The crowd was great, porters were as scarce as they used to be
plentiful, I was waiting for somebody, so I stood still and took
note of my surroundings.

Across the platform was a long train ready to start west, and from
each window leaned officers and soldiers bidding good-bye to groups
of friends. The train was marked _Hannover_, _Koln_, _Lille_. As
though I had never known it before, I found myself saying, "Lille
is in France, and those men ride there straight from here."

The train on which I had arrived had pulled out and another had
taken its place. This was marked _Posen_, _Thorn_, _Insterburg_,
_Stalluponen_, _Alexandrovo_, _Vilna_. As I stood on that platform
I felt Germany's power in a peculiar but convincing way. I had
been in Germany, in East Prussia, when the Russians were not only
in possession of the last four places named, but about to threaten
the first two.

Now the simple printed list of stations on the heavy train about to
start from the capital of Germany to Vilna, deep in Russia, was an
awe-inspiring tribute to the great military machine of the
Fatherland. For a moment I believed in von Bethmann-Holweg's talk
about the "map of Europe."

I was eager to see how much Berlin had changed, for I knew it at
various stages of the war, but I cannot honestly say that the
changes which I detected later, and which I shall deal with in
subsequent chapters of this book--changes which are absorbingly
interesting to study on the spot and vitally important in the
progress and outcome of the war--were very apparent then.