viously he had mimicked a Prussian government assessor. On the present occasion, however, the fine young fellow was posing in French artist fashion at the window. He was thoughtfully pondering a French address, which he was to deliver here two weeks later.

(A few days before some fellow on an inspection trip delivered a witty, sarcastic speech at the railway station in Pechelbronn to the crowd all a-quiver with expectation, closing with: 'Now let us sing once more that beautiful song, "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles.")

Music is heard. The infantry is approaching. The red flag bobs up and down in the hands of their leader, who is laughing like a boy. They all exhibit their new freedom by walking with their hands in their pockets and their pipes in their mouths, or else by jogging along arm in arm. The crowd of civilians opens to let them through. A table is brought from the café, carried high over the heads of the crowd. A man climbs up on this and begins. People stand on tiptoe. A soldier is speaking. A second man. He shouts hoarsely:

'Must n't happen again. Is not permitted. Is a disgrace for the soldiers.'

At the training camp at O., men broke into the barracks, pillaged them, and sold the horses to the civilians. I ask myself in astonishment, what has this got to do with the revolution? What do people mean by acting that way? But one notes that it is simply a part of the business.

The senior officer of the garrison, in his brilliant general's uniform, stalks slowly behind us through the jesting, jostling crowd, stern-looking and as supercilious and well-groomed as ever. He paces back and forth a couple of times, addressing no one and saluted by no one, and then disappears. Just to think how formerly, wherever he went,

fear and trembling accompanied his presence!

A private soldier, an Alsatian is gesticulating from the table. He would not have joined the movement if such plundering was to occur. 'You all know me.' (To tell the truth the soldiers in the Soldiers' Council are no fools. They are not permitting the citizens to organize a home-guard until the garrison has left. They do not permit a single Alsatian in their council. They are not going to give the people arms to use against us. In addition, to-night all the soldiers are to be disarmed and no more officers are to rattle sabres.) Another man is now standing on the table. He is a northern German from his dialect, and addresses himself to the people of the town. They ought to rejoice with us. We, too, have freed ourselves from foreign rule. Note well that he says, 'We, too,' right on the market-place in H., a German speaking to Alsatians. I record it for permanent record. The bourgeois circle of civilians receives all these announcements and injunctions respectfully, assumes its new functions comfortably, and lets itself be flattered. A few begin to steal away. The balconies become empty. The thing gets to be tiresome. It is time to have coffee. The dogs fancy themselves secure. Just wait, my gentlemen, your laughing time will soon be over. Finale. Music. They march away.

The revolution gives evidence of itself at home. Early in the morning my servant left with 20 marks. That is the way one celebrates a revolution. The peasants bring in no milk for the children. For some time they have not chosen to do so. Monday morning we have our annual fair. Many civilians are wearing red arm-bands, but we also notice the tricolors. The local papers caution the people to restrain their sentiments and not to irritate the soldiers

unnecessarily. My colleague, S., has returned from Kreuznach. We discussed some of the disconcerting conditions. He said to me reproachfully:

'Now you've got your revolution, you with your Frankfurter Zeitung!'

Meanwhile, a report reaches us that the Belgians and French are fraternizing with our revolutionary soldiers at the front, and that English vessels are flying the red flag. I am nearly taken in by these reports. Anyway, I get some satisfaction out of them and think that I will call upon some of the gentlemen. On the street I meet our worthy head pharmacist, W. He listens with dismay to my rejoicing.

'So!' I laugh. 'Now, there is no more blue, white, and red, or black, white, and red. Nothing but red, red, red everywhere.'

Only a few days before we had devised a charming sign for him. A blue, white, and red border, and within it his name with a tremendous acute accent on the final e. I enter some other drug-stores. The poison-mixers are equally perturbed. Professor E., whom I met on the way to the railway where he is going to Strassburg, shaking the dust of H. from his feet, laughs and raises his hand protestingly. He is an Alsatian, and replies:

'A victorious army never starts a revolution.'

The conditions of the armistice, which came out in extra editions of the newspaper, attracted hardly any attention. The domestic situation has absorbed all our interest. The war has been swallowed up in the revolution. To be sure, we observed the Alsatians standing around in groups and fairly intoxicating themselves with the number of locomotives and cars which we have got to deliver. Certainly they are lucky. The Strassburg Neue Zeitung of Sunday heads its principal editorial, 'Fragments.' It speaks disrespectfully

of Wilhelm, who wanted to smash the Alsatian constitution to fragments, and who by his undignified clinging to the throne had brought things to desperate straits. Now the whole German constitution was in fragments, etc.

'All the so-called solutions of the Alsace-Lorraine question are to be viewed from the same standpoint, whether an autonomous federal State, or neutrality, or a popular vote. Democrats as we are, we do not shrink from saying that we refuse a popular vote to-day. It would only be a way to bamboozle France. Moreover, it is our firm belief that even the strongest repressive measures would no longer make such a thing effective. We know what we want. Our open protests, not only at Bordeaux, but also in the elections of 1873 and at Berlin, prove this, and it is certainly false to assert that the Alsatian people were not asked to express themselves concerning annexation. Their wishes were clear and definite, and the world has known that they were for nearly fifty years. If there is to be a popular vote it would have no meaning except as an inquiry from the French as to whether we wished to remain part of France. We burn with eagerness to answer this question to the French.'

This is a very appropriate reaction to the liberation of Germany. To these people it means liberation from Germany. That is no surprise.

In our little village we had a meeting of the common council in the afternoon. The honorable burgomaster, former assessor, made a report upon the changes that have occurred in the Imperial Government. He stated that the hour has come and all that, following the same lines of thought as the article entitled 'Fragments.' The next day, in the sewing-room, where the patriotic women's union for gifts and for bandages for the wounded, ordinarily

plies its labors, twenty sewers were secretly sewing. They were employed, in behalf of the city, making new flags. We know what the colors are.

In the course of Monday night we heard rifle-shots about one o'clock. (Two nights earlier I had been wakened about the same hour by rifle-shots, and about ten o'clock there had been an alarm of an air-attack. However, the aviators merely dropped notices saying that they would arrive on the 15th. When I inquired the next morning what the shots meant, they told me it was a Bavarian troop train. The people did not want to go any further. They made a row at the railway station, detached cars, and shot up the signal lights.) The present night the shooting resulted in a little skirmish with an unlighted auto, which arrived from Strassburg and was captured by the sentries at this point. The automobile was passing through the street with armed soldiers. It was not learned what they intended to do, but one heard rumors that they proposed to seize a barracks. It was clearly a case in which only Alsatians were concerned, who wanted to go home, together with their auto.

We had a new experience Tuesday, when there was pillaging in Barracks Street. The barracks form a long gigantic block of buildings. The civilian population, intermingled with soldiers, crowded around the doors at three or four points. Many of the civilians were country people with their flat hats and short jackets. They had brought hand-carts, horses and wagons, and spans of oxen. Several kept in the background. They approached from all the neighboring highways. Before one of the yellow barracks stood a crowd of one hundred men, struggling, jostling, and shoving each other to and fro. As I approached I saw that several windows in the second story were

.

open. Suddenly soldiers without caps stuck their heads out and laughed. All at once a number of soldiers appeared standing at the windows above. They leaned backward and threw out whole armfuls of boots, and other material. Then they turned back again and threw out more boots, scattering them in every direction. The crowd precipitated itself upon them. Boys ran away with one boot. The people collected in compact masses, fighting, shouting, and quarreling. Wagons and carts crowded up. There were guards of soldiers before the entrances, which to-day are locked. Guards of soldiers were in front.

For the most part the soldiers when doing sentry-duty no longer carry their rifles on their shoulder or slung on their backs with the muzzle upward. They have quickly adopted the Russian style of carrying them slung with the stock upward. The way they wear their caps has changed, and likewise indicates a certain copying of the Russians. The soldiers on guard-duty all wear new uniforms. The report has got abroad and is very credible that immense stocks which cannot be carried off are in the storerooms. The men Idid not wish to leave them for the French.

But these newly-clothed soldiers were regularly delivering their apparel to the greedy peasants and civilians in the background. Soldiers kept going into the barracks without any control, repeating the trip as often as they could. In the background, in the neighboring houses, and behind the wagons they were reclothing themselves in their old uniforms (thus establishing their claim for another new suit from the army store, having sold the one they had just brought out).

Toward evening the situation changed. The eager civilians had been chased away. Sentries had established a cordon across the streets. No civilians

could approach. We heard also that the storerooms had been locked, and that some were already empty. The people of the city were crowding through the streets in a remarkably high-spirited, joyous, feverish way. Everywhere one saw sacks being dragged along. Never were there such crowds in the town as now. Miserable Russians just released from imprisonment mingled in the crowd with their bundles. Furniture van after furniture van rolled through the principal streets toward the railway. The taverns were packed with men. Hidden supplies were brought

out.

Of course, the French will bring whatever is needed with them. Trains are waiting at Nancy, loaded with white bread and red wine. The price of liquor falls precipitately. A man can buy fat geese for 5 marks a pound, where yesterday he had to pay from 12 to 15 marks.

I no longer wear my shoulder-straps, but somebody shouts to me on the street:

'Comrade, you must remove that cockade!' I remove it. Most of the officers I meet are in civilian clothing. Each one tells me how he plans to get away. The officers write out their own furlough permits and sign them themselves, or have them signed by the Soldiers' Council. The Soldiers' Council approves everything. Most of the superior officers have already left, naturally in civilian clothing. Among them is General S., who yesterday attended a session of the Soldiers' Council in order to make necessary arrangements for the departure of the regiments. The rumor has it that after a brief address he sank back upon his chair and wept, saying, 'You can realize how hard this is for me.' To-night the Dragoons march away. They go on foot across the Rhine to Baden. How comfortably our native colleagues parade

about. about. One said to me comfortingly, on my admission that I do not derive much pleasure from the prospect of exchanging the flesh-pots of Alsace for the turnips of Berlin, 'Certainly measures will be taken to prevent a famine in your country. You will get something. Depend upon it.' I replied, 'But this disgraceful armistice.' 'Oh, that will be mitigated. They merely want to humiliate the army. Don't worry about that.' We certainly have been brought to the dust. Everybody around us is happy, stealing, plundering, and thinking of his possessions. We have been struck to the ground as by a miracle over-night. We are being trodden under foot. A great number of wagons and people are hastening down B Street to the aviation field. Most arrive too late. The aviation field, we are told, was left absolutely unguarded. The civilians and soldiers got in and seized an immense quantity of supplies, great stores of gasolene and of metals. Finally, when it was too late, they posted double guards.

Toward evening little M. appeared. His first name is Aaron. He is a trader, and a distant relative of the fat millionaire. He arrived a year ago from Rumania, just recovering from the cholera, nervous, propitiating, pitiful, and timid. The most cruel form of Prussian sergeant discipline had done its worst with him, a defenseless Jew, who could not protect himself except by begging, bribing, and flattering. He finally succeeded in escaping with his misery to this little city. How he is rejoicing in his civilian clothing! 'What would you have? Is a man really a human being so long as he is a soldier? Is a man really considered a human being by the officers? And if an Alsatian got sick? Then he had to visit the staff physician. But he never disturbed himself, with his monocle in his eye and his cigar in his mouth. “You

are merely a dd Alsatian.” How happy he was! Ah! It was bound to come. It has been coming for a long time. I hope the big heads will feel it. They were always commanding, commanding, and sticking it out, and we were in the corner.' So he continued an endless story of his sufferings, sometimes humorous, and sometimes pathetic. He told how the Prussian ladies in the early days of the war interested themselves in a dignified and imposing way in hospital service. He described all their mutual jealousies: how a pharmacist had entered one of these women in his prescription book under the heading, 'Die Sau'; how this became a government matter; how he was assigned as orderly to this lady; how she used to order, 'Go over to my regiment to my regiment.'

An officer's wife, whose child was ill, said to me a few days before, when I visited her, 'Well, if they depose our Emperor I don't want to live any longer.' It was no affectation on her part. It was her real feeling. But I But I meet her now. She is still living, and is merely worried about what is going to happen to her furniture. 'And our Crown Prince. Such an elegant gentleman.' Yes, what can you reply to that? The lady had her faith. She did finely with it. How is she to understand people of different ideas. When I discuss these things with her, she thinks that perhaps the good things of the world might be divided a little more equally and justly. But the only people to blame are the rich peasantry and the bankers. "They might change that; but our Kaiser? And surely they cannot change everything. Consider a country squire, who rules his little domain like a small king, and everything runs along perfectly and the people depend on him and swear by him. Now if that should be overthrown?'

Then I go to Sister Grete's day nurs

ery. She has lived in Alsace a long time, but is German to the bone. She is much depressed. Not long ago she searched in vain for a home for her parents in Southern Germany, but she could not find anything. Her father is connected with the office of the architect of the cathedral at Strassburg, a position that carries a pension. He is an old man. Will the French take him over? What has happened to our great rich Germany? See how the railway cars look. Why, the cushions are all torn and cut. There are no curtains. Even the netting is gone from the bundle-carriers. There is no heat. The locomotives just crawl along. They have n't any coal. The machinery does n't work. There are beggars on the street everywhere, asking for bread. Why, it is enough to make you distracted. She will never, never become French, but she has no recourse but to stay here.

On Wednesday we were left without orders. Our commanding officer, our head inspector, our sergeant, were all away under one pretext or another. The hospital was to be demobilized. We impatiently awaited our turn. There was a fearful lack of cars. Three hundred were called for and only twenty available. We had transferred all the seriously ill to the City Hospital. When I went to the hospital on Wednesday the undertaker's wagon was waiting. A man in one of the wards had suddenly died. The fearful grippe takes its toll unceasingly. Trunks were packed in all the quarters, and wards were cluttered with straw, hospital materials, and books. Everywhere we heard the hammering of packing boxes being nailed. The great rooms filled with porcelain and utensils were still quite full. Women were standing about. It was not clear who was in control.

We are to leave on Thursday. Obviously there has been a lot of stuff