The Opera alone seemed something like normal to one who trusted his eyes rather than his ears for information. There was almost a full house for the “Rosenkavalier”; for music is a solace in time of trouble, as other capitals than Berlin revealed. Officers with close-cropped heads wearing Iron Crosses, some with arms in slings, promenading in the refreshment room of the Berlin Opera House between the acts--this in the hour of victory should mean a picture of gaiety. But there was a telling hush about the scene. Possibly music had brought out the truth in men’s hearts that war, this kind of war, was not gay or romantic, only murderous and destructive. One had noticed already that the Prussian officer, so conscious of his caste, who had worked so indefatigably to make an efficient army, had become chastened. He had found that common men, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers, could be as brave for their Kaiser as he. And more of these officers had the Iron Cross than not. The plenitude of Iron Crosses appealed to the risibilities of the superficial observer. But in this, too, there was system. An officer who had been in several battles without winning one must feel a trifle declassed and that it was time for him to make amends to his pride. If many were given to privates then the average soldier would not think the Cross a prize for the few who had luck, but something that he, too, might win by courage and prompt obedience to orders. The masterful calculation, the splendid pretence and magnificent offence, could not hide the suspense and suffering. Nowhere were you able to forget the war or to escape the all-pervading influence of the Kaiser. The empty royal box at the opera, his opera, called him to mind. What would happen before he reappeared there for a gala performance? When again in the shuffle of European politics would the audience see the Czar of Russia or the King of England by his side? It was his Berlin, the heart of his Berlin, that was before you when you left the opera--the new Berlin, taking few pages of a guide book compared to Paris, which he had fathered in its boom growth. In front of his palace Russian field guns taken by von Hindenburg at Tannenberg were exhibited as the spoils of his war; while the Never-to-be-Forgotten Grandfather in bronze rode home in triumph from Paris not far away.