crown boxes, destined only for Hohenzollern royalty or its representatives, sat empty, with something of the solemn demeanor of the vacant chair at the head of the table the day after the funeral. Who would occupy them when the Poles had taken over the playhouse? What, moreover, would they do toward maintaining the high standards of the stage before us? For the most indefatigable enemy of the Germans must have admitted that here was something that could ill be spared. If only they had been contented with bringing the masses these genuine benefits, without militarism, with more open competition, without so much appeal to the doctrine of force—but it has ever been Germany’s contention that only by force can the mass of mankind be lifted to higher levels; that only an army can protect the self-appointed missionaries of a loftier civilization. Armed with what those who read Polish assured me was permission to do so, I set out on foot one morning to the eastward. Beyond the last group of guards wearing the silver double-eagle on their threadbare German uniforms, I fell in with three barefooted Polish peasant women. They were barely thirty, yet all three were already well-nigh toothless, and their hardy forms and faces were plainly marked with the signs that testify to grueling labor and the constant bearing of children. The German they spoke was far superior to the dialects of many regions of purely Teutonic population. Their demeanor was cheerful, yet behind it one caught frequent glimpses of that background of patient, unquestioning acceptance of life as it is which distinguishes the country people of Europe. The most energetic of the trio showed a willingness to enter into conversation; the others confined themselves to an occasional nod of approval, as if the exertion of keeping pace with us left them no strength to expend in mere words. It was plain from the beginning that they were not enthusiastic on the subject then uppermost in the city behind us. They greeted my first reference to it with expressions that might have been called indifferent, had they not been tinged with evidence of a mild resentment.