My own first German meal—for those in the occupied region were rather meals in Germany—was a “breakfast” in a second-class hotel, of the kind with which almost every one began the day in the Fatherland. There was set before me with great formality a cupful of lukewarm water with something in it which made a faint effort to pretend it was coffee, a very thin slice of war-bread, yielded only after long argument because I had as yet no bread-tickets, and a spoonful of a sickly looking purple mess that masqueraded under the name of “marmalade.” Where the Germans got their comparative abundance of this last stuff I do not know. Its appearance suggested that it was made of bruised flesh; its taste reminded one of rotten apples. The bill on this occasion was three marks, plus 10 per cent. for service. Begin a few days on that and see how much “pep” you have left; by noon you will know the full meaning of the word hungry. I took lunch that day in a working-man’s restaurant. There I got a filling, though not a very lasting, dinner of beans and potatoes, a “German beefsteak”—resembling our “Hamburger,” but possibly made of horse-meat—a slice of what Europe calls bacon, which is really salt pork, and two mugs of weak beer—total, four mk. forty. No bread was asked or given. The clients ranged from small merchants to hackmen. For supper I investigated a long-established vegetarian restaurant on Friedrichstrasse. An oat soup was followed by a plate of mashed peas, one storage egg (two marks), a cold potato salad, a pint of “white beer,” and a pudding that would have been tasteless but for its _Himbeer_ sauce, sickly as hair-oil. The check came to seven mk. seventy-five, including the usual tip.