Part 17 (2/2)

The motor flew ahead and in a few moments later we were making our arrangements with a local station-master for a special train to Berlin.

I got here my first glimpse of the wonderful perfection of the German railway system.

”I am afraid,” said the station-master, with deep apologies, ”that I must ask you to wait half an hour. I am moving a quarter of a million troops from the east to the west front, and this always holds up the traffic for fifteen or twenty minutes.”

I stood on the platform watching the troops trains go by and admiring the marvellous ingenuity of the German system.

As each train went past at full speed, a postal train (Feld-Post-Eisenbahn-Zug) moved on the other track in the opposite direction, from which a shower of letters were thrown in to the soldiers through the window.

Immediately after the postal train, a soup train (Soup-Zug) was drawn along, from the windows of which soup was squirted out of a hose.

Following this there came at full speed a beer train (Bier-Zug) from which beer bombs were exploded in all directions.

I watched till all had pa.s.sed.

”Now,” said the station-master, ”your train is ready.

Here you are.”

Away we sped through the meadows and fields, hills and valleys, forests and plains.

And nowhere--I am forced, like all other travellers, to admit it--did we see any signs of the existence of war.

Everything was quiet, orderly, usual. We saw peasants digging--in an orderly way--for acorns in the frozen ground. We saw little groups of soldiers drilling in the open squares of villages--in their quiet German fas.h.i.+on --each man chained by the leg to the man next to him; here and there great Zeppelins sailed overhead dropping bombs, for practice, on the less important towns; at times in the village squares we saw cl.u.s.ters of haggard women (quite quiet and orderly) waving little red flags and calling: ”Bread, bread!”

But nowhere any signs of war. Certainly not.

We reached Berlin just at nightfall. I had expected to find it changed. To my surprise it appeared just as usual.

The streets were brilliantly lighted. Music burst in waves from the restaurants. From the theatre signs I saw, to my surprise, that they were playing _Hamlet_, _East Lynne_ and _Potash and Perlmutter_. Everywhere was brightness, gaiety and light-heartedness.

Here and there a merry-looking fellow, with a brush and a pail of paste and a roll of papers over his arm, would swab up a casualty list of two or three thousand names, amid roars of good-natured laughter.

What perplexed me most was the sight of thousands of men, not in uniform, but in ordinary civilian dress.

”b.o.o.benstein,” I said, as we walked down the Linden Avenue, ”I don't understand it.”

”The men?” he answered. ”It's a perfectly simple matter.

I see you don't understand our army statistics. At the beginning of the war we had an army of three million.

Very good. Of these, one million were in the reserve. We called them to the colours, that made four million. Then of these all who wished were allowed to volunteer for special services. Half a million did so. That made four and a half million. In the first year of the war we suffered two million casualties, but of these seventy-five per cent, or one and a half million, returned later on to the colours, bringing our grand total up to six million.

This six million we use on each of six fronts, giving a grand total of thirty six million.

”I see,” I said. ”In fact, I have seen these figures before. In other words, your men are inexhaustible.”

”Precisely,” said the Count, ”and mark you, behind these we still have the Landsturm, made up of men between fifty-five and sixty, and the Landslide, reputed to be the most terrible of all the German levies, made up by withdrawing the men from the breweries. That is the last final act of national fury. But come,” he said, ”you must be hungry. Is it not so?”

”I am,” I admitted, ”but I had hesitated to acknowledge it. I feared that the food supply--”

b.o.o.benstein broke into hearty laughter.

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