middle and upper classes still devote a good deal of time to
the feminine pursuits of shopping and dressing. The outbreak of
war hit the fashions at a curious moment. Paris had just abandoned
the tight skirt, and a comical struggle took place between the
Government and those women who desired to be correctly gowned.

The Government said, "In order to avoid waste of material, you must
stick to the tight skirt," and the amount of cloth allowed was
carefully prescribed. Women's desire to be in the mode was,
however, too powerful for even Prussianism. Copies of French
fashion magazines were smuggled in from Paris through Switzerland,
passed from dressmaker to dressmaker, and house to house, and
despite the military instructions and the leather shortage, wide
skirts and high boots began to appear everywhere,

This feminine ebullition was followed by an appeal from the
Government to abandon all enemy example and to institute new German
fashions of their own making. Models were exhibited in shop
windows of what were called the "old and elegant Viennese
fashions." These, however, were found to be great consumers of
material, and the women still continued to imitate Paris.

The day before I left Berlin I heard an amusing conversation in the
underground railway between two women, one of whom was talking
about her hat. She told her friend that she found the picture of
the hat in a smuggled fashion paper, and had it made at her
milliner's and she was obviously very pleased with her taste.

The women in the munition factories, who number millions, wear a
serviceable kind of uniform overall.

The venom of the German women in regard to the war is quite in
contrast to the feeling expressed by English women. They have read
a great deal about British and American women and they cordially
detest them. Their point of view is very difficult to explain.
When I have told German women that in many States in my country
women have votes, their reply is, "How vulgar!" Their attitude
towards the whole question of women's franchise is that it is a
form of Anglo-Saxon lack of culture and lack of authority.

The freedom accorded to English and American girls is entirely
misunderstood. A Dutch girl who, in the presence of some German
ladies, expressed admiration for certain aspects of English
feminine life, was fiercely and venomously attacked by that
never-failing weapon, the German woman's tongue. The poor thing,
who mildly expr