When at last we were under way again the Germans in my compartment took to comparing notes. One, a doctor, was bewailing the “plain theft” of a surgical appliance of rubber which the Poles had confiscated in spite of what seemed to be complete proof that it was his private property and not part of the German army supplies. A foxy-faced country youth, who had carefully changed from shoes to high boots just before the arrival at Wronki, changed back again now with the announcement that there were some four thousand marks concealed between the boot soles. The younger schoolmaster threw off the disguise with which he had covered his real thoughts and announced, vociferously: “You drive me out to work for my livelihood! I will work for my Fatherland at the same time. I will go to Bromberg this very evening and join the army again. We shall see whether the Poles can keep Posen.” The two other young men asserted that they, too, had left with exactly that intention. An indignation meeting against the Poles raged for an hour or more. “I could have remained and kept my position,” went on the schoolmaster, “if I had wanted to turn Polack. Both my parents were Polish; I spoke it before I did German; but I shall always remain a true son of the Fatherland, no matter what happens to it.” A few hundred yards from Kreuz station our train halted for more than an hour and gave us the pleasure of watching the Berlin express go on without us. Though it would have been a matter of twenty seconds to have sprinted across the delta between the two lines, armed boy soldiers prevented any one from leaving his compartment. To all appearances it was a case of “pure meanness” on the part of the German authorities. Our wrath at being forced to wait a half-day for a dawdling local train was soon appeased, however, by the announcement that we were the last travelers who would be allowed to enter Germany from the province of Posen “until the war was over.” The frontier had been closed by orders from Berlin. It is a long way round from Poland to Holland, and amid the turmoil of gloomy men, disheveled women, and squalling children who had been turned back with their goal so near I found cause to be personally thankful, particularly as I succeeded in eluding during all the afternoon the glassy eye of the cantankerous dyspeptic, who buffeted his way now and then through the throng.