cotta trimmings, but two guard houses painted with red-white-black stripes flank the front door and give it a look of importance.  The street at either end is barred by red, white and black striped poles and strapping grenadiers on guard are clustered thick about it.  You don’t need to ask who lives there.  The red brick house (it would not rent for more than $100 a month in any New York suburb) is the present temporary residence of the Over War Lord.  Its great attraction for the Kaiser, I am told, is the large, secluded garden in the rear where this other “man of destiny” loves to walk and meditate or, more usually, talk—­though the few remaining French inhabitants could have a frequent opportunity of seeing him walk in the little closed public park if they were interested, but the natives seem outwardly utterly apathetic.

Several of the Kaiser’s household, in green Jaeger uniforms, were lounging around the door for an early morning airing, while secret service men completed the picture by hovering in the immediate neighborhood.  You can tell that they are German secret service agents because they all wear felt alpine hats, norfolk jackets, waterproof cloth capes and a bored expression.  They have been away from Berlin for nearly three months now.  About fifty of them constitute the “Secret Field Police” and their station house is half a block away from the Kaiser’s residence.

Just around the corner from the Kaiser, within a stone’s throw of his back door, is another red-brick house with terra-cotta trimmings, rather larger and more imposing.  The names of its new residents, “Hahnke,” “Caprivi,” and “Graf von Moltke,” are scrawled in white chalk on the stone post of the gateway.  Further up the same street another chalk scrawl on a quite imposing mansion informed me that “The Imperial Chancellor” and “The Foreign Office” had set up shop there.  Near by were Grand Admiral von Tirpitz’s field quarters.  A bank building on another principal street bore the sign, “War Cabinet.”

The Great General Staff occupies the quaint old Hotel de Ville.  An unmolested ramble showed that all the best residences and business buildings in the heart of the town were required to house the members of the Great Headquarters, who number, in addition to the Kaiser and his personal entourage, thirty-six chiefs or department heads, including the Imperial Chancellor, the War Minister, the Chief of the Great General Staff, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, the Chief of the Ammunition Supply, the Chief of the Field Railways, the Chief of the Field Telephone and Telegraph Service, the Chief of the Sanitary Service, the Chief of the Volunteer Automobile Corps, &c., making, with secretaries, clerks, ordonnances, and necessary garrison, a community of 1,200 souls.