But for most Americans this did not last long, and they got off with reporting only once a week, and some of them had permanent permits for going to certain places in the suburbs of Berlin. As I was expecting to leave Germany, I never asked for one of these permits, for it was an awful task to go to the Military Commandery for anything, because there were always so many people there waiting, it took half a day to get anything. But I got off from going to the police every day. No Americans were allowed to go to either Potsdam or Spandau, Potsdam because of the royal residences, and Spandau because of the military stores. If you went any place without a permit, you were fined twenty marks and were liable to imprisonment.
I lived at a boarding-house where there were a lot of German officers, and on all the excursions that were made to the country by the boarders, I was asked to go along. The officers were very nice men, and they said that they would protect me if anything was said about my not having a permit, but I never went with them, for I don't look like a German and I was afraid I would be caught. I always stayed within the law.
I lived at that boarding-house seven weeks just before I left Germany, and I can honestly say that I never heard a word against my country. When I first went there I felt worried, for I was afraid that they would say things to me about America, and that I would answer back and maybe I would get into trouble and be arrested and held in Germany. But nothing like that happened. We hardly ever talked war—no one in Germany talks war as we do here in America—we talked about things to eat.
At this boarding-house I made friends with a very nice little German girl. One day we were talking and she said to me, "You and I have become very good friends. I never would have made up with you if you had been an English girl, but we Germans have no hate for America." And I have found this true of most of the German people—I am not speaking of the high officials and the big Militär, for I don't know anything about their sentiments—but the German folks, they have no hatred for us.
Amelia, the boarding-house maid, astonished me one day by asking if America was in the war. When I told her "yes" she wanted to know on which side, and when I told her she said, "Donnerwetter, we have so many enemies, I can't keep track of them. But I want to go to America, and I am going there after the war."
Every place I went I met Germans who want to come to America after the war; every man on the police force where I reported wants to come.
All the time all sorts of reports were being spread in America. My family heard that I was being held as a hostage, and another report was that an American lady in Dresden had been shot as a spy. The lady was called up by Mr. Oswald Schuette, an American correspondent, and the lady herself answered the phone. It was the first she had heard of it.
Personally I never heard of an American that was mistreated. I heard of one American that did a lot of blowing and talking, and he was forced to report to the police twice a day, and he had to be in at eight o'clock at night, but when he got a passage for America he was allowed to leave the country. All the American business houses were open as usual, and no American property was destroyed and no money was confiscated. Of course one has the feeling that one is in an enemy's land when one has to go to the police every week, and it did get on my nerves. And yet, every one was nice to me, and I was there five months after the break.
The German people have the greatest faith in their undersea-boats and the majority believe that the war will be over before America really gets into it. To them America seems far away. They don't know our power and our might, and they are hoping, hoping that the war will be over soon. Ask any German when the war will be over and the answer is, "In two months from now." "It can't last," they say.