sign of manly strength and that dishonesty is the highest form of
diplomacy. Then only should I set about getting the costume!"

Poor old Francis! How shrewd he was and how well he knew his Berliners!

There is nothing like newspapers for giving one an idea of national
sentiment. I had not spoken to a German, save to a few terrified German
rats, prisoners of war in France, since the beginning of the war and I
knew that my knowledge of German thought must be rusty. So I sent the
willing waiter for all the German papers and periodicals he could lay
his hands on. He returned with stacks of them, _Berliner Tageblatt,
Kélnische Zeitung, Vorwérts;_ the alleged comic papers, _Kladderadatsch,
Lustige Blétter_ and _Simplicissimus;_ the illustrated press, _Leipziger
Illustrirte Zeitung, Der Weltkrieg im Bild,_ and the rest: that
remarkable café even took in such less popular publications as Harden's
_Zukunft_ and semi-blackmailing rags like _Der Roland von Berlin._

For two hours I saturated myself with German contemporary thought as
expressed in the German press. I deliberately laid my mind open to
conviction; I repeated to myself over and over again: "We Germans are
fighting a defensive war: the scoundrelly Grey made the world-war: Gott
strafe England!" Absurd as this proceeding seems to me when I look back
upon it, I would not laugh at myself at the time. I must be German, I
must feel German, I must think German: on that would my safety in the
immediate future depend.

I laid aside my reading in the end with a feeling of utter amazement. In
every one of these publications, in peace-time so widely dissimilar in
conviction and trend, I found the same mentality, the same outlook, the
same parrot-like cries. What the _Cologne Gazette_ shrieked from its