Toward the French there is no bitterness either, rather a sort of pity and the wish to be thought well of.  One is reminded now and then of the German captain quartered at Sedan, in Zola’s “Debacle,” who, while conscious of the strength behind him, yet wanted his involuntary hosts to know that he, too, had been to Paris and knew how to be a galant homme.  Men tell you “they’ve put up a mighty good fight, say!” or speaking of the young French sculptor allowed to go on with his work in the prison camp at Zossen, or the flower-beds in front of the French barracks there—­“but, of course, the French are an artistic people.  You can allow them liberties like that.”  Every now and then in the papers one runs across some anecdote from France in which the Frenchman is permitted to make the retort at the expense of the English.

Toward John Bull there is no mercy.  He is shown naked, trying to hide himself with neutral flags; he is sprawled in his mill with a river of French blood flowing by from the battle-fields of France, while the cartoonist asks France if she cannot see that she is doing his grinding for him; he is hobnobbing cheek by jowl with cannibals and black men, and he is seriously discussed as a traitor to the Germanic peoples and the white race.

A German woman told me the other day that in her house it was the custom to fine everybody in the family ten pfennigs if they came down to breakfast without saying:  “Gott strafe die Englander!” ("God punish the English!”) In a recent Ulk there is a cartoon of a young mother holding up her baby to his proud father with the announcement that he has spoken his first words.  “And what did he say?” “Gott strafe England!”

America is criticised for supplying the Allies with arms—­shades of South American revolutions and the old “Ypiranga"!—­while permitting itself, without sufficient protest, to be shut off from sending food to Germany.  Yet, in spite of this and the extremely difficult situation created by the submarine blockade, the individual American is not embarrassed unless mistaken for an Englishman or unless he finds some supersensitive patriot in a restaurant or theatre who objects even to hearing English.

At the frontier the honest customs inspector landed, first thing, on a copy of “Tartarin sur les Alpes,” which I had picked up at the railroad news-stand in the Hague.

“Franzosisch!” he declared, flapping over the pages.  Next it was a bundle of letters of introduction, the top one of which happened to be in English.  “Englische Briefe!” and forthwith he bellowed for help.  A young officer sauntered out from the near-by office, saluted, and said, “Good morning!” glanced at “Tartarin” with a smile, and tossed it back into the bag, at letters and passport, said it must be very interesting to see both sides, and so, after a question or two, to the train for Koln.