The American Embassy.
Leipzigerstrasse is all big stores, and these stores do a rushing business. At one end of the street is Wertheim's large department store. From the outside it looks like a public library or a government building, but inside it is rather cheap looking and it is a regular mirror maze to find your way in. I doubt if even Mr. Wertheim himself finds his way through it.
Right by the door of this store they have field post boxes for soldiers all ready packed for sending things to the front, with goose breast, cakes, candy, wine, oranges and cigarettes. Everything tied up with a ribbon of Schwarz-Weiss-Rot, and a bit of green laid on the top. What don't they have in this store for soldiers! Clothes, caps, blankets, pocket lamps, knee warmers, pulse warmers, sleeping-bags, folding knives and forks, and books.
The fourth side of the square is Wilhelmstrasse, and when you read in the papers, "Wilhelmstrasse says this to-day," or "Wilhelmstrasse is silent," this is the street. It is a bare street without street-cars or trees, and lined with gray government buildings. The German Foreign Office is here, and right beside it the Chancellor's house, where Bismarck lived so long. The American Embassy is on the other side of the street. The Spanish Embassy occupies the building now. So many automobiles run over this street that it looks like glass, and when the lamps are lighted, its reflections are so bright that it looks as though it had been raining.
At the head of Wilhelmstrasse where it meets Unter den Linden is the famous Brandenburger Tor, and there, on the top of it, you see the famous bronze horses that Napoleon took to Paris and that were brought back in 1871. When you walk through its arches you are in the Tiergarten, the great park of Berlin. This park is always full of people, and many of them are going out to drive nails into the Iron Hindenburg. For over two years this nailing has been going on and the statue is not nearly finished. It is an enormous figure over fifty feet high. The money for the nailing goes to the Red Cross. It costs one mark to drive an iron nail into the figure, five marks to drive a silver nail, and 100 marks to drive a gold one. Already the whole top of Hindenburg's sword is gold, and his wedding ring is gold. The buttons on his coat are silver. The nailing is directed by soldiers, and every afternoon a military band plays in front of the figure.
New Underground and Elevated Railway Terminal in Berlin.
If you are too lazy to walk around Berlin, you can ride around on the city elevated, taking the train at the Potsdam Station. At this station you can nearly always see prisoners—Arabs, Englishmen, French—waiting to be taken out to Zossen, the great prison camp near Berlin. This station is surrounded by coal yards, and last winter when it was so hard to get any coal delivered, I often felt like getting out here and stealing a lump.
