regret to say that most of them choose the latter course.

While I was in Germany I read a lengthy and solicitous letter from
Pastor Winter, of Bruch, addressed to Admiral von Tirpitz, who had
just retired for the ostensible reason that he was unwell, but
whose illness was patently only diplomatic. The good pastor
expressed the hope that his early recovery would permit the admiral
to continue his noble work of obliterating England. Pastor Falk,
of Berlin, is a typical fire-eater. His Whitsuntide address was an
attack upon Anglo-Saxon civilisation and the urgent German mission
of smashing Britain and America. The Easter sermons of hate, one
of which I heard at Stettin, were especially bloodthirsty.
Congregations are larger than usual on that day, which is intended
to commemorate a spirit quite the opposite to hate. The clergy are
instructed not to attack Prance or Russia, and so it comes about
that, as I have previously pointed out, in Prussia, Hanover,
Schleswig-Holstein, Brandenburg, and Saxony, the pastors of the
State Church preach hatred of Britain, as violently in their
pulpits as in their pastoral visits.

The pulpit orators, taking their tip from the Government, are also
exhorting their congregations to "hold out and win the war." I
know of one pastor in a good section of Berlin, however, who has
recently lost considerable influence in his congregation. Sunday
after Sunday his text has been, "Wir mussen durchhalten!" (We must
hold out!) "No sacrifice should be too great for the Fatherland,
no privation, too arduous to be endured if one but has the spirit
to conquer." He paid particular attention to the rapidly
increasing number of people who grumble incessantly over the
shortage of food. The good man was clearly losing patience with
those who complained.

One day thieves broke into his home and got away with an enormous
amount of hams and other edibles. I remind the reader that ham had
ere this become unknown in Berlin. Less than three hundred pigs
were being killed there per week where formerly twenty-five
thousand were slaughtered. The Government had more-over taken a
house-to-house inventory of food, and hoarding had been made
punishable by law.

The story, of course, never appeared in the papers, since such
divines are useful implements of the State, but the whole
congregation heard of it, with the disastrous consequence that the
good man's future sermons on self-denial fell upon stony gro