*

One is not permitted to telephone in English or in any language except
German or French (the native languages of Switzerland), and even then
the telephone girls listen closely to one's conversation.

* * * * *

Donait and I have made all our preparations to depart for Berlin early
tomorrow morning, our dispatches having been sorted out, checked, and
re-pouched.

* * * * *

_Tuesday, December 1st._ We reached the Swiss-German frontier at noon
today. We descended from the train at Basle and drove three miles to
the frontier. Here there were two barriers straight across the road,
the nearer one guarded by numerous Swiss soldiers; the farther, some
twenty yards behind, by soldiers wearing the spiked helmet. Before we
were allowed to pass the first barrier our papers and luggage were
minutely examined by Swiss military and customs officers. We then
walked across the twenty yards to the second, or German, barrier,
where we were conducted into a little guard-house. Here some dozen
soldiers were sleeping or playing cards on cots in the background
along the walls. An efficient sergeant examined our papers and then
allowed us to pass the second barrier into Germany, showing marked
respect for the Herr Lieutenant and the Herr Attache.

We loaded our suit-cases in a second vehicle, a German one this time,
and proceeded some two miles to the railroad station of Leopoldshoehe.
While we stood on the station platform at Leopoldshoehe, heavy guns in
battle could be heard off toward Muelhausen and once there came the
typical crash of a big shell exploding much nearer, probably not more
than three or four kilometers away. As near as that to a battle in
France one sees a disorganized, deserted, wrecked countryside, with
wagon trains going back and forth and wounded soldiers straggling
toward the safety zone. Here in Germany everything was in the most
perfect order, with no excitement or confusion, and passenger trains
left on the minute by schedule time. It was difficult to realize that
there was a battle within a thousand miles.

The moment one enters Germany one feels efficiency as if one had
passed under a spell. The way the feeling immediately impresses itself
upon one is a curious psychological phenomenon. One senses at once the
wonderful civic consciousness of the nation and respects it. One does
not throw waste paper out of a carriage window, nor take trivia