, when I ask her
what she thinks, says soothingly that I needn't worry my little
head--my little head! As though I were six, and made of sugar--and
that everything will settle down again. "Europe is in an excited
state," she says placidly, "and suspects danger round every corner, and
when it has reached the corner and looked round it, it finds nothing
there after all. It has happened often before, and will no doubt
happen again. Go to bed, my child, and forget politics. Leave them to
older and more experienced heads. Always our Kaiser has been on the
side of peace, and we can trust him to smooth down Austria's ruffled
feathers."

Greatly doubting her Kaiser, after all I've heard of him at Kloster's,
I was too polite to be anything but silent, and came up to my room
obediently. If there is war, then Bernd--oh well, I'm tired. I don't
think I'll write any more tonight. But I do love you so very much,
darling mother.

Your Chris.

What a mercy that mothers are women, and needn't go away and fight.
Wouldn't it have been too awful if they had been men!

_Koseritz, Saturday, July 25th, 1914.

You know, my beloved one, I'd much rather be at Frau Berg's in Berlin
and independent, and able to see Bernd whenever he can come, without
saying dozens of thank you's and may I's to anybody each time, and I
had arranged to go today, and now the Grafin won't let me. She says
she'll take me up on Monday when she and Helena go. They're going for
a short time because they want to be nearer any news there is than they
are here, and she says it wouldn't be right for her, so nearly my aunt,
to allow me, so nearly her niece, to stay by myself in a pension while
she is in her house in the next street. What would people say? she
asked--_was wurden die Leute sagen_, as every German before doing or
refraining from doing a thing invariably inquires. They all from top
to bottom seem to walk in terror of _die Leute_ and what they would
_sagen_. So I'm to go to her house in the Sommerstrasse, and live in
chaperoned splendour for as long as she is there. She says she is
certain my mother would wish it. I'm not a hit certain, I who know my
mother and know how beautifully empty she is of conventions and how
divinely indifferent to _die Leute_; but as I'm going to marry a German
of the Junker class I suppose I must appease his relations,--at any
rate till I've got them, by gentle and devious methods, a little more
used to me.