A personal experience in this sense, at once exasperating and amusing, overtook me on a journey between Cologne and Paris. I shared my cabin in the sleeping-car with a German lady from Cassel, a typical fair-haired, solid-looking Prussian. We exchanged the ordinary politenesses of travellers thrown together on the road. I was interested to hear that not only did the lady conduct a large business enterprise in Cassel, but that she was a prop of the Volkspartei and took a keen interest in politics. She spoke of Bolshevism and the Red Peril with the fear and disgust always noticeable in the German Bourgeoisie. The train by which we were travelling crossed the devastated area in the night. Before going to bed my companion asked me whether we should see anything of the ravaged districts. I replied that I thought it would be too dark for any view of the country. It happened, however, that I woke up at 3 A.M. and, drawing the blind, found we were just moving out of Péronne. It was a grey July dawn, with driving rain, which intensified the unspeakable desolation of the Somme. Tragic beyond words were the massacred orchards. In some cases the stumps of trees not wholly cut through were throwing up fresh leaves in a painful effort after new life. My heart was stirred at the thought of my Prussian stable companion slumbering peacefully in the bunk above. She had wanted to see devastations; devastations she should see. “Gnädige Frau,” I said in a firm loud voice, “wake up. We are in the middle of the devastated area, you had better look at it.” Sounds as though a person had been disturbed from deep sleep issued from the top berth. Personally I do not like to think what I should have said or done had a strange woman in the train woke me up at 3 A.M. But Prussian docility responded to an order. Gnädige Frau got down meekly from her berth and established herself at the window. A suitable flow of exclamations and adjectives then took place: “entsetzlich,” “furchtbar,” “schrecklich,” “böse,” and so on. Comfortably wrapped up in my bunk I surveyed the scene with virtuous satisfaction, feeling that I was bringing home the war to one Prussian at least in an entirely right spirit and manner. Gnädige Frau, however, turned my flank with the military efficiency of her race. To my intense disgust I found that the text I had provided by this view of the Somme only led to an elaborate sermon on the devastations of the Russians in East Prussia. “You cannot imagine what awful things were done by those terrible Cossacks,” said the lady, “and how our poor cities were ruined. The rich German towns have had to become godparents to whole districts in the devastated area.” She rattled on in this sense as though the German legions had never set foot in France. I replied tartly that I hoped the trifling inconveniences experienced in East Prussia might afford some scale by which she could measure the sufferings of France, but I could only feel my moral lesson had