That evening I attended an excellent performance of Südermann’s _Die Ehre_ in the subsidized municipal theater. Tickets were even cheaper than in Coblenz, none of them as high as four marks, even with war tax, poor tax, and “wardrobe.” The house was crowded with the serious-minded of all classes, Poles as well as Germans; the actors were of higher histrionic ability than the average American town of the size of Bromberg sees once a year. Yet equally splendid performances were offered here at these slight prices all the year round. As I strolled hotelward with that pleasant sensation of satisfaction that comes from an evening of genuine entertainment, I could not but wonder whether this, and those other undeniable advantages of German _Kultur_, whatever sins might justly be charged against it, would be kept up after the Poles had taken Bromberg into their own keeping.
As to the walking trip through these eastern provinces which I had planned, fate was once more against me. I might, to be sure, have set out on foot toward the region already amputated from the Empire, but in the course of an hour I should have had the privilege of walking back again. The German-Polish front was just six kilometers from Bromberg, and a wandering stranger would have had exactly the same chance of crossing its succession of trenches as of entering Germany from France a year before. The one and only way of reaching the province of Posen was by train from the village of Kreuz, back along the railway by which I had come.
The place had all the appearance of an international frontier, a frontier hastily erected and not yet in efficient running order. Arrangements for examining travelers and baggage consisted only of an improvised fence along the station platform, strewn pellmell with a heterogeneous throng bound in both directions, and their multifarious coffers and bundles. The soldiers who patrolled the line of demarkation with fixed bayonets were callow, thin-faced youths, or men past middle age who had plainly reached the stage of uselessness as combat troops. All wore on their collars the silver oak-leaves of the recently formed “frontier guard.” Their manner toward the harassed travelers was either brutal or cringingly friendly. The Germans in civilian garb who examined passports and baggage were cantankerous and gruff, as if they resented the existence of a frontier where the Fatherland had never admitted that a frontier existed. They vented their wrath especially against men of military age who wished to enter Polish territory—and their interpretation of their duties in that respect was by no means charitable. Among others, a wretched little dwarf past fifty, whom a glance sufficed to recognize as useless from a military point of view, even had his papers not been stamped with the official _Untauglich_, was wantonly turned back. Many a family was left only the choice of abandoning the attempt to reach its home or of leaving its adult male members behind.