all the time except during seven periods of the day when they
take their meals." And it is a fact that prosperous merchants of
Berlin, before the war, had seven meals a day; first breakfast
at a comfortably early hour; second breakfast at about eleven, of
perhaps a glass of milk or perhaps a glass of beer and sandwiches;
a very heavy lunch of four or five courses with wine and beer;
coffee and cakes at three; tea and sandwiches or sandwiches and
beer at about five; a strong dinner with several kinds of wines
at about seven or seven-thirty; and a substantial supper before
going to bed.

The Germans are wonderful judges of wines, and, at any formal
dinner, use as many as eight varieties. The best wine is passed
in glasses on trays, and the guests are not expected, of course,
to take this wine unless they actually desire to drink it. I
know one American woman who was stopping at a Prince's castle
in Hungary and who, on the first night, allowed the butler to
fill her glasses with wine which she did not drink. The second
evening the butler passed her sternly by, and she was offered
no more wine during her stay in the castle.

Many of the doctors who were with me thought that the heavy eating
and large consumption of wine and beer had unfavourably affected the
German national character, and had made the people more aggressive
and irritable and consequently readier for war. The influence of diet
on national character should not be under-estimated. Meat-eating
nations have always ruled vegetarians.