One is not permitted to telephone in English or in any language except German or French (the native languages of Switzerland), and even then the telephone girls listen closely to one’s conversation.
Donait and I have made all our preparations to depart for Berlin early tomorrow morning, our dispatches having been sorted out, checked, and re-pouched.
Tuesday, December 1st. We reached the Swiss-German frontier at noon today. We descended from the train at Basle and drove three miles to the frontier. Here there were two barriers straight across the road, the nearer one guarded by numerous Swiss soldiers; the farther, some twenty yards behind, by soldiers wearing the spiked helmet. Before we were allowed to pass the first barrier our papers and luggage were minutely examined by Swiss military and customs officers. We then walked across the twenty yards to the second, or German, barrier, where we were conducted into a little guard-house. Here some dozen soldiers were sleeping or playing cards on cots in the background along the walls. An efficient sergeant examined our papers and then allowed us to pass the second barrier into Germany, showing marked respect for the Herr Lieutenant and the Herr Attaché.
We loaded our suit-cases in a second vehicle, a German one this time, and proceeded some two miles to the railroad station of Leopoldshöhe. While we stood on the station platform at Leopoldshöhe, heavy guns in battle could be heard off toward Mülhausen and once there came the typical crash of a big shell exploding much nearer, probably not more than three or four kilometers away. As near as that to a battle in France one sees a disorganized, deserted, wrecked countryside, with wagon trains going back and forth and wounded soldiers straggling toward the safety zone. Here in Germany everything was in the most perfect order, with no excitement or confusion, and passenger trains left on the minute by schedule time. It was difficult to realize that there was a battle within a thousand miles.
The moment one enters Germany one feels efficiency as if one had passed under a spell. The way the feeling immediately impresses itself upon one is a curious psychological phenomenon. One senses at once the wonderful civic consciousness of the nation and respects it. One does not throw waste paper out of a carriage window, nor take trivial short cuts, nor walk on the grass, nor attempt to pass through ticket gates before the proper time. Everything is regulated, all is done in order.
I was momentarily embarrassed and self-conscious when first I found myself rubbing shoulders with gentlemen in spiked helmets. During the past four months I had seen them only as prisoners or dead men, and their only greetings had been by way of their shells and bombs.
After an all-day trip from Leopoldshöhe down the Rhine Valley I arrived in Mannheim, where I am to remain over-night, as I have letters which I am instructed to leave with our Consul in this town. Donait stopped off en route for a day to visit the old family homestead from which his ancestors emigrated to America. I arrived safely in Mannheim about ten o’clock, went to the Park Hotel, which I selected from Baedeker, got an excellent room, and went immediately to bed.