A FEW CULTURED WOMEN
By JANET HILLS
WHEN I came home from a year spent with the Occupying Forces in Germany, people often said to me: " We hear about Hitler's political and religious opponents—but surely there were others, ordinary decent people, who disliked all that the Nazis stood for. Did you come across any of them?" I have tried here to give a fraction of an answer to this question.
At eleven o'clock on Sunday mornings, when some of the Berlin population is in church, and others are attending municipal or party rallies, a few gentle residents of Berlin's Bloomsbury are seeking a different salvation. In an elegant, unheated room in Wilmersdorf, an audience of cultured women, with a few civilised, slightly attenuated men, listen reverently while a pianist tries to warm his hands on Beethoven, and a pale reciter breathes impassioned prose. The programme, which consists of interwoven music and recitation, aims at artistic completeness ; it builds up a mood. Item follows item imperceptibly ; in order not to disturb the spiritual inter- connection, there is no applause, by request. Afterwards, a cultured murmur breaks out as friend greets friend, for this is a kind of artistic sisterhood. If you listen very carefully, you will hear: "They say that a new load of potatoes has arrived at the Lehner Bahnhof."
I shall never think of Berlin's Bloomsbury without affection. Take a tram to Fehrbellinerplatz, fork right through the ruins, climb to the first floor of a mutilated building, watching out for missing steps— and pause. You will hear the gentle pulsing of an unmistakable heart, the heart of " those of us who really love culture." As it is
Advent, there are fir branches behind the pictures, and small stumps of candles on the table, and paper angels in all kinds of disconcerting places. Before each of us is an exquisite plate and a small, delicate fork ; and the hostess has baked a cake with some special recipe not requiring sugar or margarine. Or there is a dish with little frag- ments of toast lightly sprinkled with a few grains of sugar. The hospitality is symbolic, but there are paper serviettes at each place, and the pale tea is steaming hot in the thin cups.
Someone draws attention to a branch of wintry jasmine standing alone, Chinese-fashion, in a tall vase. We all contemplate it with feeling. This is a salon, and an almost exclusively feminine one. Conversation ranges from the meaning of poetry to the art of making brassieres out of tablecloths. Every subject is treated with the same quiet zest and delicate thoroughness. If a tame man is present, there is some light bantering. It is restful to find that political subjects are discussed from a broadly human point of view. I have not found in any other Berlin milieu what seems to rue such a sound apprecia- tion of the qualities of the Russians as people. Genuinely interested, they discuss them here without rancour and without obsequiousness.
The women in this salon are enterprising. Some are novelists ; some publishers ; one or two are actresses. One of them was married to a Jew Who died in a concentration camp ; another is half Jewish and is only slowly expanding again after persecution. Amongst them they have sufficient divergencies of opinion to involve them in energetic discussions, and a fundamental sympathy which prevents quarrels. They are all interested in clothes, and most of them have a certain elegance. One prominent member of the salon has a special sorrow. A bullet was fired through her carefully-hoarded suitcase of dresses, and has made a neat hole in the back of each of them, between the shoulders. All are sociable, and have a strong social conscience. As well as frequenting the salon, they form women's sections of cultural groups, they read their own works aloud, they attend women's meetings. Their feminism is pronounced, but not stern ; one might almost describe it as arch. They believe in Love, and are broad-minded enough to tolerate, and even sometimes to advocate, free love. Occasionally, they rouse in one a nostalgic recollection of the days when modernism was bright pink and con- scientiously daring. And this in turn reminds one of the immense intellectual loneliness which they have now been suffering for years.
They are very fond of the British. You will sometimes hear them say in the course of conversation: " It is nice to be British," meaning that they are glad they live in our sector. The British soldier gives them a feeling of .security ; he is solid and good-tempered, and, though not so picturesque as a Russian, is nicer to meet in the streets after dark. British reserve impresses them. They, with their glorious, uninhibited sentimentality, cherish a picture of the ideal Englishman whose every word is an understatement, and whose principles are as high as his conversational powers are small. And they like English good manners. I remember one of them, an elderly authoress, re- turning from a visit to Military Government with tears of gratitude in her eyes, because an officer had offered her a chair and had told her not to sit in a draught. Finally, I am afraid they like the British because they are a bulwark against Bolshevism.
No one belonging to the salon was ever a member of the Party. I think they disliked the Nazis as much from fastidiousness as from moral principle. Fascism outraged their worship of culture, just as it militated against their faith in the individual. They had not all of them realised the full horror of the concentration camps, until the Allies revealed it. They are haunted by it now. When I came back from my first leave in England, one of them asked me anxiously, " What are they saying about us in England?" and, when I hesitated, burst into tears. The memory of Germany's guilt will be safe in their hands. Politically, I think they are mostly in favour of the Social D&nocratic Party or of the Christian Democratic Union, but they are not violent party enthusiasts. They might, like Keats, say that they are certain of nothing save the power of the imagination and the holiness of the heart's affections. In their conversation, one hears echoes of a cry long since stifled in Germany : "Nie wieder Krieg" (Never again war). I do not know how far they are likely to have a direct influence on the future political life of Germany ; but I know that I would trust any one of them with the upbringing of a German child.
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