I found myself the other evening, after zigzagging all over Berlin with an address given me at a typewriter agency, in a little apartment on the outskirts of the town.  The woman who lived there had been a stenographer in the city until the war cut off her business, and she was now supporting herself with the six marks (one dollar and fifty cents) weekly war benefit given by the municipality and by making soldiers’ shirts for the War Department at fifty pfennigs (twelve and one-half cents) a shirt.  She was glad to get typewriting, and without words on either side at once got to work.  So we proceeded for a page or two until something was said about an Iron Cross stuck inside a soldier’s coat.

“That is the Iron Cross of the second class,” she interrupted; “they put that inside.  The first class they wear outside,” and, as if she could keep still no longer, she suddenly flung out, almost without a pause: 

“My brother has the Iron Cross.  I have seven brothers in the army.  Three are in the east and three are in the west, and one is in the hospital.  He was shot three times in the leg—­here—­and here—­and here.  They hope to save his leg, but he will always be lame.  He got the Iron Cross.  He was at Dixmude.  They marched up singing ’Deutschland ueber Alles.’  They were all shot down.  There were three hundred of them, and every one fell.  They knew they must all be shot, but they marched on just the same, singing ‘Deutschland ueber Alles.’  They knew they were going against the English, and nothing could stop them.”

Her brother would go back if he had to crawl back—­if only she could go and not have to sit here and wait!

“I told you,” she said, “when you first came in, that I was German.  And I asked you if you were an American, because I know that dreadful things have been said in America about our Kaiser, and I will not have such things said to me.  Our Kaiser did not want the war—­he did everything he could to prevent the war—­no ruler in the world ever did more for his people than our Kaiser has done, and there is not a man, woman, or child in Germany who would not fight for him.”  And this, you must remember, was from a woman whose support was cut off by the war and who was making a living by sewing shirts at twelve and a half cents a shirt.

I walked down the busy High Street that night in Cologne, and the bright shop-windows with their chocolates and fruit—­apples from Canada and Hood River—­crowded cafes, people overflowing sidewalks into the narrow streets somehow reminded me of the cheerful Bordeaux I tramped through in November.  There are, indeed, many French suggestions in Cologne, and in the shops they still sometimes call an umbrella a parapluie.

An American who lives in Cologne told me that the decrease in the number of young men was noticeable, and that eleven sons of his friends had been killed.  To a stranger the city looked normal, with the usual crowds.  One did notice the people about the war bulletin-boards.  They were not boys and street loungers, but grave-looking citizens and their wives and daughters, people who looked as if they might have sons or brothers at the front.