A German woman told me the other day that in her house it was the custom to fine everybody in the family ten pfennigs if they came down to breakfast without saying: "Gott strafe die Englander!" ("God punish the English!") In a recent Ulk there is a cartoon of a young mother holding up her baby to his proud father with the announcement that he has spoken his first words. "And what did he say?" "Gott strafe England!" America is criticised for supplying the Allies with arms--shades of South American revolutions and the old "Ypiranga"!--while permitting itself, without sufficient protest, to be shut off from sending food to Germany. Yet, in spite of this and the extremely difficult situation created by the submarine blockade, the individual American is not embarrassed unless mistaken for an Englishman or unless he finds some supersensitive patriot in a restaurant or theatre who objects even to hearing English. At the frontier the honest customs inspector landed, first thing, on a copy of "Tartarin sur les Alpes," which I had picked up at the railroad news-stand in the Hague. "Franzosisch!" he declared, flapping over the pages. Next it was a bundle of letters of introduction, the top one of which happened to be in English. "Englische Briefe!" and forthwith he bellowed for help. A young officer sauntered out from the near-by office, saluted, and said, "Good morning!" glanced at "Tartarin" with a smile, and tossed it back into the bag, at letters and passport, said it must be very interesting to see both sides, and so, after a question or two, to the train for Koln. On the way to Berlin from Koln, that rainy afternoon, I went into the dining-car toward five o'clock attired in a pepper-and-salt tweed suit and heavy tan boots, and, speaking German with evident pain, tactfully asked--everybody else drinking beer--for tea. The man across the way whispered to his companion and stared; a middle-aged man farther up the aisle stood stock-still and stared; a young woman at the other end of the car turned round and, gazing over the back of her chair, whispered aghast to her companion: "Englaender!" Not particularly enlivened by the cup that cheers, I regained my compartment presently and glared out at the sodden landscape, with now and then a shot at the other occupant who had got on at Essen or one of the western stations and sat the day out without a word. One of those disagreeable Prussians evidently--until, actually needing to know, I broke the silence by asking which station we arrived at in Berlin. He answered with perfect good humor, and we began to talk. I mentioned the tea incident.