ative word or
deed, it would have needed a blind man to have failed to detect their
uncompromising hostility towards me. We travelled _via_ Soest, and my
position was rendered additionally unnerving because train after train
labelled with the flaming Red Cross thundered by, bearing their heavy
loads of the German battered and maimed from the battlefields. It was
easy to see that the number of the train-loads of wounded was exercising
a peculiar effect upon the passengers, for was not this heavy toll of
war and the crushed and bleeding flower of the German army coming from
the front where the British were so severely mauling the invincible
military machine of Europe and disputing effectively their locust-like
advance over the fair fields of Belgium and Northern France? Is it
surprising under the circumstances that they glowered and frowned at me
in a disconcerting and menacing manner?

[Illustration: Facsimile of the Pass issued by the German authorities to
the author on his leaving Sennelager for Coeln-on-Rhein.]

As the hours rolled by I began to feel fainter and hungrier. I had had
nothing since the usual cup of acorn coffee at seven in the morning.
Although I became so weak that I felt as if I must drop, I buoyed up my
flagging spirits and drooping body by the thought that I should soon
meet and enjoy the company of K----. But I was aboard a fourth-class
train and it appeared to be grimly determined to set up a new record for
slow-travelling even for Germany. The result was that I did not reach
Cologne, or Koeln, as the Germans have it, until one o'clock the
following morning, having stood on my feet for eleven hours and without
a bite to eat.

I fell rather than stepped from the train and turned out of the station.
Again my spirits sank. The city was wrapped in a darkness which could be
felt. There was not a glimmer of light to be seen anywhere. To pick
one's way through a strange city in a strange land and without more than
a bare smattering of the language under conditions of inky blackness was
surely the supreme ordeal. At every few steps I blundered against a
soldier with his loaded rifle and fixed bayonet, ready to lunge at
anything and everything which, to a highly strung German military mind,
appeared to assume a tangible form in the intense blackness. Since my
return home I have experienced some striking specimens of British
darkened towns, but they do not compare with the complete darkness which
prevaile