The German home front is a major topic in this book by Madeleine Z. Doty, who in 1917 was best known as a lawyer who was involved in prison reform. The title of the book refers to deprivations on the home front while men were fighting the war.
The book details trips to Germany by Doty in 1915 and 1916 that were part journalism assignments and part journeys of curiosity.
The 1915 trip started with the author part of a group of American women who were traveling to the Hague in Holland for a peace conference.
At the conference, a variety of people participated, from different countries and different walks of life. The representatives from Belgium made a strong impression because of their experience of having their country invaded and occupied by German soldiers. The presence of Belgian refugees at the conference added to the impression.
The discussions at the Hague often have the air of self-righteous, isolated good intentions that are fueled by euphoric feelings of idealism.
What affect this meeting of women will have, who can tell? Idealistic, impractical, it may have been, but little it was not. While war rages, force reigns on earth and we forget it is ideas that made that force possible. But ideas can also create good-will. No thought sent out into the world dies. The future lies in our hands. It is for us to mold it.
The author travelled to Berlin with the help of a Hungarian women. During her travels, the author tried to find like-minded people and often had to sneak around to find these people.
In Berlin, Doty experienced a stifled, suppressed feeling about the city, though she felt it was well-run. All of German society seemed geared to war. Doty also experienced some anti-American feelings in Berlin, and found it dangerous to speak English.
In a visit to London, Doty compared two women who in the past campaigned for women's right to vote. One of the women was putting that fight on hold to support the war effort, while the other woman was continuing the fight.
A pattern of the book is the focus by the author on people who opposed the war. But the author also found herself feeling some admiration for people who are focused on mobilizing the resources of England to end the war.
The author visited Paris, where life was much more subdued compared to her previous visits to that city. While in Paris, Doty volunteered as a nurse, and observed different kinds of wounds. She talked with soldiers about their experiences, and shared some of her ideas about non-violent ways to achieve peace, which were rejected by some of the soldiers.
The author kept reminding the reader that she is a peace activist, including a story about how a button that said "Peace" almost prevented her from leaving England to go to France.
Doty visited the battlefield of the Marne conflict, where she noticed large number of trenches and crosses. She also noticed how life continued for civilians like farmers.
Doty told a story of a young boy who took his newborn sister from Belgium to Holland, at the request of his mother, who stays behind and is apparently killed when her hamlet is destroyed. The boy's father is killed at the front, and Doty tries to make sense of the family's experience.
On the author's second trip to Europe in 1916, she has to travel to Hamburg, Germany through Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Enroute, she makes general travel writer observations about the different societies, physical conditions, and war loyalties.
Doty spent a day in Hamburg, where she noticed a lifeless stillness. She made this observation:
All that modern industry and the ingenuity of man can achieve has here been flung upon the land, and then the force that created it has vanished, leaving these great monuments to rot, to rust, and to crumble. The tragedy of unused treasures is as horrible as rows of dead. A city seems visibly dying.
From Hamburg, Doty traveled to Berlin, which seemed more full of life in 1916 than it did during her last trip to Berlin in 1915. She can freely talk English, unlike her first visit.
The author constantly talks about the quality of food that she eats, and finally decides to stay in only the best hotels during her trip, where she can get the best food.
But that writing contrasts strongly with writing about the meager rations of everyday Germans, and how rich people find ways to eat better than the poor. The author talks about the inefficiency of the food distribution system in Germany, and how it is making people suffer. The bourgeoisie can afford food stamps, but the poor cannot. Most people had an undernourished look, and Doty wonders if that will make them rise up against autocracy and militarism.
It is hard to be discontented and progressive when the stomach is full and the land flows with milk and honey. But with suffering a new race is emerging—a lean race with active minds that begins to question German autocracy and militarism.
The book has many examples of the bureaucratic passages of the author, and personal ways that she used to negotiate through them. Doty talked about being spied on, and how she and a friend had fun trying to get spies off of their tails.
The author gives a close look at how a war affects a society. At times, you feel that she is a native German writing about her country. Sometimes the book feels like a preview of the unrest of postwar Germany.
The German Government is headed for disaster because it has failed to distinguish between two kinds of efficiency—personal efficiency and industrial efficiency. Human beings cannot be treated like machines. It does not make them efficient. The world would do well to copy Germany's industrial efficiency. German hotels, railroads, cars, and factories are the best of their kind. But Germany's attempt to apply her system to individuals is creating havoc. Human beings are efficient when they are imaginative, original, and uncrushable.
The author travelled around Germany, including trips from Berlin to Leipzig to Karlsruhe. In Heidelberg, she visited a camp for Russian, English, and French officers. When she was in Mannheim, Italy and Romania declared war. In Stuttgart, she visited the Bosch munition facilities. She noticed a lot of women employed in the factories. In Nuremberg, she visited a prison. The author visited crippled soldiers' hospital at Ettlingen, where she saw different physical therapy sessions and demonstrations of different prosthetic devices.
Civilian authorities who escorted reporters through Germany were very kind and generous. At times, Doty felt guilty, because of her secret desire to expose the problems in war-time Germany. Local citizens treated visiting journalists like celebrities at public events.
In Munich, the author used money from a special fund to give food tickets to people who are eating substandard food that was given to them.
In Munich, the author attends a peace rally with a friend. The author feels threatened when her friend's peace plan differs from the peace plans of most of the people at the rally. The author later made a surreptitious and illegal trip from Munich to Stuttgart to meet a peace activist who has been jailed (Clara Zetkin).
The author experienced some scary moments when she attempted to leave Germany after her second visit to that country. She was afraid that she might be detained for her unauthorized trip to Stuttgart or for notes that she has taken about Germany.
From Germany, Doty traveled to Switzerland, where at first she has feelings of relief, seeing the contrast between Germany and Switzerland. But after she settles into Switzerland, she sees effects of war in refugees, spies, and limited resources.
I had seen both sides. I had no doubt about the outcome. Germany would eventually be beaten. Her resources were becoming exhausted. But a prolonged struggle might mean bankruptcy, spiritual and physical, for the Allies. Was there a way out?
Doty wanted justice, not punishment, in the resolution of the war.
The book concludes with a poignant story about a letter written by an English pilot to the mother of a German pilot who was killed by the English pilot.
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