Before we leave the subject of posters, however, let us take a glimpse at those appealing for aid to the _Kriegs und Zivilgefangenen_ which inundated the city. The picture showed a group of German prisoners, still in their red-banded caps and in full uniform—as if the ravages of time and their captors had not so much as spotted a shoulder-strap—peering sadly out through a wire barricade. It was plain to see that some German at home had posed for the artist, the beings he depicted were so pitifully gaunt and hungry in appearance. I have seen many thousand German prisoners in France, and I cannot recall one who did not look far better nourished than his fellow-countrymen beyond the Rhine, more full of health, in fact, than the civilian population about the detention camps. They may regret leaving comparative abundance for their hungry Fatherland, when the day of exodus finally comes. But the Germans at home were greatly wrought up about their eight hundred thousand prisoners. Many had convinced themselves that they would never be returned; the general impression of their sad lot brought continuous contributions to the boys and girls who rattled money-cans in the faces of passers-by, even those who wore an Allied uniform, all over Berlin. Stories of the mistreatment of prisoners were quite as current and fully as heartrending in Germany as they were on the other side of the battle-line. Apparently captives are always mishandled—by the enemy, and too well treated on the side of the speaker, a phenomenon even of our own Civil War. I have no personal knowledge of the lot of Allied prisoners of war in Germany, but this much is certain of those wearing the field gray—that the French neglected them both as to food and work; that the British treated them fairly in both matters, and that the Americans overfed and underworked them. But it was a hopeless task to try to convince their fellow-countrymen that they were not one and all suffering daily the tortures of the damned.
Perhaps the greatest surprise that Berlin had in store for me was the complete safety which her recent enemies enjoyed there. With German delegates to the Peace Conference closely guarded behind barbed wire in Versailles, and German correspondents forbidden even to talk to the incensed crowds that gathered along those barriers, it was astounding to find that American and Allied officers and men, in full uniform, wandered freely about the Prussian capital at all hours. Doughboys were quite as much at home along Unter den Linden as if they had been strolling down Main Street in Des Moines. Young Germans in iron hats guarded the entrance to the princely Adlon, housing the various enemy missions, but any one who chose passed freely in or out, whatever his nationality, his business or lack thereof, or his garb. Olive drab attracted no more attention in Berlin than it did in Coblenz. German chauffeurs drove _poilus_ and their officers about the streets as nonchalantly as if they had been taxi-drivers in Paris. To be sure, most uniformed visitors stuck rather closely to the center of town, but that was due either to false impressions of danger or to lack of curiosity—and perhaps also to the dread of getting out of touch with their own food-supply. For as a matter of experience they were fully as safe in Berlin as in Paris or New York—possibly a trifle more so—they seemed to run less risk of being separated, legally or forcibly, from their possessions. The hair-raising tales which correspondents poured out over the wires _via_ Copenhagen were chiefly instigated by their clamoring editors and readers at home. Let a few random shots be fired somewhere in the city and the scribes were at ease for another day—and the world gasped once more at the bloody anarchy reigning in Berlin, while the stodgy Berliner went on about his business, totally oblivious of the battle that was supposed to be seething about him.