They were powerless, as some of them told me, because of the secret
police and martial law. What could they do against the government,
with all their men away at the front? They were treated like pigs,
like dirt. They could only suffer and pray. They had a little hope
that in the future, if France and England were not too hard, they
might pay back for the guilt of their war lords and see a new Germany
arise out of its ruin, freed from militarism and with greater
liberties. So humble people talked to us when I went among them with a
friend who spoke good German, better than my elementary knowledge. I
believed in their sincerity, which had come through suffering, though
I believed that newspaper editors, many people in the official
classes, and the old military caste were still implacable in hatred
and unrepentant.
The German people deserved punishment for their share in the guilt of
war. They had been punished by frightful losses of life, by a
multitude of cripples, by the ruin of their Empire.
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