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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review, June 1928

A Night in Neustadt

A Night in Neustadt

[The following letter appeared in a Wellington paper just previous to last Christmas. Because of the fact that it is written by one well known to readers of "Spike," and because we think that many will endorse the ideas which it so clearly and so ably expresses, we make no apology—indeed none is needed—for reprinting it in full. The whole letter is self explanatory and needs no further introduction.—Ed. "Spike."]

Dear "Spike,"

I have lately had the somewhat depressing experience of seeing in the New-Zealand "Parliamentary Debates" the report of the debate (if it can be called such) in the Legislative Council on the second reading of the War Disabilities page 18 Removal Bill—a Bill which, I understand, was subsequently thrown out The Legislative Council presumably includes within its membership all that is most admirable in mature and experienced political wisdom, in prudent and considered action, a model to youth and a pattern to posterity; and on this point I for one have no desire to exhibit scepticism. It is all the more painful therefore to read the report of this debate, with the details of which your readers are doubtless thoroughly familiar. The Hon. Mr. Mclntyre, I note, is thoroughly content with home-grown teachers; the Hon. Mr. Malcolm would deprive those who venture to differ from him on an important point of his political philosophy, of civil rights "for all time," and the tolerant remarks of Sir Francis Bell, Sir James Allen, and the Hon. Mr. Barr make little headway against the general wave of feeling. I say nothing on the subject of conscientious objection, not so simple a matter to all students of politics as it appears to be, for instance, to the Hon. Mr. Hanan the heart of the side of the question that concerns me is apparently revealed in the speech of the Hon. Mr. Garland: "Sir, I think the principle is wrong. As a whole, Germany to-day is hostile to us, and is only bending the knee just as far as circumstances compel her, and there never has been any open expression of repentance on the part of that nation, which was responsible for the dread .war brought about on this earth. The leaders of Germany to-day are in entire revolt against the rest of Europe, and it is only because of her circumstances that Germany is not at our throats. This namby-pamby talk of offering the other cheek is only courting further disaster." Now, I do not wish to over-estimate the representative nature of this specimen of legislative oratory—the Hon. Mr. Garland, for all I know, may be a relatively unimportant member of the distinguished be day to which he belongs—nor am I concerned directly to rebut it. On the question of the immediate or remote causes of the war it would ill become a mere historian to argue with a Legislative Councillor. And on the psychology of present-day Germany a Dominion politician is doubtless the repository of ultimate wisdom. But I may perhaps, thus gratuitously, be allowed to give a short account of what I have myself seen and known.

One evening last July, in the middle of a European summer, three of my friends—a Canadian, an American, and a South African—and I came to the little town of Neustadt, in the Black Forest. There are hills all round Neustadt, green and beautiful, and the streams that fall down the slopes between them are not unlike the more turbulant torrents of my own country. A deeper green crowns their crests, where the tall, straight, close-packed firs seem forever to be marching like dark armies upon the valleys below. One imagines that the sky can at times be wild and lowering. And yet the whole country has an air of quiet kindliness and peace, a mixture of New Zealand and rural England. We had been unable to get rooms at Titisee, further down the steep mountain railway—the Germans, like us. are hardened week-enders, and Titisee is a great resort for the Baden business man with a car. for trampers, bathers, and ordinary persons, who merely sit on scats and look at the lake—and came up to Neustadt with hope, but very little certainty. And it seemed for a time that hope would be defeated. There were no rooms in the hotels. We dropped our bags in the street and discussed the matter without joy. and even (I regret to say on my part) with some impatience, for it had been a long day. An old lady, who seemed to me to have the light of lunacy in her eye, had for some time been following us with a wildly page 19 interested gaze; she now came forward—she had a friend—ja! ja! The friend was appealed to. Alas! he could do nothing. Another friend—her house was full up since the last hour! A small boy came—a small girl—in an instant the square seemed to be full of Hying figures of small boys and girls, dashing to apprise their parents of the parlous state of four tourists, obviously unhappy foreigners, stranded in the main street of Neustadt at 8 o' clock in the evening. And ten minutes more we were safely housed, two on one side of the square, two on the other. A sleeping baby, implicit trust and luxurious warmth, was cleared out of one room to make way for the intruders; the South African and the New Zealander, neither of whose faith was very strong, found themselves in a low cheerful room hung round with religious texts and a benevolent little Christ in blue and white china. The South Germans are strongly Catholic and their houses show it. Two charming old ladies waited on us, all smiles and attention; their beds were soft, their breakfast rolls were fresh, their coffee was nectar. We came and went and maltreated their house as if we had been their sons.

We liked Neustadt. It had all been burnt to the ground a hundred years ago, so they told us; but even as it was, rebuilt, it looked timeless and immortal. The houses were set about the steep-hung streets in the familiar and friendly way one never sees in a new country. They seem to grow out of the land, rather than to be set down upon it by the alien hands of a builder; they were as much a part of the hills as the great black forest itself. In the sun-bathed square, beneath the church with the bold shapely spire, oxen came dragging their complaining timber-laden carts, or a motor-lorry, all thunderous and unimpressive modernity, startled the air with its transient noise, threw up the dust, and passed away. The end of the streets ran naturally into fields stretching up the whole slope of a hill, where women, sunburnt, old. ageless, beautiful with an inbred unconscious beauty, turned the new sweet hay. We climbed those hills one evening and felt the dark descend and saw the stars come out—it was difficult to believe that this country was foreign. We tramped the hilly roads and called at a village store for food—how like the universal emporiums at Paekakariki or Otaki station. One late Sunday after-noon we came back from a walk; the square was crowded with people. There was a band, and two separate male choirs performed in turn, standing on the steps of the bigger buildings. There were flags hung out and everybody was very jolly, like the better kind of English crowd. It was an outing for permanently-injured soldiers, who sat maimed, smiling, and flower-bedecked with their crutches in big cars, just like ordinary human wounded soldiers. We stood in a room above the square with a number of German women—they had no reason to withhold their view's on the war and tactlessly intrusive foreigners. They might have displayed some animosity; they might at least have shown coldness. And yet of this there was no least indication. They even pulled us forward to get a better view.

We went to the inn for supper, and the good Frau Hoffmeyer. Widow. was a smiling mother to us. One of us was even asked to play the piano, and. greatly daring, ventured. After supper a village youth, solemn, intent, otherwise silent, produced an accordian and played wonderful tunes, while a graceful girl, smiling gravely, danced with the other sunburnt young men in turn. We left to the sound of many "gut nachts," and it was pleasant to walk for a while under the deep midnight summer sky before sleeping. It would have been pleasant page 20 indeed to have stayed longer at Neustadt, with its hills and cheerful companionable people; but Vienna called us, and Munich, with her numberless trarnpers—how refreshing to one who loved the Wellington hills and the familiar solitudes of the Tararuas—with her treasuries of pictures, her magnificence and loveliness of music—and we left. Our two charming old ladies were desolated to see us go; with many smiles and a sort of ancient demure roguishness they produced (besides the absurdly diminutive bill) two magnificent posies of carnations, duly wired and wrapped in silver paper, and fastened them maternally in our button holes. Come back, they said, and we will teach you the Schwarzwald accent! There is nothing, we said, that we want to do in this world so much as to come back to Neustadt! Auf wiedersehen! said our charming old ladies. Auf wiedersehen ! said we, wringing their hands, and set off down the hill to the station. Neither they nor the thousands of other hard-working, modest, friendly people we met in Germany, in trains, on the streets, in parks, in galleries, in third and fourth-class railway carriages, seemed to nourish any insatiate desire to fly at our quite defenceless throats. Perhaps their leaders—those sinister leaders to whose indubitable, to whose outrageous revolt against the rest of Europe, the Hon. Mr. Garland so thrillingly refers—had not yet whipped up their sluggish Teutonic passions to the right pitch. Or perhaps, in their gross materialism, they refrained from murder only to make a profit out of us, at whatever cost to the national shame. Who knows? We at least passed unharmed and friended, courteously treated, without let or hindrance—and at least one passport in our four was dangerously out of order.

I do not wish to lengthen unconscionably an already long letter. But I cannot help thinking of the young Prussian scholar at whose side I have been working lately in the Public Record Office. He is a medievalist of peculiarly acute sensibility, a man with the historical imagination, a musician, a student of con-temporary European politics as well as of the 13th century London records. He wears a watch chain of iron, engraved with the date 1916, and the words, "I gave gold and received iron." "In eiserner Zeit"—they were iron times, when Germany suffered not less than New Zealand. He naturally feels the national predicament keenly; yet I have heard no word of bitterness from him—despair for muddled thought and foolish blundering no doubt he experiences deeply, as every man must who has the scholar's detachment and the thinker's clarity of vision. It is perhaps easier to experience it here, where history is being made, than in New Zealand, where Legislative Councillors merely talk. I think of the other German students I have known in London, clear-headed, unaffected, passionately interested in a more adequately organised world. I find in them no hostility. They would, I feel certain, be as blanky puzzled as I am at that trenchant opinion of the Hon. Mr. Garland's, that "this namby-pamby talk of offering the other cheek is only courting further disaster." 1 think, finally, of the Armistice which silent London crowds commemorated yesterday, and of the wreath that was laid on the Cenotaph, a wreath, "very small and modest, with the label inscribed, 'to the Great Unknown Soldier of all Nations from a German girl.'"

Sir, this will reach you about Christmas. I am far from thinking that any season of the year more than another is suitable for thoughts of tolerance and amity, but it may induce you to find room for a letter which has in spite of myself attained the size of a lengthy article. And I am far from wishing to idealise page 21 Germans any more than I do Frenchmen, or Eskimos, or New Zealanders. I do not doubt that their Nationalist Die-Hards are irritating enough. And I cannot feel any great indignation at the thought of such speeches in our Legislative Council—wise and farseeing, statesmanlike as it is, it is after all a Legislative Council. But I do feel, very keenly, sorrow at what, in this respect as well as in the treatment of those who are conveniently lumped together as "shirkers," may perhaps be described as the moral inadequacy of my fellow-countrymen—a lack of understanding and imagination, a deadness of great issues and a fine generosity—which to any travelled New Zealander who has observed with candour, who has thought sincerely and dispassionately, makes any country rather than New Zealand his spiritual home.

—I am, etc.

J.C.B.