Last night it snowed – real, white snow.

Convois Autos.,
S.S.U. 647,
Par B.C.M.,
France.

Mainz, Germany
December 23, 1918.

Dearest Family:-

Last night it snowed – real, white snow. But this morning it went in a hurry. One the whole, the weather has been very mild though disagreeable with almost constant rain for the last month. The snow was pretty while it lasted and we wished we could have a bit of it for Christmas. It is very different weather from what we were having a year ago at this time. We haven’t had time to wear over-coats this year so far. Maybe we are growing tougher. Listen to what my diary says for a year ago today: “Flat on my back with a cold, sore throat and indigestion as a result of our St. Nazaire trip last week.” Then on Jan. 13 I wrote: “Three weeks ago when I started to write in this book while in bed I was prevented by the cold. There was a good fire going in a stove at the foot of my bed, but it is impossible to heat the air at a greater radius than 3 ft. and then it passes out a hole in the roof.” This all took place at Sandricourt you will remember. We surely were a blue outfit in those days and there is little to wonder at. How different now! A room to myself practically, plenty of good furniture, a roaring fire making it necessary to keep the window open because of the surplus heat. We should be quite contented and tonight I am feeling quite pert and sassy. This morning’s mail delivery brought your good box of Xmas candies and the picture of Dot. It’s a very good thing that nothing but hard candies was included because the box had caved in on about six sides but there wasn’t a piece of candy missing. I hope you won’t be disappointed when I tell you that the box was immediately opened and promptly pounced upon by a goodly number of husky ruffians. In fact, at the present writing, there is not a piece of candy to be found anywhere in this room. But I’m sure you will be glad when you know how hard it has been for us to get good things to eat up here in Germany. One can buy certain foods from the Germans but not chocolate. One can get some eatables from French commissaries but not chocolate. Our own little cantine supply of chocolate has long since disappeared. There are no American commissaries near here. So you see your gift really did fill a need. The reason I opened it immediately is partly because the temptation was too great to resist and partly because I had profitted by past experience. From now on for several weeks these boxes will be arriving all containing eats. If they are all saved until Xmas everybody over eats and feels rotten for many days. Spread it out is what I say. As far as I know your box is the first to arrive in the section. Thank you ever and ever so much for the candies. They were delicious. This statement is endorsed by J.H. Taylor, Stewart H. Fraser, Allen H. Ahlers, D.J. Luykx, Robt. R. Bodfish, Samuel Wilder and several others who have visited our apartments from time to time throughout the day. All wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. My fat little queen of the Philadelphia queens has also drawn some very choice compliments through her picture which now adorns the wall over my four-poster.

And now I’m going to relate for your perusal a bit of an account of what we are experiencing and talking about in these days of uncertainty.

Day before yesterday Johnny Taylor, Fraser and I took a train to Weisbaden just across the Rhine from here. We had been told that Weisbaden was a very cosmopolitan city, much prettier and up-to-date than Mainz. And so we found it. Very snappy city indeed with many elaborate baths and attractive shops. People speaking very good English hailed us from all sides. Our waiter at the hotel in which we ate dinner greeted us with, “Good afternoon, Gentlemen. What can I do for you?” It rather startled us. Then a very nice lady came over and spoke to us in the hotel. “I hope you boys will excuse me for intruding but I can’t resist the temptation of speaking to you Americans.” This was her salutation. She hailed from San Francisco where she was born and had lived up to about 15 years ago when she took to traveling. She and an aged uncle were caught in Germany at the outbreak of the war. The excitement broke the old man’s health and she was compelled to stay in Weisbaden with him. Soon after America joined the allies he passed away leaving her alone in a hostile country. She was very interesting indeed and we pumped her hard for information in between her own pumps on us. She says that Germany is starving though we outsiders don’t see it. It is only the rich and the more fortunate ones in Germany who are able to acquire the food essentials of life. Some hotels are able to buy, direct from the farmer, their meat, eggs, potatoes, etc., but that it is all done underhanded. A proprietor who is caught buying food elsewhere than from the government is given three years in prison. A farmer who is caught selling his goods other than to the government loses everything he owns. To buy food from the government means to eat nothing but vegetables – no meats nor grease of any kind. (This is all her story, you understand.) The wealthier classes have been able to live fairly well through underhanded work as long as their money held out. But the poorer classes have suffered and are suffering terribly today from lack of food and clothing. She herself, had been very fortunate in being taken in by two German families and by pooling their resources had managed to scrape through. She pays 5 marks for a pound of butter (and very poor butter, she says), 20 marks for a small piece of real beefsteak, about 2 marks for every egg she buys. These are a few of the things mentioned which I remember.

 This much of our talk was intensely interesting and we all liked her very much and marveled at what she had been through. She talks very little German, dislikes the people very much especially the women. She says they are a bigoted, selfish, unpatriotic race of square-heads. She served for two years with the German Red Cross to save her skin.

 But the last part of our talk destroyed completely my first good impressions. I think that in her argument as to what ought to take place now that it is all over can be seen Germany’s last hope – a hope on which she is placing everything – President Wilson. Not that President Wilson isn’t a capable man to handle the situation but that this lady’s argument is typical of the line of talk with which every German is going to try to hood-wink the world now that she has been beaten. Briefly stated the argument was something like this: the common people, the majority, of Germany were deceived and misled into the war by the Jünkers class. The German working man, the merchant, the foreign trader, the banker, etc. are not to blame. Therefore, Germany did not start the war. It was the Jünker class grasping for world power – not the Kaiser but the Jünker class. The German people were led to follow them through deceit. It is all over now. Germany is determined to rid itself of this Jünker pest, the blame for the whole thing. The guiltless people have been bled of everything they own and robbed of their dear ones. They admit their defeat and tremendous suffering. “Now that it is all over feed us, trade with us, give us a chance to build up a misled and maltreated Germany.” This is their cry now. Don’t you see? They are playing for sympathy!! They want sympathy from the nations which they have done everything in their power to destroy. They want our trade. They want to send merchants to our shores to peddle their “made in Germany” goods. They want to send men who have proved themselves to be German Secret Service Agents first and merchants during their spare moments. How can they have the audacity to think for a minute that we are ever going to believe them again. Sympathize with them? No! Not for a minute – Jünker or peasant. Feed them? Never!! Not unless it is absolutely proven that they haven’t the power to live without aid. Trade with them? Allow them to immigrate and mix with us? NO!! A thousand times NO!!!! Not until they have proven that they have the brains to warrant our having anything to do with them. It may be possible for them to prove and it may not. In either case it is not up to us to give them the chance. They’ve got to prove themselves worthy first and earn a chance. Keep them on their own soil. Let them fight it out among themselves. Don’t let them spread their poison. Quarantine them, segregate them – anything to keep them away from healthy civilized people. In five or ten years time of wrangling among themselves the fittest may have survived and have been able to clean out the worst of the disease. If they claim immunity at the end of this period let them be officially examined and passed upon by a competent board of international doctors and if found to be reasonably sane and pure let the nations try them out. If at the end of this period any of them have the fact to think they are fit to mix with civilized people then in our time to give them a chance and not until then.

 This, dear people, is why I’m afraid it is a mistake for America to play any important part in the Peace Conference. We are too kind-hearted and lenient. We are going to listen to the pleading of the German working people “who have been misled” and sympathize with them. Why? Because we haven’t been in the war long enough. Read your casualty list totals and ask yourself who should rightfully determine the testing of a nation such as Germany. America doesn’t know, it can’t know, it may never know. So let us block our ears to German pleadings and modestly withdraw in favor of those nations who are far better equipped to solve the problem than we are or ever will be.

 Oh, I tell you, we have it out hot and heavy here practically every night. Some of the fellows who can talk a bit of the language are apt to go down town and listen to this German propaganda. I tell you, it’s poison. We oughtn’t to be allowed to speak to a German. It’s hard sometimes but it’s for the good of the whole. Even this American lady had been so poisoned that her reasoning was unbalanced. Good American and all that but she had listened to people whom she had first admitted to be “bigoted, selfish and unpatriotic.” Raus mit!

You may not agree with what I have said but if I can’t convince you when I return I feel confident that the course of events will bear me out.

 Latest rumor from Paris – we will probably be mustered out in about 6 months’ time. Not before. Our chances of being dischanged on this side are very slim. France wants to get us out of here and I don’t blame her.

 With a great deal of love,

 Your son
Grant.