At the Pastorat all the reserve clothes connected with the Red Cross were taken out, washed and aired to be in readiness should wounded soldiers be sent to this town, the gymnasium turned into a hospital and twenty beds put up; a very small number it sounds, but not in comparison with the size of Neustadt.
There was the same eager desire to be the first to do anything which always characterises women workers everywhere. No one is ever willing to take the shady corners nor to do the unrecognized tasks!
I, being a foreigner and an enemy, kept myself free from the jargon of tongues and petty squabbles connected with this branch of patriotism. I kept to myself and stayed in the pretty vicarage garden with the peacefully sleeping baby, or in the almshouse grounds among the feeble and infirm poor. These unfortunate creatures, decrepit with age, showed me great kindness and the desolate feelings of being an alien oppressed me less here than anywhere else. I might walk in their grounds free among the flowers or sit in the quaint old chapel and look at the hideous Lutheran conceptions of church decorations, if I liked, but everything there was so appallingly ugly that I preferred to remain outside among the natural beauties created by the Almighty. But the sensation of being in a town as if besieged was at times so overwhelming that no personal kindness could assuage the misery of it. The loneliness of being the one on the other side among all these patriotic Teutons wedged me in as between huge rocks where there was no outlet. Of course I had no sympathy with them, nor they with me; but I was the one in the midst of many, and often and often my heart sank at the thought of how I might be imprisoned for months and months. The more I tried to speak German correctly the more I stammered over it. Certainly it is like a mother tongue to me, but one can never quite get the accent. People knew that I was not a native of North Germany, but I was often, in fact mostly taken for a Southerner. After a while, however, everyone in this small place recognised that I was English--an English friend of the Pastor, and many considered that I ought to leave this very exposed and important neighbourhood, so near to their great naval harbours and Kiel Canal, and suggested that it would be better for all parties were I, an English enemy, to go into the interior of the Empire away from all temptations of spying or giving information to my countrymen.
I was well aware that I ran considerable risk in staying, but as I had no means of getting away there was no option. English people in times of peace have never cared much about the procuring of passports and other formalities, and when these were demanded my being without them seemed to place an effectual barrier between myself and England.
Once someone had a birthday, the Germans are great on the keeping of such ceremonies, and I was asked by my friends to go with them to the afternoon coffee party. Here about thirty people all advised different things. With a dazed head and utterly exhausted I crept home to shut myself up in my bedroom and reflect what could be done. In spite of their confusing and terrifying advice, they had all meant to be kind, and most had offered to assist me if possible. The best help came from the town chemist, who possessed a telephone and obliged me by communicating with Rood & Sons in Hamburg, but the reply was most dispiriting. It ran thus:
“It is impossible at present for an English person to cross any frontier, and we can issue no tickets as our offices everywhere are closed during the war.”
Someone suggested that I might travel over Denmark--through the Skager-Rak and Kattegat, fascinating names of my geography lesson days. In that case I should have to cross that alluringly silent Baltic--I should be able to obtain a peep at Kiel--the invulnerable, as the Germans consider the harbour. They could not prevent travellers from looking into their Canal, if the Denmark bound ship passed near enough! It would be a great venture--but how and where get the ship when all around was shut up and silent--dead and uninhabited as in the Beginning when the Spirit of God spread over the face of the waters? or when Columbus stood and looked across the broad Atlantic, wondering what enchanted region lay on the other side.
No Holy Spirit, however, was brooding here, but the Great Demon of war. To me the blue Baltic appeared as an unhallowed pest spot, mocking the world with its silent mystery. What hosts of evil might spring forth from its many bays and inlets! From a distant standpoint I gazed on its mighty waters and shuddered. I dared not venture across them.
There seemed nothing for me to do after this but to retire into the interior of the country and hide myself either in the Black Forest or in the Hartz mountains. But again the good Pastor came to my aid by promising that no harm should happen to me while under his roof if I was careful about my goings in and out, and avoided the harbour and sea shore. Though as there was never any visible sign of life on the waters, it is difficult to imagine how I could convey any message had I been so minded. He here again impressed upon me that I had better make up my mind to be quiet until the end of the war. At this my spirits sank to the lowest ebb, and entirely crushed I kept to his restrictions for several days, and had to be contented with the garden and going out with an escort; but my nature being naturally bold and possessing a hatred of confinement and control, I ventured farther afield in the company of one friend of my own sex. At first we walked along the dusty high roads and spotted the sites of blackberries, which were to be picked when ripe. I engaged myself to be one at the expeditions for picking which were being organized, although my good friends at the Pastorat shook their heads about it. But something I must do, and knit or work for the German soldiers went against my grain. There was a spice of romance about shoals of people picking berries to make syrup for the wounded; and every kind of berry was to be hoarded up for this purpose. Boys, the natural terror of the hedges everywhere, were strictly forbidden by the police to touch a berry of any kind or even a nut, though what good nuts would be to soldiers I could not quite comprehend. Afterwards it came home to me that provisions of any description were likely to become scarce and nuts contain a good deal of nourishment. Even potato peelings were to be saved as when washed they could be boiled for soup.
Germany lives in fear of being starved out during the winter. As all the holiday guests have fled from the little sea-side places around, the various market gardeners began to moan that they could not sell their produce. As nothing of any description whatsoever might be wasted, beans, peas, and vegetables of all sorts were bought from these people and preserved for winter, in ways unfortunately unknown to English housewives.
As these walks on the inland roads and lanes were unheeded by the police or soldiers, I began to venture nearer the sea as it was certainly more inviting than wading through inches of dust through country where the only interest was the harvesting children, the sight of which was often pathetic.
One day my friend and I walked right through the inland road to a distant strand of sea where we hoped to be able to enjoy a stretch on the yellow sands. For miles not a soul could be seen, all the little bungalows and villas were shuttered up and everything as dead--the remains of sand heaps and castles made by the children and left as they had to return hurriedly to their homes, made a sad impression on our already heavy hearts. We sat and looked at the beautiful blue and the foam tipped waves without a sail or boat anywhere, and were just planning a tiny kind of pic-nic for another day, when we were unpleasantly disturbed by two very up-to-date German soldiers, who I must say very politely informed us that we must not sit there--that in fact no one must sit by the shore and not even walk there without papers to show their identity.
Silence was my game. My German friend did the talking. She thought I was frightened, but I do not believe I was half as frightened as she was.
Having no papers we hurried home through the inland dust.
The soldiers must have espied us through a telescope from a distant lighthouse to which our backs had been turned, for we had not seen them coming.
Now that no one, not even a native, was allowed to sit or walk by the sea the sense of being in a besieged town became stronger than ever. The quietness that began to oppress us was worse than before. Everyone felt it, and of course I more than the rest.
Women kept coming to the Pastorat with tales that husbands, brothers or sons had gone to fight, and that they must have support for children and sick; and none of them looked pleasantly at me.
Whenever the good Pastor had had a heavy morning with these poor creatures he vented his indignation on me across the dinner table, and held forth against England until all my self control was required not to quarrel. The opinion against England became stronger everywhere as fresh items of infamous news arrived, while wonderful tales of German prowess were spread about. The difficulties of my position were augmented by my having no disposable money. When I presented my English gold at the German bank in the town, they asked me: