Between Aachen and Cologne the train runs through a district rich in natural resources, both mineral and agricultural. We pass many large factories of modern construction in which, thanks to smoke-saving apparatus, the dirt of our own industrial districts has been avoided. Those factories are not idle. It is true not every large chimney is smoking, but some chimneys in every group show that work is going on. The Rhineland industries are to a large extent independent of imported material, and the activities in this district cannot be taken as an index to the rest of Germany. Similarly with the soil. Agricultural experts tell us that taken as a whole the soil of Germany is naturally poor. Only immense scientific care and attention made it possible in pre-war days for the land to yield 85 per cent. of the nation’s food. But here in the Rhineland the quality of the crops must strike the most casual traveller. With the thin English harvest in mind, I can only marvel at these bumper crops--the thick yellow corn, the potatoes, the roots, the mealies, the general impression of agricultural prosperity. The land is in perfect order. Every twig looks as though it had been put in splints. Whatever else has suffered, prisoners’ labour, or labour of some kind, has kept the land clean and in order. Compare the large areas of devastation in France with this fat, smiling country bearing no visible signs of any kind of war, and the bitterness in many French hearts seems very natural. It is difficult to associate stories of want and starvation with a rich country like this. Yet it was quite clear that at the last Germany was brought to her knees by hunger. The surface impression of prosperity in one particular district may be misleading--the reality may prove on closer acquaintance to be of grimmer stuff! Already a hundred questions beset my mind as Cologne Cathedral comes into sight. There is something typically German about the unwieldy appearance of the Kölner Dom crowned with its preposterous spires. Many years had passed since I was last in Cologne. As the line ran through the clean, well-built suburbs, I remembered vaguely an hotel on the Dom Platz, and a general impression of tall, robust men drinking beer and eating large meals. From a dusty shelf in memory’s cupboard came the recollection of some careless remark made to an English friend--I hoped there would never be war between England and Germany, because judging by the physique of the men, war with them would be no trifling affair....