20 
LAND & WATER 
July 20, 19 16 
commonplaceness. The spectacled Lieutenant fell asleep, 
and for the most part we had the carriage to ourselves. Now 
and again a soldier on leave would drop in, most of them 
tired men with heavy eyes. No wonder, poor devils, for 
they were coming back from the Yser or the Ypres salient. 
I would have Uked to talk to them, but officially, of course, I 
knew no German and the conversation 1 overheard did not 
signify much. It was mostly about regimental details, though 
one chap, who was in better spirits than the rest, observed 
that this was the last Christmas of misery, and that next year 
he would be holidaying at home with full pockets. The others 
assented, but without much conviction. 
The winter day was short, and most of the journey was 
made in the dark. 1 could see from the window the lights of 
little villages, and now and then the blaze of ironworks and 
forges. We stopped at a town for dinner, where the platform 
was crowded with drafts waiting to go westwards. We saw 
no signs of any scarcity of food, such as the English newspapers 
wrote about. We had an excellent dinner at the station 
restaurant, which, with a bottle of white wine, cost just about 
three shillings apiece. The bread, to be sure, was poor, but 
I can put up with the absence of bread if 1 get a juicy fillet 
of beef and as good vegetables as you will see in the Savoy. 
1 was a little afraid of our giving ourselves away in our 
sleep, but I need have had no fear, for our escort slumbered 
like a hog with his mouth wide open. As we roared through 
ihe darkness 1 kept pinching myself to make me feel that 1 
was in the enemy's land on a wild mission. The rain came 
on, and we passed through dripping towns, with the lights 
shining from the wet streets. As we went eastwards the 
lighting seemed to grow more generous. After the murk of Lon- 
don it was queer to slip through garish stations with a hun- 
dred arc lights glowing, and to see long lines of lamps running 
to the horizon. Peter dropped off early, but I kept awake 
till midnight, trjdng to focus thoughts that persistently 
strayed. Then 1 too dozed, and did not awake till about 
five in the morning when we ran into a great busy terminus 
as bright as midday. It was the easiest and mos u isuspicious 
journey I ever made. 
The Lieutenant stretched himself and smoothed his 
rumpled uniform. We carried our scanty luggage to a 
drosky, for there seemed to be no porters. Our escort gave 
the address of some hotel and we rumbled out into brightly- 
lit empty streets. 
" A mighty dorp," said Peter. " Of a truth the Germans 
are a great people." 
The Lieutenant nodded good-humouredly. 
" The greatest people on earth," he said, " as their enemies 
will soon bear witness." 
I would have given a lot for a bath, but I felt that it would 
be outside my part, and Peter was not of the washing per- 
suasion. But we had a very good breakfast of coffee and 
eggs, and then the Lieutenant started on the telephone. He 
began by being dictatorial, then he seemed to be switched on 
to higher authorities, for he grew more pohte, and at the 
end he fairly crawled. He made some arrangements, for he 
informed us that in the afternoon we would see some fellow 
whose title he could not translate into Dutch. I judged he 
was a great swell, for his voice became reverential at the 
mention of him. 
He took us for a walk that morning,, after Peter and 1 had 
attended to our toilets. We were an odd pair of scallywags 
to look at, but as South African as a wait-a-bit bush. Both of 
us had ready-made tweed suits, grey flannel shirts with flannel 
collars and felt hats with broader brims than they like in 
Eurojje. 1 had strong nailed brown boots, Peter a pair of 
those mustard-coloured abominations which the Portuguese 
affect and which made him hobble like a Chinese lady. He 
had a scarlet satin tie which you could hear a mile off. My 
beard had grown to quite a respectable length, and I trimmed 
it like General Smuts. Peter's was the kind of loose flapping 
thing the taakhaar loves, which has scarcely ever been shaved, 
and is combed once in a blue moon. I must say we made a 
pretty solid pair. Any South African would have set us 
down as a Boer from the back- veld who had bought a'sut of 
clothes in the nearest store and his cousin from some one- 
horse dorp who had been to school and thought himself 
the devil of a fellow. We fairly reeked of the sub-continent, 
as the papers call it. 
It was a fine morning after the rain, and we wandered about 
in the streets for a couple of hours. They were busy enough, 
and the shops looked rich and bright with their Christmas 
goods, and one big store where I went to buy a pocket-knife 
was packed with customers. One didn't see very many 
young men, and most of the women wore mourning. Uni- 
forms were everywhere, but their wearers generally looked 
like dug-outs or office fellows. We had a look at the squat 
building which housed the General Staff and took off our hats 
to it. Then we stared at the Marinamt, and I wondered 
what plots were hatching there behind old Tirpitz's whiskers. 
The capital gave one an impression ot ugly cleanness and a 
sort of dreary effectiveness. And yet I found it depressing, 
more depressing than London. I don't know how to put it, 
but the whole concern seemed to have no soul in it, to be 
like a big factory instead of a city. You won't make a factory 
look like a house, though you decorate its front, and plant 
rosebushes all round it. The place depressed and yet cheered 
me. It somehow made the German people seem smaller. 
At three o'clock the lieutenant took us to a plain wliite 
building in a side street with sentries at the door. A young. 
Staff officer met us and made us wait for five minutes in an 
ante-room. Then we were ushered into a big room with a 
polished floor on which Peter nearly sat down. There was a 
log fire burning, and seated at a table was a little man in 
spectacles with his hair brushed back from his brow like a 
popular violinist. He was the boss, for the Lieutenant 
saluted him and announced our names. Then he disappeared 
and the man at the table motioned us to sit down in twtx 
chairs before him. 
" Herr Brandt and Herr Pienaar ? " he asked, looking 
over his glasses. 
But it was the other man that caught my eye. He stood 
with his back to the fire leaning his elbow on the mantle- 
piece. He was a perfect mountain of a fellow, six and a-half 
feet if he was an inch, with shoulders on him like a shorthorn 
bull. He was in uniform, and the black and white ribbon of 
the Iron Cross showed at a buttonhole. His tunic was all 
wrinkled and strained as if it could scarcely contain his huge 
chest, and mighty hands were clasped over his stomach. 
That man must have had the strength of a gorilla. He had a 
great lazy smiling face, with a square cleft chin which stuck 
out beyond the rest. His brow retreated and the stubbly 
back of his head ran forward to meet it, while his neck below 
bulged out over his collar. His head was exactly the shape- 
of a pear with the sharp end topmost. 
He stared at me with his small bright eyes and I stared 
back. I had struck something I had been looking for for a 
long time, and till that moment I wasn't sure it existed. Here 
was the German of caricature, the real German, the fellow 
we were up against. He was as hideous as a hippopotamus, 
but effective. Every bristle on his odd head was effective. 
The man at the table was speaking. I took him to be a 
civilian official of sorts, pretty high up from his surroundings, 
perhaps an Under-Secretary. His Dutch was slow and 
careful but good — too good for Peter. He had a paper 
before him and was asking us questions from it. They did 
not amount to much, being pretty well a repetition of those 
Zorn had asked us at the frontier. I answered fluently, for 
I had all ou: lies by heart. 
Then the man on the hearth-rug broke in. " I'll talk to 
them. Excellency," he said in German. " You are too 
academic for these outl^nd swine." 
He began in the taal, with the thick guttural accent that 
you get in German South West. " You have heard of me," 
he said, " I am the Colonel von Stumm who fought the 
Hereros." 
Peter pricked up his ears. " Ja, Baas. You cut off the chief 
Baviaan s head and sent it in pickle about the country. I 
have seen it." 
The big man laughed. " You see I am not forgotten," he 
said to his friend ; and then to us : " So I treat my enemies, 
and so will Germany treat hers. You, too, if you fail me by 
a fraction of an inch." And he laughed aloud again. 
There was something horrible in that boisterousness. 
Peter was watching him from below his eyelids, as I have seen 
him watch a lion about to charge. 
He flung himself on a chair, put his elbows on the table, 
and thrust his face forward. 
• " You have come from a damned muddled show. If I had 
Maritz in my power I would have him flogged at a waggon's 
end. Fools and pig-dogs, they had the game in their hands 
and they flung it away. We could have raised a fire that 
would have burnt the English into the sea, and for lack of fuel 
they let it die down. Thea they try to fan it when the ashes 
are cold." He rolled a paper pellet and flicked it into the 
air. " That is what I think of your idiot general," he said, 
" and of all you Dutch. As slow as a fat vrouw and as 
greedy as an aasvogel." 
We looked very glum and sullen. 
" A pair of dumb dogs," he cried. " A thousand Pr mden- 
burgers would have won in a fortnight. Seitz hadn't niucii t(k 
boast of, mostly clerks and farmers and half castes and no 
soldier worth the name to lead them, but it took Botha and 
Smuts and a dozen generals to hunt him down. But Maritz ! " 
His scorn came like a gust of wind. 
" Maritz did all the fighting there was," said Peter sulkily. 
" At any rate he wasn't afraid of the sight of khaki like your 
lot." ■ ■ " 
" May be he wasn't," said the giant in a cooing voice ; 
" maybe he had his reasons for that. You Dutchmen have 
