Leaving a handful of morning papers behind him as a propitiatory offering, our "hostage" bowed himself out of the door and backed off down the corridor--still bowing--to rejoin his colleagues in the first-class section of the car. In the quarter of an hour there was still to wait before the line was clear for the departure of our train, we had our first chance for a peep into Germany through the window of the Press. The four-page sheets turned out to be copies of _Vorwärts_, the _Kölnische Volkszeitung und Handels-Blatt_, the _Weser Zeitung_, of Bremen, the _Wilhelmshavener Tageblatt_, and the _Republik_. The latter styled itself the _Sozialdemokratisches Organ für Oldenburg und Ostfriesland_, and the _Mitteilungsblatt der Arbeiter und Soldatenräte_. It claimed to be in its thirty-second year, but admitted that all this time, except the fortnight since the revolution, it had borne the name of _Oldenburger Volksblatt_. It had little in the way of news from either the outside world or the interior, the few columns which it gave up to this purpose being filled with accounts of the formation of republics in various other provinces, and attacks upon members of the acting Government in Berlin. Evidently under some sort of orders, it mentioned the arrival of the _Hercules_ at Wilhelmshaven without comment. A socialistic sheet of Hamburg, which turned up the next day, showed less restraint in this connection, for it stated that the Allied Commission had altered its decision not to meet the Workmen's and Soldiers' representatives, and that negotiations were now in progress in which the latter were taking a prominent part. Tangible evidence of the truth of this statement, it added, might be found in the fact that delegates from the Workmen and Soldiers accompanied Allied parties whenever they landed. _Vorwärts_ tried to convey the same false impression to its readers, but rather less brazenly. The _Kölnische Volkszeitung_ printed a dispatch from London, in which the _Daily Mail_ was quoted as supporting the "_australischen Premierministers Hughes'_" demand of an indemnity of "_acht milliarden Pfund Sterling_" from Germany, and proceeded to prove in the course of an impassioned leader of two columns why the demanding of any indemnity at all was in direct violation of the pledged word of the Allies, to say nothing of Wilson's Fourteen Points. A significant circumstance was the inclusion in each paper of a part of a column of comment on the movement of prices of "_Landesprodukte_" on the American markets.