Now, either the German Secret Service had shadowed me all the way from Brussels, or perhaps every step of the way since I entered the country, or else that soldier had gone out and reported me. Those officers demanded of the proprietor if there was an American in his house and if so what he was doing there. I don't know what answer he gave them, but after a while they went away. I then had the most enlightening and frank talk with that civilian German conductor that I have ever had with a German since this war began. The Belgian hotel proprietor had known him for several months as a guest, and told me that I could trust the man. In the conversation the German said, "War is a terrible thing. It is no good for common men like me." "Why not?" I asked him. "Why," said he, "I have a wife and two children at home, and if I go out and get killed what becomes of them?" I said, "Won't the Kaiser take care of them?" "Humph," he grunted, _Der Kaiser!_ And he put his fingers in his ears to indicate that the Kaiser would be deaf to their appeals. He continued, _Der Krieg ist gut für die oberen Zehn-Tausend, ja, ja! aber es ist nicht gut für diejenigen welche kämpfen_. "War is good for the upper ten thousand, yes, yes! but it is no good for the ones who do the fighting." I said, "You wouldn't dare to say these things when that soldier was here, or in front of military men, would you?" _Nein, natürlich nicht. Aber sie sind ein guter Kamerad._ "No, naturally not. But you are a good comrade." This little talk in which he said that kings and kaisers all ought to be dethroned, gave me an idea that there must be multitudes of men who feel the same, but because their souls are not their own, dare not give voice to it. I told the man that Americans could not understand how the Germans could enter the country and do the frightful things that they have done to the unoffending Belgians. I said we had thousands of kind and peaceable Germans in America, and many of them were among our best citizens. "Ah," said he, "it is the discipline. These German soldiers were once peaceable and kind citizens also, having families like myself, but the discipline of the army has made them warlike and unmerciful. After one year in the Kaiser's army they still have some heart left, after two years less, after three or four years of that discipline they have no heart at all." Another German, a soldier, then came in and my German friend shut up like a clam. So did I.