Near one of the side colonnades a gentleman standing on a chair shouts the latest war news through a megaphone to a crowd of listeners. Everybody is anxious for news of Antwerp, because I understood it was clearly realised when that city capitulated or was taken by the Germans the besieging army would be released. Then on to Paris! At the Pariser Platz I see wounded officers being taken into the large private houses which are used as Red Cross hospitals, and a large crowd receives them with sympathetic cheers. One of the most remarkable things in Berlin is the number of private houses, hotels, and museums turned into hospitals; and the conclusion I came to is that the British estimates of the number of German casualties are not at all exaggerated. Berlin is a city of wounded and distressed, gay as it is on the surface; only the authorities are careful to keep this fact as dark as possible. No official list of dead and wounded is issued, and the families are generally told by means of printed letters that Hans or Fritz will not come back. Some papers started at the beginning of the war to give lists of dead officers and men, which they drew up by means of private inquiry. Now this has been stopped, and only now and again do the papers talk of the glorious death of Captain or Lieutenant So-and-so. The censorship in Berlin is much more strict than in London. Some newspapers have disappeared; some have reduced their dimensions; others, that tried to be coherent with their past political ideas, have been boycotted even by the section of the public which used formerly to support them. For instance, to read _Vorwaerts_ in public in Berlin is an action which requires a certain amount of heroism. The newspaper which in the last two months has been suppressed three times by the Censor, and three times allowed to appear again on the promise of good behaviour, is almost the only one which shows any independence of the military Press office, and dares to tell news other than optimistic to the Berlin public. Wishing to read something fairly truthful about the war, I was scanning this newspaper while riding in a tramcar on my way to the War Fund garden party, which was, at the moment, the great attraction of all Berlin. An elderly gentleman, sitting opposite me, after looking suspiciously for a long while at the paper and at myself, addressed me with this extraordinary remark: "To be a Socialist at the present moment is to be an enemy of the Fatherland. You should be ashamed to read a paper like that when you should be fighting for the country." I answered that I read what I liked best and that he need not worry--I would gladly fight for my country as soon as she was at war. When the old man heard I was an Italian he commenced, tactless as only a German can be when he is of the tactless sort, a long talk about the treacherous politics of Italy, the punishment Germany is going to give her, and other similar nonsense.