One of the trains had just stopped.  The square was blocked with vehicles of every description.  I was surprised to find the great German furniture vans, which by comparison with those used in England and the United States look almost like houses on wheels, were drawn up in rows with military precision.  As if these were not enough, the whole of the wheeled traffic of Potsdam seemed to be commandeered by the military for the lightly wounded—­cabs, tradesmen’s wagons, private carriages—­everything on wheels except, of course, motor-cars, which are non-existent owing to the rubber shortage.  Endless tiers of stretchers lay along the low embankment sloping up to the line.  Doctors, nurses, and bearers were waiting in quiet readiness.

The passengers coming out of the station, including the women with the tall baskets, stopped, but only for a moment.  They did not tarry, for the police, of which there will never be any dearth if the war lasts thirty years, motioned them on, a slight movement of the hand being sufficient.

I was so absorbed that I failed to notice the big constable near me until he laid his heavy paw upon my shoulder and told me to move on.  A schoolmaster and his wife, his Rucksack full of lunch, who had taken advantage of the glorious sunshine to get away from Berlin to spend a day amidst the woods along the Havel, asked the policeman what the matter was.

The reply was “Nichts hier zu sehen” ("Nothing to be seen here.  Get along!").  The great “Hush!  Hush!  Hush!” machinery of Germany was at work.

Determined not to be baffled, I moved out of the square into the shelter of a roadside tree, on the principle that a distant view would be better than none at all, but the police were on the alert, and a police lieutenant tackled me at once.  I decided to act on the German military theory that attack is the best defence, and, stepping up to him, I stated, that I was a newspaper correspondent.  “Might I not see the wounded taken from the train?” I requested.  He very courteously replied that I might not, unless I had a special pass for that purpose from the Kriegsministerium in Berlin.

I hit upon a plan.

I regretfully sighed that I would go back to Berlin and get a pass, and retracing my steps to the station I bought a ticket.

A soldier and an Unteroffizier were stationed near the box in which stood the uniformed woman who punches tickets.

The Unteroffizier looked at me sharply, “No train for an hour and a half,” he said.

“That doesn’t disturb me in the least when I have plenty to read,” I answered pleasantly, at the same time pointing to the bundle of morning papers which I carried, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of the Foreign Office, on the outside.

I knew Potsdam thoroughly, and was perfectly familiar with every foot of the station.  I knew that there was a large window in the first and second-class dining-room which was even closer to the ambulances in the square than were the exit steps.