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of writing to you.

You never saw anything like the streets yesterday. They seemed full of
drunken people, shouting up and down with red faces all swollen with
excitement. It is of course intensely interesting and new to me, who
have never been closer to such a thing as war than history lessons at
school, but what do they all think they're going to get, what do they
all think it's really _for_, these poor creatures bellowing and
strutting, and waving their hats and handkerchiefs, and even their
babies, high over their heads whenever a _konigliche Hoheit_ dashes
past in a motor, which happens every five minutes because there are
such a lot of them. Our drive from Koseritz to Stettin on Monday,
which now seems so remote that it is as if it was another life, was the
last beautiful ordinary thing that happened. Since then it has been
one great noise and ugliness. I can't forget the look of the country
as we passed through it on Monday, so lovely in its summer
peacefulness, the first rye being cut in the fields, the hedges full of
Traveler's Joy. I didn't notice how beautiful it was at the time, I
only wanted to get on, to get away, to get the news; but now I'm here I
remember it as something curiously _innocent_, and I'm so glad we had a
puncture that made us stop for ten minutes in a bit of the road where
there were great cornfields as far as one could see, and a great
stretch of sky with peaceful little white clouds that hardly moved, and
only the sound of poplars by the roadside rustling their leaves with
that lovely liquid sound they make, and larks singing. It comforts me
to call this up again, to hide in it for a minute away from the
shouting of _Deutschland uber Alles_, and the _hochs_ and yellings.
Then we got to Stettin; and since then I have lived in ugliness.

The Kaiser came back on Monday. He had arrived in Berlin by the time
we got here, and the Grafin's triumphant calm visibly increased when
the footman who met us at the station eagerly told her the news. For
this, as the papers said that evening, hardly able to conceal their joy
beneath their pious hopes that the horrors of war may even yet be
spared the world, reveals the full seriousness of the situation. I
like the "even yet," don't you? Bernd was at the station, and drove
with us to the Sommerstrasse. We went along the Dorotheenstrasse, at
the back of Unter den Linden, as the Lindens were choked with people.
It was impossible to get throu