I met Elsa and Franz von Kreuzenach at the house of Elizabeth von Detmold in the Hohenzollern ring, which became a meeting-place for Brand and the girl to whom he was now betrothed. Dr. Small and I went round there to tea, at Brand's invitation, and I spent several evenings there, owing to the friendship of Elizabeth von Detmold, who seemed to like my company. That lady was in many ways remarkable, and I am bound to say that in spite of my repugnance to many qualities of the German character I found her charming. The tragedy of the war had hit her with an almost particular malignancy. Married in 1914 to a young officer of the Prussian Guard, she was widowed at the first battle of Ypres. Her three brothers had been killed in 1915, '16 and '17. Both her parents had died during the war, owing to its accumulating horror. At twenty-six years of age she was left alone in her big house, with hardly enough money for its upkeep, and not enough to supplement the rigid war rations which were barely sufficient for life. I suppose there were thousands of young women in Germany—hundreds of thousands—who had the same cause for sorrow (we do not realise how German families were massacred in that blood-bath of war, so that even French and British losses pale in tragedy before their piled dead), but there were few, I am sure, who faced their grief with such high courage, and such unembittered charity. Like Elsa von Kreuzenach, she devoted her days to suffering childhood in the crèches and feeding-centres which she had helped
