CHAPTER II POTSDAM AND HAMBURG
For my trip to Potsdam I had a bright, sunny morning. Potsdam, the favourite residence of the Kaiser, and one of the most intensely Prussian towns of Prussia, owing to the enormous number of barracks, military buildings, and academies she has in proportion to her size, attracted me for two reasons.
First, I knew any amount of military drill was daily going on in the large drill grounds, and that Potsdam, the cradle of the Prussian Army, would be specially interesting to see in war time.
Secondly, the only concentration camp in the immediate vicinity of Berlin in which British prisoners are kept is Doberitz, quite close to Potsdam.
Potsdam gave me straight away the impression of being absolutely full of soldiers. The regular garrison has gone to the front, of course, but the first classes of the Landsturm, just called to arms, are drilling day and night in the grounds of the artillery barracks.
Some of the new guns (for the Russian frontier, I learn) are being tested, and the military academy has been converted into a huge hospital. The ugly, pretentious little town, full of copies of old Italian and French buildings, seemed to be populated by an extraordinary number of people in mourning, probably owing to the fact that Potsdam being a garrison town, quite a number of officers' families reside there.
The entrance to the castle of Sans Souci, to the New Palace, and to the Marble Palace is verboten. I asked the reason of this, and I was told that the buildings are now being devoted to military purposes.
I was losing all hope of being able to see something of interest when the noise of a powerful engine made me look over my head. A gigantic Zeppelin was performing different evolutions, dropping and rising again hundreds of feet, changing the direction, and pointing a massive nose now to the earth, now to the sky.