window."

"You are right," I admitted; "I did."

"Why did you throw them out of window?" he asked. A German policeman has
his code of questions arranged for him; he never varies them, and he
never omits one.

"I threw them out of the window at some cats," I answered.

"What cats?" he asked.

It was the sort of question a German policeman would ask. I replied with
as much sarcasm as I could put into my accent that I was ashamed to say I
could not tell him what cats. I explained that, personally, they were
strangers to me; but I offered, if the police would call all the cats in
the district together, to come round and see if I could recognise them by
their yaul.

The German policeman does not understand a joke, which is perhaps on the
whole just as well, for I believe there is a heavy fine for joking with
any German uniform; they call it "treating an official with contumely."
He merely replied that it was not the duty of the police to help me
recognise the cats; their duty was merely to fine me for throwing things
out of window.

I asked what a man was supposed to do in Germany when woke up night after
night by cats, and he explained that I could lodge an information against
the owner of the cat, when the police would proceed to caution him, and,
if necessary, order the cat to be destroyed. Who was going to destroy
the cat, and what the cat would be doing during the process, he did not
explain.

I asked him how he proposed I should discover the owner of the cat. He
thought for a while, and then suggested that I might follow it home. I
did not feel inclined to argue with him any more after that; I should
only have said things that would have made the matter worse. As it was,
that night's sport cost me twelve marks; and not a single one of the four
German officials who interviewed me on the subject could see anything
ridiculous in the proceedings from beginning to end.

But in Germany most human faults and follies sink into comparative
insignificance beside the enormity of walking on the grass. Nowhere, and
under no circumstances, may you at any time in Germany walk on the grass.
Grass in Germany is quite a fetish. To put your foot on German grass
would be as great a sacrilege as to dance a hornpipe on a Mohammedan's
praying-mat. The very dogs respect German grass; no German dog would
dream of putting a paw on it. If you see a dog scampering across the
grass in Germany, you may know for certain that it