logne.

My unexpected freedom in Cologne was but one of many surprise.

There was the surprise of meeting an Australian friend in such
unexpected quarters. I ascertained her name was Miss Goche. Her father
was a well-known merchant of Melbourne, but was now living in Sydney. He
had sent his daughter to the Leipsic Conservatorium to receive the
technical polish every aspiring Australian musician seems to consider
the "hall mark of excellence."

But the war closed the Conservatorium as it did most other concerns, by
drawing out the younger professors to the firing line and the older men
to the Landstrum, a body of spectacled elderly men in uniform, who felt
the spirit wake in their feeble blood and prided themselves as
"bloodthirsty dogs," as they watched railway lines, reservoirs, power
stations, and did other unexciting small jobs.

Miss Goche was staying with her aunt and grandfather in Cologne. At
their home I was made welcome.

Little restriction was placed on my movements, than the twice daily
reporting at the Barracks.

I wondered at this freedom.

"It is easily explained," said old Goche, who could speak English. "The
Fatherland knows no enmity with Australia. We have sympathy for the
Indians, Canadians and other races of your Empire, who have been whipped
into this war against their own free will."

"But," I interrupted, "there has been no whipping."

"Tut, tut," he continued. "We of the Fatherland know. Have we not proof?
Our "Berliner Tageblatt" tells us so. We have no quarrel with the
colonial people. Our hate is for England alone; and when this war is
over and we have England at our feet, we shall be welcomed by Australia
and the colonies, and we shall let them share with us the freedom and
the light and the wisdom of our great Destiny."

There was no convincing the old man to the contrary, and his
granddaughter informed me that the same opinion was universal in
Germany.

"The best proof that it is so is the freedom you enjoy," she said.

"And yet there are times," she continued, "that I feel there is a subtle
reason for this apparent kindliness for the colonies of the British
Empire. You know Germany cannot successfully develop her own colonies.
She has not that spirit of initiative that the Britisher has in
attacking the various vicissitudes that every pioneer meets with in the
development of a new land. That is why she let her colonies be snapped
up by Australia without a pang; that is why