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
I lived at that boarding-house seven weeks just before I left Germany,
and I can honestly say that I never heard a word against my country.
When I first went there I felt worried, for I was afraid that they
would say things to me about America, and that I would answer back and
maybe I would get into trouble and be arrested and held in Germany.
But nothing like that happened. We hardly ever talked war--no one in
Germany talks war as we do here in America--we talked about things to
eat.
At this boarding-house I made friends with a very nice little German
girl. One day we were talking and she said to me, "You and I have
become very good friends. I never would have made up with you if you
had been an English girl, but we Germans have no hate for America." And
I have found this true of most of the German people--I am not speaking
of the high officials and the big _Militär_, for I don't know anything
about their sentiments--but the German folks, they have no hatred for
us.
Amelia, the boarding-house maid, astonished me one day by asking if
America was in the war. When I told her "yes" she wanted to know on
which side, and when I told her she said, "_Donnerwetter_, we have so
many enemies, I can't keep track of them. But I want to go to America,
and I am going there after the war."
Every place I went I met Germans who want to come to America after the
war; every man on the police force where I reported wants to come.
All the time all sorts of reports were being spread in America. My
family heard that I was being held as a hostage, and another report was
that an American lady in Dresden had been shot as a spy. The lady was
called up by Mr. Oswald Schuette, an American correspondent, and the
lady herself answered the phone. It was the first she had heard of it.
Personally I never heard of an American that was mistreated. I heard
of one American that did a lot of blowing and talking, and he was
forced to report to the police twice a day, and he had to be in at
eight o'clock at night, but when he got a passage for America he was
allowed to leave the country. All the American business houses were
open as usual, and no American property was destroyed and no money was
confiscated. Of course one has the feeling that one is in an enemy's
land when one has to go to the police every week, and it did get on my
nerves. And yet, every one was nice to me, and I was there five months
after the break.
The German people have the greatest faith in their undersea-boats and
the majority believe that the war will be over before America really
gets into it. To them America seems far away. They don't know our power
and our might, and they are hoping, hoping that the war will be over
soon. Ask any German when the war will be over and the answer is, "In
two months from now." "It can't last," they say.
I LEAVE GERMANY, JULY 1, 1917.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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