ot scarce we killed
all the pigs, so bother with them is over now."

"You are not downhearted about the war?" I asked.

"I know that Germany cannot be defeated," she replied. "But we do
so long for peace."

"You do not think your Government responsible at all for the war?"
I ventured.

"I don't, and the rest of us do not," was her unhesitating reply.
"We all know that our Kaiser wanted only peace. Everybody knows
that England caused all this misery." Then she looked squarely and
honestly into my eyes and said in a tone I shall never forget: "Do
you think that if our Government were responsible for the war that
we should be willing to bear all these terrible sacrifices?"

I thought of that banquet table more than two years before, and the
remark about creating public opinion. I realised that the road is
long which winds from it to the little wayside inn near Hildesheim,
but that it is a road on which live both the diplomat and the
lonely, war-weary woman. They live on different ends, that is all.

CHAPTER VIII

CORRESPONDENTS IN SHACKLES

Towards the end of 1915 the neutral newspaper correspondents in
Berlin were summoned to the _Kriegs-Presse-Bureau_ (War Press
Bureau) of the Great General Staff. The official in charge, Major
Nicolai, notified them that the German Government desired their
signature to an agreement respecting their future activities in the
war. It had been decided, Major Nicolai stated, to allow the
American journalists to visit the German fronts at more or less
regular intervals, but before this was done it would be necessary
for them to enter into certain pledges. These were, mainly:--

1. To remain in Germany for the duration of the war, unless given
special permission to leave by the German authorities.

2. To guarantee that dispatches would be published in the United
States precisely as sent from Germany, that is to say, as edited
and passed by the military censorship.

3. To supply their own headlines for their dispatches, and to
guarantee that these, and none others, would be printed.

After labouring in vain to instruct Major Nicolai that with the
best of intentions on the part of the correspondents it was beyond
their power to say in exactly what form the _Omaha Bee_ or the _New
Orleans Picayune_ would publish their "copy," they affixed their
signatures to the weird document laid before them. It was signed,
without exception, by all the important correspondents per