Again: near the house in which we live a chronic fair goes on every afternoon. Swing-boats, roundabouts, shooting-galleries, all the various side-shows of an English country feast are here. Drinks, ice-cream, and refreshments are no less to the fore. Music, that monotonous braying music which always accompanies a merry-go-round, goes on mechanically for many hours. Here Thomas Atkins gathers in force. The thrifty Boche, in fact, has created the whole fair for his entertainment at a modest price. It is characteristic of the race that they not only accept the British Occupation with entire acquiescence, but endeavour by every means in their power to turn it to good account. Notices in English explain the nature of the side-shows. All prices are marked in plain figures. Reprehensible though it may be, Gretchen not infrequently is to be seen on the roundabouts and in the swing-boats with the said Thomas. Picture-postcards, trinkets, souvenirs, are all for sale. The shooting-galleries are crowded by soldiers still anxious to let off their piece in a more harmless fashion than on the scarred battle-line far away to the west. The Germans are out to amuse, the English to be amused. Perfect good temper animates both buyers and sellers. Introspection is hardly the hall-mark of the soldier in the ranks, and the English lads who lounge about from booth to booth never give a thought to the amazing situation in which they find themselves. Many of them on demobilisation leave Cologne with real regret. It is a clean, decent place, with more than decent beer. After all Fritz is not such a bad fellow.... In the long and varied history of Britain’s rule overseas has the Pax Britannica ever held sway under conditions so strange as these? As darkness falls the fair is lit up by great flares, and the scene grows more and more animated. Cologne, with large resources in the shape of a cheap fuel supply in its immediate neighbourhood, is well off both as regards light and heat. But at last all is silent. Curfew has rung for the Germans, the Last Post for the English. That desperate tune repeated for hours by the merry-go-round is mercifully at an end for the night. To-morrow it will all begin again, and so on day after day....