I leave the Hôtel Kron Prinz and wait outside the station for two hours before the train is due to leave. I fight literally and fearfully for—not a seat—but just standing-room. My first-class ticket procures me a few inches of space in a first-class corridor where the squash is so great that the surrounding faces touch mine and I cannot move hand or foot. There are fifteen people in each compartment. The corridors even are so full that men and women are standing in the lavatories. The order is given to close the windows while we go over the Rhine. I remember nothing more until I come to with my back against the wall and my mouth sweet with the delicious odour and purifying feel of peppermint. A kind German is popping little peppermint comfits into my mouth. Blessed Teuton! We travel like that for hours. It seems days. We have leisure to study the methods of the army of men working at the fortifications outside Cologne. The express pants along at a walking pace for a few miles, stops at a wayside station and fat market women fight their way in and stick their bulging baskets—_faute de mieux_—on our heads. One woman gets wedged in the lavatory door, adding suffocation to the other trials of the poor souls within. We arrive at Duisburg. The train will stop here seven hours. Seven minutes I had understood previously. I alight. The peppermint-providing Teuton and a charming German girl who has been already forty-seven hours on the journey, take me in tow. We wander through the town, we enjoy cream-laden chocolate, ice in a café, we speak of anything and everything except the war. At the station we admire the wonderful organisation of the Red Cross. Then we dine together. An obsequious waiter brings the menu—in French. A storm-cloud gathers on the faces of my two companions. “Take it away. We don’t speak French any more,” he says roughly. We are reduced to Wienerschnitzel and beer. I dislike both. The train comes in bringing German wounded, all pale and very silent except one who is able to stand on the platform and becomes instantly the centre of a thrilled audience. I offer my fruit to the silent, white-faced men who are making shift to find comfort on the hard cushions. “Why not?” says one indifferently reaching out his hand for the purple grapes. The others stare at me but are seemingly past interest. The train starts. Our first-class compartment is as full as before, but instead of the beating sun, a blessed coolness has come to us with the darkness. My German friend meets her mother at Wesel. They all implore me to stay the night with them ... as many nights as I like. I am touched but must get on. I may yet be stopped on the frontier. Two soldiers, bayonets fixed, descend on me and demand papers. For the moment I have mislaid them. A crowd collects. Spy-baiting is always fun.