Yet disciplined and submissive though the German is to the harsh verdicts of war--never harsher than when applied by himself--there must be some peculiar sting in the presence of the enemy on the banks of the Rhine. For every national sentiment the nation possesses centres round the river famed in song and story. German patriotic literature of the “Wacht am Rhein” type is mediocre in quality, but it is eloquent of the spirit of the people. Even Heine, cynic and often anti-patriot, sings proudly of “der heilige Strom.” In periods of defeat and oppression Germans of an older date have found in the cleansing waters of the great stream a symbol of hope and regeneration. Few foreigners even can resist the spell of the Rhine. Mighty rivers have a message to give to the restless heart of man as their waters sweep by, eternal yet ever changing. Cradled in mountain snows virginal and remote, destined in the end to know the final purification and joyousness of the ocean, the course of any famous river as it flows from mountain to plain, from village to town, becomes an image of the flight of time and the vicissitudes of human life. The romantic stretches of the Rhine lie south of Bonn. Here are castles and vineyards, and scenes of many a legendary exploit. At Bonn the long gorge beginning at Bingen comes to an end, and the Rhine enters the broad plain in which Cologne is situated. Often sullied and defiled by the factories on its banks, nothing can destroy the sense of grandeur as the great volume of water sweeps forward to its fate. A hard lot for such a river to be caught in the end by the mud shallows and flats of Holland, and to make its final way to the sea broken up into countless minor streams!