least twenty years old, as the sleeves were of the Leg of
Mutton style, fashionable, I believe, about that number of years
ago.

Many German noblewomen shoot and are quite as good shots as their
husbands. I was quite surprised once on a shooting party to meet
an elderly princess whose grey hair was in short curls and who
wore a coat and waistcoat like a man's. She shot with great skill
and smoked long Havana cigars!

When German women get out of the country they very quickly
imitate foreign fashions and extravagances of dress. The Czarina
of Russia, for example, a German Princess, is very fond of
fashions, and a friend of mine who had three audiences with her
during the war tells me that on the occasion of his first
audience she was dressed in black and received him in a room
where yellow flowers were massed. On the second occasion she was
in grey and the flowers were pink. At the third audience her
dress was purple and the flowers were of lilac and white.

There is one good thing about the king and aristocratic system.
The position of women in the social scale is fixed by the
husband's rank. There is, therefore, none of that striving, that
vying with each other, which so often exhausts the nerves of the
American woman and the purse of the husband. The German women
give their time and attention to the "Four K's" that, in a
German's eyes, should bound a woman's world, "Kaiser, Kinder,
Kirche, Kuche" (Emperor, children, church and kitchen).

The successful business man of New York or Chicago or San
Francisco is surprised to find how docile and domestic the German
woman is--no foolish extravagance, but a real devotion to husband
and home, a real mother to her many children. She matches that
short epitaph of the Roman matron--"She spun wool; she kept the
house."

When I came to Germany I found, on studying the language, that
there was no word in German corresponding to "efficient." I soon
learned that this is because everything done in Germany is done
efficiently, and there is no need to differentiate one act from
another in terms of efficiency. But the German man could not be
as efficient as he undoubtedly is, without the whole-hearted
devotion of the German woman.

German girls are given a good, strong, sound education. They
learn languages, not smatterings of them. They are accomplished
musicians. Domestic science they learn from their mothers. They
are splendid swimmers, hockey players, riders and skaters.