: A War-time Journal Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes by Jephson Harriet Julia Campbell Lady - World War 1914-1918 Personal narratives English; World War 1914-1918 Germany Germany; World War I

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at cannot be susceptible to externals, else the universal sad-coloured skirt, the ill-fitting blouse and the ugly hat worn by his women-folk could not find favour in his eyes.

One sees white-capped nurses and Red Cross Ambulance men and wounded and bandaged warriors everywhere. When recovered, the soldiers get three days leave to visit their families, and then return to the Front. Poor souls! Shops are chiefly tended by women nowadays, and the German Frau is not a capable shopkeeper like the French woman. A "Drogerie" here is presided over by the wife of the man who owns it, in his absence at the war. She is a gentle, rather pretty creature, but amazingly slow and stupid. If tooth-powder be asked for, she mounts a ladder, searches among a hundred bottles, shakes her head despairingly, and wonders where her "Mann" has put it. Outside her K?che and house, the German woman does not shine, but she is a faithful unselfish wife, and a good and affectionate mother. Mr. Ives thinks we shall certainly get away next week. I hope so! The weather is cold and rainy, and there is no fire-place in my room.

"Gehen die Schottl?nder wirklich mit nackten Beinen in die Schlacht?"

"Wie lange wird es ungef?hr dauern, bis die Deutschen Paris eingenommen haben?" and so on.

A delightful story has just reached me from an Italian source. In the church of a Convent Hospital in France, one of the sisters was praying aloud with immense fervour, and when she came to the "Confiteor" she said: "C'est ma faute! c'est ma faute! c'est ma tr?s grande faute," whereupon uprose a Turco crying out: "Ah! non! ma Soeur! c'est la faute ? Guilleaume!"

"In consequence of the victorious news of the first weeks, those remaining at home had become accustomed to constant victories, and the pause in the news of the battlefield of the West is a great trial of patience." Long may that trial last! On the whole we ought to be thankful that we are in Hesse and not in Prussia. The Hessians are a simple, kindly people, pleasant, and good tempered. I have known Germany well for eighteen years. When first we travelled in the Fatherland I found each Duchy, or Kingdom, or Principality, devoted to its own particular Ruler, and little outside it mattered to its people. Nowadays there are no Hessians or W?rtembergers, not even Saxons or Bavarians, but all are Germans, and for one photograph of the Grand Duke of Hesse and his Duchess you will see here one hundred of "Unser Kaiser" and "Unsere Kaiserin." They have become Imperialists, and the ambitious spirit which animates them is shown by the act of a soldier at Li?ge who chalked up on a wall: "Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, Emperor of Europe."

"'Tis a very good world we live in, To lend, or to spend, or to give in; But to beg, or to borrow, or get a man's own, 'Tis the very worst world that ever was known."

People say that the loss of life in this terrible war is beyond belief as far as the Germans are concerned. To hide this the Emperor requests that no one shall wear mourning for the dead until the war is over. Also, no complete catalogues of casualties are issued, only lists for each kingdom, or duchy, so that the bulk of the people have no idea of the waste of life. The wounded being so numerous, the doctors now have little time to attend to them on the spot, and therefore they are put into trains and sent off to "Lazaretts" sometimes before even their wounds are washed. A Belgian lady who had a special police permit to go to Frankfort, returned this afternoon in a train full of wounded soldiers. One of these was put into her carriage. He had been badly shot in the arm; his sleeve was soaked with blood, and that had coagulated; his wound had never been washed, and French earth was still on his boots, and yet he had been sent in this condition from Rheims to Giessen!

Fifty women and children go. We sleep in Frankfort, and cross from Flushing to Folkestone. Oh! that terrible mined sea, and the "untersuchung" of the Frontier. I tremble for this Diary, all letters I have destroyed.

Presently a wounded soldier came into the carriage, and they asked him where he had been fighting. "On the Western Frontier," said he.

"With the French?"

"Yes."

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