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.
Traveling Soup Kitchen.
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.
The Roland of Brandenburg, Original Statue.