ystem; the submergence of the
individual in the organization. The wounded men seemed parts of a
machine; the human touch which may lead to disorganization was
less in evidence than with us, where the thought is: This is an
individual human being, with his own peculiarities of temperament, his
own theories of life, his own ego; not just a quantity of brain, tissue,
blood and bone which is required for the organism called man. A
human mechanism wounded at the German front needed repairs and
repairs were made to that mechanism. The niceties might be lacking
but the repair factory ran steadily and efficiently at full blast. Germany
had to care for her wounded by the millions and by the millions she
cared for them. "Two years!"

I was sorry that I had said this to the director, for its effect on him was
like a blow in the chest. The vision of more and more wounded
seemed to rise before the eyes of this man, weary with the strain of
doing the work which he knew so well how to do as a cog in the
system. But for only a moment. He stiffened; he became the
drillmaster again; and the tragic look in his eyes was succeeded by
one of that strange exaltation I had seen in the eyes of so many
Germans, which appeared to carry their mind away from you and
their surroundings to the battlefield where they were fighting for their
"place in the sun." "Two years, then. We shall see it through!" He had
a son who had been living in a French family near Lille studying
French and he had heard nothing of him since the war began. They
were good people, this French family; his son liked them. They would
be kind to him; but what might not the French Government do to him,
a German! He had heard terrible stories--the kind of stories that
hardened the fighting spirit of German soldiers--about the treatment
German civilians had received in France. He could think of one
French family which he knew as being kind, but not of the whole
French people as a family. As soon as the national and racial element
were considered the enemy became a beast.

To him, at least, Berlin was not normal; nor was it to that keeper of a
small shop off Unter den Linden which sold prints and etchings and
cartoons. What a boon my order of cartoons was! He forgot his
psychology code and turned human and confidential. The war had
been hard on him; there was no business at all, not even in cartoons.

The Opera alone seemed something like normal to one who trusted
his eyes rather