- culous, undersized, weak-framed. Wickham Brand deserves
better luck than that, sonny."
I roared with laughter at the little doctor, and told him he was looking too far ahead, as far as Brand and the German girl were concerned. This made him angry, in his humourous way, and he told me that those who don't look ahead fail to see the trouble under their nose until they fall over it.
We left the Weinstube through a fog of smoke. Another dancing girl was on the tiny stage, waving her arms and legs. An English officer, slightly fuddled, was writing a cheque for his bill and persuading the German manager to accept it. Two young French officers were staring at the dancing-girl with hostile eyes. Five young Germans were noisy round six tall bottles of Liebfraumilch. The doctor and I walked down to the bank of the Rhine below the Hohenzollern bridge. Our sentries were there, guarding heavy guns which thrust their snouts up from tarpaulin covers.
Two German women passed, with dragging footsteps, and one said wearily, "Ach, lieber Gott!"
The doctor was silent for some time after his long monologue. He stared across the Rhine, on whose black surface lights glimmered with a milky radiance. Presently he spoke again, and I remember his words, which were, in a way, prophetic.
"These German people are broken. They had to be broken. They are punished. They had to be punished. Because they obeyed the call of their leaders, which was to evil, their power has been overthrown and their race made weak. You and I, an Englishman, an American, stand here, by right of victory, overlooking this river which has flowed through two thousand years of German history. It has seen the building-up of the German people, their industry, their genius, their racial conscious-
