BRITAIN'S PALACE IN BERLIN.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14008, 12 March 1920, Page 1

BRITAIN'S PALACE IN BERLIN.

(By H. J. Gr-eenwall.j The British Embassy in Berlin is once more to be inhabited by the people for whom it was'built.

I Here Lord Kilmarnock, the - first British representative since August, i 1914, will take .up his residence. I "As a matter of fact the British Embassy is one of the finest buildings of its kind in Berlin, and it is undoubt- ■: edly the best embassy in any European i capital. ' • ; | It is but a few steps away from the I German Foreign Office, the first building on the right when one turns off from Unter den - Linden into the Willi elinstrasse. The hall is imposing,, with a very fine marble fountain in the middle. At the back of the hall is the ballroom, very spacious, with two fine full-length pictures of the King and Queen. Right and left of the hall are two marble staircases leading to the residential part of the Embassy, and on the left are the offices. Adjoining the Embassy, and to the ■right of it, is the Chancellery. On. the outbreak of war the British Embassy in Berlin was tile centre of the Junker demonstrations. Many thousands of people crowded the rather narrow Wilnelmstrasse and yelled "Death to Englishmen!" ( Then they tried to. hurl stones through the windows, and attempted in vain to storm the building. Hundreds of Englishwomen and children flocked, to the Embassy for shelter. 'I he back of the Embassy looks on the rear part of the Hotel Adlon. Some gilests of the hotel behaved in a most brutal fashion. They lit torches and pretended to throw them into the panic-stricken, struggling mass of women and children. Nobody, fortunately, was hurt. Then our staff of diplomats had to leave; The Embassy, with its broken windows, was left empty until it was taken over by- the Dutch, who had charge of our interests. Most of the rooms were closed; only the Chancellery was used for workrooms,

I arrived in Berlin just fourteen days after the armistice was signed, and as special - correspondent. of the Daily Express, repaired to the British Embassy to report to anybody I could- find there. The had been mended, but the place was very dirty. A nondescript person opened door. I spoke to him in Engilsh, to which he replied in vague German. I found the only Englishman there to be a. representative of* the Danish Red Cross. In the Chancellery several Dutchmen were tapping typewriters. The British Red Cross soon arrived and did splendid work assisting the poor, half-starved Britons, men and women, who had been released from the internment camps. They wept when they, first saw white bread, and condensed milk. One of the earliest callers was a, British correspondent who _ came to after a, top liat lie had left behind .him in the ballroom just before he had to fly for his., life. \fter the Red Cross people came Sir Richard Ewart and the British mission. Even during the second stage of the revolution there was much coming and going of red tabs. Released "British prisoners wefle used as clerks and storekeepers, and the- Embassy became a. .hive of industry. _ Now, once again, it is the official .residence of. the British representative but it will Be many a. long da.v before the ballroom will be used" for its original use.