VISITING COLOGNE.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 15469, 12 March 1919, Page 8

VISITING COLOGNE.

AUSTRALIANS FULFIL VOWS. NO YOUNG CHILDREN SEEN. LONDON, February 23. Although the Australian divisions as such have not boen sent to Cologne, many Australians have individually -visited tlio place,during the past three months. Arrangements are now being made by the Fourth Army for small parties of Australians to go there, the visit lasting about a week, lo Teach the Rhino has long been the ambition of the Australians who have been fighting in this part for four years. There are men who, on enlisting, made private vows to, do so. Two men of tho 24th Battalion, who have come all through the war, fulfilled one of these private vows a couple of days a«ro. A party of us, in motor-cars, last Tuesday drove to Cologne with a huge Australian flag flying on the back of the car. The flag,, which had been carried by a certain Australian battalion through many battlefields, was flown in this instance from a long stick, cut from a thorn tree in the wire defences of Liege forts® It was greeted on the long roads of Germany with groat respect. Since December two Australian units have been stationed about Cologne, one being the Fourth Australian Flving Squadron, and the other the Australian Casualty Clearing Station. Both are serving with the Second Army. "SAVE US FROM ANARCHY." The British cavalry advance gu_ard was to enter Cologne on December loth, but four davs previously it was implored by the Cologne Burgomaster to enter the town immediately in order to save the place from anarchy. This the cavalry did, and Australian airmen immediately afterwards flow into the city. .' The Australian officer commanding" took over from the German military" authorities 150 German aeroplanes surrendered under the armistice conditions. These machines are o£ all types,

from large Gothas to small scouts, including an armourod aeroplane with •wings fusilnge, niado of corrugated specially designed for attacking trenches from a low altitude. The Hun

pilots,' in handing over the machines,' expressed astonishment at the various flying feats performed over the aero-1 drome by the Australian airmen, particularly the remarkable stunts shown off in on© of the latest designed British, flying' scouts, which they declared they were glad they had not met, or were not compelled to meet. The general attitude of the inhabitants tof the Cologne area has been quite friendly towards the British troops, whom they regard as having saved the town from the German Bolsheviks. Whether this friendly attitude will endure beyond the danger of the Bolshevists in Germany remains to be seen.

THE GERMAN MORAL. The long preliminary discussion ab the Allied Conference is plainly -restoring the Germans' moral, and impressions recently received by various newspaper correspondents that the Germans believe they have not yet lost the war are certainly true enough. The Cologue shops are well stocked, and are <loing a (flourishing trade among , the British, especially in cameras, photographs, and material, which N are extraordinarily cheap as compared with prices in Erigland and Franfce. But the apparent prosperity of the Cologne business II9USCS is not a truo reflection of the general conditions in unoccupied Germany, where, according to trustworthy descriptions, most of the poorer peoplo are living in the most wretched condition. Fatty products and woollens are almost impossible to obtain. Civilian suits in the Cologno shops are priced at nearly £30. The' inhabi T tants are prepared to do anything for a soldier who will give or sell them a -fake of soap or a piece of chocolate. They say that the_ Allied areas soap is impossible to obtain. Another noteworthy feature of this part <>f Germany is the absence of very young children. In four days, ulonp a good street, on a stretch of the Rhine and elsewhere in the conntry west of Cologne, we saw no children or sign of children under three or four years of age. People say that this is quito general, and, owing to the lack of nourishment during the last couple of years, for a woman to bear a child was the seal of her deathwarrant.