BERLIN IN 1927.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 29, 4 February 1928, Page 11

BERLIN IN 1927.

John Drinkwater, the poet, describing in an English paper Berlin as he saw it at the end of 1927, say3:—"Berlin itself has an attraction curiously difficult to define. Its utilitarian virtues arc manifest. It is, for example, easily the cleanest capital city that I have ever seen— collecting capitals is a hobby of mine, and Berlin is, I think, my fourteenth! The public services and hotels are efficient, the shops good, and a mark means a mark, and not a mark plus an indefinite something according to your accent or the cut of your coat. And yet the city makes, on a first impression, a some-' what undistinguished appearance. The architecture is mostly solid and inoffensive. but not notably characteristic of a >?ople or period. Some of its decoration, Mich as exfoliating pillars fringed and coloured like sea anemones, is, indeed, prostrating, and the Sieges Allee must represent the world's peak of sculptural honor. But,in,general the buildings.of