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"What is then the present condition of Berlin? Did you find out the truth about what's going on there?" Everybody keeps asking me these questions.

The answer cannot be given in a few words. Berlin, on the surface, is as usual; the life did not appear to me at first sight much different from what I saw during my last visit four years ago. London has changed her habits more on account of the war than Berlin.

The theatres in the German capital are mostly open, the crowds in the street do not look much different from the peace-time crowds, the food-stuff prices are very little higher than usual. The women driving taxi-cabs, the starving queue outside the butchers' shops in the morning, and the potatoes sold at high price—these exist only in the dreams of newspaper correspondents.

Everything seems pretty normal. The enthusiasm for the Emperor, for the Army, for the Fatherland is as strong as ever. The confidence of the people, fed on false news, on fantastic reports, on gigantic illusions, is unbounded. These people have a keen relish and delight in the fact, as they admit at once, that the whole world is against them; they seem to be proud of their isolation and despise infinitely their only allies, the Austrians.