The orderly who opens the front door is a Sergeant in field gray uniform. You mount a flight of marble steps, and saunter down a marble hall, half a block long. It is the reception hall. It is furnished with magnificent hand-carved, high-backed chairs without upholstery, lounging not being apparently encouraged here. They are Gothic structures backed up against the walls. There is no Brussels or Axminster carpet on the cold marble floor--not even Turkish rugs. Through this palace hall, up by the ceiling, runs a thick cable containing the all-important telephone wires. The offices open off the hall, the doors labeled with neatly printed signs telling who and what is within. If you should come walking down the street outside at 3 A.M. you would probably see the lights in Hindenburg's office still burning, as I did. At 3:30 they went out, indicating that a Field Marshal's job is not a sinecure. Feeling of the German People Complete Confidence in Victory and Resentment Toward England [By a Staff Correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES.] BERLIN, Feb. 12.--To the neutral American, intent only on finding out the truth, the most thought-provoking feature here (overlooked by foreign correspondents because of its very featureless obviousness) is the fact that Germany today is more confident of winning than at any time in the three months I have been here. This confidence must not be confused with cocksureness; it is rather the "looking forward with quiet confidence to ultimate victory," as General von Heeringen phrased it. Even more important is the corollary that, while the Germans have apparently never had any doubt that they would win out in the end, this "ultimate victory" does not seem so far off to them today as it did three months ago. To one who has had an opportunity of personally sounding the undercurrents of German public opinion, this quiet optimism that has become noticeable only in the past few weeks (totally different in character from the enthusiasm that followed the declaration of war) has seemed particularly significant. Three months ago I was incessantly asked by Germans "how the situation looked to an American," and "how long I thought the war would last." When left to answer their own question, they almost invariably remarked: "It may last a long while yet." Today neutral opinion is no longer anxiously or even eagerly sought. The temporary need for this sort of moral support seems to have passed, and there are many indications that the well-informed layman expects 1915 to see the wind-up of the war, while I have talked with not a few professional men who have expressed the opinion that the war will be over by Summer--except against England.