than the narrow web one issued by his supply company, and that belt was more likely than not to be girdled round with buttons and metal rosettes from German uniforms, as the original American wore the scalps of his defeated enemies. Our intelligence police frequently ran down merchants or manufacturers guilty of violating the fraternization order by making or offering for sale articles with the German and the American flags intertwined, pewter rings bearing the insignia of some American division and the iron cross; alleged meerschaum pipes decorated with some phrase expressive of Germany’s deep love for America in spite of the recent “misunderstanding.” The wiseacres saw in all this a subtle “propaganda,” cleverly directed from Berlin. I doubt whether it was anything more than the German merchant’s incorrigible habit of making what he can sell, of fitting his supply to his customer’s wishes, however absurd these may seem to him. Up to the 1st of February Americans on detached service in Germany ate where they chose. With the non-fraternization order came the command to patronize only the restaurants run by the army or its auxiliary societies. The purpose was double—to shut another avenue to the fraternizer and to leave to the Germans their own scanty food store. This question of two widely different sources of supply side by side required constant vigilance. When two lakes of vastly different levels are separated only by a thin wall it is to be expected that a bit of water from the upper shall spill over into the lower. A pound can of cocoa cost 50 marks in a German shop—if it could be had at all; a better pound sold for 1 mk. 25 in our commissary. A can of butter for which a well-to-do citizen would gladly have given a week’s income was only a matter of a couple of dollars for the man in khaki. A bar of soap, a tablet of chocolate, a can of jam, many of the simple little things that had become unattainable luxuries to the mass of the people about us, cost us no more than they did at home before the war. Even if there was no tendency to profit by these wide discrepancies—and with the vast percentage of our soldiers there was not—the natural tender-heartedness of America’s fighting-man moved him to transgress orders a bit in favor of charity. Much as one may hate the Boche, it is hard to watch an anemic little child munch a bare slice of disgusting war-bread, knowing that you can purchase a big white loaf made of genuine flour for a paltry ten cents.