At Coblenz we were billeted at the house of Von Grotte, the German president of the Rhineland provinces, and when I woke that first morning I could not help thinking of the changes that had taken place in my life between my birth at Mannheim in 1856 and this day at Coblenz in 1919. Soon I was seated in the Coblenzer-Hof partaking of a good American breakfast of oatmeal, eggs, bacon, wheat-cakes and molasses, and no doubt a better meal than any German had that day, and looking at “Old Glory” afloat over Ehrenbreitstein. How full historically the interim had been! How strange to see the American flag above this fortress on the Rhine, while, below, a bronze statue of William I looked on in woeful contemplation of the wreckage to his Empire that his grandson had wrought. Anxious to learn the true state of mind of the German people, I asked an American Military Intelligence officer to arrange for me to talk with some of the leading citizens of Coblenz. He did so at the home of the best known lawyer of the city, where, besides our host, were a prominent doctor, the largest local paper manufacturer, an export merchant, and several others. It took a couple of bottles of Rhine wine to loosen their tongues. Finally, one said: “Here we are in the afternoon of life, each of us a leader in his calling. We all had accumulated a competency when the war came but some 20 per cent. of this has been taken in taxes, and the remainder is to-day worth scarcely one fifth of its original value. [A mark was then worth about five cents.] We have scarcely one sixth of what we formerly possessed in actual wealth. Instead of yielding us a sufficient annual income on which to live, our principal now amounts to only three years’ normal income.” They all said that their business prospects were at an end. “But surely _your_ profession goes right on,” I protested to the physician. “I am as badly off as the others,” he answered, “three of these men are my best and oldest patients: how can I charge them any more than I did before the war? Moreover, many of my patients I can’t charge anything at all.” As one of the company expressed it, they felt that France wanted to turn them into galley-slaves: “She has put us into the hold of a ship; the hatches are battened down, and on them are sitting a lot of politicians from Paris to make sure that we never get out.” The manufacturers said that the young men of ability and energy would not submit to “such slavery.” They would seek other fields of activity, and eventually drift to a country like Russia, where skilled managers and intelligence were at a premium.