Vagabonding Through Changing Germany

The outstanding feature of the visit was not the castle itself, however, but the attitude of this lifelong servant of the imperial owner. The assertion that no man is a hero to...

They were singing a familiar old song with new words during my last weeks in Coblenz, the chorus beginning “The Rhine, the Rhine, the Yankee Rhine.” For many miles up and down t...

Milk, said the man who had brought Pegnitz its supply for years, was by no means as rich as it used to be. Fodder was scarce, and every one used his milch cow as oxen now, far m...

The innkeeper had returned at late dusk from tilling his fields several miles away. Like his fellows throughout Bavaria, he was a peasant except by night and on holidays. During...

Now and then one ran across a simple old countryman who took his opinions wholly and unreservedly as they had been delivered to him, without ever having opened the package. “How...

The waiter who served me in a hotel which the fleeing Assembly had left forlorn and gloomy was a veteran _Feldwebel_ and a radical Socialist. The combination gave his point of v...

As a matter of fact I had already “consorted” with no small number of German residents, chiefly of the small-merchant class. Those I had found somewhat mixed in their minds. A f...

Some contended that the women in particular had a deep resentment against the American soldiers, that they were still loyal to the Kaiser and to the old order of things, that th...

What does Germany plan to do with herself, or what is left of her, now? Does she wish to remain a republic, to return to the Hohenzollerns, or to establish a new monarchy under...

Having effaced the lingual reminders of their late oppressors, the Poznanians had proceeded to pay their respects to the bronze heroes they had left behind. The Germans, as is t...

Farther on, along a soft-footed country road that undulated over a landscape blooming with fruit-trees and immense lilac-bushes, I came upon a youthful shepherd hobbling after h...

The recent history of Metz was plainly visible in her architecture—ambitious, extravagant, often tasteless buildings shouldering aside the humble remnants of a French town of th...

The British, rating me a correspondent, billeted me in a once proud hotel in the shadow of the great cathedral. In the scurry of pursuing passport and visées in Paris I had foun...

In the face of a wide divergence of opinion among its own inhabitants it was hard for a stranger to decide which of the two races predominated in Bromberg. The Germans asserted...

At Wronki the Polish authorities were far more inquisitive than they had been toward travelers from the other direction. One by one each compartment group was herded together, b...

Memories of France had suggested the possible wisdom of reaching the station well before train-time. I might, to be sure, have purchased my ticket in leisurely comfort at the Ad...

The resultant gnawings of perpetual hunger had brought to light a myriad of _Ersatz_ foods that were in reality no food at all. It was frequently asserted that this consumption...

Thus far the question of lodging had always been simple. I had only to pick out a village ahead on the map and put up at its chief _Gasthaus_. But Saturday night and the “hamste...

To carry out still further my movie-bred disguise I took third-class and mingled with the inconspicuous multitude. There was no use attempting to conceal myself in the coal-bin...

The “Residence City” of Coblenz, headquarters of the American Army of Occupation, is one of the finest on the Rhine. Wealth has long gravitated toward the triangle of land at it...

These village inns are all of the same type. A quaint and placid building with the mellowed atmosphere that comes with respectable old age, usually of two stories, always with a...

Later I was assured that many had stayed up all night, waiting for the first draft of the terms. Südermann explained the apparent apathy with, “We Germans are not like the Frenc...

There were very few cattle and almost no laborers in the fields, though the holiday may have accounted for the absence of the latter. The landscape looked everywhere well cultiv...

Kulmbach, noted the world over for its beer, is surrounded with immense breweries as with a medieval city wall. But the majority of them stood idle. The beverages to be had in i...

When it came to discussions of the war and Germany’s conduct of it, I found no way in which we could get together. We might have argued until doomsday, were it fitting for a gue...

Fifteen kilometers from the capital I stopped at a crossroads _Gasthaus_, quite prepared to hear my suggestion of food answered with a sneer. Two or three youthful ex-soldiers s...

I did not go into Germany with any foreformed hypotheses as a skeleton for which to seek flesh; I went to report exactly what I found there. I am satisfied that there were dasta...

The question of fraternization and the ubiquitous one of German food shortage were not without their connection. Intelligence officers were constantly running down rumors of too...

Look where you would you were sure to find some new _Ersatz_ brazenly staring you in the face. Clothing, furniture, toys, pictures, drugs, tapestries, bicycles, tools, hand-bags...

There was but one barrier left between me and freedom. Judging from the disheveled appearance of the fat Hollanders who emerged, after long delay in every case, from the little...