Memories of France had suggested the possible wisdom of reaching the station well before train-time. I might, to be sure, have purchased my ticket in leisurely comfort at the Adlon, but for once I proposed to take pot-luck with the rank and file. First-hand information is always much more satisfactory than hearsay or the dilettante observation of the mere spectator—once the bruises of the experience have disappeared. The first glimpse of the station interior all but wrecked my resolution. Early as I was, there were already several hundred would-be travelers before me. From both ticket-windows lines four deep of disheveled Germans of both sexes and all ages curved away into the farther ends of the station wings. Boy soldiers with fixed bayonets paraded the edges of the columns, attempting languidly and not always successfully to prevent selfish new-comers from “butting in” out of their turn. I attached myself to the end of the queue that seemed by a few inches the shorter. In less than a minute I was jammed into a throng that quickly stretched in S-shape back into the central hall of the station. We moved steadily but almost imperceptibly forward, shuffling our feet an inch at a time. The majority of my companions in discomfort were plainly city people of the poorer classes, bound short distances into the country on foraging expeditions. They bore every species of receptacle in which to carry away their possible spoils—hand-bags, hampers, baskets, grain-sacks, knapsacks, even buckets and toy wagons. In most cases there were two or three of these to the person, and as no one dreamed of risking the precious things out of his own possession, the struggle forward suggested the writhing of a miscellaneous scrap-heap. Women were in the majority—sallow, bony-faced creatures in patched and faded garments that hung about their emaciated forms as from hat-racks. The men were little less miserable of aspect, their deep-sunk, watery eyes testifying to long malnutrition; the children who now and then shrilled protests at being trodden underfoot were gaunt and colorless as corpses. Not that healthy individuals were lacking, but they were just that—individuals, in a throng which as a whole was patently weak and anemic. The evidence of the scarcity of soap was all but overpowering. Seven women and at least three children either fainted or toppled over from fatigue during the two hours in which we moved a few yards forward, and they were buffeted out of the line with what seemed to be the malicious joy of their competitors behind. I found my own head swimming long before I had succeeded in turning the corner that cut off our view of the pandemonium at the ticket-window.