He was the man so well informed about London life in war time, and as he, too, seemed to consider the garden party a very dangerous social function (probably from different motives from my own) we left of common accord without being caught again.
He gave me some news about the war, and said Antwerp was about to capitulate.
"We shall get into the town in one or two days," he said. "It is the intention of the Kaiser to occupy the whole of Belgium and to advance on the north coast of France, so as to cut the usual lines of communication with England." He said also that the official reports from the eastern theatres of operation were very satisfactory (for Germany), and concluded: "The Russians don't trouble very much about us; their main objects are the southern Austrian provinces and, if possible, Turkey."
We sat down in an old-fashioned café, celebrated in all Berlin for its excellent "Weiss-bier," the old all-Prussian drink stuff which is going quite out of fashion and is now obtainable in very few restaurants. Huge piles of newspapers and reviews were laid on a large table in the centre of the room, as in every café in Berlin. The foreign publications, generally very largely represented, were reduced to a few soiled issues two months old. People sitting round the centre table were enjoying and laughing loudly at the jokes of the humorous German and Austrian papers.
The dominant note in the caricature is the monotonous repetition of a few coarse, common figures—the drunken Russian loaded with stolen loot, the tall, thin, red-haired English soldier, who cares only for the pay he gets; the sloppily-dressed Frenchman, who talks much and does nothing. Kitchener, Poincaré, and Joffre seem pet subjects, and they appear dressed in all possible clothes over and over again in monotonous succession.
One of Ulk's last issues was almost entirely devoted to Kitchener and to his recruiting scheme.
Some of the drawings are really clever and bear the signature of well-known artists, but the rest of these papers do not seem humorous even to the Germans themselves.
"They really don't know what to say," explained my companion. "All the possible subjects of humour about our enemies have been exhausted long ago, and even our best comic artists are forced to repeat themselves."
"Do you believe in this 'dum-dum' story?" I asked, showing him a drawing representing a French and an English soldier preparing the murderous bullets, and, at the back of them, Death looking very pleased at this sight.