Chapter XII

THE DIVINE DESCENDANTS OF WILLIAM THE GREAT GIVE A BENEFIT FOR THE CANINE GARDENS AND PAY TRIBUTE TO THE PIGGERIES

~1~

The strike that I had feared would be the beginning of a bloody revolution had ended with an actor shouting into a horn and the shadow of an Emperor waving his arms. But meanwhile Capt. Grauble, on whom I staked my hopes of escape from Berlin, had departed to the Arctic and would not return for many months. That he would return I firmly believed; statistically the chances were in his favour as this was his fourth trip, and hope was backing the favourable odds of the law of chance.

So I set myself to prepare for that event. My faith was strong that Grauble could be won over to the cause of saving the Germans by betraying Germany. I did not even consider searching for another man, for Grauble was that one rare man in thousands who is rebellious and fearless by nature, a type of which the world makes heroes when their cause wins and traitors when it fails--a type that Germany had all but eliminated from the breed of men.

But, if I were to escape to the outer world through Grauble’s connivance, there was still the problem of getting permission to board the submarine, ostensibly to go to the Arctic mines. Even in my exalted position as head of the protium works I could not learn where the submarine docks or the passage to them was located. But I did learn enough to know that the way was impenetrable without authoritative permission, and that thoughts of escape as a stowaway were not worth considering. I also learned that Admiral von Kufner had sole authority to grant permission to make the Arctic trip.

The Admiral had promptly turned down my first proposal to go to the Arctic ore fields, and had by his pompous manner rebuffed the attempts I made to cultivate his friendship through official interviews. I therefore decided to call on Marguerite and the Countess Luise to see what chance there was to get a closer approach to the man through social avenues. The Countess was very obliging in the matter, but she warned me with lifted finger that the Admiral was a gay bachelor and a worshipper of feminine charms, and that I might rue the day I suggested his being invited into the admiring circle that revolved about Marguerite. But I laughingly disclaimed any fears on that score and von Kufner was bidden to the next ball given by the Countess.

Marguerite was particularly gracious to the Admiral and speedily led him into the inner circle that gathered informally in the salon of the Countess Luise. I made it a point to absent myself on some of these occasions, for I did not want the Admiral to guess the purpose that lay behind this ensnaring of him into our group.

And yet I saw much of Marguerite, for I spent most of my leisure in the society of the Royal Level, where thought, if shallow, was comparatively free. I took particular pleasure in watching the growth of Marguerite’s mind, as the purely intellectual conceptions she had acquired from Dr. Zimmern and his collection of books adjusted itself to the absurd realities of the celestial society of the descendants of William the Great.

It may be that charity is instinctive in the heart of a good woman, or perhaps it was because she had read the Christian Bible; but whatever the origin of the impulse, Marguerite was charitably inclined and wished to make personal sacrifice for the benefit of other beings less well situated than herself. While she was still a resident of the Free Level she had talked to me of this feeling and of her desire to help others. But the giving of money or valuables by one woman to another was strictly forbidden, and Marguerite had not at the time possessed more than she needed for her own subsistence. But now that she was relatively well off, this charitable feeling struggled to find expression. Hence when she had learned of the Royal Charity Society she had straightway begged the Countess to present her name for membership, without stopping to examine into the detail of the Society’s activities.

The Society was at that time preparing to hold a bazaar and sent out calls for contributions of cast off clothing and ornaments. Marguerite as yet possessed no clothes or jewelry of Royal quality except the minimum which the demands of her position made necessary; and so she timidly asked the Countess if her clothing which she had worn on the Free Level would suffice as gifts of charity. The Countess had assured her that it would do nicely as the destination of all the clothing contributed was for the women of the Free Level. Thinking that an opportunity had at last arisen for her to express her compassion for the ill-favoured girls of her own former level, Marguerite hastened to bundle up such presentable gowns as she had and sent them to the bazaar by her maid.

Later she had attended the meeting of the society when the net results of the collections were announced. To her dismay she found that the clothing contributed had been sold for the best price it would bring to the women of the Free Level and that the purpose of the sacrifices, of that which was useless to the possessors but valuable to others, was the defraying of the expense of extending the romping grounds for the dogs of the charitably maintained canine garden.

Marguerite was vigorously debating the philosophy of charity with the young Count Rudolph that evening when I called. She was maintaining that human beings and not animals should be the recipients of charity and the young Count was expounding to her the doctrine of the evil effects of charity upon the recipient.

“Moreover,” explained Count Rudolph, “there are no humans in Berlin that need charity, since every class of our efficiently organized State receives exactly what it should receive and hence is in need of nothing. Charity is permissible only when poverty exists.”

“But there is poverty on the Free Level,” maintained Marguerite; “many of the ill-favoured girls suffer from hunger and want better clothes than they can buy.”

“That may be,” said the Count, “but to permit them gifts of charity would be destructive of their pride; moreover, there are few women on the Royal Level who would give for such a purpose.”

“But surely,” said Marguerite, “there must be somewhere in the city, other women or children or even men to whom the proceeds of these gifts would mean more than it does to dogs.”

“If any group needed anything the state would provide it,” repeated the Count.

“Then why,” protested Marguerite, “cannot the state provide also for the dogs, or if food and space be lacking why are these dogs allowed to breed and multiply?”

“Because it would be cruel to suppress their instincts.”

Marguerite was puzzled by this answer, but with my more rational mind I saw a flaw in the logic of this statement. “But that is absurd,” I said, “for if their number were not checked in some fashion, in a few decades the dogs would overswarm the city.”

It was now the Count’s turn to look puzzled. “You have inferred an embarrassing question,” he stated, “one, in fact, that ought not to be answered in the presence of a lady, but since the Princess Marguerite does not seem to be a lover of dogs, I will risk the explanation. The Medical Level requires dogs for purposes of scientific research. Since the women are rarely good mathematicians, it is easily possible in this manner to keep down the population of the Canine Garden.”

“But the dogs required for research,” I suggested, “could easily be bred in kennels maintained for that purpose.”

“So they could,” said the Count, “but the present plan serves a double purpose. It provides the doctors with scalpel practise and it also amuses the women of the Royal House who are very much in need of amusement since we men are all so dull.”

“Woman’s love,” continued Rudolph, waxing eloquent, “should have full freedom for unfoldment. If it be forcibly confined to her husband and children it might burst its bounds and express too great an interest in other humans. The dogs act as a sort of safety valve for this instinct of charity.”

The facetious young Count saw from Marguerite’s horror-stricken face that he was making a marked impression and he recklessly continued: “The keepers at the Canine Gardens understand this perfectly. When funds begin to run low they put the dogs in the outside pens on short rations, and the brutes do their own begging; then we have another bazaar and everybody is happy. It is a good system and I would advise you not to criticize it since the institution is classic. Other schemes have been tried; at one time women were permitted to knit socks for soldiers--we always put that in historical pictures--but the socks had to be melted up again as felted fibre is much more durable; and then, after the women were forbidden to see the soldiers, they lost interest. But the dog charity is a proven institution and we should never try to change anything that women do not want changed since they are the conservative bulwark of society and our best protection against the danger of the untried.”

~2~

Blocked in her effort to relieve human poverty by the discovery that its existence was not recognized, Marguerite’s next adventure in doing good in the world was to take up the battle against ignorance by contributing to the School for the Education of Servants.

The Servant problem in Berlin, and particularly on the Royal Level, had been solved so far as male servants were concerned, for these were a well recognized strain eugenically bred as a division of the intellectual caste. I had once taken Dr. Zimmern to task on this classification of the servant as an intellectual.

“The servant is not intellectual creatively,” the Eugenist replied, “yet it would never do to class him as Labour since he produces nothing. Moreover, the servant’s mind reveals the most specialized development of the most highly prized of all German intellectual characteristics --obedience.

“It might interest you to know,” continued Zimmern, “that we use this servant strain in outcrossing with other strains when they show a tendency to decline in the virtue of obedience. If I had not chosen to exempt you from paternity when your rebellious instincts were reported to me, and the matter had been turned over to our Remating Board they might have reassigned you to mothers of the servant class. This practice of out-crossing, though rare, is occasionally essential in all scientific breeding.”

“Then do you mean,” I asked in amazement, “that the highest intellectual strains have servant blood in them?”

“Certainly. And why not, since obedience is the crowning glory of the German mind? Even Royal blood has a dash of the servant strain.”

“You mean, I suppose, from illegitimate children?”

“Not at all; that sort of illegitimacy is not recognized. I mean from the admission of servants into Royal Society, just as you have been admitted.”

“Impossible!”

“And why impossible, since obedience is our supreme racial virtue? Go consult your social register. The present Emperor, I believe, has admitted none, but his father admitted several and gave them princely incomes. They married well and their children are respected, though I understand they are not very much invited out for the reason that they are poor conversationalists. They only speak when spoken to and then answer, ‘Ja, Mein Herr.’ I hear they are very miserable; since no one commands them they must be very bored with life, as they are unable to think of anything to do to amuse themselves. In time the trait will be modified, of course, since the Royal blood will soon predominate, and the strongest inherent trait of Royalty is to seek amusement.”

This specialized class of men servants needed little education, for, as I took more interest in observing after this talk with Zimmern, they were the most perfectly fitted to their function of any class in Berlin. But there was also a much more numerous class of women servants on the Royal Level. These, as a matter of economy, were not specially bred to the office, but were selected from the mothers who had been rejected for further maternity after the birth of one or two children. Be it said to the credit of the Germans that no women who had once borne a child was ever permitted to take up the profession of Delilah--a statement which unfortunately cannot be made of the rest of the world. These mothers together with those who had passed the child bearing age more than supplied the need for nurses on the maternity levels and teachers in girls’ schools.

As a result they swarmed the Royal Level in all capacities of service for which women are fitted. Originally educated for maternity they had to be re-educated for service. Not satisfied with the official education provided by the masculine-ordered state, the women of the Royal Level maintained a continuation school in the fine art of obedience and the kindred virtues of the perfect servant.

So again it was that Marguerite became involved in a movement that in no wise expressed the needs of her spirit, and from which she speedily withdrew.

The next time she came to me for advice. “I want to do something,” she cried. “I want to be of some use in the world. You saved me from that awful life--for you know what it would have been for me if Dr. Zimmern had died or his disloyalty had been discovered--and you have brought me here where I have riches and position but am useless. I tried to be charitable, to relieve poverty, but they say there is no poverty to be relieved. I tried to relieve ignorance, but they will not allow that either. What else is there that needs to be relieved? Is there no good I can do?”

“Your problem is not a new one,” I replied, thinking of the world-old experience of the good women yoked to idleness by wealth and position. “You have tried to relieve poverty and ignorance and find your efforts futile. There is one thing more I believe that is considered a classic remedy for your trouble. You can devote yourself to the elimination of ugliness, to the increase of beauty. Is there no organization devoted to that work?”

“There is,” returned Marguerite, “and I was about to join it, but I thought this time I had better ask advice. There is the League to Beautify Berlin.”

“Then by all means join,” I advised. “It is the safest of all such efforts, for though poverty may not exist and ignorance may not be relieved, yet surely Berlin can be more beautiful. But of course your efforts must be confined to the Royal Level as you do not see the rest of the city.”

So Marguerite joined the League to Beautify Berlin and I became an auxiliary member much appreciated because of my liberal contributions. It proved an excellent source of amusement. The League met weekly and discussed the impersonal aspects of the beauty of the level in open meetings, while a secret complaint box was maintained into which all were invited to deposit criticisms of more personal matters. It was forbidden even in this manner to criticize irremedial ugliness such as the matter of one’s personal form or features, but dress and manners came within the permitted range and the complaints were regularly mailed to the offenders. This surprised me a little as I would have thought that such a practice would have made the League unpopular, but on the contrary, it was considered the mainstay of the organization, for the recipient of the complaint, if a non-member, very often joined the League immediately, hoping thereby to gain sweet revenge.

But aside from this safety valve for the desire to make personal criticism, the League was a very creditable institution and it was there that we met the great critics to whose untiring efforts the rare development of German art was due.

Cut off from the opportunity to appropriate by purchase or capture the works of other peoples, German art had suffered a severe decline in the first few generations of the isolation, but in time they had developed an art of their own. A great abundance of cast statues of white crystal adorned the plazas and gardens and, being unexposed to dust or rain, they preserved their pristine freshness so that it appeared they had all been made the day before. Mural paintings also flourished abundantly and in some sections the endless facade of the apartments was a continuous pageant.

But it was in landscape gardening that German art had made its most wonderful advancement. Having small opportunity for true architecture because of the narrow engineering limitations of the city’s construction, talent for architecture had been turned to landscape gardening. I use the term advisedly for the very absence of natural landscape within a roofed-in city had resulted in greater development of the artificial product.

The earlier efforts, few of which remained unaltered, were more inclined toward imitation of Nature as it exists in the world of sun and rocks and rain. But, as the original models were forgotten and new generations of gardeners arose, new sorts of nature were created. Artificial rocks, artificial soil, artificially bred and cultured plants, were combined in new designs, unrealistic it is true, but still a very wonderful development of what might be called synthetic or romantic nature. The water alone was real and even in some cases that was altered as in the beautifully dyed rivulets and in the truly remarkable “Fountain of Blood,” dedicated to one of the sons of William the Great--I have forgotten his name--in honour of his attack upon Verdun in the First World War.

In these wondrous gardens, with the Princess Marguerite strolling by my side, I spent the happiest hours of my sojourn in Berlin. But my joy was tangled with a thread of sadness for the more I gazed upon this synthetic nature of German creation the more I hungered to tell her of, and to take her to see, the real Nature of the outside world--upon which, in my opinion, with all due respect to their achievements, the Germans had not been able to improve.

~3~

While the women of the Royal House were not permitted of their own volition to stray from the Royal Level, excursions were occasionally arranged, with proper permits and guards. These were social events of consequence and the invitations were highly prized. Noteworthy among them was an excursion to the highest levels of the city and to the roof itself.

The affair was planned by Admiral von Kufner in Marguerite’s honour; for, having spent her childhood elsewhere, she had never experienced the wonder of this roof excursion so highly prized by Royalty, and for ever forbidden to all other women and to all but a few men of the teeming millions who swarmed like larvae in this vast concrete cheese.

The formal invitations set no hour for the excursion as it was understood that the exact time depended upon weather conditions of which we would later be notified. When this notice came the hour set was in the conventional evening of the Royal Level, but corresponding to about three A.M. by solar time. The party gathered at the suite of the Countess Luise and numbered some forty people, for whom a half dozen guides were provided in the form of officers of the Roof Guard. The journey to our romantic destination took us up some hundred metres in an elevator, a trip which required but two minutes, but would lead to a world as different as Mount Olympus from Erebus.

But we did not go directly to the roof, for the hour preferred for that visit had not yet arrived and our first stop was at the swine levels, which had so aroused my curiosity and strained belief when I had first discovered their existence from the chart of my atlas.

As the door of the elevator shaft slid open, a vast squealing and grunting assaulted our ears. The hours of the swine, like those of their masters, were not reckoned by either solar or sidereal time, but had been altered, as experiment had demonstrated, to a more efficient cycle. The time of our trip was chosen so that we might have this earthly music of the feeding time as a fitting prelude to the visioning of the silent heavens.

On the visitors’ gangway we walked just above the reach of the jostling bristly backs, and our own heads all but grazed the low ceiling of the level. To economize power the lights were dim. Despite the masterful achievement of German cleanliness and sanitation there was a permeating odour, a mingling of natural and synthetic smells, which added to the gloom of semi-darkness and the pandemonium of swinish sound produced a totality of infernal effect that thwarts description.

But relief was on the way for the automatic feed conveyors were rapidly moving across our section. First we heard a diminution of sound from one direction, then a hasty scuffling and a happy grunting beneath us and, as the conveyors moved swiftly on, the squealing receded into the distance like the dying roar of a retreating storm.

The Chief Swineherd, immaculately dressed and wearing his full quota of decorations and medals, honoured us with his personal presence. With the excusable pride that every worthy man takes in his work, he expounded the scientific achievements and economic efficiency of the swinish world over which he reigned. The men of the party listened with respect to his explanations of the accomplishments of sanitation and of the economy of the cycle of chemical transformation by which these swine were maintained without decreasing the capacity of the city for human support. Lastly the Swineherd spoke of the protection that the swine levels provided against the effects of an occasional penetrating bomb that chanced to fall in the crater of its predecessor before the damage could be repaired.

Pursuant to this fact the uppermost swine level housed those unfortunate animals that were nearest the sausage stage. On the next lower level, to which we now descended by a spiral stair through a ventilating opening, were brutes of less advanced ages. On the lowest of the three levels where special lights were available for our benefit even the women ceased to shudder and gave expression to ecstatic cries of rapture, as all the world has ever done when seeing baby beasts pawing contentedly at maternal founts.

“Is it not all wonderful?” effused Admiral von Kufner, with a sweeping gesture; “so efficient, so sanitary, so automatic, such a fine example of obedience to system and order. This is what I call real science and beauty; one might almost say Germanic beauty.”

“But I do not like it,” replied Marguerite with her usual candour. “I wish they would abolish these horrid levels.”

“But surely,” said the Countess, “you would not wish to condemn us to a diet of total mineralism?”

“But the Herr Chemist here could surely invent for us a synthetic sausage,” remarked Count Rudolph. “I have eaten vegetarian kraut made of real cabbage from the Botanical Garden, but it was inferior to the synthetic article.”

“Do not make light, young people,” spoke up the most venerable member of our party, the eminent Herr Dr. von Brausmorganwetter, the historian laureate of the House of Hohenzollern. “It is not as a producer of sausages alone that we Germans are indebted to this worthy animal. I am now engaged in writing a book upon the influence of the swine upon German Kultur. In the first part I shall treat of the Semitic question. The Jews were very troublesome among us in the days before the isolation. They were a conceited race. As capitalists, they amassed fortunes; as socialists they stirred up rebellion; they objected to war; they would never have submitted to eugenics; they even insisted that we Germans had stolen their God!

“We tried many schemes to be rid of these troublesome people, and all failed. Therefore I say that Germany owes a great debt to the noble animal who rid us of the disturbing presence of the Jews, for when pork was made compulsory in the diet they fled the country of their own accord.