Dateline- Toronto

by Ernest Hemingway

  With marks at 800 to the dollar, or 8 to a cent, we priced articles in the windows of the different Kehl shops. Peas were 18 marks a pound, beans 16 marks a pound, a pound of Kaiser coffee—there are still many “Kaiser” brands in the German republic—could be had for 34 marks. Gersten coffee, which is not coffee at all but roasted grain, sold for 14 marks a pound. Fly paper was 150 marks a package. A scythe blade cost 150 marks, too, or 18¾ cents! Beer was 10 marks a stein, or 1¼ cents.

  Kehl’s best hotel, which is a very well-turned-out place, served a five-course table d’hôte meal for 120 marks, which amounts to 15 cents in our money. The same meal could not be duplicated in Strasbourg, three miles away, for a dollar.

  Because of the customs regulations, which are very strict on persons returning to Germany, the French cannot come over to Kehl and buy up all the cheap goods they would like to. But they can come over and eat. It is a sight every afternoon to see the mob that storms the German pastry shops and tea places. The Germans make very good pastries, wonderful pastries, in fact, that, at the present tumbling mark rate, the French of Strasbourg can buy for a less amount than the smallest French coin, the one-sou piece. This miracle of exchange makes a swinish spectacle where the youth of the town of Strasbourg crowd into the German pastry shop to eat itself sick and gorged on fluffy, cream-filled slices of German cake at five marks the slice. The contents of a pastry shop are swept clean in half an hour.

  In a pastry shop we visited, a man in an apron, wearing blue glasses, appeared to be the proprietor. He was assisted by a typical “boche”-looking German with close-cropped head. The place was jammed with French people of all ages and descriptions, all gorging cakes, while a young girl in a pink dress, silk stockings, a pretty, weak face and pearl earrings in her ears took as many of their orders for fruit and vanilla ices as she could fill.

  She didn’t seem to care very much whether she filled the orders or not. There were soldiers in town and she kept going over to look out the window.

  The proprietor and his helper were surly and didn’t seem particularly happy when all the cakes were sold. The mark was falling faster than they could bake.

  Meanwhile out in the street a funny little train jolted by, carrying the workmen with their dinner pails home to the outskirts of the town, profiteers’ motorcars tore by raising a cloud of dust that settled over the trees and the fronts of all the buildings, and inside the pastry shop young French hoodlums swallowed their last cake and French mothers wiped the sticky mouths of their children. It gave you a new aspect on exchange.

  As the last of the afternoon tea-ers and pastry eaters went Strasbourg-ward across the bridge, the first of the exchange pirates coming over to raid Kehl for cheap dinners began to arrive. The two streams passed each other on the bridge and the two disconsolate-looking German soldiers looked on. As the boy in the motor agency said, “It’s the way to make money.”

  British Can Save Constantinople

  The Toronto Daily Star

  September 30, 1922

  CONSTANTINOPLE.—Constantinople is noisy, hot, hilly, dirty and beautiful. It is packed with uniforms and rumors.

  British troops have now arrived in sufficient numbers to prevent any Kemalist invasion.

  Foreigners are nervous, however, remembering the fate of Smyrna, and have booked outgoing trains for weeks ahead.

  Everything awaits the answer of the Angora National Assembly to the Allied peace terms. The assembly is now debating the Paris proposals, and their decision is expected next Wednesday.

  Hubby Dines First, Wifie Gets Crumbs!

  The Toronto Daily Star

  September 30, 1922

  COLOGNE.—Traveling in Germany now is as exactly as much fun as strap-hanging in an Avenue Road car during the crest of the rush hour.

  The railways lose money with every train they run, and as a result the minimum of cars hold the maximum of passengers jammed in the corridors like nails in a keg. Yesterday in Frankfurt at six o’clock in the morning there was a crowd of people big enough to fill any ordinary train strung out along the track waiting for the Amsterdam express which was switching in the yards. When the express pulled in, the passengers debarked, and the crowd was allowed to board the train, the corridors were still packed and every seat taken. But they all jammed in somehow or other.

  No matter what your views on the reparations problem may be, nor how much you may see the necessity for allowing Germany to recover into a prosperous nation in order to secure the stability of Europe, you cannot admire the way German men treat their wives. In order not to indict a whole people for the acts of a few, that sentence is amended to read: “the German men I have seen in the last four weeks in various parts of Germany.”

  Here is an example. The kellner comes through the train announcing the third service in the dining car. A German gentleman in the compartment rises, hands the illustrated papers he has been reading to his wife and disappears toward the dining car. He returns an hour and a half later bearing a very beery breath and parts of rolls stuffed with bits of cheese. These he hands to his wife, who munches them avidly. German gentleman resumes the illustrated papers. The family has dined.

  There was the other German gentleman who reached for his rucksack. The rucksack fell from the luggage rack striking his wife on the head. Tears came into the wife’s eyes. The German gentleman looked annoyed. “You’re not hurt,” he said to the wife. Probably he was afraid that if he didn’t check that sort of thing right at the start the wife might get to feeling there was something the matter with her and be unable to carry the rucksack.

  Then, of course, there was the other German gentleman who was determined to obtain a seat in a fully occupied first-class compartment. There are three places on each side of a first-class compartment. This distinguishes it from the second-class, which has four, the third-class, with six, and the fourth-class which seats eight on a side.

  In this particular case all the places were occupied, but an old lady who sat next to the window was standing up and looking out. We were stalled. Part of the train had run off the track. The German gentleman entered, followed by his wife, and sat down in the old lady’s place. The old lady next sat down and being very nearsighted and not knowing that someone had appropriated her place, sat down on the German gentleman’s lap.

  His face never moved. He just sat there. The old lady jumped up and looked at him in terror. The German gentleman’s wife blushed and went out of the compartment. He just sat there, his face as stolid as a ham, and the old lady looked out of the window, her lips trembling.

  I thought of the Niagara of words a Frenchwoman would have turned loose, the way she would have torn into the big sulky-looking beast. But there was no outbreak. The old lady was simply frightened. She had evidently been through this sort of thing before.

  In the present state of things in Germany foreigners do not start rows. They spend most of their time swallowing insults in order to avoid being mobbed. My own theory had been that if the Germans had no scruples about killing [Walther] Rathenau they would have no scruples about killing me—and I have trod very softly. But things in the compartment had reached the point where I was wondering what sort of weapon a tennis racket in its frame would really make and rehearsing the eleven variations of the one best way to cripple a man.

  Of course the obvious way to bring on the trouble was to get up and give the old lady my seat. That is always regarded as a casus belli by every seated male in a German streetcar. Just then the wife opened the compartment door and said that she had found him a seat further up the train. The German gentleman remained seated a few minutes longer, just to show that he could if he wished, and then went out. The old lady sat down very thankfully.

  German home life is supposed to be a very fine and perfect thing. It has such beautiful features as the mother and father and little children all gathering to drink beer together, and the little children are allowed such touching and rare intimacies as fetching father’s slippers, lighting fath
er’s pipe, etc. But the part of it that appears in public conveyances has somehow lost its charm.

  German Riots

  The Toronto Star Weekly

  September 30, 1922

  COLOGNE.—British officers back from Silesia tell how British troops had to escort the French troops out of the country after the plebiscite in order to prevent attacks that would have brought on bloody fighting.

  The British guard over the departing French troops prevented an outbreak, but the Germans’ hatred of the French was so great that they exacted reprisals on their own people who had been over-friendly with the occupying army. German women who had been seen in public with French officers were seized, their heads were shaved and they were hooted around the streets. Other German girls known to have had closer relationship with French officers had their clothes torn off, their heads shaved, and were driven out of their towns.

  The enormous equestrian statue of William Hohenzollern, that stands at the Cologne side of the beautiful Hohenzollern bridge across the Rhine, bears all the marks of another recent occasion when the German showed what he is still capable of being. Both spurs on William’s giant iron boots were broken off and the blade of his sword is gone. These were smashed off in an attempt by some of the Cologne citizenry to overthrow the big statue in a brawl that started out as a revolution and ended as a small-sized riot.

  During the attack on the statue, a policeman appeared and tried to quiet the mob. The mob threw the policeman into the river. In the cold, swift swirl of the Rhine against the base of the bridge, the policeman hung on to one of the abutments and shouted up that he knew who was in the mob and would see that they were all punished. So the mob swarmed down and tried to push the policeman loose into the current. It meant drowning for the policeman to let go—and he hung on. Then the mob chopped his fingers loose from the stone with the hatchet with which they had been attacking the statue.

  It was a German policeman and a German mob. And all over Germany conflict goes on between German police and German mobs. In the north there are riots against the high cost of living, that are quelled by the police with machine guns. In the south there are riotous demonstrations in favor of Hindenburg, Ludendorff and a return to the monarchy in Munich at which the police quell the dissenting Republicans with clubs.

  Meantime, in order that the profiteers on both sides shall not allow any of the money being spent to get out of their hands, Herr Stinnes and a group of French contractors have concluded an agreement that all material supplied by Germany to France for reconstruction shall come through Herr Hugo Stinnes.

  Stinnes is to receive six percent by agreement on everything that passes through his hands. It is the final refinement of the whole profiteering business, whereby the profiteers of both countries get together and form a profiteers’ trust, so that nothing can get away from them at either end. And the great reconstructed-devastated regions scandal, which is beginning to be talked about under their breath by many people, as a coming blowup that will make the Panama Canal scandal and the Marconi scandal pale into nothing, gets nearer and nearer.

  British Planes

  The Toronto Daily Star

  September 30, 1922

  CONSTANTINOPLE.—The arrival of several thousand additional British troops has encouraged the Greeks and the Armenians here to discard their Turkish fezzes and resume conventional western headgear. At the beginning of the present crisis every Greek and Armenian provided himself with a fez, which he wore continuously until he thought the danger of Turkish occupation was past. British airplanes flew over the capital today, causing a flurry of excitement in Stamboul. The aerial maneuvers gave the population another evidence of Great Britain’s preparedness to meet eventualities.

  The continued arrival of British war units has lessened the danger of an uprising within the city and checked the panicky flight of Christians to neighboring countries.

  British Order Kemal to Quit Chanak

  The Toronto Daily Star

  September 30, 1922

  CONSTANTINOPLE.—With British and Turks on the verge of war in the neutral zone, General Harington, British commander-in-chief, dispatched a new demand to Mustapha Kemal today that he evacuate the Chanak area.

  It was understood that no time limit was set.

  The dispatch of the fresh ultimatum followed the receipt of an ultimatum from Kemal, in which he demanded that the British evacuate the Asiatic side of the straits.

  Kemal’s note was considered decidedly hostile.

  One high British official stated that the note had closed the door to peace.

  Harington Won’t Demand Evacuation

  The Toronto Daily Star

  October 2, 1922

  CONSTANTINOPLE.—British general headquarters here today issued a denial of a report originating in England that General Harington would demand the evacuation of the shores of the Dardanelles by Turkish troops within twenty-four hours. That question, it was stated, would be discussed at Mudania.

  The Allied generals will leave for Mudania tonight. They are General Harington for Great Britain, General Sharpi for France and General Membelli for Italy.

  Turk Red Crescent Propaganda Agency

  The Toronto Daily Star

  October 4, 1922

  CONSTANTINOPLE.—The Mudania Conference will determine the question of peace or war. General Harington has shown a steadily increasing desire for peace, but the Turk concentration of troops between the straits and Constantinople gives them a strong position to talk from. However, it is believed that Harington’s good sense and the Franco-Turk accord will bring about an amicable settlement.

  Thrace, an unproductive barren country, is the key to the present situation. To the reorganized Greek government, Thrace is another Marne, where a stand must be made or the end of greater Greece admitted.

  Turkish Red Crescent (equivalent to the Red Cross) reports on Greek atrocities in Thrace must be discounted as the leader of the Red Crescent is Kemal’s head in Constantinople and Red Crescent official reports are used as propaganda to force immediate occupation of Thrace by the Turks.

  The Turks want Adrianople, their ancient capital, for sentimental reasons, and Thrace to give them a strong foothold in Europe. Eliminating the Greeks from Thrace will unite Bulgaria and Turkey, making a dangerous wedge of pro-Soviet countries thrust into the center of the Balkans.

  Hamid Bey

  The Toronto Daily Star

  October 9, 1922

  CONSTANTINOPLE.—Bismarck said all men in the Balkans who tuck their shirts into their trousers are crooks. The shirts of the peasants, of course, hang outside. At any rate, when I found Hamid Bey—next to Kemal, perhaps the most powerful man in the Angora government—in his Stamboul office where he directs the Kemalist government in Europe, while drawing a large salary as administrator of the Imperial Ottoman Bank, a French-capitalized concern—his shirt was tucked in, for he was dressed in a gray business suit.

  Hamid Bey’s office is at the top of a steep hill beyond an old seraglio and houses the Red Crescent—equivalent to our Red Cross—of which Hamid Bey is one of the leaders and where attendants in Red Crescent khaki carry out the orders of the Angora government.

  “Canada is anxious about the possibility of a massacre of Christians when Kemal enters Constantinople,” I said.

  Hamid Bey, big and bulky, with gray mustaches, wing-collared and with a porcupine haircut, looked over his glasses and spoke French.

  “What have the Christians to fear?” he asked. “They are armed and the Turks have been disarmed. There will be no massacre. It is the Greek Christians who are massacring the Turks now in Thrace. That’s why we must occupy Thrace to protect our people.”

  That is the only guarantee of protection Constantinople Christians have, except the Allied police force, while toughs from the Crimea to Cairo are gathered in Constantinople hoping that the patriotic orgy of Kemal’s triumphant entry will bring a chance to start a fire in the tinder-dry, wooden tenements and begin kill
ing and looting. The Allied police force is compact and efficient, but Constantinople is a great sprawling city of a million and a half, crowded with a desperate element.

  The man who raises a thirst somewhere east of Suez is going to be unable to slake it in Constantinople once Kemal enters the city. A member of the Anatolian government tells me that Constantinople will be as dry as Asiatic Turkey, where alcohol is not allowed to be imported, manufactured or sold. Kemal has also forbidden cardplaying and backgammon and the cafés of Brusa are dark at eight o’clock.

  This devotion to the laws of the prophet does not prevent Kemal himself and his staff from liking their liquor, as the American, who went to Smyrna to protect American tobacco, found when his eight bottles of cognac made him the most popular man in Asia Minor at Kemalist headquarters.

  Kemal’s edict will halt the great importation of American raw alcohol shipped to Constantinople in drums and marked “medicinal.” This is made into an absinthe-like drink and is sipped by the Turks as they sit in the coffee shops, puffing their bubble-bubble pipes.

  Turks Near Constantinople

  The Toronto Daily Star

  October 9, 1922

  CONSTANTINOPLE.—Turkish forces today withdrew from Ismed in the neutral zone, it was announced here.

  The above dispatch should probably read that the Turks have with-drawn from the Ismed neutral zone. In the following dispatch it is said that General Harington had warned Ismet Pasha that a withdrawal must be made.