Institute, attached to the
University of Berlin. To-morrow I hope to see Excellency von Harnach,
president of the University of Berlin, to whom I have a letter. Dr.
Drechsler was kind, agreeable, extremely interesting. He showed me some
New York newspapers--the first real news of the war I have had for
weeks. The 'Tribune' and 'Times' had an account of us fellows down in
the cellar at Antwerp. Drechsler and I had an interesting argument, and
before I left he deluged me with pamphlets and literature for the
improvement of my mind and sympathies. Even so he was unlike the
average German. As a rule they have attempted to cram their arguments
down my throat. These Teutons think they can force you to believe.

"Dr. Drechsler and the proprietor of the Kaiserhof, and, of course, the
Foreign Office warned me that it was forbidden to go to the prisoners'
camps, either at Zossen or Doeberitz. Some correspondents had been
taken on 'personally conducted' tours; but because of misinformation
sent out the tours were no longer in vogue. So I thought that I would
risk it, without permit, and, wishing to take a swing through rural
Germany, I decided to visit the camp at Zossen, twenty-five kilometers
south of the capital. When the guards weren't looking, I slipped boxes
of cigarettes through the barbed-wire fence to Irish privates, and
listened to the talk of captured Cossacks, and watched the British
Tommies kicking around a 'soccer' football, squabbling about fouls and
penalties, and as much excited about the score as if they were at home
on Hampstead Heath."

It was chiefly in my wanderings through rural Germany that I was able to
rub elbows with the rank and file of citizens, and to get that barometer
of public feeling which Colonel Roosevelt, I believe, has called the
barber-shop opinion. I think I am justified in saying that during the
winter there were many evidences, too many to be overlooked, that a
growing minority, suffering through loss of life and realizing the
territorial advantages which are now Germany's, earnestly longed for
peace on any reasonable terms. The sooner peace came, they felt, the
better would be the strategic position of the Vaterland. Some of this
minority, in addition to the women, were business men, or professors, or
merchants, or doctors.

It was not far from Hanover, where you change cars for Cologne and Aix-
la-Chapelle, dispatching-centers of the troops for the northern line of
battl