‘It is unjust,’ said the farmers, ‘that we should have to pay twice and three times over, and it won’t do. And what is all this about commercial treaties?’
The gentlemen shrugged their shoulders and referred them to other gentlemen, and they, too, shrugged their shoulders and referred them further, and finally the farmers left in a rage. There were still the other parties to be tried, the radicals, the opposition parties. But there they found nothing but empty talk and the farmers wouldn’t stand for that.
‘Help yourselves,’ said Hamkens and Heim, and took the matter in hand.
They called a meeting of farmers at Rendsburg. And fifty thousand turned up. The bailiffs had already visited many houses and there were rumours of this one and that one having to leave his farm, and there were highly respected names among them, men from North and South Dithmarsch, from the neighbourhood of Itzehoe and Rendsburg, from Wilster and Heide; even from Preetz and Flensburg the bad news came, and for some time past it had been not only the west coast where the farmers were feeling the pinch and were rising up against it. Fifty thousand farmers at one meeting!
‘Well, what of it?’ said the workers of Kiel, ‘we can produce fifty thousand of our men any day you like.’
But these were farmers who had assembled, and from Schleswig-Holstein moreover. And the farmer up there was not one to leave his farm. If he has anything to say he calls on his neighbour, or at most at the beer-house which is kept by the baker or the butcher nearby, or he goes for a drink after his business in the market-town. And merely for a question of politics! Before the war they had voted National-Liberal, because they did not want to vote for the Old Prussian conservatives. They were, moreover, a stronghold, as they read in the newspapers, but that did not concern them, for since 1864 they had had no use for politics. And now? Fifty thousand! And in the offices and party headquarters they began to prick up their ears. There was not much for them to hear in Rendsburg. But it was enough. For the last time we demand. . . and then, things have come to a climax! And the refrain began to be heard: ‘Better dead than slaves, sea-girt Schleswig-Holstein.’
When the farmers returned home, however, they knew considerably more than they had known before, more even than the anxiously listening ears in the offices had been able to discover. In every community emergency committees were formed, and only the best men were considered good enough to be eligible for these.
‘Is that all?’ asked the gentlemen in the offices.
It was not all.
Then the officers of the law came to distrain, and they found a great crowd of farm labourers on all the roads round about the village; they allowed the officers to pass through unmolested, greeting them with friendly grins; but afterwards the bailiffs had to sit idle all the afternoon in the sun, for there was not a soul to be seen, and there was no question of holding a sale. There was another distraint. This time the auction room was packed full, and there were a certain number of strangers present, who were probably anxious to pick up a bargain; but all round the strangers stood the farmers, casually contemplating their fists, and not a single bid was made. Another time, in the Treasury-office at Husum, the passages were full of farmers. There was no room for the busy officials to get through.
‘Make room, you people,’ they said. ‘What do you want?’
‘We’re just waiting,’ said the farmers, ‘don’t shove,’ and they laughed, and some of them began to sing softly.
‘This won’t do,’ said the officials, and they said a lot more.
And one thing led to another, and the farmers went on just waiting. Then the police came and there were blows and broken windows and a preliminary enquiry, at which next to nothing came out, for the farmers had only been waiting for Hamkens who was inside giving a long explanation as to why he could not pay his taxes out of capital.
‘This won’t do,’ muttered the minor officials.
‘This will not do at all,’ said the higher officials.
‘Stringent measures must be taken,’ said the highest authorities, and the Minister declared in the Landstag: ‘Stringent measures will be taken.’
The emergency committees became very busy. For the whole machinery of administration began to creak into movement. ‘Machinery of administration,’ that was the great cry.
‘Who is to blame for everything? Whom did we warn after quietly stating what we wanted? Who is putting on great airs now that the damage has been done? The machinery of administration. They could not help us. They could not act for us. But they can act against us. Up to now everything had been peaceful in the country.’
The womenfolk were not greatly in favour of the new attitude.
‘Leave it alone,’ they, said to the men, ‘it’ll change all in good time—don’t get mixed up in these things.’
Then the machinery of administration began to confiscate the milk-money. Now, the milk-money is the daily money, and it is in the hands of the farmer’s wife, who with it keeps the daily life of the farm-house going.
‘What, the milk-money? What are we to live on? How are we to buy the dinner and pay the cobbler?’
The milk-money—that settled it. They resorted to stringent measures.
‘Stringent measures,’ that was the great cry.
Every policeman knew what it meant, and what had to be done. But when the policeman on his round happened to go into the bar to have a quick nip of brandy, the farmers, who were there in crowds, stood up without a word and left the room, and the innkeeper didn’t like to see a lot of good customers leaving for the sake of one good customer. The policeman didn’t fancy his brandy any more, and at home his wife, herself a farmer’s daughter, pestered him because, since they had recently confiscated the milk-money in the next village, she couldn’t get any of the farmers’ wives to oblige her if she happened to run out of butter.
‘Go over to Mrs. Petersen, she’s not like that,’ advised her husband. But Mrs Petersen was like that too. For suddenly there was great solidarity and there was a rumour from the town that Farmer Heim, after much quiet deliberation, had stood up at a meeting and had said—no more than that—that, as he knew there were many who did not want to be loyal to the cause, all he had to say was that in Schleswig-Holstein the farms were at a great distance from one another and for the most part they had thatched roofs. But, however that might be, the young men were more zealous in riding from place to place to rouse the farmers, and they visited the parish magistrates and told them, with the compliments of the emergency committee, that if any new taxation demands turned up they could just send the rubbish back where it came from.
There was a dangerous atmosphere in the country, and it was not surprising that many wanted to cook their gruel on the same fire and helped to fan the flames. The parties prepared for action, and in the little towns there was great unrest. The numerous agricultural associations anticipated a great haul of new members, and, if they had not been greatly united before, they were still less so now. They all agreed in wanting to present a united front, and the more united the front, the green front, became, the greater grew the internal dissensions. The farmers did not bother their heads much about this, for their movement was not an organisation, and the meetings of their emergency committees were not board meetings. And the authorities did not negotiate with them, they merely adopted stringent measures. The authorities would gladly have called a halt, but there was prestige to be considered. Had not the farmers’ recently gone so far as to threaten a parish magistrate who was loyal to the Government?
‘Above all, don’t weaken. We have the powerful hand of the State behind us!’
Farmer Kock from Beidenfleth went three times to the District President in Itzehoe, who promised to intervene to prevent his distrained oxen from being fetched away, if he would pay off his arrears of tax within a given period. But before the appointed period had elapsed the zealous district officer had sent the bailiff to collect the oxen, and with him he sent a couple of unemployed men, since no one else could be
found to undertake the job.
The three men arrived at the farm and proceeded to take the oxen. The farmer made no difficulties, but when they came out on to the road they suddenly encountered a number of farm labourers in their blue caps and with their sticks in their hands. They stood there and said nothing. Some of them piled bundles of straw on the narrow road, a few bundles in one place and then a few bundles a bit further on. And when the three men had dragged the oxen a little way along the road, suddenly tongues of flame shot up out of the straw and smoke rose. The oxen smelt the fire and stopped short. Why fire? From time immemorial fire has blazed in the land in time of trouble. And Farmer Kock was in trouble. The fire-horn was sounded because there was fire on the road, and the people gathered together because the fire-horn had sounded. Unfortunately, the oxen did not know this: they wrenched themselves loose and rushed back to the stable.
The District President in Itzehoe was a sensible man. On the one hand he felt sympathetic towards the farmers, and on the other hand he had superior officials to deal with. The district officer had acted too precipitately, he thought, and the words ‘stringent measures, stringent measures’ echoed in his ears. I am responsible for my district, he thought to himself; to whom am I responsible? My official superiors. The District President of Itzehoe was a thoughtful man. Whatever he decided to do was sure to be wrong. So, he said firmly, I will do my duty. And in the grey morning hours the police surrounded the house of Farmer Kock and forced their way into the farm-yard. There stood the oxen. They stared stupidly at the blue-and-white seal with the Prussian eagle on the boards of the loose-box. They were loaded into the motor-lorry and rumbled away with their brilliant escort. The driver of the lorry glanced along the road. Right across his path stood a barricade of carts. The police got down from the lorry and removed the obstacles. The next village was dead and empty. The bells were ringing. They were sounding an alarm. The fire-horn was tooting. The noise resounded hollowly in the deserted streets. And here again carts were placed across the road. The driver of the lorry was a townsman of Itzehoe, he knew a lot about farmers. Farmers were strange beings. The driver of the lorry had a breakdown half-way. It was impossible, he said, to drive any further. And the police had to lead the oxen into the town. The District President of Itzehoe was a wise man. The very next morning the oxen were up for sale in the cattle-market at Hamburg. But in the afternoon three farmers visited the director of the cattle-market. These oxen, they told him, were not ordinary oxen. They were distraint oxen.
‘And if the oxen are not released from the market-pens and returned within twenty-four hours, you can find some other place to get your oxen, but you won’t get any from Schleswig-Holstein.’
The director of the cattle-market was also a wise man. And he was sympathetic towards the farmers. If he could get no more oxen from Schleswig-Holstein he might as well let the grass grow in his pens. He put his hand in his own purse and paid Farmer Kock the amount of the tax.
The story of Beidenfleth flamed through the countryside. Stringent measures must be taken now or never. The police issued summonses and held trials. Fifty-two farmers were accused of a breach of the peace. Two hundred farmers gave themselves up to the court and said they also were involved, and it was only right and just that they too should come up for trial. Farmer Claus Heim knew that matters had come to a climax. The country people were united. Incessantly and everywhere the farmers were holding meetings. The young men on their horses were perpetually on the road. Their case had to be prepared; the farmers had to be made firmer and still firmer in their solidarity. In the provincial newspapers the emergency committees invited attendance at meetings, published resolutions and proclamations. But the provincial newspapers were also district and official organs, and they also contained official announcements. They had always been careful not to express themselves unequivocally on the side of the country people, and now they made difficulties even about announcing their meetings.
The farmers asked, ‘What does this mean? You will not write for us? You think we have turned to you because we have no paper of our own, because we are not an association or a party? We will have a paper.’
‘We will and we must have our own paper,’ said Claus Heim.
The farmers clubbed together. At the worst, they said, it will be better to have thrown away our good money for our paper than for the taxes. They bought a little printing-office in Itzehoe. Claus Heim had happened to read some article about the battle of the country people in the Iron Front, a small Hamburg weekly. They were signed ‘Ive’ and they were the only ones which seemed to him to be clear, good, and to the point. He went to Hamburg to find this Ive.
Hans Karl August Iversen, called simply Ive by his friends, was still a soldier during the disturbed post-war period three years after the Armistice. The last roll-call of his unit found him the possessor of brand-new lieutenant’s stripes, his demobilisation papers, and an indomitable determination to seize every chance that came his way. Apart from slashing, shooting and stabbing, he had no experience of any kind of work, but he could adapt himself to any situation. He had nothing to regret the loss of, for he had never possessed anything. When he began to observe the world consciously he found himself in a dirty-grey, devastated landscape in which an unceasing hail of iron poured down from the sky. He crouched down into a cavity half-filled with mud, and discovered that the most practical method of progress was, almost blinded and yet with his attention strained to the utmost, to jump from hole to hole. Of the great works of literature he knew best the ‘Introduction to the Use of the Weapons of Close Combat,’ and his handwriting, large, clear and round, could easily be read by the light of a glowing cigarette. The front was his home and the company his family. The post-war period hardly made any difference to this. It is true complications of an ideological nature arose, which he investigated from beneath the rim of his steel helmet, as though they were the particularly involved contours of the enemy’s trench system. On the whole, the impression he got was that he had been transferred to another battle-sector, to the different conditions and duties of which he had to adapt himself. Many of his companions had had the same experience, and as they were unconvinced by any governmental pronouncements that made it unnecessary to believe that they might be called up again as a fighting unit, they decided to remain together and to start a settlement. They took possession, therefore, of a plot of land which had been put at their disposal on apparently favourable conditions, and began at once to dig and hew. But the authorities found the presence of these restless men in the wood a nuisance. They believed them—not without good reason—to be in secret possession of firearms, and they resorted to what the settlers considered to be underhand methods against the undertaking. Promised materials were not delivered—credit which had been guaranteed, and which was needed in the first place for the bare necessities of life, was not forthcoming. The housing inspectors refused to give their sanction to the hastily erected mud-huts, and when, finally, the forester of the district reported a terrifying increase in the number, of poachers, and the police reported the extraordinary insubordination of this almost communistic society of demobilised soldiers, the government abruptly withdrew all support and the grumbling men gradually disappeared, and no one knew where they had gone.
Ive had taken up a post as a night watchman and field guard on a manor estate in Pomerania. In his spare time he collected the youth of the whole district and drilled them. At first this was not much more than a game, but the game was not looked on with disfavour, and so Ive very soon established a band of young volunteers, which spread over the whole of Pomerania and met together for strenuous drilling and grand parades, rousing the Labour press of the small country towns to violent comment. Ive answered these comments in the papers of the National Party, and the quick wit which characterised his answers drew the attention of the lord of the manor even more than hitherto to the modest young night watchman, and he even invited him to dine at his table. The lord of the manor did yet mo
re. He gave Ive a considerable sum of money, which had been placed at his disposal by the National Party, and enabled him to found the Battle-Cry, a weekly paper, the object of which was to defend the old ideals against an inimical world. The Battle-Cry appeared and, by its rough but straightforward language, won for itself many friends and opponents. But this language was not always pleasing in the ears of his employer, for it became clear, in the course of time, that Ive had an uncomfortable conception of ideals, as, for example, when no amount of instruction in political economy could prevent him from referring to the mass importation of Polish reapers as a gross scandal. When Ive was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment or a fine of sixty thousand marks on account of an unbecoming remark about the President of the Reich, the gentlemen of the Party Committee informed him regretfully that unfortunately they could not pay his fine. At the same time, they suspended the appearance of the paper, a measure which was easily justified by the fall of the mark in the period of inflation. For since the postal subscriptions were paid monthly in advance, but the papermaker had to be paid as soon as the paper was delivered, the Battle-Cry’s burden of debt grew in direct proportion to the increase in the number of subscribers.
Ive would not have minded spending a short time in prison. He knew that the other patriotic associations were only waiting to swallow up his young volunteers as a fat morsel. But since at this juncture young men of his type in the Ruhr territory were transforming their passive resistance into a despairing attack, he resigned his position as leader of the volunteers, scratched together all the money he could find in his drawers, sold all his belongings except what he absolutely needed, paid his fine, which was now worth no more than a pound, and set off to answer the call of his blood. But when he got to the Ruhr he soon found himself in prison again, and indeed he brought this upon himself by deliberately playing with fire. At the end of the Ruhr campaign he was released and, somewhat pale but without any trace of a persecution complex, he tried his hand at being an insurance agent. He gave up his activities in this field when a charitable person, whom he had been canvassing for a long time, instead of shutting the door in his face, pressed the insurance premium into his hand and advised him to seek another profession. Minimax and Electrolux in turn failed to fulfil his hopes of social improvement; however, he won the third prize of five hundred marks in the Veedol oil competition with a couplet:
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