in Germany. At least, the Germans say so, and so do the
people whose books about Germany are crammed with soul-satisfying
statistics and elaborate calculations. Over-crowding, too, is said to
be worse in Germany than in English cities. But I have always seen the
rent and the crowding judged by the number of rooms and not by their
size. This is really misleading, because you could put the whole of a
small London flat into many a German middle-class dining-room or
_Wohnzimmer_. You could bring up a family in a single room I once had
for a whole summer in Thueringen for 5s. a week. It was as big as a
church, and most light and airy. One camped in bits of it. I think
rent for rent rooms in Germany are quite twice as large as in London.
In Berlin, where rent is considered wickedly high, you can get a flat
in a good quarter for L80, and for that sum you will have four large
rooms, three smaller ones, a good kitchen, an attic that serves as a
lumber-room, and a share in a laundry at the top of the house. There
will even be a bathroom with a trickle of cold water, but it is only
in the very newest and most expensive German flats that you find hot
and cold water laid on. Your drawing and dining-rooms will be
spacious, and one of them is almost sure to have a balcony looking on
the street and the pleasant avenue of trees with which it is planted.
For this rent you must either make yourself happy on the third or
fourth floor in a house without a lift, or you must find one of the
delightful "garden" dwellings behind the _Hof_; but you will have a
better home for your money than you could get in a decent part of
London. In fact, it comes to this, in spite of all the statistics in
favour of London. If you can only spend L80 on your rent you can live
in a good quarter of Berlin, near enough to the Tiergarten, close to
the Zoological Gardens, and within a tram-ride of the delightful woods
at Halensee. In London you can get a small house for L80, but it will
either be in an unattractive quarter or in a suburb. A flat, wherever
it is, must always seem a dwelling place rather than a home, but the
Germans have elected to live in flats and accept their disadvantages.
In and around all the great cities there are villas, but their number
hardly counts in comparison with the masses of tall white houses, six
storeys high for the most part, and holding within their walls all
degrees of wealth and poverty. The German villa is florid, and likes
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