Cochrane elected to take the right-hand branch, and this we followed for over a mile. It was leading us due west, and seemed likely to continue to do so for several miles more before the ridge was rounded. The coast opposite our position ran, we knew, rather from N.E. to S.W., and so every mile we marched west added another to our distance from the coast. At the next halt we reconsidered the question of roads, and decided we must go back and risk the village. But it was essential to make less noise, and so, as we once more approached the crossroads, those who were not wearing chariqs" padded their boots with old socks, bits of shirt, and pieces of felt. It gives some idea of the absolute weariness of body which now was ours, when it is stated that it was only after much forcible persuasion from Nobby that those who would have the trouble of tying on the padding could be induced to take this precaution. But in the end wise counsels prevailed, and we succeeded in passing through the villageand it was a large one-without causing any apparent alarm, Looney, however, lost one of his mufti hats with which he had padded one of his boots.

The track now increased in width to as much as ten feet, being roughly levelled out of the solid rook, and running along a ledge above a precipitous ravine. Below us we heard the roar of a mountain stream, and as at one point a

rough path had been out down to water-level, Cochrane descended it and fetched up a ohargal full of water. It was to prove a serious mistake that we did not fill all our receptacles here. On resuming our way, we were taken by our road over another striking bridge which crossed the ravine a little higher up. This time the arch was & pointed one. Once more we found the defile unguarded. We were probably in magnificent mountain scenery, but could see little of it, as the moon had not yet risen. Even though after crossing the bridge we waited in the warmth of a little cave till after the time of moonrise, the moon itself did not become. visible until two hours later, so steep were the slopes on every side of us. We could see, however, that we were going round the eastern shoulder of the ridge which had blocked our direct route, and this ridge rose sheer from the very edge of the ravine. Without a road to to follow, therefore, we should have fared badly indeed. Even with it, the climb from the bridge had been severe, but on proceeding we soon came to the top of the rise and found ourselves walking on a carpet of pine-needles through a beautiful open forest. This was a wonderful contrast to the arid wastes or rugged ridges across which had been so many of our long and weary marches, Even here, however, the country was soon to resume its more normal aspect. We found our

IN pre-war days Berlin's famous avenue, known as Unter den Linden, always impressed as being symbolical of modern Germany. There the flaunting parvenu hotels of William II.'s Industriestaat stood cheek by jowl with the unpretentious Ministerial buildings of the Waterloo era; there great shops, tricked out with a lavish display of bronze and marble and plate-glass, were flanked by the meanest of Old Berlin drinking kens. There was always plenty of traffic in the street and on the pavements; yet, just as the shabbylooking little horse-cabs contrasted strangely with the splendid limousines of Berlin's merchant princes, so the shoddy dress and boorish manners of the crowd seemed to accord ill with the heavy magnificence of hotels, cafés, and shops. In fact, with its violent contrasts, its vulgarity, its haste, and its general incoherence of tendenoy, Unter den Linden used to be a fairly accurate symbol of that clay-footed colossus, modern Germany.

One day in the early spring of 1913 I walked down Unter den Linden with a well-known French statesman. The German Government had just introduced its measures for inoreasing the army, proposing to raise the money for this purpose by means of a levy on

capital. As we strolled along my companion and I discussed these proposals and other aspects of German finance. With a characteristic gesture which took in the whole façade of the busy street, the shrewd old Frenchman said—

"Si la guerre éolate, jeune homme, vous verrez, tout ça s'écroulera !"

That was a true prophecy, though its fulfilment may have been delayed. The whole façade of modern Germany, as represented by the great hotels and kolossal night cafés of Unter den Linden, has fallen with a crash. The fabric of the Empire has been shaken to its very foundations, if not wholly destroyed. The collapse of Germany is a stupendous thing. It is its suddenness, its swiftness, its completeness which are so staggering, which make it an occurrence unique in the history of the world. The epoch-making events which have accompanied it, the defeat of the German armies, the occupation of Rhineland and Alsace-Lorraine by the Allies, and the surrender of the German Fleet, have deflected public attention from the study no less absorbing, scarcely less thrilling-of the origins and symptoms of this mighty fall.

For fifty months Germany was a closed book to the world

without. For fifty months we were relegated to the realm of deduction and hypothesis by the iron curtain which shut out from our view the slow process of decay going forward in the German body politio. The Allies' Intelligence services contrived to keep the Supreme Command accurately posted on the progressive decline of what the Germans call "the spirit of 1914." But so long as the frontier remained closed our knowledge was not absolute, and I believe that the Germans are right in claiming that when the crash came the Allies had no idea how close the Germans were to collapse. But now the barriers are down. The Supreme War Lord is a fugitive and an outoast, his son and heir the same: his beaten generals have vanished from the light of day. The tricouleur floats from Strasbourg Minster and the British Foot Guards mount the watch on the Rhine. For those who, like the writer, have been with the Army of Occupation in Germany, the land of blood and iron is a olosed book no more.

Its pages are gradually unfolding, and he who runs may read. The tremulously polite householder in the houses where British soldiers are quartered, the fawning shopkeeper, the tram conductor, the lady clerk in the billeting office, the papers at the newsstand, the books in the bookshop - all are individually pages of this tragio tale of the decline and fall of a great nation. It is a tragedy, as the

story of every failure, of every crime, must be. And the spectacle of the ruthless retribution that has overtaken the arrogant, purse - proud, ambitious nation one used to know, is tragedy in the sense of the plays of Sophocles or Euripides. It seems to me in Germany of to-day that if you stop and listen you may hear the inexorable march of leaden-footed Destiny.

The story of Germany's collapse is the story of the military defeat of the German Armies. Of that it is too soon to write. But it is now possible to trace to its source in some measure the progressive crumbling of the German front in the field and at home, which led to Germany's military overthrow. And it is because I rejoined the British Army in France shortly after the opening of the great battle (August 1918), in which the symptoms of the deterioration of German moral made themselves incontrovertibly manifest, and continued with the Division for a month or so after it had taken its place with the British Army of Occupation in Germany, that I feel justified in attempting this task. The interrogation of prisoners during the fighting, conversations with all types of Germans during our mareh from the Ardennes to Cologne to Cologne and during my stay on the Rhine, and articles in the German newspapers and magazines, furnished the material for this story of the collapse of Germany.

It is a popular belief in the Allied countries that the Germans do not realise their military defeat. This is, I think, true in the case of the stay-at-home civilian of the uninformed class: it is oertainly not true of the German soldier. It must be remembered that the German civilian lived in a fool's paradise for fifty months. The hoodwinking of the German publio by the military authorities, of which I shall have more to say elsewhere, was successful in a measure which seems incredible. For example, the German appeal for an armistice, which to every one of us soldiers on the Western Front appeared ultimately inevitable, came upon the German public with the force of a stunning shock.

In the same way, the stayat-home Hun has not the least conception of the detestation in which the very name of Germany is held all through the oivilised world. The waiters in the Cologne restaurants and cafés talk glibly about former service in England, and look forward eagerly to a speedy return. When a waiter at the Dom Hotel, wearing the ribbon of the Iron Cross in the buttonhole of his dress-suit, voiced to me sentiments of this description, he fairly took my breath away. German naïveté takes some getting used to. Advertisers in the Cologne newspapers ("published," as the notice printed above the

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title runs, "with the assent of the British military authorities") ask for lessons in commercial English. On all sides one is beset with questions as to when the inquirer may resume business relations with "my good friend" Mr X of Manchester, or "our old clients " Messrs Y of Liverpool. The Berlin 'Vossische Zeitung,' of January 16, printed two advertisements asking for the representation of German firms in Rumania "in view of the approaching peace trade." One of these advertisements was anonymous, the other was inserted by an "efficient business man settled in Bukharest, temporarily resident in Berlin." Whether the advertisers are Rumanian or not, the advertisements themselves are sufficient indication of the amazing obtuseness of the German mind.

The German civilian is equally ignorant of the faot that he lost the war because the German army was defeated. In Cologne, which is mildly Social Demoorat in the working-class quarters and for the rest overwhelmingly "black" or Catholic, the collapse of the German front is attributed to the "revolutionaries " of Berlin. Berlin, let me say in parenthesis, which, as the centre of Frederician Prussia, was always unpopular outside the narrow limits of the monarchy, is now anathema to the rest of the Empire. "Our Front was never broken": "our soldiers in the

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