We talked of the war and the peace and the threatening condition of affairs in Eastern Europe. Both men called down fire from heaven on the Poles. No German can speak of a Pole in measured language. Soon there would be a Bolshevist army in Warsaw, and then what was going to happen to Germany? Freckles, who had fought on the Eastern Front, spoke well of the Russians. They were brave men, so he said, and if properly armed and properly led would fight as well as the Germans. They had no chance in the war; men could not fight with spades and hayforks. They were mown down like sheep because they had often neither rifles nor guns. Klassen had had a Russian prisoner working on his farm and had found him a good fellow. Freckles, who was, I gathered, not a man of property, was rather attracted by some of the anti-capitalist ideas of the Bolsheviks. Klassen was talking bitterly of the Schiebers and the terrific price of food and goods in Germany--capitalism was a curse. “What are you but a capitalist,” retorted Freckles with a grin; “you have four cows and some land and a pond full of trout”--before which sally Klassen, who was clearly at the mercy of his more nimble-witted friend, collapsed entirely. “What about the arms, too,” said Freckles with another grin and a wink in our direction. Klassen turned to us as eagerly as his brother. Of course we had heard of the law proceedings in Cologne at which he had been fined? No? His face fell on realising the limited span of his fame; it was a terrible affair; he did not know how he should get the money for the fine. We packed both men into the car and took them back to the village, where we parted with mutual goodwill. “In a fortnight, then,” said Klassen, “you will come again when the fish are bigger. Yes, you can bring a friend too if you wish.” So we said good evening and, consoled by the discovery of a secret pond if we had failed to secure a length of stream, travelled westwards towards the setting sun and Cologne. CHAPTER IX WHO PAYS? To the traveller passing from the devastated regions of France to the hills and valleys of the Rhineland, there is something almost scandalous in the impression of wealth and solidity conveyed by the latter country. “These people have not suffered in the war at all,” said an English woman in Cologne to me indignantly; “look at the worldwide misery they have provoked; look at the state of France, and then see how lightly the Germans themselves have escaped: everything intact and their country untouched.”