The city itself was as astonishingly placid in the midst of what an outsider would have supposed to be exciting times. Being not only in a state of siege, but having just heard that it was soon to transfer its allegiance to another race, one was justified in expecting a town as large as Trenton or San Antonio to show at least some ripples on its surface. I looked for them in vain. It was Sunday, just the day for popular demonstrations in Germany, yet not only was there no sign whatever of rejoicing among the Polish population, but nothing even suggesting the uprising of protest among the German residents which had been so loudly prophesied. The place resembled some New England factory town on the same day of the week. Groups of Polish-looking young men, somewhat uncomfortable and stiff in their Sunday best, lounged on the street-corners, ogling the plump Polish girls on their way to church. Strollers seemed interested only in keeping to the shaded side of the street, youths and children only in their games. Tramways rumbled slowly along as usual—and, before I forget it, their female conductors wore breeches; such shops as were habitually open on Sunday seemed to be doing their customary amount of business. The whole town was as staid, heavy, and unenthusiastic as the German character. In the face of a wide divergence of opinion among its own inhabitants it was hard for a stranger to decide which of the two races predominated in Bromberg. The Germans asserted that only 40 per cent. of the population were Poles, and that many of them preferred to see things remain as they were. The Poles defied any one to find more than twenty Germans among every hundred inhabitants, or to point out a single member of their race who sincerely wished to keep his allegiance to the Fatherland. Street and shop signs were nearly all in German, but that may have been due to legal requirement. The rank and file of the populace had a Polish look, yet they seemed to speak German by choice. Moreover, there is but scant difference of appearance between Teutons and Poles, particularly when they have lived their entire lives together in the same environment. On the wall of a church I dropped into during morning service there were five columns of names, forty-five each, of the men who had “Patriotically sacrificed their lives for a grateful Fatherland.” At least one half of them ended in “ski,” and in one column alone I counted thirty unquestionably Polish names. But then, it was a Catholic church, so there you are again. Perhaps the most unbiased testimony of all was the fact that the little children playing in the park virtually all spoke Polish.