e and a popular
pastor worked up a huge subscription for war-waifs, and when the money
had been raised it was found the waifs were already well provided for.
I believe the money was appropriated to a fund for helping the indigent
middle class. At a cabaret one night there appeared a clever
impersonator. A slim, clean-shaven man entertained the people sitting
at the dinner-tables by rapid changes of personization. He was in turn
every one who had a share in the making of modern Germany. Thus he was
Bismarck and he was Karl Marx, and he was Ebert, in rapid succession.
No one cheered him, and the people looked at the undistinguished figure
of Ebert without enthusiasm. Presently, as one foresaw, he came to
Hindenburg, and then every one cheered and the place rocked with
excitement. There were even a sprinkling of claps over to applaud his
next impersonization, the late Emperor Franz Joseph who was sandwiched
in to prepare the mind for something else. After that, one waited.
Would he show the Kaiser? What would happen if suddenly the familiar
face of Wilhelm the Second confronted that gathering of Germans? The
mimic, however, would not risk it, and his concluding make-up was not
Wilhelm but, very cleverly chosen, Frederick the Great. And every one
was at ease again.

Germany is not ready to have the Kaiser back. But, as at Athens, so in
Berlin, national humiliation has reacted in favour of the monarch.
There is a vague feeling that the Kaiser is suffering for Germany's
sake, and that his exile typifies the unhappy downfall of Germany. No
one thinks the Kaiser less virtuous than Lloyd George or Clemenceau.
Except for the Communist movement, which naturally tends in an entirely
different direction, there is a national sentimental reaction in favour
of the Hohenzollerns. This was clearly focussed in the honours paid to
the dead Kaiserin. Before the passing of that funeral cortege the
Kaiser's portrait was rare in public places. Now it has appeared again
and is common.

There are nevertheless few things in Europe more improbable than the
return of the Kaiser. He might come back before he died. But it would
be as the result of some strange turn of affairs in Europe. He will
probably die in Holland. And then will he not come back and receive
the greatest honour?

I was naturally interested in the spirit of the rising generation,
those who did not have to fight, those who perhaps will not be
conscripted to fi