than his ears for information. There was almost a full
house for the "Rosenkavalier"; for music is a solace in time of
trouble, as other capitals than Berlin revealed. Officers with close-
cropped heads, wearing Iron Crosses, some with arms in slings,
promenaded in the refreshment room of the Berlin Opera House
between the acts. This in the hour of victory should mean a picture of
gaiety. But there was a telling hush about the scene. Possibly music
had brought out the truth in men's hearts that war, this kind of war,
was not gay or romantic, only murderous and destructive. One had
noticed already that the Prussian officer, so conscious of his caste,
who had worked so indefatigably to make an efficient army, had
become chastened. He had found that common men, butchers and
bakers and candlestick makers, could be as brave for their Kaiser as
he. And more of these officers had the Iron Cross than not.

The prevalence of Iron Crosses appealed to the risibilities of the
superficial observer. But in this, too, there was system. An officer who
had been in several battles without winning one must feel a trifle
declassed and that it was time for him to make amends to his pride. If
many Crosses were given to privates, then the average soldier would
not think the Cross a prize for the few who had luck, but something
that he, too, might win by courage and prompt obedience to orders.

The masterful calculation, the splendid pretence and magnificent
offence could not hide the suspense and suffering. Nowhere were
you able to forget the war or to escape the all-pervading influence of
the Kaiser. The empty royal box at the Opera, His Opera, called him
to mind. What would happen before he reappeared there for a gala
performance? When again, in the shuffle of European politics, would
the audience see the Tsar of Russia or the King of England by the
Kaiser's side?

It was his Berlin, the heart of his Berlin, that was before you when you
left the Opera--the new Berlin, which he had fathered in its boom
growth, taking few pages of a guidebook compared to Paris. In front
of his palace Russian field-guns taken by von Hindenburg at
Tannenberg were exhibited as the spoils of his war; while not far
away the never-to-be-forgotten grandfather in bronze rode home in
triumph from Paris.

One wondered what all the people in the ocean of Berlin flats were
thinking as one walked past the statue of Frederick the Great, with his
sharp nose pointing th