RHINE BILLETING.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 13860, 12 September 1919, Page 1

RHINE BILLETING.

ißy Cicely Hamilton.) Even though I know 1 had military authority to back me. it was not without a certain uneasiness that 1 rang, at my first German billet. Tiie .stamped aim 1 printed slip I ,'ield ready to thrust 'forward entitled me to shelter—roof, bed, and a measure of attendance: uo man, I imagined, v.ould dispute its plain order; but i anticipated scowls and an obvious unwillingness—the species of reception that would make me uncomfortable ami conscious of being an intruder. Three weeks of Rhine billeting have taught me to laugh at my nervousness: since, whatever the motive, the German hausfraii does well 'by the lodger inflicted on her. Her attitude to the alien may be summed up as correct, with hero and there a leaning towards cordiality—induced, one hopes, by the fact that her post-war experience of the English-, man has revealed him as less intolerable than she pictured him some months ago. She accepts your slip of paper with apparent unconcern, leads you to your beclroor.i, shows you where the light turns on. provides you with I a latchkey, and retires with no sign of annoyance.

After that, very possibly, your personal intercourse ceases —since the

•■occupying" community, civilian as w.-ll as military, collects in messes for its meals: but you find your bed made and your room cleaned and tidied every "morning. Towels, it may be, will be lacking to your washing equipment: they are not included in military "requirements, and the billeted lodger will do well to carry a provision thereof as he carries a provision of

-rjnp: but the other accessories of an ordinary bedroom are furnished .as a matter of course. There « ; re exceptions to the rule that intercourse with your involuntary hosts is slight: the garrulous landlady, I imagine, exists in ah quarters of the globe." Very certainly she exists on the banks of the Rhine—a being as impossible to silence as her counterpart i:i 'Blackpool or Birmingham. Instructions against fraternisation are of no avail against her flood of confidences on the subject of the names, the ages, the marriages and prospects of her offspring: and, personally. I sat helpless a night or two ago when my hostess' construed ;ui expression of thanks for lighting the gas into an invitation to produce ;i selection of family photographs, and accompanied the display with biographical details in the thickest of Cologne dialect. Kcmemberiiig that the street outside mis patrolled bv British military police, that my landlady and [ weie still technically enemies, it was an odd sensation to' be called on to admire the counterfeit presentment of a son of the house arrayed in-his best Prussian uniform.

There would be little hope lor a new Germain- if all her children were as the postcard sellers of Cologne, whose displays of the retreat of the -German amiv.'of the changing of British guard, on German bridges are to me a perpetual source of amazement mingled with shame. But now and again, over the harrier that separates the two rare*, one catches a gliiifpse of a finer spirit—that suffers. Yesterdav. a woman on whom J was billeted, spoke to me suddenly and lnipulsivelv she had come to apologise for some trivial shortcoming in the housekeeping arraugements due.-io the illues-; of a- iiiaiid-servant. And then, without warning, she spoke from her heart of other things—chiefly. I think, from a need of someone to speak to. Of the thought of was ahvavs with her— Germany defeated and 'having lost all to her conquerors Of how hard it was to keep cheerful outwardly—of the tears that were alwavs near her eyes. . . . . There was nothing to do but listen with respect: realising, as one listened that in such an attitude lay more hope tor the future of a countrv than in many marks of profit acquired bv the traders of Cologne.