Читать книгу Boche and Bolshevik. Experiences of an Englishman in the German Army and in Russian Prisons онлайн

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Although I had nothing to complain of, Englishwomen married to Germans were subject to the bitterest persecution. Coffee parties would be formed, to which they would be invited, and then each guest present in turn, by those little stabs that women know so well how to inflict, would see how she could torture the “Engländerin.” A certain “Professorenfrau” we knew wanted to try the same tactics on me. She made the most extravagant efforts to convert me to her way of thinking. When everything else had failed she even visited the members of my household and suggested they should make my life a hell to me until they had brought me round to the German point of view. Then she tried to entrap me. She was putting on the usual pose, asserting that Germany had never expected that England would make war on her and that nothing had surprised her more.

A VIRAGO

“Well, then,” I assured her, “how do you explain the fact that four days before the declaration of war Germany arrested all the English sailors in the country, even those in little sailing vessels far up the Rhine, as well as other Englishmen she thought it desirable to keep?” I gave her the names of acquaintances of mine who were put in the common jail without being accused of anything—and this before the declaration of war. She refused to believe it, and requested me to give her a written statement over my signature. This was the trick always played by German agents on Belgians in neutral countries. If they made a written declaration and signed their names to it, their families in Belgium would suffer for it; while if they refused—then they were branded as liars. I, of course, refused, and the woman broke out into a storm of abuse. I have never seen a more horrible figure, even among the drunken viragos of Whitechapel. At last, fearing for my eyes, as her fingers were obviously itching to be at me, I bowed, and left the room as hastily as was consistent with dignity.