The Russians continued to scream, to look murderously at the Jew, to shake their fists at him. As for him, with his customary air of dull indifference, he remained quietly in his own corner behind the door, beside the dust-bin and the spittoon, the dirtiest and dampest corner of the casemate.

Said Issajoff:

"They say to him, 'You have crucified our Lord Jesus Christ.' They also say to him, 'You love the Germans; if you could, you would have shot us.' They also say, 'If you accept the Frenchman's present, we will flay you alive.'"

Issajoff is a revolutionist and a Jew, although he keeps this latter fact to himself. Coldly and deliberately he reported to me his comrades' words; but the vague smile which played over his large features indicated irony and contempt.

"You really find this scene surprising?" he resumed.

I contemplated these disciples of the Christ, all yapping at this poor wretch. For the first time in my life I found my Christianity a heavy burden.

I went up to Kajedan. I pressed him by the hand and gave him the orange. I wanted to give him the contents of my cigarette-case, but he said he did not smoke. "Well, give them. to your friends." He did so. The Russians greedily seized the cigarettes. They threw themselves on their paillasses, and,

VASSILI

July 1, 1915.

I AM Vassili's barin (seigneur). He polishes my shoes; every morning, in the court, he brings me water for my "teube"; he picks up balls for me in our extemporized game of tennis; if I am thirsty, he runs to the well; if the cloth of my worn trousers gives way during an unusually vigorous movement of Swedish gymnastics, he promptly threads a needle and repairs the damage; he watches over me as one watches milk on the boil; no valet has ever served me so well. What constrains him?

Were I to forbid him to serve me, he would shed bitter tears. Have I ever given him an order? Have I ever been short with him? Is Vassili my valet or my friend? He no longer kisses my hands, he no longer kisses my lips, he no longer kisses the ground where I have trod. He has given up these muzhik ways. He simply shakes hands with me. When I am at work he sits on my ration-chest or stands at the window, smoking cigarettes and looking at the illustrations in my books. When he likes them he exclaims, "Harosho! harosho!" ("Good! good!"). But always I feel his faithful Siberian eye upon me. He divines the least of my wishes. Do I need a book? He knows perfectly to whom it has been lent. He jumps up, runs along the corridors, finds the man, maybe in his casemate, maybe

beneath the shade of a poplar, maybe in one of the ditches, explains himself in nigger talk, and, breathless and perspiring, comes back to me with the prize. It can hardly be said that we converse; the difficulties are too great. We look at one another and we smile. He gives me everything he can; I respond in kind. He works; I work. He serves me; I serve him. I know how to read and write, I can influence the sergeant-major, and I can ask my relatives and friends in France to send me things. For his part, he knows how to darn, patch, fetch water, wash up. Thus, side by side, each at his own task, we both work. He imagines that I am a barin, in which he is mistaken, and that I love him, in which he is not mistaken. For my part, I regard him as a good fellow from Tomsk, who pines for his cottage and his wife, and I would like to send him back to them in good condition when his imprisonment is over.

or maybe two, when we have conquered the autocracy which tyrannizes over you." They stare at us blankly, utterly disheartened.

These poor fellows are suffering. They have many children, six, seven, or eight. Their savings are exhausted, and the wolf is at the door. When we are marching to work they recount their troubles to Brissot and to me, confidingly and deferentially, as they would to an elder brother. They are good by nature, simple-minded, somewhat subservient, weighted by innumerable centuries of silent submission. One perceives clearly that they have not effected their revolution, and that despite parliamentary suffrage and the Reichstag they are still under the dominion of the feudal age.

THROUGH studying them closely, and through talking with them, it seems to me that I am beginning to understand this

THE COMMON PEOPLE OF GERMANY AND THE WAR

July 7, 1915.

IT has lasted for eleven months. How much longer will it continue?

Our sentries are even more impatient than we are ourselves. They grumble and find fault.

"It is too bad," they exclaim. "Do you think it will be over in a month?" they ask us.

"Pooh!" we answer; "in a year perhaps,

I knew huge and mysterious Germany. something of the élite of the country, but was quite ignorant of the common people, workmen, peasants, and lower middle class. But these are the backbone of Germany.

How different is their world from ours! In France we read the paper; we have political ideas; we influence the appointment of ministers; we take sides passionately, for or against Pelletan, for or against. Clemenceau, for or against Poincaré; every one of our village orators has

good advice to give to our admirals, our generals, and our diplomats. How unlike Germany! Nothing can equal the ignorance of these folk in public matters. Think of a French agriculturist of the days of Louis XIV, hard-working and kindly, engrossed in domestic cares, knowing that it is hard to gain a livelihood, and occupied in this pursuit by day and by night; accepting princes, seigneurs, taxes, corvées, and wars as one accepts sunshine, rain, hail, and frost, without venturing to pass any judgment upon them; saying that these things have been, are, and will be, that he himself is but a poor man, that every one has his own trade, that it is the king's to govern, and his to provide a living for his family; there you have the political essence of the German peasant and the German workman. Monarchy, republic, foreign relations, double alliance or triple alliance-don't waste your time talking to him about these. Should you do so, he will listen, he will express a civil assent, and will then fall asleep over his beer.

A Frenchman cannot understand how utterly indifferent are the common people in Germany to political ideas and to questions of state. A Frenchman, whether he knows it or not, and even if he believes himself to be a monarchist, reasons like a leader. He speaks as if he were himself a part of the king and a considerable part. He eagerly discusses the affairs of the country. Militarist or anti-militarist, he is patriotic to the core-patriotic like the sovereign he is. Should the foreigner insult France, he is personally insulted; this is his own business; the offense is not offered to some distant prince; it touches himself, the individual king; it makes his own skin tingle. This was obvious at the mobilization; it remains obvious. For France, one and indivisible, is truly a free nation, a collection of autonomous persons who have determined to live together, who know themselves to have been intrusted with the most exalted of human missions, and each one of whom makes the fulfilment of that mission a point of personal honor.

How different is Germany! The country possesses an élite of persons well equipped for administration and rule, and this endows her national life with a fine aspect of cohesion. But directly we examine more closely, we see that the cohesion is no more than apparent. There are those who theorize about Germany as a whole, but there is not one Germany; between the people and the leaders there is no intimate solidarity, no communion of love, hope, and will. Above, there is an empyrean of men who believe themselves superhuman who utter claims, trace plans, issue orders, who, as if at section drill, thunder out commands to Germany and to the world at large; below, there is a swarm of good and peaceable folk, all of whom are engaged in their insignificant private affairs, and making no attempt to interfere in the loftier mysteries of their government.

It is not the business of the common Germans to be patriots (for this presupposes a degree of liberty and of internal sovereignty to which they have not yet attained), but to be good subjects. To obey unfailingly and without discussion; to abase themselves devoutly before authority; to be subservient to their leader, whoever he may be; to carry out orders whencesoever derived, be they democratic or be they Cæsarian-this it is to be a good German. Active as he is in private affairs, he is passive in religion, with a sort of mystical fervor, and he is passive in his relationships to authority. The Germans hardly realize this, and yet to us it is obvious.

Here is an example. On one occasion I, a prisoner of war, roundly reprimanded a sentry, reproaching him with disobedience to orders. Secretly I was laughing, but the sentry trembled. Standing at attention as if confronted by an officer, he trembled before the majesty of the command, the Befehl. I had issued an order, and that is why he stood at attention; there he was, submissive, stupefied with willingness; he forgot that I was a Frenchman, subject to his orders, that the regulations forbade me to speak to him, that he should

THE reason is that the German has never emerged from private life. He lives in his house, on his land, in his factory, his tavern, his church; he lives with his family, with a few friends, with his professional associates. He makes his life. there as agreeable as possible; he is an able domestic economist, knowing well how to adorn his residence, his table, his savingsbank. The currents of modern life, socialism, liberalism, materialism, the religion of comfort and of hygiene, have developed his practical aptitudes to an unimaginable extent, to a degree unsuspected in France. He wants to get his belly well lined during the week, and to be able on Sundays to go with his gnädige Frau and his quiverful of children, all smartly dressed, to drain several dozen tankards of beer, and to spend the entire afternoon, laughing boisterously, in the arbors of neighboring Wirtschaften. He likes to think proudly that his father lived in poverty, but that he lives at ease. He likes to imagine that no workman in the world is happier than the German workman. As long as he has a full stomach, he can believe that all is well. The Government can do what it likes, can ally itself to Austria or to France, can be licentious or straight-laced, can obey or disobey the Reichstag. He himself, trusty Michael, is well off. Germany, therefore, is great, the world is perfect.

I have gradually been able to fathom this state of mind through more or less

clandestine conversations with the soldiers who guard us and the peasants who employ us at twenty pfennigs for the day of nine hours. Notwithstanding all the patriotic songs with which the recruits make the roads resound, and notwithstanding all the pratings of the pulpit and the school, I am now confident that the affairs of the fatherland are not Michael's affairs. Whether it be that the degree of economic emancipation he has attained supplements or reinforces his ingrained instinct of submission to authority, in any case, the ancient sentiment, quasi-religious nature, and the new sentiment, thoroughly utilitarian, lead to the same result: a concern with nothing but private affairs, political indifference, so that one can even say that in the world of politics the common German is a mere cipher. He expects nothing else.

in

THIS state of mind has its advantages. It is favorable to the maintenance of public order. Since every one rests content in his own sphere, there is no friction, there is no waste of energy, no mutual suspicion between the classes. Authority, certain of its durability, can take long views, it has elbow-room. While those in authority are loved, they can give themselves up to their natural bent, which is to regulate to regulate the workman at home, the employer abroad, to wrap themselves in purple, to cut a dash, to astonish the universe. But hitherto the crowd has consisted of fat kine. Association with the worthy Michael day after day in these times when every one is rationed, when poverty and death stalk abroad, has led me to think that the political nullity of the people, precious to those in authority, is hardly likely to produce a tenacious and

trustworthy patriotism, and that in the long run it may well eventuate in disaster.

FOR nearly a year I have been studying life in this corner of Germany. I observe, I ask questions, and I listen. They are now quite tamed. No longer do they cry death on us. No longer do they call out kaput except as a joke. In the villages, when the working-gang arrives, the children flock to the scene from all directions, barefooted, somewhat timid, at once shy and smiling. They have heard their fathers say that the French are splendid soldiers, "the only ones who can hold their ground against the gray-blues.' The description has raised us in these youngsters' esteem. They know, too, that we receive parcels, many parcels. They believe us to be extraordinarily wealthy. The gossips even state with definite assurance that there are six millionaires and one multi-millionaire at Fort Orff; and, for what reason I know not, I am the multi-millionaire. This little world is astonished that persons of such eminence, terrible on the battle-field, should be so friendly with their humble selves. The German bourgeois and the Junkers, we gather, have less agreeable manners. Finally, the villagers have been informed that our prison society is a true republic, that we have suppressed all distinctions of fortune, that the "sans-parcels" gain just as much advantage from the coming of the French mail as the "little-parcels" and the "big-parcels." This communism, natural as it seems to us, touches and vanquishes them.

The fact is that the children and the members of the working-gang fraternize. Some of the poor women secretly offer us an apple or an egg. The old men salute

us humbly. One of us was addressed as "Most honored sir," another as "Highly well-born sir." Even those who have been discharged from service on account of severe wounds, men with empty sleeves and horribly scarred faces, no longer glare at us with the murderous hatred they showed at the outset.

At Ingolstadt, when we are waiting for our parcels in the square in front of the Kommandantur, civilians come and go before our group and converse with us. The women are particularly attentive. They recognize Monsieur Pierre, "who had a frightful frightful wound, and who, God be thanked! is now quite well again"; Monsieur Paul, "who-"; Monsieur Jacques, "who-" They smile broadly when we call them to order, quoting to them the phrases in which one of the newspapers. the night before has censured them for their friendliness to the prisoners.

Yesterday some of the gang were talking to a hoary-headed postman.

"Well, Daddy, how goes it?" said Bracke, who can speak the Franconian. patois.

"Very well, gentlemen; very well." There he stood, not knowing what to say. He had taken off his Mütze and was wiping his forehead to keep himself in countenance. Then all at once he said, stammering slightly:

"It grieves me to think that we are at war with you."

"No, no, old chap; we 're not at war with you. Our quarrel is with the big guns of your country. They 're a bad lot; they oppress you, and would like to oppress the whole world. But you 're a poteau!"

"Poteau, what 's that?" "A comrade, a chum."