Part 12

The military formed one of these schools--the radical. These men wanted to spread over the entire population the discipline of the barrack-yard. For the time being they wanted the entire state to be run on military principles. All production was to be for the state; all distribution was to be done in the interest of the war, and all consumption, whether that of the rich or the poor, was to be measured by the military value of the individual. It was proposed that every person in the several states should get just his share of the available food and not a crumb more. The rich man was to eat exactly, to the fraction of an ounce, what the poor man got. He was to have no greater a share of clothing, fuel, and light.

That seemed very equitable to most people. It appealed even to the other school, but it did not find the approval of those who were interested in the perpetuation of the old system of social economy. What the military proposed was more than the socialists had ever demanded. The enforcement of that measure would have been the triumph absolute of the Social-Democrats of Central Europe.

But for that the Central European politician and capitalist was not ready. With the capitalist it was a question of: What good would it do to win the war if socialism was thus to become supreme? It would be far better to go down in military defeat and preserve the profit system.

The struggle was most interesting. I had occasion to discuss it with a man whose name I cannot give, for the reason that it might go hard with him--and I am not making war on individuals. At any rate, the man is now a general in the German army. He was then a colonel and looked upon as the ablest combination of politician, diplomatist, and soldier Germany possessed, as he had indeed proved.

"You are a socialist," I said to him. "But you don't seem to know it."

"I am a socialist and do know it," said the colonel. "This war has made me a socialist. When this affair is over, and I am spared, I will become an active socialist."

"And the reason?" I asked.

That question the colonel did not answer. He could not. But I learned indirectly what his reasons were. Little by little he unfolded them to me. He was tired of the butchery, all the more tired since he could not see how bloody strife of that sort added anything to the well-being of man.

"When war reaches the proportions it has to-day it ceases to be a military exercise," he said on one occasion. "The peoples of Europe are at one another's throat to-day because one set of capitalists is afraid that it is to lose a part of its dividends to another. The only way we have of getting even with them is to turn socialist and put the curb on our masters."

There would seem to be no direct connection between this sentiment and the economic tendency of the military in food regulation. Yet there is. The men in the trenches knew very well what they were fighting for. They realized that, now the struggle was on, they had to continue with it, but they had also made up their mind to be heard from later on.

The case I have quoted is not isolated. I found another in the general headquarters of General von Stein, then commanding a sector on the Somme.

In the camp of the military economists was also that governing element which manages to drag out an existence of genteel shabbiness on the smallest pay given an official of that class anywhere. This faction also favored the most sweeping measures of war economy.

But it was in the end a simple matter of holding these extremists down. Their opponents always had the very trenchant argument that it took money to carry on the war, and that this money could not be had if the old system was completely overthrown. There was little to be said after that. To do anything that would make war loans impossible would be treason, of course, and that was considered going too far.

Regulation thereafter resolved itself into an endeavor by the anti-capitalists to trim their bête noire as much as was possible and safe, and the effort of the economic standpatters to come to the rescue of their friends. Now the one, then the other, would carry off the honors, and each time capital and public would either gain or lose. It depended somewhat on the season. When war loans had to be made, the anti-capitalist school would ease off a little, and when the loan had been subscribed it would return to its old tactics, to meet, as before, the very effective passive resistance of the standpatters.

I may mention here that much of what has been said of the efficient organization of the German governments is buncombe--rot pure and simple. In the case of the Austrian and Hungarian governments this claim has never been made, could never have been made, and no remark of mine is necessary. The thing that has been mistaken for efficient organization is the absolute obedience to authority which has been bred into the German for centuries. Nor is that obedience entirely barrack bred, as some have asserted. It is more the high regard for municipal law and love of orderliness than the fear of the drill-sergeant that finds expression in this obedience. How to make good use of this quality requires organizing ability, of course. But no matter how the efficient organization of the Germans is viewed, the fact remains that the German people, by virtue of its love of orderliness, is highly susceptible to the impulses of the governing class. To that all German efficiency is due.

There had been some modification of distribution early in 1915. That, however, was entirely a military measure. The traffic on the German state railroads was unusually heavy, and trackage, rolling-stock, and motive power had to be husbanded if a breakdown of the long lines of communication between the French and Russian fronts was to be avoided. There was no thought of social economy. The thing aimed at was to keep the railroads fit for military service.

But by August of 1915 the military economists had managed to get their hands into economic affairs. It cannot be said that their efforts were at first particularly fortunate. But the German general staff was and is composed of men quick to learn. These men had then acquired at least one sound notion, and this was that, with the railroads of the several states under military control, they could "get after" the industrial and commercial barons whom they hated so cordially.

"In the interest of the military establishment" a number of socio-economic innovations were introduced. The first of them was the distribution zone. There is no doubt that it was a clever idea. It was so sound, at the same time, that the friends of the trade lords in the government had to accept it.

The arrangement worked something like this. A wholesaler of flour in western Hanover might have a good customer in the city of Magdeburg. Up to now he had been permitted to ship to that customer as he desired. That was to cease. He could now ship only to that point when he could prove that the flour was not needed nearer to where it was stored. But to prove that was not easy--was impossible, in fact.

Since the German state railroads had in the past provided much of the revenue of the several governments, this was no small step to take. But it was taken, and with most salutary effects. The trundling of freight back and forth ceased, and the food shark was the loser.

Ostensibly, this had been done in order to conserve the railroads. Its actual purpose was to check the trade lords by depriving them of one of their arguments why the price of necessities should be high.

What was accomplished in this instance should interest any community, and for that reason I will illustrate it with an example of "economic waste" found in the United States.

You may have eaten a "Kansas City" steak in San Antonio, Texas, if not at Corpus Christi or Brownsville. (I am an adopted "native" of that region and inordinately proud of it.) If you had investigated the history of that steak I think you would have been somewhat surprised. The steer which produced that steak might have been raised in the valley of the Rio Grande. After that the animal had taken a trip to Oklahoma, where better pasture put more meat on its back. Still later a farmer in Missouri had fattened the steer on the very cream of his soil, and after that it had been taken to Kansas City or Chicago to be butchered and "storaged."

It might then have dawned upon you that a great deal of wasted effort was hidden in the price of that steak, though no more than in the biscuit that was wheat in North Dakota, flour in Minneapolis, biscuit in San Francisco, and a toothsome morsel to follow the steak. You would be a dull person indeed if now some economic short cut had not occurred to you. The steak might have been produced by Texas grass and North Texas corn, and the like, and it need never have traveled farther than San Antonio. The biscuit might have been given its form in Minneapolis.

It was so in Germany before the military social economists took a hand in the scheme, though the waste was by no means as great as in the cases I have cited, seeing that all of the empire is a little smaller than the Lone Star State.

But the little trundling there was had to go.

In the winter of 1915-16 this budding economic idea was still in chrysalis, however. The several governments still looked upon it entirely as a measure for the conservation of their railroads. What is more, they were afraid to give the principle too wide an application. In the first place, the extension of the scheme into the socio-economic structure seemed difficult technically. It was realized that the reduction of traffic on the rails was one thing, and that the simplifying of distribution was quite another. To effect the first the Minister of Railroads had merely to get in touch with the chiefs of the "direction," as the districts of railroading are called. The chiefs would forward instruction to their division heads, and after that everything was in order.

But distribution was another thing. In that case the several governments did not deal with a machine attuned to obey the slightest impulse from above, and which as readily transmitted impulses from the other end. Far from it. Not to meddle with distribution, so long as this was not absolutely necessary, was deemed the better course, especially since all such meddling would have to be done along lines drawn a thousand times by the Central European socialist.