When you start your stroll through Berlin, you begin at
Friedrichstrasse Station, for everything begins there and ends there
for that matter. Here is the elevated that takes you all around the
city, and the long-distance railway that takes you all around the
world.
From the station you hurry down two squares of Friedrichstrasse, and
there you are right on Unter den Linden, the heart of Berlin. Linden
trees! Linden trees! But they are all bare now, and the lights from the
other side of the street show through their empty coal-black branches.
But on days when there has been a victory, flags show through, and then
the street is very beautiful.
The center of Berlin is built on a square. On one side is Unter
den Linden, on the second side Friedrichstrasse, on the third side
Leipzigerstrasse and on the last side Wilhelmstrasse. Unter den Linden
is all fashionable shops and hotels. Here is the Hotel Adlon where most
Americans stop, but the German royalty go there as well. The Duchess
of Brunswick often makes this her headquarters. Near the hotel is a
newspaper office, the _Lokal-Anzeiger_. It always has a crowd of people
hanging around its bulletins, and its great war map which shows with
colored pins how Germany has advanced her boundaries. Then there are
jewelry and men's furnishing shops. This is the promenade side of the
street, and here the Beau Brummels and Disraelis of Berlin walk with
their fine ladies. Some of them take tea at Kranzler's, and the little
cake house is packed from early morn till night. People sitting in
Kranzler's never look at ease but as though they were there to be seen
and not to have a good time.
On the other side of the street in the midst of all this fashionable
array is a tiny little beer hall for soldiers. They always have a ham
and a dozen of eggs in the window, and beside the ham the sign "_Bier
für Militär 10 Pfennige_," and what soldier would not take advantage of
this! On the same side is the "Jockey Club," tailors who make English
clothes. The words "Jockey Club" are printed all over the front of
the store. There is only one empty store on the street, and that is a
tiny shop, and the signs are still in the window: "Chevalier d'Orsay
Perfume." The French shop-keepers left at the beginning of the war. The
"Mercedes Automobile Company" have a big show window on this street,
and in this window they have three or four giant automobiles. They are
all marked "Sold," but they can't be delivered until after the war.
Friedrichstrasse is a very narrow street, and it is always so crowded
that one can hardly get along it. Many people walk in the middle
of the street. It is full of little shops and lottery places run by
the government. They have a great many Red Cross Lotteries, and the
chances sell for three marks a chance. Last winter the winner of the
first prize of many thousand marks never came to claim it. The number
was advertised in all the papers. If the winner did not turn up in a
certain time the money was to be turned over to the Red Cross.
[Illustration: _Wertheim's Department Store._]
On Friedrichstrasse there are several American shoe stores--the "Walk
Over," the "Hanan," and the "Vera" shoe. But it is now over two years
since they have had any shoes from America, and they have filled up
their empty boxes with German shoes which are very inferior to our
makes. Busses run along this street, and many of the conductors are
women who wear trousers--not bloomers but regular men's trousers.
[Illustration: _The American Embassy._]
Leipzigerstrasse is all big stores, and these stores do a rushing
business. At one end of the street is Wertheim's large department
store. From the outside it looks like a public library or a government
building, but inside it is rather cheap looking and it is a regular
mirror maze to find your way in. I doubt if even Mr. Wertheim himself
finds his way through it.
Right by the door of this store they have field post boxes for soldiers
all ready packed for sending things to the front, with goose breast,
cakes, candy, wine, oranges and cigarettes. Everything tied up with a
ribbon of _Schwarz-Weiss-Rot_, and a bit of green laid on the top. What
don't they have in this store for soldiers! Clothes, caps, blankets,
pocket lamps, knee warmers, pulse warmers, sleeping-bags, folding
knives and forks, and books.
The fourth side of the square is Wilhelmstrasse, and when you read in
the papers, "Wilhelmstrasse says this to-day," or "Wilhelmstrasse is
silent," this is the street. It is a bare street without street-cars
or trees, and lined with gray government buildings. The German Foreign
Office is here, and right beside it the Chancellor's house, where
Bismarck lived so long. The American Embassy is on the other side of
the street. The Spanish Embassy occupies the building now. So many
automobiles run over this street that it looks like glass, and when
the lamps are lighted, its reflections are so bright that it looks as
though it had been raining.
At the head of Wilhelmstrasse where it meets Unter den Linden is
the famous Brandenburger Tor, and there, on the top of it, you see
the famous bronze horses that Napoleon took to Paris and that were
brought back in 1871. When you walk through its arches you are in
the Tiergarten, the great park of Berlin. This park is always full of
people, and many of them are going out to drive nails into the Iron
Hindenburg. For over two years this nailing has been going on and the
statue is not nearly finished. It is an enormous figure over fifty
feet high. The money for the nailing goes to the Red Cross. It costs
one mark to drive an iron nail into the figure, five marks to drive
a silver nail, and 100 marks to drive a gold one. Already the whole
top of Hindenburg's sword is gold, and his wedding ring is gold. The
buttons on his coat are silver. The nailing is directed by soldiers,
and every afternoon a military band plays in front of the figure.
[Illustration: _New Underground and Elevated Railway Terminal in
Berlin._]
If you are too lazy to walk around Berlin, you can ride around on the
city elevated, taking the train at the Potsdam Station. At this station
you can nearly always see prisoners--Arabs, Englishmen, French--waiting
to be taken out to Zossen, the great prison camp near Berlin. This
station is surrounded by coal yards, and last winter when it was so
hard to get any coal delivered, I often felt like getting out here and
stealing a lump.
[Illustration: _Entrance to the New Underground Railway Built Since the
War._]
At no time in the day can you ride around the loop without seeing a
troop train. There is always a troop train flying by. Very gay trains
with shouting soldiers hanging out of the windows and doors. All waving
and crying _Auf Wiedersehen_! That means "Till we meet again," but many
of them never come back.
Beside the soldier trains are the freight trains and the funny things
they haul: Parts of aeroplanes with the wings marked with the Iron
Cross; parts of undersea-boats; sleds for the winters in Russia--the
kind you see pictures of in story books, and then cannons, automobiles,
little field-kitchen wagons--everything painted gray--"field-gray."
Near the Charlottenburg Station is a _Mittelstandsküche_ or a
middle-class kitchen. These kitchens have been established all over
Berlin since the war, and here one can get a good meal for eighty
pfennigs.
[Illustration: _Café Victoria, Corner of Friedrichstrasse and Unter Den
Linden._]
If you get off the elevated at the Lehrte Station you are in
Alt-Moabit. Near the station is the great civil prison of Berlin. It
is built like a star with five arms running out from a center. It makes
one think of an octopus. Here the spies, the offending editors and the
troublesome socialists are imprisoned. Liebknecht is here. I knew the
prison pastor, a young man named Dr. Klatt. Dr. Klatt wanted to go to
the front, but he is so useful here that they will not let him go. He
is the go-between for the prisoners and the outside world. Some of the
prisoners begged to be allowed to go to fight for their country, and
Dr. Klatt helped these men to get free. He says there is a tremendous
amount of patriotism among the prisoners.
Near the prison is a great red barracks. It is so long that one can
scarcely see from one end to the other. There are always soldiers at
the windows, and if you look their way at all, they are very apt to
call _Guten Tag_. At the far end of the building there is a path-way,
and no matter at what time of the day you go there you can see hundreds
of new recruits coming out. They have not received their uniforms as
yet, and they have on old clothes, and most of them carry boxes in
their hands. Two hundred of them come at a time, six abreast, and when
they have reached the gateway as far back as you can see, a second
batch appears. This lasts as long as you stand there.
A little farther up from the Lehrte Station is the greatest hospital in
Berlin, and it is now used as a collecting-place for soldiers who have
been wounded and are now well and ready to go back to the front. Here
they go through their final examination to make sure that they are able
to go back.
[Illustration: _Steuben Statue at Potsdam._]
It is an hour's ride from Berlin to Potsdam, and you can easily see
why the Hohenzollerns have chosen this as a place to live. It is so
cunning, so little. The tiny houses are of a yellow color. It is a
soldier town. Every man is a soldier, and soldiers practise all day
long in front of the Town Palace of Frederick the Great. In the street
in front of the palace is a tree, the "Petition-Linden," where people
used to come to present their woes to old Fritz. On the other side of
the palace is the statue of General Steuben, a replica of which was
sent over as a gift from the Germans to America.
Potsdam is most beautiful at sunset. One can stand on the old bridge
and look out over the water. When the shadows begin to fall, the old
knights on the bridge seem to move and to climb down from their places.
Hark! One can hear the click of their spurs, the rattle of armor. One
by one they leave the bridge and move toward the old palace in the
darkness.