I asked you if you were an American, because I know that dreadful things
have been said in America about our Kaiser, and I will not have such
things said to me. Our Kaiser did not want the war--he did everything
he could to prevent the war--no ruler in the world ever did more for his
people than our Kaiser has done, and there is not a man, woman, or child
in Germany who would not fight for him." And this, you must remember,
was from a woman whose support was cut off by the war and who was making
a living by sewing shirts at twelve and a half cents a shirt.

I walked down the busy High Street that night in Cologne, and the bright
shop-windows with their chocolates and fruit--apples from Canada and
Hood River--crowded cafes, people overflowing sidewalks into the narrow
streets somehow reminded me of the cheerful Bordeaux I tramped through
in November. There are, indeed, many French suggestions in Cologne, and
in the shops they still sometimes call an umbrella a parapluie.

An American who lives in Cologne told me that the decrease in the number
of young men was noticeable, and that eleven sons of his friends had
been killed. To a stranger the city looked normal, with the usual
crowds. One did notice the people about the war bulletin-boards. They
were not boys and street loungers, but grave-looking citizens and their
wives and daughters, people who looked as if they might have sons or
brothers at the front.

The express from Cologne to Berlin passed through Essen, where the Krupp
guns are made, the coal and iron country of Westphalia, and the plains
of the west. It is a country of large cities whose borders often almost
touch, where some tall factory chimney is almost always on the horizon.
All these chimneys were pouring out smoke; there is a reason, of course,
why iron-works should be busy and manufacturing going on--if not as