Germany in War Time - What an American Girl Saw and Heard

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Title: Germany in War Time - What an American Girl Saw and Heard
Author: McAuley, Mary Ethel
Language: English
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[Illustration: _Germany's Youngest Reserve._]

GERMANY IN WAR TIME

What an American Girl Saw and Heard

MARY ETHEL McAULEY

Chicago
The Open Court Publishing Company
1917

DEDICATION
TO MY MOTHER
WHO SHARED THE TRIALS OF
TWO YEARS IN GERMANY
WITH ME

PREFATORY NOTE.

This book is the product of two years spent in Germany during the great
war. It portrays what has been seen and heard by an American girl whose
primary interest was in art. She has tried to write without fear or
favor the simple truth as it appeared to her.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE
Getting into Germany in War Time 1
Soldiers of Berlin 7
The Women Workers of Berlin 20
German "Sparsamkeit" 35
The Food in Germany 49
What We Ate in Germany 62
How Berlin is Amusing Itself in War Time 69
The Clothes Ticket 81
My Typewriter 88
Moving in Berlin 93
What the Germans Read in War Time 98
Precautions Against Spies, etc. 108
Prisoners in Germany 115
Verboten 128
The Mail in Germany 132
The "Ausländerei" 140
War Charities 146
What Germany is Doing for Her Human War Wrecks 159
Will the Women of Germany Serve a Year in the Army? 173
The Kaiserin and the Hohenzollern Princesses 184
A Stroll Through Berlin 196
A Trip Down the Harbor of Hamburg 207
The Krupp Works at Essen 218
Munich in War Time 228
From Berlin to Vienna in War Time 242
Vienna in War Time 256
Soldiers of Vienna 267
Women Warriors 279
How Americans Were Treated in Germany 286
I Leave Germany July 1, 1917 292

GETTING INTO GERMANY IN WAR TIME.

Now that America and Germany are at war, it is not possible for an
American to enter the German Empire. Americans can leave the country if
they wish, but once they are out they cannot go back in again.

Since the first year of the war there has been only one way of getting
into Germany through Denmark, and that is by way of Warnemünde. After
leaving Copenhagen you ride a long way on the train, and then the train
boards a ferry which takes you to a little island. At the end of this
island is the Danish frontier, where you are thoroughly searched to see
how much food you are trying to take into Germany. After this frontier
is passed you ride for a few hours on a boat which carries you right
up to Warnemünde, the German landing-place and the military customs of
Germany.

When I went to Germany in October, 1915, the regulations were not
very strict, travelers had only to show that they had a good reason
for going into the country, and they were searched--that was all. But
during the two years I was in Germany all this was changed. Now it
is very hard for even a neutral to enter Germany. Neutrals must first
have a visé from the German consul in Denmark. It takes four days to
get this visé, and you must have your picture taken in six different
poses. Also, you must have a legitimate reason for wanting to go into
the country, and if there is anything the least suspicious about you,
you are not granted a permit to enter.

Travelers entering Germany bring as much food with them as they can.
You are allowed to bring a moderate amount of tea, coffee, soap, canned
milk, etc.; nine pounds of butter and as much smoked meat as you can
carry. No fresh meat is allowed, and you must carry the meat yourself
as no porters are allowed around the docks. This is a spy precaution.

The butter and meat are bought in Copenhagen from a licensed firm where
it is sealed and the firm sends the package to the boat for you. You
must be careful not to break the seal before the German customs are
passed. The Danes are very strict about letting rubber goods out of
their country, and one little German girl I knew was so afraid that the
Danes would take her rubbers away from her, that she wore them on a hot
summer day.

The boat which takes passengers to and from Warnemünde is one day a
German boat and the next day a Danish boat. If you are lucky and make
the trip on the day the Danish boat is running, you get a wonderful
meal, and if you are unlucky and strike the German day, you get a poor
one. After getting off the boat, you get your first glimpse of the
German _Militär_, the soldiers at the customs.

The travelers are divided into two classes--those going to Hamburg
and those going to Berlin. Then a soldier gets up on a box and asks
if there is any one in the crowd who has no passport. The day I came
through only one man stepped forward. I felt sorry for him, but he did
not look the least bit disheartened. An officer led him away. Strange
to say, four days later we were seated in a hotel in Berlin eating our
breakfast when this same little man came up and asked if we were not
from Pittsburg, and if we had not come over on the "Kristianiafjord."
When I said that we had, he remarked: "Well, I am from Pittsburg, too,
and I came over on the 'Kristianiafjord.'"

"But I did not see you among the passengers," I said.

"No," he answered, "I should say not. I was a bag of potatoes in the
hold. I am a reserve officer in the German army, and I was determined
to get back to fight. I came without a passport claiming to be a
Russian. It took me three days to get fixed up at Warnemünde because
I had no papers of any kind. The day I had everything straightened
out and was leaving for Berlin, a funny thing happened. I was walking
along the street with an officer when a crowd of Russian prisoners came
along. To my surprise one of the fellows yelled at me, 'Hello, Mister,
you'se here too?' And I knew that fellow. He had worked for my father
in America. As he was returning to Russia, he was taken prisoner by
the Germans. I had an awful time explaining my acquaintance to the
authorities at Warnemünde, but here I am waiting to join my regiment."

At Warnemünde, after the people are divided into groups, they are taken
into a large room where the baggage is examined. At the time I came
through we were allowed to bring manuscript with us, but it had to
be read. Now not one scrap of either written or printed matter can be
carried, not even so much as an address. All the writing now going into
Germany must be sent by post and censored as a letter.

When I came through I had a stack of notes with me and I never dreamed
that it would be examined. I was having a difficult time with the
soldier who was searching me when an officer who spoke perfect English
came up and asked if he could help me. He had to read all my letters
and papers, but he was such a slow reader that the train was held up
half an hour waiting for him to finish reading them. Nothing was taken
away from me, but they took a copy of the _London Illustrated News_
away from a German who protested loudly, waving his hands. It was a
funny thing to do, for in Berlin this paper was for sale on all the
news stands and in the cafés. But sometimes the Germans make it a point
of treating foreigners better than they do their own people. I noticed
this many times afterward.

After the baggage was examined, the people had to be searched. The men
didn't have to undress and the women were taken into a small room where
women searchers made us take off all our clothes. They even make you
take off your shoes, they feel in your hair and they look into your
locket. As I had held up the train so long, I did not have much time
to dress and hurried into the train with my hat in my hand and my shoes
untied. As the train pulls out the searcher soldiers line up and salute
it. Searching isn't a very nice job, and when my mother went back to
America the next spring, no less than four of the searchers told her
that they hated it and that when the war was over the whole Warnemünde
force was coming to America.

The train was due in Berlin at 9 o'clock at night, but we were late
when we pulled in at the Stettin Station. We had a hard time getting
a cab and finally we had to share an automobile with a strange man
who was going to the same hotel. At 10 o'clock we were in our hotel
on Unter den Linden. From the window I could look out on the linden
trees. The lights were twinkling merrily in the cafés across the way.
Policemen were holding up the traffic on the narrow Friedrichstrasse.
People were everywhere. It did not seem like a country that was taking
part in the great war.

[Illustration: _Marine Reserves on Their Way to the Station.
Wilhelmshaven._]

SOLDIERS OF BERLIN.

Berlin is a city of soldiers. Every day is soldiers' day. And on
Sundays there are even more soldiers than on week days. Then Unter den
Linden, Friedrichstrasse and the Tiergarten are one seething mass of
gray coats--gray the color of everything and yet the color of nothing.
This field gray blends with the streets, the houses, and the walls, and
the dark clothes of the civilians stand out conspicuously against this
gray mass.

[Illustration: _Soldiers Marching Through Brandenburg Gate._]

When I first came to Berlin, I thought it was just by chance
that so many soldiers were there, but the army seems ever to
increase--officers, privates, sailors and men right from the trenches.
During the two years that I was in Berlin this army remained the same.
It didn't decrease in numbers and it didn't change in looks. The day
I left Berlin it looked exactly the same as the day I entered the
country. They were anything but a happy-looking bunch of men, and all
they talked about was, "when the war is over"; and like every German I
met in those two years, they longed and prayed for peace. One day on
the street car I heard a common German soldier say, "What difference
does it make to us common people whether Germany wins the war or not,
in these three years we folks have lost everything." But every German
soldier is willing to do his duty.

The most wonderful thing about this transit army is that everything
the soldiers have, from their caps to their shoes, is new, except the
soldiers just coming from the front. And yet as a rule they are not
new recruits starting out, but men who have been home on a furlough or
men who have been wounded and are now ready to start back to the front.
To believe that Germany has exhausted her supply of men is a mistake.
Personally, I know lots of young Germans that have never been drafted.
The most of these men are such who, for some reason or other, have
had no army service, and the German military believe that one trained
man is worth six untrained men, and it is the trained soldier that is
always kept in the field. If he has been wounded he is quickly hurried
back to the front. By their scientific methods a bullet wound can be
entirely cured in six weeks.

[Illustration: _The Most Popular Post-Card in Germany._]

German men have never been noted dressers, and even at their best the
middle and lower classes look very gawky and countrified in civilian
clothes. You cannot imagine how the uniform improves their appearance.
I have seen new recruits marching to the place where they get their
uniforms. Most of them have on old ill-fitting clothes, slouch hats
and polished boots. They shuffle along, carrying boxes and bundles.
They have queer embarrassed looks on their faces. Three hours later,
this same lot of men come forth. They are not the same men. They have a
different fire in their eyes, they hold themselves straighter, they no
longer slouch but keep step. The uniform seems to have made new men of
them. It should be called "transform," not uniform.

At the Friedrichstrasse Station one can see every kind of soldiers at
once. There the men arrive from the front sometimes covered with dust
and mud, and once I saw a man with his trousers all spattered with
blood. The common soldiers carry everything with them. On their backs
they have their knapsacks, and around their waists they have cans,
spoons, bundles and all sorts of things. These men carry sixty-five
pounds with them all the time. In one of their bags they carry what
is known as their _eiserne Portion_ or their "iron portion." This
consists of two cans of meat, two cans of vegetables, three packages of
hard tack, ground coffee for several meals and a flask of whisky. The
soldiers are not allowed to eat this portion unless they are in a place
where no food can be brought to them, and then they are only allowed
to eat it at the command of a superior officer. In the field the iron
portions are inspected each day, and any soldier that has touched his
portion is severely punished.

[Illustration: _Schoolboys' Reserve. Berlin._]

A great many of the soldiers have the Iron Cross of the second class,
but very rarely a cross of the first class is seen. The second class
cross is not worn but is designated by a black and white ribbon drawn
through the buttonhole. The first class cross is worn pinned rather
low on the coat. The order _Pour le mérite_ is the highest honor in
the German army, and not a hundred of them have been given out since
the beginning of the war. It is a blue, white and gold cross and is
hung from the wearer's collar. A large sum of money goes with this
decoration. The second class Iron Cross makes the owner exempt from
certain taxes; and five marks each month goes with the first class Iron
Cross.

The drilling-grounds for soldiers are very interesting. Most of these
places are inclosed, but the one at the Grunewald was open, and I often
used to go there to see the soldiers. It made a wonderful picture--the
straight rows of drilling men with the tall forest for a background.
The men were usually divided off into groups, a corporal taking
twelve men to train. It was fun watching the new recruits learning
the goose-step. The poor fellows tried so hard they looked as though
they would explode, but if they did not do it exactly right, they were
sent back to do it over again. The trainers were not the least bit
sympathetic.

One day an American boy and I went to Potsdam. We were standing in
front of the old Town Palace watching some fresh country boys drill. I
laughed outright at one poor chap who was trying to goose-step. He was
so serious and so funny I couldn't help it. The corporal came over to
us and ordered us to leave the grounds, which we meekly did.

[Illustration: _Soldiers Buying Ices in Berlin. A War Innovation._]

Tempelhof, the largest drilling-ground in Berlin, is the headquarters
for the army supplies, and here one can see hundreds of wagons and
autos painted field-gray. The flying-place at Johannisthal is now
enclosed by a fence and is so well guarded you can't get within a
square of it.

[Illustration: _Looking at Colored Pictures in an Old Book-Shop._]

It is very interesting to watch the troop trains coming in from the
front. When I first went to Berlin it was all a novelty to me and I
spent a great deal of my time at the stations. One night just before
Christmas, 1915, the first Christmas I was in Berlin, I spent three
hours at the Anhalt Station watching the troops come home. They were
very lucky, these fellows, six months in the trenches and then to be
home at Christmas time! They were the happiest people I had seen in the
war unless it were the people who came to meet them.

[Illustration: _Cheering the Soldier on His Way to the Front._]

Most of the soldiers were sights. Their clothes were dirty, torn and
wrinkled. Many of them coming from Russia were literally covered with
a white dust. At first I thought that they were bakers, but when I
saw several hundred of them I changed my mind. Beside his regular
paraphernalia, each soldier had a dozen or more packages. The packages
were strapped on everywhere, and one little fellow had a bundle stuck
on the point of his helmet.

A little child, perhaps three years old, was being held over the
gate near me and all the while he kept yelling, "Papa! _Urlaub_!" An
_Urlaub_ is a furlough, and when the father did come at last the child
screamed with delight. Another soldier was met by his wife and a tiny
little baby. He took the little one in his arms, and the tears rolled
down his cheeks, "My baby that I have never seen," he said.

This night the soldiers came in crowds. Everybody was smiling, and in
between the trains we went into the station restaurant. At every table
sat a soldier and his friends. One young officer had been met by his
parents, and he was so taken up with his mother that he could not sit
down but he hung over her chair. Was she happy? Well, I should say so!

At another table sat a soldier and his sweetheart. They did not care
who saw them, and can you blame them? He patted her cheeks and he
kissed her hand.... An old man who sat at the table pretended that he
was reading, and he tried to look the other way, but at last he could
hold himself no longer, and grasping the soldier's hand he cried,
"_Mahlzeit!_"

[Illustration: _A Field Package for a German Soldier._]

We went out and saw more trains and more soldiers. A little old lady
stood beside us. She was a pale little lady dressed in black. She was
so eager. She strained her eyes and watched every face in the crowd.
It was bitter cold and she was thinly clad. At 12 o'clock the station
master announced that there would be no more trains until morning. The
little old lady turned away. I watched her bent figure as she went down
the stairs. She was pulling out her handkerchief.

THE WOMEN WORKERS OF BERLIN.

The German women have filled in the ranks made vacant by the men.
Nothing is too difficult for them to undertake and nothing is too hard
for them to do.

The poor German working women! No one in all the war has suffered like
these poor creatures. Their men have been taken from them, they are
paid only a few pfennigs a day by the government, and now they must
work, work like a man, work like a horse.

The German working woman is tremendously capable in manual labor.
She never seems to get tired and she can stand all day in the wet and
snow. But as a wife and mother she is becoming spoiled. She is bound
to become rough, and she takes the jostlings of the men she meets with
good grace, answering their flip remarks, joking with them and giving
them a physical blow when she thinks it necessary. Most of the women
seem to like this familiarity which working on the streets brings them,
and they find it much more exciting than doing housework at home.

All great reforms begin in a violent way, and maybe this is the
beginning of emancipation for the German woman, for she is beginning to
realize what she can do, and for the first time in the history of the
empire she is living an independent existence, dependent upon no man.

[Illustration: _A Window Cleaner._]

When the war first broke out, women were taken on as ticket punchers on
the overground and underground railways, and _Frau Kneiperin_, or "Mrs.
Ticket-puncher," sits all day long out in the open, punching tickets.
In summer this job is very pleasant, but in winter she gets very, very
cold even if she does wear a thick heavy overcoat and thick wooden
shoes over her other shoes. She can't wear gloves for she must take
each ticket in her hand in order to punch the stiff boards. She earns
three marks a day.

[Illustration: _A German Elevator "Boy."_]

After the women ticket punchers came the women door shutters, and _Frau
Türschliesserin_, or "Mrs. Door Shutter," is all day long on the
platforms of the stations, and she must see that every train door is
shut before the train starts. This is a lively job, and she must jump
from one door to the other. Most of these women wear bloomers, but some
of them wear men's trousers tucked in their high boots. They all wear
caps and badges.

_Frau Briefträgerin_ is the woman letter carrier. This is rather a nice
job, carrying only a little bag of letters. One fault with the work is
that she must deliver the letters to the top floor of every building
whether there is an elevator or not, but as no German building is more
than five stories high, it is not so bad. Most of the special delivery
"boys" are women. They wear a boy's suit and ride a bicycle.

More than half the street car conductors in Germany now are women. Most
of these women still cling to skirts, but they all wear a man's cap
and coat. They are quite expert at climbing on the back of the car and
fixing the trolley, and if necessary they can climb on the top of the
car. If the car gets stuck, they get out and push it, but the crowd is
generally ready to help them. They have their bag for tips, and they
expect their five pfennigs extra the same as a man.

When _Frau Führerin_, or "Mrs. Motorman," came, some of the German
people were scandalized and exclaimed: "Well, I will never ride on a
street car run by a woman. It wouldn't be safe." Now, no one thinks
anything about it, and the women have no more accidents than the men.
Some of these women are little bits of things, and one wonders that
they have the strength to stand it all day long. Most of them look as
if it were nerve-racking. They earn three and a half marks a day.

[Illustration: _Costume of a Street-Car Conductor._]

Women cab drivers are not very numerous, but every now and then one of
them whizzes around a corner looking for a fare. One Berlin cabby is
quite an old lady. The men cabbies are jealous of the women because
the women get the best tips. There are few women taxi drivers. One
young woman driver has a whole leather suit with tight breeches and
an aviator hat. Women also drive mail wagons, and women go around from
one store to another cleaning windows. _Frau Fensterputzerin_ or "Mrs.
Window Cleaner" carries a heavy ladder with her. This is no light task.

They have always had women street cleaners and switch tenders in
Munich, but now they have them in Berlin as well. They work in groups,
sweeping the dirt and hauling it away in wheelbarrows. Just before I
left Berlin I saw a woman posting bills on the round advertising posts.
She did not seem to be an expert at managing the paste, because she
flung it around so that it was dangerous to come near her. In the last
year they have had women track walkers, and they pace the railroad ties
to see if the tracks are safe. They dress in blue and carry small iron
canes.

[Illustration: _A Famous "Cabby" in Berlin._]

The excavation for the new underground railway under Friedrichstrasse
was dug out by women, and half the gangs that work on the railroad
tracks are women. They fasten bolts and saw the iron rails. All the
stores have women elevator runners, and most of the large department
stores have women checking umbrellas, packages, dogs, and--lighted
cigars! Most stores have women floor-walkers. Most of the delivery
wagons are run by women, and they carry the heaviest packages.

All the newspapers in Berlin are sold by women, and they wheel the
papers around in baby carriages. Around the different freight stations
one can see women loading hay and straw into the cars. They wield
the pitchfork with as much ease as a man and with far more grace.
Many of the "brakemen" on the trains are women, and some of the train
conductors are women. Most of the gas-meter readers are women, and
other women help to repair telephone wires, and still others help to
instal telephones.

There are a few _Frau Schornsteinfegerin_, or "Mrs. Chimney Sweep,"
but the job of being a chimneysweep doesn't appeal to most women. These
women wear trousers and a tight-fitting cap. They mount the house tops
and they make the soot fly, and the cement rattles down the chimney.
They carry long ropes with which they pull their brushes up and down.

[Illustration: _Cleaning the Streets in Berlin._]

_Frau Klempnermeisterin_, or "Mrs. Master Tinner," repairs the roofs.
Of course she wears trousers to make climbing easier. Most of the women
who have these odd jobs are those whose husbands had the same before
the war. Many other women work in the parks cutting the grass and
watering the flowers. In the market places women put rubber heels on
your shoes while you wait.

Most of the milk wagons are run by girls, and women help to deliver
coal. They have no coal chutes in Germany, and the coal is carried from
the wagon into the house. This is really terrible work for a woman. A
few women work on ash wagons, others are "ice men," and others build
houses.

Nearly all the munition workers in Germany are women, and they are
paid very high for this work. Most of them get from $40 to $50 a month,
wages before unknown for working women. The strength of some of these
women is almost beyond belief. Dr. Gertrude Baumer, the famous German
woman writer and settlement worker, told me that shells made in one
factory weighed eighty pounds each and that every day the women working
lifted thirty-six of these shells. Women are also employed in polishing
the shells.

The women workers in munition factories are very closely watched, and
if the work does not agree with them they are taken away and are given
other employment. The sanitary conditions of these factories are very
good, and they are almost fire-proof, and they have no horrible fire
disasters. Indeed they have very few fires in Germany.

They have in Berlin what is known as the _Nationaler Frauendienst_,
or the "National Women's Service," and it is an organization to help
the poor women of Germany during the war. Dr. Gertrude Baumer is the
president of this organization, and she is also one of the strongest
advocates for the one year army service for German women.

[Illustration: _A Berlin Street-Car Conductor._]

This society finds employment for women and gives out work for women
who have little children and cannot leave home. Women who sew at
home make bags for sand defenses, and they make helmet covers of gray
cloth. These covers keep the enemy from seeing the shining metal of
the helmet. If a woman is sick and cannot work the society takes care
of her until she is better and able to work again. They also have food
tickets which they give to the poor.

[Illustration: _Reading the Gas Meter._]

[Illustration: _A Chauffeur._]

Pension schedules are being made up by different societies, and it
is not yet certain which one the government will adopt; at present
every woman whose husband is in the war is given a certain amount
for herself and children. For women who are now widows the pension
is according to the rank of the husband. For instance, the widow of
a common soldier gets 300 marks a year. If she has one child she get
568 marks and so on, increasing according to the number of children,
for four children she gets 1072 marks. The widow of a non-commissioned
officer, a corporal or a sergeant, gets a little more, and the widow of
a lieutenant gets over twice as much as a common soldier's widow. The
widow of a major-general gets 3246 marks a year. When she has children,
she gets very little more, for when a man has risen to the rank of
major-general the chances are that he is old and that his children are
grown up and able to take care of themselves.

[Illustration: _Digging the Tunnel for the New Underground Railway in
Berlin._]

These schedules are also controlled by the number of years a man
has served in the army, and they are trying to pass a new bill which
requires that pensions shall be controlled by the salary the man had
before the war. If the dead man had worked himself up into a good
position of 1000 marks a month, his family should have more than the
family of a man who could only make 300 marks a month.

The schedule as it now stands for wounded men is that a private who has
lost his leg gets 1,368 marks a year; a lieutenant gets 4851 marks a
year; and a general 10,332 marks a year.

[Illustration: _Caring for the Trees._]

They have in Germany a "votes for women" organization of 600,000
members, but it will be years and years before it ever comes to
anything, for German women are very slow in acting and thinking for
themselves.

GERMAN "SPARSAMKEIT."

When the blockade of Germany began, no one believed that she could hold
out without supplies from the outside world; that in a short time her
people would be starving and that she would be out of raw material.
During the few months before the blockade was declared, Germany had
shipped into her ports as much cotton, copper, rubber and food as
was possible. After the blockade started much stuff was obtained from
Holland and Scandinavia. From the very first days of the war Germany
set to work to utilize all the material that she had on hand, and her
watchword to her people was "waste nothing."

[Illustration: _Collecting Cherry Stones for Making Oil._]

The first collection of material in Germany was a metal collection,
and it took place in the fall of 1915, just after I came to Berlin.
This collection extended all over Germany and took place in different
parts at different times. Every family received a printed notice of
the things that must be given up to the State. It was a long list, but
the main thing on it was the brass ovendoors. As nearly every room in
Germany has a stove with two of these doors about a foot wide and three
quarters of a foot high you can get some idea of how much material this
collection brought. Since this collection the doors have been replaced
by iron ones that are not nearly so pretty. All kinds of brass pots and
kettles were collected, but with special permits people were allowed to
keep their heirlooms. Everything was paid for by the weight, artistic
value counted for naught. Vacant stores were rented for storing this
collection and the people had to bring the things there.

In some cities the people willingly gave up the copper roofs of
their public buildings. Copper roofs have always been very popular
in Germany. In Berlin the roof of the palace, the cathedral and the
Reichstag building are of copper, and in Dresden the roofs of all the
royal buildings are of copper.

A friend of mine who is a Catholic went to church one Sunday just
before I left Berlin. Before the service opened and just as the priest
mounted the pulpit the church bells began to ring. When they had
stopped the priest announced that this was the last time the bells
would ever ring, for they were to be given to the metal collection. The
people began to cry as the priest went on, and before he had finished,
many were sobbing out loud. Even the men wept. My friend said that it
was the most impressive thing that she had ever witnessed.

In that first copper collection they got enough metal to last several
years, but if a second collection is necessary they can take the
brass door knobs which are very large and heavy. All the door knobs in
Germany are made of brass and this would make a vast amount of metal.

[Illustration: _Women Collecting Old Papers._]

In April, 1917, they took an inventory of all the aluminum in the
empire. People had to send in lists of what they had. The ware was
not collected but it was to be given up at any time the government
wanted it. The aluminum is to be used in making money. For a long
time they have had iron 5- and 10-pfennig pieces, and now they have
1-pfennig pieces made out of aluminum. In Leipsic and Dresden they
have 50-pfennig pieces made out of paper, and Berlin will soon have
them too. Before the iron money was made in the winter of 1915, small
change was very scarce. The store-keepers would rather you would not
buy than give you all their small change. At that time in Turkey also
small change was so scarce that the people stood in line by the hour
to get it. The reason for the scarcity in Germany is that the German
soldiers have carried it away to the conquered lands where German money
is used as well as native money. In Germany we used, and they still
use, postage stamps for small change, but this is very unsatisfactory
as they get very dirty in the handling.

[Illustration: _Women Collecting Old Papers._]

The collection of old paper never ceases in Germany. All over Berlin
they have places where this paper is accumulated and sold, and women
work all day bringing it in. Every kind of old paper is bought, books,
magazines and newspapers. Everything must be brought in flat, and a
good price is paid for it.

Another collection that is always going on is the fruit stone
collection. They collect cherry stones, peach stones, plum stones,
and apple and pear seeds. These collections take place in the public
schools and all over Berlin you see pretty posters, "Send the stones to
the schoolhouse with your children." The seeds are used for making fat
and oil.

Everybody wondered what they were going to do when they advertised that
fourteen marks would be paid for every load of common thistles. But
the thistles are being made into cloth. Hair is also made into cloth.
Coffee grounds are also collected, but it has not been decided how they
shall be used.

When the clocks are changed in the summer, it saves a great amount of
gas, and since the first of January, 1917, all the stores must close
at 7 o'clock instead of 8. All electric light advertisements are
prohibited, and all theaters and public places close earlier.

In the city of Hanover, on account of the scarcity of water, the
water is shut off from the bath rooms, and no one can take a bath. In
Copenhagen there is also a scarcity of water, and when I was there the
water all over the city was shut off between two and four o'clock in
the afternoon.

This coming winter people will be urged in every way to save coal, and
if possible to heat only one or two rooms. They have plenty of coal but
no way of delivering it, and last winter people had to go down to the
freight yards and fetch the coal themselves. I often saw fine-looking
ladies wheeling coal in baby carriages. Baby carriages are used for
hauling everything, and they are very practical.

In every way paper is being saved, especially wrapping paper. Every
woman has her bun bag, and when she goes to the bakery shop to buy buns
she takes it with her. I have seen men buying buns in stores, and they
nearly always have their own paper bag with them. Bread is just wrapped
in the middle of the loaf, and if you don't take your own bag with you
for eggs, you will have to carry them home in your hand.

In the markets nothing is wrapped. Every German woman has what she
calls her _Tasche_. It is a black bag with handles and it is used in
preference to a basket. Everything that is bought in the market is put
into this bag unwrapped. If you buy anything that is too large to put
into the bag you have to carry it home in your hand unwrapped. Rhubarb
is carried in this way. Meat is first wrapped in a thin piece of wax
paper and then in a newspaper. Wherever it is possible, newspapers are
used for wrappings. We were never fussy about carrying a newspaper
bundle in Germany, we were glad we got the newspaper. One night a
friend of mine, an American girl, came to stay all night with me, and
as we had only two quilts, she had to bring her own quilt with her. She
had no paper big enough to wrap the quilt, so she just carried it in
her hand. The people on the street car and on the street did not even
stare, they merely thought that she was a good German woman who was
sparing of paper for the Vaterland.

[Illustration: _Collecting Old Automobile Tires._]

In the department stores they do not use string on small packages,
and on large packages they tie the string only one way around. If the
purchase is a very small object like a spool of thread or a paper of
pins, it is wrapped in the bill. Many people carry their own wrapping
paper with them and it is always wise to carry a piece of string. None
of the department stores will deliver anything that costs less than
five marks, and notices are posted everywhere asking people to carry
their purchases home with them. Only one store, Borchardt's grocery
store, still wraps up things as nicely as in days of peace, and when
you buy anything there you are sure that the package will not come open
on the street. Now they have invented a new kind of string made out of
wood. It is very strong but hard to tie.

Since the very beginning of the war no one in Germany has been allowed
to run his own automobile on account of the scarcity of rubber tires
and gasoline. All the automobiles displayed in the store windows have
tires made of cement. This is just done to make them look better. All
the tires have been taken over by the military authorities. No one is
allowed to ride a bicycle with rubber tires without a permit. They have
invented two kinds of tires for substitutes. One kind is made of little
disks of leather joined in the middle, and the other kind is made of
coiled wire. Both these tires are advertised, and the advertisements
read: "Don't worry, ride your bicycle in war time. Get a leather disk
tire; then you don't need a permit."

For everything that is scarce in Germany they have a substitute and in
this line German ingenuity seems to have no end. They have a substitute
for milk called _Milfix_. It is a white powder, and when mixed with
water it looks like milk. It can be used in coffee or for cooking. The
funny part about _Milfix_ was that when it first came out everybody
scorned it, but all of a sudden there was hardly any real milk to be
had, and _Milfix_ was put on the _Lebensmittel_ food card, and one
could only buy a small quantity of it. Then everybody was just wild to
get a little bit of the precious stuff.

Then they have egg substitutes. Some brands of it are in powder form
and other brands are like yellow capsules. They are very good when
mixed with one real egg and make very good omelet. Then there is the
meat substitute. It comes in cans and is dark brown in color. It is
some kind of a prepared vegetable. It looks like chopped meat and it
is said to taste like meat. They have a hundred different varieties
of substitutes for coffee, and without any exception all brands of
_Kaffee-Ersatz_ are very bad.

The most unique thing on the market is the "butter stretcher." That is
what they call it. It is a white powder, and they guarantee that when
it is mixed with a quarter of a pound of real butter it will stretch it
to half a pound. We bought some of it but we never had the courage to
try it on a quarter of a pound of real butter; but many boarding-houses
used it.

Every day something new bobbed up on the market. One of the finest
things was _Butter-Brühe_ and _Schmalz-Brühe_. It came in cans the
half of which was either butter or lard and the other half was broth.
It was fixed this way so it did not come under the butter card or the
fat card. The cans weighed a half pound and sold for five marks. It was
foreign goods from either Holland or Denmark.

Last spring there appeared on the market great quantities of "Irish
stew" in cans. The Germans stood around it wondering. What was Irish
stew? None of them had the slightest idea. But finally they bought it,
for they said, if it was Irish it must be good. They have a substitute
for sausage made out of fish. It is awful stuff with a lingering taste
that lasts for days.

They have substitutes for leather, rubber, and for alcohol. They have
what they call a _spiritus_ tablet, and it can be used in lamps. It is
used by the soldiers in the field. As matches are very expensive they
have a small apparatus of two iron pieces that when snapped make a
light. As soap is very scarce in Germany hard-wood floors are cleaned
with tin shavings. The shavings are rubbed over the floors with the
feet, the workers wearing felt shoes.

[Illustration: _A Collection of Copper._]

All over Germany soap is used very sparingly. Clothes are put to soak
a week before wash day and each day they are boiled a little. This
plan saves all the hard rubbing, and when the clothes are taken out
of the water the dirt falls out of them. They don't use wash-boards in
Germany. Pasted everywhere in Berlin are posters which say, "Save the
soap." They say to shake the soap in hot water and never let it lie in
the water and always keep it in a dry place.

Most stores will sell only one spool of embroidery floss to one person
at a time. If you want a second spool you must go the next day. This
restriction is very hard on the German woman who loves to do fancy
work.

We saved everything. When we boiled potatoes we saved the water for
soup or gravy. It had more strength than clear water. We never ate eggs
out of fancy dishes with grooves in them, as too much of the egg stuck
in the grooves. We served everything from the cooking kettle right on
our plates, so that no grease would be wasted. Many restaurants also
did this, and what you ordered was brought in on the plate that you
ate from. A great many people used paper napkins for every day. This
saved the linen and the soap. We never threw out our coffee grounds but
cooked them over and over. We weren't used to strong coffee, and these
warmed-over grounds were much better than _Kaffee-Ersatz_.

Some people cooked rhubarb tops in the same way you cook spinach. It
makes a very good vegetable. We took the pea pods from the fresh peas
and scraped them and cooked them with the peas. These are really fine.
It is a well-known Polish dish. The first year we were in Berlin we
could get corn starch, and we used this for thickening food instead of
flour.

One of the funniest things was that you could not buy an orange unless
you bought a lemon. This worked two ways. The oranges were saved and
the storekeepers got rid of the lemons. I have never seen anything
like the quantity of lemons in Germany--millions of lemons everywhere.
Lemons, radishes and onions were three things that you could buy any
time without a card and without standing in line.

Since the war, hundreds of war cook books have been printed. They are
generally very practical and give excellent recipes for making cakes
without butter or eggs or even flour, using oatmeal instead. They tell
how to make soup out of plums, apples, pears, onions and fish. And they
contain menus with suggestions of things to have on the meatless days.
They save the puzzled housewife's brain much worry.

Last Christmas in Germany was known as the Christmas of a single
candle, and most of the Christmas trees had only one light on the top.
One has no idea of the tremendous sacrifices these people are making
for their country.

THE FOOD IN GERMANY.

In Germany I sometimes had to go to three or four different stores
before I could get a spool of silk thread. Leather is so expensive that
only the upper-class burgher will be able to have real leather shoes
this winter; and starch is twenty marks a pound. But after all, no
German will go to work with an empty dinner pail.

The German Food Commission is the most uncanny thing in all the world.
Like magic it produces a substitute for any article that is scarce,
it has everything figured out so that provisioning shall be divided
proportionately each week, and just what each person shall receive,
for everybody does not receive the same amount of food in Germany. For
instance, a man or woman who does manual labor gets more bread than a
man or woman who works in an office; people over sixty years get more
cereals, and sick people get more butter and eggs. These people get
what they call _Zusatz_ cards, besides their regular cards.

Every one in Germany is getting thin, and the German dieting system
proves that much worn-out statement that "we eat too much," for nine
out of every ten Germans have never been so well in their lives as they
have been since the cards have been introduced. You feel spry, active
and energetic, and the annoyance is mental rather than physical, for
one is constantly thinking of things to eat.

[Illustration: _Woman Selling Ices._]

The ones that are really hurt by the blockade are the growing children,
and the thing that they lack and long for is sweets. Before the war,
one never realized what an important role candy played in the game of
life. The food commission recognizes this, and very often chocolate and
puddings are given on the cards of children under sixteen years of age.

While food prices have been soaring all over the world, prices in
Germany are almost down to normal level, for anything that you buy on
the cards is extremely cheap, and everything that is any good is sold
on the cards. Everything that is sold _ohne Karte_, or without a card,
is either not good or so expensive that the ordinary person cannot
afford to buy.

When I first came to Germany in October, 1915, there was only one card,
and that was the bread card. This card was divided off in sections with
the numbers 25, 50 and 100 grams. At that time the whole card was 2100
grams for each person each week. Later it was reduced to 1900 grams,
and on the first of May, 1917, to 1600 grams. This last reduction was
a courageous thing for the bread commission to do at this time--one of
the worst months of the year before the green vegetables come in--and
in Berlin a couple of thousand workers from a factory gathered on Unter
den Linden. They stayed two hours, broke two windows, and then went
home pacified at a pound of meat a week more and more wages.

On the bread card it takes a 50 gram section to buy a good-sized roll,
a whole card to buy a big loaf of black bread, and half a card to buy
a small loaf of bread. After the bread card was reduced no buns were
allowed to be made in Berlin, although in the other cities they have
them. Instead, they had what they called white bread, but it was almost
as black as the black bread, and when buying one had to ask, "Is this
white or black bread?" I thought that the bread was very good, and it
was of a much superior quality to what I got in Sweden where the bread
card is of a less number of grams than in Germany. At the bottom of the
German bread card is the flour ticket, and it allows one the choice of
either 250 grams of flour or 400 grams of bread. I came out very well
on my bread card, for even when I lived in a boarding-house I kept my
card myself and I took my bread to the table with me. When people are
invited to a meal they always take their bread and butter with them.

[Illustration: _A Store in Charlottenburg, a Suburb of Berlin._]

After the bread card the next food restriction was the two meatless and
fatless days a week. On Tuesday and Friday no butcher was allowed to
sell meat, and no restaurants or boarding-houses were allowed to serve
meat. Monday and Thursday were the fatless days. The butchers were
not allowed to sell fat, and the restaurants were not allowed to cook
anything in grease. On Wednesday no pork was allowed to be sold.

Until after Christmas there were no other cards, but along in December
the butter began to be scarce, and the stores would sell only a half
pound to each person, and the people had to stand in line to get that
half pound. These butter lines were controlled by the police, and it
was no joke standing out in the cold to get a half pound of butter.
But after Christmas came in rapid succession the butter card, the meat
card, the milk card, the egg card, the soap card and the grocery card.
These cards have regulated everything and have stopped the standing in
line for articles.

At first the butter card called for half a pound of butter each week,
but now it varies. Then it wasn't a separate card, but the center of
the bread card was stamped for butter. Now each person gets either 60
grams of butter and 30 grams of margarine, or 80 grams of butter. You
must buy your butter in a certain shop where you are registered and
you can buy no place else. This is also true of sugar, meat, eggs and
potatoes.

At first the meat card was only for home buyers, and the restaurants
could serve as much meat as they liked, but soon it was seen that this
was not fair to the people who eat at home. A card was issued that was
divided off into little sections, so that the meat could be bought all
at once or at different times. On the first of May, 1917, the meat card
was increased by one-half, and every one is getting 750 grams of meat
instead of 500 grams. Here the food commission made a mistake: they
should have given out more meat in the cold months and have kept more
flour for spring, but instead they increased the meat card in May and
lowered the bread card.

[Illustration: _One of the First Bread-Cards._]

Another mistake that the food commission is making is allowing
scandalous prices to be charged for fowls. Fish, chickens, geese and
turkeys are bought without cards, but the prices are so high that
few people can afford to buy them, and the birds are lying rotting in
the store windows. Those birds are undrawn to make them weigh more. A
medium-sized turkey or goose costs anywhere from sixty to one hundred
marks, and a chicken runs about thirty marks.

The milk card was among the first cards, and only sick people and
children get milk. The babies get the best milk and the older children
get the next best, and after they are served the grown-ups get what is
left. Adults have no milk card.

The sugar card varies, but one gets about 1¾ pounds of sugar each
month. At preserving time people are given extra sugar and saccharine
on the grocery card. The potato card varies. First it was seven pounds
a week for each person, then it was reduced to five and then to three,
and then it was raised to five again. This was the only card on which
we sometimes did not get our allowance, and when there were not enough
potatoes for the cards we could get extra bread on our potato card. At
first some of the potato cards were red and others blue. The red cards
were good on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, and the blue ones
were good on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Now no potatoes
are allowed to be put into the bread.

The egg card came in the summer of 1916, and for a long time afterward
it was possible to get all the eggs you wanted in restaurants without
a card, but now one must have a card there as well, even if you order
an omelet or an _Eierkuchen_, a pancake of which the Germans are very
fond.

The _Lebensmittel_ or "grocery" card is a very important card, and it
is for buying such things as noodles, rice, barley, oatmeal, macaroni,
white cornmeal and cheese. Then they have other cards for buying oil,
saccharine, matches, sardines and smoked fish. Fresh fish is without
a card. Each week the stores have numbers hanging up in their windows
telling what can be bought that week, like "Rice on Number 13" or a
"Pudding on Number 6." It is also printed in the newspapers and on the
advertising posts, and sometimes you must be registered for the things
and can buy them only in a certain store.

[Illustration: _An Asparagus Huckster._]

On the first soap cards, you could get every month a cake of toilet
soap, a cake of laundry soap and some soap powder, but now one can get
only 50 grams of either kind of soap and 250 grams of soap powder each
month. Soap was one of the hardest things to get, and a cake of real
soap sells from five to ten marks a cake. We never thought of taking a
bath with soap but used it only on our faces. They have what they call
"War Soap," and it can be used on the hands, but if it drops on your
dress it leaves a white spot. If you want to give a real swell present
to any one in Germany just send a cake of soap.

I always said that when coffee came to an end in Germany the Germans
would be ready to make any kind of a peace. How could a German live
without coffee? But last summer the coffee gave out and instead
of complaining they took to drinking _Kaffee-Ersatz_, or "coffee
substitute," with the same passion that they had lavished on real
coffee. It is the most horrible stuff any one ever tasted with the
exception of the substitute they have for tea, but the Germans say they
like it. They have cards for _Kaffee-Ersatz_, and each person gets a
half pound a month.

In the cafés in the summer of 1916 they were still serving real coffee
with milk and sugar. Then suddenly the waiters commenced asking the
patrons if they wished their coffee black or with cream, and then later
they asked if you wanted the coffee sweet, and so they brought it,
putting in sugar and milk themselves. A little later you did not get
sugar but two little pieces of saccharine were served, and now they
have a liquid sweet stuff that is used. They do not serve real coffee
any more, but most restaurants still serve milk. The famous _Kaffee
mélange_, or coffee with whipped cream, was forbidden at the beginning
of the war.

When I left Germany they had no beer or tobacco cards, but there was
talk about them. The beer restaurants receive only a certain amount
of beer each day, and when this is gone the people must wait until
the next day. Most beer halls serve only two glasses to each person.
In Munich, because of the shortage of beer, some of the beer halls
do not open until 6 o'clock at night, and at 4 o'clock the Müncheners
gather at the doors with their mugs in their hands, patiently waiting.
Sometimes they knock the mugs against the doors to a tune. Munich
without beer is a very sad sight!

In Berlin some of the restaurants will serve beer only to people
who can get chairs, but this does not faze the clever Berliners, and
when they want their beer they bring camp stools with them, and then
they are sure to have a seat. It is forbidden to make certain kinds
of fine beers because they take too much malt and sugar. None of the
beer is as good as in times of peace, but the Germans have forgotten
the delicacies of the past, and they live in the food ideals of the
present, and they smack their lips and say, "Isn't the beer fine
to-night?"

From August 1916 until March 1917 it was forbidden to sell canned
vegetables. They were being saved up for the spring months. The store
windows were decorated with glass jars filled with the most wonderful
kinds of peas, beans and asparagus. I always felt like smashing the
window and stealing the stuff, but the Germans only looked at it
admiringly and said, "It will be fine when the vegetables are freed."

Everything on the cards is at a set price, and the dealers don't dare
to charge one cent more; even the prices of some things not on the
cards are regulated. For instance, this spring no one could charge
more than one mark a pound for cherries, and many of the cafés had to
cut their cake prices. The police got after Kranzler, the famous cake
house, and it had to reduce all its cakes to twenty pfennigs each.

When I was in Dresden in May, 1917, I ate elephant meat. An elephant
got hurt in the Zoo and had to be killed. A beer restaurant bought his
meat for 7000 marks, and it was served with sauerkraut to the public
without a card at 1.30 marks. It tasted like the finest kind of chopped
meat, and the restaurant was packed as long as the elephant lasted.

The food question is not the same all over Germany, and in Berlin,
Dresden, Hamburg and Leipsic they have less than in other places.
Bavaria, the Rhine Country and East Prussia are far better off, and in
some of the small villages they do not even have a bread card.

One of the hardest things to get is candy. In Berlin one can buy
chocolate for sixteen marks a pound, but in Dresden it is very cheap
because it is bought on the card. The candy is bought on the grocery
card and one gets a half pound every two weeks. Candy lines are the
only kind of lines that one sees now in Germany.

One card I forgot to mention is the coal card that will be issued
for the coming winter. There is no scarcity of coal, but there are no
people or cars for delivering. The people will be given three-fourths
as much coal as they formerly consumed.

In times of peace eating in a German restaurant was notoriously cheap,
and one could get a menu of soup, meat, potatoes and dessert for 90
pfennigs, and in Munich for 80 pfennigs. Now these same restaurants
charge 1.75 marks, that is, twice as much; but even then food is
cheaper than in America. Before the war some of the restaurants charged
extra if you did not order anything to drink, but this is now done away
with.

Anything can be bought without a card if you know how to do it. The
government tries in every way to stop this selling, and although
the fine is very heavy for selling _ohne Karte_, it goes on just the
same. We always managed to get things without a card. Our janitress
got coffee for us at 9.25 marks a pound, our vegetable woman gave us
extra potatoes, and we could always get eggs. On the card an egg cost
30 pfennigs and without a card we paid anywhere from 50 pfennigs to 1
mark. The hardest thing to get without a card was sugar, for the food
commission has an iron hand on the sugar, but we got it for 2.50 marks
a pound. On the card it was 30 pfennigs a pound. It is said that butter
could be bought for nine marks a pound without the card, but we never
tried to get it.

The police sees that every one gets his share of food. If a woman holds
a servant girl's rations from her, the girl can report it to the police
and the woman is fined. In a boarding-house when the potatoes are
passed around the landlady tells you whether you can take two or three
potatoes, or one big potato and one small potato. The food conditions
are not always comfortable, but the food commission has the things
divided off so they will last for years.

WHAT WE ATE IN GERMANY.

Reading over the food restrictions, one does not get a very clear
idea of what we really ate in Germany, so I have made out a menu that
was possible in the month of April, 1917. April is, of course, one of
the hardest months of the year because it is just before the green
vegetables come in and the winter supplies are gone. In this month,
however, we could buy canned goods which were forbidden during the
winter months, and each person was allowed two and one-half pounds of
canned goods a week.

The menu as I have written it includes only things which are bought on
a card or without a card, but no restricted food that has been bought
underhand without a card as everybody does. It does not include any
of the expensive articles like chicken, goose, or fresh vegetables
which the better middle class have, and it does not include the canned
vegetables, fruit and meat which all German families have in their
supply cupboard.

When we kept house, we obtained many things from friends, and when my
mother came back from a trip to America, she brought with her forty
pounds of meat, bacon, ham and sausage, eighteen pounds of butter,
sugar, coffee, canned milk, chocolate, rice and flour. Some of this
she bought in Denmark, and the rest she brought over from America. In
January, 1917, I made a trip to Belgium, and while the Germans were
allowed to take only ten pounds of food out of Belgium we had special
permits, and I brought back a lot of food. Most people had crooked ways
of getting things, and we were all as crooked as we had a chance to be.

Nothing was allowed to be sent from Poland to Germany, but a Polish
girl I knew made a trip home to Warsaw, and going over the frontier
she made "a hit" with the man that takes up the "louse tickets." You
cannot go from Warsaw to Berlin unless you show a ticket stating that
you are not lousy. The girl's mother in Warsaw sent the "louse soldier"
the food, and he relayed it to Berlin. Once the soldier came to Berlin
on a furlough and he called on the Polish girl. He was an awful-looking
specimen, but he was served the finest kind of a dinner.

In April we still had 1900 grams of bread, but I have made out the
menu with 1600 grams as it is now. Sixteen hundred grams of bread is 32
slices of 50 grams each, but I have allowed five slices of bread a day,
for the bread at supper was always cut thin and often weighed only 40
grams. Most families weighed the bread for each person and then every
one got his share. People who ate in restaurants always watched their
bread rations, for the waiters were liable to bring short weights.
If you were in doubt whether you were getting enough in a restaurant,
you could demand to have the bread weighed before you. This sometimes
stirred up a lot of trouble, and rows often occurred.

We had five pounds of potatoes a week. This makes 2500 grams, and in
the menu I have allowed 300 grams of potatoes seven times a week. As
this makes only 2100 grams, this leaves 400 grams for the peelings.
The omelet for Monday's menu could be made out of real eggs, but the
pancakes for Sunday would have to be made out of egg substitute.

As we had 750 grams of meat a week, I have allowed 130 grams four times
a week which makes 520 grams, and this leaves 230 grams for sausage.
_Graupen_ that I have mentioned is a large coarse barley, and when I
say turnips I mean what they call _Kohlrüben_--we sometimes call it
rutabaga. We ate this vegetable constantly during the spring of 1917.
Most people hated it, but it was fine for filling up space. Dogs were
fed almost entirely on it. When I was in Dresden I went to the Zoo, and
there they had packages of carrots and _Kohlrüben_ for sale for feeding
the monkeys. The monkeys were hungry and they gobbled up the carrots,
but they absolutely refused to eat the _Kohlrüben_, and when they were
handed a piece they threw it down in disgust.

This menu was typical of the German pension or boarding-house, where
the landlady stayed well within the limit of the cards because the
things on the cards were cheap. For breakfast we always had the same
things--coffee substitute, two pieces of bread, four times a week two
pieces of sugar, and three times saccharine, four times a week butter
and three times marmalade. Even in peace times Germans eat only coffee
and rolls for breakfast. At 11 o'clock they have a second breakfast,
and this consisted sometimes of oatmeal with salt and once in a while a
piece of bread with jam, then they could not have so much for supper.
In the afternoon at 4 o'clock they always have coffee substitute and
cake, generally made without eggs or butter and sometimes without
flour, using oatmeal or white cornmeal for flour.

DINNER SUPPER

MONDAY

Bouillon. 3 pieces of bread.
300 grams of potatoes, 62½ grams of sausage.
scalloped with mushrooms Omelet. Asparagus.
and milfix. Pickles. Lard instead of butter.
Carrot salad. Tea or beer.
White cornmeal with fruit
juice.
Wine.

TUESDAY

Brown flour soup. 3 pieces of bread.
130 grams of beef. 300 grams of potatoes.
300 grams of potatoes. Dried fish. Stewed onions.
Canned beans. Cake. Tea. Beer. Marmalade.
Wine.

WEDNESDAY

Noodle soup. 3 pieces of bread.
Fish. 62½ grams of sausage.
300 grams of potatoes. 300 grams of potatoes.
Fried turnips. Graupen with bouillon.
Gelatine. Radishes. Butter.
Wine. Tea. Beer.

THURSDAY

Onion soup. 3 pieces of bread.
130 grams of veal. Bouillon.
Rice. Canned peas. Canned spinach with 1 egg.
Cake. Radishes.
Wine. Tea. Beer.

FRIDAY

Vegetable soup. 3 pieces of bread.
Graupen with stewed fruit. 300 grams of potatoes.
Asparagus. Sardines.
Chocolate pudding. Vegetable salad. Butter.
Wine. Tea. Beer.

SATURDAY

Asparagus soup. 3 pieces of bread.
130 grams of pork. Macaroni and cheese.
300 grams of potatoes. Turnip salad.
Stewed dried apples. Marmalade.
Pudding. Pickles.
Wine. Tea. Beer.

SUNDAY

Plum soup. 3 pieces of bread.
130 grams of beef. Bouillon.
300 grams of potatoes. Egg pancake filled with cranberries.
Turnips. Butter. Radishes.
Lemon pudding. Tea. Beer.
Wine.

Since the war many war cook-books have been printed, and these books
contain recipes for dishes that can be made with things now obtainable
in Germany. Some of these recipes are very good, and some of them are
simply awful. I will give you some of the most used and popular ones.

BEER SOUP.

2 quarts of beer brought to a boil.
1 egg well beaten.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
Flour to thicken.
Boil and serve hot.

PLUM SOUP.

½ pound of plums boiled in a quart of water and strained.
2 tablespoonfuls of sugar.
½ cup of oatmeal.
Boil and serve cold.

APPLE SOUP.

3 cups of apple sauce sweetened.
2 bouillon cubes.
3 cups of water.
Boil and serve hot.
(Pear soup is made in the same way.)

ONION SOUP.

6 large onions boiled and put through a colander.
2 bouillon cubes.
1 quart of water.
Flour to thicken.
Boil and serve hot.

POTATO AND CABBAGE PUDDING.
(This is used as a meat substitute.)

1 head of cabbage boiled thirty minutes.
6 sliced potatoes.
Boil all together until soft.

1 teaspoonful of lard, heat and add flour until a brown gravy is
made. Add salt and pepper. Stir into potatoes and cabbage and
serve hot.

BAKED VEGETABLES.

½ head cabbage.
½ rutabaga sliced.
4 potatoes sliced.
2 bouillon cubes, flour thickening and seasoning.
Mix together and bake in oven for one hour.

STUFFED CABBAGE.

1 head of cabbage boiled one-half hour.
1 cup of chopped meat fried in fat.
Quarter the cabbage, scooping out the heart.
Fill the space with meat.
Bake in an oven ten minutes and serve hot.

CUCUMBERS WITH MUSTARD SAUCE.

3 large cucumbers halved lengthwise and boiled.
1 quart of water boiled with mustard to taste and thickened with
flour--sweetened.
Pour the mustard sauce into a deep dish and lay the hot cucumbers
on top.

POTATO DUMPLINGS WITH STEWED FRUIT.

6 large raw potatoes grated.
1 egg or 2 egg substitute powders.
1 cup bread grated and browned.
Add enough flour to thicken and form into dumplings.
Boil for half an hour.
Serve with hot stewed fruit--peaches, apples, apricots or plums.

DROP CAKES WITHOUT EGGS, SUGAR OR MILK.

½ cup walnut meats.
2 egg substitutes.
½ cup milk substitute.
½ teaspoonful saccharine.
1 tablespoonful baking powder.
1 cup flour.
Add a little cinnamon. Bake as drop cakes.
Flour the baking pan instead of greasing it.

OAT MEAL CAKES.

1 egg.
½ cup milk substitute.
½ teaspoonful saccharine.
Oatmeal to thicken.
1 tablespoonful baking powder.
Beat together and bake as drop cakes.

RAISIN BREAD.

½ cake yeast.
1 cup potato water.
2 tablespoonfuls of raisins.
1 pound of flour.
Set sponge at night and bake one hour.

HOW BERLIN IS AMUSING ITSELF IN WAR TIME.

When war was first declared all the theaters and amusement places in
Berlin were closed, and it was not until after Christmas of that year
that they were opened again. Now everything is open except the dance
halls, for dancing is prohibited during the war. The famous resort
"Palais de Danse" is closed up and its outside is all covered with
posters asking for money for the Red Cross.

The theaters in Berlin are very well attended. As many times as I went
to the opera, which was quite often, every seat in the house was taken.
The greater part of every audience are soldiers who are glad to spend
some portion of their furloughs forgetting the horrors of war and life
in the trenches. The operas are as brilliant as before the war, but
many of the young stage favorites are missing, for even the matinee
idol must take his turn at the front. Several of the popular actors
have been killed.

One can always hear the French and Italian operas, and at concerts the
music of the great Russian composers. They do not prohibit the music of
enemy composers, and one can hear Verdi, Mascagni and Gounod. However,
"Madame Butterfly" and "Bohème" were never given to my knowledge. I do
not know whether it was because they had no singers for these operas
which are great favorites, or whether it was because of the nationality
of the composer.

[Illustration: _A Boat Race near Berlin, April, 1916._]

Just before I left Berlin I saw a wonderful production of "Aïda," and
the principal singers were Poles from the Royal Opera House in Warsaw.
The singers were received with the wildest enthusiasm. All the cast
except the Poles sang in German, and the Poles sang in Polish. The
duets sounded very funny. Two of the Polish singers were invited to
come and sing permanently in Berlin. They both declined. The man, who
has one of the most magnificent voices I ever heard, because he loves
Warsaw too much to leave it, and the woman because she did not want to
be tied up in Berlin with a five-years' contract, as she wants to come
to America as soon as the war is over. There is more or less a movement
in Germany to taboo the German singers who are in America, and they
also want to prevent all their new young singers from coming to us.
It will be a very hard task, for America is the aim of every German
singer, and no feeling of patriotism will keep them at home.

Since the war many new stars have arisen, and many new operas have
been played. From Bulgaria comes a young singer by the name of Anna
Todoroff, and she has taken Berlin by storm. Several boy wonders have
sprung up, the greatest being a little boy from Chili, Claude Arrau.

The greatest triumph of last season was Eugen d'Albert's new opera _Die
toten Augen_, or "The Dead Eyes," and it was played several times a
week. The music of the opera is lovely, entrancing, but what a strange
theme--a blind woman who is married to a man she has never seen, prays
unceasingly for her sight so that she can see her husband. At last
her prayer is answered, and when her eyes are opened she beholds a
beautiful man by her side whom she believes to be her husband. She
makes love to him, and he loves her in return. The husband who was
absent when his wife's sight was restored returns, and he finds his
wife's lover. He challenges the man to a duel and kills him. The woman
is distracted by grief. She no longer wishes to see, so she goes out
and sits in the sun with her eyes wide open. She sits there until her
very life is burned out. That is the end. D'Albert is a Belgian and
either his fourth or fifth wife was Madame Carreño, the pianist, who
died lately. His present wife is an English woman.

[Illustration: _An Art Exhibition Showing Fritz Erler's Picture of the
Crown Prince._]

An American named Langswroth has written a very successful opera called
"California." Perhaps it will be played in America. An old opera that
was played frequently last winter in Berlin was Meyerbeer's opera "_Die
Afrikanerin_." In spite of its age it was very popular.

The concerts are always well attended in Berlin; and Strauss, Nikisch
and von Weingartner are very popular. Each conductor has his following.
Last winter Lillie Lehmann gave a concert. She is sixty years old,
and her voice is still very beautiful. She does not sing very often
in public and spends most of her time writing songs and teaching a few
chosen pupils.

One misses the great foreign stars who always came to Berlin each
season, but still they have the great artists Joseph Schwartz, Conrad
Ansorge, Clara Dux, Slezak, Emil Sauer, Karl Flesch, Arthur Schnabel
and scores of others.

The character of the plays has more or less changed since the war, and
while comic operas are still being given, the most popular shows are
of a more serious character. The greatest favorites are Strindberg,
Ibsen, Brieux, Björnsen, Shaw, Wedekind and Shakespeare. A German
loves Shakespeare much more than an American or an Englishman does,
and last winter, all winter long, Max Reinhardt gave Shakespeare at
the Deutsches Theater. In spite of Shakespeare's English origin, the
plays were very well attended, and yet I do not think the audience was
like the German girl that Percival Pollard told about. He made her say,
"What a pity that Shakespeare is not translated into English. I should
think that they would like him in London."

The play that caused the greatest sensation in Germany last season was
a tragedy called "_Liebe_," or "Love." It was a grewsome tale of two
married people. It was full of the sordidness, the horrible actualities
of life. I lived at the same boarding-house with the actress that took
the part of the wife in the play, _Frau Anna_, the main role. She was
quite a frivolous young German girl, but she splendidly managed the
part of a woman that had been married nine years.

[Illustration: _A Boat Club in the Grunewald near Berlin._]

Moving picture shows are not as popular in Germany as in America
because of the high prices. In Germany it costs as much to go to
a "Kino"--that is what they call a "movie"--as it does to sit in
the gallery at the opera. For shows no better than our five-cent
shows we had to pay two marks, and one can sit in the gallery at the
Charlottenburg Opera House for ninety pfennigs.

They have their "movie stars," and one of the greatest favorites is an
American girl named Fern Andra. When I left Berlin her films were still
drawing great crowds, America's entrance into the war having made no
difference. They do not have Charlie Chaplin in Germany. They know him
in Norway, but so far Germany has escaped. One German editor wrote,
"_Gott sei Dank_, the war has prevented us from going Chaplin mad."

As a whole the German "movies" are not nearly so good as ours, they
cannot compare with our wonderful productions. The only part that is
better than ours is the music, and they always have fine orchestras of
from ten to thirty men. Here in America we just drop into a "movie,"
but in Germany it makes a special evening's entertainment. Most of the
"kinos" have restaurants attached, and in all "kinos" you must check
your wraps. I often stayed away from shows just because I hated the
idea of going to the _Garderobe_ and checking my wraps.

[Illustration: _Booty Exhibition in Berlin. Captured Air-Ships._]

I saw a great number of fine art exhibitions in Germany. Germans
consider an art exhibition as one of the necessities of life. Cubist
art has rather gone out of date, and war art has taken its place.
Such stirring pictures as these war artists have produced! Most of
the best German artists have been to the front sketching, and the
war productions of such artists as Fritz Erler and Walther Georgi
are some of the most wonderful paintings I have ever seen. Weisgerber
was another artist who has made blood-stirring war pictures. He was a
German officer and was killed a year ago in France. He was very young,
and his work was full of great promise. His work was much seen in _Die
Jugend_.

I saw the great Berlin exhibition of art last fall. It was not nearly
so interesting as the great international exhibitions that were held in
Germany before the war. It was monotonous, and yet I have never seen an
exhibit where so many pictures were sold. I saw hundreds and hundreds
of pictures marked _Verkauft_.

It is surprising the number of art works of all kinds that are being
bought in Germany. I often used to go to Lep's Auction Rooms where all
kinds of art works were sold, at auction. The place was always crowded
with bidders, and the bidding was fast and high. I went one day to a
stein sale and saw 119 steins sold for nearly 4000 marks. I am no judge
of porcelain, but it seemed like spending a lot of money. Another day
I went with a man I knew, a German. For 100 marks he bought three odd
tea-pot lids. He thought he had a great bargain, but I could not see
it.

[Illustration: _Booty Exhibition in Berlin. Captured Cannon._]

Germany has always been the land of _Ausstellungen_, or "exhibitions,"
and the war has only served to increase the number. In every city I
was in during the two years I saw dozens of _Kriegs-Ausstellungen_
advertised. Every city has had exhibitions of artificial arms and legs
with demonstrators showing how they work. Then they have displays of
uniforms, guns, aeroplanes, ships and photographs. In Berlin they
had an exhibition of the forts around Verdun. It was wonderfully
made--everything in proportion, with tiny soldiers, wagons, wire
entanglements etc. The greatest show they had when I was there was the
"Booty Exhibition" in which all kinds of captured war material were
displayed.

The Germans are very fond of walking, and the war has not decreased the
pleasure which they find in this pursuit. Before the war the walkers
did not carry their lunch with them, but now they must if they want to
get anything to eat; and every afternoon you can see crowds of people
starting out, each with a little package of lunch. The Berliners like
to go to the Grunewald where they stop at a little inn and order a cup
of _Kaffee-Ersatz_, eat their sandwiches, and feel they are having a
very nice time.

Sitting in a café with a cup of cold coffee before them, always has
been and always will be the favorite amusement of the German people.
Here they can read the magazines and papers and look around. Most
Germans do not entertain their friends at home but meet them at a café,
and each person pays for what he orders.

All through the war they have boat and track races, and these sports
are very popular. Before the war they had aeroplane exhibitions, but
these are not held any more. All the hospitals have concerts and moving
picture shows for the wounded soldiers.

The main amusement of the people now is talking about things to eat.
A man I know in Dresden meets eight of his cronies at a _Stammtisch_
every Saturday night. Before the war they discussed politics, art,
music, literature and science, but he says now they talk only about
eating. In March and April when we had that awful run of a vegetable
called _Kohlrüben_, the man I know said his _Stammtisch_ was going
to get out a cook-book for _Kohlrüben_, for they knew twenty-five
different ways to cook them!

THE CLOTHES TICKET.

It has been said that the sign _Verboten_ was the most seen sign in
Germany, but now that sign has a rival in _Ohne Bezugsschein_, which
means "without a clothes ticket." All the store windows are decorated
with these cards and merchants are pushing forward these articles
because they are more expensive than the articles which require a
card, and most people would rather pay a few marks more than go to the
trouble of getting a card.

Along in May, 1916, there were rumors of a ticket for clothes, but the
people only laughed, "How could there be a ticket for clothes?" they
asked and "What will we do if our clothes wear out and we can't get a
ticket for any more?"

On the 10th of June the ordinance was published, and it went into
effect on the 1st of August. Now the ticket is in full swing, and
one must have a ticket to get all the articles of wearing apparel and
household things that are not marked _Ohne Bezugsschein_.

The _Bezugsschein_ was not originated to make things uncomfortable for
people in general, but to protect the people who are poor and to keep
the rich people from buying up the cheap useful articles that poorer
people must have for winter. At first it was only cheap useful articles
that were on the card, and articles of clothing that were over a set
price could be bought without a card, but now many expensive things are
on a card as well, and no matter what the price is, a man or a woman
can have only two woolen suits a year.

The following list is from the ordinance of June 10, and it tells what
things can be bought without a card. The prices quoted are the lowest
prices of articles without a ticket. The first list is of articles
which require no ticket at any price.

1. Silk or art cloth.
2. Half silk cloth.
3. Silk or half silk stockings for men or women.
4. Ladies' cotton stockings of which a dozen pairs weigh less
than 750 grams.
5. Men's cotton stockings of which a dozen pairs weigh less than
450 grams.
(This is to keep the coarser stockings for the poor.)
6. Silk or half silk gloves for men or women.
7. Cotton gloves made from number 80 thread or finer.
8. Ribbon, cord and bobbin.
9. Suspenders, or garters for men or women.
10. Lace tulle or curtains.
11. Tapestry and all kinds of cloth for furniture.
12. Caps, hats and veils.
13. Umbrellas.
14. Woolen cloth for ladies' dresses or suits which is not over
130 centimeters wide and retails at at least 10 marks a meter.
15. Colored or flowered stuff of cotton material which is not more
than 50 centimeters wide and retails for not less than 3 marks
a meter.
16. Cotton goods as used for aprons etc., which is not over 90
centimeters wide and retails for not less than 2 marks a meter.
17. Printed cotton goods which is not over 90 centimeters wide and
retails for not less than 2 marks a meter.
18. Unwashable white goods.
19. Corsets.
20. Wash goods not more than 80 centimeters wide which retails
at not less than 3 marks a meter.
21. Linen not more than 80 centimeters wide which retails at not
less than 3 marks a meter.
22. Pure linen bed covers which retail at 30 marks or over.
23. Handkerchiefs.
24. Colored aprons which retail at 2 marks and over.
25. White aprons which retail at 2 marks and over.
26. Satin shoes.

Men's ready made clothes without a ticket at the following prices and
over.

Suits 75 marks.
Coats 47 "
Jackets 32 "
Vests 11 "
Pants 18 "

All things for military use can be bought without a ticket.

Women's ready made clothes without a ticket at the following prices and
over.

Woolen suits 80 marks.
Coats 60 "
Wash suits 40 "
Woolen waists 11 "
Wash skirts 20 "
Woolen skirts 30 "
Trimmed woolen dresses 100 "
Night gowns 10 "
Combination suits 6 "
Drawers 10 "
Corset covers 5 "
Dressing sacks 10 "
Wash petticoats 12 "

For every article of wearing apparel or cloth that is not in this list
and is cheaper than the set price, one must procure a _Schein_ in order
to buy the article. This means that all the cheaper waists, dresses,
aprons, pants, stockings, underwear and skirts require a ticket, also
all the cheaper cloth by the meter. One cannot buy a yard of flannel,
a wash rag or a dusting rag without a ticket. Nearly everything for
children requires a ticket.

It is very troublesome to get a ticket, but if you know what you want
before you go to the store, you can procure your ticket first, and
this saves time. The _Bezugsscheinstellen_ are scattered all over the
city. Each district has a place, and you must get your ticket from
the district in which you live. They have on file all the _Scheine_
you have procured, so you can't get more than your allowance, and
if you have moved from one place to another you must wait until
they investigate what you have had in the other district before they
will give you a _Schein_. You must show your passport or your police
registration.

The clothes ticket is a large piece of paper with a place for your
name, address and occupation. The clerks write on the paper the article
you wish and how many of each article. For every kind of an article a
separate _Schein_ is needed. On the back of the ticket it tells that it
is not transferable and that the misuse of it makes you liable to six
months imprisonment or a fine of 15,000 marks. It also says that it is
good only in the German Empire. This is not supposed to be a joke.

If anything happens to a person's clothes, like loss by fire, new
clothes can be procured if the person can prove that the fire was an
accident. An American I knew had all his clothes stolen except the suit
he was wearing. He went to the police and explained his case, and after
a few weeks he got a permit to get some more clothes.

When a man gets a new suit he has to turn in his old suit. These old
suits are repaired and are put away for the soldiers when they come
home from the war. Germany forgets no details.

The limit of things that a person can buy is rather indefinite, for
some people require more clothes than others. Some men get twelve
shirts a year, and others get only six. Two woolen suits are allowed
and six pairs of stockings.

Since April, 1917, a ticket has been required for shoes, and each
person is allowed two pairs of shoes a year. This is really the hardest
restriction of the whole war, for the leather is so poor that hardly
the best would last six months. Shoes for men are not as bad as the
shoes for women, and the soldiers have very good shoes, but when I left
Berlin the only kind of shoes that a woman could buy was fancy patent
leather with cloth tops, the soles of which were like paper. What the
German women are going to do for shoes this winter I do not know. I
could not get any shoes at all. In the summer of 1916 I had a pair made
for sixty marks, but the next summer they wouldn't make any to order,
and I wear so small a size that I could not get any shoes to fit me in
Berlin.

When I left for Denmark I was very shabby looking. I had a nice silk
suit and a pretty hat, but that was the extent of my wardrobe. The
girls in the boarding-house where I lived bought nearly everything I
had. They were just wild to buy my things, and I sold what they could
wear because I knew I could get more and they could not. It was a
pity that I am so small, because they could hardly get into what they
bought. The daughter of the boarding-house keeper with whom I lived was
going to have her winter suit made out of a portière that she had dyed
a nice brown color. She had used up all her tickets and couldn't buy
any woolen material. As I was going away I let the girls get tickets in
my name. This was very nice of me, for I had to go and get the tickets
myself, and I had to wait in line to get them.

The ticket is very hard on girls about to be married, as a German girl
must furnish the house and have at least two dozen sets of sheets and
pillow cases and about one hundred towels. As one person can get only
two sheets a year on the ticket, it would at that rate take a girl
twelve years before she could be properly married. So the scheming of
getting things without a ticket was as great as the scheming of getting
food without a card, and the government cannot prevent it.

A week before I left Berlin, a printed card was hung up in my room
at the boarding-house. It said, "After August 1 people coming to this
boarding-house for an extended stay must bring their own bedding with
them. The washing will be done every four weeks." It was signed "The
Boarding-House Union." I was glad that the washing was to be done every
four weeks, because I was seven weeks at that boarding-house, and I
never once had clean sheets. After three weeks the sheets got a kind
of gray color, and then they never seemed to get any dirtier. Special
provisions are made at hotels where each guest must be furnished with
a clean sheet.

The clothes _Schein_ is especially designed to limit the sale of woolen
goods, and many German women who had never worn silk before in their
lives are wearing it now, because wool is so expensive. The ticket
is very hard on the dry-goods merchants, the tailors and the men's
furnishers, and they complain that their business is frightful, but
Germany doesn't care for the individuals, she is looking out for the
country as a whole.

MY TYPEWRITER.

It is not only clothes that are getting scarce in Germany, but every
kind of manufactured articles as well. Many articles of furniture
cannot be bought at all now, even second-hand, and the prices for
things still in stock are enormous. A German girl I know was going to
be married, and she wanted twin brass beds. She tried all over Dresden
but could not get two single brass beds alike. She could not even order
them, because she was told by the merchants that they were not being
made any more. A perfectly plain brass bed, single size, was 390 marks.

All the old stock of manufactured articles, furniture, cooking
utensils, goods by the yard, tablecloths, towels and sheets are being
bought up by the people, because they say that the new stock which will
be manufactured after the war will be of an inferior quality, and it
will be years before they can get the good grade of goods again.

Just to illustrate the scarcity of manufactured articles I will tell
the story about my typewriter. When I first went to Germany I rented a
Smith Premier for three months for thirty marks. Every one said that
this was a great bargain. When the three months were over I sent the
typewriter firm a check in payment for three months more. I didn't hear
anything from them for about a month, when one day a young man called
on me and said that he had come for the typewriter, that his firm was
not renting typewriters any more, but that I could buy it if I wished,
for 390 marks. Reckoning a mark as a quarter as the Germans do, that
meant nearly one hundred dollars for a very old rattle-trap typewriter
that any one could buy in America for fifteen dollars.

I told the young man that I would not be threatened into buying his
typewriter, and that if he took it away he would have to give me back
my entire thirty marks even though I had had it a month. We argued
for about an hour, and then he went away. The next day I got a letter
saying that I could keep the typewriter the remaining two months, but
that at the end of that time I must either give it up or buy it. At the
end of the two months I sent another check for thirty marks, but the
next day a girl messenger dressed as a boy appeared, handed me back
my check, took my typewriter under her arm and disappeared. I hoped
carrying it would make her good and tired.

I did not want to lay out 400 or 500 marks for a typewriter, and I
had an awful time. It was absolutely impossible to rent a typewriter
anywhere in Berlin, and I went everywhere. I put an advertisement in
the paper and I got only six answers and upon going to all of these
six places, I found that at each place the typewriter was a "Mignon,"
a little toy machine where you had to turn a wheel whenever you struck
a letter.

After spending four days hunting, I finally bought a "Pittsburg
Visible." I paid sixty-five marks for it, and it wasn't like any
typewriter I have seen before--or since. It was very curious to look
at--a long, thin affair with very weak prongs that were always getting
twisted around each other. It must have been twenty-five or thirty
years old. I was always in terror for fear something would happen to
it, and whenever we had a guest I yelled, "Be careful and don't bump
the typewriter," or "Don't lay your hat on the typewriter." When I
first used it, it had the bad habit of getting stuck in the middle of a
line, but after I had had it a year, it worked pretty well and I became
very much attached to my little "Pittsburg Visible."

During the year I had my typewriter, typewriters became scarcer
and dearer than ever, indeed it was impossible to buy any kind of a
second-hand visible typewriter, and the new ones were about 600 marks.
New correspondents coming over had an awful time and most of them had
to borrow typewriters from friends. As most of the typewriters were of
American make, it was hard to get a typewriter repaired, as the parts
came from America. Ribbons and carbon paper were very expensive, and
although typewriter paper doubled its price, it was cheaper than the
paper here in America.

At the time I sold my little Pittsburg Visible in June 1917, I was
living in a German boarding-house in Berlin. I believe in advertising,
so I put an "ad" in the "Lokal-Anzeiger" which read: "For sale--cheap,
visible typewriter, Pension Kostermann, Savigny-Platz 5." I thought
that it was a very nice "ad" and it cost me one mark ninety pfennigs.

I will never forget the day my "ad" came out. Before I was up at
seven A. M. the maid knocked at my door and said that I was wanted
at the telephone. It was some one about the typewriter. That was the
beginning. The phone rang all day long, and all the next day. People
came in droves, and they would not go away even after the typewriter
was sold. They wanted to know what kind it was, and they left cursing
themselves that they had not come earlier.

Before I advertised in the paper I had decided to hold out for my
price, one hundred marks. At 10.30 A. M. I was offered ninety marks,
but I said one hundred was my price. At 11.30 there was a lull in the
callers, but the telephone rang like wild. A little Jew came in and
offered me fifty-three marks for my typewriter. I was standing there
looking very much insulted at the idea of any one daring to offer
me fifty-three marks for my good machine, when suddenly the landlady
appeared at the door of my room. "Fräulein McAuley," she said severely,
glaring at the Jew, "I want this to cease. The maids have done nothing
this morning but answer the phone and go to the door about your
typewriter. Do you understand?"

I felt squelched and begged her pardon, and when she left banging the
door after her, I looked helplessly at the Jew. "Sixty-five marks," he
said sympathetically. "Make it sixty-six," I said, "and you can have
it." "Done," he answered, and I sold my typewriter at the profit of one
mark after having it a year.

I explained to the landlady that I had not put the telephone number in
the paper, and she was pacified. Her daughter admired the American way
in which I had made the sale, and the following day she put an "ad" in
the same paper for a pair of field glasses she had. "All the soldiers
will want them," she said. They prepared for a rush such as I had had
for the typewriter, and not a soul answered the advertisement. Both
mother and daughter blamed me for it. I think they thought that I had
done something more than merely advertise in the paper.

MOVING IN BERLIN.

When you move from one place to another in Berlin it takes just about
three days to get all the food cards in order again. Here is what you
would have to do if you move from one suburb of Berlin to another, say
from Charlottenburg to Wilmersdorf. This is for all foreigners--even
neutrals.

First you go to the _Portier_ or janitor of the building where you
live in Charlottenburg, and he gives you three green slips which
you fill out. These slips tell your name, age, occupation, religion,
nationality, where you were born and where you last lived. After they
are filled out the _Portier_ signs them. The _Portier_ keeps one slip,
sends one to the magistrate of Charlottenburg and gives you the third.
With this green slip you go to the Charlottenburg police. In the first
room a policeman looks up your record which you are surprised to find
filed in a little box, and if your record is all right he sends you
into the next room where the chief presides. The chief of each police
station has charge of all the foreigners, and at the little branch
police station on Mommsenstrasse where I reported in June the chief
told me he had over five hundred foreigners in his district.

You present your green slip, which the man outside has stamped, and
your passport to the chief, and after more filing and stamping both on
the slip and on your pass, you are ready to move. As soon as you get to
Wilmersdorf the new _Portier_ gives you three white slips to fill out.
They are very similar to the green ones and ask the same questions. The
_Portier_ signs these, and he keeps one, sends one to the magistrate
of Wilmersdorf, and with the third white slip, your green slip and your
pass, you go to the police in Wilmersdorf. Here they file and stamp and
then give you back your pass and the white slip which has been stamped
for the bread commission.

It is not necessary to go to the bread commission in Charlottenburg,
but you must take all your food cards and your white slip with you
to the bread commission in Wilmersdorf. Here they look over all your
cards very carefully to make sure you are not trying to cheat them and
then they give you an entirely new lot of cards cutting them off up to
date so you can't get more than your share of food. So far moving has
been easy, but the worst part of the business is to come, and that is
getting registered to buy meat, eggs, butter, sugar and potatoes at
certain stores. Lately this registering has been somewhat simplified,
and you can get registered at the bread commission for all the articles
except meat, but when the registering was first introduced each person
had to go to the _Rathaus_ or city hall himself and get registered for
each article. This meant that one had to stand at least an hour--for
there were always such crowds--at five different rooms waiting to have
your sugar, meat, butter, potato and egg cards stamped so that you
would be allowed to buy these articles, and after you were registered
you could buy them only in a certain store, but if you weren't
registered you couldn't buy these articles at all. This registering
scheme was a very good one, for since it has been introduced there
has been no standing for any of these articles, and when the people go
for their butter or eggs they find it waiting for them, and the food
controllers give each shopkeeper just as much of each of these articles
as he can show he has customers registered to buy that article in his
store. This has also done away with a lot of selling _Ohne Karte_, or
without a card, for the shopkeeper does not dare to sell without cards,
for then he would not have enough for his registered customers and then
the police would get after him.

Just to show you what a trouble this registering is I will tell you of
the time I had getting registered to buy an egg. I got the egg card
easily enough. I had lived at a boarding-house before and I did not
even know that you had to be registered for eggs. I took my egg card
and went to Herr Blumfeld, an egg-dealer near by, and told him I wanted
to buy the egg due on my card. That week we got only one egg apiece.
Herr Blumfeld said that he would gladly sell me the egg, but first I
would have to go to the magistrate of Charlottenburg and get registered
to buy from him, but that after I got registered I could always buy
eggs from him.

That didn't sound so hard, so I took the egg card and went to the
court-house, which was about six stations on the underground. The
court-house was black with people madly rushing to and fro with cards
in their hands, red cards, green cards, yellow cards and blue cards.
There were soldiers, prosperous looking business men, maids, children,
well-dressed women, and women with shawls on their heads. Guides were
stationed everywhere, but the people did not seem to be able to find
the room they wanted.

I asked a guide where the egg room was, and he pointed it out to me,
"_Eierzimmer 91_." I had to go up five flights of stairs, for all the
registering rooms were on the top floors. About seventy-five people
were ahead of me waiting to be registered to buy eggs. It was about
an hour before my turn came, and then I presented my card and said, "I
would like to buy eggs from Herr Blumfeld on Pestalozzistrasse."

"Where is your _Ausweiskarte_?" the lady at the desk asked. I told her
I had none and had never heard of one.

"I can't register you for eggs without an _Ausweiskarte_. So you will
have to go home to your _Portier_ and get one."

I took the underground and hurried home. The _Portier_ said that he
had no _Ausweis_, or permit cards, and that I would have to go to the
bread commission and get it. After waiting at the bread commission in
line for an hour, I succeeded in getting an _Ausweis_ card, and then
I rushed back to the magistrate. This time I had to wait only half an
hour, and at last I came to the desk and was registered to buy an egg
from Mr. Blumfeld of Pestalozzistrasse.

I had spent the whole day trying to get that egg, and I was happy in
the thought that my efforts were not in vain. As I rode back on the
underground I was trying to decide, "Would I eat my egg for breakfast
or for dinner? Would I have it boiled or fried?" and then the awful
thought came to me, "What if the egg was bad?" That would be too cruel!

It was just seventeen and a half minutes to eight when I got back
to the egg shop of Herr Blumfeld. He was sweeping. I waved my card
triumphantly, "I have it," I cried. He leaned his broom against
the counter and pointed to a sign hanging over the stove, "_Eier
ausverkauft_" (Eggs sold out). I looked at it, then staggered, and then
fainted dead away in the greasy arms of the astonished Herr Blumfeld,
_Eier-Grosshändler_.

WHAT THE GERMANS READ IN WAR TIME.

"Gobble! Ah a gobble!" That is what it sounds like when you hear the
newspaper sellers crying out their wares on Potsdamer Platz in the
evening. But this is really not what they are saying. They are saying,
_Abendausgabe_ or "Evening Edition."

It is a pretty sight, the Potsdamer Platz--cabs rattling along,
jingling street-car bells, the square black with civilians and gray
with soldiers, wagons drawn up to the sidewalks loaded down with
bright-colored fruit and vegetables, women selling flowers--violets,
roses, lilies-of-the-valley--_Zehn Pfennige ein Sträusschen_, and above
all the other sounds the cries of "Gobble! Gobble Ah-a-gobble!"

Compared with our big American newspapers a German paper is a very
little affair. Its pages are about half as big as the pages of our
papers, and in the morning they usually have only eight pages, and in
the evening six. There are no glaring headlines to a German paper, and
no red ink is used. Even when Kitchener was drowned or America declared
war, it appeared in the papers as a headline with letters no more than
three-quarters of an inch high.

There is absolutely nothing sensational about a German newspaper, even
in war time. They all look alike, and one has to look at the date of
the paper to make sure that it is not the paper of the day before.
They have no cartoons, and they rarely have any pictures. The Sunday
supplement has few "funnies" and never any colored pictures. There
are no spicy scandals, no sensational divorce trials and no tales of
thrilling murders with the picture of the house where the dark deed
was committed marked with an X. Then there is no woman's page and no
society column. You ask, well, what have they in their papers?

[Illustration: _A Reading-Room for Soldiers on the West Front._]

On the first page is the war news, very brief. It gives the General
Staff's report from all the war fronts, and this report is signed by
the general on each of these fronts. The second page is devoted to
news of a more local character. They often print interviews on this
page. They make more of a feature of interviews in Germany than we
do in America. On the other pages they have sports, the drama, music,
stories, and always one article of literary character. One of the big
features on the front page is the printing of the under-sea boat booty.
Whatever is printed in the German newspapers is the truth as far as
it goes, but not everything that is known is printed. What the people
really get is the truth without details. The people would like to read
these details, but they do not get them. One of the most surprising
things that was printed was Zimmermann's letter to Mexico. It came out
in all the papers, for Zimmermann thought that the best thing to do was
to publish it. It was not very popular with the German people.

One of the things that was not printed in the German papers was the
great spy scandal in Norway. I never heard one word about it until I
came to Norway. The papers are controlled by a censor. Once last summer
the _Berliner Tageblatt_ was shut off for three days. They printed
something which the censor did not like, but the general public never
found out what the offending article was.

There are three great publishing houses in Berlin. First, the August
Scherl Company, which publishes the daily newspaper _Lokal-Anzeiger_,
a morning and an evening paper which has a very large circulation
among the poorer class of people and is used for small advertisers.
Scherl also publishes _Die Woche_, a weekly well known in America;
_Die Gartenlaube_, a magazine for women; _Der Tag_; and _Der Montag_,
a newspaper which comes out every Monday.

[Illustration: _A Field Book-Store in France._]

A second great company is the Rudolf Mosse Company which publishes
the well-known _Berliner Tageblatt_, a morning and an evening paper.
The third and perhaps greatest company is the Ullstein Company which
publishes the _Vossische Zeitung_, a morning and evening paper; the
_Berliner Morgenpost_, a paper read by the working class; _B. Z. am
Mittag_, a little sheet which comes out at noon and is easily the
most popular paper in Berlin; the _Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung_,
a splendid weekly which sells for ten pfennigs. Everybody in Berlin
reads this weekly, for it has good war articles, fine stories and many
interesting pictures. There are many other papers published in Berlin,
such as the 8 _Uhr Abendblatt_, a sheet which comes out at seven in
the evening, and the _Tägliche Rundschau_, a splendid paper of literary
character.

The morning papers cost ten pfennigs and the evening papers cost five
pfennigs. Last summer the _B. Z. am Mittag_ raised its price to ten
pfennigs, but the public refused to pay the price and in four days it
was back to 5 pfennigs again.

All the larger papers have what they call a _Briefkasten_ or a letter
box, which is an information and clipping bureau combined. Here forty
or fifty people are employed all day long clipping and filing things.
Any one can go to this bureau or write to them and is given information
free of charge. They even give medical advice free.

The large publishing houses publish books. The Ullstein Company makes
a specialty of books for one mark each. They published the "Voyage of
the U Deutschland" by Captain Paul König, and every one in Germany read
this book.

There is one newspaper in Berlin published in English. It is supposed
to be an American paper, but its Americanism was of a very peculiar
brand. This paper is called the _Continental Times_. The most prominent
socialistic paper is called the _Vorwärts_. It is allowed a good deal
of freedom but once in a while it is suppressed. On the 19th of April
of this year 3000 working men and women gathered on Unter den Linden.
It was the only approach to a strike or a riot that I saw as long as
I stayed in Germany. The _Vorwärts_ was against this movement, and
mostly through its influence the people went back home. The paper
has a tremendous influence. Maximilian Harden's pamphlet _Zukunft_ is
universally read with much interest and curiosity. Harden is allowed
about the same privileges in Germany as Bernard Shaw is allowed in
England.

[Illustration: _German Soldiers on the West Front Reading War
Bulletins._]

In the main cities in the territory captured by the Germans, in Lille,
Brussels, Warsaw, Lodz and Vilna, they have established very good
papers printed in German. Then they have papers issued for the soldiers
at the front, like the _Champagner Kamerad_, and the _Landsturm_. These
papers contain war news, stories, jokes and poems.

[Illustration: _A Traveling Library for Soldiers._]

German newspapers never call their enemies ugly names, and they have
remained very dignified sheets. English newspapers are very much read
in Germany. These papers are only four days old, and as most of the
Germans of the better class read English, they are in great demand. In
any of the leading cafés or at the newsdealers one can have the _London
Times_, the _Daily Mail_, the _Daily Telegraph_, the _Illustrated
London News_, the _Graphic_, _Sphere_ and _Punch_. French and Italian
papers are also to be had. American papers came very irregularly, but
even yet a few leak through, and when I left in July I saw American
papers up to April 30. If news in an English paper does not coincide
with that in the German paper, the German reader does not believe
it--that is the only impression it makes on him.

In Berlin they do not have great war bulletins in front of the
newspaper offices as we do at home. The nearest approach to our
bulletins is in Copenhagen, where they hang bulletins, printed in very
large letters, in the second-story window of the newspaper office. A
German war bulletin is about as big as an ordinary sheet of typewriting
paper, and it is hung low in the newspaper office window where every
one takes his turn reading the fine print. Sometimes the bulletins
are written by hand with a lead pencil. Other bulletins are printed on
single sheets of paper and are distributed on the streets free.

The number of pamphlets written about the war is endless. Every doctor
and every professor in Germany seems to have written a book, and
every phase of the war has been touched upon. Most of the books are
gotten up in a very attractive way with soft backs. They have very few
stiff-backed books in Germany. Since the war many books on art, music,
science, medicine and literature have been published.

Newspapers have to keep down to a certain size on account of the
scarcity and cost of paper, but books are no more expensive than they
were before the war, and they have book sales the same as we have in
America. A few weeks before I left, Wertheim's large department store
had a sale of English-German dictionaries, very large books at four
marks each. They had a window decorated with these books, and they
were soon all snapped up, for the Germans said that they could see no
reason why they should not go on with their study of English because
the English were enemies.

[Illustration: _Newspapers Published for the Soldiers since the War._]

[Illustration: _Newspapers in Captured Cities._]

The war has not spoiled the German's love of reading romances, and so
many novels of the cheaper type have been written that a society has
been formed to keep the boys and girls from reading them. They have
automatic book stands in all railway stations where you put twenty
pfennigs in the slot and get a novel. There are many cheap editions of
patriotic songs printed in small pocket volumes convenient for soldiers
in the trenches.

PRECAUTIONS AGAINST SPIES, ETC.

SOLDATEN!
Vorsicht bei Gesprächen!
Spionengefahr!

This sign is hanging in every street car, train coupé, restaurant,
store and window with a war map in Germany, and it warns the soldiers
to be careful in their speaking, that dangerous spies travel about.

Germany is trying to prevent things that she does not wish known from
becoming known by locking them up even in the mouths of her soldiers,
and if she were as clever at concealing her tactics abroad as she is at
home, Zimmermann's famous letter to Mexico would never have been found.

Not only the soldiers on the streets must keep quiet, but the soldiers
in the field as well, and each soldier has written directions that in
case he is taken prisoner he shall give no information to the enemy. He
must not tell the number of his regiment, his age or what district he
is from, for all these things give the enemy important information. It
is especially important that the enemy shall not know what regiment is
opposing them.

All the foreigners in Germany are under police control, but none of
the enemy civilians are interned except the English. The Americans,
Russians, French, Belgians and Italians are free except that they must
report once a day to the police, and they cannot go from one city to
another without a permit. Most of the Americans get off with going to
the police only once a week. The Poles have to go twice a week. All
neutral foreigners must go to the police and register when they change
their address. The Germans must do this too in order to get a bread
card. The food cards have been great things for weeding out criminals
and spies, for no one can get a card unless he is registered at the
police, and many famous criminals who have been evading the police for
years have been caught since the war.

There are very few slums in Germany, but in Berlin they have a few
dens where crooks hold out, and bread cards can be bought for fifty
pfennigs to one mark. An American boy I knew in Berlin who spoke German
like a native, used to dress in old clothes and visit these places.
Sometimes he was taken for a foreigner but nearly always for a German.
He said that the men made signs from one table to the other when they
had anything to sell. He often bought cards for fifty pfennigs. One
crook that he got acquainted with was a German who went around begging,
saying that he was a Belgian refugee. He had some kind of a medal to
show people and his begging business netted him a nice little income.

The boy said that the slums were rather "slow," very little drinking
and a great deal of planning of things that they were afraid to carry
out, for a German crook hasn't much courage. One café that the boy
often visited was the "Café _Dalles_," which means "Café Down and Out."
It was situated right near the Kaiser's Berlin palace. One night in
the summer of 1916 it was raided just a few minutes before the boy got
to the place. Through this raid the police discovered that some one
was manufacturing bread cards by the thousands each week. They were an
almost perfect imitation of the real cards. Of course even the clever
Berlin police could not control all the crooked work that was going on
with the food cards, but they kept things pretty well under hand. One
scheme that was worked was, when a family changed their residence, to
register an extra one in the family. I used to wonder often that the
Germans had the nerve to do this, for they were terribly afraid of
being caught.

In Germany a foreigner uses his passport on every occasion, and one
must always carry it. You can't send a telegram out of Germany without
showing your pass, and then if you send it in any other language than
German, you must make a German translation of the message at the bottom
of the sheet.

No foreigner, not even a neutral, is allowed to go to the seaside
unless he has a doctor's certificate, and even then it is hard to get
a permit. No kodaks are allowed at the seaside, and one is not allowed
to sketch. Now they are very strict about any one taking pictures in or
around Berlin.

When you come into Germany, you are not allowed to bring either a kodak
or a Bible with you. One can easily see the reason for the kodak being
prohibited, but people are always surprised when their Bibles are taken
away from them. In all wars the Bible has been used as a place for
concealing secret messages and the garb of a priest, nun, or minister
has been a favorite disguise for spies.

A man I knew in Berlin came over by way of Holland. He had a Bible, a
prayer-book and a Chicago telephone book with him. He was astonished
when they took the Bible and the prayer-book away from him and allowed
him to keep the telephone book. It was winter when he came over, and
he had on a coat with turn-back cuffs. He lives in Chicago, and he had
acquired the habit of sticking street-car transfers in his cuffs. When
he was searched the searcher found a transfer in the cuff, and the
American was marched off to an officer. The German officer looked at
the transfer long and interestedly and then laughed, "Why, I know that
line, I have been in Chicago myself."

On this same boat was a preacher. The preacher was sure that he as a
member of the cloth would have no trouble, and then he had a stack of
credentials sky-high. When he was searched more closely than the rest
he grew insolent and said things, and as a result he was held up three
days until his friends in Germany helped him out.

My mother was nearly held up on the German border when she left
Germany. A German lady in Dresden asked her to take some presents to
her daughter in America, and among the things were two little bibs
worked in a cross stitch design that were to be given to the daughter's
child. The officials at Warnemünde seemed to think that the designs
meant something, and they studied over them a long time, but finally
after half an hour they gave them back to mother but with an air of not
being sure what the cross stitch designs really were.

The greatest role for spies in this war is that of Red Cross worker.
Here they have much freedom, and they can get very near the front.
Then a sick or wounded man will tell things that a well man will not.
Also, it is not so hard for them to transmit messages to their fellow
conspirators. In every country Red Cross workers are closely watched.

Another kind of spy is the newspaper spy. There was a newspaper spy in
Berlin when I was there. He posed as being very _deutschfreundlich_,
and his good cigars and quantities of spending-money got him lots of
information. When newspaper men are taken to the front, they have to
sign a paper that they will not leave Germany for a month after their
return. They also have to sign a paper that they will not hold the
German government responsible in case of anything happening to them.

They tell all sorts of spy stories in Germany, and some of them sound
very far-fetched. Here is a typical one. In East Prussia a nun was
found weeping in a railway station. She had a funeral wreath in her
hands. A sympathetic crowd gathered around her and tried to comfort
her. Finally, a little boy in the crowd cried, "Oh, look, mother,
what big hands she has!" The crowd looked, and sure enough they were
big--they were a man's hands. And the nun was found to be a man, a
Russian spy.

An American girl I knew was arrested as a spy. She was summering in a
little town in the Westphalia district. She was an ardent photographer,
and she could not see anything without wanting to snap it. The second
day there, she was out walking and discovered what she considered a
neat bit--green trees and a factory in the distance. She snapped the
picture and just then a voice behind her asked what she was doing. She
looked around and there stood a German soldier who told her to come
with him. She went. She was taken to a guard house where her pass was
examined and the film developed. When the films came out it was found
she had a picture of a bridge and two munition factories. They gave
the girl two hours to get out of the town. She never dreamed it was
_verboten_.

All the munition factories, granaries, wharves, supply places and
flying-places in Germany are guarded night and day, and if any one goes
poking around these places he is told to "move on." If any one can spy
on any of these locked-up places he must be very clever.

PRISONERS IN GERMANY.

Every thirtieth person in Germany is a war prisoner. Every fifth man is
a Russian.

In Germany there are now nearly 2,000,000 prisoners of war. In the
summer of 1916 the Central Powers held 2,658,283 prisoners, and of this
number 1,647,225 were held in Germany. This was before Roumania fell,
and then the number was greatly increased.

They have 150 large prison camps and five hundred small prison camps in
Germany, and there are hundreds of places where the working prisoners
live. The largest camps are at Guben and Czersh, where the prisoners
are mostly Russians. The camps at Zossen, Wunsdorf, Nuremberg and
Ratisbon are also very large.

The camps are divided into military divisions, and they are run like
real military camps. The common prisoners sleep in dormitories, and
they are furnished with a straw mattress, a pillow and colored bed
covers. The men must keep their own beds clean, and they are compelled
to take a bath every day. Many of the prisoners are employed around the
camp, some of them helping in the cooking and the baking. In a camp of
10,000 prisoners it is no easy task to get the meals ready.

The prisoners, especially on the east front, are compelled to be
vaccinated against cholera, typhoid and small-pox, and every prisoner
must be disinfected for lice and fleas, even his clothes. Every Russian
prisoner must have his head shaved. Prisoners are employed as barbers.

[Illustration: _A Street in Ruhleben, the English Prison Camp._]

Every prisoner is allowed to write four postcards and two letters
each month, and these letters are censored. All prisoners except the
Russians receive many packages from their homes. In the Stuttgart camp,
where the soldiers are mostly English and French, the twenty-four
hundred prisoners receive on an average seventeen thousand packages
each month. Every package is censored. No alcoholic drinks are allowed
to be sent, and also no cartoons that would be offensive to the
Germans.

[Illustration: _Russian Prisoners Receiving Bread._]

The English and French prisoners receive spending money from their
families, and most of them are never without spending money for tobacco
and beer. It goes much harder with the Russians whose families are too
poor to send anything. That is one reason why the Russian prisoners are
anxious to work.

Most of the Russian prisoners are employed in carrying the ashes out
of the apartment houses, and the big burly fellows lift the great iron
cans as though they were made of paper. These men are quite free, and
they run their wagons without a guard. They are very well behaved,
attending strictly to their own business and speaking to no one. It is
_verboten_ for the German people to speak to them, so of course they do
not do it. The working Russian prisoners wear their soldier uniform, a
brown coat, brown corduroy trousers and a brown cap with a green band.
They have a black stripe sewed around their sleeve. This shows they are
prisoners.

[Illustration: _A Canteen in the Zossen Camp._]

Last fall many of the prisoners were employed in cutting down trees in
the Grunewald. A guard was always stationed near them. I was walking
one day with a German who spoke Polish, when we came upon a group of
prisoners. The German asked the Russians in Polish how they liked
Berlin. "_Sehr gut, aber_--" (very good, but--) one of the fellows
answered. Just then a German guard came from the top of the hill, and
he told us to move on. In Germany, every time anything became truly
interesting I was told to move on.

[Illustration: _French Prisoners Gathering Wood._]

A great many Russians work on the railroad tracks, and still others are
employed in factories, gardening and working in the fields. Those that
work in the factories are not employed in the explosive departments
but are engaged in lifting heavy bars of metal and shells. In these
factories the men are closely guarded, but the average Russian is very
docile and easy to manage.

Very few English prisoners do any work, but many French prisoners are
employed in factories and in the fields. They still wear their bright
red trousers. In Dresden I saw a lot of these red-trousered fellows
running around the streets loose. One prisoner had a little German
child with him. She was a little girl of about four years of age, and
she clung to his hand and seemed very fond of him.

[Illustration: _Russian Prisoners Before Entering the Louse
Disinfecting Place._]

[Illustration: _Russian Prisoners Coming Out of the Louse Disinfecting
Place._]

At Circus Busch last winter a great spectacular play was produced and
as five hundred supers were needed for the show, men were taken from
the prison camps to take part. There were English, French, Arabs and
Turcos, all dressed in their own uniforms, but some of the prisoners
had to take the part of German soldiers. They were dressed in the
regular German uniform and they looked rather sheepish. Of course in
the play the Germans won all of the battles, but there was a waiting
list of prisoners who wanted jobs in the show. They were paid one mark
a night. The theater management was responsible for the safety of the
prisoners, and the theater was well guarded.

Two of the most interesting camps in Germany are the two near Berlin,
the one at Zossen and that for the English at Ruhleben. The camp at
Zossen is about an hour's ride from Berlin and can be seen from the
train window on the way to Dresden. It is built in the open country and
is a town of small houses. They have all kinds of prisoners here.

The "Gentlemen's Camp" at Ruhleben is where the English civil prisoners
are interned, and some very rich and influential men are here. Ruhleben
is built on a race track, and though at first it had only a few
buildings, it is now a small town. It has its main streets, its shops,
its restaurants, its reading rooms, its select circle and its four
hundred. It had a theater, the director of which was the director of
one of the Berlin theaters before the war.

[Illustration: _French Prisoners Going into the City to Make
Purchases._]

They have a newspaper printed in Ruhleben. The German authorities do
not allow these papers to be sent out of the camp, but I was lucky
enough to have seen one of them. An English girl I knew in Berlin got
one of them from the German wife of a Ruhleben prisoner. I had to swear
that while I was in Germany I would never tell I had seen it. It was
a very neat little sheet with stories, poems and advertisements--no
news. The advertisements were for the different shops and stores in
Ruhleben. Some of the men interned there carry on trades, and I saw
advertisements for printing, clothes-pressing and tailoring.

At Ruhleben they have what they call their "university," and here
they have classes in languages, art and science, and for the colored
prisoners they have the common school branches. All these benefits were
not gotten up by the Germans, but by the prisoners themselves. The men
are allowed to spend only a certain amount of money each month, which
keeps down the gambling, but they are allowed to buy what furniture
they wish.

[Illustration: _Englishmen on Their Way to Ruhleben, November, 1915._]

A great cry has been raised against the small amount of food given
the prisoners at Ruhleben. I heard from all sides that this was true,
and that in winter they have very little coal. But Germany can't give
her prisoners much--she can't give even her own people much. What they
have to give the Russian prisoners is a mystery--perhaps just enough to
exist on.

[Illustration: _A Popular French Prisoner in Germany._]

When I was in Germany, an English preacher was invited to come over
from England and inspect the Ruhleben camp. He was met at the German
frontier by a German officer and escorted direct to Ruhleben. He spent
one week in the camp, living the same life the English prisoners live.
He was allowed to bring messages to the men and to take messages from
the men back to England--censored of course. There were rumors around
Berlin about him, but there was nothing in the German papers. I read
his report in the _London Times_ after he got back to England. He said
that the men were comfortable and that they had an intellectual life,
but he added that the men surely needed the food packages sent from
England and that they received the packages sent.

One day the first summer I was in Berlin, I was in Wertheim's
department store. I saw a great many people gathered around the
sporting-goods counter. When I asked what was the matter I was told
that the two men in civilian clothes were Englishmen from Ruhleben,
and that they had come to Berlin to buy a tennis racket. They were
accompanied by a German sergeant. The Englishmen seemed to be enjoying
themselves and they took a long time to select the rackets.

[Illustration: _French Prisoners at Work._]

This spring they left a number of men out of Ruhleben. These men
wanted to work. One day I was standing in my boarding-house hall
talking to the landlady, when a fine-looking young man came up and
asked for a room. He spoke very good German, but I could see that he
was a foreigner. Before she showed him the room he asked what kind of
boarders she had, and she said, mostly German officers. "Then there
is no use for me to look at the room," he answered, "I am an enemy
foreigner, and maybe it would not be pleasant." "Oh, it would be all
right," said the eager landlady, "all you would have to do would be to
report to the police." "Oh, yes, I know," answered the man, "I am _sehr
bekannt_ (well known) to the police. I am an Englishman."

Every prison camp has religious services according to the religion
of the prisoners. Prince Max of Saxony likes to preach, and he goes
around preaching to the Russian prisoners in Russian. At Wunsdorf and
Zossen they have mosques where the Mohammedan prisoners can hold their
services.

Some of the officers' camps are at Klausthal and Wildemann in the
Harz, at Cologne, and at Mainz. They have much better quarters than
the common soldiers. In some cases they have separate rooms, and the
meals are better and are served in better style. They are even said to
have napkins. The officers never work for the Germans, but I have seen
pictures of them knitting and doing fancy work.

The youngest prisoners are some little Russian boys from twelve to
fourteen years of age. These children were used as messenger boys to
the Russian officers and employed around the camp kitchens. In the
camps they are given a lesson in German every day.

VERBOTEN.

In Germany nowadays--

It is _verboten_ to throw rubbish on the side walks and streets.

It is _verboten_ to spit in public places.

It is _verboten_ for children and nurse girls to occupy all the benches
in the parks. Places must be left for old people.

It is _verboten_ for children to play in the halls of apartment houses.
There are sand-boxes in the rear for them.

It is _verboten_ for you to play your piano in an apartment after ten
o'clock at night. Other people might want to sleep.

It is _verboten_ to make any unnecessary noises in an apartment house
at any time.

It is _verboten_ to take dogs into restaurants and grocery stores.

It is _verboten_ to beat carpets on any day except Friday or Saturday,
and then it is forbidden to start before eight o'clock. People in
Germany don't have brooms, they beat their carpets each week.

It is _verboten_ for customers to handle fruit on the market stands. It
is also forbidden to handle poultry or game.

It is _verboten_ to sell short weights, and for this the punishment is
severe.

It is _verboten_ to put more people in a street car than it can seat.

It is _verboten_ to take dogs into any train coupé except the one
marked "For dogs."

It is _verboten_ to put more people in an elevator than it can hold.

It is _verboten_ to employ a man until he is old and then to throw him
out and give his place to a younger man.

It is _verboten_ to employ women with very young babies.

* * * * *

Since the war some new things have been added to this list:

* * * * *

It is _verboten_ to eat more food than is your share. There must be
enough for all.

It is _verboten_ for dealers to raise their prices on the common
necessary articles higher than those fixed by the government.

It is _verboten_ to bake cakes and pastry at home. The flour must be
saved for bread.

It is _verboten_ to either sell or use cream. Cream is a luxury, butter
is a necessity.

It is _verboten_ to dance during the war.

These are only a few rules laid down by the German people for the
German people. And they are not only laid down but they are obeyed
without question. The power to obey laws shows strength and not
weakness, and it is this little word _verboten_ that the world has
laughed at so much that is helping Germany to win battles to-day.

For the Germans _verboten_ means not only "forbidden," but it means
self-restraint, obedience, and the respect for the rights of others,
and it means unity as well,--the unity of working together, of hearing
commands given by those above and of heeding those commands.

A German is quite as selfish as a person of any other nation, and he is
also quite as greedy, but since the war he is forbidden to be greedy.
He has the inclination but he cannot carry it out. He can buy only a
certain amount of things each week and that at a price so sternly fixed
by the government that a man's store is closed if he charges one cent
more than allowed. Also, he is not allowed to refuse to sell things
if he has them in stock, and the laws are very strict about selling
spoiled things. If a butcher sells you spoiled meat and refuses to take
it back you can go to the police with your story. It is _verboten_ to
sell bad meat.

The drink question had become a mighty one for all the warring nations,
but Germany, the greatest beer-drinking country of the whole world, has
quietly settled the question without a fuss, and now since the war, the
breweries are forbidden to retail more than two-thirds of their output
in peace times.

The Germans say that _verboten_ is a part of patriotism, for real
patriotism consists in not only loving your country but in serving it
as well and in having respect for its laws and the rights of other men.

THE MAIL IN GERMANY.

In Germany, when a crowd of Americans got together, we had but two
topics of conversation--the food and the mail.

The mail between Germany and America came pretty regularly until
February, 1916. Since that time it is only a few straggling letters
that have gotten there at all. Even before America went into the war,
letters addressed to Germany direct were held, but most people had a
Holland or Scandinavian address, and they had their letters relayed to
them. But even many of these letters did not get through.

This relaying can still be done through Switzerland but not through
Scandinavia, as the Scandinavian boats do not carry mail; and there
is no mail service between America and Scandinavia. The relaying
of letters is very expensive, and where before the war it cost ten
pfennigs to send a letter to America on a German boat, by the relaying
it costs fifty pfennigs. The relaying is done in this way. The letter
is placed in an open envelope addressed to the person in America. On
the outside of this envelope one fastens an International Coupon which
can be bought in any country. In Germany it costs thirty pfennigs, and
it can be exchanged in any country for a five-cent stamp. A second open
envelope is placed over the first envelope with the coupon attached.
A twenty-pfennig stamp is placed on this second envelope to take the
letter out of the country. The relayer takes the coupon and buys a
stamp with it in the neutral country where he is and mails the letter.
Sometimes these letters reach their destination.

[Illustration: _The Growth of the Field Post Mail._]

The German censor seldom opens a letter that has already been opened by
the English censor, but they open all letters marked Holland or Denmark
or Switzerland. Letters sent out of Germany must be mailed open, and
it is better to write on one side of the paper so that if the censor
takes it into his head to clip, only one side of the paper is spoiled.
If the German censor thinks that a letter is too long he sends it back
and tells you to make it shorter.

Until America entered the war, newspapers sent out by newspaper offices
to firms in Germany generally got there, but papers sent to private
people were usually held up. The American papers were about two months
old. I received several letters nine months old. An American I know
received two letters in the same mail. One was dated June, 1914, and
announced the marriage of a friend of his in Chicago. The second letter
was dated July, 1915, and it was a card telling of the birth of a boy
to the couple.

On the 1st of February, 1917, it was advertised in all the German
newspapers that any one wishing to send mail by the U-Deutschland could
do so by paying two marks extra postage, and that all the letters
should be in the post office by the 15th of February. Many people
sent letters. On the 5th of February, America broke off relations with
Germany, so the boat did not sail. Along in March all the people who
had sent letters received their two marks back with their letter and
the information that the boat had not sailed and that there was now no
mail service between America and Germany.

[Illustration: _The Central Depot for Soldiers' Mail in Hanover._]

Before the war Germany had the finest mail system in the world, letters
came more quickly, they had more deliveries and not so many letters
were lost. Now since so many of the clerks are new and many of them
are women, the service is not as efficient as it was. One often loses
letters.

The first mail delivery in Germany comes at 7.30 in the morning and
the last delivery is at 8 o'clock at night, and there are many more
in between. Then they have what they call their _Rohrpost_ letters
and these are the special delivery letters, and they are shot through
a tube from one post office to another and are delivered by a boy at
the other end. Now a good many of the special delivery messengers are
women.

[Illustration: _Berlin Mail Carriers._]

The most extensive mail in Germany is the _Feldpost_ or the soldiers'
mail. It does not cost anything to send a letter to a soldier or for
a soldier to send a letter to you. All you have to do is to put the
word _Feldpost_ at the top of the letter and it goes free. Even if you
know where a soldier is, you do not put the name of the place on the
envelope, only his field address which consists of the army corps, the
regiment and the company of the soldier.

[Illustration: _Mail Wagons on the West Front._]

A one-pound package can be sent to the soldiers for twenty pfennigs.
Thousands and thousands of packages are sent each day. Just before I
left Berlin it was forbidden to send a soldier packages of food, as
the soldiers in the field had better rations than the German civilian
population. Many soldiers sent their families packages of food. I
visited a German family in Dresden in May, 1917, just the month before
I left Germany, and every day while I was there they received a package
of food from the son who was an officer in Hungary.

In the summer of 1916, the prices of postage stamps were raised in
Germany. Letters that had before cost five pfennigs now cost seven
and one-half pfennigs, and letters that cost ten pfennigs, now cost
fifteen pfennigs. The price was not changed on the letters going out
of Germany. Some of the people rather grumbled and said: "It now costs
fifteen pfennigs to send a letter from Potsdam to Berlin and only
twenty pfennigs to send a letter from Germany to America."

[Illustration: _The Package Post in Berlin. Both Men and Women
Workers._]

It does not take nearly as long for a letter to go to a soldier in
France as it takes to go to a soldier in Russia. A letter sometimes
comes in one day from the Somme to Berlin, but from Russia a letter
takes four or five days at the least.

All the mail that goes to the soldiers on the west front is first sent
to Hanover to a central station. Here the mail is sorted and sent
to different stations along the front. From these main stations the
mail is sent to different sub-stations. Every day each regiment sends
a soldier to its sub-branch for the regiment's mail. Nobody but the
soldier and the head of the sub-branch knows where the mail is to go,
for each regiment's whereabouts are kept a secret.

THE "AUSLÄNDEREI"

In Germany, one evening last winter I heard a German count give
a lecture on the _Ausländerei_. He started out by saying that for
years the German people had been suffering from a disease called
_Ausländerei_, which means that they have always been too fond of all
that is foreign, that they have been ashamed of being Germans, and that
they have tried to copy the manner, modes and customs of other nations
instead of sticking to their own national ideals.

He went into detail, beginning with the foreign names used all over
Germany. He said that instead of a hotel being called by the good
old-fashioned German word _Hof_, the hotel proprietors insisted on
using the word "hotel," combined, alas, too often with such words as
Bristol, Excelsior, Continental, Esplanade, Carlton, Westminster and
Savoy. He thought that much better words would be _Berlinerhof_ or
_Kaiserhof_.

He said that until three years ago messenger boys were called by the
English name "messenger boys," and he much preferred the new name
_Blitzjunge_ which means "lightning kid."

He lamented that even now English clothes for men were still being
sold in German shops, and that they were quoted as English and were
bought because they were English; that German women still follow Paris
fashions; but he said with emphasis: "A German heart under a Paris gown
is no true German heart." He said that a man who studied in England
liked to be styled "an Oxford man" or "a Cambridge man," and that
many a German woman who goes to Switzerland each year registers at the
fashionable hotels as "Madame Schultz" or "Madame Schmidt" instead of
"Frau."

He said further that when an Englishman or an American came to Germany,
he fully expected every German he met to know English, but no traveling
German expects any one to know German, and the German meekly learns the
languages of all the other races.

He ended by saying that he knew that no people had a greater love for
their country than the German people have, and that the time had come
for them to cease their imitations and to be Germans without foreign
ideals, thoughts or customs.

It is said that in Königsberg the military commander there has made it
a criminal offense for any one to use or circulate a foreign fashion
plate. There are also a small number of people who think that English
or French should not be spoken on the streets during the war, although
English and French are still being taught in the schools, and I often
saw youngsters studying their English lessons on the trains.

But I have found that the count, the military commander at Königsberg,
and the people who want nothing but German spoken on the streets
represent only a small portion of the German people; the whole cry of
the masses is for peace to come, so that they can have things from the
outside world again.

During the two years that I was in Berlin I talked English on the
streets nearly all the time, and I was spoken to only twice for talking
English. Once I went to Potsdam with an American boy, and we were
sitting in the train waiting for it to start. We thought the train was
empty, and we were talking English very fast and rather loud. Suddenly
a woman in black poked her head around from the next coupé and asked us
to stop talking English. "It hurts me," she said, "the English killed
my husband."

Another time I was talking to an American lady at the opera, when a
pinched-faced German lady turned around in front of us and said, "Don't
you know that this is the Royal German Opera House and that we are at
war with England?" She thought we were English. We said nothing but
commenced to speak German.

A funny thing happened to an American lady I knew. She was dining with
a Turkish officer dressed in civilian clothes. As the Turk knew no
German they were talking French. A nervous wounded German officer came
in and seated himself at a table near them. As soon as he heard the
French he sent the waiter over to tell them to stop. The Turk took his
military calling-card out of his pocket and sent it over to the German.
The German officer did the only thing there was to do--he came over and
apologized.

Once in a while in Berlin we were cut off the telephone when we spoke
English. This was a spy precaution, and Central would not connect us
again even when we spoke German.

In Cologne a number of dressmakers had a meeting to establish some
new styles for Germany. They dug up a lot of fashion plates from the
styles fifty years back, and had fashion plates printed from them and
model dresses made, and they tried to convince the modern German girl
that this was what she should wear. They called the new style the
_Reform-Kleid_ or "reform dress," but their scheme was not much of a
success, for if anything was ever ugly it was this dress. I never saw
more than half a dozen of these dresses on the street, but once at a
club I saw a number of them. They were made with a narrow skirt and
a loose Russian blouse for a waist. They were absolutely shapeless
and so were the women that were in them. The dresses were mostly made
of flowered silk and very little trimmed. The hat that went with the
reform costume was perfectly plain and fitted down over the head like
a pan.

The _Reform-Kleid_ is the butt of many a joke in the German weeklies,
and the German girls I know said that they would die before they
would wear them. Very wide skirts are the style in Germany, and the
government has tried to make women wear narrower ones because of the
amount of cloth it takes, but a woman's patriotism ceases where styles
are concerned, and they all manage to get the needed cloth for their
skirts.

Germany has been cut off from the world so long that her styles are
different from the rest of the world. Even the Scandinavian people
dress more like Americans. In Germany, very short-vamped, round-toed
shoes are the style; you couldn't buy a pair of pointed shoes there.
Last summer an American girl came over from the United States, and she
had been told beforehand to bring shoes. She brought eleven pairs of
pointed ones, and every time she went out the Germans stared at her
feet. The German hats sit high from the head, and short sleeves are
once more in fashion.

All the German women will be glad when they can have Paris fashions
again, and most German men try to dress like Englishmen. They love
English tweed and they think that there is nothing like a Burberry
coat. Many of the German officers wear a monocle and this is surely
English.

One old German fogey wanted to have all the letters on the German
typewriters changed to German script. But even at the mention of such a
thing the merchants and business men rose up and said they would never
have it. Café Piccadilly changed its name to Café Vaterland, but the
Russischer Hof is still so called, and the highest order in the German
army is still called _Pour le mérite_.

Of course you hear a lot of talk about _echt deutsche_ things, and
that now nothing is worth anything unless it is "made in Germany" and
is pure German. They call that patriotism, but the far-thinking German
realizes that it is the _Ausländerei_ that keeps a nation young, and
it was that which made Germany what she was before the war. The count
said that the Germans were "copy cats"--but was not this one of the
cleverest things about the German nation?

WAR CHARITIES.

Almost every day is tag day in Berlin. You can't poke your head out
of the door without a collection-box being shoved at you. Boys and
girls work at this eternally. They go through the trains and the cafés
and restaurants, not one at a time but in steady streams. You may be
walking along a very quiet street and you will see a lady come smiling
toward you. Apparently she is empty-handed, but just as she comes up
to you, she whisks a box out from behind her muff or newspaper and
politely begs a mite.

The Germans give unceasingly to these collections. They put in only
ten pfennigs at a time, but I have often watched men and women in the
cafés, and they will give to half a dozen youngsters in half an hour.
They really prefer to give their charity donations in this way instead
of in a large lump. They get more pleasure out of it.

[Illustration: _Traveling Soup Kitchen._]

The day just before I left Berlin for Copenhagen, I had been
pestered about ten times in one square. The collection was called the
_U-Boot-Spende_, and it was a collection for the wives and children of
the sailors who had lost their lives on the U-boats. At one corner a
boy of about thirteen years stopped me by raising his hat and asking if
he dared beg a few pfennigs for the _U-Boot-Spende_.

[Illustration: _The Roland of Brandenburg, Original Statue._]

"Now, look here," I said to him, "Why should I give to this? I am a
_feindliche Ausländerin_ (an enemy foreigner) and if I give you any
money it encourages you Germans to go on sinking American ships. I must
save my money for the wives and the children of the men who have lost
their lives by the U-boats."

[Illustration: _The Iron Roland of Brandenburg._]

The boy blushed deeply. "That is true," he said, "I beg your pardon.
I feel for those people too. And if you will allow me I would like
to donate something for your charity," and the little fellow pulled a
mark out of his pocket and handed it to me. I found out afterwards that
the boy was the son of one of Germany's richest and most aristocratic
princes.

Besides the tag days there are many women who go around selling little
picture sheets for ten pfennigs. Countless numbers of these sheets have
sprung up since the war. The companies that publish them make only a
small profit and the rest of the money goes to charity.

[Illustration: _The Blacksmith of Bochum in Westphalia._]

One of the best ways the Germans have of collecting money is the
driving of nails into wooden statues and charging so much to each
person for being allowed to drive a nail. The "Iron Hindenburg" is the
greatest of all these figures, but there are many more even in Berlin.
Many cafés have their own figures to nail, sometimes it is only an
eagle or an Iron Cross. In Brandenburg they have a wooden copy of their
famous old stone statue of Roland that has stood for centuries in the
Brandenburg market place. The stone figure was funny and quaint enough,
but the nailed figure looks like some queer product of cubist art.

[Illustration: _Nailed Statue. Statue of German Landsturm Man at
Posen._]

[Illustration: _Entertaining "Kriegskinder."_]

The _Mittelstandsküche_ and the _Volksküche_ are also charitable
organizations and are run by women's clubs. These kitchens are places
where the middle and lower class people can get a good meal for from
fifty to seventy pfennigs,--a meal consisting of soup, meat, potatoes
and a vegetable. Compote or stewed fruit can be bought for ten pfennigs
a dish, and salad can be bought for the same price. They do not have
bread, you must bring that with you. They cut off your food cards
for meat and potatoes, but they are not very strict about it. If you
were terribly hungry and went to a _Volksküche_ you could very likely
get something to eat without a card. The city sees that these places
are well provided for, and often you could not get potatoes in the
fashionable restaurants, but the kitchens always had them.

[Illustration: _The Iron Hindenburg on the Kaiser's Birthday._]

Besides these kitchens, club women have a traveling soup kitchen. It
consists of a goulash cannon driven around the streets on a wagon, and
the people come with their buckets to get a hot stew for thirty-five
pfennigs.

The American Chamber of Commerce had a fine soup kitchen in Berlin. It
was opened two winters ago with great pomp, and Mr. and Mrs. Gerard
were present at the occasion. Society ladies took turns helping in
the kitchen, and they made it a very great success. Everything served
in the kitchen was free and the food was splendid. They served many
hundred people each day.

In Munich the Americans have a hospital which they conduct themselves.
I don't know how it is run since America got into the war, but before
this time the Americans paid for everything. Two years ago the American
ladies in Dresden had a bazar for the German Red Cross. They made many
thousand marks. In Berlin there is a very rich American man who keeps
the families of one hundred and fifty German soldiers that have been
killed in the war. When America got into the war, it was thought that
his charity would end, but he said, "No, these poor women and children
cannot help it that America is in the war."

[Illustration: _Frau Becker's Children Out for a Walk._]

One of the greatest charitable organizations in Berlin is a day nursery
run by Frau Hofrat Becker. The nursery is where the working wives
of soldiers can leave their babies each day while they are at work.
No children can be left with Frau Becker unless the mother shows a
certificate that she works. The children can be left at five o'clock in
the morning and they are kept there until night.

Frau Becker has five of these homes located in different parts of
Berlin, and I have visited all of them. In each home she has about
one hundred and fifty children--little babies from six weeks old up to
four years of age. Some of the children seemed very happy but others
were pinched looking little things who looked as though the battle of
life was too great for them. The babies are given milk and bread for
breakfast and at noon a warm stew.

Besides taking care of the babies, Frau Becker gives the older children
who go to school a warm noon-day meal, and after school she gives
them coffee or bread. Then she provides these larger children with
employments and amusements so they will be kept off the streets. The
larger girls sew and knit, and the boys learn songs and games. All the
helpers are voluntary, and they receive no pay.

[Illustration: _Berlin Youngsters Going to a Fresh Air Camp in East
Prussia._]

Nearly every family in Germany of the better middle class have what
they call a _Kriegskind_, or a "war child." They take a boy or girl of
some poor family and give them their meals. The family where I visited
in Dresden had had a little girl since the beginning of the war. When
the war broke out, Hilda was nine years old, and you cannot imagine
what a change has taken place in her during the three years. She has
now very nice manners, she is very clean and she has learned to sew and
play the piano. Hilda is one of a family of eleven children. The father
is a _Landsturm_ man in the war, and he makes thirty-eight pfennigs a
day.

One of the greatest charity collections is the gold-collection. The
Empress started this collection by giving a lot of gold ornaments,
and many people have followed her example. The story goes around in
Germany--personally I doubt if it is true--that the Crown Princess gave
to the collection all the gold plates that King Edward of England had
given her for a wedding present, and when the plates were melted down
they were all found to be plated.

WHAT GERMANY IS DOING FOR HER HUMAN WAR WRECKS.

The word "cripple" is a word that hurts, and in Germany when one
speaks of the men who have lost arms, legs, or eyes, they say
_Kriegsbeschädigte_, which means hurt or damaged by the war. It has a
softer sound.

Even now, with the war not over, plans have been carried out for these
men and many more plans are being made. Skilful doctors and makers of
artificial limbs are contriving all sorts of ways to make various kinds
of arms and legs that are suited for all kinds of work that a crippled
man might wish to do.

For instance, a man who wishes to be a carpenter must have a different
kind of a hook on his new hand from that of the man who wishes to be
a blacksmith. The man who has lost his arm at the shoulder must have a
different hook from the man who has lost his at the elbow.

[Illustration: _One-Armed and One-Legged Soldiers Learning Farming._]

[Illustration: _Crippled German Soldiers Learning to Letter._]

All this means much experimenting as there are so many different trades
in the world, and the crippled man wishes if possible to follow the
same trade he had before the war. In many cases it is not possible to
do this, and there have been mapped out fifty-one new trades at which
crippled men can work. The government has established schools where
these trades can be learned without any charge to the soldier.

[Illustration: _Factory for Making Artificial Limbs in Berlin._]

[Illustration: _Armless Soldier Learning a New Trade._]

One of the most famous of these schools is in Berlin, the
Oscar-Helene-Heim. Before the war this was a hospital for crippled
children with a school for them where they could learn trades. Since
the war they have made additions to the place, and soldiers can go here
to learn a trade. The head of this institution is Professor Biesalski,
the man who has invented many of the different kinds of arms and legs.
The Biesalski arm is very simple and is made out of nickel, and tools
fasten into the holder with screws.

[Illustration: _Riding the Bicycle Before Receiving the New Leg._]

I went all through this home. They have a carpentry department, a
shoe-making department, a basket-weaving department, and a gardening
department. There were a number of soldiers here without legs, but the
home makes a specialty of helping soldiers without arms, and this is
the far more difficult task. I saw some men with both arms gone, and
in these sad cases they have implements for holding everything, tools,
knives, forks, spoons, cups, cigars and indeed everything that a man
would want to hold.

[Illustration: _After Receiving the New Leg._]

The artificial legs are also most wonderful. One army captain who had
lost his leg at the thigh was able to mount his horse nine weeks after
his leg had been amputated, and two weeks later he joined his regiment
in the field. Another chap just nineteen years of age and who had lost
his leg, enlisted in the aviation squad, and now he is one of the best
flyers in the German army.

[Illustration: _A Legless Soldier Learning to Walk._]

However, most of the men do not return to war but settle down to
peaceful labors. One soldier, a shoemaker by trade, found that he
could make just as good shoes with one foot as with two. Another
case was that of a soldier who had lost both legs at Liège. He was an
engineer by trade and now he is running the fast train between Cologne
and Brussels. A tailor had both feet cut off. The new feet made for
him were very big and now he can tread the sewing machine as well as
before.

[Illustration: _Armless Soldier Learning to be a Carpenter._]

The most successful hand made since the war was not "Made in Germany"
but "Made in America." A famous Berlin surgeon, Dr. Max Cohen, became
infected from the wound of a soldier whom he was dressing at the
beginning of the war. The infection became so bad that it was necessary
to amputate his left hand. He sent to America for a new hand. It is
made so that the fingers have joints like a real hand, and these joints
bend and work like the joints of a real hand. The joints are operated
by pulleys fastened at the shoulder. The hand can not only hold
things, but can lift a fifty-pound article and can carry lighter weight
articles. With his good right hand and the aid of this left hand, Dr.
Cohen can still carry on his operations, and they are as successful as
before.

[Illustration: _Dr. Cohen Lifts 50 Pounds with Artificial Hand Made in
America._]

All over Germany they have exhibitions of dummies with artificial arms
and legs to show their workings. One dummy was a figure at a sewing
machine, and it showed how artificial legs could do the treading. The
men can go to these exhibitions and pick out the kind of an arm or leg
that suits them.

[Illustration: _Dr. Max Cohen. He is Able to Hold a Newspaper._]

Perhaps the hardest task of the war is the educating of the blind
soldiers, for they are more or less helpless, and they are apt to
become despondent. In Berlin they have established a hospital and
a school for blind soldiers. It is called the St. Maria Victoria
Hospital. The whole inspiration of this school is a blind woman,
Fräulein Betty Hirsch. When the war broke out she was in England
studying the English methods of dealing with the blind, and she has
charge of all the training of the soldiers.

From the very beginning it was Fräulein Hirsch's ambition that
her blind soldiers should not have the old monotonous trades of
basket-making and broom-making. She wanted them to have a broader
field of activity in the world, and so she visited all the factories in
Berlin to find out what work a blind man can do. She has her soldiers
trained to fill these positions. Now she has forty-five blind men
in good munition factory positions, and they work from six to eight
hours a day. At first they received 45 pfennigs an hour wages, but
this was increased to fifty-five pfennigs an hour. Some of the men put
cartridges into frames, and others fill cartridges into pockets. Every
night the workers come home to the hospital where they are housed and
cared for free.

Every morning from eleven to twelve o'clock the men are given their
lessons, and the rest of the day they spend practising them. They learn
typewriting and how to become telephone centrals. I saw one young
fellow there who had lost both eyes at Verdun. He had been studying
typewriting four months and he could take a dictation like a person
with sight.

It is forbidden to use a dictagraph in Germany, but Fräulein Hirsch got
permission to use it for the blind people. As they had none of these
instruments in Germany, Fräulein Hirsch copied the English model and
had them made at her dictation.

One of the blind soldiers here has invented an attachment to the
typewriter that holds the machine fast when the end of the paper is
reached. It is very hard for a blind person to tell when the end of the
paper is reached, and they are very apt to go on ticking after the page
is done. This invention is a rod with a screw in the front and will
undoubtedly be used by the blind typists all over the world.

Another trade the soldiers are taught is cigarette making. German
cigarettes are not rolled but the tobacco is stuffed into papers that
come already fastened together. The blind men learn this very quickly.

Every province in Germany now issues a pamphlet each week to help the
crippled men. These pamphlets are called "From War to Work in Peace,"
and they contain everything that would interest a crippled man, trades
they can pursue, things that they can make if they prefer to stay
at home, and where they can sell what they make. They also contain
advertisements for employment for crippled men.

Near Berlin they have a farm for one-legged men, and here the
one-legged soldiers can go to live and farm. Most of the farmers are
men without families, and they intend to live on the farm all the rest
of their days.

The German government has drawn up plans to build houses for the
crippled men. Sites have been selected and plans have been completed.
The houses are to be built near factories where work will be carried
on that a crippled man can do. The plans for these houses are very
attractive. Some of the houses are single houses, cottage effects with
slanting roofs and a little garden. In each settlement there will be a
number of large apartment houses, and then one very large house like a
hotel where the unmarried men can live.

The rental of these houses will be astonishingly low. For instance
a room for a bachelor in the large house will cost from twenty to
thirty dollars a year. This includes light and heat, and in some cases
furniture. An apartment in the large apartment house will cost from
seventy-five to one hundred dollars a year with light and heat. The
single houses will be more expensive and will cost about one hundred
and fifty dollars a year. Each apartment in the large house will have a
little garden, and there will be cafés and libraries where the men and
their families can enjoy themselves.

No man is happy unless he has work to do, and the Germans are doing
everything that is possible, so that the future will not look too black
to the crippled German soldier when he comes home from war.

WILL THE WOMEN OF GERMANY SERVE A YEAR IN THE ARMY?

The greatest question before the German women is not, Shall they have
the right to vote? but, Would it not be better for them if they had one
year's special training by the Government as do the men when they serve
their time in the army?

Compulsory military service has been a fine thing for men in the
countries where it is enforced, and this is especially so of Germany
where the men are inclined to be fond of studies rather than of sports
and exercise. It makes them physically stronger, they are taught
correct ways to exercise, and the way to care for their health.

And so this war has brought to the German women the consciousness that
they, too, must have some practice and training in things, if they wish
to fulfil their duty to their families and their country. They realize
how much better they could do all the things that they are now forced
to do if they had had some special training beforehand. And so the
great question has come up: Shall the women of Germany have a year's
training by the State?

Many of the greatest women of Germany are for this issue, and they
have worked out plans for the service. All this does not mean that
the women will have to learn to shoot guns and cannons, but that they
shall be trained in the branches that make a more perfect womanhood and
motherhood.

[Illustration: _Women Giving Soldiers Cooking Lessons._]

[Illustration: _Society Girls Learning Gardening._]

[Illustration: _Society Women Helping the Poor Children._]

The women will be divided into two classes for their army year--the
first class being the higher and more educated German girls, and the
second class being the poorer girls who must earn their own living.
Naturally, the rich girl who stays at home would not be taught the same
branches as a poor girl.

The better class girls will pay for their year of service. Buildings
would have to be built for them, complete in every equipment, where
they could live during that year. The other girls would be taught in
the public schools, and their training would be free, the State paying
for everything--clothes, food and training.

The most important thing for the women to learn in their year would
be housekeeping. Not merely the keeping of the house in order, such
as sweeping, dusting and scrubbing and all the branches that go with
housekeeping. They must learn cooking, not only cooking for strong
healthy people, but things that sick people can eat. They must learn
to prepare food for infants. They must learn to do washing and ironing,
and they must learn to make a bed properly.

They must learn to do scientific marketing, so that they will know what
to buy without wasting, for _Sparsamkeit_, i. e., economy, is one of
the fundamental things to learn. They will be taught what to do when
there is no fat to be had, and they will be given different menus for
times when certain foods are scarce.

Then the German women will be taught how to make a garden, when to
plant different seeds and what grows best in certain seasons. Chicken
raising will be taught to the girls who care to know about it, and
for the country girls there will be training in the making of dairy
products.

[Illustration: _Society Women Learning to Cook._]

After housekeeping the next important thing is nursing. The women must
learn to take care of the sick, how to make bandages, and perhaps some
knowledge of medicine. If this branch is distasteful to any of the
women they will not be compelled to pursue it very far, but for those
who like the branch they can continue it until they become graduate
nurses.

The second branch of nursing which every girl must learn thoroughly
is taking care of infants. They must be taught the proper dressing for
young babies, what babies must eat and when they must sleep. Also they
must know what to do in cases of light infants' diseases and what to do
for fussy babies and for teething babies.

Then they must learn something of social settlement work, and how to
entertain sick and crippled children. They must help in the care of
orphans and be able to make things for them. They must know something
of kindergartening and know stories and games for children. Many German
women who have lost their husbands in the war will be glad to have a
place to send their children, and the army girls can take care of them.

After nursing come lessons in sewing, and besides the making of the
common things the better class of girls will learn to make lace and to
do fancy work. In the year's service the better class girls will sew
for the poor and the poorer girls will sew for themselves.

[Illustration: _Women Learn Gardening._]

One prominent German woman thinks that it would be a good plan to
have the girls serve their first half year of service at the age of
fourteen, when they leave public school. At this time they would be
taught house-keeping and cooking. Then, later, between the age of
seventeen and twenty when it is most convenient to the girls they could
do their second half year.

Nursing, sewing and cooking will be the main branches taught to the
better class girls, but each of the poorer girls will be taught a
special branch by which she can earn her own living, and something she
can use in filling the places of the men when it is necessary, as in
this war.

The better grade of the poorer girls will be taught book-keeping and
typewriting. They will be taught to be telephone operators, and how to
wait on customers properly. But a girl will be taught only one of these
branches, and she will be allowed to choose the one that she likes
best.

Of course most German girls get married, but they must have some
specialty to fall back on in case of the men going to war, or in the
case of the loss of a husband, when they may be left with many little
children to support. When a girl has learned any specialty she must
serve the State in that capacity whenever she is called upon to do so.
That will be her duty, the same as a man's.

[Illustration: _A Home for Soldiers' Babies._]

The plan so far is to have everything managed by women, and they are
to have officers the same as the army. This will make the bright women
more efficient in management and the duller women will learn to obey.

Already the society women of Germany have formed clubs for learning to
do things. They are learning to make gardens, to cook and to sew. Women
are now being drafted for the munition factories, and as most of these
girls have before been housemaids, many German housewives are thrown
upon their own resources.

That most of the German women would be benefitted by a year's training
cannot be denied. It would help to make them stronger in body and in
mind. This war has been a great example to the world of what military
training means to the men, and the women of Germany feel that if they
must do the work of a man, they should have the same benefits as a man.

THE KAISERIN AND THE HOHENZOLLERN PRINCESSES.

The most popular man in Germany is the Kaiser, and the Kaiserin is
the most popular woman. William II may have his critics, but no one
can deny that in him Augusta Victoria has found what she considers an
ideal husband. The only domestic tyranny that I heard of his engaging
in is, that every birthday he gives the Kaiserin twelve hats for a
present. These hats he picks out himself, and she has to wear them.
From the pictures one sees of the Kaiserin wearing a hat one does
feel that he is a sort of barbarian and rather rough on his wife. On
her last birthday when I was in Berlin, she would allow no gifts to
be given her--perhaps she wanted one year without hats--and instead,
she requested all the givers to send wine, jams and preserves to the
soldiers. This collection was called the Kaiserin's birthday gift.

[Illustration: _The Kaiserin of Germany._]

Except for the present war, the life and reign of Augusta Victoria has
been a peaceful one, and it is now twenty-eight years since she became
the first lady in the land. She was born in the little castle of Dolzig
in Schleswig-Holstein, and there she spent her childhood with her two
younger sisters and her brother. The young Prince Wilhelm of Prussia,
the present Kaiser, was a half cousin of the young Princess, their
mothers being half sisters. Prince Wilhelm had seen her but once at an
English court party given by a mutual relative, and it was not until he
was invited to a hunting-party at her father's castle that they became
acquainted.

[Illustration: _The Crown Princess Cecilia._]

[Illustration: _Princess Eitel Friedrich, Wife of Second Son._]

The hunting-party was in 1878, and it brought a great booty. The story
goes that after the hunt the young Prince was walking in the garden
when suddenly he came upon the young Princess--that was the beginning
of the courtship, and a year later they were married. When Bismarck
heard the news he exclaimed, "A happy ending to a kingdom's drama."
Bismarck had probably arranged the match, for Schleswig-Holstein was
restless and needed to be bound more securely to the states of Germany.

[Illustration: _Princess Adalbert, Wife of Third Son._]

The Prince and Princess entered Berlin through the Brandenburg Gate.
Six years later, Emperor Wilhelm I died, and less than a year later
his son died, and Kaiser Wilhelm II and Augusta Victoria ascended the
throne.

On the 6th of May, 1882, the present Crown-Prince was born. His father
was so excited that he opened the window of the Marble Palace and
yelled across to his father's palace, "Father, it is a boy. Hurrah! The
fourth German Kaiser!" The child was christened with the full name of
Friedrich Wilhelm Victor August Ernst.

[Illustration: _Princess August Wilhelm, Wife of Fourth Son._]

After this came five more boys, one after the other--Eitel Friedrich
on July 7, 1883; Adalbert on July 14, 1884; August Wilhelm on January
29, 1887; Oskar on July 6, 1888; and Joachim on December 17, 1890. The
youngest child was a daughter, Victoria Louise, born on September 13,
1892.

All the children are now married, and strange to say every one of them
has married a German, and all of royal blood except the wife of Prince
Oskar, and she was a baroness.

[Illustration: _Baroness von Ruppin, Wife of Fifth Son._]

The wedding of the Crown Prince and the Duchess Cecilia of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin took place on June 6, 1905. The Crown Princess has
very high connections, coming from the same family as the famous Queen
Louise. Her mother is a Russian Princess, and she is a first cousin to
the late Czar. Her sister is the Queen of Denmark, and when she goes to
Denmark to pay a visit to her sister, the two walk through the streets
of Copenhagen arm in arm with the king.

[Illustration: _Princess Joachim, Wife of Sixth Son._]

Her democratic spirit has made her very popular with the German people,
and she is said to be the one person who dares to defy her imperial
father-in-law, and as a result he admires her very much and is very
fond of her. Four years ago, the Kaiser forbade the officers to tango.
The very next day after this edict the Crown Princess hired a tango
teacher. The Kaiser only laughed. He liked her spirit.

She is very tall, almost as tall as her tall husband. She is almost
of the Russian type and has dark hair and very bright eyes. The German
women look to her to set the styles. She dresses a great deal in white
and like the Kaiserin wears very large hats. Although very rich in her
own right she does not wear extravagant clothes but rather sensible
things.

[Illustration: _Victoria Louise, Duchess of Brunswick, Daughter of the
Kaiser._]

She is very active and capable, and is a splendid mother, spending
much of her time with her four boys and her little daughter, helping to
train them herself. The eldest boy is now ten years old, and the little
girl was born since the war. She has her own palace in Berlin, but she
spends most of her time at Potsdam or at Danzig, the favorite resort of
the royal pair.

At the silver wedding of the Kaiser and Kaiserin, Prince Eitel
Friedrich and the Grand Duchess Charlotte of Oldenburg were married.
The Duchess is a grand-daughter of Prince Carl, the famous general of
1870. She is quite different from the vivacious Cecilia, being of a
quiet temperament. She has no children.

A year later the fourth son of the Kaiser, Prince August Wilhelm,
was married to Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein. She
is so pretty that they call her the "Beautiful Princess." Almost any
day one can see her riding around in her carriage with her little boy
at her side. She is a first cousin to her husband, being a daughter
of the favorite sister of the Kaiserin. She is by far the favorite
daughter-in-law of the Kaiserin's, and the two are often seen together.
Her child is a beautiful boy of four years. Both she and the child are
very often photographed.

Prince Adalbert, the third son, was the next to be married, and in
1911 he married Princess Adelheid of Saxe-Meiningen. Princess Adelheid
is a very sad princess, for since her marriage she has lost both her
parents. She has no children.

[Illustration: _The Crown Princess and Her Four Sons on the Balcony of
Her Castle Watching the Departure of the Troops._]

The next royal child to be married was Victoria Louise, who has always
been very popular in Germany. She is the Kaiser's favorite child and
he always said that his only daughter should marry whom she pleased.
When she picked August of Brunswick every one was satisfied, for it
settled for once and all the Guelph claim to the Brunswick throne.
The Germans like to believe that this was a love match, for they do
not like to think that their dear little Princess Victoria Louise was
sacrificed to the plans of the State, but on all sides you hear rumors
that she is not happy and that her husband is always "away," and "away"
doesn't mean at the front either, for they say he doesn't care much
for fighting. She has two children. She spends most of her time in
Brunswick, but sometimes she meets her husband in Berlin, and they go
to either the Adlon or Bristol Hotel.

The fifth son, Prince Oskar, was morganatically married in 1914 to the
Baroness von Rippen, a beautiful and high-minded lady with whom he was
very much in love. Of all the royal ladies she has the most charming
face. At first the Kaiser wasn't very keen on this marriage, but when
the war broke out he gave his consent. They have one baby born in 1916.

The youngest son was married in the spring of 1916, and the wedding
of Prince Joachim and the Princess Marie of Anhalt was a quiet war
marriage. This summer a boy was born.

A STROLL THROUGH BERLIN.

When you start your stroll through Berlin, you begin at
Friedrichstrasse Station, for everything begins there and ends there
for that matter. Here is the elevated that takes you all around the
city, and the long-distance railway that takes you all around the
world.

From the station you hurry down two squares of Friedrichstrasse, and
there you are right on Unter den Linden, the heart of Berlin. Linden
trees! Linden trees! But they are all bare now, and the lights from the
other side of the street show through their empty coal-black branches.
But on days when there has been a victory, flags show through, and then
the street is very beautiful.

The center of Berlin is built on a square. On one side is Unter
den Linden, on the second side Friedrichstrasse, on the third side
Leipzigerstrasse and on the last side Wilhelmstrasse. Unter den Linden
is all fashionable shops and hotels. Here is the Hotel Adlon where most
Americans stop, but the German royalty go there as well. The Duchess
of Brunswick often makes this her headquarters. Near the hotel is a
newspaper office, the _Lokal-Anzeiger_. It always has a crowd of people
hanging around its bulletins, and its great war map which shows with
colored pins how Germany has advanced her boundaries. Then there are
jewelry and men's furnishing shops. This is the promenade side of the
street, and here the Beau Brummels and Disraelis of Berlin walk with
their fine ladies. Some of them take tea at Kranzler's, and the little
cake house is packed from early morn till night. People sitting in
Kranzler's never look at ease but as though they were there to be seen
and not to have a good time.

On the other side of the street in the midst of all this fashionable
array is a tiny little beer hall for soldiers. They always have a ham
and a dozen of eggs in the window, and beside the ham the sign "_Bier
für Militär 10 Pfennige_," and what soldier would not take advantage of
this! On the same side is the "Jockey Club," tailors who make English
clothes. The words "Jockey Club" are printed all over the front of
the store. There is only one empty store on the street, and that is a
tiny shop, and the signs are still in the window: "Chevalier d'Orsay
Perfume." The French shop-keepers left at the beginning of the war. The
"Mercedes Automobile Company" have a big show window on this street,
and in this window they have three or four giant automobiles. They are
all marked "Sold," but they can't be delivered until after the war.

Friedrichstrasse is a very narrow street, and it is always so crowded
that one can hardly get along it. Many people walk in the middle
of the street. It is full of little shops and lottery places run by
the government. They have a great many Red Cross Lotteries, and the
chances sell for three marks a chance. Last winter the winner of the
first prize of many thousand marks never came to claim it. The number
was advertised in all the papers. If the winner did not turn up in a
certain time the money was to be turned over to the Red Cross.

[Illustration: _Wertheim's Department Store._]

On Friedrichstrasse there are several American shoe stores--the "Walk
Over," the "Hanan," and the "Vera" shoe. But it is now over two years
since they have had any shoes from America, and they have filled up
their empty boxes with German shoes which are very inferior to our
makes. Busses run along this street, and many of the conductors are
women who wear trousers--not bloomers but regular men's trousers.

[Illustration: _The American Embassy._]

Leipzigerstrasse is all big stores, and these stores do a rushing
business. At one end of the street is Wertheim's large department
store. From the outside it looks like a public library or a government
building, but inside it is rather cheap looking and it is a regular
mirror maze to find your way in. I doubt if even Mr. Wertheim himself
finds his way through it.

Right by the door of this store they have field post boxes for soldiers
all ready packed for sending things to the front, with goose breast,
cakes, candy, wine, oranges and cigarettes. Everything tied up with a
ribbon of _Schwarz-Weiss-Rot_, and a bit of green laid on the top. What
don't they have in this store for soldiers! Clothes, caps, blankets,
pocket lamps, knee warmers, pulse warmers, sleeping-bags, folding
knives and forks, and books.

The fourth side of the square is Wilhelmstrasse, and when you read in
the papers, "Wilhelmstrasse says this to-day," or "Wilhelmstrasse is
silent," this is the street. It is a bare street without street-cars
or trees, and lined with gray government buildings. The German Foreign
Office is here, and right beside it the Chancellor's house, where
Bismarck lived so long. The American Embassy is on the other side of
the street. The Spanish Embassy occupies the building now. So many
automobiles run over this street that it looks like glass, and when
the lamps are lighted, its reflections are so bright that it looks as
though it had been raining.

At the head of Wilhelmstrasse where it meets Unter den Linden is
the famous Brandenburger Tor, and there, on the top of it, you see
the famous bronze horses that Napoleon took to Paris and that were
brought back in 1871. When you walk through its arches you are in
the Tiergarten, the great park of Berlin. This park is always full of
people, and many of them are going out to drive nails into the Iron
Hindenburg. For over two years this nailing has been going on and the
statue is not nearly finished. It is an enormous figure over fifty
feet high. The money for the nailing goes to the Red Cross. It costs
one mark to drive an iron nail into the figure, five marks to drive
a silver nail, and 100 marks to drive a gold one. Already the whole
top of Hindenburg's sword is gold, and his wedding ring is gold. The
buttons on his coat are silver. The nailing is directed by soldiers,
and every afternoon a military band plays in front of the figure.

[Illustration: _New Underground and Elevated Railway Terminal in
Berlin._]

If you are too lazy to walk around Berlin, you can ride around on the
city elevated, taking the train at the Potsdam Station. At this station
you can nearly always see prisoners--Arabs, Englishmen, French--waiting
to be taken out to Zossen, the great prison camp near Berlin. This
station is surrounded by coal yards, and last winter when it was so
hard to get any coal delivered, I often felt like getting out here and
stealing a lump.

[Illustration: _Entrance to the New Underground Railway Built Since the
War._]

At no time in the day can you ride around the loop without seeing a
troop train. There is always a troop train flying by. Very gay trains
with shouting soldiers hanging out of the windows and doors. All waving
and crying _Auf Wiedersehen_! That means "Till we meet again," but many
of them never come back.

Beside the soldier trains are the freight trains and the funny things
they haul: Parts of aeroplanes with the wings marked with the Iron
Cross; parts of undersea-boats; sleds for the winters in Russia--the
kind you see pictures of in story books, and then cannons, automobiles,
little field-kitchen wagons--everything painted gray--"field-gray."

Near the Charlottenburg Station is a _Mittelstandsküche_ or a
middle-class kitchen. These kitchens have been established all over
Berlin since the war, and here one can get a good meal for eighty
pfennigs.

[Illustration: _Café Victoria, Corner of Friedrichstrasse and Unter Den
Linden._]

If you get off the elevated at the Lehrte Station you are in
Alt-Moabit. Near the station is the great civil prison of Berlin. It
is built like a star with five arms running out from a center. It makes
one think of an octopus. Here the spies, the offending editors and the
troublesome socialists are imprisoned. Liebknecht is here. I knew the
prison pastor, a young man named Dr. Klatt. Dr. Klatt wanted to go to
the front, but he is so useful here that they will not let him go. He
is the go-between for the prisoners and the outside world. Some of the
prisoners begged to be allowed to go to fight for their country, and
Dr. Klatt helped these men to get free. He says there is a tremendous
amount of patriotism among the prisoners.

Near the prison is a great red barracks. It is so long that one can
scarcely see from one end to the other. There are always soldiers at
the windows, and if you look their way at all, they are very apt to
call _Guten Tag_. At the far end of the building there is a path-way,
and no matter at what time of the day you go there you can see hundreds
of new recruits coming out. They have not received their uniforms as
yet, and they have on old clothes, and most of them carry boxes in
their hands. Two hundred of them come at a time, six abreast, and when
they have reached the gateway as far back as you can see, a second
batch appears. This lasts as long as you stand there.

A little farther up from the Lehrte Station is the greatest hospital in
Berlin, and it is now used as a collecting-place for soldiers who have
been wounded and are now well and ready to go back to the front. Here
they go through their final examination to make sure that they are able
to go back.

[Illustration: _Steuben Statue at Potsdam._]

It is an hour's ride from Berlin to Potsdam, and you can easily see
why the Hohenzollerns have chosen this as a place to live. It is so
cunning, so little. The tiny houses are of a yellow color. It is a
soldier town. Every man is a soldier, and soldiers practise all day
long in front of the Town Palace of Frederick the Great. In the street
in front of the palace is a tree, the "Petition-Linden," where people
used to come to present their woes to old Fritz. On the other side of
the palace is the statue of General Steuben, a replica of which was
sent over as a gift from the Germans to America.

Potsdam is most beautiful at sunset. One can stand on the old bridge
and look out over the water. When the shadows begin to fall, the old
knights on the bridge seem to move and to climb down from their places.
Hark! One can hear the click of their spurs, the rattle of armor. One
by one they leave the bridge and move toward the old palace in the
darkness.

A TRIP DOWN THE HARBOR OF HAMBURG.

My most unique experience in Germany was my trip down the Harbor of
Hamburg, for strangers are absolutely forbidden near the docks, and
foreigners poking around are arrested. My trip was made just by chance.

An American girl and I took a trip up to Hamburg Christmas week last
year. I was offered letters of introduction to people there, but I said
we didn't want them, that we were going only for fun, and we didn't
want to be bothered by meeting strange people. I had been in Hamburg
once several years before, but neither of us knew much about the place.

The first evening, or rather afternoon--it was dark at four
o'clock--that we were there, we started out for a walk. We went through
St. Pauli, the famous sailor quarter, where in times of peace the
sailors spent their time when their ships were in port. As this was
Christmas week, the shooting galleries and side-shows were open, but
the places were not crowded, as it was too early. Only a few soldiers,
sailors and children were walking about the place.

One place had a figure of a soldier in the window. He was stepping into
a room where a woman was holding a little baby in her arms. On a card
was printed what the soldier was saying, "Excuse me, young man, but I
would like to make your acquaintance. I am your dad."

[Illustration: _Sailors Learning to Do a Washing in the Seamen's School
at Hamburg._]

We branched off the main street of St. Pauli and went up a side street.
It was pitch dark, and the streets were not well lighted. At the end
of this street we came to some steps at the bottom of which was a
foot-bridge that led to the water's edge. In the distance on the other
side of the water was what looked like a great city of lights. We both
held our breath when we saw this place--it looked like New York when
you cross on the ferry. And ferry-boats were shooting all over the
water. Great iron beams with regular rows of lights on their sides made
them look like sky scrapers.

"It's New York! It's home!" cried my excited companion.

Great crowds of workmen--hundreds, thousands of them--were coming up
the foot-bridge. They had come over on the ferry. I had my geography
all mixed up and I said, "That is Altona over there. Let's go down and
take a ride on the ferry and pretend that we are landing in New York."

[Illustration: _The Sailors' School for the Merchant Marine._]

We hurried down the narrow foot-bridge. The men that were hurrying
up bumped into us. At the foot of the bridge was a ticket place. An
elderly man in a blue uniform was standing beside it. We rushed over to
him and asked, "Are we allowed to go over to Altona on the ferry."

[Illustration: _Vegetable Market._]

He looked at us and then laughed and answered us in English: "That is
not Altona. That is the great Hamburg docks. Where do you want to go?"

We told him that we did not know where we wanted to go, but that it
looked so much like New York that we wanted to ride over.

It was a bitter cold winter night between Christmas and New Year's, and
if he thought that we were either crazy or spies he never let on.

"Have you passports?" he asked.

We showed our papers, and he told us that if we promised to stay on the
boat and to come back to him he would let us go. We promised, and he
wrote our names, our Hamburg, Berlin and American addresses, our age
and religion in a book, and he told us to buy a ticket.

The round trip cost five pfennigs, and the old man escorted us to the
ferry and talked to us until the boat was ready to start. He said
that night and day 15,000 men were employed on the docks, and that
besides all the men coming over on the boats many more came over
through a tunnel that ran under the water. He said that they were
building many boats, and that the "Bismarck" would be the largest boat
afloat--55,000 tons--and that the "Tirpitz" would be 32,000 tons, and
that so far during the war there had been made a total tonnage of new
boats of 740,000 tons and that 100,000 tons were under construction.
Then he told us about the school for sailor boys at Finkenwerder where
boys were being trained as sailors, not for war but for the merchant
marine after the war. I said that I thought this was certainly very
enterprising.

[Illustration: _Goulash Cannon Factory._]

I did not realize what a wild night it was until our boat got started.
The ferry tipped up and down, and the wind was like a knife. Boats were
scooting all over the harbor, and we had a time to keep from bumping
into things.

A boy of about twelve years was attending to the landings. He was a
tough little kid, and he smoked one cigarette after another. And how
he could swear! We wanted to ask him some questions, but neither of
us had the courage. But finally he came over to us and almost blowing
a puff of smoke into my face he said: "He is an old cab-driver and a
_Schreihals_, and I hate him." He pointed to the pilot.

When our boat came to the second landing it slid under the end of a
great black thing that hung over us. "That is the 'Imperator,'" said
our sailor boy. It had been raised up out of the water to keep it from
rotting, and this made it look bigger than ever. Some of its port holes
showed lights. Just back of the "Imperator" the boy pointed out the
"Bismarck." What a monster it was! It was all lighted up with electric
lights. We could see workmen moving around on it, and we could hear
the click of their hammers. The "Tirpitz" could hardly be seen. It lay
beyond the "Bismarck" and the pelting snow blinded our view.

We passed all sorts of boats, cruisers, torpedo boats, supply boats,
and steamers. I have never seen such a busy place as that harbor.

[Illustration: _The Crowds in the Hamburg Exchange._]

"You are foreigners," said the boy, "and the old boss on the docks
doesn't allow foreigners out here. But I suppose he saw that you were
girls and you wouldn't know much. We have got to be careful of spies.
We have arrested twenty already. The last one I spotted myself. He was
drawing a plan on a paper. I can tell you nothing gets by me. I can see
you two are harmless."

We made a circle around the harbor. When we came near the cruisers,
coming back, one of the biggest ones broke loose from the group and
began to move slowly away.

"Do you see that?" said the boy, "she is going out again. She has been
here for three weeks. She has been in many a fight. I can tell you she
is a devil." The boat had but a few lights showing, and in a minute she
was lost in the darkness.

On our ferry coming back were several hundred workmen. They were not
cripples but big strong men. When we got off the dock at St. Pauli they
all jumped off and ran. We ran too, for we were nearly frozen stiff.
The old man in blue was waiting for us, and with chattering teeth we
thanked him and told him how much we had enjoyed our trip.

"Wouldn't you like to come in and get warmed up a bit?" he asked and he
took us into a little office where a great fire was burning. He talked
to us about America. I think he must have been a mate on a steamer.

[Illustration: _View of a Grain Storage at Hamburg._]

It was just six o'clock when we ran up the foot-bridge. A boat-load
of workmen ran up with us. At the top we stood a minute and looked
out over the harbor. A sea of lights! A bay of boats! More workmen!
The old man in blue had said: "We are getting ready for the Hamburg of
to-morrow."

THE KRUPP WORKS AT ESSEN.

Standing in the main square before the town hall of Essen is a large
bronze monument, representing not a king, nor yet a hero, but a man
clad in a simple citizen's coat. His right hand rests on an anvil,
and his penetrating eyes are overhung by a thinker's brow. The granite
pedestal bears the name of "Alfred Krupp."

Long ago England knew the process of making cast steel, but she
carefully kept it a secret. In 1800 Friedrich Krupp, the father of
Alfred, began to experiment. He worked early and late. His friends
told him that he was wasting his time, but Friedrich worked on. After
eleven years he discovered the precious secret, and in 1818, on the
present site of the Essen works, he built eight furnaces, each with one
crucible. He employed only two laborers. And that was the beginning of
the great Krupp works at Essen.

[Illustration: _Bertha Krupp, Her Husband and Children._]

His son Alfred was born in 1812, just one year after the great
discovery was made, and in 1842 Alfred assumed entire charge of the
works. His father had been able to cast steel only in small masses.
In 1855 Alfred Krupp sent a block of steel weighing 4500 pounds to the
London Exhibition, and he was able to cast steel in one mass weighing
more than 100,000 pounds. Alfred Krupp died in 1887, and it was under
him that the Krupp works grew, to such enormous proportions.

[Illustration: _A Large Community House._]

Alfred Friedrich Krupp, the third in line, was born in 1854 and died
in 1902. He was known as the cannon king. When he died nearly all
his wealth went to his daughter Bertha. In 1906, at the age of twenty
years, Bertha Krupp was married to a plain German gentleman with only a
"von" to his name, Herr von Bohlen and Halbach. They have four children
living and one child dead, and they live very quietly at "Villa Hügel"
in Essen, a lovely villa built on the hills above the town. In 1900,
before his marriage, Herr von Bohlen was an attaché at the German
embassy at Washington. Bertha Krupp is the second richest person in the
German empire, running the Kaiser a close second, and when this war is
over her wealth may surpass his.

[Illustration: _Community Houses in Essen._]

Essen lies twenty-two miles north of Düsseldorf on the main railway
to Berlin. This is a very thickly populated district, and the center
of a network of railways which makes it accessible to the Westphalia
coal fields. It is a gloomy-looking town of gray slate roofs, only
brightened by emerald green shutters. The whole town depends on the
Krupp plant for their livelihood, except the store-keepers and a few
hundred men who manufacture woolen goods, cigars and dyes.

The present Krupp works cover over 150 acres, and the daily output
in time of peace is 1977 tons, and many times greater in time of
war. In 1907 they employed 64,354 workmen, and each year this number
had increased. They make all kinds of guns of all calibers--guns
for naval and coast defenses, siege guns, fortress guns, field guns,
armor shields and disappearing carriages for hoisting and transporting
machinery for ammunition. They produce crucible, Martin, puddled and
Bessemer steel, and also steel castings. They make ammunition with
fuses and bursting charges, armor piercing shells, explosive steel
shells, torpedo shells, cast iron shells, shrapnel, case shot and fuse
setters. Besides these warlike productions they make railway material,
engineering material, and sheet iron for motor cars.

[Illustration: _400 Damaged French and English Cannon Being Repaired at
the Krupp Factory._]

Plans have been made to erect a gigantic branch of the Krupp works
at Munich. These works will cover one hundred acres, and the city
of Munich recognizing this opportunity for further developments, has
provided enough ground for private industries that are bound to follow
Krupp.

[Illustration: _A View of the Mills._]

The house of Krupp has worked out an elaborate scheme for the benefit
of their workingmen. It is not a charity scheme, but a building scheme
for both workmen and employer. The scheme was carried out by Alfred
Friedrich Krupp. He built 5469 dwellings, well lighted houses, with as
much space between them as possible and each with a little garden. All
the houses have good water. Three thousand of the houses were built
within fifteen minutes' walk from the works. The men longest in the
firm's employ and with the largest families were given the selection of
the houses.

Policemen and teachers are eligible to become tenants of the dwellings.
The leases are very binding and forbid the carrying on of business
in the houses, sub-letting, quarreling with the neighbors, disorderly
noises, the building of additions, misuse of the drains, the keeping
of animals that are disturbing to the neighbors, smoking stove-pipes
without covers and the lighting of the fire with oil.

[Illustration: _Another View of the Krupp Works._]

The tenant on the first floor must clean the pavement every day before
nine A. M., except Sundays and holidays when it must be done on the
preceding day between three and four P. M. The rent of the houses runs
from $15 a year for two rooms, to $85 for five or six rooms with a
cellar.

The Essener Hof is a hotel run by the Krupps, and it is intended
for the guests of the Krupps who are doing business with the firm.
Then there is a boarding-house for bachelors and widowers. This
boarding-house was started in 1855 with two hundred men and now it has
over a thousand.

For the community of workers there are many stores, twenty-five grocery
stores, two slaughter-houses, a bakery, a flour mill, an ice plant, a
brush factory, two tailors, two shoemakers, a laundry, a hotel, eleven
restaurants, three cafés, nine beerhalls and two clubhouses.

[Illustration: _A Street in Essen at the Entrance of the Krupp Works._]

There is a whole staff of doctors to look after the workmen and
their families, and the strict medical treatment prevents contagious
diseases. The laws of the German empire require certain classes of
workmen to be insured against old age and broken-down constitutions.
This came through the efforts of Bismarck, and it applies to all
workmen with a salary not exceeding $500 a year. Alfred Krupp gave
$250,000 to the workmen, the interest of which is used as a fund to
encourage them to build their own houses and as a help for the needy.
It is loaned to the workmen at a very small rate of interest.

Besides these benefits he established private schools the purpose
of which is to qualify the children of the workmen to earn honest
profitable livings. A fee of five cents a month is charged to each
pupil, but if the child remains fifteen months, seventy-five cents is
placed in the savings bank to his credit.

Krupp realized that a contented body of workmen brings about better
results than unhappy ones, and he felt that his scheme was not only a
philanthropic one but also a good business investment.

In the war of 1870 Krupp guns were used, and in this present war they
have played a star role. The Kaiser sent his personal thanks to the
house of Krupp for all that they have done for Germany. Frau Bertha
is very proud of her works and also of the nickname of her howitzers:
"Busy Berthas."

MUNICH IN WAR TIME.

No matter what you want to do in Germany if you are a foreigner, even
a neutral, you have to go to the police. If you want to take a trip,
the first thing that you do is to go to the police and ask them if you
are allowed to go where you want to go, and then if you are allowed to
go you must return to the police exactly twenty-four hours before you
start and get your passport stamped.

Then you take your bread card, your butter card, your meat card and
your potato card to the bread commission. They cut off tickets for as
long as you are to be away, and in return they give you a traveling
bread card, a little book with twenty tickets in it. Each ticket is
good for either a roll or a piece of black bread, and for each week you
receive forty tickets. In the hotels where you stop you receive a meat
card on the days when meat is served.

[Illustration: _The Son of the Bavarian Crown Prince._]

As soon as you arrive at your destination you must go to the police and
register. Here they write your whole history down on a field-gray card.
One would think that it was an easy matter to slip away and the police
would never know. This can be done very easily, but if you are caught
you get in an awful muddle. Police come through the trains unexpectedly
and ask to see your passport. If it is not in order you are liable to
be imprisoned, and you must pay a fine for every day that you are not
registered. Sensible people follow all the police rules. They are well
advertised and one cannot fail to know them.

[Illustration: _The Wittelsbach Fountain in Munich._]

An American lady I know went from Berlin to Munich without registering
at the police station. A man came through the train and asked her for
her pass, and when he saw that it was not stamped she was ordered
to report to the Munich police at once. When she got to Munich she
forgot to go to the police for three days, and when she went there the
good-natured Bavarian policeman let her off.

"I am so glad," she said, "I would not know what to wear if I went to
jail.'"

It was in September, 1916, that I made my last trip to Munich. One
seldom sees French prisoners in Berlin, but all the way from Berlin to
Munich I saw them working in the fields. All of these prisoners had on
blue coats and their famous bright red trousers. They made gay spots on
the dull German landscapes.

Every little farm had geese, and every little town had its little
garrison of soldiers, training. In some places the soldiers were out in
the fields drilling. They were running, jumping and shooting.

[Illustration: _The Frauenkirche, the Symbol of Munich._]

The center of attraction of our whole train was a young sailor from the
"Deutschland." He was a fine young fellow and he smiled at everybody.
At every station he got out and bought something to eat. He seemed to
have an endless appetite and a very long purse.

[Illustration: _King Ludwig of Bavaria._]

As one gets farther and farther into Bavaria, the wayside shrines begin
to appear. They are everywhere along the roads and in the fields. At
different places harvest workers could be seen gathered around the
shrines in prayer.

When one is many, many miles away from Munich, one can see the two
towers of the _Frauenkirche_, red towers with green tops. These towers
are the symbol of Munich.

Outwardly, the only change that one can see in Munich is the
substituting of soldiers for students, and it really spoils the place,
for while the military spirit suits Berlin so well, it seems out of
place with these more gentle southern people. The Bavarian uniforms are
trimmed around the collar with a blue and white braid that looks like
the edging on a child's petticoat. It is hard to understand how such
artistic people could choose such a thing, but a Bavarian's artistic
sense is in his mind and not in his dress. The Bavarian soldiers have
a reputation all over Germany for being very fine warriors.

The loss of the old Prince Regent Luitpold meant much to these people,
and his son can never hope to be as popular even if he did have to wait
seventy years before he came to the throne. The Crown Prince Rupert is
more popular than his father. He is nearly always with his troops at
the front, and even when his eldest boy died, he felt that he could not
get away. He said, "This is no time for a soldier not to be attending
to his duty." His next son, Prince Albert, is now the heir to the
throne. He is a beautiful little boy and is tremendously popular in
Munich. The old Müncheners say that he is very much like what Ludwig II
was when he was a boy.

[Illustration: _Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria, "The Fighter of
Metz."_]

Most things to eat are much more plentiful in Munich than in Berlin.
For instance, a man can have a pint of milk every day and a woman can
have more than that. Ham costs only seventy cents a pound without a
card, and on meat days it can be bought in any of the restaurants. The
meat portions in the Munich restaurants are one hundred and eighty
grams while in Berlin they range from fifty to forty grams; and in
Bavaria the price for the portion is no higher.

Vegetables and fruit are very plentiful, but butter and eggs are
scarcer than in Berlin. One person gets only fifty grams of butter each
week and one egg. In Berlin we generally got eighty grams of butter and
never less than an egg and a half a week.

In Bavaria everything is divided among the people. For instance, if a
man who lives in the country near Munich has a load of hay for sale,
he brings that load of hay to Munich to what they call the central
station. They have all kinds of central stations in Munich, for grain,
for meat, for eggs, for vegetables, and for butter. The load of hay
which the man brings is divided up and given out where it is most
needed; he does not dare to sell the load of hay himself.

[Illustration: _National Museum at Munich._]

It is just the same with eggs. Suppose that you had a brother in the
country, and he wanted to send you one hundred eggs to pack for the
winter. He could not send you the eggs direct. He would have to send
them first to the central station, and if eggs were plentiful that
week, the central station would let you have the eggs; but if eggs were
scarce and were needed elsewhere, you are given only a small part of
the eggs. This plan is followed in everything. Even if you raise a pig,
you cannot keep all the meat yourself, you must sell a part of it to
your neighbor if he needs it.

The rolls in Munich are much better than in Berlin, and they seem to be
made of entirely white flour. Cheese is very scarce in Berlin, but in
Munich there is plenty of cheese, and it is very cheap. Pure coffee can
be bought at a dollar a pound without a card, and although there is a
sugar card the same as in Berlin, still all the restaurants and cafés
serve pure sugar.

The price of beer has not been affected much by the war and beer
that was twenty-eight pfennigs before the war is now thirty-four
pfennigs, and the Hofbräu beer, or the beer made by the royal brewery,
is thirty-two pfennigs. Fine malt beers such as Bock Beer and Märzen
Beer are prohibited from being made, as they take too much malt and
saccharine.

[Illustration: _Karl's Gate._]

One evening when I was there we walked through the Mathazerbräu, the
greatest beer hall in the world. The place was one mass of people
drinking beer, soldiers and officers and women. Most of the guests
brought their supper with them, and everybody was smoking. It was like
walking through a thick fog, there was so much smoke.

[Illustration: _Franz von Stuck._]

We went to a lot of theaters, cafés and cabarets, and they were always
full. Everywhere we went we had trouble in getting a seat. Everybody
seemed to be having a very nice time. They were not hilarious, but
they seemed to think that staying at home and moping would not help
matters. The most astonishing part was the vast amount of money spent
everywhere. Some cabarets only served champagne, and the spenders
ordered it by the quart. No one got drunk in spite of the amount of
fluid they poured into them.

The art show at the Glass Palace was on when I was there, but I did
not find it as interesting as the great show I had seen there the year
before the war. There were too many landscapes of a dull color. This
did not interfere with the sale of the pictures, and one-tenth of them
were marked sold.

[Illustration: _The Home of Franz von Stuck in Munich._]

One day I paid a visit to the studio of Herr Franz von Stuck. He was
very cordial. He is a splendid, big, strong man. Lately he has built an
addition to his house so that he can have more room for his work, and
he has one of the finest studios I have ever seen. The first floor is
for modeling, and the second floor is for painting. He said that it was
very hard to get good models now as all the men of fine physique were
in the war.

"Do you get the same amount of bread as an ordinary man?" I asked him.

"Exactly the same," he answered. "The poorest workingman in the streets
gets the same as I. That is why our system is so splendid."

He hardly mentioned his work at all, indeed he seemed quite shy about
it. On his table was a dish made of Brazilian butterflies. He picked
it up and turned it so that it showed blue, then brown, and then green.
"Isn't it beautiful!" he said enthusiastically, "Look at it now!"

I looked around the room at all his wonderful pictures. I thought of
all the fame that was his and of all the honors that had been heaped at
his feet, and yet there he was admiring a butterfly's wing. I had the
feeling that a great man stood before me.

FROM BERLIN TO VIENNA IN WAR TIME.

You would naturally think that it would be a very easy matter to go
from Berlin to Vienna in war time, because Germany and Austria are
allies, and that it would be as easy as traveling around Germany; that
all you would have to do would be to pack your trunk, go down to the
station, buy your ticket and get on the train. Of course you must do
all these things, but you must do a great many other things before you
do that.

The first thing that you do is to go to the police where you are
registered and get what they call a _Fragebogen_, which means a
question sheet. You cannot get this sheet unless you have a letter from
some important person or firm stating that it is necessary for you to
go. Your reason must be a very good one.

[Illustration: _Vienna--Along the Danube._]

You fill out your _Fragebogen_, the police look up your record
and if it is found out to be all right, they put your letter of
recommendation, your passport, the _Fragebogen_ and half a dozen
pictures of yourself in an envelope and seal it. You take this sealed
envelope to the main police station in the district in which you
live. Here the package is opened by several different men in several
different rooms, and finally, after many questions and much stamping,
you are told to write your name across your picture which has been
pasted on a card.

After you are through with the German police, you must have your
pass viséd by the Austro-Hungarian consul. Here you must go to three
different men and be "stamped" and the last man takes two more of your
pictures and pastes them on a pink card. Then you pay four marks to
another man who does some more stamping. After all these things are
done, you go back to your local police and register that you are going
away, and then, after showing your pass at the railway ticket office,
you are allowed to buy your ticket to Vienna. This was what a neutral
American had to do before we got into the war--now I doubt if an
American could go to Vienna at all.

It is a sixteen hours' ride from Berlin to Vienna with a one hour's
wait at Tetschen on the Austro-German frontier. Our first stop was
at Dresden, and like all German stations it was full of soldiers. The
ride from Dresden to Tetschen is very beautiful. It runs through the
Saxon Switzerland, a lovely country with mountains, streams of water
and little villages. How peaceful everything was! How quiet! It did not
seem like a country that was taking part in a great war.

[Illustration: _A Station in Vienna._]

At noon we reached Tetschen, a cold, dismal looking place. First we
had our baggage examined by both Austrian and German officials. These
officials are all clever men. Some of them are dressed up to look like
common soldiers, but they are all fine lawyers and criminal experts.

A soldier stood up on a box and said that any one who had any writing
about him should give it up. In my stocking I had my money and a letter
of introduction that I had brought from America and which I was going
to use in Vienna. I understood perfectly well what the soldier said,
but for some unknown reason or other I simply didn't feel like pulling
the letter out of my stocking. This was madness on my part, for I had
learned long ago that if you follow directions in Germany you don't get
into trouble, and if you don't follow them, you are sure to get into a
mess.

After this, we were taken through a gate where we gave up our passes
and they were taken away to see if the picture corresponded with the
one sent down by the German police. The men here had a dreadful time
with my name. All Germans find my name a difficult one. One soldier
here just insisted that my name was "Auley" without the "Mc," but
finally another soldier gave him a poke and said that "Mc" was a title
and that I was of royal blood.

[Illustration: _The Inside of a Polish Hut._]

Everybody who didn't have a German or an Austrian pass had to undress,
and as soon as I got into the searching-room, I gave the woman who was
to search me, the letter out of my stocking. She took it and gave it to
some one. My heart was in my mouth, for I had no idea what they would
do, and I knew if they did anything to me it would be my own fault for
not following directions.

I got a very good searching, and I had to take off all my clothes,
only when she told me to take off my shoes and I commenced to unlace
one boot she said never mind that one, to take off the other one. I
had hardly gotten dressed before there was a knock at the door of the
dressing-room and some one said I was wanted. I put on my hat and went
out, and there planked in front of the door with both legs spread out
and a long sword at his side, was a good-looking little Saxon officer
aged about twenty years.

He had a fierce look on his face as he demanded, "Why didn't you give
this up in the other room?"

"I couldn't," I answered, "it was in my stocking. You couldn't expect
me to take it out of my stocking before all those men, could you?"

Then we both laughed and I said, "I hope you will give it to me again."

"Of course I will," he answered.

[Illustration: _Russian Refugees Returning Home._]

I went with him to the commanding officer, but that man would not
give me back the letter. I didn't care, I was so glad I hadn't been
arrested. When we came back from Vienna, I was the only one of our
party that had to undress. I never noticed it, but there was some
kind of a mark on my pass, and as soon as the official saw it I had to
undress. But this time I had nothing in my stocking. When they searched
my trunk they took away from me all the post cards and photos of Vienna
I had, and didn't give them back.

After leaving Tetschen, the train runs for hours through Bohemia. It
does not touch at Prague but at a number of small picturesque towns
such as Kolin and Znaim. The country is extensively cultivated and very
fertile. The train was supposed to be an express train but it stopped
at every little way-station.

At one station, a very beautifully dressed lady with a little girl got
on the train. I thought that she must be the wife of some high official
and I was surprised at her lovely clothes away out there in Bohemia.
She sat next to me, and in a short time she began talking to the woman
who sat across from her and who kept asking over and over if any one in
the coupé knew when we got to Deutschbrod. The beautifully-dressed lady
said that she knew for she was going there. And then she told the whole
coupé about the place.

To my surprise she said that she was the wife of the apothecary at the
Barracks at Deutschbrod. The Barracks is a city built since the war on
the hills above the town. It was built by the Austrian government and
is the home of the refugees of East Galicia whose homes were destroyed
by the Russians. Most of these _Flüchtlinge_, as the Germans call them,
are Polish and Russian Jews, but they have also two hundred Italians
from near Görz.

[Illustration: _A Family of Polish Refugees._]

The wife of the apothecary, who was a Hungarian woman, said that
the refugees had everything they needed and that everything was
free--clothes, food, wine, beer, doctor's service and medicine. She
said that unless there was some contagious disease in the camp the
people were allowed perfect freedom to go and come as they pleased.
Most of the inmates have their own gardens and raise their own
chickens.

It was dark when we came to the place, but the apothecary's wife
pointed it out on a distant hill. It was like a great city, one mass
of electric lights sparkling in the darkness. When I came back from
Vienna I had a good look at it. It was a hillside town made up of new
frame houses, mostly small houses laid out in regular rows separated by
straight streets.

After Deutschbrod was passed, our compartment was empty except for a
young Jewish woman who had been sitting quietly in the corner. After a
while she leaned over to us and said, "You speak English. I can see it
that you are Americans. I was once in New York." And then she told us
that she was a refugee from East Galicia.

[Illustration: _Galician Refugees in Austria._]

"It was terrible," she said in rather good English. "I was in
America for a whole year. I saw Niagara Falls. Then shortly before
the war broke out my mother wrote for me to come home. We had such
a nice house, and such nice things in our house. They belonged to my
ancestors. On the 4th of October we heard that the Russians were coming
toward our village and that they were only forty kilometers away. We
had already sent our best horses to the army. The ones left behind were
sent to the village for the old people. My mother and father rode, and
my husband and I walked or rather ran after them for two days as fast
as we could. We hadn't time to take anything with us, and we had to
leave even our glassware and silver behind. I had a new Persian lamb
coat that I left hanging in the cupboard. We have never been able to go
back to our homes since." She wept a little.

It was ten o'clock when we came to Vienna. We had a hard time getting
a cab, and when we did get one it rattled over the stones as though
it had no rubber on its wheels. The first thing we had to do the next
morning was to go to the police, and it took us the whole morning
until two o'clock in the afternoon to get registered. There were only
two clerks and about fifty people waiting. We came in turns, and if
any one tried to get in ahead of his turn the rest of us howled, "Wait
your turn." One fat, important-looking foreigner tried to get into the
clerk's room without waiting. Three men waiters jumped up and turned
him out. This pleased the rest of us and we all giggled with glee.

[Illustration: _Uniform of a Viennese Red Cross Girl, Field Gray
Trimmed in Red._]

VIENNA IN WAR TIME.

[Illustration: _Scene Along the Danube._]

I had never realized the wonderfulness of the German food card system
until I went to Vienna. In Germany you can buy at a reasonable price
your allotted ration of food, and the poor people are just as well off
as the rich, but in Vienna the rich people have everything and the poor
people are in great need because of the lack of food regulations, and
while there is an abundance of food it is so dear that the poor cannot
afford to buy. And Vienna is not like Berlin--there are a great many
poor people in Vienna.

[Illustration: _Funeral of Franz Josef. The Emperor and Crown Prince of
Austria in the Foreground._]

[Illustration: _Viennese Vegetable Woman._]

For some time there has been a bread card in Vienna, and at the time
of my visit, November 1916, the government was just beginning to take
the food question in hand, and a few weeks before Christmas a coffee
and a sugar card were issued. But the Austrians have not the gift for
organization which the Germans have, and I heard that even six months
later the food distribution was in a very poor state. I talked to many
Austrians, and they all told me that they were anxious to have the
entire German food card system established in Austria.

[Illustration: _Collecting Books, Papers and Tobacco for the Hungarian
Soldiers._]

Austria is a great agricultural and wheat-raising country, and yet when
I was there, there was very little bread in Vienna. The beautiful white
Viennese bread had entirely disappeared, and a soggy brown stuff had
taken its place. There was one kind called "Anker Bread" that was still
very good, and the people stood in line to get it. And all this was not
because flour was scarce but because of its poor distribution.

None of the restaurants are allowed to serve bread, even if you have
a bread card you cannot get it, and the only place a stranger can
get bread in Vienna is for breakfast at his hotel. People who eat in
restaurants carry their bread with them, and generals and all sorts of
high officials have little packages of bread concealed in their pockets
which they slyly pull out at the table.

All the white flour is baked into cakes, and the Viennese cakes are
as white and as wonderful as in their palmiest days. But the price! In
a café a piece of cake of two thin layers costs one crown twenty-five
hellers, about a quarter in our money.

[Illustration: _Wholesale Cabbage Market in Vienna._]

In most German cities one person gets about a pound of meat a week,
but in Vienna there is no meat card and you can buy as much meat as you
like if you can afford to buy it. Every meat shop in Vienna is hanging
full of meat--sausage, ham, pork, beef, chickens and geese. I went
through the great Viennese market which is squares and squares long.
Everywhere meat, meat, meat. I had forgotten that there was so much
meat in the world. Stall after stall just loaded down with hams, but
no bacon. Mostly young pigs. But no one was buying, only looking--like
Till Eulenspiegel, as though the smell was enough. The hams were from
one dollar to one dollar and sixty cents a pound, and the beef was even
higher. Sausage was not so expensive, and geese were cheaper than in
Germany.

I had never seen such an abundance of everything. Acres and acres of
cabbages piled up as high as a house--great, hard-looking heads of a
fresh green color. Then barrels and barrels of apples. Not such good
apples as we have in America, but at such a fancy price! For thirty-two
cents we got six little dried-up apples that we could hardly eat.

From the apple market we went to the onion market. Can you imagine a
square as big as Union Square in New York where nothing but onions are
sold? Well, they have that in Vienna. And the most wonderful onions!
Small white ones, small red ones, big yellow ones and green ones! Onion
peelings flew around everywhere, and do you know that they really
smelled sweet? But the old women in back of the stalls did not look
sweet, but as though they had stood among onions so long that they had
become dried-up onions themselves.

[Illustration: _Waiting for Soup at a Viennese Soup-Kitchen._]

They had no potatoes in the market, but the restaurants seemed to have
plenty of them. Cheese was just beginning to be scarce, and one person
could buy only a quarter of a pound at a time. We collected cheese to
take back to Berlin with us, and we took turns going into the shops
and buying a piece so that the clerks would not know that we were
together. We collected a good many pounds and we got them safely over
the frontier.

Eating in a restaurant in Vienna in war time is the most expensive
thing of which I know. Small meat or deer orders were from eighty cents
upward, and no potatoes go with this order. In Germany, you can get a
piece of meat, two potatoes and a vegetable for thirty-two cents.

There seems to be plenty of milk and sugar in Vienna, but it is
forbidden for any café to serve milk in coffee between the hours of two
and seven o'clock, when every Viennese goes to a café to drink coffee.
This restriction saves many gallons of milk. The coffee is real coffee
and very good. You can have as many eggs as you like, very nicely
cooked at fifteen cents an egg. Sugar is not served on the trains
between Berlin and Vienna, but in a café they give you three lumps with
a cup of coffee. Saccharine is served with tea.

[Illustration: _Sick Hungarian Soldiers Receiving Gifts in Vienna._]

The war has been very hard on the Austrians, and distress shows itself
in the faces of the people you meet on the streets. They do not come
of the sturdy stock that the Germans come from. They have always been
a very religious people, and the war has made them more religious than
ever, and now they are always burning candles before their favorite
altar or saint's picture. The sacred picture in the Church of St.
Stephen is always lighted by dozens of candles, and there is never a
moment when the church is opened that some one is not kneeling before
this picture, children, soldiers and old women with their empty market
baskets. For the Catholic Viennese this picture is the center of
everything, and in the war this inanimate object has played a big part.
They pray to it to help the men in battle, to care for the wounded and
to bless the souls of the dead. Centuries ago this picture was stolen
by the Turks or some other kind of Pagan, and it is said that the eyes
of the picture shed real tears until it was brought back and placed
in a Christian church again. It stands on the ground on an easel, and
people are allowed to touch the wire over it.

Small change is very scarce in Vienna, and they have torn the two-crown
paper bills in two, and each half is good for a crown. They also use
stamps for change as they do in Germany. Now they are making crowns and
half-crowns of paper.

This winter is going to be terrible for the poor of Vienna, for last
winter was bad enough. I really wonder what the people will do to get
along.

SOLDIERS OF VIENNA.

I had been in Vienna, and each time I had thought that the most
wonderful and exquisite things were the Viennese officers. They have
always seemed to me like dainty paper dolls which had just stepped out
of a fashion plate. I had imagined that in war time they would look
less spick and span--but no indeed, they looked just the same, real war
having made no difference.

The Austrian officer is of only one type. He is very tall, very slender
and very graceful, and he is mostly rather dark than light. He has
a small head and face, a straight nose, curved lips and a short but
square chin. He may have eyes of any color, but he is clean shaven--a
mustache is no longer the fashion. His nails are polished and his
manners are delightful. He is generally well educated and very clever.
But he does not look substantial. He seems to have no inner power.

[Illustration: _Franz Josef in Uniform._]

The uniform of the Austrian army from the commonest soldiers to the
highest official is away ahead of the German uniforms. The German
uniforms have the tendency to make the men look wide and squatty, and
the ugly little stiff flat caps of the Germans only emphasize this
fact. The Austrian uniform on the other hand makes the men look tall
and slender. The belt of the coat is high, and this makes the legs look
longer, and the straight cap adds more to the height.

Most of the officers' coats are of field-gray color, but not all as in
Germany. The artillery men, for instance, wear a coat of dark reddish
brown that is very stunning in color. The Hussars wear a short gray
coat of very heavy cloth and black trousers. Around their neck they
wear a fur collar and over the fur a heavy gold braid is tied. Other
officers wear white broadcloth uniforms, and although Vienna is by no
means a clean city these white suits are always spotless. Most of the
officers wear white kid gloves and their boots shine like a mirror. The
streets of Vienna are full of these officers. One wonders who is at the
front.

Nearly all the Austrian officers and many of the Viennese policemen
wear corsets, and you can see the corsets displayed in the men's
furnishings windows. They are not as long as a woman's corset and
are generally made of fancy silk, yellow and black--the Austrian
colors--preferred. All the officers wear such long swords that they
drag on the ground.

[Illustration: _Emperor Carl Franz Josef and His Family._]

They do not have shoulder straps to denote rank as they have in
Germany, but stars on the collar are used instead. A single star
made out of any kind of cloth denotes a common soldier; two stars
an _Unteroffizier_, or a corporal; three stars a _Feldwebel_, or a
sergeant; a silver star means a _Leutnant_, or a lieutenant; two silver
stars an _Oberleutnant_, or a first lieutenant; three silver stars
means a _Hauptmann_, or a captain; one gold star means a _Major_, and
so on up the list.

All the uniforms are very practical and very well made. The overcoats
of the common soldiers are lined all the way down, and the gray caps
are not stiff but are made out of a soft cloth. The legs are bound in
strips of heavy cloth which wind round and round.

All the common soldiers have their hats stuck full of fancy pins of
all kinds, and the soldiers from Tyrol have _Edelweiss_ pins stuck in
their hats, for that is the flower of the mountains. The Viennese Red
Cross girls also wear many pins. They wear a gray suit and a hat that
is trimmed with bright red and is very becoming.

If Vienna is full of officers the country around is full of common
soldiers. I saw them from the train windows. Some of them were farming,
others were fishing, and still others were walking along the country
roads, perhaps going home on a furlough.

[Illustration: _Soldiers at the Prater Park in Vienna._]

One day I went to the Central Cemetery in Vienna where Mozart, Gluck,
Beethoven, Schubert, Johann Strauss and Brahms lie buried in a little
plot of ground. Just before you come to the cemetery there is a
barracks. It had only a barbed wire fence around it and we could see
into the place. It was made up of small frame houses and looked like
a western mining town that had sprung up in a single night. Before
the door of a house near the fence a soldier was doing a good-sized
washing. He seemed to be very much worried for fear he was not getting
the things clean. I am sure he was rubbing everything full of holes.
When he saw us watching him, he first wiped the perspiration from his
brow, then he laughed. "_Sehr schwer_," (very hard), he said sighing.

The Central Cemetery is so large that nearly every one who dies in
Vienna is buried in it. When a funeral comes in at the gate the bells
are tolled, and the funerals came in one after another the day I was
there. The hearses of the soldiers were draped with the Austrian flag.
People follow the hearse walking. An old woman dressed in black and
with a black shawl tied over her head was holding on to the back of one
of these soldier hearses. It seemed as though she could not bear to be
parted from her dead. She was not weeping but had a strange grim look
on her face, a face in which all hope was gone.

From the cemetery we went to the Prater to see the less dismal side of
soldier life. The Prater is the great park of Vienna. It has splendid
drives, but one end is like a Coney Island or a Luna Park. It is
a very gay place even now in war time; there are merry-go-rounds,
roller-coasters and all kinds of side shows. The crowd was very much
mixed, but most of the men were soldiers, privates, and they looked
like men from the country. I saw one old Austrian general getting on
the loop-the-loop with a little boy. He was showing his grandson a good
time.

[Illustration: _Kaiser Carl of Austria on a Visit to Berlin._]

Along the streets one could buy roasted peanuts, roasted chestnuts,
roasted apples, and roasted potatoes. I bought a potato. It was served
to me in a newspaper, and I had to eat the thing without the aid of a
knife or a fork. It tasted fine to me.

One morning we went to the art gallery, but it was closed. Now it is
open only one day a week. When we came out of the gallery a common
soldier came up and spoke to us. He asked us what there was to see in
Vienna. He said he only had until six o'clock that night, and he did
not know what to go to see, as he had never been in Vienna before.

He was a young man with light hair and very gentle manners. He was
dressed in field gray but I noticed something queer about him. All
German and Austrian privates wear pieces of gray linen around their
necks instead of collars, but this man had on a white collar with a
black border. Was he a priest? He asked me a lot of questions as to
whether this church or that church was open or not and then I said to
him, "Are you a priest?"

"Yes," he answered, "I am the village priest of the little town of
X.... I am a volunteer in this war, and now after a year I am returning
on my first furlough to my little parish. My people will be very glad
to see me, but in two weeks I must be back to the front again. An old
man is taking my place. He was too old to go, but I am young and my
country needed me." He walked along with us a little way and when he
left us, he raised his hands over our heads and gave us his blessing.

[Illustration: _Austrian Soldiers in Winter Uniform._]

The guard change in the court of the city palace in Vienna is a great
spectacle. It takes about a half an hour and is much more elaborate
than the one in Berlin. I can't begin to tell all that takes place.
Soldiers stand in rows, then they come out and salute, and then they
go back again. The officers must stand without moving, they don't seem
to breathe, and this standing is so strenuous that three times in that
half hour they must be relieved. When the Austrian flag is brought out
all the men lift their hats and salute it with drawn swords. In between
the military band plays, and when the playing is over a major comes out
and congratulates the officers on their performance. It is like a piece
on the stage.

The opera in Vienna is always crowded with soldiers, and they make a
very gay assembly, officers with their gay uniforms and Viennese ladies
in their low-necked gowns. The customs in Vienna are not the same as
in America, and a real lady can take an officer to the theater or to
dinner, paying his way.

One night we were seated in a restaurant when a first lieutenant, a
tall fellow dressed in black and gold, came in with a lady. They sat
down at the table next to us. He was very polite, hanging up her coat,
taking a spot of dirt off her face, and then he read over the bill
of fare and asked her what she wanted. They were not married to each
other, for they used _Sie_ and not the familiar _Du_. He wanted her to
have either roast duck or roast goose, but she said no, that they were
too expensive, and she modestly took two "wienies" and some sauerkraut
at sixty cents a plate. "What a considerate lady," I thought, "she
doesn't want to be too hard on that poor officer." When the waiter came
around I nearly fell over to see her foot the bill, and then she gave
the officer five crowns to pay for the cab.

Another day I was in a shop buying cheese. A young lady came in with
three officers--two artillery officers and a hussar. First she bought
several dollars' worth of cakes, and then she bought each of the men
a bottle of fancy liqueur. Her bill was over thirteen dollars. She
carried the cakes and the bottle for the hussar, because he had on
white gloves and had no pockets. It is a great thing to be a Viennese
officer.

WOMEN WARRIORS.

Perhaps in no other war have there been so many women warriors as
in this one. In Russia, in Galicia, in Hungary, in Serbia, and in
Montenegro, countless women have gone out to fight. They have served in
the trenches, in the mountain passes and on ships. They have suffered
hardships the same as the men, enduring the cold, the wretched food and
the strenuous work without a murmur. Each one of the women has had love
of country and fireside in her heart, but in most cases it was love for
her husband from whom she did not wish to be separated that sent her to
the front.

The peasant women in these far eastern countries have always done
the work of men. They have tilled the soil, built houses and made
roads, and so it seems quite natural to them that they should fight. A
number of Russian women soldiers have been taken prisoners, and it is
impossible to tell them from men.

The German government does not permit her women to fight, but every now
and then one of them disguises herself as a man and enlists, fighting
for her country until she is found out. In France, a few women have
done the same thing, and in England a regiment of "Riflewomen" has
been formed, not for service on the front, but for home defense if it
ever becomes necessary. In Serbia, early in the war, women formed a
battalion known as the "Death's Head Battalion," and at that time they
were very active. Some women in the Austrian, Hungarian and Russian
armies have been made corporals and sergeants, and many of them have
received decorations for valor.

The most famous woman warrior of the present war has been the Grand
Duchess Augusta of Austria, wife of the Grand Duke Josef. Ever since
Italy entered the war she has been at the head of her regiment on the
Italian front. She dresses like a soldier, wears a helmet on her head,
carries a sword and rides her horse like a man. The Grand Duke is very
proud of her and does everything he can to encourage her activities.

Elizabeth Lorenz, also a Viennese, is the second famous woman warrior.
She is the wife of the famous surgeon Dr. Adolf Lorenz, and she went to
the front as her husband's assistant, driving a Red Cross wagon to and
from the firing line. She was decorated by Franz Josef before he died.

Another Austrian to serve her country was a little twelve-year-old
peasant girl, Rosa Zenoch, who, during the fighting at Rawaruska,
carried water to the soldiers in the trenches. In the thick of the fray
she stopped to give a drink to a wounded Hungarian soldier lying by the
wayside. Some shrapnel burst around her and she was severely wounded.
She was carried to the hospital train, but on the way to Vienna it was
necessary to amputate her leg. When Franz Josef heard about her case he
sent her a golden band set with diamonds, 10,000 crowns and a new leg.

In one Hungarian regiment the eighteen-year-old Anna Falacia served
five months without any one knowing that she was a girl. Since Anna's
mother died she and her twin brother had been inseparable, and when
he was called to the colors, she dressed herself as a boy and went
with him. During the storming of Belgrade the brother of Anna Falacia
was shot and he fell dying at her feet. When she saw him lying there
she burst into tears. They carried him away and she left her post and
followed the bier. The sergeant called her back. "I am Anna Falacia,"
she cried, "I am a girl, and now that my brother is dead, I am going
back."

A German woman who disguised herself as a man was Maria Balka. When
the Russians invaded Memel in East Prussia they killed Max Balka.
When his wife Maria saw what they had done, she swore that she would
have revenge. She dressed as a man and enlisted. No one knew her. She
was a good soldier and she rose from private to corporal and then to
sergeant. She even won a band for being one of the five best shots in
her regiment.

At Kowno, twenty thousand Russians were taken prisoners, and Maria
Balka with two underofficers and ten men were ordered to take one
thousand of them to Gumbinnen. There were no trains, and they had to
march. The orders were strict--if a prisoner got out of line he was to
be shot. It was no time for mercy.

In the village of Pilwiski they passed a hut. A Russian peasant woman
was standing in the doorway. She had a baby in her arms. When she saw
the men she rushed forward crying, "Peter! Peter Doroff!" A prisoner
broke from the ranks and rushed into her arms, although he knew the
order was death. Four German privates stopped and leveled their guns
and waited the order from Maria Balka to fire. Maria Balka's face
was all aflame; she would make at least one Russian suffer as she had
suffered. It was her moment. But the Russian woman flung herself at
Maria's feet.

"That is my husband," she pleaded, "Don't shoot him. He is all I have."

Maria's hand which had been raised to give the signal trembled and then
fell at her side.

"March," she said to the surprised soldiers.

"You may keep him," she said to the terrified woman. When Maria
reported at headquarters she explained what she had done, and she told
them that she was a woman. The next day she went back to Memel. Her
desire for revenge was dead.

One German woman, Anne Marie Reimer, the wife of a doctor in East
Prussia, served seven months as the driver of an automobile truck, and
the result of her experiences is a very interesting book _Seven Months
on the East Front as a Driver_. In this book, she tells how she guided
her automobile right up to the firing line. Once, when the fighting
was very fierce she did not have her clothes off for four weeks. When
the Kaiser came to review her regiment, she passed in review in front
of him with the rest of the men. In February, 1915, she was taken with
fever contracted by the exposure. Her husband brought her to Berlin. In
her book she says that no one knows the unselfishness and the kindness
of soldiers toward each other, and she thinks that war has an ennobling
influence on the men.

The Russian prisoners in the German prison camp at Zossen went in a
body to the German major and asked him to have a Russian prisoner,
Nicholas Nisoff, removed from their barracks. He was possessed with
the devil, they said, and he was trying to cast a spell over them. The
major sent for Nicholas Nisoff, and he came pale and trembling.

"Nicholas Nisoff," said the major, "sit down and tell me what is the
matter. What have you done that you are silent all day and cry out all
night?"

It was below freezing in the major's barnlike office, but Nicholas had
to wipe the perspiration from his brow as he staggered into a seat. He
began in broken sentences.

"It happened in Galicia. In the morning we took two hundred Austrian
and Hungarian prisoners. We shut them up in different places, and in
one hut where thirty of them were, I was detailed on night watch. All
night long I paced up and down before the cottage. It was very quiet,
but at last I heard a noise. The window was slowly opened and some
one jumped to the ground. "Halt!" I cried, "Halt! Or I will fire." The
person did not stop, so I fired into the darkness. I took out my pocket
lamp to see what kind of a Hungarian I had shot, and there on the
ground a slender figure was lying. I looked again. I could not believe
what I saw. It was a woman! Her cap had fallen off and her long yellow
hair was streaming about her. I felt her heart. It had stopped beating.
And I, Nicholas Nisoff, had killed a woman. And since that time I
cannot sleep, and in the night she comes to me with her long hair
streaming around, and pointing her finger at me she says, 'Nicholas
Nisoff! Why did you shoot me?'"

When he had finished, Nicholas again wiped the sweat from his brow and
the major wrote down something on a paper. The next day Nicholas was
taken away and brought to Berlin where he was given employment on a
railroad. He is much happier now, and it is only now and then that the
ghost of the Hungarian woman comes to haunt him.

Helene Lichowitz! When they came for Ivan Lichowitz, Helene begged
them not to take her husband. He was ill, she said. But it made no
difference, and three weeks later he was in the trenches. Once he
coughed so violently that he lost consciousness. But when he came to,
Helene Lichowitz was bending over him.

"I have come to take care of you," she said. For three weeks they were
together. Helene did the same work as a man, and most of Ivan's work
too. On a bitter cold day last December there was a night attack by
the Germans. The Russians were ordered to charge. Ivan stumbled along
blindly, and Helene supported him when she thought that he was going to
fall. When they had gone a little way, there was a great roar from the
German side, followed by a volley of bullets, shells burst in the air.

In the evening the German ambulance men came to save what they could of
the poor creatures lying there. Ivan was dead, but Helene was carried
to a field hospital. The German doctor did everything he could to
save her, but Helene Lichowitz did not want to live. She said her work
was done. In three days she died, holding the hand of the tear-dimmed
German doctor.

"Ivan Lichowitz!" she called in a low voice, "I come!"

HOW AMERICANS WERE TREATED IN GERMANY.

"Wilson Breaks with Germany!" So announced the _B. Z. am Mittag_ at
noon on Sunday February 5, 1917. It was a very cold day, almost the
coldest of that long cold winter. The chills were running up and down
my spine in our cold apartment, but this headliner froze me stiff.

"Wilson Breaks with Germany." That is a typical German headliner. They
never say "America" in the German papers, but always "Wilson," and it
is Wilson that gets the blame for everything and never the American
people.

The Monday after the break occurred the Americans flocked around
the Embassy. We were all tremendously excited. Some were talking
about "getting out" and others about "staying over." All were saying
something, but most of us were saying "We will wait and see." When war
was really declared, we took it much more calmly, we had grown used to
emotion.

Our breaking off relations was taken very quietly by the German people.
It was not flattering, and I felt that they should show a little horror
and emotion that the greatest country in the world was against them.
But the German people are sort of stunned in their emotions, and the
only real emotion they have is the wish for peace. Peace is all they
think about and long for.

When our Embassy went away all the Americans that remained behind went
to the station to see them off. It was a slushy, snowy night. German
policemen were everywhere and we had to show our passes to get out to
the train. The platform was full of people, and the people who were
going away were leaning from the train windows. Mr. and Mrs. Gerard
had a little crowd around their window. I saw two men from the German
Foreign Office in the crowd, Dr. Roediger and Herr Horstmann. Dr.
Roediger was the clever young German who censored most of the articles
of the American newspaper correspondents. His English was perfect.

When the train pulled out, there was a faint "Hurrah," and the people
turned down the steps, embassyless and ambassadorless.

Right after the break Herr Zimmermann gave out that the Americans in
Germany should be shown every courtesy, and that they should be treated
as neutrals, and that any discourtesy should be reported to him at
once.

Nothing happened to us until about the first of April all the Americans
were summoned to the Military Commandery, and here we were lined up and
registered. The _Militär_ advised us to go home. The Foreign Office too
gave us this advice. Even the American men were advised to leave, and
none of them were held.

The last of April the Americans got notices that they would have to
report to their local police every day to get official papers stamped.
Also that they could not go from one city to another without a special
permit which took three weeks to get, also that they could not go to
the suburbs of Berlin without a permit--this last included Grunewald.
The only bright spot was that we could stay out at night as late as we
liked.

But for most Americans this did not last long, and they got off with
reporting only once a week, and some of them had permanent permits for
going to certain places in the suburbs of Berlin. As I was expecting
to leave Germany, I never asked for one of these permits, for it was
an awful task to go to the Military Commandery for anything, because
there were always so many people there waiting, it took half a day
to get anything. But I got off from going to the police every day.
No Americans were allowed to go to either Potsdam or Spandau, Potsdam
because of the royal residences, and Spandau because of the military
stores. If you went any place without a permit, you were fined twenty
marks and were liable to imprisonment.

I lived at a boarding-house where there were a lot of German officers,
and on all the excursions that were made to the country by the
boarders, I was asked to go along. The officers were very nice men, and
they said that they would protect me if anything was said about my not
having a permit, but I never went with them, for I don't look like a
German and I was afraid I would be caught. I always stayed within the
law.

I lived at that boarding-house seven weeks just before I left Germany,
and I can honestly say that I never heard a word against my country.
When I first went there I felt worried, for I was afraid that they
would say things to me about America, and that I would answer back and
maybe I would get into trouble and be arrested and held in Germany.
But nothing like that happened. We hardly ever talked war--no one in
Germany talks war as we do here in America--we talked about things to
eat.

At this boarding-house I made friends with a very nice little German
girl. One day we were talking and she said to me, "You and I have
become very good friends. I never would have made up with you if you
had been an English girl, but we Germans have no hate for America." And
I have found this true of most of the German people--I am not speaking
of the high officials and the big _Militär_, for I don't know anything
about their sentiments--but the German folks, they have no hatred for
us.

Amelia, the boarding-house maid, astonished me one day by asking if
America was in the war. When I told her "yes" she wanted to know on
which side, and when I told her she said, "_Donnerwetter_, we have so
many enemies, I can't keep track of them. But I want to go to America,
and I am going there after the war."

Every place I went I met Germans who want to come to America after the
war; every man on the police force where I reported wants to come.

All the time all sorts of reports were being spread in America. My
family heard that I was being held as a hostage, and another report was
that an American lady in Dresden had been shot as a spy. The lady was
called up by Mr. Oswald Schuette, an American correspondent, and the
lady herself answered the phone. It was the first she had heard of it.

Personally I never heard of an American that was mistreated. I heard
of one American that did a lot of blowing and talking, and he was
forced to report to the police twice a day, and he had to be in at
eight o'clock at night, but when he got a passage for America he was
allowed to leave the country. All the American business houses were
open as usual, and no American property was destroyed and no money was
confiscated. Of course one has the feeling that one is in an enemy's
land when one has to go to the police every week, and it did get on my
nerves. And yet, every one was nice to me, and I was there five months
after the break.

The German people have the greatest faith in their undersea-boats and
the majority believe that the war will be over before America really
gets into it. To them America seems far away. They don't know our power
and our might, and they are hoping, hoping that the war will be over
soon. Ask any German when the war will be over and the answer is, "In
two months from now." "It can't last," they say.

I LEAVE GERMANY, JULY 1, 1917.

It is easier to cross the frontier going out of Germany than any other
frontier in Europe. This statement includes neutral Denmark where they
nearly tore my clothes off me searching for gold. You are not allowed
to take any gold out of Denmark. There are two reasons why the German
frontier is easy to cross. One is, that most people who come out of
Germany are anxious to come out, and they are afraid to hide anything
for if it was found they would be sent back and held. The second reason
is that the Germans don't give suspicious persons a permit to leave the
country.

The day before you arrive at the German frontier the officials there
know all about you. They know the history of your life and every move
you have made in Germany. They know whether you are to be well searched
or to be put through a form of searching. At the frontier they ask
you no questions, for everything has been sent to them by the military
commandery in Berlin. An American newspaper man in Copenhagen told me,
that if the man at the door of the searching-room at the frontier gives
you a low number you are to be well searched, and if you are given a
high number you are hardly searched at all.

It takes at least three weeks for a foreigner--neutral or enemy--to get
a permit to leave Germany; that is unless you have influence, and then
it can be done in a few days. But that influence has to be a powerful
one, for the military authorities are very strict.

The regular way to get the permit is to make a formal application at
your local police. This application must be very politely written. I
wrote out my application so, "_Ich ersuche um Erlaubnis, nach Amerika
zu gehen._" My local policeman was horrified at this. "It is not polite
enough," he said, "you must take it home and write it over." So I wrote
beginning like this, "Honorable Gentlemen, I beg politely to have the
honor to ask your gracious permission to leave Germany, etc." This
letter made a great hit with the policeman.

After waiting a while, and if the police find that you have a clean
record, you get a notice to come to the military commandery on a
certain day. There you find your permit or _Passierschein_ waiting for
you. The soldier in charge asks you what day you wish to leave and then
he gives you a day before that date and a day after that date--three
days upon which you can travel.

Then the soldier takes a stack of papers--about twenty sheets, and
puts them--with your pass, four photographs and your permit ticket--in
an envelope and tells you to go to the police headquarters. Then your
running around commences, and it takes you at least two days to get all
the necessary stamps and seals. Then the evening before you leave the
country you must go to your local police and register. If you should
forget to do this you would be sent back from the frontier.

You are not allowed to take with you any writing of any kind, or
printed matter, books etc., out of Germany without having them first
censored. They have a place where the letters are read and sealed, and
if you have a lot of books they send a soldier to your house. He looks
over the books and packs your trunk and then seals it, and it is not
opened again at the frontier. You pay the soldier one mark an hour for
the work.

You are not allowed to take anything that Germany might need, out of
Germany--no tools, no instruments and no electrical apparatus; that
is, if the things have been bought in Germany. If it is something of a
foreign make you can take it with you.

I had a little electric stove that I was very fond of, and I knew
that if I ever went to the frontier with that stove they would take
it away from me in a minute, as it was new and German make. I went to
an influential man I knew in the Foreign Office and I asked him if he
would seal up my stove for me. He laughed but said, "The German Foreign
Office can't seal up a stove." I was disappointed but not daunted, and
I inveigled the military division of the Foreign Office to help me in
getting a permit to take my stove over the border.

You are allowed to take one thousand marks out of Germany, so I got all
my money over that amount changed into Swedish money. I took it to Dr.
Roediger, the censor, and asked him to seal it for me.

"How many marks have you?" he asked.

"No marks at all," I answered, "that is Swedish money." As he was a
nice, sensible, clever man, he asked no more questions but sealed it
for me.

It was Sunday when I left Berlin. The train was almost empty. I had my
money in my hand grip, and in the other hand I had my precious stove
which had a case like a kodak. At Rostock a man came through the train
and asked to see our passports. He only looked at the passports of the
Germans in the coupé with me, but he took my pass and wrote a long list
about it on a slip of paper. The people in the coupé stared at me.

At noon we came to Warnemünde. At the door of the military customs
we were given a number. Mine was "J 19." Then we went into a room
where a soldier called out the numbers. There were only about thirty
of us in all, I was the only enemy--the rest were Germans and Danes.
When the man called "J 19" I handed him my pass and my permit. "Oh, a
_Passierschein_." he said. The passes were shoved through a little slot
in the wall, and as soon as our pass examination was through, we were
let into a room where our baggage was examined.

As I entered the room, a soldier stepped forward. He had my pass in
his hand. "What is your name?" he asked, and that question was the only
question that I was asked when I crossed the frontier out of Germany.

A soldier in a black uniform opened my trunk first. I showed him the
permit I had for the stove. He looked at the sealed packages and then
he passed me on to another soldier in gray. This soldier took the
wrapping off all my sealed packages, and then he asked me if I had any
other writing or books in my trunk, and when I said, "No," he closed
the trunk again without taking one thing out of it or looking at it at
all. This man spoke rather good English, and when I asked him where he
had learned it he answered, "Talking to little American children that
I know."

Then he told me that I would have to be searched and he gave me the
number "91." He carried my baggage to the dressing-room for me. Here a
woman searched me. I had to take off my skirt and waist and shoes, but
I was not torn apart, and the searching was anything but thorough. When
I came out I was given my pass again and told I could get on the boat.
The whole performance did not take more than fifteen minutes.

On the boat I had to have my baggage searched again by the Danish
officials, but this was merely a farce, for they knew well enough that
nobody was trying to export anything out of Germany. The dinner on
the Warnemünde boat was wonderful--everything possible and without a
card. We all sat down and ate and ate and ate. After dinner, lovely
girls came around selling the most wonderful strawberries. But when we
were out about an hour the sea got very rough. Afterwards we left the
boat and boarded a train on the island. Before the train started we
all stood in the corridor of the train looking at the boat we had just
left. It was all spattered down the sides with red. Our thoughts were
all the same, and then in the silence, the piping voice of a little
German girl was heard, "_Wie schade um die Erdbeeren!_" And we all
echoed her thoughts, "Too bad about the strawberries."

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Germany in War Time - What an American Girl Saw and Heard" ***

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