Religious processions lend much variety and colour to street life in Cologne. Throughout the summer months each parish has a procession every Sunday morning; long rows of priests, nuns, children, and parishioners walk through the streets carrying banners, flowers, and emblems. The central point of the procession is the canopy under which the priest carries the Host. Red-robed acolytes swing censers as they move slowly along. Altars are erected at convenient halting points in the streets, where prayers are said and hymns chanted. The pavement is strewn with green boughs, houses are decorated, and the faithful erect shrines with crucifixes, sacred images, candles, flowers, etc. These local festivals culminate in the most famous of all Cologne processions--that of Corpus Christi. On that day every ecclesiastic, great and small, from the Archbishop downwards, as well as every Catholic guild and society, take part in an elaborate and impressive tour of the town. The vestments are of a gorgeous character. The uniforms worn by the guilds are of quaint design and many-coloured. The centuries roll backwards, and for a brief space the finger of the Middle Ages touches the modern city. The procession concludes with a service in the cathedral, and the great company of people winding across the square with banners and emblems and passing up the steps suggests some mediaeval picture. Religious processions are the only German pageants which survive to-day on the Dom Platz. One event alone on the square, brief but memorable, has concerned conquerors and conquered alike--the first commemoration of the Armistice on 11th November 1919. Yet of all my recollections of the square it remains the most impressive. * * * * * A bitter morning with a blizzard driving across the river; snowflakes drift disconsolately over the square, as though doubtful of trying conclusions with the sombre pile of the cathedral surveying the scene with gloomy aloofness. Under foot dirt and slush. From every corner of the square whistles a wind which pierces through furs and coats. Yet the usual crowd of German spectators are there, pressing as is their wont on the ranks of the men in khaki who line the square. No less crowded are the cathedral steps, on which stand a row of trumpeters. I came late, to find to my surprise that my neighbours are nearly all Germans. In spite of the dreadful weather there is little movement among the crowd. People speak under their breath, as though in the presence of some great solemnity. English and Germans alike, we are thinking of our dead. For a moment we draw near to one another in the consciousness of common sorrow, common loss, common pride. The snow drives in our faces, the merciless wind searches out the shivering crowd cowering under its umbrellas.