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

31 страница из 43

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.