What are we to make of the civility of these people among whom we live as conquerors? How can it be reconciled with their arrogance and brutality when they had the upper hand in France and Belgium? These middle-class families, these quiet, respectable working-class people enjoying their simple pleasures, what part did they take in the insults heaped on prisoners and captives? Did these parents and children rejoice and cheer when submarines sent other women and children to their deaths? What kind of conscience do they carry for the war? How can they outwardly at least bear so little grudge against the people who have beaten them? With whom does the responsibility for the war rest? During the struggle many of us would have vowed Burke was at fault in his great axiom that you cannot indict a nation. Germany seemed to us then to be the very spirit of wickedness incarnate. Here face to face it seems more difficult. What baffling chameleon-like quality do these people possess, that they can outrage the conscience of the whole world and yet give one the impression that as individuals many of them are kindly, decent folk? The riddle seems insoluble, and I do not pretend to have any key to it. German mentality is so constituted that it is violent and arrogant in success, chastened and polite in defeat. That the whole nation is consciously playing a part seems hard to believe. They are too clumsy in mind and body for so continuous an effort of deception, too thick about the ankles and too thick about the wits. Some of the English in Cologne call them servile. Personally the adjective hardly seems to me to meet the case. But they are curiously correct, even courteous. I went about Cologne, on arrival, Baedeker in hand, as any pre-war tourist might have done. Both in trams and trains I received, more than once, small civilities from Germans who put me on my way seeing that I was a stranger. As an English woman I marvelled at their civility. It was the same in the shops. The family in whose house we were billeted on my first arrival, were, I am sure, far less embarrassed by my advent than I was at the prospect of using their rooms. I was haunted by a sense of the rage with which I should have endured the presence of a German woman in my house. But after a day or two I ceased to have scruples about a situation which apparently did not trouble them. It was a relief to accept their attitude to us, as it might be, of hosts and paying guests to whose comfort they desired to contribute. Daily we exchanged small civilities. Naturally we were careful to leave no ragged edges in such a situation. Often I speculated on the transformation scene which might have resulted from a change in our respective positions. The old housekeeper had the hall-mark of the Prussian on her. I should be sorry to be within her reach as a prisoner. But the lady of the house, who had lost two sons in the war, appeared to be a kindly soul. She was a good musician, and I furtively