endly spirit--and I must say I am
surprised. Practically I have been thrown out, neck and crop. All my
luggage is lost. Away at some one-horse junction near the Dutch frontier
that I can't even learn the name of. There's joy in some German home, I
guess, over my shirts; they were real good shirts. This tweed suit I
have is all the wardrobe I've got in the world. All my money--good
American notes--well, they laughed at them. And when I produced English
gold they suspected me of being English and put me under arrest.... I
can assure you that the English are most unpopular in Germany at the
present time, thoroughly unpopular.... Considering that they are getting
exactly what they were asking for, these Germans are really remarkably
annoyed.... Well, I had to get the American consul to advance me money,
and I've done more waiting about and irregular fasting and travelling on
an empty stomach and viewing the world, so far as it was permitted, from
railway sidings--for usually they made us pull the blinds down when
anything important was on the track--than any cow that ever came to
Chicago.... I was handed as freight--low grade freight.... It doesn't
bear recalling."

Mr. Direck assumed as grave and gloomy an expression as the facial
habits of years would permit.

"I tell you I never knew there was such a thing as war until this
happened to me. In America we don't know there is such a thing. It's
like pestilence and famine; something in the story books. We've
forgotten it for anything real. There's just a few grandfathers go
around talking about it. Judge Holmes and sage old fellows like him.
Otherwise it's just a game the kids play at.... And then suddenly here's
everybody running about in the streets--hating and threatening--and nice
old gentlemen with white moustaches and fathers of families scheming and
planning to burn houses and kill and hurt and terrify. And nice young
women, too, looking for an Englishman to spit at; I tell you I've been
within range and very uncomfortable several times.... And what one can't
believe is that they are really doing these things. There's a little
village called Vise near the Dutch frontier; some old chap got fooling
there with a fowling-piece; and they've wiped it out. Shot the people by
the dozen, put them out in rows three deep and shot them, and burnt the
place. Short of scalping, Red Indians couldn't have done worse.
Respectable German soldiers....

"No one in England really seems