Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and HeardMcAuley, Mary Ethel
History
Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and Heard
McAuley, Mary Ethel
World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany
The morning papers cost ten pfennigs and the evening papers cost five
pfennigs. Last summer the _B. Z. am Mittag_ raised its price to ten
pfennigs, but the public refused to pay the price and in four days it
was back to 5 pfennigs again.
All the larger papers have what they call a _Briefkasten_ or a letter
box, which is an information and clipping bureau combined. Here forty
or fifty people are employed all day long clipping and filing things.
Any one can go to this bureau or write to them and is given information
free of charge. They even give medical advice free.
The large publishing houses publish books. The Ullstein Company makes
a specialty of books for one mark each. They published the "Voyage of
the U Deutschland" by Captain Paul König, and every one in Germany read
this book.
There is one newspaper in Berlin published in English. It is supposed
to be an American paper, but its Americanism was of a very peculiar
brand. This paper is called the _Continental Times_. The most prominent
socialistic paper is called the _Vorwärts_. It is allowed a good deal
of freedom but once in a while it is suppressed. On the 19th of April
of this year 3000 working men and women gathered on Unter den Linden.
It was the only approach to a strike or a riot that I saw as long as
I stayed in Germany. The _Vorwärts_ was against this movement, and
mostly through its influence the people went back home. The paper
has a tremendous influence. Maximilian Harden's pamphlet _Zukunft_ is
universally read with much interest and curiosity. Harden is allowed
about the same privileges in Germany as Bernard Shaw is allowed in
England.
[Illustration: _German Soldiers on the West Front Reading War
Bulletins._]
In the main cities in the territory captured by the Germans, in Lille,
Brussels, Warsaw, Lodz and Vilna, they have established very good
papers printed in German. Then they have papers issued for the soldiers
at the front, like the _Champagner Kamerad_, and the _Landsturm_. These
papers contain war news, stories, jokes and poems.
[Illustration: _A Traveling Library for Soldiers._]
German newspapers never call their enemies ugly names, and they have
remained very dignified sheets. English newspapers are very much read
in Germany. These papers are only four days old, and as most of the
Germans of the better class read English, they are in great demand. In
any of the leading cafés or at the newsdealers one can have the _London
Times_, the _Daily Mail_, the _Daily Telegraph_, the _Illustrated
London News_, the _Graphic_, _Sphere_ and _Punch_. French and Italian
papers are also to be had. American papers came very irregularly, but
even yet a few leak through, and when I left in July I saw American
papers up to April 30. If news in an English paper does not coincide
with that in the German paper, the German reader does not believe
it--that is the only impression it makes on him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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