We sat down in an old-fashioned café, celebrated in all Berlin for its excellent "Weiss-bier," the old all-Prussian drink stuff which is going quite out of fashion and is now obtainable in very few restaurants. Huge piles of newspapers and reviews were laid on a large table in the centre of the room, as in every café in Berlin. The foreign publications, generally very largely represented, were reduced to a few soiled issues two months old. People sitting round the centre table were enjoying and laughing loudly at the jokes of the humorous German and Austrian papers. The dominant note in the caricature is the monotonous repetition of a few coarse, common figures--the drunken Russian loaded with stolen loot, the tall, thin, red-haired English soldier, who cares only for the pay he gets; the sloppily-dressed Frenchman, who talks much and does nothing. Kitchener, Poincaré, and Joffre seem pet subjects, and they appear dressed in all possible clothes over and over again in monotonous succession. One of _Ulk_'s last issues was almost entirely devoted to Kitchener and to his recruiting scheme. Some of the drawings are really clever and bear the signature of well-known artists, but the rest of these papers do not seem humorous even to the Germans themselves. "They really don't know what to say," explained my companion. "All the possible subjects of humour about our enemies have been exhausted long ago, and even our best comic artists are forced to repeat themselves." "Do you believe in this 'dum-dum' story?" I asked, showing him a drawing representing a French and an English soldier preparing the murderous bullets, and, at the back of them, Death looking very pleased at this sight. "Well, 'dum-dum' stories take wonderfully well with the public. People simply adore to hear that the enemy are using illicit methods of warfare. In mediæval times they used to say that the enemy had the help of the evil power, or a magic sword, or something else of the kind. In modern times 'dum-dums' are a wonderful survival of the old tales. Why not give dum-dum stories to the public if they like them?" "But do you think 'dum-dums' have really been used?" I asked. "No, they are cruel and of no use at all. The 'dum-dum' bullets to be effective must be of fairly large size, and we cannot use anything of the kind with our modern rifles. In military circles we don't attach any importance to these rumours. In all the wars of the last fifty years the 'dum-dum' legend had a resurrection like the Arab phoenix." "But I have seen photos of 'dum-dum' bullets," I insisted.