Letters to America Letters to AmericaJoan and Mervyn(1) gave me as a birthday present a book, "The Great Railway Bazaar", by Paul Theroux. It is an account of a series of railway journeys from London to Tokyo, starting with London-Paris which I have read; I am now on the Orient Express, London-Istanbul. I recall some of my own railway journeys, the first in a foreign country being from Hook of Holland to Stuttgart in 1936, the train being the Rheingold Express.
As soon as we entered Germany (it was a Sunday) uniformed Nazis got onto the train with collecting-boxes, for the unemployed, or so the boxes were labelled. I made a small donation, although I am fairly certain that the money went, not to unemployed relief, but to Party funds. I then had a fine meal as the train made its way to Cologne and on down beside the Rhein to Karlsruhe where I was to change trains around 3 o'clock. It was delightful to sit in comfort and watch the river and the wonderful scenery gliding by and eat a good meal all at the same time.
At Karlsruhe I found that my train left for Stuttgart at 4 o'clock so, having an hour, I left my luggage at the station in the care of a porter and walked out into the town. Near the station was a park and a zoo and until it was time to return I walked around, looking more at the family parties than at the animals. I was impressed with the tidiness and cleanliness of that small part of the town, but it was too small a sample of life in Germany to make any judgement yet because it was after all my first visit to the country. When I arrived back at the station there was my porter and luggage just as if they had stood for the hour on that one spot.
I boarded the train and duly got to Stuttgart. As the train drew into the station I found the platform packed with hundreds of men, all very vociferous and prepared to push their way on, but I managed to get off before I was engulfed. On enquiry I found that they were French and had been supporting their home football team. They were now to begin their journey home. I went out of the station and had to cross a road to reach the Graf Zeppelin Hotel where I was to stay. But for the quick action of a bystander I would have been knocked down immediately by a motor car, having carefully looked the wrong way before stepping off the pavement. Reaching the hotel I found no room had been booked and I was entrusted to a page boy who took me to a hotel in the next street. A double line of "Brownshirts" formed a control holding back pedestrians and keeping free the entrance to the hotel; not for me, but for the French football team who were on the point of departure. The boy and I arrived by foot and he, armed with my suitcase, thrust his way between two of the guards, and I followed.
So I reached my room for my first night in a foreign land. I was 32, it was the Sunday before Easter and Joan was to be born in June2. The most important impression I gained from the four days I spent at the factory was of the cold efficiency of every factor of production. I never saw any operation, however simple, that I could honestly say was carried out better by our people in this country, although we were supposedly producing the same product. It was not so much because they had equipment that was so much better, simply that everything they did was done in as obvious a way as possible, with such innate care and sense of responsibility. I have seen the same quality of workmanship in this country, but it is rare. In Germany it was universal.
Early in the morning of Thursday (I came home the following day, Good Friday) I awoke to an unusual sound, the sound of regular marching feet, in mass, but with a volume of sound that showed clearly they were not marching troops. I rose and went to the window. A most impressive but chilling sight met my gaze. They were all young boys, I would estimate 11 to 14, and they marched in step, without any talking and with no words of command. They had knapsacks on their backs. I could not see the head of the marching column which was three abreast. Neither could I see the tail end, although I watched for some time and the hotel stood facing a main road which extended a long distance in either direction. This was clearly the Hitler Youth that was talked about in England. Nobody who had not seen such a sight as I witnessed that morning, could possibly understand what German thoroughness can produce. Here was the factory life I had already witnessed brought into the home.
I could not speak in German, my acquaintance with the language being too slight, so it was not until I got into the factory that morning and was able to speak to an American colleague who was resident in Stuttgart that I learned the facts. I remarked to him what I had seen, adding that it must be the result of compulsion because it seemed that every boy in the city was there in the march. He told me that it was indeed the Hitler Youth and that they were off to Easter camp. No, he said, it was a voluntary affair, but he doubted if any boy not in hospital was absent from it because his life would "not be worth living". I somehow thought that those words so often used in general conversation here in England were in Germany at that time quite literally true. I came home a sadder but a wiser man, but history has many such examples.
Late the following afternoon as the train travelled across Holland it began to fill up with people coming over to England for the holiday and I discovered that they had been warned of rough seas. On the boat I drank black coffee and was "as sick as a dog" almost before the ship left the Hook of Holland. Then, completely empty, I fell into my bunk and slept like a log, waking only when were safely at Harwich. There followed a tedious time in Customs and an even longer wait for the train to London and for the serving of breakfast to begin. Most of my fellow travellers spoke of the dreadful night they had spent on the boat, of which I remembered absolutely nothing. I was so hungry that I ordered a kipper before my eggs and bacon and could have despatched double portions of both, but refrained. It was good to be home again.