the day.

Late this afternoon, when I walk around to the American consulate, I
shall pass the office of the chief local paper; and there I am sure to
find anywhere from seventy-five to a hundred men and women waiting for
the appearance on a bulletin board of the latest list of dead, wounded
and missing men who are credited to Aix-la-Chapelle and its vicinity. A
new list goes up each afternoon, replacing the list of the day before.
Sometimes it contains but a few names; sometimes a good many. Then
there will be piteous scenes for a little while; but presently the
mourners will go away, struggling to compose themselves as they go; for
their Kaiser has asked them to make no show of their loss among their
neighbors. Having made the supremest sacrifice they can make, short of
offering up their own lives, they now make another and hide their grief
away from sight. Surely, this war spares none at all--neither those who
fight nor those who stay behind.

Toward dusk the streets will fill up with promenaders. Perhaps a
regiment or so of troops, temporarily quartered here on the way to the
front, will clank by, bound for their barracks in divers big music
halls. The squares may be quite crowded with uniforms; or there may be
only one gray coat in proportion to three or four black ones--this last
is the commoner ratio. It all depends on the movements of the forces.

To-night the cafes will be open and the moving-picture places will run
full blast; and the free concert will go on and there will be services
in the cathedral of Charlemagne. The cafes that had English names when
the war began have German ones now. Thus the Bristol has become the
Crown Prince Cafe, and the Piccadilly is the Germania; but otherwise
they are just as they were before the war started, and the business in
them is quite as good, the residents say, as it ever was. Prices are no
higher than they used to be--at least I have not found them high.

After the German fashion the diners will eat slowly and heavily; and
afterward they will sit in clusters of three or four, drinking mugs of
Munich or Pilsner, and talking deliberately. At the Crown Prince there
will be dancing, and at two or three other places there will be music
and maybe singing; but at the Kaiserhof, where I shall dine, there is
nothing more exciting than beer and conversation. It was there, two
nights ago, I met at the same time three Germans representing three
dominant classes in the l