Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/whatisawinberlin00pieruoft WHAT I SAW IN BERLIN WHAT I SAW IN BERLIN AND OTHER EUROPEAN CAPITALS DURING WARTIME by "PIERMARINI" London Eveleigh Nash 1915 NOTE Several chapters of this book are reprinted from the _Evening News_ (London), to the Proprietors and Editor of which paper the author owes his grateful thanks for the permission to include them here. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTORY 1 CHAPTER I MY FIRST WAR-TIME JOURNEY TO BERLIN 11 CHAPTER II POTSDAM AND HAMBURG 55 CHAPTER III CONSTANTINOPLE 75 CHAPTER IV BULGARIA AND GREECE 121 CHAPTER V MY SECOND WAR-TIME VISIT TO BERLIN 142 CHAPTER VI VIENNA 184 CHAPTER VII SWITZERLAND 196 CHAPTER VIII ITALY 205 CHAPTER IX FRANCE 221 CHAPTER X HOLLAND 240 CHAPTER XI ANTWERP--THE DEAD CITIES OF BRABANT 259 CHAPTER XII BRUSSELS, TOURNAI, AND THE GERMAN FRONT 284 WHAT I SAW IN BERLIN AND OTHER EUROPEAN CAPITALS INTRODUCTORY The golden days of the war correspondents have long since passed away; the unlimited freedom allowed to newspaper correspondents during the 1870 war, the fact that Germany could know every move, every change of front, even the exact figures of the different contingents of troops, by the simple method of getting the Paris papers, and the many instances during both the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese Wars, in which supposed war correspondents turned out to be dangerous spies, have made the commanders of the fighting armies extremely careful; and the war correspondent is kept so far from the firing-line that even if he manages to get near to the front, he is allowed to see practically nothing, and his report is based only on what he can get out of soldiers back from the line of fire. Moreover, the enormously wide front of the modern battlefield makes it absolutely impossible for the war correspondent to gain anything like an exact idea of what is going on. His work is essentially a work of analysis, analysis of the section in which he moves, but the synthesis of the whole movement is bound to escape his observation.