CAY LIFE IN BERLIN.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3978, 10 July 1915, Page 7

CAY LIFE IN BERLIN.

THEATRES AND WAR JOKES’.

AND TERRIFIC CASUALTY LISTS,

(BY AN EX-BERLINER.)

“Night life” in Berlin, which George Ade, the American humorist, once described as ail night and no Lite, has protty much vanished during the war, as far M) carousing in the notorious Palais de Danse and other nocturnal resorts is concerned. Their after-midnight licenses have been revoked, and Berliners can now do nothing naughtier ’twixt twelve and dawn than swill beer and munch i’oCnl till’ lor 2 a.m. 1 imagine there-. must be many denizens of the enemy capital who find the impossibility to “hummel,” regardless of the clock, the war’s cruellest hardship. THEATRE LIFE NORMAL.

Germans are a race of theatre-goers, and obviously the powers-thut-be do not think it meet to interfere with so truly national a pastime. My latest Berlin papers show that all the Jo or 20 loading playhouses and a dozen minor ones are without exception doing business at the old stands. Their bills are pretty much on peacetime lines, with the exception of the revue houses, like the Metropol and the Berliner Theatre, which are producing, respectively, up-to-the-minute musical shows entitled "Extras!” and “What We’re Thinking About." Both arc- war pieces, with plenty of uppercuts and jabs at the country the Germans so ardently pray God to

“punish,” as they don’t seem able to dew

Max Reinhardt is not letting war in Germany or in his own native Austria interfere with his normal activities, though Armageddon has robbed him oi four of liis chief lieutenants. Baron Gersdorff, his right-hand man, who will be well and agreeably remembered in London in connection with “The Miracle,” was one or the first to he killed in the western fighting. Young Richard Ordynski, the talented Austrian Pole who produced “Sumurun” at the original Coliseum engagement, has gone to seek his fortunes in theatrical America, fearing dramatic art iff Germany has seen its best days for a long time to come. Alexander Moissi, Reinhardt's leading tragedian,

and an adored matinee idol, is an iron-crossed lieutenant at the front, ns is Paul Wegener, another Reinhardt star. At the Deutsches Theatre there is a season of “Faust” and other German classics, and Reinhardt’s charming little Kammerspiole presents its customary bill of farces and playlets risque. The Royal Opera is going on as usual, as is its new rival, the Deutsches Operaliaus. in Charlottenburg. “LIFE AFTER DEATH.”

Have you ever had a look at an official German casualty lust? It is the last word in gruesomeness from the standpoint, of sheer bulk. Imagine a periodical the size of one of our penny evening papers, only with three or four times as many pages, crammed from beginning to end with three closely printed columns of almost endless names of Vermisst (missing). Verve undet (wounded) and Gef alien /killed). They look tor all the world as if some diabolical printer bad slmplv torn as many pages from the Berlin city directory and made a Mapdasli VerlustKste (casualty list) out of them. Newspapers are not permitted to reproduce the lists in anything approximating complete form. They may only cull names or special interest to the Local public. The lists are sold for one penny each in the streets like newspapers, the proceeds going to some war relief fund or other. I don’t wonder, in- the presence of these Brobdignagian death notices, the like of which the world has never known m all its sanguinary hi; Tory. that one of the popular lecture attractions m Berlin at the moment, is a discourse entitled “There is Life After Death. Obviously its intent is to popularise the notion that men who die for the Fatherland on the field of glory suffer nothing but a transmigration of the soul. “WE HAVE THE WORK.”

Seven German army corps are now in the Carpathians trying to save the remnant of the beaten Austrian army from complete annihilation. That must be the reason for a, screaming war

joke now popular on the Berlin Bourse where most local “humor” in the Huns’ capital originates. A favorite Austrian greeting —before “Goth strafe England’’ was invented —has always been “Icli babe die Ebro! (1 have the honor). When a Viennese officer nowadays clicks bis keels before a Prussian comrade, and says. "I have the honor.” the Gorman is said to respond : “Yes, you have the honor, but we have the work!” A WARM SUMMER The “Frankfurter Zeitung” has been giving extensive front-page space to a grave discussion of meteorological probabilities under the title of “Will the Coming Summer be a Warm Ono?” I am officially authorised to state that Air Thomas Atkins’ answer to the question is “Ra-tlier!” WAR AND FASHIONS. The editor of the “Lokal-Anzeigei waxes peevish over the zeal .with which Berliners of both sexes insist upon discussing style and faliions at an hour when the nation s' thought and energy require to be concentrated on war. It isn’t a question of wide or narrow skirts, of flowered or featheied millinery, or the cut of waistcoats and trousers, which is under debate, but a vociferous demand for the “Rooting out- of French styles from German soil!” My old friend Herr von Kupffor, whose thinking on the “Lokal-Anzeiger” is done for him by the Berlin Foreign Office, shrieks that women’s clubs have better things to do these days and nights than otgunisc public controversies and exhibitions of grotesque garments and chapeaux called “German creations.' Ho says what Germany has to do is to beat the French army. There vil be time enough after that to annihilate Fronch fashions.

“DON’T EVEN TALK ENGLISH.” A Loudon Yankee friend, just back from Berlin and. -Hamburg, says that fns German, acquaintances, as soon as be stepped off the train, warned him imploringly “not even to talk English while in the country.” He Hid the best ho ooulO with what Tie calls his “ragtime Gorman,” but the hotel and restaurant waiters, who are not even now averse to practising their English on any customer with a smooth

m — —Mi—face or other.'Angio*y>axon indications,.-, helped him out at food time. Ho wasopenly insulted only once in Germany, in consequence of his very English-accented German. That was at Hiller’s, Berlin’s smartest restaurant, where calculated indignity was visited upon him in the form of inattendance, cold food, rude remarks from German guests, and a general atmosphere of hostility. MUSICIANS’ STRIKE. Unless their wages are raised from Li 10s to £2 a month, members of the Musicians’ Trades Union threaten toleave their work at all Berlin theatres and opera houses where they are now employed. The Managers’ Association has so far successfully withstood their demands, which are based on the higher cost of living in war time. SECESSIONIST ART.

The artistic talk of the hour in Berlin is the spring “Academy” of the Munich painters, those revolutionaries known a-s “Secessionists. ' whose speciality is art outrance. A critic, reviewing the show, says: “It’s all right this time. There'isn’t a picture on exhibition which even suggests whistling for the police.”