Writing from Salzburg, Dr. Josiah Oldfield, says: “I was taking an early morning Sunday stroll down the streets of Cologne.

The scarlet and white flags, with their great black Swastikas, were boasting of violence and war as they hung out from every window.

Recalling the bitter days of the Occupation time, I felt how impossible it was to get into touch, in either mind or thought, with the crowds that were out on the streets.

Suddenly, as I walked on in a mood of sadness, I felt a soft, cool touch of something pressing under my arm into the palm of my hand and pushing my hand out of my pocket.

Startled by this curious sudden intrusion I looked round to see what it was.

It was a great Alsation, full of grace and beauty, that had silently stolen behind me and had said, in the language of brotherhood: “Do not be sad, I am your friend, we two are brothers at heart.”

I returned his caress, in the language which every dog understands, and my remembrance now of Cologne is not that of a city of Swastika dominance, but of the universal brotherhood of kindliness.”

The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review
December 1936.