighting a defensive war: the scoundrelly Grey made the world-war: Gott
strafe England!" Absurd as this proceeding seems to me when I look back
upon it, I would not laugh at myself at the time. I must be German, I
must feel German, I must think German: on that would my safety in the
immediate future depend.
I laid aside my reading in the end with a feeling of utter amazement. In
every one of these publications, in peace-time so widely dissimilar in
conviction and trend, I found the same mentality, the same outlook, the
same parrot-like cries. What the _Cologne Gazette_ shrieked from its
editorial columns, the comic (God save the mark) press echoed in foul
and hideous caricature. Here was organization with a vengeance, the
mobilization of national thought, a series of gramophone records fed
into a thousand different machines so that each might play the selfsame
tune.
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