[Illustration: _The Package Post in Berlin. Both Men and Women Workers._] It does not take nearly as long for a letter to go to a soldier in France as it takes to go to a soldier in Russia. A letter sometimes comes in one day from the Somme to Berlin, but from Russia a letter takes four or five days at the least. All the mail that goes to the soldiers on the west front is first sent to Hanover to a central station. Here the mail is sorted and sent to different stations along the front. From these main stations the mail is sent to different sub-stations. Every day each regiment sends a soldier to its sub-branch for the regiment's mail. Nobody but the soldier and the head of the sub-branch knows where the mail is to go, for each regiment's whereabouts are kept a secret. THE "AUSLÄNDEREI" In Germany, one evening last winter I heard a German count give a lecture on the _Ausländerei_. He started out by saying that for years the German people had been suffering from a disease called _Ausländerei_, which means that they have always been too fond of all that is foreign, that they have been ashamed of being Germans, and that they have tried to copy the manner, modes and customs of other nations instead of sticking to their own national ideals. He went into detail, beginning with the foreign names used all over Germany. He said that instead of a hotel being called by the good old-fashioned German word _Hof_, the hotel proprietors insisted on using the word "hotel," combined, alas, too often with such words as Bristol, Excelsior, Continental, Esplanade, Carlton, Westminster and Savoy. He thought that much better words would be _Berlinerhof_ or _Kaiserhof_. He said that until three years ago messenger boys were called by the English name "messenger boys," and he much preferred the new name _Blitzjunge_ which means "lightning kid." He lamented that even now English clothes for men were still being sold in German shops, and that they were quoted as English and were bought because they were English; that German women still follow Paris fashions; but he said with emphasis: "A German heart under a Paris gown is no true German heart." He said that a man who studied in England liked to be styled "an Oxford man" or "a Cambridge man," and that many a German woman who goes to Switzerland each year registers at the fashionable hotels as "Madame Schultz" or "Madame Schmidt" instead of "Frau." He said further that when an Englishman or an American came to Germany, he fully expected every German he met to know English, but no traveling German expects any one to know German, and the German meekly learns the languages of all the other races. He ended by saying that he knew that no people had a greater love for their country than the German people have, and that the time had come for them to cease their imitations and to be Germans without foreign ideals, thoughts or customs.