Once I heard them
playing old English melodies, and I sickened a little at that. That was
going too far! I looked round the Cafe Bauer--a strange scene after
four and a half years Hun-hating. English soldiers were chatting with
Germans, clinking beer mugs with them. The Germans lifted their hats
to English "Tommies"; our men, Canadian and English, said "Cheerio!" to
German soldiers in uniforms without shoulder-straps or buttons. English
people still talking of Huns, demanding vengeance, the maintenance of
the blockade, would have become hysterical if they had come suddenly to
this German cafe before the signing of peace.

Long before peace was signed at Versailles it had been made on the
Rhine. Stronger than the hate of war was human nature. Face to face,
British soldiers found that every German had two eyes, a nose, and a
mouth, in spite of being a "Hun." As ecclesiastics would say when not
roused to patriotic fury, they had been made "in the image of God."
There were pleasant-spoken women in the shops and in the farmhouses.
Blue-eyed girls with flaxen pigtails courtesied very prettily to English
officers. They were clean. Their houses were clean, more spotless even
than English homes. When soldiers turned on a tap they found water came
out of it. Wonderful! The sanitary arrangements were good. Servants were
hard--working and dutiful. There was something, after all, in German
Kultur. At night the children said their prayer to the Christian God.
Most of them were Catholics, and very pious.

"They seem good people," said English soldiers.

At night, in the streets of Cologne, were women not so good. Shameless
women, though daintily dressed and comely. British soldiers--English,
Scottish, and Canadian--grinned back at their laughing eyes, entered
into converse with them, found they could all speak English, went down
side-streets with them to narrow-fronted houses. There were squalid
scenes when the A.P.M. raided these houses and broke up an entente
cordiale that was flagrant and scandalous.

Astonishing climax to the drama of war! No general orders could stop
fraternization before peace was signed. Human nature asserted itself
against all artificial restrictions and false passion. Friends of mine
who had been violent in their hatred of all Germans became thoughtful,
and said: "Of course there are exceptions," and, "The innocent must
not suffer for the guilty," and, "We can afford to be a little generous
now."

But t