We walked up the Sieges Allee, spoiled by a childish decorative scheme of the Kaiser himself, with a multitude of marble benches and statues, and we reached the Königs Platz. "Those are the men we need now. They were the right men in the right place," exclaimed one of my companions, pointing to the statues of Bismarck and Moltke at the two ends of the square.
"Yes, but thank the Lord you don't have them," was my mental answer.
* * *
A military band wakes me up with the eternal sound of "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles," and does not leave me for a second the illusion of being in a friendly town.
The clumsy furniture of my large bedroom at the Kaiserhof Hotel, and the sight of the intensely German-looking front of the house which bounds my horizon at the other side of the Wilhelmplatz, make me realise that I am in Berlin, right in the heart of the great monster who is lacerating Europe with his steel talons from east to west.
I am seized by a sort of fever. I want to see straight away how the war has changed these Germans, among whom I have many friends, in peace time excellent organisers of commercial enterprises as merchants, as scientists, even as soldiers, but soldiers whose chivalry, as I thought then, seemed to transcend the natural grimness of the soldier.
I dress as quickly as possible. Leaving the hotel, I walk right along the Wilhelmstrasse, full of busy people. I am now in Unter den Linden.
Flags are hanging from every balcony; others wave at the top of the high masts which crown the gigantic commercial buildings; many shops display draperies with the national colours and the clawed black eagle is everywhere—on the cap of the messenger boy and at the breast of the lady, on the banner which dominates the corner turret of the Bauer Café, and on the silk handkerchiefs in the shop windows.