In my mail the next morning I found a card signed by Lieut. Forrester of
the hospital staff. It read:

"The bearer, Karl Armstadt, has recently suffered from gas poisoning
while defending the mines beneath enemy territory. This has affected his
memory. If he is therefore found disobeying any ruling or straying
beyond his permitted bounds, return him to his apartment and call the
Hospital for Complex Gas Cases."

It was evidently a very kindly effort to protect a man whose loss of
memory might lead him into infractions of the numerous rulings of German
life. With this help I became ambitious to try the streets of Berlin
alone. The notice from the tailor afforded an excuse.

Consulting my atlas to get my bearings I now ventured forth. The streets
were tunnel-like passage-ways closed over with a beamed ceiling of
whitish grey concrete studded with glowing light globes. In the
residence districts the smooth side walls were broken only by high
ventilating gratings and the narrow passage halls from which led the
doors of the apartments.

The uncanny quiet of the streets of this city with its three hundred
million inhabitants awed and oppressed me. Hurriedly I walked along
occasionally passing men dressed like myself. They were pale men, with
blanched or sallow faces. But nowhere were there faces of ruddy tan as
one sees in a world of sun. The men in the hospital had been pale, but
that had seemed less striking for one is used to pale faces in a
hospital. It came to me with a sense of something lost that my own
countenance blanched in the mine and hospital would so remain colourless