This was still manned by a German crew. For every car that left their territory, however, the Poles required that one of the same class and condition be delivered to them in exchange. Several long freight-trains, loaded from end to end with potatoes, rumbled past us on the parallel track. Two hundred thousand tons of tubers were sent to Germany each month in exchange for coal. It was at that date the only commercial intercourse between the two countries, and explained why potatoes were the one foodstuff of comparative abundance even in Berlin. At Biala the station guards were Polish, but there was little indeed to distinguish them from those of Kreuz and Bromberg. Their uniforms, their rifles, every detail of their equipment, were German, except that some of them wore the square and rather clumsy-looking Polish cap or had decorated their round, red-banded fatigue bonnets with the silver double-eagle of the resurrected empire. Many were without even this insignia of their new allegiance, and only the absence of oak-leaves on their collars showed that they were no longer soldiers of the Fatherland. We halted at Wronki for two hours, which made our departure three hours later, for clocks and watches were turned ahead to correspond with Polish time. Frontier formalities were even more leisurely and disorganized than they had been in Kreuz. The Poles seemed to have something of the amiable but headless temperament of the French. Their officers, too, in their impressive new uniforms with broad red or yellow bands, and their rattling sabers, bore a certain resemblance to children on Christmas morning that did not help to expedite matters under their jurisdiction. They were a bit less “snappy” than the more experienced Germans, somewhat inclined to strut and to flirt, and there were suggestions in their manner that they might not have been horrified at the offer of a tip. When at length my turn had come they found my credentials unsatisfactory. Why had they not been viséed by the Polish consul in Berlin, as well as by the Germans at Frankfurt? I had never dreamed that Berlin boasted a Polish consul. Indeed! Who, then, did I suppose handled the interests of their nation there? However, it was all right. As an American and a fellow-Ally they would let me pass. But I must promise to report at a certain office in Posen within twenty-four hours of my arrival.