At the beginning of the war the click of the knitting needle was heard everywhere; shop-girls knitted while waiting for customers, women knitted in trams and trains, at theatres, in churches, and, of course, in the home.  The knitting is ceasing now for the very practical reason that the military authorities have commandeered all the wool for the clothing of the soldiery.  A further reason for the stoppage of such needlework is the fact that women are engaged in countless forms of definite war work.

Upon the whole it is beyond question that the German women are not standing the losses as well as the British women.  I have been honoured in England by conversations with more than one lady who has lost many dear ones.  The attitude is quieter here than in Germany, and is not followed by the peace talk which such events produce in German households.

What surprises me in England is the fact that the word “peace” is hardly ever mentioned anywhere, whereas in any German railway train or tramcar the two dominant words are Friede (peace) and Essen (food).  The peace is always a German idea of peace—­for the extreme grumblers do not talk freely in public—­and the food talk is not always the result of the shortage, but of the great difficulty in getting what is to be obtained, together with the increasing monotony of the diet.

It must not be supposed, however, that the life of feminine Germany is entirely a gloomy round of duty and suffering.  Among the women of the poor, things are as bad as they can be.  They are getting higher wages than ever, but the food usury and the blockade rob them of the increase.

The middle and upper classes still devote a good deal of time to the feminine pursuits of shopping and dressing.  The outbreak of war hit the fashions at a curious moment.  Paris had just abandoned the tight skirt, and a comical struggle took place between the Government and those women who desired to be correctly gowned.

The Government said, “In order to avoid waste of material, you must stick to the tight skirt,” and the amount of cloth allowed was carefully prescribed.  Women’s desire to be in the mode was, however, too powerful for even Prussianism.  Copies of French fashion magazines were smuggled in from Paris through Switzerland, passed from dressmaker to dressmaker, and house to house, and despite the military instructions and the leather shortage, wide skirts and high boots began to appear everywhere,

This feminine ebullition was followed by an appeal from the Government to abandon all enemy example and to institute new German fashions of their own making.  Models were exhibited in shop windows of what were called the “old and elegant Viennese fashions.”  These, however, were found to be great consumers of material, and the women still continued to imitate Paris.

The day before I left Berlin I heard an amusing conversation in the underground railway between two women, one of whom was talking about her hat.  She told her friend that she found the picture of the hat in a smuggled fashion paper, and had it made at her milliner’s and she was obviously very pleased with her taste.