Travelers entering Germany bring as much food with them as they can. You are allowed to bring a moderate amount of tea, coffee, soap, canned milk, etc.; nine pounds of butter and as much smoked meat as you can carry. No fresh meat is allowed, and you must carry the meat yourself as no porters are allowed around the docks. This is a spy precaution.
The butter and meat are bought in Copenhagen from a licensed firm where it is sealed and the firm sends the package to the boat for you. You must be careful not to break the seal before the German customs are passed. The Danes are very strict about letting rubber goods out of their country, and one little German girl I knew was so afraid that the Danes would take her rubbers away from her, that she wore them on a hot summer day.
The boat which takes passengers to and from Warnemünde is one day a German boat and the next day a Danish boat. If you are lucky and make the trip on the day the Danish boat is running, you get a wonderful meal, and if you are unlucky and strike the German day, you get a poor one. After getting off the boat, you get your first glimpse of the German Militär, the soldiers at the customs.
The travelers are divided into two classes—those going to Hamburg and those going to Berlin. Then a soldier gets up on a box and asks if there is any one in the crowd who has no passport. The day I came through only one man stepped forward. I felt sorry for him, but he did not look the least bit disheartened. An officer led him away. Strange to say, four days later we were seated in a hotel in Berlin eating our breakfast when this same little man came up and asked if we were not from Pittsburg, and if we had not come over on the "Kristianiafjord." When I said that we had, he remarked: "Well, I am from Pittsburg, too, and I came over on the 'Kristianiafjord.'"
"But I did not see you among the passengers," I said.
"No," he answered, "I should say not. I was a bag of potatoes in the hold. I am a reserve officer in the German army, and I was determined to get back to fight. I came without a passport claiming to be a Russian. It took me three days to get fixed up at Warnemünde because I had no papers of any kind. The day I had everything straightened out and was leaving for Berlin, a funny thing happened. I was walking along the street with an officer when a crowd of Russian prisoners came along. To my surprise one of the fellows yelled at me, 'Hello, Mister, you'se here too?' And I knew that fellow. He had worked for my father in America. As he was returning to Russia, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. I had an awful time explaining my acquaintance to the authorities at Warnemünde, but here I am waiting to join my regiment."
At Warnemünde, after the people are divided into groups, they are taken into a large room where the baggage is examined. At the time I came through we were allowed to bring manuscript with us, but it had to be read. Now not one scrap of either written or printed matter can be carried, not even so much as an address. All the writing now going into Germany must be sent by post and censored as a letter.
When I came through I had a stack of notes with me and I never dreamed that it would be examined. I was having a difficult time with the soldier who was searching me when an officer who spoke perfect English came up and asked if he could help me. He had to read all my letters and papers, but he was such a slow reader that the train was held up half an hour waiting for him to finish reading them. Nothing was taken away from me, but they took a copy of the London Illustrated News away from a German who protested loudly, waving his hands. It was a funny thing to do, for in Berlin this paper was for sale on all the news stands and in the cafés. But sometimes the Germans make it a point of treating foreigners better than they do their own people. I noticed this many times afterward.
After the baggage was examined, the people had to be searched. The men didn't have to undress and the women were taken into a small room where women searchers made us take off all our clothes. They even make you take off your shoes, they feel in your hair and they look into your locket. As I had held up the train so long, I did not have much time to dress and hurried into the train with my hat in my hand and my shoes untied. As the train pulls out the searcher soldiers line up and salute it. Searching isn't a very nice job, and when my mother went back to America the next spring, no less than four of the searchers told her that they hated it and that when the war was over the whole Warnemünde force was coming to America.
The train was due in Berlin at 9 o'clock at night, but we were late when we pulled in at the Stettin Station. We had a hard time getting a cab and finally we had to share an automobile with a strange man who was going to the same hotel. At 10 o'clock we were in our hotel on Unter den Linden. From the window I could look out on the linden trees. The lights were twinkling merrily in the cafés across the way. Policemen were holding up the traffic on the narrow Friedrichstrasse. People were everywhere. It did not seem like a country that was taking part in the great war.