Part 18

The same rule applied to the women who worked around the head of the mine, pushing carts and loading the coal. If they came to work, they received their bread tickets; if they failed to turn up, the little mouths at home would go unfed for a day.

I often used to stop for a moment or so on my way to or from the pit head and watch these poor women at work. Some of them went barefoot, but the most of them wore wooden shoes. They appeared to be pretty much of one class, uneducated, dull, and just about as ruggedly built as their men. They seemed quite capable of handling the heavy work given them. There were exceptions, however. Here and there among the gray-clad groups I could pick out women of a slenderer mold. These were women of refinement and good education who had been compelled to turn to any class of work to feed their children. Their husbands and sons were at the front or already killed.

The food restrictions caused bitterness among all the mine workers. There were angry discussions whenever a group of them got together. For several days this became very marked.

"There's going to be trouble here," my friend, the English Tommy, told me. "These people say their families are starving. They will strike one of these days."

The very next day, as we marched up to work in the dull gray of the early morning, we found noisy crowds of men and women around the buildings at the mine. A ring of sentries had been placed all around.

"Strike's on! There's a bread strike all through the mining country!" was the whispered news that ran down the line of prisoners. We were delighted, because it meant that we would have a holiday. The authorities did not dare let us go into the mines with the civilians out; they were afraid we might wreck it. So we were marched back to camp and stayed there until the strike was over.

The strike ended finally and the people came back to work, jubilant. The authorities had given in for two reasons, as far as we could judge. The first was the dire need of coal, which made any interruption of work at the mines a calamity. The second was the fact that food riots were occurring in many parts and it was deemed wise to placate the people.

But the triumph of the workers was not complete. The very next day we noticed signs plastered up in conspicuous places with the familiar word "Verboten" in bold type at the top. One of our fellows who could read German edged up close enough to see one of the placards.

"There won't be any more strikes," he informed us. "The authorities have made it illegal for more than four civilians to stand together at any time or talk together. Any infringement of the rule will be jail for them. That means no more meetings."

There was much muttering in the mine that day, but it was done in groups of four or less. I learned afterward, when I became sufficiently familiar with the language and with the miners themselves to talk with them, that they bitterly resented this order.

I found that the active leaders in the strike shortly afterward disappeared from the mine. Those who could possibly be passed for military service were drafted into the army. This was intended as an intimation to the rest that they must "be good" in future. The fear of being drafted for the army hung over them all like a thunder cloud. They knew what it meant and they feared it above everything.

When I first arrived at the mine there were quite a few able-bodied men and boys around sixteen and seventeen years of age at work there. Gradually they were weeded out for the army. When I left none were there but the oldest men and those who could not possibly qualify for any branch of the service.

In the latter stages of my experience at the mine I was able to talk more or less freely with my fellow workers. A few of the Germans had picked up a little English. There was one fellow who had a son in the United States and who knew about as much English as I knew German, and we were able to converse. If I did not know the "Deutsch" for what I wanted to say, he generally could understand it in English. He was continually making terrific indictments of the German Government, yet he hated England to such a degree that he would splutter and get purple in the face whenever he mentioned the word. However, he could find it in his heart to be decent to isolated specimens of Englishmen.

I first got talking with Fritz one day when the papers had announced the repulse of a British attack on the western front.

"It's always the same. They are always attacking us," he cursed. "Of course, it's true that we repulse them. They are but English and they can't break the German army. But how are we to win the war if it is always the English who attack?"

"Do you still think Germany can win?" I asked.

"No!" He fairly spat at me. "We can't beat you now. But you can't beat us! This war will go on until your pig-headed Lloyd George gives in."

"Or," I suggested gently, "until your pig-headed Junker Government gives in."

"They never will!" he said, a little proudly, but sadly too. "Every man will be killed in the army--my two sons, all--and we will starve before it is all over!"

The German citizens, in that section at least, had given up hope of being able to score the big victory that was in every mind when the war started. What the outcome would be did not seem to be clear to them. All they knew was that the work meant misery for them, and that, as far as they could see, this misery would continue on and on indefinitely. They had lost confidence in the newspapers. It was plain to be seen that the stereotyped rubber-stamped kind of official news that got into the papers did not satisfy them. Many's the time I heard bitter curses heaped upon the Hobenzollerns by lips that were flabby and colorless from starvation.

There was much excitement among them when, early in 1917, the news spread that unrestricted submarine warfare was to be resumed. Old Fritz came over to me with a newspaper in his hand and his eyes fairly popping with excitement.

"This will end it!" he declared. "We are going to starve you out, you English."

"You'll bring America in," I told him.

"No, no!" he said, quite confidently. "The Yankees won't come in. They are making too much money as it is. They won't fight. See, here it is in the paper. It is stated clearly here that the United States will not fight. It doesn't dare to fight!"

But when the news came that the United States had actually declared war they were a sad lot. I took the first opportunity to pump old Fritz about the views of his companions.

"It's bad, bad," he said, shaking his head dolefully.

"Then you are afraid of the Americans, after all?" I said.

Fritz laughed, with a short, contemptuous note. "No, it is not that," he said. "England will be starved out before the Americans can come in and then it will all be over. But--just between us, you and me--most of us here were intending to go to America, after the war, where we would be free from all this. But--now the United States won't let us in after the war!"