Von Below, a German officer in Berlin who had been in the Argentine, used to make merry over the Argentine soldiers and said that they objected to drilling when it rained. I do not believe this officer, but I should like to have the brave Argentine officers hear his jokes and gibes.
We left, after three or four days in Berne, on the evening train, for the French frontier. In the train corridors, outside the compartments, spies stood staring at us, spies pretending to read newspapers came into each compartment; police spies, betrayed by heavy boots; general staff spies, betrayed by a military stiffness; women spies; spies assorted and special. And these gentry had followed me all over Berne—for in the neutral countries of Europe as well as the belligerents are we constantly reminded of the insidious methods of Kaiserism.
CHAPTER XVIII
A GLIMPSE OF FRANCE
At Pontarlier, on the French frontier, a special train was waiting for my party and into this train a German-American inserted himself after first mixing his baggage with mine. I went through the train and this enterprising gentleman and another German-American were detained for some days at Pontarlier. One of them, later, on reaching Spain, reported immediately to the head of the German secret service there, thus justifying my suspicions. Fortunately when he subsequently arrived in Spain we had already sailed, so that if he bore any sinister message from Berlin to the German agents in Spain to hinder our voyage, he was too late.
The night trip to Paris was uneventful. At the Gare St. Lazare we were met by our Ambassador, Mr. Sharp, with several of his staff and a representative of the French Foreign Office.
Paris was indeed a changed Paris since I had last seen it in October of 1913. The pavement in the Place Vendôme, in front of the Hotel Ritz, where we stopped, was full of holes, but taxicabs, almost as extinct as the dodo in Berlin, rushed merrily through the crowded streets. The boulevards were lively, full of soldiers looking far more cheery, far more snappy, than the heavy footed German soldiers who so painfully tramped down Unter den Linden. Many soldiers were to be seen without an arm or leg, something impossible in Germany where, especially in Berlin, it has been the policy of the Government to conceal those maimed by war from the people at home. Although constantly walking the streets of Berlin I never saw a German soldier without an arm or leg. Once motoring near Berlin I came upon a lonely country house where, through the iron rails of the surrounding park, numbers of maimed soldiers peered out, prisoners of the autocratic government which dared not show its victims to the people.
At night in Paris the taxicabs and autos rushed dangerously through streets darkened to baffle the Zeppelins. In the hotel there was little heat, only wood fires in one's room. In the homes a single electric light bulb was permitted for each room; violation of this rule meant loss of electric light from that apartment for three weeks.
In the Ritz Restaurant there were lights on the table only. And the gloomy dining room, where a few Americans and British officers and their families conversed in whispers, resembled but little the gay resort so often filled, before the war, with American millionaires. Olivier, the head waiter, appeared only at night, absent during the day on war duties. No lights, no music, it is hard to think of Paris without these, Paris which calls itself the "Ville Lumière"—the City of Light.