A well-to-do merchant
from Bremen who travelled for some distance in my train
assured me that there was plenty of food in Germany,
except of course for the poor. Distress, he said, was
confined entirely to these. Similarly a Prussian gentleman
who looked very like a soldier, but who assured me with
some heat that he was a commercial traveller, told me
the same thing: There were no cases of starvation, he
said, except among the very poor.
The aspect of the people too, at the stations and in the
towns we passed, puzzled me. There were no uniforms, no
soldiers. But I was amazed at the number of commercial
travellers, Lutheran ministers, photographers, and so
forth, and the odd resemblance they presented, in spite
of their innocent costumes, to the arrogant and ubiquitous
military officers whom I had observed on my former visit.
But I was too anxious to reach Berlin to pay much attention
to the details of my journey.
Even when I at last reached the capital, I arrived as I
had feared, too late.
"Your Excellency," said a courteous official at the
railway station, to whom my naval uniform acted as a
sufficient passport. "The Revolution of which you speak
is over.
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