editorial columns, the comic (God save the mark) press echoed in foul
and hideous caricature. Here was organization with a vengeance, the
mobilization of national thought, a series of gramophone records fed
into a thousand different machines so that each might play the selfsame
tune.

"You needn't worry about your German mentality," I told myself, "you've
got it all here! You've only got to be a parrot like the rest and you'll
be as good a Hun as Hindenburg!"

A Continental waiter, they say, can get one anything one chooses to ask
for at any hour of the day or night. I was about to put this theory to
the test.

"Waiter," I said (of course, in German), "I want a bag, a handbag. Do
you think you could get me one?"

"Does the gentleman want it now?" the man replied.

"This very minute," I answered.

"About that size?"--indicating Semlin's. "Yes, or smaller if you like: I
am not particular."

"I will see what can be done."

In ten minutes the man was back with a brown leather bag about a size
smaller than Semlin's. It was not new and he charged me thirty gulden
(which is about fifty shillings) for it. I paid with a willing heart and
tipped him generously to boot, for I wanted a bag and could not wait