Entrance to the New Underground Railway Built Since the War.
At no time in the day can you ride around the loop without seeing a troop train. There is always a troop train flying by. Very gay trains with shouting soldiers hanging out of the windows and doors. All waving and crying Auf Wiedersehen! That means "Till we meet again," but many of them never come back.
Beside the soldier trains are the freight trains and the funny things they haul: Parts of aeroplanes with the wings marked with the Iron Cross; parts of undersea-boats; sleds for the winters in Russia—the kind you see pictures of in story books, and then cannons, automobiles, little field-kitchen wagons—everything painted gray—"field-gray."
Near the Charlottenburg Station is a Mittelstandsküche or a middle-class kitchen. These kitchens have been established all over Berlin since the war, and here one can get a good meal for eighty pfennigs.
Café Victoria, Corner of Friedrichstrasse and Unter Den Linden.
If you get off the elevated at the Lehrte Station you are in Alt-Moabit. Near the station is the great civil prison of Berlin. It is built like a star with five arms running out from a center. It makes one think of an octopus. Here the spies, the offending editors and the troublesome socialists are imprisoned. Liebknecht is here. I knew the prison pastor, a young man named Dr. Klatt. Dr. Klatt wanted to go to the front, but he is so useful here that they will not let him go. He is the go-between for the prisoners and the outside world. Some of the prisoners begged to be allowed to go to fight for their country, and Dr. Klatt helped these men to get free. He says there is a tremendous amount of patriotism among the prisoners.
Near the prison is a great red barracks. It is so long that one can scarcely see from one end to the other. There are always soldiers at the windows, and if you look their way at all, they are very apt to call Guten Tag. At the far end of the building there is a path-way, and no matter at what time of the day you go there you can see hundreds of new recruits coming out. They have not received their uniforms as yet, and they have on old clothes, and most of them carry boxes in their hands. Two hundred of them come at a time, six abreast, and when they have reached the gateway as far back as you can see, a second batch appears. This lasts as long as you stand there.
A little farther up from the Lehrte Station is the greatest hospital in Berlin, and it is now used as a collecting-place for soldiers who have been wounded and are now well and ready to go back to the front. Here they go through their final examination to make sure that they are able to go back.
