Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-12-14
Special Cable to Evening Public Ledger

Special Cdbfe to EUentng Public Ledger
Copyright 1918, bv Ne,c York Times Co.
Cologne. Dec IL.
Few of the British troops apart from the
cavalry holding the bridges. are for the
present in column. but bodies OF infantry are
passing through and going 10 camps and
billets outside the city. Among these the
Jocks, Seaforths, Camerons, the Black Watch
and others, and they have come marching
through with their pipes and at the first
skirl of them the young Germans start run
ming, unable to resist the sight of the killed
men and the sound.
Crowds gather around our transport,
halted for little while in the streets. and
English-speaking Germans in these groups
speak to the Jocks in friendly way, though
many of them were soldiers until a week
30 ago and were fighting against these very
men of ours.
A walter with whom spoke was with the
sixteenth Reserve Division round about Gre
villers and Bapaume, where they lost 75 per
cent of their men. He is a man of forty
two or three and is the head waiter of
great hotel. but was private soldier In the
ranks until the armistice.
"1 often used to ask myself" he said,
what all this thing was for, what was the
use of all this bloodshed in the front line?
We did not hate the English and your, SOL
d!ers did not hate us, though we tried to
Kill each other. II was only the people
behind the lines who hated, and they did
not know the torture and cruelty of the
things we suffered, and will never know"
German People Were Duped
Many German people asking them
selves now what was it all about, why did
we bring this ruin upon ourselves? They
were made to believe, and | think they be-
liered quite honestly. that they were fight
ing in war of self-defense just as the
British and French believed they were, and
they were duped into the belief that by a
months sacrifice hoy
bound to win fairly good peace
Now they have awakened from their
nightmare to the cold. horrible reality of
defeat and they ask who was chiefly to
blame. and answer 1t not in the name of
the Kaiser. but of the capitalists.
Many Of them including the editor of the
Cologne Gazette and the so-called intellectuals
of Germany, still seem to be under the
delusion that their army was not actually
beaten in the field. and that they had many
lines OF defense which the troops could have
maintained for long time. 1t is useless
to tell them that they had Gas | know by
having gone over all this ground) no lines
of defense whatever behind their Hindenburg
line The retreat Of their army, they say,
was due to the collapse of he interior of
conviction by hunger. which weakened the
bodies and wills of the people
From our point of view and in actual fact
it Is certain that the German army was so
beaten III tne nelu or successive hammer
blows and by inability to fill up the gaps
in its ranks, owing to exhaustion of it's man
power, that nothing was left but surrender
Hindenburg himself acknowledged that and
recent history proves II, but it is certain also
that in Germany itself there was a moral and
physical collapse owing to the long strain
of the war and underfeeding.
Proud Camoufiage OF Misery
In recent messages I have given my first
impression of German conditions Of life in the
villages and rural towns like Malmedy ana
Montjoie and Duren. and have shown sur
prise at the good meals one can get in the
hotels and restanrants. also described the
apparent abundance of meat and other sup
plies in towns like AiX-a- -Chapelle and the
absence of the hunger look in the faces or
the middle class crowds in Cologne But If
one examines deeper, as / have now had
time to do, finds that this Is all super
fetal and due partly to the gross inequality
of conditions between the rich and the poor
and partly, too. to proud camoufage of the
misery which is beneath the surface of this
show in the handsome streets and rich res
taurants.
There is hideous stinting and scraping OF
the barest necessities of life, with the hunger
wolf at the doors of the small houses ana
in some quarters where working women live
in half starvation, which drains them OF
vitality.
This camoufage of life's luXures has been
ceverly done by the Germans but, like
camouflage in war, it is all sham. There is
sham coffee and sham tea. Even the rich
looking pastry in the shop windows is made
without fat, and with a little -four mixed
with substitutes, so that it has no nourish-
ment.
In the great hotels the skill of the chefs
makes poor food tasty and ekes it out The