Chapter III: Part 3

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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_.

"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."

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.

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.