CITY OF SLEEPLESS NIGHT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 14925, 24 February 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

CITY OF SLEEPLESS NIGHT.

Mr. Richard TwmSK, in an. article- in Chambers's Journal on the German capital, calls Berlin "the city of sleepless night." It has its .omnibuses and its night trams, and one may see the "Bummlers" returning from their revels with the early morning market carts. Later on they reverse the order, turning day into night, and the city of sleepless night becomes a very sleepy place by day. Berliners have cultivated the habit of making up for their lost sleep by sleeping in the trains and public conveyances, plying to and from the town. - Nearly all the passengers' in them begin to nod as soon as they have paid their fare, and it is no uncommon thing to see them wake at the terminus, having travelled far beyond their destination.

The police have to, look after everything in Berlin, though the people generally regard them as enemies. They do not scruple to call them in to settle even trifling domestic difficulties. The extraordinary powers which they exercise are. Mr. Thirsk asserts, little more than official humbug, calculated to annoy honest citizens, who are obliged to fill in forms instructing the police all about their private and personal affairs. Because of this searching police supervision it has often been said that slums have been prevented in Berlin. But this is not true. In fact, the. police have, not even been able to prevent overcrowding. The majority of the barrack-like tenements are inhabited by families much too large for the rooms they occupy, and if by any chance they should have a spare room/ they take in lodgers. What the police do with the slums, Mr. Thirsk goes on to say, is to try .to hide them as much as possible. Poverty daro not show its rags and tatters in the street. If it does it is hounded back whence it came or incarcerated in prisonlike places, to which it objects, and does all in its power, to avoid. Herein lies the secret of Berlin's respectability." There must be uniformity among the • poor as well as among the rich, and just as one seldom sees any particularly welldressed people, so one seldom meets remarkably ragged beggars. All must conform to the police standards, which demand an air of respectability even in poverty. Hence Berlin has*no streetcries, no paper boys shouting the latest news, no street-hawkers vending their wares.