not burden him with these extraneous details while he feasted his
eyes on the magic words: _Gesehen, Berlin_. Mount Olympus, Mecca,
Imperial and Ecclesiastical Rome all rolled into one--that is
authoritative Berlin to the German of the province.

"Gesehen, Berlin" he repeated with reverence, carefully folded the
passport and deferentially handed it back to me. I saw that I was
winning, so I sought to rise to the occasion.

"And now, Herr Commandant," I began, "can you suggest where I may
best begin my atrocity work tomorrow? Or first, would it not be
well for me to get a more complete idea of the invasion by seeing
on the map just what routes the Russians took coming in?"

He unfolded a large military map of peerless German accuracy and
regaled me for more than half an hour with the military features of
the campaign.

"Just tell me the worst things that the Russians have done," I
began, "and I will start investigating them tomorrow."

Then he anathematised the Russians and all things Russian, while
his orderly stood stiffly and admiringly at attention and the other
officers stopped in their tracks.

"First you should visit the ruins of the once beautiful old castle
at Labiau destroyed by the beasts," he thundered. "And they also
wantonly destroyed the magnificent old church near by."

He followed with an account of the history of the castle, and it