It was evident that we were in for a tedious journey and that our trek across Western Germany was to be agony long drawn out. Berlin to Hanover, the first leg of the trip, was one I had accomplished times innumerable under three hours, and even a _Bummelzug_ hardly took longer. It was to take us nearly three times as long to-day. Mobilization was technically complete, but every railway track in the country, especially if it fed the great trunk-line to the west along which we were traveling, was still choked with troop trains. In consequence, though ours was a "special," we had to halt, back up, sidetrack and perform every other gyration of which a train is capable, whenever we came up with battalions en route toward one of the three frontiers on which German blood was now being spilled. At every station we encountered trainloads of men in gray, singing, cheering and laughing as if bound for a picnic instead of slaughter. It was always they who had the right of way, for it was soon borne in upon us that the meanest detachment of reservists bulked larger in Germany’s eye just then than "the whole bally British diplomatic service put together," as Jelf irreverently expressed it. Never at any time were we doing anything dizzier than twenty miles an hour, and we figured that if we reached Hanover by dinner-time, we should be fortunate. As to London, which we used to reach twenty hours after leaving Berlin, it became painfully obvious that it would be nearer forty this trip. But there was much to see, and to think and talk about. As we were being held up everywhere along the line by seemingly the entire male population of the Empire in uniform, it was not surprising, for one thing, to find the fields on either side of us as denuded of men as if Adam had never lived. None but women was discoverable at work on this eve of harvest, excepting here and there an old man, while children, too, were being pressed into service. At bridges, culverts and crossings, instead of the customary railway guards, who used to stand at salute with a flag as a train whirled past, there were now soldiers with rifles. No restrictions were placed upon our reconnoitering the adjacent country as long as we were in motion; but Lieutenant-Colonel von Buttlar, always heel-clicking and saluting beforehand, intimated to _Mein Herren_ that the curtains of their compartment-windows must be drawn as the train approached or halted at stations. There was no suspicion, he begged to assure us, that we might attempt to practise espionage about troop movements. On the contrary, the suggestion was a precaution recommended in our own interests. Unfortunately, quoth the apologetic colonel, it had not been feasible to conceal the identity of our train. Western Germany was bursting with patriotic frenzy, and it was just within the range of possibilities that their exuberance might beat itself into disagreeable "demonstrations." Therefore, discretion was obviously our cue.