I found myself the other evening, after zigzagging all over Berlin with
an address given me at a typewriter agency, in a little apartment on the
outskirts of the town. The woman who lived there had been a
stenographer in the city until the war cut off her business, and she was
now supporting herself with the six marks (one dollar and fifty cents)
weekly war benefit given by the municipality and by making soldiers'
shirts for the War Department at fifty pfennigs (twelve and one-half
cents) a shirt. She was glad to get typewriting, and without words on
either side at once got to work. So we proceeded for a page or two
until something was said about an Iron Cross stuck inside a soldier's
coat.

"That is the Iron Cross of the second class," she interrupted; "they put
that inside. The first class they wear outside," and, as if she could
keep still no longer, she suddenly flung out, almost without a pause:

"My brother has the Iron Cross. I have seven brothers in the army.
Three are in the east and three are in the west, and one is in the
hospital. He was shot three times in the leg--here--and here--and here.
They hope to save his leg, but he will always be lame. He got the Iron
Cross. He was at Dixmude. They marched up singing 'Deutschland ueber
Alles.' They were all shot down. There were three hundred of them, and
every one fell. They knew they must all be shot, but they marched on
just the same, singing 'Deutschland ueber Alles.' They knew they were
going against the English, and nothing could stop them."

Her brother would go back if he had to crawl back--if only she could go
and not have to sit here and wait!

"I told you," she said, "when you first came in, that I was German. And