While we ate there sat at a table near by a party of German students, who with much noise sang patriotic verses and cheered lustily the names of national heroes while they steadily drank tankard after tankard of beer. After a space they began to take interest in us. Glancing from time to time at our table they talked excitedly of ‘Englanders’ and, from the few words we could understand, of our navy. I was very tired, and under the impression that they desired to pick a quarrel, I went to bed to escape trouble. Keating, on the other hand, scenting an immediate if a minor war, refused to move and did not reach his room until the early hours of the morning. It appears that far from desiring to annoy us they wished us to join them. This Keating did and a short conversation in French followed. The use of this language was quickly banned as unpatriotic and a curious but wonderful version of English was substituted. They were under the impression that England was about to become Germany’s ally. Thus combined the two nations were to dominate the world in the manner indicated to us by several others during our travels. These views, so soon to fade, served to create a temporary friendship between Keating and the students, which ended shortly before three in the morning with the joint humming of ‘God Save the King,’ because, as they said, ‘without words it is the National Anthem of both the related countries.’ It was a happy evening, in that it formed so great a contrast to other nights of the same week. The next morning we left on the last lap of our journey through Germany rather late, slightly after eleven o’clock, owing to the encouraging friendliness of the previous night. This day was August 4 and in honour of its high destiny was one of sunlit splendour. Our innkeeper, in the smallness of his bill and his obvious readiness to give credit until the end of the war in case our money had run short, showed that some Germans are not devoid of the kindlier instincts of humanity. Human nature is the same the world over by whatever title the races may be labelled. With usual delays from road patrols we passed slowly through Lottë, Westerkappeln, and Höveringhausen. In Ibbenburgen we were held up by a long patriotic procession, chiefly of children dressed brilliantly in white, and carrying banners decorated in some cases with religious symbols and in some with the armorial device of Westphalia. As they walked they sang, with the softness of childhood, songs of the countryside. It was pleasant when in the midst of our worries to listen to the beat of childish feet and the echo of childish voices between the lines of high narrow houses of this quiet Westphalian village. Curious incidents, unimportant in themselves, remain in one’s memory for all time.