Our life for the next three or four weeks till we reached our regiment was simply a jolly picnic. We were three hundred strong, under the command of two sergeants, genial fellows, who had never been to the front and who were anything but soldiers. Our train journey took us through Central Germany to Breslau, and thence _viâ_ Cracow to a station beyond Rava Ruska, the name of which I have forgotten. In High Germany we were greeted with enthusiasm at every station, in German Poland no one took any notice of us, in Austrian Poland our reception was directly hostile. The Austrians treated us like “matter in the wrong place.” We reached Cracow at ten at night, and were to have had supper there. Nothing had been got ready for us and no one knew anything about us. We stood waiting in the rain for two hours, and then we had to pass in single file before a small window and each receive his basin of soup. At Kattowitz, the last German station, our transport, now swelled to a thousand men, had been fed in less than half an hour. The Austrians were sulky at having to trouble about us and took no pains to conceal their feelings, and the Germans were wild with rage at the way they were treated. [SN: AUSTRIANS] This is, perhaps, the best place to speak of the relations between the Germans and the Austrians. There have been many discussions in the press as to whom the Germans hate most, whether it is the English or the Americans. I have no doubt at all that the German soldier hates the Austrian most. They felt themselves betrayed from the beginning of the war. When the Russians broke through at Rava Ruska, Hindenburg sent down an officer to find out what was wrong. He returned with the report: “Da ist eine bodenlose Schweinerei, wir werden alles selbst machen müssen” (“Things are in no end of a mess; we shall have to do everything ourselves”). Hindenburg used to allow himself witticisms at the expense of his Allies. Once he remarked, “I won’t have anything said against my Austrians. They serve to occupy the enemy till the military come up.” Stories were current of Prussian officers serving on the Austrian staff, who had discovered Austrian generals in the very act of telephoning to the enemy and had shot them dead on the spot. Meanwhile the Germans, by their behaviour, let the Austrians know that they remembered all these things. It was most amusing to watch Austrians attempting to fraternize with Germans. The Austrian, with his gay and careless elegance of manner, would approach the German and try to get into conversation with him. Most probably he would begin by asking where the other came from. The German would draw himself up stiff and straight till he looked as if he had swallowed the poker, and would put on an air as if he concentrated in his own person all the victorious majesty of his army. Then, in the sharp staccato dear to the Prussian drill-sergeant, he would answer, “Ich bin aus Cassel,