The women had from the beginning tried to lead their husbands away from “arguing politics,” chiefly with ludicrously heavy attempts at coquetry, and at length they succeeded. I regained the highway. On either hand lay slightly rolling fields of fertile black soil, well cultivated as far as the eye could see, with only a scattering of trees. Miles away an abandoned Zeppelin hangar bulked into the sky. There were more women laborers than men; several gangs of them were working with picks and shovels; another group was slowly but patiently loading bricks. Horses were to be seen here and there, but oxen were in the majority. Farm-houses showed a rough comfort and a tolerable cleanliness, villages a passable neatness that may or may not have been due to German influence. Certainly the architecture, the farming methods, the communal customs, were little different from those of Prussia or the Rhineland. The dinner served me in the chief tavern of a village of some two thousand inhabitants was nothing to complain of, either in variety or price. A general-shop keeper stated that “with the exception of a few semi-luxuries, such as cocoa and toilet soap,” his grocery department could still meet the decreased demands made upon it. In the clothing lines everything was scarce or wholly lacking. Worst of all, there was nothing fit to drink or smoke. The strong spirits that had once been his chief trade had become so weak no one but boys would drink them. If only America would send concentrated alcohol they could doctor the stock of liquor they had on hand so that no one would know the difference. Then if they could only get some American tobacco! Life was not what it used to be, without a real cigarette from one month’s end to the other. The German rule, on the whole, had not been so bad as many of the Allies seemed to believe. They got along, though it was rather pleasant to be relieved of the arrogant fellows, or see them crawl into their shells. No German resident in the village had given any sign of intending to move away. The communal school was still teaching the German language—two or three hours a week now. No one had noticed any other change of any importance. The French prisoners confined in the province during the war had been brutally treated. There was no doubt about that; he had seen it himself. But on the whole the German authorities had not been much harder on the Polish population than upon their own people, in Prussia and elsewhere. It was all part of the war, and every one in the Empire had to bear his share of the burdens. Happily, it was over now, if only the new Polish government did not grow ambitious for military conquests also, with the millions of soldiers, some of them patriotic to the point of self-sacrifice, under its command.