e Government, in
the class with which I mostly came into contact in Germany, the
women are blindfold and believe all they are told. So strong, too,
is the influence of Government propaganda on the people in Germany
that in a town where I met two English ladies married to Germans,
they believed that Germany had Verdun in her grasp, had annihilated
the British troops (mainly black) on the Somme, had defeated the
British Fleet in the battle of Skagerrak (Jutland), and reduced the
greater part of the fortifications, docks, and munition factories
of London to ruins by Zeppelins.

Their anguish for the fate of their English relations was sincere,
and they were intensely hopeful that Britain would accept any sort
of terms of peace in order to prevent the invasion which some
people in Germany still believe possible.

At the beginning of the war the click of the knitting needle was
heard everywhere; shop-girls knitted while waiting for customers,
women knitted in trams and trains, at theatres, in churches, and,
of course, in the home. The knitting is ceasing now for the very
practical reason that the military authorities have commandeered
all the wool for the clothing of the soldiery. A further reason
for the stoppage of such needlework is the fact that women are
engaged in countless forms of definite war work.

Upon the whole it is beyond question that the German women are not
standing the losses as well as the British women. I have been
honoured in England by conversations with more than one lady who
has lost many dear ones. The attitude is quieter here than in
Germany, and is not followed by the peace talk which such events
produce in German households.

What surprises me in England is the fact that the word "peace" is
hardly ever mentioned anywhere, whereas in any German railway train
or tramcar the two dominant words are Friede (peace) and Essen
(food). The peace is always a German idea of peace--for the
extreme grumblers do not talk freely in public--and the food talk
is not always the result of the shortage, but of the great
difficulty in getting what is to be obtained, together with the
increasing monotony of the diet.

It must not be supposed, however, that the life of feminine Germany
is entirely a gloomy round of duty and suffering. Among the women
of the poor, things are as bad as they can be. They are getting
higher wages than ever, but the food usury and the blockade rob
them of the increase.

The