I don't know how to put it, but the whole big concern seemed to have no soul in it, to be like a big factory instead of a city.

You won't make a factory look like a house, though you decorate its front and plant rose-bushes all round it.

The place depressed and yet cheered me.

It somehow made the German people seem smaller.
At three o'clock the lieutenant took us to a plain white building in a side street with sentries at the door.

A young staff officer met us and made us wait for five minutes in an ante-room.