my nationality. I replied that I was an Englishman. For a moment there was a profound silence all round, and I was beginning to think that I should be accidentally shoved off the moving train, when a voice asked, 'Have you got any English cigarettes?' As it happened I had a couple of packets of a brand that I very much disliked, and I distributed the contents of one all round. This sop to Cerberus had the happiest results. When at the next junction I had to change trains, two or three of the soldiers climbed down with me and insisted upon carrying my very portable luggage for me to the farther platform.

The second experience occurred not many months ago, when I was coming up on a journey from Vienna to Berlin. When we got into the German train at Tetschen, there was a young Englishman standing in the corridor who looked rather wistfully at my golf-clubs. The train was full, as usual, and he had failed to find a seat. After we had gone a short way, he opened the door of our compartment and asked if there was a vacant seat. On being told that there was, he sat down, explaining to me that he had only a second-class ticket but would gladly pay the difference on to Berlin.

Presently came along the ticketcollector, to whom the Englishman handed his ticket, saying in very broken German that he wanted to pay the additional fare. The collector grunted, and went off and fetched an inspector, to whom, after the Englishman had vainly tried to explain the situation in German, he addressed himself in English. In the meantime I had explained matters to him in German; but, paying no attention to me, the inspector turned to the Englishman and said, 'We don't speak English here. You're in Germany now, and if you have anything to say, you must say it in German.' Then,

looking round for applause, he continued in German: 'Who gave you permission to travel in a first-class compartment? You have broken the regulations and must pay twice the first-class fare for the whole distance.'

This rudeness and official punctilio, however, brought forth a storm of protest from my fellow voyagers. They all declared that they themselves were quite ignorant of the regulations in question; and how then should an Englishman, or any other foreigner, be expected to know them. The place was vacant, the Englishman had volunteered to pay the difference, and that was surely sufficient.

The official declined to listen to any expostulations. The Englishman thereupon said that he would willingly leave the compartment and asked for the return of his ticket, which, it turned out, was a through ticket to Hamburg. The inspector, however, declined to give it up until the sum claimed had been paid; and the more his own compatriots abused him for his scurvy behavior, the more violently and obstinately he stuck to the letter of the law. The matter was not settled until we got actually to Berlin, and, forming a small deputation, laid the full facts before a yet higher functionary, who, thank goodness, had some notions of elementary justice and reason.

Much capital was made last year, in the Franco-British press, out of an assault delivered by Prince Joachim of Prussia upon a party of French officers who were dining with their wives in the Hotel Adlon, Berlin. The episode was certainly disgraceful; but it must be admitted that Prince Joachim has long been notorious as a blustering bully, and that upon this occasion he had been gazing upon the champagne when it bubbled. In the ordinary course, a conversation in French provokes little or no comment; and, so far from the

speaking of English being objected to, people are, on the contrary, only too eager to refurbish their acquaintance with that tongue, and to give you full particulars of where they have worked in England or America, where they were interned, and what they hope to do as soon as passports again become available to German citizens.

The last two incidents are, however, instructive, for they illustrate the intransigeance of the old German Junker and official classes of all grades, and they show the difficulties to be contended against by such Germans as have taken the lessons of the war to heart, and are struggling to make the disappearance of militarism coincide also with the spread of a more urbane and democratic spirit. The dice are, however, weighted against them, so long as the present generation of Junkers and officials survives.

II

When, however, it comes to business or official relations, one very soon realizes that the German is unable to resist the temptation to score off his late enemies as much as he can. One of the commonest illustrations of this propensity is the twenty-five-per-cent surtax which Germans try to impose upon foreigners. You can go into a shop, for example, and order a number of articles. As soon as the assistant finds out from your name or address (if you have not long before been betrayed by your accent) that you are a foreigner, down goes the twenty-five-per-cent Zuschlag on the bill. But for the wise, the remedy is simple. You begin by pointing out that, under the terms of the peace treaty, Germans are forbidden to differentiate against foreigners; and, if that produces no effect, you walk out with the intimation that to-morrow you will get the goods ordered, through a

German friend- and at another shop.

Nothing, again, could be more courteous than the way in which my colleague and myself have been, in appearance, treated by the authorities, but we are fully aware that, as representatives of the bitterly hated 'Northcliffe Press,' whose alleged calumnies against Germany are almost a daily theme with the majority of newspapers, we are, nevertheless, quite cordially disliked, and that we are never likely to get any real favor shown to us. Quite the contrary. Coincidence is notoriously long in the arm, but was it altogether a coincidence, I wonder, that when, not long ago, we wanted to get a certain report over to London before it had appeared in the German press, our telephone, which had previously worked quite admirably, suddenly became gestört, and remained in that useless condition for an unaccountably long period?

That amusing Dickens creation, Mr. Joseph Bagstock, used, if I remember right, to be fond of referring to himself in the following terms: 'Tough, sir, tough is Joey B. Tough and de-vilish sly.' Well, Joey B. was as tender as spring lamb and as angelically simple as Amelia Sedley, in comparison with many Germans whom I could name. One cannot, perhaps, blame them too severely. The under dog is never enamored of his situation, and when that under dog has been accustomed for half a century to be the top dog and to have his enemy by the throat, he is doubly infuriated when the positions suddenly become reversed. If, then, the Germans can put spokes in some of our wheels, they naturally do so, and it is 'up to us' to see that we give them back as good as they give.

Besides, it is not only we civilians who suffer from these more or less impotent struggles. Germany has never ceased to regard and proclaim the Treaty of Versailles as an outrageous

arations, and the clearly inspired telegrams of the Washington correspondent of the Times, indicating that Mr. Harding would welcome an agreement between the English-speaking peoples, have been gall and wormwood to a Germany determined to play off the members of the Entente against one another. The press has not ventured to give a free rein to its indignation; but the feeling is there, and is embittered by a dawning perception that Mr. Lloyd George's outburst on Upper Silesia is not likely to end in anything substantial. The methodical German, then, while pushing back his nascent exuberance for the United States, is concentrating simply upon the material and practical aspects of future relations. Realizing that, for the moment, the situation is not ripe, Germany is devoting her attention more immediately to Russia and nearer markets; but she never lets the United States out of her sight; and speeches made at meetings of the Hamburg-Amerika line and similar large concerns show, not only that the restoration of prewar relations with the United States remains the cardinal object of German policy, but that, judged by the statistics of shipping, it is beginning to be realized. With this success Germany is momentarily content, and that is why American business men, journalists, and others find doors open to them which are closed to men of French or British nationality.

Not, I think, that the individual Englishman is personally disliked. It is generally admitted that the British occupation of the Cologne area has been marked by tact and forbearance, and the British missions in Berlin have frequently been praised to me for the quiet, unobtrusive manner in which they go about their business. The innate reluctance of the Englishman to make himself conspicuous has stood

him here in good stead. Except on special occasions, the British officers are almost always in mufti. When one recollects the outburst against Great Britain with which the war opened, and the immense popularity of Herr Lissauer's 'Hymn of Hate,' it is really astonishing to find so little overt trace of anti-British feeling. There are, of course, the recognized Anglophobes, headed by Herr G. Bernhardt of the Vossische Zeitung; but it is certainly curious how little the average German reflects that it was, after all, to the British that the German navy had ultimately to surrender in such dramatic fashion; that it was the British Empire which took over the bulk of Germany's colonial possessions; and that it is to the British Empire that Germany must look again for many of her indispensable raw materials and for customers for her finished products. As a matter of fact, Great Britain stands more than ever before in the sunshine of the German Michael. But the average German does not apparently look so deeply as this, and merely notices that Great Britain is showing a readiness to resume trade-relations with him, and to this end is prepared — within the limits of the Treaty of Versailles-to give him an opportunity to avoid national bankruptcy.

This is not, of course, to say that the British or even the Americans are positively popular or fêted here. Whatever may be the faults of the Germans, they have, at least, a spirit of national pride, which is sometimes lamentably lacking among the Austrians and Hungarians. During the many months which I spent in Austria and Hungary during 1919 and 1920, I heard many of the Allies declare that they found the friendliness and hospitality of the inhabitants almost too embarrassing. This criticism is not without justification. But neither Aus

tria nor Hungary ever seriously regarded herself as at war with Great Britain, France, or the United States. The troops of these nations practically never came into conflict with one another, and the pre-war personal relations between the wealthier and betterclass families in Great Britain, for example, and Austria-Hungary had been in many cases very cordial and intimate. It was, then, often very awkward for an Englishman, Frenchman, or American to find himself being invited to luncheons and dinners and dances with unfeigned friendliness, during a time when the Allied representatives in Paris were preparing in the treaties of Saint-Germain and Trianonsettlements infinitely more disastrous to Austria and to Hungary than was the Treaty of Versailles to Germany. Sometimes, in fact, the situation became intolerable, and some virulent outburst against our newest European allies compelled one to remind one's very hosts that, after all, they had begun the war by their ultimatum to Serbia.

There is no fear of any of the Allies being similarly embarrassed in Germany. Not long ago some of the Berlin correspondents gave prominence to a 'house law' of the von der Golz family, the members of which bound themselves to enter into no friendly relations with their ex-enemies, but to confine their dealings with them to strictly official matters. There was, as a matter of fact, nothing remarkable about this. A German baron to whom I mentioned this house law,' and with whom, as another old Cambridge man, I had fancied myself on tolerably good terms, bluntly told me that there was nothing extraordinary in this family pact, which was being observed in many houses. His avowal confirmed my own observations and experience. Exceptions may be made, for reasons of policy, in the

case of recognized Germanophiles of influence; but the ordinary ex-enemy will have no opportunity, even if he has the desire, to mingle in the intimate home life of any German family of good extraction. This may be bad Christianity, but it is understandable amour propre, and human nature.

IV

But if, in the case of the other Allies, there has been a certain German external correctness, there has been, and is to-day, one great exception. If Great Britain was the most hated enemy during the war, France is now loathed with a deadly hatred of which no secret is made. Before the war Germany certainly did not hate France so much as France hated Germany; and even during the war the German press often expressed its admiration for the bravery of the French poilus. All such admiration has long vanished. Not long ago an American to whom I was speaking of this bitter hatred had a simple yet striking example of the truth of these words. He was inclined to be skeptical, so I rang the bell for the waiter and asked him what he thought of the French. The man's eyes literally blazed, as he declared that he would willingly march against the French again to-morrow because, he said, 'they wish to make a nation of slaves of us.' When he had gone out of the room, I rang for the chambermaid, and she was equally outspoken in her detestation of the French.

People in railway-carriages speak quite openly about this hatred, and canvass the time—it may be twentyfive years, it may be longer - when the final reckoning with France is to come. 'We want,' the Germans say, 'no allies. We ask only to be left alone with the French, and we are sure that the next time France will not have Eng