Читать книгу What I Saw in Berlin and Other European Capitals During Wartime онлайн

13 страница из 43

Only the military circles seem to realise fully how terribly strong is the enemy Germany is fighting, and how very small are her chances in the long run. But they keep their sentiments and feelings as secret as possible, and, helped by their wonderfully organised Press, they manage to keep alive the Berlin public's illusions.

During my short stay in Berlin, thanks to a few acquaintances in the military world and to a fair knowledge of the German language, I managed to mix with different classes of people, from the man in the street to the officers of the cavalry regiment still in Berlin for the drill of the 1914-15 recruits; from a very well-known writer on military science to the working people unemployed on account of the war crisis.

* * *

At about nine o'clock on the morning after my arrival I woke up still tired after a late night in the gayest circles of Berlin. I had been to one of the numerous cabarets, which are the equivalent in Berlin of the London night club. The gay life of the German capital was being carried on just as in peace time. Students, officers, viveurs, and the indispensable feminine element, among which the French was, as usual, much in evidence (Dumas used to say, "Le demi-monde n'a pas de patrie!"), were crowding into the large, brightly-lighted rococo room, trying hard to dance one-steps and maxixes with the latest Paris or London swing.