noted and that I
was to be constantly under police surveillance.

After delivering my packages to the Consulate I waited until after
dinner for Donait, with whom I am to leave for Berlin at nine o'clock.
I took luncheon with Vice-Consul Cochrane, spent the afternoon
sightseeing in the streets of the city, and dined with Consul Leishman
and his wife.

* * * * *

_Berlin, Thursday, December 3d._ Donait and I had a whole compartment
to ourselves last night, which shows how normally German railroads
are running. We arrived in Berlin at eight o'clock this morning,
bathed, dressed, and had breakfast, at eleven o'clock presented
ourselves at the American Embassy and delivered our precious dispatch
pouch to Mr. Grew, the First Secretary.

I was surprised and much pleased to find that an old playmate, Charles
Russell, was Private Secretary to Ambassador Gerard, a position in
which he has achieved a great success.

Our duty discharged, we hastened to take our first walk along the
famous Unter den Linden. The city of Berlin is well laid out, with
wide avenues and numerous and ample park spaces, some of them very
large, but the architecture of the city is a jumble of heavy, clumsy,
gloomy buildings, fussed up with most extraordinarily crude and
grotesque details. For an architect to be in Berlin is next door to
being in hell.

Our Military Attache, Major Langhorne, has been at the front almost
continuously since the beginning of operations. In his absence, we
called upon the Naval Attache. I also called at the American Consulate
to leave dispatches and found that the Vice-Consul had been one of my
classmates at Yale. He remembered me as "Fish Wood" the runner, and
probably in true Yale spirit considered my occupation of Attache much
less important.

The present conditions in Berlin are as unknown to the outside world
as are the domestic affairs of China. In order not to make too many
diplomatic _faux pas_, I spent the first day talking with the men whom
I knew and in accumulating useful data as to danger points. As one in
Germany senses efficiency, one as quickly becomes conscious of the
all-seeing eye and the all-guiding hand of the Government. We have
nothing like that in America, and for an American in France there is
no such supervision. Life in Prussia is at present, for the diplomat
of a neutral country, much like skating on thin ice. Several of the
younger diplomats in Berlin have unc