Germany in War Time: What an American Girl Saw and Heard

by Mary Ethel McAuley

The youngest son was married in the spring of 1916, and the wedding of Prince Joachim and the Princess Marie of Anhalt was a quiet war marriage. This summer a boy was born.

A STROLL THROUGH BERLIN.

When you start your stroll through Berlin, you begin at Friedrichstrasse Station, for everything begins there and ends there for that matter. Here is the elevated that takes you all around the city, and the long-distance railway that takes you all around the world.

From the station you hurry down two squares of Friedrichstrasse, and there you are right on Unter den Linden, the heart of Berlin. Linden trees! Linden trees! But they are all bare now, and the lights from the other side of the street show through their empty coal-black branches. But on days when there has been a victory, flags show through, and then the street is very beautiful.

The center of Berlin is built on a square. On one side is Unter den Linden, on the second side Friedrichstrasse, on the third side Leipzigerstrasse and on the last side Wilhelmstrasse. Unter den Linden is all fashionable shops and hotels. Here is the Hotel Adlon where most Americans stop, but the German royalty go there as well. The Duchess of Brunswick often makes this her headquarters. Near the hotel is a newspaper office, the Lokal-Anzeiger. It always has a crowd of people hanging around its bulletins, and its great war map which shows with colored pins how Germany has advanced her boundaries. Then there are jewelry and men's furnishing shops. This is the promenade side of the street, and here the Beau Brummels and Disraelis of Berlin walk with their fine ladies. Some of them take tea at Kranzler's, and the little cake house is packed from early morn till night. People sitting in Kranzler's never look at ease but as though they were there to be seen and not to have a good time.

On the other side of the street in the midst of all this fashionable array is a tiny little beer hall for soldiers. They always have a ham and a dozen of eggs in the window, and beside the ham the sign "Bier für Militär 10 Pfennige," and what soldier would not take advantage of this! On the same side is the "Jockey Club," tailors who make English clothes. The words "Jockey Club" are printed all over the front of the store. There is only one empty store on the street, and that is a tiny shop, and the signs are still in the window: "Chevalier d'Orsay Perfume." The French shop-keepers left at the beginning of the war. The "Mercedes Automobile Company" have a big show window on this street, and in this window they have three or four giant automobiles. They are all marked "Sold," but they can't be delivered until after the war.

Friedrichstrasse is a very narrow street, and it is always so crowded that one can hardly get along it. Many people walk in the middle of the street. It is full of little shops and lottery places run by the government. They have a great many Red Cross Lotteries, and the chances sell for three marks a chance. Last winter the winner of the first prize of many thousand marks never came to claim it. The number was advertised in all the papers. If the winner did not turn up in a certain time the money was to be turned over to the Red Cross.

Wertheim's Department Store.

On Friedrichstrasse there are several American shoe stores—the "Walk Over," the "Hanan," and the "Vera" shoe. But it is now over two years since they have had any shoes from America, and they have filled up their empty boxes with German shoes which are very inferior to our makes. Busses run along this street, and many of the conductors are women who wear trousers—not bloomers but regular men's trousers.