Perhaps the greatest surprise that Berlin had in store for me was the complete safety which her recent enemies enjoyed there. With German delegates to the Peace Conference closely guarded behind barbed wire in Versailles, and German correspondents forbidden even to talk to the incensed crowds that gathered along those barriers, it was astounding to find that American and Allied officers and men, in full uniform, wandered freely about the Prussian capital at all hours. Doughboys were quite as much at home along Unter den Linden as if they had been strolling down Main Street in Des Moines. Young Germans in iron hats guarded the entrance to the princely Adlon, housing the various enemy missions, but any one who chose passed freely in or out, whatever his nationality, his business or lack thereof, or his garb. Olive drab attracted no more attention in Berlin than it did in Coblenz. German chauffeurs drove _poilus_ and their officers about the streets as nonchalantly as if they had been taxi-drivers in Paris. To be sure, most uniformed visitors stuck rather closely to the center of town, but that was due either to false impressions of danger or to lack of curiosity—and perhaps also to the dread of getting out of touch with their own food-supply. For as a matter of experience they were fully as safe in Berlin as in Paris or New York—possibly a trifle more so—they seemed to run less risk of being separated, legally or forcibly, from their possessions. The hair-raising tales which correspondents poured out over the wires _via_ Copenhagen were chiefly instigated by their clamoring editors and readers at home. Let a few random shots be fired somewhere in the city and the scribes were at ease for another day—and the world gasped once more at the bloody anarchy reigning in Berlin, while the stodgy Berliner went on about his business, totally oblivious of the battle that was supposed to be seething about him. In January, 1919, a group of American officers entered one of the principal restaurants of Berlin and ordered dinner. At that date our olive drab was rare enough in the capital to attract general attention. A civilian at a neighboring table, somewhat the worse for bottled animosity, gave vent to his wrath at sight of the visitors. Having no desire to precipitate a scene, they rose to leave. Several German officers sprang to their feet and begged them to remain, assuring them that the disturber would be silenced or ejected. The Americans declined to stay, whereupon the ranking German apologized for the unseemly conduct of an ill-bred fellow-countryman and invited the group to be his guests there the following evening.