During our first winter in Berlin we spent many afternoons at the
Ice Palace in the Lutherstrasse, an indoor ice rink much larger
than the one in the Freidrichstrasse, the Admirals Palast, where
the ice ballets are given and the graceful Charlotte used to
appear. The skating club of the Lutherstrasse was under the
patronage of the Crown Prince and was one of the very few meeting
places of Berlin society. The women were taught to waltz by male
instructors and the men by several young women--blonde skaters
from East Prussia. I tried to improve my skating and spent many
hours making painful "Bogens" or circles under the efficient eyes
of a little East Prussia instructress. Afternoon tea was served
during the interval of skating and one afternoon a week was
specially reserved for the Club members.

One of my young secretaries used to go occasionally to Wannsee,
near Berlin, to play hockey with a German friend; as the young
men were nearly all in the war, girls made up the majority of
each team. My secretary reported that those German girls were as
strong, as enduring and as skilful as the average young man.

Girls of the working classes, instead of flirting or turkey
trotting at night, make a practice of going to the Turnvereins,
to exercise in the gymnasiums there. If the members of the German
lower classes only had the opportunity to rise in life what would
they not accomplish! So many of them are very ambitious,
persistent, earnest and thrifty.

Of course, female suffrage in Germany or anything approaching it
is very distant. First of all, the men must win a real ballot for
themselves in Prussia, a real representation in the Reichstag. In
the Germany of to-day, a woman with feminist aspirations is
looked on as the men of the official class look on a Social
Democrat, something hardly to be endured. And this is in spite of
the fact that the nations to the North, in Scandinavia, freed
women even before America did.

The most beautiful woman in Berlin society is Countess
Oppersdorff--the mother of thirteen children. She is not German,
but was born a Polish Princess Radziwill.

The chief lady of the Imperial Court is Countess Brockdorff. She
is rather stern in appearance and manner, and rumour has it that
she was appointed to keep the good-natured, easy-going Empress
to the strict line of German court etiquette, to see that the
Empress, rather democratic in inclination, did not stray away
from the traditional rigidit