Part 7

He went into detail, beginning with the foreign names used all over Germany. He said that instead of a hotel being called by the good old-fashioned German word _Hof_, the hotel proprietors insisted on using the word "hotel," combined, alas, too often with such words as Bristol, Excelsior, Continental, Esplanade, Carlton, Westminster and Savoy. He thought that much better words would be _Berlinerhof_ or _Kaiserhof_.

He said that until three years ago messenger boys were called by the English name "messenger boys," and he much preferred the new name _Blitzjunge_ which means "lightning kid."

He lamented that even now English clothes for men were still being sold in German shops, and that they were quoted as English and were bought because they were English; that German women still follow Paris fashions; but he said with emphasis: "A German heart under a Paris gown is no true German heart." He said that a man who studied in England liked to be styled "an Oxford man" or "a Cambridge man," and that many a German woman who goes to Switzerland each year registers at the fashionable hotels as "Madame Schultz" or "Madame Schmidt" instead of "Frau."

He said further that when an Englishman or an American came to Germany, he fully expected every German he met to know English, but no traveling German expects any one to know German, and the German meekly learns the languages of all the other races.

He ended by saying that he knew that no people had a greater love for their country than the German people have, and that the time had come for them to cease their imitations and to be Germans without foreign ideals, thoughts or customs.

It is said that in Königsberg the military commander there has made it a criminal offense for any one to use or circulate a foreign fashion plate. There are also a small number of people who think that English or French should not be spoken on the streets during the war, although English and French are still being taught in the schools, and I often saw youngsters studying their English lessons on the trains.

But I have found that the count, the military commander at Königsberg, and the people who want nothing but German spoken on the streets represent only a small portion of the German people; the whole cry of the masses is for peace to come, so that they can have things from the outside world again.

During the two years that I was in Berlin I talked English on the streets nearly all the time, and I was spoken to only twice for talking English. Once I went to Potsdam with an American boy, and we were sitting in the train waiting for it to start. We thought the train was empty, and we were talking English very fast and rather loud. Suddenly a woman in black poked her head around from the next coupé and asked us to stop talking English. "It hurts me," she said, "the English killed my husband."

Another time I was talking to an American lady at the opera, when a pinched-faced German lady turned around in front of us and said, "Don't you know that this is the Royal German Opera House and that we are at war with England?" She thought we were English. We said nothing but commenced to speak German.

A funny thing happened to an American lady I knew. She was dining with a Turkish officer dressed in civilian clothes. As the Turk knew no German they were talking French. A nervous wounded German officer came in and seated himself at a table near them. As soon as he heard the French he sent the waiter over to tell them to stop. The Turk took his military calling-card out of his pocket and sent it over to the German. The German officer did the only thing there was to do--he came over and apologized.

Once in a while in Berlin we were cut off the telephone when we spoke English. This was a spy precaution, and Central would not connect us again even when we spoke German.

In Cologne a number of dressmakers had a meeting to establish some new styles for Germany. They dug up a lot of fashion plates from the styles fifty years back, and had fashion plates printed from them and model dresses made, and they tried to convince the modern German girl that this was what she should wear. They called the new style the _Reform-Kleid_ or "reform dress," but their scheme was not much of a success, for if anything was ever ugly it was this dress. I never saw more than half a dozen of these dresses on the street, but once at a club I saw a number of them. They were made with a narrow skirt and a loose Russian blouse for a waist. They were absolutely shapeless and so were the women that were in them. The dresses were mostly made of flowered silk and very little trimmed. The hat that went with the reform costume was perfectly plain and fitted down over the head like a pan.

The _Reform-Kleid_ is the butt of many a joke in the German weeklies, and the German girls I know said that they would die before they would wear them. Very wide skirts are the style in Germany, and the government has tried to make women wear narrower ones because of the amount of cloth it takes, but a woman's patriotism ceases where styles are concerned, and they all manage to get the needed cloth for their skirts.

Germany has been cut off from the world so long that her styles are different from the rest of the world. Even the Scandinavian people dress more like Americans. In Germany, very short-vamped, round-toed shoes are the style; you couldn't buy a pair of pointed shoes there. Last summer an American girl came over from the United States, and she had been told beforehand to bring shoes. She brought eleven pairs of pointed ones, and every time she went out the Germans stared at her feet. The German hats sit high from the head, and short sleeves are once more in fashion.

All the German women will be glad when they can have Paris fashions again, and most German men try to dress like Englishmen. They love English tweed and they think that there is nothing like a Burberry coat. Many of the German officers wear a monocle and this is surely English.

One old German fogey wanted to have all the letters on the German typewriters changed to German script. But even at the mention of such a thing the merchants and business men rose up and said they would never have it. Café Piccadilly changed its name to Café Vaterland, but the Russischer Hof is still so called, and the highest order in the German army is still called _Pour le mérite_.

Of course you hear a lot of talk about _echt deutsche_ things, and that now nothing is worth anything unless it is "made in Germany" and is pure German. They call that patriotism, but the far-thinking German realizes that it is the _Ausländerei_ that keeps a nation young, and it was that which made Germany what she was before the war. The count said that the Germans were "copy cats"--but was not this one of the cleverest things about the German nation?

WAR CHARITIES.

Almost every day is tag day in Berlin. You can't poke your head out of the door without a collection-box being shoved at you. Boys and girls work at this eternally. They go through the trains and the cafés and restaurants, not one at a time but in steady streams. You may be walking along a very quiet street and you will see a lady come smiling toward you. Apparently she is empty-handed, but just as she comes up to you, she whisks a box out from behind her muff or newspaper and politely begs a mite.

The Germans give unceasingly to these collections. They put in only ten pfennigs at a time, but I have often watched men and women in the cafés, and they will give to half a dozen youngsters in half an hour. They really prefer to give their charity donations in this way instead of in a large lump. They get more pleasure out of it.

The day just before I left Berlin for Copenhagen, I had been pestered about ten times in one square. The collection was called the _U-Boot-Spende_, and it was a collection for the wives and children of the sailors who had lost their lives on the U-boats. At one corner a boy of about thirteen years stopped me by raising his hat and asking if he dared beg a few pfennigs for the _U-Boot-Spende_.

"Now, look here," I said to him, "Why should I give to this? I am a _feindliche Ausländerin_ (an enemy foreigner) and if I give you any money it encourages you Germans to go on sinking American ships. I must save my money for the wives and the children of the men who have lost their lives by the U-boats."

The boy blushed deeply. "That is true," he said, "I beg your pardon. I feel for those people too. And if you will allow me I would like to donate something for your charity," and the little fellow pulled a mark out of his pocket and handed it to me. I found out afterwards that the boy was the son of one of Germany's richest and most aristocratic princes.

Besides the tag days there are many women who go around selling little picture sheets for ten pfennigs. Countless numbers of these sheets have sprung up since the war. The companies that publish them make only a small profit and the rest of the money goes to charity.

One of the best ways the Germans have of collecting money is the driving of nails into wooden statues and charging so much to each person for being allowed to drive a nail. The "Iron Hindenburg" is the greatest of all these figures, but there are many more even in Berlin. Many cafés have their own figures to nail, sometimes it is only an eagle or an Iron Cross. In Brandenburg they have a wooden copy of their famous old stone statue of Roland that has stood for centuries in the Brandenburg market place. The stone figure was funny and quaint enough, but the nailed figure looks like some queer product of cubist art.

The _Mittelstandsküche_ and the _Volksküche_ are also charitable organizations and are run by women's clubs. These kitchens are places where the middle and lower class people can get a good meal for from fifty to seventy pfennigs,--a meal consisting of soup, meat, potatoes and a vegetable. Compote or stewed fruit can be bought for ten pfennigs a dish, and salad can be bought for the same price. They do not have bread, you must bring that with you. They cut off your food cards for meat and potatoes, but they are not very strict about it. If you were terribly hungry and went to a _Volksküche_ you could very likely get something to eat without a card. The city sees that these places are well provided for, and often you could not get potatoes in the fashionable restaurants, but the kitchens always had them.

Besides these kitchens, club women have a traveling soup kitchen. It consists of a goulash cannon driven around the streets on a wagon, and the people come with their buckets to get a hot stew for thirty-five pfennigs.

The American Chamber of Commerce had a fine soup kitchen in Berlin. It was opened two winters ago with great pomp, and Mr. and Mrs. Gerard were present at the occasion. Society ladies took turns helping in the kitchen, and they made it a very great success. Everything served in the kitchen was free and the food was splendid. They served many hundred people each day.

In Munich the Americans have a hospital which they conduct themselves. I don't know how it is run since America got into the war, but before this time the Americans paid for everything. Two years ago the American ladies in Dresden had a bazar for the German Red Cross. They made many thousand marks. In Berlin there is a very rich American man who keeps the families of one hundred and fifty German soldiers that have been killed in the war. When America got into the war, it was thought that his charity would end, but he said, "No, these poor women and children cannot help it that America is in the war."

One of the greatest charitable organizations in Berlin is a day nursery run by Frau Hofrat Becker. The nursery is where the working wives of soldiers can leave their babies each day while they are at work. No children can be left with Frau Becker unless the mother shows a certificate that she works. The children can be left at five o'clock in the morning and they are kept there until night.

Frau Becker has five of these homes located in different parts of Berlin, and I have visited all of them. In each home she has about one hundred and fifty children--little babies from six weeks old up to four years of age. Some of the children seemed very happy but others were pinched looking little things who looked as though the battle of life was too great for them. The babies are given milk and bread for breakfast and at noon a warm stew.

Besides taking care of the babies, Frau Becker gives the older children who go to school a warm noon-day meal, and after school she gives them coffee or bread. Then she provides these larger children with employments and amusements so they will be kept off the streets. The larger girls sew and knit, and the boys learn songs and games. All the helpers are voluntary, and they receive no pay.

Nearly every family in Germany of the better middle class have what they call a _Kriegskind_, or a "war child." They take a boy or girl of some poor family and give them their meals. The family where I visited in Dresden had had a little girl since the beginning of the war. When the war broke out, Hilda was nine years old, and you cannot imagine what a change has taken place in her during the three years. She has now very nice manners, she is very clean and she has learned to sew and play the piano. Hilda is one of a family of eleven children. The father is a _Landsturm_ man in the war, and he makes thirty-eight pfennigs a day.

One of the greatest charity collections is the gold-collection. The Empress started this collection by giving a lot of gold ornaments, and many people have followed her example. The story goes around in Germany--personally I doubt if it is true--that the Crown Princess gave to the collection all the gold plates that King Edward of England had given her for a wedding present, and when the plates were melted down they were all found to be plated.

WHAT GERMANY IS DOING FOR HER HUMAN WAR WRECKS.

The word "cripple" is a word that hurts, and in Germany when one speaks of the men who have lost arms, legs, or eyes, they say _Kriegsbeschädigte_, which means hurt or damaged by the war. It has a softer sound.

Even now, with the war not over, plans have been carried out for these men and many more plans are being made. Skilful doctors and makers of artificial limbs are contriving all sorts of ways to make various kinds of arms and legs that are suited for all kinds of work that a crippled man might wish to do.

For instance, a man who wishes to be a carpenter must have a different kind of a hook on his new hand from that of the man who wishes to be a blacksmith. The man who has lost his arm at the shoulder must have a different hook from the man who has lost his at the elbow.

All this means much experimenting as there are so many different trades in the world, and the crippled man wishes if possible to follow the same trade he had before the war. In many cases it is not possible to do this, and there have been mapped out fifty-one new trades at which crippled men can work. The government has established schools where these trades can be learned without any charge to the soldier.

One of the most famous of these schools is in Berlin, the Oscar-Helene-Heim. Before the war this was a hospital for crippled children with a school for them where they could learn trades. Since the war they have made additions to the place, and soldiers can go here to learn a trade. The head of this institution is Professor Biesalski, the man who has invented many of the different kinds of arms and legs. The Biesalski arm is very simple and is made out of nickel, and tools fasten into the holder with screws.

I went all through this home. They have a carpentry department, a shoe-making department, a basket-weaving department, and a gardening department. There were a number of soldiers here without legs, but the home makes a specialty of helping soldiers without arms, and this is the far more difficult task. I saw some men with both arms gone, and in these sad cases they have implements for holding everything, tools, knives, forks, spoons, cups, cigars and indeed everything that a man would want to hold.

The artificial legs are also most wonderful. One army captain who had lost his leg at the thigh was able to mount his horse nine weeks after his leg had been amputated, and two weeks later he joined his regiment in the field. Another chap just nineteen years of age and who had lost his leg, enlisted in the aviation squad, and now he is one of the best flyers in the German army.

However, most of the men do not return to war but settle down to peaceful labors. One soldier, a shoemaker by trade, found that he could make just as good shoes with one foot as with two. Another case was that of a soldier who had lost both legs at Liège. He was an engineer by trade and now he is running the fast train between Cologne and Brussels. A tailor had both feet cut off. The new feet made for him were very big and now he can tread the sewing machine as well as before.

The most successful hand made since the war was not "Made in Germany" but "Made in America." A famous Berlin surgeon, Dr. Max Cohen, became infected from the wound of a soldier whom he was dressing at the beginning of the war. The infection became so bad that it was necessary to amputate his left hand. He sent to America for a new hand. It is made so that the fingers have joints like a real hand, and these joints bend and work like the joints of a real hand. The joints are operated by pulleys fastened at the shoulder. The hand can not only hold things, but can lift a fifty-pound article and can carry lighter weight articles. With his good right hand and the aid of this left hand, Dr. Cohen can still carry on his operations, and they are as successful as before.

All over Germany they have exhibitions of dummies with artificial arms and legs to show their workings. One dummy was a figure at a sewing machine, and it showed how artificial legs could do the treading. The men can go to these exhibitions and pick out the kind of an arm or leg that suits them.

Perhaps the hardest task of the war is the educating of the blind soldiers, for they are more or less helpless, and they are apt to become despondent. In Berlin they have established a hospital and a school for blind soldiers. It is called the St. Maria Victoria Hospital. The whole inspiration of this school is a blind woman, Fräulein Betty Hirsch. When the war broke out she was in England studying the English methods of dealing with the blind, and she has charge of all the training of the soldiers.

From the very beginning it was Fräulein Hirsch's ambition that her blind soldiers should not have the old monotonous trades of basket-making and broom-making. She wanted them to have a broader field of activity in the world, and so she visited all the factories in Berlin to find out what work a blind man can do. She has her soldiers trained to fill these positions. Now she has forty-five blind men in good munition factory positions, and they work from six to eight hours a day. At first they received 45 pfennigs an hour wages, but this was increased to fifty-five pfennigs an hour. Some of the men put cartridges into frames, and others fill cartridges into pockets. Every night the workers come home to the hospital where they are housed and cared for free.

Every morning from eleven to twelve o'clock the men are given their lessons, and the rest of the day they spend practising them. They learn typewriting and how to become telephone centrals. I saw one young fellow there who had lost both eyes at Verdun. He had been studying typewriting four months and he could take a dictation like a person with sight.

It is forbidden to use a dictagraph in Germany, but Fräulein Hirsch got permission to use it for the blind people. As they had none of these instruments in Germany, Fräulein Hirsch copied the English model and had them made at her dictation.

One of the blind soldiers here has invented an attachment to the typewriter that holds the machine fast when the end of the paper is reached. It is very hard for a blind person to tell when the end of the paper is reached, and they are very apt to go on ticking after the page is done. This invention is a rod with a screw in the front and will undoubtedly be used by the blind typists all over the world.

Another trade the soldiers are taught is cigarette making. German cigarettes are not rolled but the tobacco is stuffed into papers that come already fastened together. The blind men learn this very quickly.

Every province in Germany now issues a pamphlet each week to help the crippled men. These pamphlets are called "From War to Work in Peace," and they contain everything that would interest a crippled man, trades they can pursue, things that they can make if they prefer to stay at home, and where they can sell what they make. They also contain advertisements for employment for crippled men.

Near Berlin they have a farm for one-legged men, and here the one-legged soldiers can go to live and farm. Most of the farmers are men without families, and they intend to live on the farm all the rest of their days.

The German government has drawn up plans to build houses for the crippled men. Sites have been selected and plans have been completed. The houses are to be built near factories where work will be carried on that a crippled man can do. The plans for these houses are very attractive. Some of the houses are single houses, cottage effects with slanting roofs and a little garden. In each settlement there will be a number of large apartment houses, and then one very large house like a hotel where the unmarried men can live.

The rental of these houses will be astonishingly low. For instance a room for a bachelor in the large house will cost from twenty to thirty dollars a year. This includes light and heat, and in some cases furniture. An apartment in the large apartment house will cost from seventy-five to one hundred dollars a year with light and heat. The single houses will be more expensive and will cost about one hundred and fifty dollars a year. Each apartment in the large house will have a little garden, and there will be cafés and libraries where the men and their families can enjoy themselves.

No man is happy unless he has work to do, and the Germans are doing everything that is possible, so that the future will not look too black to the crippled German soldier when he comes home from war.

WILL THE WOMEN OF GERMANY SERVE A YEAR IN THE ARMY?