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ON THE WAY TO THE FRONT 29
are approaching a big town, the traffic on the road increases,
people live closer together, and the telegraph wires combine
into mighty clusters—those silent wires which yet talk and
know far more than we. \Vlien I come to the Valley of the
Main I seem once more to hear the good old Swedish music
and to see Stalhandske’s cavalry before me, and into the
moaning of the tree tops I seem to read the words of Adler
Salvius :
" Our Finnish lads who are getting used to those
wine-lands are not likely to come back to Savolaks in a hurry.
In the Livland wars they often had to put up with water and
coarse mouldy bread with their beer-broth ; now the Finn
quaffs his wine out of his helmet." Such wealth and such
abundance our poor old horsemen and their retainers had never
even dreamt of.
Before us through the mist and gloaming twinkled the
thousand lights and electric lamps of Frankfurt. When Gus-
tavus Adolphus first came to Frankfurt the good burghers did
not want to let him in, but made excuses and put the blame
on the Elector of Mayence. But the King answered that he
knew of no Elector of Mayence but himself. " I do not want
to be delayed. If you refuse to open the gates, I dare say I
can find some keys as I have done before in places which have
fallen into my hands." The city surrendered at once. During
the winter of 1631-32, when Sweden’s King held his court at
Frankfurt, this city was the centre of Europe. It was from
here that Gustavus Adolphus said to the French who asked
him not to direct his armies against Alsace, which country
they pretended to have claimed ever since the death of the
remote Dagobert : "I have come not as a traitor to Germany,
but as its protector. I will restore it, not rend it asunder."
We drive on and on. The clusters of houses in the outskirts
and suburbs close up into the streets of a large town. The
traffic grows, the tram bells ring, the motors hoot, vast crowds
of people walk about busily under umbrellas, and after a short
while we stop before the entrance of the Hotel which before
the war was called Englischer Hof, but which has now been
re-baptised the Hessischer Hof, owing, to the feelings of the
Germans towards their Germanic kinsmen of the island
kingdom.
It is wonderful how attached one gets to one’s car on a long
journey ! It is with a feeling of boredom that one stops at
the hotel where the night is to be spent, and with a sensation
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