-vines
meandering over the whitewashed cottages, and marvelled at the
monotony of taste which furnished every window-ledge with exactly four
pots of scarlet geraniums. Now, nothing pleased us that was German;
scenery, architecture or people! "This," we said to ourselves, is "the
sunny Rhineland through which we are passing, and we see no obvious
signs as we go by of the struggle which is devastating Belgium and
menacing France." At the first station, however, we realised that
Germany was indeed at war. Red Cross nurses seemed everywhere. Long
tables were spread with snowy cloths and bore coffee urns, zwiebacks,
hoernchen and huge bowls of steaming soup ready for the poor wounded as
they pass through. Now and then pale bandaged faces looked out at us
from passing trains, and men on crutches hobbled by, and the horrors
of mutilating war came home to us all. At Goch we had to show our
passports, and have our luggage examined, but the reality proved not
nearly so bad as our imaginings, and on the whole the officials were
kind and courteous compared to our Altheim demon. The sun was setting
blood-red behind a distant line of black forest when we left Goch and
our enemies and imprisonment behind us and entered the Land of Promise.

We had all been saddened in the morning to learn that Mr. Ives'
strenuous efforts to get permission for the men left behind to go
soon, had met with a curt refusal from the Commandant at Frankfort.
"When England returns our men, not before, and she had better be quick
about it," said he. But how true is Rochefoucauld's cynical
epigram--"Nous avons tous assez de force pour supporter les maux
d'Autrui!" Even our sympathy with, and sorrow for, those left in
Altheim could not damp the joy we felt to be free again; and when we
quitted Goch, the German frontier station, I thought how blessed would
be that day when "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and
their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up a sword
against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall
sit every man under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall
make them afraid."

GERMAN TRAVEL NOTES

"TAKIN' NOTES"

He who knows his Rhine and loves it must take of its charms in small
doses, or satiety is the outcome. There are those, of course, who can
travel from Dan to Beersheba and cry, "'Tis all barren"; but the
ordinarily intell