Of the two neutralizing points, that to the north was reputed the more promising. The express to Cologne sped across white fields that belied the calendar and gave the heavily blossomed cherry- and apple-trees the appearance of being laden with clinging snow. The more brassy British khaki took the place of our own, the compartment groups changed gradually from American to English officers. The latter were very young, for the most part, and one scarcely needed to listen to their almost childish prattle of their work and things warlike to know that they were not veterans. Long freight-trains crowded with still younger Britishers, exuding the extreme callowness of the untraveled insular youth, rattled into town with us from a more northern direction, happy to take the place of the grim and grizzled warriors that were being demobilized. In the outskirts of the city Germans of both sexes and all ages were placidly yet diligently toiling in their little garden patches into the twilight of the long spring day. The British, rating me a correspondent, billeted me in a once proud hotel in the shadow of the great cathedral. In the scurry of pursuing passport and visées in Paris I had found no time to change my garb to the kind that flaps about the ankles. In consequence my evening stroll was several times broken by as many of England’s boyish new guardsmen, their bayonets overtopping them by several inches in some cases, who pounded their rifle-butts on the pavement in salute and stage-whispered a bit tremulously: “Officers is not to walk about too much by theirselves, sir.” My query at the first warning had been answered with a: “Three of them was badly cut up last night, sir.” There were no outward signs of any such serious enmity, however; on the contrary, the populace seemed almost friendly, and at the officers’ club guests were checking their side-arms with the German doorman.