But what we could not see at Nauen, Rathenow, Stendal, Gardelegen, Obisfelde and Lehrte, we could hear, for all the inhabitants of every hamlet and town in Central Germany appeared to have orders from somewhere to assemble at their railway-stations and sing themselves red in the face for Kaiser and Empire. Manifestly the Supreme War Lord had not only called up his armed legions, but mobilized the country’s _Singvereine_ besides, and man, woman and child of them were now in the trenches with their throats bared to the foe. I suppose they were chanting _Die Wacht am Rhein_ and _Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles_ in other parts of Germany, too, but I have often thought that the country’s most vociferous and tireless choral artists were concentrated on that day on the strategic line of the British safe-conduct train’s route. If the Great General Staff at Berlin, with that incomparable attention to detail which is one of its vaunted accomplishments, schemed to send us out of Germany convinced, by the evidence of our own ears, that the Kaiser’s people were sallying forth to war like Wagnerian heroes with music and triumphant cheers on their lips, the plan succeeded. My own indelible recollection of that farewell ride across Germany, at any rate, is the memory of song. For many days and nights afterward, _Die Wacht am Rhein_ and _Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles_, would ring and ring through my head. At the time it all seemed beautifully spontaneous, for the Germans are a singing folk, who put soul into their anthems, but reflection makes me wonder if that continuous song-service which so mercilessly accompanied us from Berlin to the Netherlands was not a stage-managed extravaganza with a motive. The Germans are a thorough race, and in war they overlook no opportunity. It was only at times that the singing was anything else than merely monotonous--the periodical occasions when, if we halted longer than usual at a station, the singers would line up alongside the train so closely that they could fairly shout in our ears. Then there would be a note of ill-mannered defiance in their song. At Hanover we happened to be drawn up in the station at the very moment when the British Ambassador and the Belgian Minister were in the dining-car, and there was a particularly vehement vocal endurance competition outside of the window at which they were sitting. But from my own table on the opposite side of the car I observed that Sir Edward Goschen was not visibly diverted from his _Wiener-Schnitzel_, for, while the _Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles_ was doing its worst, he remarked, cheerily, to his Belgian colleague: "Rather fine singing, isn’t it?"