In many districts of Germany the traveler’s eye was frequently drawn, during the hectic spring of 1919, to a large colored poster. It showed two men; the one cold, gaunt, and hungry, huddled in the rags of his old uniform, was shuffling through the snow, with a large, dismally gray city in the background; the other, looking well nourished and cheerful, wearing a comfortable new civilian suit, was emerging from a smoke-belching factory and waving gaily in the air a handful of twenty-mark notes. Under the picture ran the device: “DON’T GO TO BERLIN! There every one is hungry and you will find no work. Instead, go to the nearest government employment office”—the address of the most convenient being added. Despite this and many similar efforts on the part of the authorities and private agencies, people kept crowding into the capital. Not even a personal appeal from his new “Reichspräsident” Ebert to the ordinarily laborious and persistent German to remain at home and keep at work, rather than to try to better his lot by this vain pilgrimage, succeeded in shutting off the Berlinward stream of discontented humanity. War and social disorders seem always to bring this influx into the national metropolis, the world over. It is man’s nature to wander in search of happiness when he is not happy, seldom recognizing that he is carrying his unhappiness with him and that it is but slightly dependent upon the particular spot he inhabits. In this case the general misery was largely due to the gnawings of hunger, and surely Berlin, in the year of grace 1919, was the last place in all Germany in which to seek alleviation from that particular misfortune. Yet the quest of the rainbow end went hopefully on, until the tenements of the capital were gorged with famished provincials and her newspapers teemed with offers of substantial rewards to any one who would furnish information of rooms, apartments, or dwelling-houses for rent.