I found that the active leaders in the strike shortly afterward disappeared from the mine. Those who could possibly be passed for military service were drafted into the army. This was intended as an intimation to the rest that they must "be good" in future. The fear of being drafted for the army hung over them all like a thunder cloud. They knew what it meant and they feared it above everything.
When I first arrived at the mine there were quite a few able-bodied men and boys around sixteen and seventeen years of age at work there. Gradually they were weeded out for the army. When I left none were there but the oldest men and those who could not possibly qualify for any branch of the service.
In the latter stages of my experience at the mine I was able to talk more or less freely with my fellow workers. A few of the Germans had picked up a little English. There was one fellow who had a son in the United States and who knew about as much English as I knew German, and we were able to converse. If I did not know the "Deutsch" for what I wanted to say, he generally could understand it in English. He was continually making terrific indictments of the German Government, yet he hated England to such a degree that he would splutter and get purple in the face whenever he mentioned the word. However, he could find it in his heart to be decent to isolated specimens of Englishmen.
I first got talking with Fritz one day when the papers had announced the repulse of a British attack on the western front.
[Sidenote: Fritz's view of British attacks.]
"It's always the same. They are always attacking us," he cursed. "Of course, it's true that we repulse them. They are but English and they can't break the German army. But how are we to win the war if it is always the English who attack?"
"Do you still think Germany can win?" I asked.
"No!" He fairly spat at me. "We can't beat you now. But you can't beat us! This war will go on until your pig-headed Lloyd George gives in."
"Or," I suggested gently, "until your pig-headed Junker Government gives in."
"They never will!" he said, a little proudly, but sadly too. "Every man will be killed in the army--my two sons, all--and we will starve before it is all over!"