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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Villa Elsa, by Stuart Henry
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Villa Elsa
+       A Story of German Family Life
+
+Author: Stuart Henry
+
+Release Date: November 28, 2006 [EBook #19946]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VILLA ELSA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jacqueline Jeremy and The Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+VILLA ELSA
+
+_A Story of German Family Life_
+
+BY
+
+STUART HENRY
+
+
+NEW YORK
+E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+681 FIFTH AVENUE
+
+
+COPYRIGHT 1920, BY
+E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+
+_All Rights Reserved_
+
+_Printed in the United States of America_
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+Pat and Anna
+
+IN LOVING TOKEN OF OUR WINTER'S
+CONVERSATIONS ON THE GERMANS
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+This narrative offers a gentle but permanent answer to the problem
+presented to humanity by the German people. It seeks to go beyond
+the stage of indemnities, diplomatic or trade control, peace by
+armed preponderance. These agencies do not take into account Teuton
+nature, character, manner of living, beliefs.
+
+Unless the Germans are changed, the world will live at swords'
+points with them both in theory and in practice. Whether they are
+characteristically Huns or not, it should be tragically realized
+that something ought to be done to alter their type. Their minds,
+hearts, souls, should be touched in a direct, personal, intimate
+way. There should be a natural relationship of good feeling, an
+intelligent and _lived_ mutual experience, worked up, brought
+about. A League of Nations, of Peace, inevitably based on some sort
+of force, should be followed by a truly human programme leading to
+the amicable conversion of that race, if it is at heart unrepentant,
+crafty, murderous.
+
+In the absence of any particular heed being paid to this underlying,
+fundamental subject, the present pages suggest for it a vital
+solution that seems both easy and practical and would promise to
+relieve anxiety as to an indefinitely uncertain, ugly future ahead
+of harassed mankind.
+
+How shall the German be treated in the present century and beyond?
+
+To try to answer this aright, it is obviously necessary to know what
+the German is--what he is really like. To know him at his best, in
+his truest colors, is to live with him in his most normal condition,
+and that is at his fireside, surrounded by his family. This aspect
+has been the least fully presented during the war. What the Teuton
+military and political chieftains, clergymen, professors, captains
+of industry, editors and other men of position have said, how they
+have conducted themselves toward the rest of humanity, is
+notoriously and distressingly familiar. But what the ordinary,
+educated German of peaceful pursuits, staying by his hearthstone
+far behind and safe from the battle line, thought and wished to
+say, has been beyond our ken. There has been no way to get at him
+or hear from him as to what lay frankly in his mind.
+
+His leaders loudly proclaimed themselves to be as terrifying as Huns
+and unblushingly gloried in this profession. Has he agreed or has he
+silently disagreed? Has he too wished this or has he been unwilling?
+Is he essentially a Hun, are his family essentially Huns, or are
+they in reality good and kindly people like our people? Are they
+temporarily misled?
+
+The humble German families of education who are hospitable, who sing
+and weep over sentimental songs in their homes, whose duties are
+modest and revenues small, who have never been out of their
+provinces, who have had no relations with foreigners and could have
+no personal cause for hatred--have they been so bloodthirsty about
+killing and pillaging in alien lands?
+
+Villa Elsa contains a family immune from any foreign influence and
+matured in the most regular and unsuspecting Teuton way. The German
+household is the most thoroughly instructed of all households. Its
+members are disciplined to do most things well. How can it then be
+Hun in any considerable degree? Impossible, said the nations, and so
+they remained illy prepared against a frenzied onslaught. But a
+shocked public has beheld how readily the most erudite of mankind,
+as the Germans were generally held to be, could officially,
+deliberately and repeatedly as soldiers, singly and _en masse_,
+act like their ancestors--the barbarians of the days of Attila.
+
+These are all puzzling queries which this story attempts to
+illuminate and solve by its pictures and observations of the
+life of such a modest and typical Teuton home in 1913 and 1914.
+Admittedly too much light, too much study, cannot be given to
+the greatest issue civilization as a whole has faced.
+
+Villa Elsa is but Germany in miniature. In the significant
+character, habits and activities of this household may be found
+the true pith and essence of real Germanism as normally developed.
+This Germanism appears ready to continue after the War to be the
+malignant and would-be assassin of other civilizations. It is,
+therefore, tragically important to find and act on the right
+answer to the question:
+
+Is there any possible way to make the Germans become true,
+peace-loving friends with us--with the rest of mankind?
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                                         PAGE
+
+         FOREWORD                                vii
+
+      I. TRIUMPHANT GERMANY IN 1913                1
+
+     II. DEUTSCHLAND UEBER ALLES                   6
+
+    III. GARD KIRTLEY                             11
+
+     IV. VILLA ELSA                               19
+
+      V. FAMILY LIFE                              29
+
+     VI. THE HOME                                 36
+
+    VII. GERMAN LOVING                            46
+
+   VIII. GERMAN COURTSHIP                         54
+
+     IX. A JOURNALIST                             64
+
+      X. SPIES AND WAR                            71
+
+     XI. GERMAN WAYS                              78
+
+    XII. HABITS AND CHILDREN                      86
+
+   XIII. DOWN WITH AMERICA!                       94
+
+    XIV. AFTERMATH                               106
+
+     XV. MILITARY BLOCKHEADS                     113
+
+    XVI. A LIVELY MUSICIAN                       120
+
+   XVII. IMMORALITY AND OBSCENITY                125
+
+  XVIII. THE NAKED CULT                          134
+
+    XIX. JIM DEMING OF ERIE, PAY                 145
+
+     XX. AN AMERICAN VICTORY                     152
+
+    XXI. A PEOPLE PECULIAR OR PAGAN?             160
+
+   XXII. MAKING FOR WAR                          168
+
+  XXIII. SOCIAL ETIQUETTE                        178
+
+   XXIV. THE COURT BALL                          186
+
+    XXV. FRITZI AND ANOTHER CONVERSATION         192
+
+   XXVI. SOME OF THE LESS KNOWN EFFICIENCY       200
+
+  XXVII. THE IMPERIAL SECRET SERVICE             210
+
+ XXVIII. JIM DEMING'S FATE                       218
+
+   XXIX. WINTER AND SPRING                       229
+
+    XXX. VILLA ELSA OUTDOORS                     238
+
+   XXXI. A CASUAL TRAGEDY                        247
+
+  XXXII. A GERMAN MARRIAGE PROPOSAL              256
+
+ XXXIII.  A WAITRESS DANCE                       263
+
+  XXXIV. CHAMPAGNE                               272
+
+   XXXV. RECUPERATION                            279
+
+  XXXVI. THE GERMAN PROBLEM. AN ANSWER           285
+
+ XXXVII. A GERMAN "GOTT BE WITH YE"              294
+
+XXXVIII. A JOURNEY                               302
+
+  XXXIX. THE TOMB OF CHARLEMAGNE                 313
+
+     XL. THE END OF A LITTLE GAME                323
+
+    XLI. ARE THEY HUNS?                          329
+
+   XLII. THE ANTI-CHRISTIANS?                    336
+
+  XLIII. THE TEUTON PROBLEM. A SOLUTION          347
+
+
+
+
+VILLA ELSA
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+TRIUMPHANT GERMANY IN 1913
+
+
+In the late summer of 1913 a quiet American college man of
+twenty-three, tall, lean, somewhat listless in bearing, who had
+been idling on a trip in Germany without a thought of adventure,
+was observing, without being able to define or understand, one of
+the most remarkable conditions of national and racial exhilaration
+that ever blessed a country in time of ripest peace.
+
+He had never been out of America, and supposed his Yankee people,
+with all their wide liberty, contemplated life with as much
+enjoyment as any other. But in that land which is governed with
+iron, where (as Bismarck said) a man cannot even get up out of his
+bed and walk to a window without breaking a law, Gard Kirtley was
+finding something different, strange, wonderful, in the way of
+marked happiness. It pulsated everywhere, in every man, woman and
+child. It seemed to be a sensation of victory, yet there had been
+no victory. It appeared to reflect some mighty distinctive human
+achievement or event of which a whole race could be proud in
+unison. There had been nothing of the sort.
+
+And yet it was there, a certain exuberance. The people, with heads
+carried high, quickly moving feet and pockets full of money, were
+enlivened by a public joyousness because they were humans and,
+above all, because they were Germans. It seemed a joy of human
+prestige, of wholesale well-being, of an assuredly auspicious
+future. Multitudes of toasts were being drunk. The marching and
+counter-marching of soldiers looked excessive even for Germany. A
+season of patriotic holidays was apparently at hand. Festivals,
+public rites, celebrated the widespread exultation. The whole
+country conducted itself as on parade, _en fete_.
+
+Wages were higher and comforts greater than ever known there. For
+the first time chambermaids often drank champagne and wore on their
+heads lop-sided creations of expensive millinery with confident
+awkwardness--creations which they said came from Paris. The chimney
+sweeps had high hats and smoked good tobacco which they may have
+thought came from London. For the imported was the high water mark
+of plenty in Germany as always elsewhere, though she claimed to make
+the best goods.
+
+The scene should not be painted in too high colors--colors too
+fixed. To the careless observer it doubtless appeared little
+different from the annual flowering forth of the German race in
+its short summer season. Always at that time were the open gardens
+lively, the roses blooming with the crude, dense hues that the
+Teutons like, and all the folk pursuing their busy tasks and
+vigorous pleasures with a sort of goose-step alacrity.
+
+But the closer, more sensitive onlooker felt something more in
+1913--something widely organized, unified, puissant, imperial
+indeed, such as, he may have imagined, had not existed since the
+days of the great emperors in Rome. What the Germans told all comers
+was that they had the best of governments, and that no nation had
+been so thoroughly, soundly and extensively prosperous.
+
+For each citizen read in his daily paper of successful and growing
+Teuton activities in the most distant parts of the earth--in ports,
+regions and among peoples whose names he had never heard before and
+could not pronounce. At breakfast his capacious paunch and his
+wife's fat, flowing bosom expanded with pride in hearing of some new
+far-off passenger route carrying the flag, of the Made in Germany
+brand sweeping the markets of the world, and perhaps of the Kaiser's
+safe return to his palace, bronzed with the cast of health and
+strength. Never had investments brought the German such high
+rates. Never had speculation been so rife and withal so uniformly
+profitable.
+
+As for industry, Deutschland was a colossal beehive. If Frederick
+the Great started the beehive, William the Second was increasing its
+size to unbelievable proportions. Insignificant villages everywhere
+contained millions of dollars' worth of machinery, manufacturing
+goods of untold value. Not an ounce of energy, not a second of time,
+seemed to be lost in the Empire. Every German was a busy cog fitted
+precisely into the whole national plant.
+
+It was as if the Teuton knew that other races must soon stand with
+their backs to the wall and that now was the moment to redouble
+effort to capture still more trade and reduce the rest of the world
+to an acknowledged state of submission.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+DEUTSCHLAND UEBER ALLES
+
+
+Thus the Germans, in 1913, felt how supreme their country was or was
+speedily becoming. Not only their newspapers but their educators,
+their pastors and, more than all, their military and political
+leaders told them that a place above the rest of mankind had been
+reached. The pride, the assurance, pervading the land was the stiff
+and hardy efflorescence of this universal conclusion. And the
+Teutons had earned and therefore merited it all, for no one,
+nothing, scarcely even Nature, had lent a helping hand.
+
+German women knew they were the best housekeepers, wives, mothers,
+dressers, dancers. Never had they been so to the fore. Never had
+they had so much money to spend for clothes. Never had they
+promenaded so proudly to martial music or waltzed so perspiringly
+with the fashion-plate officers whom they adored.
+
+The children were paragons of diligence and promise. In their school
+books and college text books everything German was lauded in the
+superlative; everything foreign was decried as inferior,
+undesirable. Nearly every human discovery, invention, improvement,
+was somehow traced to a Teuton origin. Even characteristic German
+vices were held to be better than many virtues in other lands.
+
+The young person grew up to believe that the Rhine was the finest of
+rivers, the mountains of the Fatherland were the most celebrated in
+song and story, its lakes the most picturesque, its soil the best
+tilled. He was properly stuffed with the indomitable conviction, the
+aggressive obsession, that the fittest civilization _must_ prevail.
+
+And the army! Always the army--that bulwark, that invincible force!
+Hundreds of thousands of civilians apparently regretted they were
+not back in the barracks, following the noblest of occupations as
+soldiers for the supreme War Lord. The army represented admitted
+perfection. Foreign observers were united in naively attesting its
+impeccableness. It was ready to the last shoe button, to the last
+twist of its waxed mustache. But ready for what? Few outside of
+Germany appeared to think of asking. The army was taken to be simply
+Teuton life and of no more ulterior significance than the national
+beer.
+
+The admission was also general at home and abroad that the German
+Government was the most free from graft and the most thorough. In
+Germany the kings and princes were paid homage as models of wisdom
+and virtue, and the Kaiser was believed to be walking with God, hand
+in hand, palm to palm. In token of the mystic union between Emperor
+and people, Hohenzollern monuments were seen rising in all parts of
+the Empire in greater quantity, amid greater thanksgivings. These
+_Denkmals_ were growing huger, more thunderous in appearance, and
+served the double purpose of keeping the populace in a state of
+admiring, unquestioning awe and expressing fulminating Bewares! to
+other races. In every home, factory, retail shop, public place, was
+the Kaiser's picture, with his trellised mustache, and his devout
+eyes cast with a chummy comradeship up to heaven.
+
+All the foregoing explanations accounted in part for a glorious
+increase in noise among a people that does everything loudly. The
+national noisiness was harmonized somewhat by innumerable bands and
+orchestras. Public balls seemed to have become the order of the
+night, and the famous forests by day were filled by echoes of the
+horns of the bloody chase--the _cors de chasse_ of the legendary
+Roland and knights of the Nibelungen. Humble civilians grew fonder
+of the habit of donning their military or hunting uniforms and big
+marching boots, and sticking cock's feathers in their hats at rakish
+angles, recalling the war of 1870 or reviving dreams of the sporting
+Tyrol. They drank daily more pints of beer and swallowed the
+hot-headed Rhine wines as if thus renewing their blood in that of
+their fiery ancestors. Meals mounted to seven or eight a day, for it
+was proper to gorge themselves like the human gods they were. Even
+the most servile took on a conscious air of being of a regal
+species.
+
+In this wise, the German, like Cain, the competent iron-worker, was
+treading the earth with resounding footsteps. Over his bullneck and
+under his spiked hat he had naturally come to look upon himself as a
+super-being. While the American watched ball games, the Englishman
+played golf and the Frenchman wrote to his loved one, the Teuton was
+keeping himself hardened for war, and toiling like the systematic
+beaver in up-building national industries that were so swiftly
+dominating all others. To say the least, this intense people were
+strenuously perfecting an intensive and powerful civilization such
+as never had been seen.
+
+So--as Gard Kirtley was finding and yet failing to explain to
+himself--expectancy, undescribable and splendid, was in the air
+beyond the Rhine. And there was one special toast drunk to it all
+with ever more loudly clinking glasses--Der Tag! Such was triumphant
+Germany, the triumphant Vaterland, in 1913--foretasting a portentous
+future; pregnant with colossal success; swollen with a hundred years
+of victories and growth; as sure of its prowess and might as were
+the swaggering gods of its Valhallas.
+
+Imperial Deutschland ueber Alles!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+GARD KIRTLEY
+
+
+Into this Triumphant Germany young Kirtley had come to recuperate
+from the sadness over the loss, the previous year, of his parents
+and from a siege of sickness. Still somewhat pale, somewhat weak, he
+showed the shock he had undergone. He had toured across southern
+Germany and up to Berlin where he had bidden good-by to his chance
+American traveling companion, Jim Deming, who was knocking about
+Italy and Teutonland. They had exchanged final addresses.
+
+Kirtley, clean-shaven, with pleasant brown eyes, and brown hair
+brushed down flat, giving his head the appearance of smallness,
+looked very lank and Yankeeish among the robust, fat Teutons of the
+Saxon capital. He was entering Dresden on a late afternoon brown
+with German sunshine. The school year had begun, but a loitering
+summer-time brightened city and countryside. As he made his way
+slowly through the throng at the station, he gave evidence of a
+rather shy way of looking up and about, an apologetic readiness
+to step aside, to yield place, not characteristic of the speedy
+American in Europe. He had not, as we have said, come to Germany
+for adventure. He had not come merely to idle for the winter. And
+certainly he little mistrusted he was finally to figure as a modest
+hero in a curious and dangerous experience that linked itself up
+with the beginning of the war of which he, like the world at large,
+felt not the slightest premonition.
+
+His German teacher had been his favorite in his eastern college
+where he had one season been a very fair halfback. His better
+showing had exhibited itself in his ability to throw from left field
+to home plate on the ball team. This American preceptor of German
+parentage had taken an interest in Kirtley with the insistent way of
+Teutonic pedagogues. Always commending with a uniform vigor the
+Germans and German fashions of living, he had gradually filled Gard
+full of the idea of their excelling merits.
+
+Kirtley heard of the tonic of the nutritious Teuton beer and Teuton
+music in overflowing measures. In the Kaiser's realm, it appeared,
+the digestions are always good. How desirable it would be for Gard
+to take on some flesh in the German manner! In that climate,
+Professor Rebner claimed with assurance, although he had never been
+abroad, one can eat and drink his fill without causing the human
+system to rebel as it is apt to in our dry, high-strung America. His
+pupil's appetite would come back. Hearty meals of robust cheese and
+sausages would be craved with an honest, clamorous hunger that meant
+foolish indelicacy here at home.
+
+Rebner also urged that Gard could in Deutschland improve his German
+which, notwithstanding his affection for his preceptor, was
+indifferent. Its gutturalness grated on his nerves, antagonized him.
+But he criticized himself for this, not the language. Had not his
+old mentor always sung of the superiorities of that tongue?
+
+Kirtley could improve, too, his fingering on the piano by
+familiarizing himself with the noble melodies that flooded the
+German land. Two hairy hands would go up in exultation,
+
+"To hear Beethoven and Wagner in their own country, filling the
+atmosphere with their glories! And then Goethe and Schiller. Those
+mighty deities. To read them in their own home!"
+
+But the greatest thing, to the old professor's mind, would be to
+behold the German people themselves, study them, profit by them in
+their preeminence. What an example, what an inspiration, what a
+grand symphony of concentrated harmony! Germany was the source of
+Protestantism and therefore of modern morals--honest, uncompromising
+morals. German discipline would have a bracing, solidifying effect
+on a typically casual, slack American youth like Gard, whose latent
+capabilities were never likely to be fully called upon in the
+comparatively hit-and-miss organization of Yankee life.
+
+For he had not yet begun to find himself. He had not even decided on
+a calling at an age when the German is almost a full-fledged
+citizen, shouldering all the accompanying obligations. Kirtley's
+exemplary conduct and the gravity cast over him by the death of his
+loved ones, had led him to think a little of Rebner's suggestions
+about the ministry. And for this, Luther's country would be expected
+to be sublime.
+
+The loudly reiterated praise of Germany and the Germans had at last
+produced the desired effect on Gard. He was prevailed upon to break
+away from the old associations, go abroad for a year and get a fresh
+and stout hold on the future. Rebner, through his connections, had
+been able to arrange for a home in Saxony for his pupil's sojourn.
+It was in "a highly estimable and well-informed family" who had
+never taken a paying guest. Although a new experience for them, they
+had urgently insisted that they would do everything they could to
+make his stay agreeable and beneficial. This was deemed most lucky.
+For the real German character and existence could there be observed
+and lived with the best profit, uncontaminated by the intermixture
+of doubtful foreign associations.
+
+And so Gard had arrived in Dresden, in whose attractive suburb of
+Loschwitz, on the gently rising banks of the Elbe, the worthy
+Buchers were domiciled. As his limping German did not give him
+confidence about the up-and-down variety of the Saxon dialect, he
+did not venture this afternoon to find his way by tram to the house.
+The blind German script in which his hosts' solicitous and minute
+instructions were couched, and the funny singsong of the natives
+talking blatantly about him, made him feel still more helpless. He
+sought refuge in an open droschke. He could then, too, enjoy the
+drive across the city.
+
+The Saxon capital sits capaciously like a comfortable old dowager
+fully dressed in stuffs of a richly dull color. Her thick skirts are
+spread about her with a contented dignity which does not interfere
+with her eating large sandwiches openly and vigorously at the opera.
+To-day the mellow sunlight crowned her ancient nobleness with a
+becoming hue, as Gard was jogged along in a roundabout way through
+the city. Here at the left were the august bridges and great park,
+all famed in Napoleon's battles. Over there were the dowdy royal
+palaces. There, too, was the house of the sacred Sistine. Her sweet
+lineaments shone down in almost every American parlor Gard knew.
+
+The dingy baroque architecture, whose general tastelessness was
+heavily banked up by a multitude of towers, gables and high copings,
+suggested an old-fashioned residential city of the days of urban
+fortifications. The uniform arrays of buildings, all pretending to
+the effect of sumptuousness thickened by weighty proportions and
+blasphemed by rococo hesitations and doubts, seemed constructed to
+exalt the doughty glory of Augustus the Strong--Dresden's local
+Thor, its chief heroic figure in the favorite Teuton galaxy of
+muscled Titans. Somber medieval squares, blocked away quaintly from
+the world, were relieved by the celebrated Bruehl Terrace, enlivened
+by gilded statuary and by historic and literary memories.
+
+Through all this metropolis of formidable and dun respectability
+curved the Elbe as if to round off the massive imitations of
+something better somewhere else. Hither coursed the smooth brown
+stream from Bohemia, not far away, through the high fastnesses of
+the Erz range and the groomed vistas of Saxon Switzerland, and past
+the frowning old fortress of Koenigstein, towering near a thousand
+feet above its untroubled bosom. Kirtley was to find the river, with
+its carefully tended shores, a companion in many an hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+VILLA ELSA
+
+
+Such in brief was the scene that stretched out around him and
+enveloped his attention and interest. There was not majesty that
+would offend, but rather a cosy formality that is the absence of
+style. It cured somewhat the homesick inclinations that quite
+naturally haunted him after a wearying day of travel and as
+nightfall drew down about his loneliness. He was bound for the
+home of a strange family, speaking a tongue in which he was far
+from glib. It had been written, though, that the Bucher young
+people had learned English pretty well at school.
+
+Kirtley reached his destination to find that the parents were
+waiting expectantly to receive him. With German consciousness, they
+were stuffily attired for this novel and important event. After
+staunch greetings he was led into the house past a big angry dog
+that stood guard tempestuously at the door. Gard found later that
+such savage barking was quite a feature of the Teuton threshold, and
+might be considered one bristling aspect or cause of the ungenial
+development of the social spirit in Germany. _Cave canem_ can hardly
+be called a suitable first attraction toward the spread of
+hospitality. He feared he was going to be bitten and wished his
+welcome had not been complicated with shudders.
+
+The entrance to Villa Elsa consisted of a hallway swimming in heady
+odors from the strong cooking in the adjacent kitchen. Kirtley stood
+for a moment stifled. But he was to become more used to the lusty
+smells that roam about, presumptuous and fortifying, in German
+households and of which, indeed, all German existence is resolutely
+redolent. Strength, whether in barking dogs or fumes or what-not,
+appeals to the race.
+
+In the passage-way, too, Gard was struck by the presence of various
+weapons, and shields, hunting horns, sundry pairs of large boots,
+military or shooting garments, belts loaded with cartridges. It
+seemed almost like the combative entry to some museum of armor.
+Taken together with the embattled dog, it suggested a defended
+fortress rather than a peaceful fireside.
+
+"How pugnacious!" Gard declared to himself.
+
+In the entry Ernst was called, and he came promptly forth, a smiling
+lad of fifteen, with a musing face, his thick light hair thrown back
+and run through meditatively by his fingers. He conducted Gard up
+two flights to a good-sized but snug room where he was to abide. A
+linden tree courted the window panes with its green branches.
+
+Just the place for a fellow who wants to get away from the world and
+read!--Kirtley thought.
+
+On his nightstand lay, with characteristic Teuton foresight, the
+names and addresses of a language teacher and of a music teacher
+who were duly "recommending themselves" to him in the German idiom.
+Lists of purchasable text books and musical editions from houses
+which, in the thoroughly informed Teuton manner, had got wind of
+his coming, also opened before him.
+
+"They evidently expect me to begin to-morrow morning. No loss of
+time." He laughed to himself.
+
+His trunk and satchel were in his room in a few minutes with all the
+certainty and punctuality of the imperial-royal service. "_Essen
+fertig!_" was soon vociferated up the stairway by the cook Tekla,
+whose bulky young form Gard had glimpsed in the kitchen. Not sure of
+being summoned he did not emerge until Ernst tapped on the door--
+
+"Meester Kirtley, please come to eating."
+
+At table the elder son was introduced--Rudolph, called Rudi, a youth
+of about Gard's age. There was an unseemly scar on his face and
+something oblique in his look. Engineering was given as his
+profession, but he affected the German military strut and was
+forward and crammed with ready-made conclusions on most subjects.
+But Herr Bucher reigned here as elsewhere about Villa Elsa as
+absolute master. He alone spoke with authority. Reverence was
+first of all due him. Gard soon saw how the wife and children,
+notwithstanding their stirring presences, were on a secondary plane.
+How different in the land where he had come from where they are
+quite free to rule in the house! The sturdy Frau was submissive,
+energetically helpful. But in her husband's absence she assumed his
+stentorian command.
+
+The manner of eating was frankly informal and ungainly. Evidences of
+sharp discipline one moment; the next, awkward short-cuts. The
+Germans have never been able to harmonize these extremes into a
+medium of easy formality or sightly smoothness. At the Bucher table
+each one reached across for the food with scarce an apology--a plan
+jerkily interrupted at times by Tekla, who stuck things at Gard as
+if she were going to hit him. The strong provender heaped up in
+abundance, rank in smell and usually unappetizing in color,
+interfered at first with his hunger. And the drinking was, of
+course, of a copiousness he had little dreamed of.
+
+The whole effect created a distinctly unsympathetic impression. It
+ran full tilt against Gard's anticipations. Rebner had led him to
+expect always the best among the Germans. Were they not the most
+advanced of humans? Were they not the patterns whom he should model
+himself after in the laudatory desire for self-improvement? He was
+naturally curious to see the young lady of the household, all the
+more as he wondered how she would blend into this blunt picture. She
+did not appear and he heard no reference to her. But there was a
+vacant place.
+
+Much struggling occurred over the mutual endeavors to carry on
+conversation. With the English which the sons had learned and with
+Gard's German which he found a strange article on its native ground,
+headway was made after a fashion. His bloodless American college
+variety of the language was very weak to buffet about in these
+billows of idioms and colloquialisms.
+
+The family, in its emphatic substantiality, was most friendly and
+eager to please. They urged food and fluid upon him in a way that
+would have dismayed his Yankee doctor. He found himself eating and
+drinking to an extent he had never imagined. This sort of thing, he
+concluded half-despairingly, would either be the making of him or
+kill him. At home the general fear was about too much. Here satiety,
+over-satiety, seemed to be the rule as at all German firesides.
+While he dreaded to think what his abstemious digestive apparatus
+would do, his new friends took not amiss the bountiful spilling of
+edibles and liquids upon their napkins spread conspicuously over
+their breasts. Laundering must be cheap in Germany. That was one
+good thing.
+
+Gard did not forget that this was represented to be a highly
+instructed and cultivated circle. The members had graduated from the
+best schools or held degrees from standard universities. He kept
+asking himself in what guises the much advertised German excellence
+was yet to appear in this domestic group whose culture and virtues
+had been so extolled. If these manners and habits were part of its
+perfect ripened fruit, then American education and life were indeed
+obviously blighted. He could not help noticing that all hands had
+not been necessarily washed before meal-time, and that finger nails
+were unblushingly uncleaned and unkempt. An accidental glimpse under
+the immense flowing white beard of his host revealed the absence of
+a shirt collar, and the neck evidently relied on its untrimmed
+hairiness as an excuse for not being customarily washed.
+
+It became apparent to Kirtley after a month that personal cleanness
+and neatness in Germany were not particularly considered as next to
+godliness. The gold braid, spick and span uniforms and other showy
+gear, were apt to cover dirty bodies and soiled underwear. Alas, the
+Germans could not wash in beer. He wondered why his old enthusiastic
+mentor had never given him a hint of these things. Likely he did not
+know. Distance often increases eloquence in proportion as it breeds
+ignorance.
+
+With the exhilaration of the bounteous meal, however, Gard's spirits
+rose to a height he had not known in a long time. If conversation
+languished over the stony roads of the duality of expression,
+glasses were clinked together again and a new topic was hopefully
+started. When it seemed proper to him that the end of the repast
+should be in sight, a new course would be brought in, usually
+accompanied boisterously by the two family dogs, including the
+ferocious beast who had given Gard the shivers. The animals
+conducted themselves with a ravenous freedom around the board,
+alternately being petted and fed and allowed to lick plates, only to
+be in turn kicked out and shrieked after, with a chair occasionally
+upset in the rumpus. This habit of kicking animals, things and
+persons Gard later observed was prevalent among the Teutons, whose
+appropriate fondness for conveniently big boots and large stout
+shoes at the same time discourages any vanity about small feet. It
+is a part of their military predilection.
+
+At the end of a couple of hours dinner was brought to a close.
+Fraeulein had not yet put in an appearance, and it now came out that
+she was "at lesson." She must have stayed for another class. After
+his gastronomic feat Gard did not know whether he felt sick or never
+better in his life. What's more, he did not seem to care, his senses
+were so pleasantly numbed.
+
+On his way up to his room, in the dim hall, he caught sight of a
+young woman hanging up her wrap. Mussed strands of straw-colored
+hair shone down her shoulders and sent a sudden thrill of gladness
+through his veins. He had never seen but one Wagner opera and that
+was "The Twilight of the Gods," with its aureate Rhine maidens
+bathing in that delicious revelry of divine music. The arrival at
+last of the daughter of the house, as he assumed this was, brought
+back a flash of all that golden loveliness.
+
+In his sleep that first night, vast trenchers of food and tankards
+of drink disported in happy confusion with goddesses blond and
+magical.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+FAMILY LIFE
+
+
+The matter of much eating and drinking had first to be, if possible,
+disposed of. It was exacting and the most important affair. Kirtley
+did not want to be discourteous or appear unappreciative. He had
+come to Germany to do as the superior Germans do. His digestive
+tract was on the narrow-gage American plan. Theirs was broad-gage,
+with their surpassing organisms.
+
+At the Buchers Gard had manfully to face six meals a day. Must he be
+swamped in order to put the desirable adipose tissue on his bones?
+By all the laws of American dieting and Prohibition the German race
+should have been destroyed by indigestion and drunkenness centuries
+ago. But here they were more flourishing than ever--the generally
+acknowledged nation of masters!
+
+And his bed--the German bed. He could not remember whether Mark
+Twain ever described it, but he should have. Gard's haven of rest
+appeared to lie on solid foundations. It was constructed with German
+stability. There were as many blankets in summer as in winter.
+
+Worst of all, two immense feather pillows lay across its middle. The
+only place for them seemed to be on his sorely tried stomach or on
+the floor. In a month an attack of insomnia resulted. For hours at
+night he lay awake, listening to the frequent rain on the roof or
+the wind whining Teutonically in the leaves of his linden.
+
+In his initial troubles and anxieties he went to a German doctor.
+This spectacled wise man prescribed more beer. German physicians
+seemed to be in league with the brewers. Gard was of the kind who
+would suffer rather than complain. So he worried along.
+
+He did not fall in with the urgent, conscientious assumption of
+the Buchers that he would at once want to begin driving away at
+"lessons." His hosts reminded him openly at times that his
+prospective teachers were still waiting, still recommending
+themselves. Responsibility was evidently felt for his programme
+of work. He realized that he was somewhat disappointing, for
+instruction, education, is such a pushing, unceasing business
+with the Germans. It may be said they never finish school.
+
+Yet he wished first to take a good look at the historic city, its
+celebrated art treasures. He wanted to make a few excursions in the
+environs before the winter set in with its dampness and gloom.
+Besides, he never before had had a chance at fine opera, at fine
+symphonies and music recitals.
+
+"But ought not Herr Kirtley at least begin with the free evening
+lectures?"--with which Dresden shone through the illuminations of
+many profound and oracular professors in lofty pulpits. He submitted
+that his German was too feeble of wing to enable him to soar into
+the heights of such wisdom.
+
+The zest in Germany for learning and accomplishments was truly
+wonderful to him. Half his life of instruction now quickly seemed to
+have been idling. As far as industriousness, drilling, well-defined
+ambitiousness, were concerned, the young German had many advantages.
+
+The modest Bucher household was run educationally with the dynamic
+regularity of military establishments. It was, of course, no
+exception. Lessons and lectures commenced mornings at eight, with
+Sundays partly included. This routine begins with the German child
+at six.
+
+Evenings, too, had their busy duties. No baseball, no tennis, no
+lazy days of swimming and fishing. Playtime was spent in martial
+exercise, in evenings at the opera or seeing the classical dramas of
+all races and epochs on the stage. Gard became aware that the Bucher
+children had carried six or seven studies at an age when he had
+thought he was abused, overburdened, with four.
+
+Besides, their courses were more mature. And yet he had come to
+Germany, despite Rebner's eulogiums of the Germans, with the
+complacent idea that, as he was the respectable American average,
+he could look the other youth of the world in the face unashamed,
+asking no odds.
+
+Little Ernst at fifteen was studying, among numerous things,
+philosophy and didactic religion. The way he could cite facts
+and carry on a discussion on these and similar subjects!
+
+"What part do philosophy and religion play in our system of
+instruction for the young?" Gard asked himself with a deprecatory
+smile. "Is it a miracle that the Germans can teach us desirable
+knowledge and morals, as Rebner insists?"
+
+Kirtley readily perceived that he had scarcely sufficient precise
+information to discuss intelligently general topics with this boy.
+The latter could always quote some acknowledged and ponderous
+authority--German, of course, and all the more awe-inspiring, but of
+whom Gard had not heard. For it usually came down to the question,
+Who are your authorities? He rarely could tell who his were. They
+promptly faded away before all the weight and definiteness Ernst
+could bring to bear.
+
+While Rudolph and Ernst were so far along as a result of a busy
+adolescence, Fraeulein Elsa, as Gard discovered, was in her way not
+behind. She knew English and French pretty well and was quite an
+accomplished musician, able to play from memory on the winged Pleyel
+almost whole books of classic music. She could paint fairly well in
+oil and was now taking up etching with enthusiastic assiduity. She
+could sew, cook, run the house. In brief, her days were as full as
+her brothers' in propelling tasks. _She_, apparently, did not have
+"boys on the brain."
+
+Kirtley threw up his hands in imitation of his venerated professor.
+This was just an ordinary German miss. He had scarcely dreamed of
+such things in a girl.
+
+It was all illustrated by Gard's piano playing, which was cheap and
+meaningless strumming. He could rattle through a lot of popular
+tunes and stumble through a few short simple school-girl salon
+pieces. The Buchers were a real orchestra. With the ladies at the
+piano, the old Herr at the flute, Ernst at the violin and Rudi at
+the 'cello, they could play a dozen programmes and furnish enjoyment
+for the listener.
+
+And always salutary, enlightened, cultivated music. The house
+reverberated with a multitude of choice enduring arias, sung, hummed
+or whistled, and this made Villa Elsa almost take on a charm for
+Gard. He had not known how his melodious soul was starved.
+
+Why should not the Germans be expected to have noble souls with all
+the wealth of distinguished, inspiring music flowing through their
+lives? Should it not give them necessarily a strong, desirable
+spirit, fortify them in healthy aspirations, encourage them to get
+the best out of existence? This incentive and pleasureableness,
+making for the good, the true and the beautiful--must it not
+contribute a deep richness and righteousness to the Teuton heart?
+
+And is it to be wondered at--the Germans' big supply of red blood?
+For the strength of the Teuton's body, Gard observed, was built up,
+maintained, in equal measure with his other training. The military
+drilling and strenuous gymnastics provided him with straight
+shoulders, a full chest, a sound spine, strength of limb--in short,
+good, presentable health.
+
+The Bucher fireside had no doctor, no adored specialists, hanging
+about. It had been taught to handle simple complaints itself.
+Medical and surgical bills did not upset its modest financial
+equilibrium. The family were extraordinarily well. Their brawn,
+energetically looked after as well as the brain, accounted partly
+for their marvelous appetites.
+
+So nothing seemed to Gard to be missed in this potent scheme of
+instruction and _Kultur_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE HOME
+
+
+Often when he peeked down from his attic window he spied the shining
+bald head of the very elderly Herr Bucher surrounded by the mass of
+lively colors of his rose garden. He loved to spend hours there in
+the sunshine with his posies, tying up their branches, clipping
+choice specimens with which he was fond of decorating the members
+of Villa Elsa, its dining table, its living room. Roses, roses,
+everywhere.
+
+It was his hobby, this spot of blossoms, and in it his short, bulky
+form, so whitened by his Jovian beard meerschaumed by the stains
+from his huge, curving German pipe, was often almost lost to view.
+He was like some droll gnome waddling about in a flower patch.
+Frequently someone had to be sent to find him among all those pets
+which he knew so well by their Latin and popular names and by their
+characteristics. While he grumbled and so often stormed about in the
+house, speaking always in gruff tones of command, he was quite sunny
+out there in his plot, although still guttural and dictatorial.
+
+He was a retired professor of phonetics and diction, but now and
+then prepared a pupil. This was how he had met his wife a long, long
+time before, when she was a young singer. She was twenty years his
+junior and had become so completely a housewife that you could
+scarcely associate her with any art. She was fat, harsh, homely,
+masculine in the way of German women, an occasional long hair
+sticking from her face in emulation of a beard.
+
+Devoid of any graces of seduction, putting out her heavy fists in
+every direction she exhibited a bearish kindness toward Gard that
+seemed calculated at first to frighten him. She was loud-voiced,
+iron-jawed. One of her favorite boasts was that she had never been
+to a dentist. She pulled out her rarely aching teeth, or some one of
+the family pulled them for her.
+
+The Herr could be smoother and he assumed a fatherly solicitude over
+Gard, looking out for his advantages, anxious that he should make
+progress. But Bucher evidently was annoyed at times by not having
+authority in the matter of the slow way in which his young guest set
+about with his "studies." Kirtley had not come to study, had not
+been trained to study, in the German sense. It would have been
+difficult to make the old man see any virtue in such desultoriness.
+It doubtless proved to his mind that Americans are only half
+trained, half tamed, half domesticated.
+
+The couple surrounded Kirtley with a protection, an honesty, a
+reliability, a zeal, that was as surprising as it was, on the whole,
+gratifying. He felt a security he had hardly known in his own home.
+If he were cheated or otherwise imposed upon anywhere in
+Dresden--and this did not often happen--the Buchers were violently
+up in arms about it and never ceased pursuit of the recreant until
+the wrong was righted.
+
+"The good German name must not be tarnished."
+
+In a word, they tried to treat him like a son; and so forceful and
+constant were their efforts in this direction that he sometimes
+wished their well-meant attentions were less formidable. The easy
+American "forget it," "why bother," "never again," were expressions
+of a mood unfamiliar to them. They visibly had small patience with
+such slackness which only, to their minds, encouraged lawlessness.
+
+The setting for Gard's approaching German love affair was
+appropriately picturesque and propitious. A tight little meadow,
+with a grassy path wandering through by the Elbe, lay near at hand,
+and beyond, at the right, a pine wood--the Waldpark--with neat
+graveled walks and rustic seats where the tonic air was often to
+brace his musings.
+
+Adjacent was the small summer house, still poetically standing,
+where Schiller wrote "Don Carlos" a century and a quarter before. A
+leafy lane led from the meadow to the walled garden inclosure of
+Villa Elsa, whose branches, vines and flowering bushes insisted
+on making it almost a hidden retreat. The spot could not be more
+_gemuetlich_--that familiar expressive word which Kirtley soon
+learned to rely on amid the scant artillery of his defensive
+weapons of conversational German.
+
+Through a swinging gate in the wall, and usually to the clanging of
+a bell that announced you, you entered the house on a level with the
+ground. On this floor were the kitchen and dining room. Next came
+the _belle etage_, with the salon and music room opening into each
+other, and with another apartment or two. Above, the chambers. And
+still above, the two attic rooms. All was plain but substantial.
+
+The garden furnished not only flowers but vegetables. And in one
+corner stood a table and chairs for afternoon tea with cakes or beer
+with cheese. Here the ever-busy sewing and knitting mainly went on
+in summer, and a forgotten book, half read, was usually left by some
+one of the young folks. There was a drowsy, old-fashioned air about
+the premises that recalled illustrations in some of the editions of
+Grimm's fairy tales.
+
+Aside from the abundance of bound music, Gard had been far from
+expecting that fine examples of art and literature would be so
+meagerly represented in this representative German home. There
+were poor pictures of Bismarck, of William the Second, and of
+his grandfather aping the appearance of Gambrinus.
+
+Prominent also were steel engravings of Saxon and Prussian kings of
+whom Kirtley had never heard. But there they were, conspicuous
+household gods, with fierce, epic miens and lordly bodies,
+surrounded by wreaths of glory and Latin texts, and supported by
+cannon pointed at the observer with menaces of angry welcome. And
+not to be forgotten were the august thrones, avenging swords of
+royalty, and the dark swirling clouds suggesting the German Olympus.
+
+"It all harmonizes with the arsenal down in the entrance,"
+muttered Gard.
+
+As for books, he was taken at an angle still more unexpected and
+significant. Goethe and Schiller and the other old Teuton classics,
+breathing of liberalness and freedom--figures that had always stood
+out in the world as leading exponents and guardians of a cultured
+enlightenment--were only present in the Bucher home in the form of
+musty, unused volumes.
+
+These authors, who were so loved, advocated and expounded in
+American colleges and whom Kirtley had come to Germany to know
+better and to worship, were scarcely ever mentioned. He was
+astonished to find that the Germans thought little of them. And
+Heine likewise, that naughty child of the Vaterland! At the Buchers
+the presentable red and gilt edition of his poems was kept in
+Fraeulein's escritoire in her room.
+
+American education, Gard began to realize, was somehow on the wrong
+track here. It was trying to cultivate a Germany that no longer
+seemed to exist. It was diligently teaching and acclaiming Teutons
+who were repudiated in their own land. It was separating the spirit
+and taste of the two peoples instead of bringing them together.
+
+The books that were in evidence in Villa Elsa were a new lot,
+excepting the great and formidable Nietschke. Kirtley had never
+heard of the Treitschkes and Bernhardis and Hartmanns, whom the
+Buchers were reading and quoting.
+
+From what he made out, these and similar authorities were insisting
+mightily on German conceptions and prerogatives--some exalting the
+Teuton supremacy of will, others urging and preparing the mental
+ground for an armed attack on the world for a German dictatorship.
+This militant literature was introduced here by Rudolph, who was
+armed with strategic plans, diagrams, military maps, which the
+family frequently of an evening pored over with the enthusiasm of a
+parlor game. First it was Russia to be assaulted, then Belgium, and
+always France.
+
+"Italy is already as good as conquered," Rudi proclaimed, "and
+England simply needs to be tilted off her worm-eaten perch by a
+sudden shock."
+
+Kirtley rubbed his eyes. What a widespread, horrible butchery was
+being nursed and nourished here in this obscure family of peace?
+Surely this good folk did not appreciate the meaning of it all. Was
+it not merely something awfully exciting to talk about, argue about,
+puzzle over, in the prosaic humdrum at this respectable hearthstone?
+
+Such a strange form of social entertainment! The "arsenal" below
+always came to Gard's mind. These people acted as if they were
+actually thinking of capturing the whole Eastern Hemisphere,
+speaking as if they were going to rule it like conquerors, going to
+enforce at the point of the blade German "might," "will," "rights."
+These were the common expressions used. Kirtley thought the
+household must be unbalanced on this topic.
+
+He said to himself, "No one else whom I have read or heard of is
+contemplating such a campaign. Other races are holding forth on the
+benefits and glories of peace. These Dresden Germans are talking of
+the benefits and glories of war!"
+
+This example in these simple, every-day Buchers was most pointed.
+Their lines were furthest from the military. Teaching diction and
+phonetics to women and male singers, studying engineering, religion
+and the gentle arts, had nothing to do with such proposed bloody
+belligerence.
+
+Only Rudi could be called somewhat martial. Hydraulics was his
+branch, and his frequent absences on missions about which he assumed
+an important and mystifying air, such as is, for that matter, usual
+in bumptious young men, never caused any comment or visible interest
+on the part of the others. He gave himself out to be close to the
+_militaire_, familiar with its secrets, as he freely blew his
+cigarette smoke across the meal table; and to him the family
+deferred on these subjects. Surely all this was to Gard very
+foreign and interesting.
+
+"What a different race of beings! What a curious revelation to
+observe, what a doughty complex to comprehend!"
+
+He was more confounded by the attitude of the women. They were even
+fiercer than the men. To them the other Europeans were a wholly bad
+lot. Those neighbors were so much in the way of the good, all-worthy
+Germans. But it was on the English that this feminine hatred vented
+itself most turbulently. Frau Bucher shouted that she would be more
+than glad--she would be hilarious--if war came.
+
+"I would wear my last rag for years, see my two boys dead on the
+battle front, if Gross Britain could be knocked into the bottom of
+the sea."
+
+Was all this a part of that national gladness Gard was observing in
+Germany and could not gage, could not yet give an explicit and
+sufficient reason for? Those old-time Teuton liberals, masters of
+prose and verse--how would they feel at home in this modern
+Rhineland of hysterical spleen and arms provocative? Was it
+possible he had really come on a sort of fool's errand?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+GERMAN LOVING
+
+
+Fraeulein Elsa was a blooming, almost blue-eyed young woman of
+twenty. Such a fresh, strawberry and cream complexion under a
+plenteous harvest of flaxen hair would not be associated in America
+with anyone very serious. _There_ she would have been thought
+arrayed by Nature as a tearing blonde, suitable for the equivocal
+light stage, or as a frivolous artist's model, or as promenade girl
+in a suit and cloak house. But in Fraeulein the extraordinary
+combination of volatile comeliness and unimpeachable earnestness
+daily worked growing wonders in Kirtley.
+
+It is a luckless young traveler who does not find himself or herself
+engaged in some romance, permanent or transient, which ever after
+sweetens or gilds the memories of the tour. Moreover Gard was at an
+age when youthful susceptibilities were softened by the
+lackadaisicalness of his returning state of health and hope.
+
+So his difficulties with the German language, feasting, sleeping and
+redoubtable ways in general, were to be complicated by German
+loving. The shining object of his tenderness--how she was to lend
+brightness to the short dismal days and long black nights of the
+Teuton winter! At first he had asked himself:
+
+"Is a campaign of the heart in Deutschland as portentous, dreadfully
+systematic, a proceeding as the other undertakings? Do the Germans
+go at that sort of thing, too, hammer and tongs?"
+
+The glowing Fraeulein was able-bodied, full-chested, with every
+golden promise of a rich maternityhood. Did American girls have
+any bosoms to speak of? Gard seemed now to have never noticed that
+feature in them. Yet bounding breasts are the unashamed pride of
+German girls.
+
+While the Yankee miss is often to be identified by complaints of a
+physical nature, Elsa had no aches or pains to talk about. She had
+a strength competent to support all her energetic, meritorious
+endeavors. A thoroughly well woman--what an exceptional being, a
+god-send! It is not the fashion with maids beyond the Rhine to be
+ailing. Weak backs, nervous prostration, indigestion and similar
+indispositions were not topics at the Buchers'. To be coquettishly
+delicate or romantically ill is a liability to the Germans. Health,
+unenchanting as it may be, is a prime asset. That the Teuton women
+are gormands--what is that compared with their willingness to mother
+six or more sturdy youngsters?
+
+Had Frau Bucher been an Elsa at twenty? Yes, in the main, yet
+impossible to conceive. Would Elsa become at fifty-five like her
+parent? Heaven forbid! But Youth ignores such deterrent
+probabilities.
+
+The daughter and her manifold achievements easily bowled Gard over.
+Was he in love or did he merely imagine he was? Was he filling with
+the divine fire or only being smitten? Who could ever tell? And what
+is, in fact, the practical difference? Kindly old Rebner had hinted
+that it would not be amiss in Gard to bring home one of the
+excellent German _maedchens_ with her brimming stock of health and
+efficiency.
+
+"She would be an answer to our American servant girl question, flood
+your fireside with invigorating music, and rear a house full of
+robust children. It would be a novel and commendable experiment and
+experience for you, Kirtley."
+
+Of course Heine is the approved route with a German girl. Gard
+borrowed from Fraeulein an old copy of the "Buch der Lieder." Very
+obliging at times like the rest of the family in the business of
+improving his accent, she urged that if he would commit some of
+those little prized poems to heart, she would supervise his
+intonations. He eagerly betook himself to this charming exercise,
+and it was not long before he was inviting her to walk along that
+alluring path through the meadow by the persuasive water. Here he
+repeated over and over to her the very pertinent lines,
+
+    Thou'rt like unto a flower,
+
+and
+
+    Thou lov'st me not, thou lov'st me not,
+
+under the conscientious reproofs of her engaging diction.
+
+But never more than for half an hour at a time. This was all she
+could spare him. Her days were very strictly divided by her pressing
+concerns. A sightly young woman so tremendously busy--it was almost
+exasperating.
+
+And he could not establish any tender quality of relationship that
+would warm a delectable exchange of rosy intimations or tentative
+expressions of budding feelings of delight. It was teacher and
+pupil. She unsuspectingly insisted on following her role of
+preceptress and very earnest was she about it, too.
+
+She saw nothing comical in his frequent linguistic stumblings that
+would naturally lead to melting moods. As the Germans have, of
+course, little humor, she found in these faulty exhibitions only
+causes for disappointed glances and reprimands approaching severity.
+Often you would have thought he was a boy of ten reciting his lesson
+at her knee.
+
+"Now Thursday by half past ten, you must have that line right or I
+will _scold_ you." And she would sometimes laugh a little in her
+discouragement.
+
+She looked upon it as a duty, a voluntary drudgery, but which, she
+assured him, she was most pleased to do. For she loved Heine--raved
+about him, like sentimental German maids. She could never go over
+his verse often enough. And so she encouraged Gard to keep on. It
+was a reflected part of her normal disciplined life of acquisition.
+
+After a month of these tactics he realized he was making no headway
+toward--he did not acknowledge what. Young men as a type did not
+seem to Elsa of special interest any more than a hundred other
+objects on earth. And then the cold weather before long put an end
+to the little promenades of rime by the shore, and Gard had to try
+other lines of attack on this radiant and beflowered German
+fortress.
+
+The park of fir trees lay quite beyond the meadow. It was a silent,
+evocative spot, unfrequented except for a peasant now and then
+trudging along under a bundle of wood or a weather-beaten basket of
+provisions. Kirtley had managed to stray that far once with Elsa,
+but learned that the mother was expected to accompany at such
+distances. It provoked his silent comment,
+
+"As nearly as I can estimate, about a half a mile from home is all
+that is allowed a German miss unchaperoned."
+
+It was the same when he invited Fraeulein to the opera or theater.
+The parent must attend. As she was equally occupied, it did not
+appear easy for him to arrange for the two. Besides, Frau Bucher
+killed everything under these confounding and confounded
+circumstances. She sat between him and her daughter and ruled the
+conversation. It was little better than taking her alone, so he
+abandoned also these enterprises.
+
+In the talk at table the family, with Teuton tactlessness, now and
+then cried out the surpassing merits of the German young man.
+Unquestionably he led all others. Gard met no success in stemming
+the tide, miffed as he was about this social seclusion of the
+daughter. He soon saw his mistake in feeling personally hurt, as if
+insulted. It was but the custom. Could it be indeed a fact that
+German youths were such moral reprobates that girls could not be
+trusted to their unguarded companionship? The question had no
+meaning to his hosts. It was useless to hint of such an idea,
+burning as he often was to launch it upon the waves of discussion.
+To them, chaperoning signified the highest morals.
+
+They exploded with, "It may very well be as you say in America!
+That is to be expected. Are there any morals in the United States?
+We have heard awful things. There are the Mormons. There is
+co-education. And young girls of the best families go around loose
+with men day and night. What _could_ be the result? Free love. And
+free love means cheap love or no love at all. Admittedly pretty low
+conditions for virtue. What else can be looked for in a country
+where all sorts of people come promiscuously from everywhere?
+Divorces, voting females, slatterns, homelessness, neglected, poorly
+educated children."
+
+If, in passing, America and Americans were referred to in the
+family, and this was rare, Elsa, Gard noticed, kept silent. Yet she
+could be very wrought up about other Europeans. This nursed his
+fancies. He interpreted it in terms of promise. Elsa, he decided,
+was a good girl in a hedge-hog environment of unbelievable traits,
+of warring contrasts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+GERMAN COURTSHIP
+
+
+Once during the winter he tried on her a course of flirtation which
+he had learned very well in his Sophomore year. But German girls do
+not flirt. His arrows sank in feebly, impotently, as if her
+attention had the despairing resistance of a sandbag. Unperturbed
+she made nothing of it. He felt that she thought he was silly or had
+the rickets. So he speedily gave this up.
+
+Thus he became aware how vastly different are courtship and other
+relations between young men and young women in America and in
+Germany. He asked himself.
+
+"Are the German ways more civilized?" Certainly, to the Teuton, they
+represent a more creditable and becoming evolution. He always
+stoutly favors his own customs, and finds little here to discuss.
+Even if a rotten morality in his young gods is to be assumed, this
+would be proper as in the young gods of the mythologies.
+
+The Teuton marriage refers plainly to property. The language has
+prominent terms indicating how espousal means goods with a woman
+attached to them. There is scarcely an equivalent in English.
+Courtship in the form of natural little raptures that disport in and
+beautify enamored companionship in youth, the pure, unfettered,
+mystic attraction between the sexes in blossoming time, are
+practically unknown to the German social life. The full gloss of
+fancy, the velveting of manners, the felicitous fabrication of
+innocent emotions into a blessed garment of many colors, find their
+development outside the domain of Thor. Such associations have there
+no charming playtime, but forthwith make for permanent good or
+permanent evil.
+
+Accordingly, for Gard, in his fond inclinations, there was no
+experience with Cupids about the Bucher flower garden. Only, as it
+were, a sort of rough sledding on broken, jolting ice! And he noted
+the comparative absence of such delicate sentiment in German
+literature. Aside from Heine, who became French, German letters have
+relatively little to offer on this score. The very language
+discourages love-making. Since Heine's exile a century ago, the
+increasing might of the armored Hohenzollerns had finally almost
+killed all this.
+
+Gard was thrown out of gear in another way. Fraeulein's lack not only
+of amatory complaisance but of social polish or even facility kept
+him dubious and disconcerted. She brusquely alternated between a
+sisterly tenderness of familiarity, almost exaggerated, only to
+follow it by a sudden, disquieting flop over on the side of a
+formality as stiff as buckram. She would be as distant as if they
+were two boarders having a tiff in a _pension_. These detachments
+were not because of anything Kirtley had done or said. They formed
+a natural example of Gothic undevelopedness in human relations, the
+rude unevenness of beginners.
+
+But, then, he forgave her for this.
+
+"Is she not extremely occupied--full of pursuits? How admirable!"
+
+It shamed him, spurred him on not a little. For days he would only
+see her at the generous meals where she exclaimed over her dread of
+getting fat. That usually furnishes a German with an excuse for
+being helped to more. She dutifully played of an evening in the
+family orchestra, yet this was a musical, not a social, happening.
+The severe if rich harmonies that were favored, largely with the
+idea of drill, created generally an atmosphere of austerity.
+
+She could not understand Gard's offers to carry her umbrella over
+her to a class or to bring her a storm coat in case of need. Such
+attentiveness meant intrusions almost to be resented. She appeared
+to frown upon any kindly little considerations that should have been
+agreeable to her or at any rate convenient. She had been brought up
+to do everything for herself. There was nothing of the clinging vine
+about her. Young German women are not expected to lean upon men in
+this wise.
+
+Presents of candy or what-not are looked upon with an inquisitive or
+doubtful eye, especially by the parents. For the German girl has no
+charming secrets from her father and mother. They must know all,
+with immediate conjectures about marriage. Troubling gifts,
+consequently, became rather out of the question with Gard.
+
+He feared that Fraeulein Elsa might reflect sometimes the feeling of
+unfriendliness which he was aware of in the supercilious Rudi. The
+latter exhibited a negligent attitude of indifference toward Gard,
+though it was cloaked under casualness. There was a sinister air
+about the young engineer, and she would be bound to follow
+submissively anyone breathing the military ozone.
+
+Under all these unsettling circumstances, Kirtley's uncertain
+attachment for the German language did not increase by Peter
+Schlemihl strides. Besides, his regular teacher was something like a
+wild boar. He had proceeded to dragoon Gard as if he were a lad. And
+Herr Keller's person was offensive. He exhaled a smell unpleasant if
+scholastic. Dressed in a soiled, shiny, black garb, and with a
+bristly mustache and beard which often showed egg of a morning, he
+talked blatantly of having been in Paris as a soldier in '70. It was
+his one excursion out of Saxony.
+
+Even the German language at such a cost was not very inviting.
+Finally Gard received a curt note to the effect that if he were not
+more assiduous, the lessons would better end. Herr Keller did not
+want to be bothered with triflers.
+
+"Bounced from school!" Kirtley exclaimed. It was the first time. He
+took advantage of this opportunity to discontinue.
+
+He could see that his hosts did not blame the professor. Why, he was
+capable of forcibly drilling the Teuton language and literature into
+a post hole. This doubtless confirmed Kirtley's failure as a student
+in their eyes. And this was to be looked for in Americans who think
+that they can acquire knowledge and know life by gadding about and
+"observing," instead of by book study. The awful German language
+seemed doomed to blast Gard's affectionate hopes.
+
+While his burgeoning amorousness met with such blighting
+encouragement in the direction of Fraeulein Elsa, it encountered
+unexpectedly an immense and yearning bosom in another quarter.
+Fraeulein Wasserhaus, next door, clamored for a mate. With cowlike
+simpleness she almost bellowed out for love. Of an age verging on
+the precarious she waddled into and out from Villa Elsa with bulging
+breasts so bared, under the transparent pretenses of white gauze,
+that Frau Bucher declared herself shocked. She said that the
+Wasserhaus was trying to be a part of the disgraceful Naked _Kultur_
+that had been assailing Germany.
+
+When this bovine soul came to know of Kirtley's presence, she
+fastened her consuming desires upon him. She had a brother in
+America and actively developed a hankering to go there and be near
+him. Yoking up with a Yankee would be a most natural and fitting
+state in which to negotiate the Atlantic.
+
+As the Bucher wall was too high for her to hang over in her
+languishing ardors, she hung over her gate to offer a book or a
+tiger lily to Gard as he passed. Several times when the
+pachydermatous Tekla banged her way upstairs with an armful of
+utensils in her work, a bouncing compote or other unabashed delicacy
+would be tumbling about on a dustpan or a slop basin, bound for the
+attic room by the linden tree. Twice a belabored missive accompanied
+these little couriers, anxiously quoting some anguishing
+sentimentality from one of the household poets writhing amid the
+pages of the affecting Gartenlaube.
+
+It was at first so bothersome that Gard contemplated leaving the
+neighborhood. Even the Buchers, truest of prosy Germans, could
+grasp the ridiculousness of this situation, and it was the one item
+of noisy fun they could fall back upon when they wished to be
+especially entertaining.
+
+"Mein Gott!" the Frau would cry out when going over her troubles and
+arduous occupations. "And I've got to get a husband for the
+Wasserhaus yet!" The Herr often went into a deafening rage about it.
+
+"Is there no way to keep that lachrymose female out of my house with
+her belated calf-love? She annoys the good Herr Kirtley." And he
+would toddle out, slamming the door like a clap of thunder.
+
+The family assumed a very self-conscious behavior when the lorn
+maiden was mentioned, and were anxious Gard should know that, while
+unfortunately she was their neighbor, she was not at all of their
+stratum.
+
+"Poor girl!" Gard mused. There were nearly half again as many women
+as men in Saxony.
+
+At last he came to know there seemed to be a mystery about Fraeulein
+Elsa--something which was hidden from him. And a new and deeper
+interest was summoned forth from within his breast. Occasionally at
+table she was silent as a mile stone. Some days she did not appear
+to his sight at all. And then, when he did see her, she evidently
+wanted to avoid him. Very true it was that she often pored over the
+little volume of Heine in her room without a word to anyone. But, of
+a sudden, she would become frankly in evidence again--a floral and
+quite superb girl, resolutely "making good," as was her wont.
+
+"What is it?" Gard wondered.
+
+None of the family ever referred to it. Even in his intimate talks
+with her mother, whom Gard now and then practiced his German upon as
+she was plying her needle, nothing was divulged. There was no young
+German coming to the house with regularity. Consequently, could it
+be love difficulties? Yet something was wrong. It lent respect to
+Elsa, threw enhancement about her.
+
+Gard concluded that the roughness of the Bucher family life
+mortified her. It was often well-nigh outlandish. How could she
+have so ardently studied the beautiful in music and colors without
+realizing this?
+
+But he had not been long enough in Germany to be advised that
+knowledge is not expected there to enter into the inner life. What
+one is has little in common with what one knows or can dexterously
+do. Study does not pass into character. The German, with all his
+acquirements, does not look for moral or esthetic effect upon the
+heart or soul.
+
+German women esteem the strong fighter, the rugged accomplisher the
+boisterous enthusiast, among their men. Whether these are atheistic,
+immoral, boorish, cruel, are considerations of secondary importance.
+The daughters marry them with little hesitation. Men are men,
+supreme, to be adored. Women are to be tolerated, stepped on, sat
+upon. Man is the master, woman is the willing servant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+A JOURNALIST
+
+
+Gard's experience in perfecting himself in German met with another
+rebuff. Under the prompting of his parental friends in Villa Elsa he
+concluded at length to attend a course of lectures given by a
+celebrated professor who was, however, known to be of an
+exceptionally cantankerous disposition. Kirtley had become aware of
+the querulous restrictions and exactions attending the most peaceful
+German activities and made sure of his ground at the class room,
+whither he went one morning with encouraging expectations. He asked
+the janitor if the hearings were free and public. They were.
+
+It was the usual amphitheater and Gard entered to find only a few
+regular students down in the front rows. He decided on a seat alone
+in the center. Herr Professor, be-spectacled, soon clambered up on
+the rostrum and squatted dumpily. Blear-eyed he scanned the place
+and blurted out:
+
+"There is a stranger in the room. The lecture will not proceed until
+he departs." Gard, having been assured by the janitor, could not
+imagine that he himself was meant. The man of prodigious learning
+shouted angrily, throwing out his arm toward Kirtley:
+
+"Must I repeat that there is a foreigner in the audience? I shall
+not begin until his presence has been removed."
+
+Gard went away, incensed. Surely, he swore to himself, Teuton
+erudition acts so often like a mad bear ready to claw away at men
+and things. He never attended another day lecture.
+
+But he had to get on with his German. He decided to put an
+advertisement for an instructor in the Dresden _Nachrichten_. At its
+_bureau_ he ran counter to a lot of ifs and ands at the hands of a
+surly young clerk. A German, naturally gruff, only needs a small
+position to increase his acerbity. His newspapers display, likewise,
+a disagreeable officiousness, being nearly always, to some extent,
+bureaucratic organs. They are lords, not servants, of the public.
+They do not appear to want your business, your money.
+
+Gard's imperfect German balked him, too. After he had been back and
+forth to the little window three or four times, trying to alter his
+"ad" to suit the rasping individual whose face Gard could scarcely
+catch a glimpse of by stooping down to the aperture, an American
+stepped forward. He was a steel gray man of about sixty and was
+inserting a notice. He said he was familiar with all the rigors of
+such a proceeding, being a correspondent for the Chicago _Gazette_.
+
+"Perhaps I can help," volunteered Miles Anderson. "After having had
+scraps and fights about this sort of thing around this country for
+seven years--though the Germans won't fight--I've finally got the
+hang of it. You can save three or four words by a different jargon.
+I can see you are an American because you take up more room about
+this than necessary. German economy, you must remember."
+
+Gard was glad to find a friend of his race. And after the
+advertisement was disposed of, they repaired to a neighboring beer
+hall to refresh and relieve their feelings. Anderson was
+smooth-shaven, with piercing gray eyes under bushy eyebrows, his
+head presenting the appearance of just having been in a barber's
+chair. With the insistent curiosity of a practiced interviewer he
+wanted to know why Kirtley had come to this godless land; where he
+was hanging out; and all about the Buchers.
+
+A bachelor, Anderson had become toughened by hotel and _pension_. He
+thought Kirtley very fortunate in getting right into a family where
+the veritable German bloom had not been rubbed off by foreigners, by
+boarders. It would be a most fragrant experience. Here Kirtley would
+see on the native heath the genuine German of the great middle class
+that makes up the might of the nation.
+
+"Can you read German comfortably?" asked Anderson. "What do you make
+of it? I've been studying it for seven years and sometimes it seems
+as if I hadn't got much further than the verb to hate."
+
+"You can't give me any short cuts about it, then?" laughed Gard.
+
+"Yes, I can--yes, I can. Here's a little compilation and analysis of
+the irregular verbs," explained his new acquaintance, pulling a
+green brochure from his pocket. "Only costs a mark. You can get a
+second-hand one at the book stalls by the Augustus bridge. I always
+carry it with me and con it over and over. Good for the
+pronunciation. If you get the irregular verbs of a language well fed
+into your system, you've got the language by the windpipe.
+
+"Then buy _Simplicissimus_. You'll pick up a good deal from
+that--the popular expressions, the phrases and exclamations that are
+going. If you learn to use the exclamations, it makes you
+interesting and well-liked. It gives the other fellow the chance to
+do the talking. _Simplicissimus_ and that kind of thing are better
+than the dry, stilted German classics--'Ekkehard,' 'Nathan der
+Weise' and all that discarded stuff. But remember that _esprit_ was
+not given the Germans, because it would hide their Boeotian
+stupidity."
+
+"I haven't yet seen--I suppose I shall see"--said Kirtley, "why the
+general American student like me is so persistently encouraged to
+come to Germany. Why is it?"
+
+"Because we are damn fools," heartily rejoined Anderson. "The
+Germans don't have education. They have instruction. The one makes
+gentlemen. The other makes experts. It is hard for an expert to be a
+gentleman. They don't have gentlemen in Germany. No such word in
+their language. It is a nation of experts, but that's precisely the
+reason it should be feared. Why, education would teach a German not
+to slobber at his meals.
+
+"It is his strenuous ingrowing instruction that cultivates his
+extreme national egotism until it has become like a boil. His racial
+egoism helps obscure the obscure sunlight here in Germany and blinds
+him. He has to wear spectacles. It is a natural cry, his cry for a
+place in the sun."
+
+"Should I have gone to England or France?" suggested Gard.
+
+"Yes. At any rate, not here. The German procedure roughens the fiber
+and lowers the moral standards of the general student. Instruction
+here is along mental and manual lines. The Teuton is meant to be a
+specialist. He is competent but not refined."
+
+The two compatriots gossiped along about this and that.
+
+"I'm having a devil of a time sleeping on my bed," confessed Gard.
+"You ought to know about German beds. How do you get on with them?"
+
+"The German bed helps to give the German his bad disposition. I put
+two beds side by side and sleep across the middle. That's one way to
+fool the German bed. If I saw yours I might be able to suggest
+something."
+
+Anderson frankly expressed a desire to visit the Loschwitz home. So
+on Gard's invitation they had lunch and went out to his suburb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+SPIES AND WAR
+
+
+They took off the bed clothes, including the two huge feather
+bolsters in the center.
+
+"These bolsters are for the gingerbread effect that the German likes
+everywhere," explained the visitor. They examined the remaining
+construction. It was narrow and short. It suggested a granite-like
+base.
+
+"Rock of Ages!" commented Anderson. "As you can't ask for an
+additional bed, all I can see is for you to swill beer and then you
+don't care where you sleep. That's the way the Germans do."
+
+The journalist appeared disappointed in not meeting any of the
+family that first day. Frau was overwhelmed in kitchen duties and
+not presentable. The other members were away, working, working.
+Anderson had to be contented with Gard's description of them, after
+the latter had passed the cigars.
+
+"Who's the spy in your family?" abruptly asked the elder.
+
+"The spy?"
+
+"Yes, the spy. Every well-regulated German family should have a spy
+in it."
+
+"What for?" queried Kirtley in surprise.
+
+"Why, for the Kaiser, of course. Who else? The Teutons call him
+euphemistically the Government. But without Wilhelm there wouldn't
+be any German Government."
+
+"Why should he want spies in his own German families?" interrogated
+Gard innocently.
+
+"Didn't every medieval feudal lord keep close tab on his
+subjects--the people he owned? The Kaiser wants to know of any signs
+of disloyalty. If a household harbors any foreigners, as your family
+is doing, he wants to know what they are up to."
+
+"Do you mean to say that the Government knows about me--that I'm
+being watched?"
+
+"They are at least ready to watch you. Mind you, Germany is a real
+block-house, and the elaborate spy system is an integral part of it.
+I should say, from what you tell me of the Buchers, that young
+Rudolph is the sleuth here."
+
+"Rudolph?"
+
+"Yes. He's doubtless keeping an eye on you and reporting to the
+authorities if there's anything suspicious about you and your
+actions."
+
+And then the journalist, pleased to have a fresh listener, launched
+upon his pet idea.
+
+"The Kaiser is preparing an abysmal pitfall for the world and it
+won't take heed. I tell you, Kirtley--and I want you to mark my
+words--Deutschland is going to spring at Europe like a tiger. The
+army and navy are ready for the onslaught. When they spring, it will
+be farewell to civilization--except the German--unless something
+like a miracle supervenes. The French army is being moth-eaten by
+the Socialists, the British navy has dry rot. I look to see Wilhelm
+practically the ruler of the earth. If not, he will cause it to pay
+a cost that will make the next fifty years groggy."
+
+Kirtley thought this was jesting. He later learned that the "old
+man" was regarded as "cracked" on this topic. Every spring he
+prophesied war, but it had not come. The Kaiser failed to rush to
+Paris and there dictate terms to an astounded and cowed universe.
+People politely laughed in their sleeves. Yes, Anderson was a fine
+fellow, but they wearied of his dismal forebodings that came to
+naught. Some said it was because German had been hard for him to
+learn. He had taken it up when more than fifty and had become
+tangled in its snarling roots--its beer-drunken syntax. "He had got
+mad at the language." It was natural that he should get mad at the
+people.
+
+Gard saw a light.
+
+"Perhaps," he said, "that's what the Buchers really mean about the
+German army conquering everybody whenever it wants to."
+
+"That's it, that's it!" Anderson was gratified by the confirmation.
+He went on with grave seriousness.
+
+"I'm a journalist. I have opportunities to see behind the curtain,
+haven't I? I have been at the army maneuvers, at the officers'
+messes and dinners, when they were sober and when they were drunk.
+Beer loosened their tongues and they did not care. They talk of it,
+boast of it, and the civilian, too. I'm telling no secrets. They are
+very frank about it. Don't you hear the Buchers openly discussing
+it? They all give us warning and we say it's a fine day. Did you
+ever read any of the Kaiser's speeches in German? There you find it
+all. But he's crazy, they say. Crazy or not, he has the most
+thoroughly organized and powerful nation behind him that the globe
+ever saw. And behind him to a man."
+
+"Why don't you write it up, then--tell people over home?" Gard
+ventured, somewhat impressed.
+
+"Write it up? Tell people? That's what I _have_ been doing for five
+years. But what's the use of shouting to a world of fools? No one
+will pay any attention to it. My paper sends my stuff back and says
+it don't want war talk--it wants peace talk. Americans are happy and
+they don't want to be disturbed. They only want to hear about what
+they want to believe. So it seems to be everywhere."
+
+"I guess you are right about that," Gard testified. "I have been a
+pretty fair reader of our papers and periodicals and have never been
+made to feel there was any need for alarm."
+
+"Exactly," Anderson scolded. "Why, look at our Exchange professors.
+They are coming over here, ready to swallow the Germans whole. The
+Kaiser invites them to lunch on his yacht, gives them a pat on the
+shoulder blade, and they are his. While the Germans plainly despise
+us, our educators go home crying Great is Germany! How superior are
+her people! Let us send our sons over there to drink of her wisdom
+and grandeur! What inanity! Bah!"
+
+"And so here I am," Gard smiled. "But I have bunted into you almost
+the first thing."
+
+"Couldn't do better--couldn't do better," repeated Anderson with a
+cheering turn. "I'll tell you what to do. I'll give you a little
+practical advice--free."
+
+"It won't be worth much if it's free, will it?"
+
+"Well, it's worth this rotten German cigar you've given me. Read the
+editorials and correspondence in the Dresden papers. They're a good
+sample. There you'll see what the German attitude toward us is
+officially, and what German hatred feeds on day by day. The trouble
+with Americans over here is they don't read anything serious. Of
+course our students study their text books. But generally our people
+just fly around, hear music, drink beer in the cafes, but they don't
+read. Too nervous--afraid of being bored. So they don't learn much."
+
+Anderson ran on into other subjects.
+
+"One great thing about the German system is that it would make such
+people work to some purpose. We don't. It also makes its plodders
+work. This Government recognizes frankly that most of its
+population, like all populations, are plodders, and it gives them
+something regularly to do and sees that they do it. This converts
+this dull element into an organized strength--a source of power. The
+Germans practice their wonderful economies with respect to the
+poorest kind of human energy. They kick something into their drones.
+So they are such a mighty nation in a small land.
+
+"In America, in other countries, this element is rather a
+disorganized weakness. It is not pushed. It is for the most part
+waste material or neglected material. Our public system, when
+economies are concerned, first considers money, property. It seems
+sometimes as if our free individualistic plan of government were,
+after all, adapted for the minority of the bright-witted."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GERMAN WAYS
+
+
+"Had the Buchers ever known an American before you came?" Anderson
+interrupted himself.
+
+"No."
+
+"How do you think they like you?"
+
+"I guess if I dropped out of their lives, I would not create much of
+a splash."
+
+"You'll find they hate you. Hate is the German religion. The Germans
+can hate people they've never known, never seen. They hate on
+principle and without principle. Of course it's the proper precursor
+for their programme of conquering the world. If they were trying to
+love the world, they could not be preparing to demolish it and
+expecting to."
+
+Though Anderson had lived so long among the Teutons, he had not
+become Teutonized. He was a marked exception. He viewed the nation
+with a metallic aplomb that at times sent shivers down Kirtley's
+spine.
+
+"Now this family of yours," he went on discursively--"don't you
+notice about them and in them and behind them something tremendously
+unifying and propelling that is lacking in our American home?"
+
+"I certainly do," responded Gard. "I can't make it out--their
+dynamic, conscientious industry. What is it for? It's not with the
+idea of making money--like Americans, eager to accumulate the
+dollars. It's not for personal fame. It's not for any ambitious
+social position. It does not seem to be for any of the reasons that
+inspire an American household. And yet it is here, in this house, in
+every room, behind every chair at table, night and morning. It's
+bigger than anything we find in our Yankee life because it's beyond
+and higher than mere individuality. It makes the Buchers satisfied
+and still is something that has fearfulness lurking about it. It's
+not religious or divine--they are not actuated by such motives, do
+not speak of them. What in the world is it that the Germans have
+that is so wonderful and we do not seem to have?"
+
+Kirtley had thought a great deal about this and talked almost
+fluently.
+
+"I'll tell you," and the old correspondent, bent forward toward him
+earnestly, glad that he had a young, receptive mind opened out
+toward him. "I'll tell you. It's simply the Hohenzollern in his mad
+and unconcealed pride about ruling the universe. He is in every
+German home like this, driving each individual to work the best, to
+make the most of himself and of herself, and without loss of time.
+He makes them understand that it's for the great German race--that
+they may become the potent force everywhere--leaders of mankind as
+he has taught them they deserve to be. It is for the benefit of
+their more and more deserving nation. But it is first and foremost
+for himself and his family. He has a burning, itching desire to
+reign everywhere. He is not a normal man physically and is
+unbalanced by a monumental vanity--arrogance--egotism.
+
+"When your Frau is so busily sewing, she is sewing for her
+household, it is true, but she is consciously and unconsciously
+sewing for Wilhelm. When your Fraeulein goes out to her etching
+lesson, she is aware of being of the magnificent German people, and
+shares a part of the national ambition to excel. It's this that we
+haven't got in America and can't well have under our system. But
+it's this unified, disciplined zeal that enables two or three
+ordinary Germans to do what it takes four ordinary Yankees to do.
+Clad in armor and with a glistening sword in hand, Germania ought to
+scare men, and they are not taking the warning.
+
+"But, Kirtley, it scares me. I feel--see--something awful coming. In
+the universal German hate, the national boundary stops any flow
+outward of sympathy, good faith, equity. All peoples outside are
+human insects whom it is proper for the Teuton to tread on if he
+can, crush the life out of, because they are in his pathway to
+glory."
+
+Kirtley, who had stared at his new friend in this solemnity, turned
+a serious face toward the clawlike branches of his linden in its
+gauntness of late autumn-tide. This meaning of the animus that was
+impelling his odd and yet so normal German household, he began to
+see, was substantiated by a score of acts and attitudes in its daily
+life. He scarcely deemed it proper to tell of them.
+
+Besides, he did not want to fire up Anderson who already was so
+unsettled, so comfortless, on the subject. But Kirtley was reasoning
+out how this animus gave a solidity, a solidarity, to the German
+household--a satisfied contentment--because it was working toward a
+definite racial goal. Any such incentive was almost absent in the
+American family.
+
+"And so," wound up Anderson with epigrams, "the years will be left
+humanity to weep these days of _insouciance_ and neglect. You can
+see that Germany is a man-made nation. It is not the kind God or
+Nature would make. God must have turned His face when the Teuton
+species was manufactured. Germany is like a man-made hot air
+register. When it isn't throwing up hot air, it is throwing up cold
+air. It is always throwing up."
+
+To change the somewhat painful theme, Kirtley soon began:
+
+"I don't see any sports--such as we know them--in Germany. How do
+they get along without them?" Like all Yankee college men he was
+alert on these lines.
+
+"No sports in Deutschland. Go out on the Dresden golf links of a
+morning and you'll find hardly a German soul playing. It's the same
+in Vienna--the same in Berlin. They have links because it's the
+fashion in England. The Germans ape everything. Go out on the
+highway to Berlin or Vienna or any of the great roads and you will
+seldom meet any Germans touring in their motors for pleasure. Only
+Americans--English. The Germans are spoiling little time by such
+matters. They are busy--busy working for their Empire--busy like
+moles boring away to undermine the earth--busy drilling with arms.
+
+"So you see no sporting terms incorporated in their daily language,
+in their newspaper language, such as we see in England and
+America--terms denoting fair play, square deal, manly courtesy
+toward the under dog. Our Anglo-Saxon motto, 'Don't hit him when
+he's down,' is no motto with the Germans. They think that's just the
+time _to_ hit him. Kick him when he's flattened out. Kick him
+preferably in the face. That's one reason so many Teutons have
+scarred faces. The Anglo-Saxon spirit in a sporting crowd is for the
+little fellow. In Germany, it's for the big fellow--the fellow who
+already has everything on his side.
+
+"This sort of thing, of course, kills the true idea and fun of
+sport. Take away its knightliness of bearing, spirit of
+self-sacrifice, exhibition of pluck though defeat is certain, and
+what have you left to sport about? It merely becomes a question of
+brute force--overwhelming force. You have cruelty left as a net
+result. And that's a large part of German conduct--cruelty to
+underlings or to those who are feebler or caught at an unfair
+disadvantage. Having no leaven of sports is one thing that makes the
+German life seem so heavy, ominous, brutal, to us."
+
+"Its growling rigidity, with all this," Anderson continued gravely,
+"is due to the fact that the old men are mainly in the saddle in
+Germany--men sixty and seventy. The existence and influence of young
+men are not as much in command as with us. These old Germans have
+disgruntled stomachs from so much drinking, and they roar about.
+Physical sports mean nothing to them. And so it seems sometimes as
+if the Germans are born old, not young. Their children are old. This
+helps make them such a serious race--the most serious. And yet
+people insist on believing that this serious race means nothing but
+fun by all its military preparations. Where's the logic?"...
+
+When the journalist went, Kirtley let him through the wall gate with
+its weighted rope. The gate flew back in place with a loud report as
+if to give emphasis to the old man's direful interpretations and
+prophecies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HABITS AND CHILDREN
+
+
+In spite of Anderson, Gard could not make up his mind that Rudolph
+was anything more than a young braggadocio. The idea of an ordinary
+family living comfortably along with a spy in its midst, ready to
+inform on them and their guests, was so foreign to his notions, so
+caddish, that it weakened his confidence in his compatriot's
+judgment. While Gard felt that Rudi was not "straight," he could not
+consider him downright harmful. However, under the spur of the
+valuable significance that Anderson attached to this typical
+household life, Kirtley felt it profitable to observe closely its
+manifestations and opinions. They were verified in other German
+families where Gard often went with the Buchers. What could be more
+truly educational?
+
+In defiance of the famous Teuton discipline, a certain
+disorderliness ran through the management of Villa Elsa. This
+surprised him. The eruptive way meals were served, the jumbled-up
+spectacle of the dining table, beds made up at any time of day,
+knitting and sewing going on in many rooms--all this was in
+unforeseen contrast to the rigorous military and educational
+training and precision. He could but compare the _genre_ picture of
+looseness in the homes with that of the correct and fine army.
+
+The inadequate, almost primitive, bathing facilities in Villa Elsa
+corresponded to the unscoured condition of its occupants. The
+unsightly hairiness of German skins seemed to answer for much
+washing. There was little thought of soap and hot water as a law of
+health, a delight, a luxury. Kirtley had assumed that soiled bodies
+did not betoken the loftiest state of man. But the bath was looked
+upon here as a disagreeable performance and accordingly was only
+indulged in at infrequent intervals. It was discussed freely at
+table as a forthcoming, dreaded event. Gard bathed in town. As for
+fresh underwear and hose, they were talked of over soup like some
+new and rare dispensation of Providence.
+
+Fraeulein alone had a toothbrush and powder, and they appeared rather
+conspicuously here and there as if they were modern ornaments of
+which the household was visibly proud. Bad breaths coming from
+decayed teeth and from stomachs sour with drink were freely blown
+about and without apologies. Indeed, apologies about anything were
+small features at all times.
+
+There was no particular provision for the maid. Gard scarcely knew
+where or how she slept. Tekla dressed with unconcern in the kitchen
+and in the hall. Servant girls were rather considered like calves
+and therefore entitled to scant human consideration. The odors, the
+unsightly colors, the clatter of the German home, gave further
+evidence of the absence of sensitiveness, of any fine and balanced
+poise of nerves.
+
+This repulsiveness of existence, of course, did not affect the
+audible consciousness of the family about their representing the
+most progressive state of civilized man. And not to be forgotten was
+the German ill-temperedness, which was pronounced in the morning,
+and did not wear off considerably until stomachs were filled during
+the day. All these facts testified that the Teuton little cultivates
+loveliness in human contact. Beauty of living is not, with him, a
+natural end to attain.
+
+After awhile it came over Kirtley that the Buchers showed no
+interest in his antecedents or in his country. Their apparent
+ignorance of America was rivaled by their indifference about it.
+They evidently were of the firm conclusion that there was nothing
+worth while there to learn, nothing worthy of attention. It was, to
+them, an unprofitable jumble of peoples and things in a rudimentary,
+unvarnished state of development. It was Patagonia trying to copy
+the ways of Europe. This was but a feature of the Teuton tribal
+belief that all the racial evolutions outside the German borders
+were undesirable, demoralizing and mischievously blocking the
+outspread of _Kultur_.
+
+Gard could not but know of the limited income on which existence
+went on at Villa Elsa. It was characteristic. Though limited, the
+income was _secure_. Despite the economies practiced, the prevailing
+confidence and self-satisfaction did not suffer, as a result, the
+slightest impairment. It was significantly German.
+
+Gard said to himself:
+
+"There are here none of the spectacular ups and downs, everlasting
+sudden changes and movings to and fro, riches one year, poverty the
+next, the unsettledness and acute money misfortunes, that make up so
+large a share of our feverish, restless, uncertain Yankee careers.
+There does not seem to be a synonym for 'hard up' in German. As for
+us Americans the habitual changes of location of the household, the
+separation of the parents for reasons of business, travel, or
+inharmonious temperaments, the resultant ever-growing crop of
+divorces, the frequent living apart of the children, both from
+fathers and mothers and from the home, the loose family ties and
+ignoring of kin who are not of the most immediate relationship--how
+far is all this from the steady, compact, solid, unanxious and
+unthreatened examples of Villa Elsa and German households in
+general!"
+
+The Teutons had a paternal Government which they knew would not let
+them come to want. Their firesides could thrive and accomplish
+greatly on so small a basis because this was stationary and
+unfailing. The American needed so much more because, with him, all
+was relatively unsafe. While he hesitated about rearing a large
+family for this reason among others, the German had no such thought
+of dodging the future, for he knew his children would be taken care
+of.
+
+In fact, he raised his progeny conspicuously for the State. Parental
+feeling was secondary to the Kaiser's wishes. The Bucher children,
+like usual German children, were in effect dedicated to the
+Government, consecrated to its uses. It could come in and did come
+in and take this boy or girl for that and that one for this. It had
+designated Rudi for hydraulic engineering and indicated his
+university course to that end. Ernst was selected for philosophy.
+The parents were not only willing but proud of this. It was not for
+them to resent such outside interference because of any personal
+likes of their own.
+
+Gard wrote Rebner:
+
+"In America, the child's future is somewhat a matter of buffeting
+back and forth aimlessly between teacher and parent. The latter is
+disposed to shirk the responsibility by leaning on the shoulders of
+the instructor who is inclined to keep shifting the burden back to
+the home. As a result, while the German youngster is early being
+adapted to a particular future course for which Nature has given him
+an aptitude, his American competitor is often left to drift through
+the years without definite ambition, or at least with only a belated
+or partly drilled preparation therefor."
+
+In Germany, Kirtley observed, the Government stood as the real
+father. The actual father was its representative. The mother played
+a subsidiary role. All was the father idea. The Germans call it
+Fatherland, not Motherland, as the English affectionately term their
+own country.
+
+This interposition of the State in the Teuton family weakens the
+links of personal tenderness. The State rather than Love rules the
+home. Hence resulted the unfeelingness that Kirtley observed in the
+life about him in Loschwitz--the roughness so little tempered with
+affection, but, instead, frankly interpreted and exhibited as the
+true bearing of the dominant male's masculine nobility.
+
+Quite normally, then, came about the extensive amount of open and
+violent quarreling which Gard noticed in the households. In Villa
+Elsa the Herr quarreled with the Frau, each quarreled with the
+children, they quarreled with Tekla, and she took it out on the
+dogs. It was not disputing among self-respecting equals, but
+ill-humored domineering over those who were confessedly underneath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+DOWN WITH AMERICA!
+
+
+The German text books that came in Gard's way proved the national
+craze for what was Deutsch, _echt Deutsch_, to the exclusion of what
+was not. It was almost a ferocity of inbreeding instruction. It
+created the _furor Teutonicus_. The Hohenzollerns used education as
+a prod to madden the Germans. It kept stirred up, with increasing
+exaggeration and rage, the racial rabidness on the subject of other
+nations.
+
+Kirtley still did not believe that this reached to America and
+Americans, for which topics, as already indicated, the Buchers had
+shown small curiosity in their intercourse with him, seldom
+mentioning the names. But his eyes were abruptly opened wide with
+astonishment and concealed indignation one evening at dinner.
+
+It was a habit for the family, when nothing was pressing, to remain
+at table discussing this and that, nearly always providing the theme
+was German. He encouraged this because he could learn from the
+well-stocked information which the members possessed about Germany
+and the Germans, and for the further reason of conversational
+opportunities.
+
+It may be best to try to reproduce the scene in outline as it
+occurred. The talk had fallen upon governments, nations, peoples--a
+general field of inquiry for which Kirtley had had some predilection
+at college. The vast superiority of the German Government had been
+again, as often before, so emphasized in Villa Elsa that he felt now
+that he ought to raise a question. Should this overweening
+assumption always pass unnoticed, unqualified?
+
+It was partly because the foreigner avoided disputing with the
+Germans, who made discussion unpleasant by their acrid, dictatorial
+manners and drowning diapasons, that their arrogance had so rapidly
+grown out of bounds. They do not recognize courtesies in debate, fly
+off the handle, burst in with interruptions on the half-finished
+statements and sentences of others.
+
+Besides, Kirtley had not yet fully learned that they have not the
+same understanding of things, not the same definitions for the same
+words. For instance, the Buchers insisted that the Germans had the
+most freedom of any nation. But their freedom meant something like
+the liberty allowed in a prison yard. Free press? Yes, it was to be
+found in Deutschland in its highest state, since it was always
+authoritative. And there authority meant liberty of opinion. Again,
+thought was the most free and liberal there, because, as it seemed,
+the German was free to think just as the Kaiser thought. Equity?
+Equity was only what the Teutons wanted, and therefore of the most
+desirable type. And so on.
+
+Such differences were usually antipodal--diametrically opposed. The
+reason, Gard worked out, was that in America and other democratic
+lands the significance of such words sprang from the common people
+upward. In Germany such interpretations proceeded essentially from
+the reigning family downward. Discussions under such circumstances,
+instead of leading toward mutual understanding, breed acrimony.
+There is little room for shadings, amicable approachments, progress
+in the direction of reciprocal enlightenment.
+
+It was a nest of blustering, pugnacious hornets which Kirtley poked
+up on the evening in question, by asking:
+
+"How do you prove that the German Government is the best?"
+
+The Herr, taking his knife from his mouth--the Teuton eats
+conspicuously with his knife--suddenly showed that he had evidently,
+in the presence of his American guest, long held himself in on this
+subject with ill-feelings that clamored to be let loose.
+
+"Prove it? Prove it?" he hoarsely exclaimed. "It needs no proof.
+Everybody knows it. Could we have the greatest people without the
+best Government? Could we have the best education without the best
+Government? Why does everybody come to Germany to study? Why did
+_you_ come? It's because these things are true. Did you ever hear of
+young Germans going elsewhere to universities? They do not need to.
+We have the best."
+
+The family were up in arms. Their Government had been questioned.
+Each member, with the exception of Fraeulein, who was "at class," was
+bursting to talk about America. It had no army. Therefore it
+amounted to little. It had no higher education worthy of the name.
+It had only one institution that could claim to be called a
+university. It had no aristocracy. It was a country of low, lawless
+classes. These and similar sentences flew back at Kirtley, whose
+face reddened. The mask was being at last hurled off. What
+self-control, indeed, had the family before maintained, when they
+were so armed with displeasure concerning the United States! He
+would not have credited it. It was at least illuminating, if
+blinding. For what could be the excuse, provocation? Nothing that he
+had ever heard of. The two peoples had been so separate and
+distinct. The words of Anderson rushed into his mind. "The Germans
+can hate people they've never known, never seen. They hate on
+principle and without principle."
+
+Knives and forks figured in the air, beer mugs were grabbed and
+banged down, napkins took refuge under the table as if in fright,
+to be indiscriminately dirtied under foot. The gulped down food,
+meeting the oncoming throaty expressions of irritability, created
+much alimentary confusion. Gard almost trembled. Here he had been
+for weeks dwelling in a friendly society, in an intimate
+relationship, without any realization of what ugly thoughts were
+secretly leveled at him in the form of a political unit. As an
+individual, he had been most welcome. As a citizen of the United
+States he was despised. The Herr vociferated:
+
+"What is your country, tell me, what is your country? It is _nichts,
+nichts_. It is not a country. It is a ragout, a potpourri, a mess.
+We do not recognize such a country. It has no beginnings, no
+tradition, no unity of blood, no ideals----" He choked and the Frau
+flared forth while attempting to crack a nut between her teeth.
+
+"The American people are the off-scourings of Europe. They were
+criminals, atheists, diseased people, failures, who were sent away
+from Europe. So they go and try to found a new race, a new nation.
+They try, but they fail of course...."
+
+When his mother got out of breath, little Ernst began with a milder,
+more judicial air, though he seemed partly to have memorized
+official declarations.
+
+"Don't you think, Herr Kirtley, it stands to reason that our
+reigning family, which is admitted to be honest and has practiced
+ruling for centuries, knows better how to govern a race than the
+always new and untried persons who keep taking the reins of
+government in a democracy? The Americans can never tell far ahead
+who is to rule. There are changes all the time. How can the citizen
+prepare confidently for the future? How can he plan long ahead as we
+do? I have always read that this is the reason things are so steady
+and stable in Germany and so uncertain and wabbling in America. This
+uncertainty hanging over a republic unsettles its population. You
+have panics, lynchings, graft. We are free of such scourges. Our
+Government is always the same unit and to be relied on. If new
+policies are begun, it is there to carry them through to their
+logical end, even if it takes a generation or longer. You have
+always new statesmen with new ideas. We no sooner learn to know of
+one of your politicians than he is dropped and we must read about
+another in control. How does that make for any well-considered and
+thoroughly demonstrated plans? Would it not be the natural result
+that the German people are completely contented and the American
+people are always discontented?"
+
+Rudolph's excited pronouncements ran along a different line,
+interchanged with voluminous whiffs of tobacco.
+
+"Under our Government, Herr Kirtley, the German flag is seen in all
+parts of the globe. And wherever it is seen, it is respected,
+feared. Who ever sees the American flag? Even _I_ don't know what it
+looks like. It is not feared. It is only noticed out of voluntary
+courtesy. And a nation can't be really great without an army like
+ours. The army is the spine of the country. It makes a country a
+vertebrate. What would even Germany be without its army? Almost
+nothing. The army consolidates, trains, disciplines. It gives us
+health, good constitutions, industrious habits, exactness. It makes
+a nation superior because it fortifies human effort. In the constant
+changing of our regiments about to different sections of the Empire,
+our soldiers come to be well acquainted everywhere. They make
+friends and are at home in every direction. They learn to realize
+how great we are and this strengthens the German feeling and makes
+all parts of the nation one.
+
+"Of course we have the only first-class army. All our General Staff
+has to do any day is to say the word and, as I have so often said,
+our army can go out and defeat the world. Our navy will soon be in a
+position to destroy England's. We are getting her trade routes, her
+mail routes. Our goods are now selling everywhere. It is not only
+because they are the best and the cheapest, but because our army and
+our navy stand behind them to _make_ people know what is best for
+them. Every little German box of goods has a big gun behind it. Of
+course we don't need to use the gun--_yet_--because people are
+crying for our manufactures all over the world. If we had occupied
+your big and half-developed country in your place, we would have
+long ago been the only great State. There would have been no others.
+We would have annihilated them if they were not willing to become
+German provinces."
+
+Rudi took a long pull at his cigarette, with his elbows outspread
+like the haughty wings of the Prussian eagles of war. Emitting a
+long streamer of smoke, he summed up the whole thing in a nutshell
+with a derisory--Pouf!
+
+Kirtley was inwardly fired up with resentment. Then he had to
+smother a laugh. This exhibition of the family taken off its guard
+was more instructive than volumes of discussion he might read about
+the true German attitude toward America--toward everyone. Were these
+but Goths with the German skins scratched off a little? He kept
+thinking of Anderson--how it furnished the pure evidence of what the
+latter was despairing of before deaf ears! Gard's respect, his
+sympathy, for the old man, jumped up with patriotic fervor.
+
+He marveled at first how the good Buchers had been primed with this
+knowledge, these comparisons. Then he realized that the editorials
+and other articles in the Dresden journals, whose lengthy, heavy,
+pounding sentences confused with an obtuse, inverted syntax he was
+reading at Anderson's suggestion, accounted for these venomous
+conceptions and prejudices.
+
+"So it is our duty to hate," broke in the Herr once more, with
+croaks and grunts now behind his long porcelain pipe which roved
+down over his stomach, a green tassel dangling at the end. "We give
+our children beatings to educate them, don't we? So we have the best
+education. We must give the world a beating to improve it."
+
+The Frau all the while could hardly restrain herself.
+
+"You know what we in Germany call Americans? We call them
+pigs--yes, _pigs_. America is like a big pig pen where everybody is
+wallowing over everybody for money--just for money."
+
+"And Germany," added her elder son, "is just waiting till the United
+States gets money enough, then we go in with our _navy_ and our
+_army_ and take it all."
+
+Gard wanted to see how far they _would_ go, and he had seen. Was
+this the old barbarian of the north risen to earth again, his rude
+garments of hide torn off, exposing him in his pristine, fighting
+nakedness? Where was the German under it all--the German who was
+taken to be civilized in heart and spirit as other men are? These
+law-abiding, stay-at-home people had deliberately grown in Villa
+Elsa this robust plant of contempt, so full-blossomed now and ready
+to exhale its noisome fumes which at moments almost stifled Kirtley
+with their poison. What would Rebner say to this with his golden,
+soul-felt opinions of the excelling race!
+
+This hospitable and apparently harmless domicile was, in reality,
+like a martial encampment. Gard could not but conclude that he would
+have to leave Loschwitz. How could he for a moment stay in face of
+these direct and hard-fisted attacks? And certainly Villa Elsa would
+not want to harbor a hog any longer. The similar households he had
+come to know, all such households, unquestionably bore the same
+furious grudges against the western hemisphere.
+
+But Elsa? How could he leave her--like this? She was the first girl
+to excite seriously his affections. She seemed to strike the note of
+whatever was truly earnest in him. Yet did she, too, think Americans
+were pigs? Did she consider him of such an inferior breed? Perhaps,
+in her misled innocence, she did. Perhaps that was the reason why
+she acted toward him in an upsetting fashion which only the more
+tempted a certain tenacious element in his make-up.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+AFTERMATH
+
+
+This astonishing outbreak in Villa Elsa was followed by something
+still more singular to Kirtley, or at least out of his reckoning. It
+was to stir the depths of his contemplations and comparisons and
+give him the sharpest look into German character he had yet
+received. It was to show him that a gaping abyss might be separating
+the Teuton from other western humanity. Having latterly doubted that
+the race was easy of sympathetic grasp, any true kinship, he now
+profoundly realized that instead of being able to approach it nearer
+in feeling the more he knew it, he was encountering very high cliffs
+that threatened forever to mark an inaccessible boundary line.
+
+He had taken it for granted that the anti-American outburst would
+end the Buchers' relations with him. He must have turned out to be
+very unwelcome. The very sight of him as one of the American pigs
+about the house must have been most unsatisfactory, distasteful.
+They could not from now on visibly wish him or any Yankee in their
+home. Their personal dignity could not permit their assault to be
+backed up afterward by any equivocal conduct toward him.
+
+Then, too, they would expect that he would not want to remain. Had
+they not voluntarily, deliberately, hurled at him their defiant
+scorn of his people? Self-respect would demand his immediate
+departure.
+
+As for himself, Gard passed a sleepless night thinking hotly about
+the episode. Toward morning he cooled off. These were boors. Why
+should he take to heart their boorishness? Richness was here indeed.
+Just the place to keep finding out the real German. Having let the
+bars down with such a bang and hullabaloo, the family would from now
+on readily and fully reveal themselves. It is a poor investigator
+and observer who is easily shied away from his purpose by taunts and
+ill-breeding.
+
+But the miracle was that the Buchers went on exactly as before. They
+obviously saw no reasons for altering their friendly daily
+intercourse, nor did they have any idea that he should harbor a
+grievance. Beginning with the next morning, their usual amicable
+bearing and attentions continued uninterrupted. The family was not
+conscious of having tried to give mortal offense or to cause
+resentment from him.
+
+For, to a German, blows in all senses are a normal part of living.
+His social habits indulge themselves in knocks, coarse attacks,
+unseemly abuse, as rather matters of course. He wields a bludgeon
+where more refined men would cut down with sarcasm or wither one
+with disdain. Blows are his natural method of instructing others and
+of getting himself instructed. "Good German blows" are what the
+Kaiser talked of loudly. To strike as well as to kick is a
+wholesome, healthful, righteous procedure, not to be grieved over,
+not to be kept rankling in the bosom. It is truth and fact in
+action, and action should always be forceful and decisive to be
+effective. The whipping of a school boy for any just cause should
+not be remembered by him throughout life as something to be allowed
+to fester or as calling for angry vengeance.
+
+So Gard's hosts pursued the tenor of their ways as if that
+detonating night had witnessed nothing. Their insensitiveness about
+it included insensitiveness about him. In other words, he discovered
+that as you cannot insult a German, therefore he cannot insult you.
+He does not know about such things in the Anglo-Saxon meaning. His
+conception of social and moral values is so obtusely or radically
+different from those of the truly occidental civilizations that
+there is little common ground here. Consequently, in such relations,
+the Teuton does not feel anything to be sorry for. There is nothing
+for him to worry about in any shame the next day.
+
+Kirtley learned gradually, through his dealings with tradesmen and
+in hearing business men talk in the cafes, that this underbred
+attitude extended into the German secular world. A German may cheat
+you, lie to you, take a grossly unfair advantage of your good faith,
+but he will not expect that this is going to interfere with a
+continuance of your business relations. It is only a part of the
+hard game of gain. If you indignantly enumerate to him the facts of
+your unpleasant discovery, he sees little about which to bear a
+grudge. He is not humiliated. He merely and unfortunately did not
+succeed, or succeeded while unluckily you found him out.
+
+Likewise if one lies to him, cheats him or otherwise mistreats him
+in a transaction, he does not permanently lay it up against the
+evil-doer. For he knows he would have done the same thing under
+similar circumstances. He is prepared to go on next week with the
+usual dealings. Of course he will complain with prompt vigor, and
+rage in his favorite fashion, but it is only because of his material
+loss or discomfort, not because of broken standards of trusted faith
+lying dishonored in the dust.
+
+All this alien side of German character thus came to be lain before
+Gard like a scroll unrolled. He read its lines with eyes blinking in
+wonderment. And this was the people who were to lead the earth.
+
+The only part of it he felt the Buchers did not comprehend and were
+disappointed about, was that he did not candidly acknowledge the
+porcine truth of all they had shouted at him. He was of a
+heterogeneous conglomeration called Yankees. He should admit it. He
+was stupid not to. For him not to join in the Bucher chorus of
+Germany's greatness was a poor return for all they were doing for
+his ease and profit. But he was an American and of course the
+Americans--
+
+It must be quickly acknowledged, it is true, that Kirtley's
+experiences and observations along these channels did not
+necessarily show that the Teuton is less honest than others. Let it
+be granted that he is fully as upright as anyone in the sum total of
+his commercial transactions. The point Gard uncovered was that here
+were full-fledged race traits and habitudes which stood counter to
+Christian ideals, were pagan in type, were due to a lower stratum of
+moral and social perceptions.
+
+The explosion in Villa Elsa led him on to another revealment. What
+was it but a rather puerile performance? Tactless, boisterous
+youngsters blurt out the disagreeable sentiments of a household. The
+Buchers had acted like children. Laying aside all question of the
+wonderful German trained mind, knowledge, efficiency, Gard observed
+so much that was boy-like and girl-like in the adult Teuton life. No
+country has such a wealth of toys and juvenile story books as
+Germany. The Teuton weaves his nursery tales, so grotesque and
+strikingly cruel, into his grown-up years. All this influence
+continues with him and affects him strongly as long as he lives. The
+mature German can kick, sulk, whine, much as his offspring do. When
+irritated he can easily act like an _enfant terrible_.
+
+What is quaint, droll, distorted, comically ugly, or of a
+gingerbready effect, in Germany, is the expression of this childish
+strain. And it appeals particularly there to the youthfulness that
+remains in the hearts of visiting foreigners. It is accordingly one
+of the most popular Teuton aspects, especially among women and the
+young.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+MILITARY BLOCKHEADS
+
+
+Gard's attentions to Elsa continued intermittently, and as if
+detached, on their unadvancing course. He had, however, reached the
+stage of playing piano duets with her. This is always hopeful.
+Occasionally they rambled through Schubert's little Vienna love
+waltzes and other selections that could top off an evening with
+melodies of a sprightly and sentimental nature. He felt he was
+becoming acquainted with her in a way he otherwise could not. She
+was more cheerful at these times, exhilarated by the music.
+
+He had learned a large part of his playing by ear. Reading at sight
+was a fresh experience. She corrected his fingering while helping
+fill out his conversational vocabulary. It was certainly most
+agreeable to have Fraeulein take his fingers in her warm, plump,
+flexible hand with conscientious authority and show him the method
+of the Dresden Conservatoire.
+
+Think of a young and lustrous miss being able to instruct him like a
+veteran! He had never considered American girls in such a light--had
+never expected to learn anything of profitable skill from them.
+Elsa, for her part, regarded it as a curious and amusing experience
+to watch this tall man playing like a boy. The musical Germans she
+knew were adept at some instrument.
+
+He formed the habit of adding _en_, or its variants, to the English
+equivalent of the German word he could not think of, and she seemed
+to be struck by this as a very original fashion of eliciting
+information. On one occasion at the piano they heard the entrance
+bell below clang, announcing a visitor, and Gard, hastening to
+disappear upstairs, exclaimed:
+
+"Wir muessen--wir muessen--_stopfen_!"
+
+The word for stop would not come to him. Fraeulein blushed and
+snickered and ran off to tell her mother about Herr Kirtley and his
+German. He was frightened. What absurdity had he uttered? He got to
+his dictionary as soon as he could and found he had said--We must
+darn stockings!
+
+The incident nearly always put Elsa in good humor. She doubtless
+considered Yankees an odd folk. How could they expect to become
+civilized with their rudimentary attainments? Must he not be seeming
+to her a sort of freak?...
+
+But, for the most part, she continued to hold him aloof, and he
+concluded the reason lay in the mystery which shadowed her young
+life and to which he could trace no clue. What could it frankly be
+that sent her to her room and to Heine? The beginning of the answer
+seemed to come at last in the form of a youth who suddenly soared in
+at Villa Elsa.
+
+Herr Friedrich von Tielitz-Leibach was a composer and a music
+director. He was the son of a neighbor who had moved away, and the
+musical Buchers doted on him as one with a shining future. Kirtley
+had often heard them refer to Friedrich as to so many of their
+friends of whom he knew nothing.
+
+When Friedrich called, at very rare intervals, it was always a
+wonderful day. The steady, stolid routine of the home became
+perturbed, gladdened. He was a German of Hungarian extraction, and
+the Magyar blood gave him a dash and sparkle. He was tall, very
+thin, with the intellectual look that black-rimmed glasses produce.
+His eyes harmonized in color with the black shock of tossing hair
+that set off a distinguished appearance. And, like a traditional
+votary of music, he wore a great black cloak swinging around him
+with an operatic air, giving the impression that he was just going
+to or coming from the theater.
+
+Highly agitated, gilded with flattery, readily acquainted, he
+bubbled over promptly in confidences and intimate allusions. He was
+ever brimming with the freshest gossip of himself and his exalted
+career; and his personal experiences, he assumed, were bound to be
+unique and entertaining.
+
+Making friends with everyone, he insisted on calling on Gard up in
+the attic room, pleased to welcome such an "excellent person"--as he
+had heard downstairs--to the fold of the family. But did they not
+lead such dull, stagnant, imbecile lives, moored here in this
+stodgy, out-of-the-world suburb, where so many idiots live who
+wonder how the world can come to an end when it's round? Friedrich
+truly hoped Herr Kirtley would not be bored to death.
+
+To-day the musician had finished with his final military examination
+and was at last free from ever having to serve. He made a diverting
+story of it and had hastened to the Villa to recount the
+congratulatory news.
+
+"I had to report this morning for military service, just having got
+back to Dresden. So I went to the Platz and there sat an officer as
+big as a hogshead. And I hope not as full. He began treating me as
+if I were a truant school boy. 'Stand up! Sit down! Stand up again!'
+So the examination commenced. I knew I was not fit for the army. I
+did not want to go. I hate it. But they were after me. He said:
+
+"'Take off your glasses!' I removed them. He said:
+
+"'What is that letter off there?' Mein Gott! it looked as far off as
+Pillnitz. It was my left eye out of which I had seen nothing since I
+was a baby.
+
+"'I see nothing,' I said. He yelled:
+
+"'You can!' Then I said:
+
+"'I can't!' Then he roared out:
+
+"'Why can't you?'
+
+"'Because I am blind in it!' He glared at me as if I were a
+perjurer.
+
+"'It is blind and you can see nothing out of it?'
+
+"And now I was getting out of patience with this blockhead. Blind
+and can't see out of it! They put the blockheads in the army because
+there is no other place for them. I think that must be the reason
+why there are more synonyms for blockhead in the German language
+than in any other--we have the largest army. I said:
+
+"'Of course I can't see anything out of it because it's blind,
+you---- ' I was just on the point of adding 'fool' when I stopped
+myself in time. It was the military--the august _military_. One must
+hold his peace before the magnificent military. He thought I was
+cheating about my eye because I did not want to march to Moscow, to
+Paris. And I don't want to march to Moscow or Paris. They're so far.
+
+"So this stupid _Kerl_ took me over to a higher officer and still
+another. They sat there as stiff and self-complacent as wooden
+saints in a plaster church. They too shouted at me They were so
+suspicious, although I had never had the pleasure of meeting any of
+them before.
+
+"'You say you are blind in one eye and can't see out of it?'
+
+"I screamed, 'No, no, no!' They thought I might be going insane.
+They examined my eye, my glasses, and tried all kinds of tests to
+try to fool my poor eye. But it remained my faithful friend, and
+they were mad. And I was just as mad and ready to shriek at
+them--'Blind! Blind! Blind!' I was losing half a day for nothing
+over their stupidities.
+
+"Then the _Dummkopfen_ began to enter it up on their official
+blotters. That seemed to take forever too. I was nearly exhausted.
+They solemnly wrote me down as blind in one eye and cannot see out
+of it. And at last, Gott sei Dank! they let me go, glowering at me
+as if they were still sure I was somehow tricking them. And here I
+am--alive!"
+
+Friedrich's ludicrous recital, embellished by a hundred gestures and
+poses, had raised a guffaw even in Villa Elsa.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+A LIVELY MUSICIAN
+
+
+Gard discovered that such mockery or berating of military officials,
+with whom the ordinary public came in servile contact, was rather
+common in Germany in spite of the universal adoration of the army.
+
+Intermixed with Friedrich's take-off were his moments of "the grand
+manner," appropriate to a musical director who is born to command
+fickle or imperious singers and musicians. He was naturally an
+actor. His refreshing mimicries amused Gard. Against the bovine
+background of the Villa Elsa circle, he stood out in relief as an
+enlivening figure with flitting phases of elegance.
+
+He was clever, talented. He spun off a lot of new music at the
+piano, much of it coming from his own pen. Elsa hung absorbed over
+the wing of the instrument. Friedrich, of about Kirtley's age but
+adequately equipped and ambitious, was aspiring to some one of the
+dignified thrones in the musical kingdom of Germany. Gard was only
+just hatching out as a man. He was essentially but a lad grown up.
+Von Tielitz showed already a wholly developed maturity. German
+instruction again versus American education!
+
+Friedrich was better versed in English than the Bucher children. He
+paid two calls on Gard that first day. Talking Anglo-Saxon was good
+practice. On the second call he discharged a missile that struck
+Kirtley near the heart, and gave him a feeling of faintness.
+
+"Don't you like Elsa?" Von Tielitz whipped out with no preamble.
+"She is really a nice girl, a very nice girl. Her family thinks we
+are to marry. Well, perhaps. I don't know. Sometimes I think yes.
+Sometimes I think no. There are so many others, don't you know. But
+I think we will marry as soon as I get my Kapellmeistership. We are
+always such good friends. She used to sit on my lap before I went
+away. O! we are _very_ good friends. But now I am not so much in
+Dresden and, my dear Mr. Kirtley, my poor Kapellmeistership does not
+come along. It is most aggravating, as you say in English. I get so
+discouraged."
+
+He brightened again.
+
+"They tell me you and Elsa have been playing duos. Such good
+training. Very agreeable. We used to play together also. A nice girl
+to rub one's knees against under the piano--oh,
+
+    "I am Titania the blond,
+     Titania, of the air!"
+
+Friedrich twittered gayly the lines from "Mignon." Then he abruptly
+changed.
+
+"But I have now so little time for serious maidens. Ach Himmel! How
+I am driven by going here and going there! One says this to me,
+another says that to me, and my head gets all in a whirl."
+
+So he wandered on with his mixtures of _nonchalance_, condescension
+and, above all, his ebullient self-esteem that flowed over on to
+everyone to the point of deluging them. When he went away, it was
+with such a warm invitation to call upon him the next week that
+Kirtley could not but accept. Besides, here was opened up a novel
+and suggestive line of behavior from the standpoint of the German
+young man of the world.
+
+Gard was left with confused feelings that drooped their wings in
+displeasure if not distress. So there was a rival, and of long
+standing, on the little rosy sea of his romance! And this was he.
+Was it a wonder that Elsa had "spells"? Here was a true
+heart-breaker. Just the type to play havoc with a girl. What place
+was there left for the mild, unpretending Gard? And still she
+deserved far better than Von Tielitz. Perhaps it was this feeling
+that added to her unhappiness. His vulgarity! To talk as Von Tielitz
+did about one who might become his wife, and to a stranger, was a
+new form of German brutality. It steadied and deepened Gard's
+admiration for her. Who ever heard a young Yankee speak like this
+about his serious sweetheart? However raw he may be, there is a
+certain sacred respect at the bottom of his language about her--his
+bearing toward her.
+
+Elsa did not appear at meals for a day or two after Friedrich left.
+Kirtley was not encouraged by learning that this usually happened
+after a call from the composer. He thought it strange that the Frau,
+with all her plain speech and hardy lack of sentiment, still made
+no reference to her daughter's trouble. Marriage is to the Germans
+such an earth-to-earth affair, as Gard perceived, that he marveled
+she did not unbosom herself capaciously about what must be a
+mother's anxiety. But the Teuton daughter is like a glove that can
+be put on or cast off by the sovereign male. She is meant to be
+toughened, exposed to rude blasts, fortified, to be able to support
+the draft-mare burdens of Teuton wifehood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+IMMORALITY AND OBSCENITY
+
+
+Gard now descended unwittingly into one of the darkest regions of
+German life, and one which foreign publics had persistently missed
+or voluntarily overlooked in their chorus of approbation of the
+race.
+
+It is a familiar dictum that one can judge of a nation pretty fairly
+by the position and treatment of its women. Kirtley had never, in
+America, heard anything about Deutschland in this light. But he soon
+found in Saxony that this was only one of the numerous German topics
+on which little publicity was shed in his homeland in spite of the
+general emphasis laid on German preeminence. This emphasis was
+mainly a diffusion, through mere books of information, about
+achievements and an extraordinary condition of learned mentality. Of
+the actual inhabitants beyond the Rhine, ignorance was kept
+widespread. German femininity was assumed to be of a predominating
+excellence to match that of German masculinity.
+
+No study of a people is indeed complete without an unglossed inquiry
+into its conduct toward its women and children. To say that the
+German's business traits are the same and as reputable as those of
+other races, is below the mark. In this secular domain he is
+compelled to deal and to act within the accepted formulae of trade.
+To do otherwise would be to ostracize himself.
+
+But he is in no such competition or is subject to no such exactions
+in his attitude toward his own women and children. With them he does
+as he pleases and his real nature stands forth. These truly vital
+matters have been passed over as if unnoticed by the world, as has
+been said, and still it wonders why it cannot learn what the German
+is--does not understand him. He is, perhaps more than anyone, what
+he is toward his own inferiors--toward those who are weaker and
+dependent.
+
+The question of German womanhood and girlhood should not therefore
+be blinked by the earnest contemplator. It was not long before Gard
+was saying to himself that if Americans could be made to realize
+the status of womankind in Deutschland, they would not be so lured
+by the idea of sending their young folk thither for education. There
+would be a marked decline in their generous enthusiasm for _all_
+things German. In what civilized land does woman lead less in lofty,
+sublimated power or put a fainter stamp on the talents of the race?
+German art, music, poetry, language, politics, education, all are
+distinctively masculine. The Teuton woman merely partakes of the
+life of man, the ideal. She does not assume to lead him. She would
+seem so far below par that, as Gard had seen, even flirtation
+scarcely exists in Deutschland. Flirtation is particularly a custom
+among equals.
+
+When he returned Friedrich's visits as promised, he found him
+sharing the room of his friend Karl Messer. Messer was a successful
+architect who had already secured a Government commission while the
+equally youthful Kirtley--may it be repeated--had not begun real
+life and, according to the American plan, could do nothing very
+well. Those two room-mates and cronies were leading the typical
+Teuton existence of youths who combined proficient work with a frank
+sensuality accompanied, of course, by much imbibing in the German
+way. And it may be preliminarily noted that what explorations Gard
+afterward made in this great and seamy side of Teuton nature,
+likewise ended in a downward direction toward depths that he had
+scarcely thought possible in the educated human.
+
+Von Tielitz and Messer had been at an uproarious ball the night
+before and were idling about, recuperating. They had accomplished
+the ruin there of two girls, which they looked upon as truly manly
+sport. Assuming that Kirtley, as must be the case with all young
+men, was equally interested with them in being satyrs, they lost no
+time in trying to entertain him with their adventures.
+
+The pursuit of woman! In Germany this is not very difficult, as she
+is not visibly unhappy to consider herself the legitimate prey of
+the lordly sex. This idea runs naturally and powerfully throughout
+the Teuton scheme. It is not merely that the female is considered to
+have a price, but the price must be low, if not a cypher. To German
+women the triumphant male is a splendid creature. His acts are
+noble. To be hungry, thirsty, sensual are proper, and therefore
+candid, attributes in man. In order to subdue the earth, the race
+must be prolific, and to be prolific, desires must not be limited or
+weakened by pale Puritanisms. That men are normally uncleansed
+sewers from which the face need not be averted, was a conception
+Kirtley's senses had fallen somewhat foul of in the Bucher home. To
+what point this aspect was carried logically outside Villa Elsa, he
+was to realize in skirting the openly sensual sides.
+
+The two Germans told of the various girls who had lived with them
+when in college. For the frank amatory life of the Teuton student
+begins early. Von Tielitz and Messer also boasted of their
+present-day mistresses who were so often changed for reasons of
+economy. The hilarious game, as Gard learned, was to obtain favors
+in exchange for nothing as far as possible. Trickery, lies, abuse,
+kicks, were employed to this purpose. Female chastity? A fable for
+the impotent. Consequently all was fair.
+
+Sisters of their respected fellows were inferentially appraised and
+colloquially "hefted" as articles of social commerce ready to be
+knocked off matrimonially to the best bidder under the material
+rules of the German _Mitgift_ system. Through the garish films of
+innuendo and braggadocio that day Kirtley was led to behold images
+of these daughters as if they were languishing to become mates and
+beating their breasts in their longing to become mothers. He had by
+no means now forgotten Friedrich's equivocal remarks about Elsa.
+
+Before Gard was to leave Deutschland he had to conclude that the
+German puts himself in the attitude of thinking of his women as
+sluttish and accordingly acting in that scale toward them. There
+is no great gilding to these fancies. Girls are small inspiration
+to him compared with what the _petites dames_ are to the amorous
+Frenchman. Idealization of love in its ultimate fulfillment, the
+poetizing of the ardent flesh crying out for its craving mate,
+are characteristically ignored by the Teuton who seeks the baser
+gratifications without illuminations of loveliness or hesitations
+of delicate refinement.
+
+Kirtley thought he knew young men, yet this revolting capacity in
+them in Germany was proven to him to be not unnormal by its openness
+and by the dearth of any loud voices in rebuke. The German is
+conspicuously full of animal spirits. He affects the mighty in
+physique. Exudations and emanations are frank and prominent
+functions.
+
+Under the Kaiser the Berlin dame who rented rooms to the foreign
+student, offering them "with" or "without," meaning sometimes her
+own daughter in the bargain, considered herself respectable enough.
+More than this she acted in line with what appeared to be the
+purpose of acquiring a sympathetic control of the morals as well as
+the minds of the alien sojourner, the one being accompanied by a
+pandering to his lower nature with the doors of vice flagrantly ajar
+while the other armed his mentality with a Teutonized equipment and
+outlook. To sap the will, to galvanize the mind as from a German
+electric battery, palsied resistance to aggressive Germania. It was
+of a piece with that propaganda which the world was not to wake up
+to until almost too late.
+
+These downright animal phases pointed the way logically, in Gard's
+mind, to that obscenity which is interwoven in the German
+civilization. He had first come across such evidence in leading
+comic journals. The drawings and jests that did not leave much to
+be filled out, adorned many a German page with an Adamic candor. It
+divorced him from _Simplicissimus_ and _Ulk_, not that he was
+squeamish or a Miss Priscilla, but he saw no fun in that sort of
+thing.
+
+He talked of it later with Anderson. Though there were pleasant
+delusions in Anderson's mind about Germany before he arrived, it was
+not his fault if few seemed to be left after his seven years. He
+bluntly defined the limited German wit and humor as
+characteristically born of the latrine.
+
+Gard's two young friends did not refrain from talk in the key of
+indecency. Their complacent revelation of the extent to which the
+pornographic enters into the German scene, suggested an unclosed
+Priapean volume whose companion in America is as a sealed book.
+Kirtley heard that stores filled with obscene objects publicly for
+sale were to be found on frequented thoroughfares in German cities.
+
+He saw that Frau Bucher's insistence on a chaperone, which he had
+regarded a silly, outworn conventionality, appeared most wise.
+Germany was a poor place for an unguarded German girl.
+
+This ran through his mind:
+
+"Great Guns! What a country for me to study for the ministry, study
+morality, best fit myself for life, as advised by Rebner and, it
+seems--everybody!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE NAKED CULT
+
+
+The German, in all this physical aspect, is not a little like an
+unabashed ape. Accordingly the foreigner in Deutschland is impressed
+by the popular worship of the wide-hipped female. The Teuton can
+leave little to be inferred but that he is more interested in the
+magnet of her developed hips than in the magic of her brain.
+
+American women, with their slender waists and chaste frigidness born
+of Plymouth Rock, with their rulership in the home, their influence
+permeating conspicuously in matters of public interest out of the
+home, their entire freedom to be courted and married or let alone in
+unbounded respect--how long would these conditions have been
+permitted by the Gothic Kaiser if heedless America had fallen into
+his gradually tightening grip? Doubtless to his view Yankee women
+were treated too much like dolls. They are not breeders of
+soldiers, makers of kingdoms. They do not rear children for the
+State. What have they desirably in common with the disciplined
+Hausfrau who becomes the mother of the ruling future generations?
+_She_ is properly the chattel of the Government.
+
+And so it is not enough, as Gard recognized, for Frau or Fraeulein to
+be massive of line and fond of being upholstered in dense colors in
+order to satisfy the general grossness of her male. It is not enough
+that she should be armed with strong hands, planted on large feet,
+and decorated in the German's favorite rococo manner of abounding
+breasts, to gratify his cyclopean aspirations.
+
+"Big hips mean big women and big women mean big empires." The sex
+fecund, ardent for mating and offspring, is the type. And thus
+fatness, which obviously and indisputably fills out the picture, is
+a popular German female attribute. Von Tielitz and Messer made it
+plain that obesity and width of girth characterized the transient
+objects of their amours. And their allusions gave every evidence
+that the famous Naked Cult, to the fascinations of which Fraeulein
+Wasserhaus, with her bared and redundant bosom, was yielding, had
+been claiming the German youth for its own.
+
+Germany was recovering from this rage for nudity which had assumed
+some proportions. Starting from the only artistic section of the
+Empire, namely Bavaria, this cult had knocked even against the
+gloomy portals of the Pommeranian churches in the north. The Teuton
+had suddenly discovered that it was right and proper in his godship,
+as it was in the realm of the Greek deities, to go about naked. It
+was natural, healthful, and both beautiful and moral.
+
+German men and women, in their divinity, should bathe, drink beer,
+dance together nude. What else did Grecian sculpture teach to these
+the modern Greeks--the true legatees of all that was Hellenic? What
+else did painting inculcate but the beauty of undraped couples
+wandering through landscapes? What more majestic spectacle than that
+of the Teuton father, mother and children going out for an afternoon
+promenade, clothed only in the ingenuous consciousness of their
+human greatness?
+
+In a race of beings so little modeled after the accepted lines of
+pulchritude, all this was laughable. But to the German, condemned
+to a vise-like seriousness and to childlikeness, it became
+significant and weighty. It was such a grateful revelation not to
+have to dream of his loved ones through the unsatisfactory medium of
+German clothing.
+
+With his customary excess of logic he plunged headlong into these
+ardent waves of the realm of Venus rising unimpeachably from the sea
+in her immortal bareness. He began to systematize this
+demonstration. Some of the political parties seemed to be in line to
+favor this revealment of another radical tenet. German philosophers
+made ready to seize upon it with huge mental biceps and labor to
+incorporate it beneficently into the Teuton pansophy. Even doctors
+of theology were said to view the novel dispensation through the
+blue spectacles of their didacticism, and to hesitate and stumble
+over the question of greeting these glad visions of a glad
+apocalypse. What was truer Protestantism than that there is the
+natural body as well as the spiritual body, and that it would be
+virtuous to behold outwardly the former as it was virtuous to
+recognize inwardly the latter?
+
+The campaign became almost lively. Of course the young Germans,
+whose fathers and mothers in their youth had raved over Wagner and
+thus shocked their elders, raved over a departure that linked such
+possibilities of frankness and loveliness so delectably together.
+The Von Tielitzes and Messers were in the seventh heaven.
+
+But Germany, being a northern country ruled severely in the main by
+old men, was bound to feel in the end more comfortable in clothes.
+Climate governs male and female alike and shapes their habits to its
+own tyrannical mandates. The Teutons were doomed to suggest flannel.
+So a vast moral revulsion in the form of the much German clothedness
+finally rose up and overwhelmed the religion of Nudity--the _Nackt
+Kultur_. Although the Teuton male likes to contemplate himself and
+be contemplated as candid Mother Nature made him, he could not adapt
+himself to the idea of his fleshy women appearing naked before a
+critical and commenting world. Momus had at last arrived in ancient
+Deutschland and was feared.
+
+While the movement, which was presuming to cover Germany with
+sculptures of its heroes in complete undress, honored itself by
+such fitting testimonials to their lordliness, Fritz curiously
+shrank before public statues depicting his fat housewife in like
+absence of attire. This was illogical besides being unsatisfactory
+to those who had insisted on worshipping the German female form _al
+fresco_. The vital point being thus dodged, there was left nothing
+interesting in the way of legs for the Naked Cult to stand on, and
+it dropped out of sight as suddenly as it had risen to view.
+Prejudice is Plebeian and blind and to the blind and Plebeian high
+art of course goes with low morals. The Plebs are always in the
+crushing majority. So the odd German mind jumped to the other
+extreme and for a few months got ashamed of little daughters going
+barefoot or playing with naked animal toys.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gard had been able to warm up small sympathy for the modern military
+authors and iron and blood philosophers whom he found in vogue in
+Germany. On the other hand, cold water had unexpectedly been thrown
+on the retreating Goethes and Schillers whom he had come to venerate
+with grammar and lexicon. As the Germans were proving to be wide of
+what his anticipations had set as a mark, he had begun a serious
+course of reading not only about the modern race but about its
+origins, curious to know of the early developments of this strange
+people who belonged to civilization yet was so considerably and
+constitutionally outside the realm of its Christian development.
+
+In this study he became attracted to Charlemagne and that epoch. Of
+them he had learned little at college. Of course the Germans had
+"bagged" Charlemagne, as an Englishman would express it, in addition
+to their other seizures right and left in the face of an indulgent,
+even supine, world. But Gard discovered that while they had kept the
+puissant Carolingian snatched to their breasts, the chivalrous side
+of the great medieval evolution which ended in fostering the
+romantic ideal of womanhood in its chastity, daintiness and colorful
+spell, had never reached much east of his capital--Aix-la-Chapelle.
+His heroic size, his practical religious pretensions and
+assumptions, his campaigns to seize control of foreign lands--all
+such Carolingian features and manifestations were imitated and
+adopted as German _motifs_, but the corresponding gallant exaltation
+of the gentler sex was not included. The polished courts of
+self-denying love, the Troubadours, the salons, the refining
+influences that gradually raised woman to her modern sovereignty of
+a graceful liberty and charm, never characterized Deutschland.
+
+Besides, women becoming idols through his own sexual restraint
+compelled a self-sacrificing procedure that did not appeal to Fritz.
+To him those many feminizing influences had naught to do with
+strength in battle or in toil. They were dangerous, softening, and
+coddled the elements of defeat. He wanted work and fighting and
+children, always children, but with the lustful appetites of the
+undisputed male.
+
+His Berthas and Gretchens, who had been exceptional figures in the
+warring camps of the ancient Teutons, were therefore only
+transferred into a similar yet menial relation in the housed home.
+And there they have typically remained--in its cook room and
+nursery. The fact that the Buchers, though coming, as they boasted,
+from one original, unmixed, stationary stock there in that middle
+spot of old Europe, had displayed themselves as social and political
+parvenus, led to Kirtley's reflecting:
+
+"The German thinks of a wife as in the kitchen, while a wife appears
+to the Frenchman as in the salon, to the Briton, as in an English
+garden."
+
+So this gradual elevating of the sex toward an ethereal height in
+all respects, toward pure associations which, through the epochs of
+chaste saints, chivalry, gallantry, social freedom, were to uplift
+men by the graces of lofty feminine enchantment, took place westward
+of the Rhine. And Germany, if the sporadic Heine is excepted, had no
+Shelleys, no Chopins, and scarcely any of that rare, delightful
+perfume of human existence which western and southern mankind quite
+typically adores as the ultimate extract of beauty because it is
+associated with the spiritual elegance of womanhood....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On Kirtley's leaving that day, Von Tielitz and Messer showed
+themselves generously ready to share their amorous acquaintanceship.
+They insisted on his going with them sometime to the smallest,
+quaintest inn in Dresden where they were at present cultivating
+friendly relations with "Fritzi." In short petticoats she served the
+best hot sausages in Saxony. To an American student of life and
+language in Germany she was pictured as absolutely necessary. For,
+although originally from the Thuringian forest, she spoke the Saxon
+dialect "shockingly well."
+
+Kirtley laughed it off as a part of the ribald fun.
+
+The young Germans wound up their list of salutations with Der Tag!
+
+"What do you mean by Der Tag?" he inquired. The others grinned
+significantly.
+
+"Wait and see. It will be something _kolossal_." And they called out
+after him:
+
+"Don't forget about Fritzi!"
+
+That night Gard, laden with heavy feelings, tumbled into his German
+bed piled with its equatorial bolsters. Could Elsa marry a man like
+Friedrich? Ought she to be permitted to? Could she really love him?
+Wouldn't she be horrified if she knew fully about him? Or would she,
+like German women in general, seem to care little about the morals
+of her future mate? Likely, as Gard fancied, it was this knowledge
+of him that sent her now and then in evident unhappiness to her
+room.
+
+She was a pure and very worth-while girl. He could not ignore that
+her healthful, productive example was a stimulus to him. It would be
+a sturdy prop in his long sensitive, susceptible physical
+recovery--and afterward. Was it really not a kind of _duty_ to try
+to save her from sharing the fate of Von Tielitz, and win her if he
+could?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+JIM DEMING OF ERIE, PAY.
+
+
+The Americanization of the Bucher home Kirtley naturally thought
+beyond all attempts. Its detestation of the low-born Yankee, with
+only his sorry millions, seemed too deeply planted there, especially
+in the brain and bosom of the Frau. Could Villa Elsa have been
+transferred to the United States, such a viewpoint might perhaps
+have been altered after a time. But this representative boorish
+German family, stuck here on the rainy banks of the mid-continent
+Elbe and so rooted and clamorous in the presumption that they and
+their kind were eclipsing the earth--how impossible of any
+conversion?
+
+Gard had at first the idea of getting together some American
+statistics and showing the Buchers a few facts. Then he saw this was
+hopeless. They accepted nothing that did not come through their own
+official channels. And why should he waste time on these obscure
+people? Why should he undertake to upset their racial happiness?
+Nobody, least of all he, could change their attitude about the
+upstart Yankee and his upstart dollars. The Buchers held themselves
+too far above mere money and its filth.
+
+But the miracle was, nevertheless, to be accomplished, at least for
+awhile, in a manner as simple as it was unlooked for. And this was
+what happened.
+
+One day, soon after Gard's disillusioning call on Von Tielitz, he
+was grubbing in his attic among the ninth century roots of the
+future super-luxuriant Teuton forest, when he heard Tekla's
+woodchopper feet pounding their way upstairs. A card was thrust in.
+James Alexander Deming, Erie, Pa. Well, of all the world! The next
+moment he was there in the room, talkative, airy, sunny, dressed
+with the obvious American consciousness of having just left the
+hands of his fashionable tailor and haberdasher. Every section of
+his black hair and tiny black mustache was plastered down as always
+in correct position.
+
+Making himself right at home with his newly acquired
+cosmopolitanism, Jim explained how he was already settled in
+Dresden for the winter.
+
+"You knew that the more I saw of this old Germany, the more I liked
+it. My governor wrote me I could stay if I would try to learn
+something and I thought of you. I said to myself, 'Kirtley is a
+serious sort of chap. If I light down near him, it will be easier to
+learn this confounded language they have got over here, and I will
+be able to shine with it in Erie, Pay, and do the old folks proud.'
+
+"So I've got a teacher and a grammar and also a dictionary so big I
+can't find anything in it--all ready to loop the loop. But first, of
+course, I must run out and see you and see how you are getting on,
+swimming in beer. Nothing is too good for us Americans, you know, so
+my room in the hotel is right by the royal palace where I can see
+the Crown Prince with his sword fall off his horse every morning at
+ten. Gad, won't it be something to talk about when I get back to
+good old Pennsylwanee?"
+
+Deming's "old man" was possessed of wealth derived from oil wells.
+But although Jim's pockets had always been stuffed with money, he
+had never been able to get through high school or enter college.
+Hang it all, he didn't take to books like Kirtley and all such
+intellectual boys. It was the fault of his dad and mam. They had
+petted and spoiled him--an only child. It was too bad, but shucks,
+he wasn't going to let it interfere with his happiness. So it was
+money here and money there, and a host of friends who, like Gard,
+could not help being fond of him.
+
+Jim had seen the Kaiser and quaffed out of the largest hogshead on
+the Rhine. He had been at a duel at Heidelberg where the chap with a
+cut through his cheek asked for a mug of beer and blew the beer out
+through the gash. He had swum in Lake Starnberg where Ludwig II had
+drowned himself; had seen the cafe in Munich where the celebrated
+Naked Culture was said to have originated; had bribed his way into
+the villa at Mayerling where Rudolph of Austria and Marie had ended
+that mysterious night of fatality. In short, he had done Germany
+pretty thoroughly.
+
+When, by his insistent questionings, he learned about the
+comfortable and illuminating German home where Kirtley had installed
+himself, and that there was a fine, serious young lady in it with a
+harvest of straw-colored hair, he soon confessed, after all, to his
+disappointments.
+
+"Kirtley, you are always a lucky dog. Here you are with nice Dutch
+people, in the social swim, absorbing German to beat the band. All I
+see is chambermaids who shout at me some kind of devilish dialect
+that a fellow can't understand. And my chambermaid and I are just at
+present at outs. I told her this morning she was the tallest woman I
+ever saw. A little of her went such a long ways. As she don't know
+any English words, that is the only thing we have agreed about. She
+said, Ja wohl! This going to balls and cafes as I'm doing is all
+right for local color and all that, but it would tickle dad a lot if
+I knew a quiet, decent, respectable German family. And I want to
+know a nice, sober German girl who has got yellow, chorus-girl hair
+and will steady a fellow down. The proper study of young man is
+young woman. I haven't been able to meet any young ladies in this
+country. Sometimes I think they have only wenches. And I want some
+of the classic Gayty and Schiller stuff too that you can get here in
+Loschwitz."
+
+This urgent idea did not appear auspicious to Gard. If Deming got
+the run of Villa Elsa, he would unsettle things, interfere with his
+own work. Jim was a good boy but he played hob with study. And he
+was just the kind of flashy, ignorant Yankee who would prove to
+Villa Elsa what it claimed about the race. He would disgust the
+Buchers with his showy superficiality and dolessness. Mere money,
+everlasting money. More than all he would complicate the situation
+with Fraeulein. He might upset her somehow, and at least discover his
+own secret feelings toward her--feelings that had become more
+distraught after the Von Tielitz revelation. In a word, everything
+would be helter-skelter.
+
+After Jim had called twice, bent upon becoming intimate with the
+Buchers, Gard, as he thought, conceived a clever maneuver. He took
+Deming over to call on Fraeulein Wasserhaus. Here was an earnest
+young woman, lolling on the gate with plenty of time on her hands,
+dying for a man. She could teach Deming everything he wanted to
+know. She was not antagonistic to Americans as were the Buchers. On
+the contrary she was aching to clasp some one of them in her pudgy
+arms.
+
+But this stratagem proved a flat failure. When they came away from
+her abode, Jim took on a worried look and lit a cigarette.
+
+"Say, see here, old chap. Are you trying to make fun of me? Is this
+a joke? I don't want a walrus, thirty years old, with ragbag clothes
+that fit her a foot off. She has a gait like an ice wagon. Why, she
+couldn't get a job as window-washer in the street car shops of Erie,
+Pay."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+AN AMERICAN VICTORY
+
+
+Deming's campaign against the terrible German language was unable to
+advance perceptibly beyond the stage of preparations. These were
+somewhat elaborate, especially from the standpoint of expense. He
+had a multiplicity of instructors and grammars. If they had been
+placed side by side they might have reached from the Green Vault to
+the Zwinger.
+
+He blamed these agencies of instruction. His "professors" he
+generally picked up at the Stadt Gotha where he played billiards.
+While these parties were fair with the ivories, they could not seem
+to knock any caroms of German around the cushions of Jim's brain.
+
+His daily routine was like this: At ten, his lesson in Dutch.
+Teacher would come. Great show of hospitality. There must be
+something to drink. The preceptor must try one of the fancy pipes,
+of which Deming had collected a large array in Germany. He would be
+feeling knocked in this morning, having been up late consuming
+numerous bocks in amicable emulation of the local prowess. He had
+not got around to his lesson and had concluded he did not think much
+of his present grammar. Herr Preceptor would suggest procuring
+another which would strew roses no doubt along the thorny path.
+Capital idea. Of course they must then wait for the new grammar.
+
+Adjournment at eleven to the cafe for billiards. Deming was a good
+wielder of the cue. He said the Germans were too be-spectacled and
+blear-eyed to play well and by three o'clock he had usually won
+quite a number of marks. This was making "easy money." It went
+toward paying for his evening's entertainment and was good economy.
+His pleasure account would not look so large to his governor. At
+three, to his hotel for afternoon dress. Evenings it was some other
+form of diversion. Home at all hours.
+
+This was his day of study, of which his hopeful parents learned the
+promising side. Someone advised him that if he did not try so hard
+to master German, it would come easier. But he experimented with
+this plan for a week and told Gard:
+
+"When you don't bone over the blamed language, it's surprising how
+much you don't know about it. It still takes me an hour and a half
+to hold a five minutes' conversation."
+
+In two months he was thumbing page ten of the grammar, but he had
+seized upon a good many slang phrases, supercharged ejaculations.
+Though the undercurrent of his discouragement about his progress was
+considerable, it interfered little with his acquainting him
+proficiently with the restaurant world of Dresden. He saw and heard
+what was going on in those quarters, and through him Kirtley learned
+of that phase of German character and habits.
+
+In view of everything, there had finally been no decent, reasonable
+way for Gard but to let Deming, professedly zealous of knowing
+German and seeing Teuton home life, into the Bucher circle. Aware
+that Jim was quite innocent enough morally, Gard avoided introducing
+him to Von Tielitz and Messer whose depravities might prove
+harmful. But Deming at last met the former at Loschwitz and the two
+became friends just before Friedrich left in quest of another
+Kapellmeistership. The friction or explosion Gard rather expected
+between them over Fraeulein did not occur. While he had dreaded such
+a happening for Jim's sake, it might have cleared the atmosphere
+pleasantly for his own. But Friedrich was delighted that Herr Deming
+showed his old neighbors, the Buchers, such munificent courtesies,
+and Jim thought Von Tielitz the most brilliant chap he had ever
+known.
+
+Kirtley waited with fear, with trembling and also with some hopeful
+interest, for the fireworks resulting from Deming's induction to
+Villa Elsa. And they promptly began to soar, for Jim had, in his
+way, all the American speed, and proceeded to overwhelm the
+household with his attentions. It was a case of swift enthusiasm
+about the whole family. Unlike Kirtley he did not care how many of
+the members accompanied the Fraeulein and him. All were welcome.
+Though he openly displayed his fascination about the Fraeulein, it
+had none of that tender sentiment which Gard was dissembling before
+his friend. Nevertheless it appeared to be a violent case of love at
+first sight, and before the first sight.
+
+Kirtley dropped out of the running. He excused himself by the
+necessity of burying himself deeper in his books on Teuton origins
+and traits. In a brief week the Buchers had forgotten him. All was
+Herr Deming--the wonderful Herr Deming--the fortunate youth who was
+bringing the witchery of good luck into the drab home. It was Herr
+Deming morning, noon and night.
+
+There were theater parties, suppers on Bruehl Terrace, plans for the
+next dance. Jim spread it on thick, and the dutiful, docile Elsa was
+swept along with the rest, although with a reserve in evocation as
+became the modesty of a maiden who was manifestly the pivotal center
+of all this vertiginous attraction and activity. The Buchers
+suddenly evinced a great and favorable curiosity about America.
+Their attitude toward it was revolutionized. They plied Gard with
+questions. What was living like there? It must be most desirable.
+Gard came across convenient hand books of knowledge, inconvenient
+encyclopedias and atlases, lying here and there in the house, with
+pages opened freely at the United States. Frau Bucher became
+vociferous in praise of the advantages of the Yankee fashion of
+courtship over the slow, economical, dull, German process of
+match-making.
+
+The household was overturned. Its affairs got dreadfully behind.
+Mother was mightily absorbed in getting out and fixing up imposing
+old dresses, laces, wraps, that were heirlooms or dated from her
+bridal days of a quarter of a century before. Elsa's lessons in
+etching and her methodical hours for perfecting her manifold
+talents, became badly confused.
+
+The great thing was driving at the fashionable hour in the Grosse
+Garten. This was what the Buchers had never dreamed of. In the
+winter only the royal and very aristocratic families drove there.
+The common people, who might extravagantly expend a few marks to
+indulge in this pastime of nobility in summer, were frozen out of it
+in winter. Hot drinks in beer halls were then more to their taste.
+
+But many an afternoon at four Deming, with his two ladies
+overdressed for the occasion in the dowdy German manner, occupying
+a handsome, heated limousine decorated with a conspicuous mirror and
+with Parma violets gently disengaging a delicate perfume, fell in
+right behind the king's household if possible, and toured the park
+in stately measure, being numbered, no doubt, by the open-mouthed
+beholder on the sidewalk, among the social elect in Saxony.
+
+Elsa was as good as engaged, as good as married. In her mother's
+eyes, bloodshot with all this glory of excitement, her daughter was
+already dwelling in a palace in that amazing city of Erie, in that
+splendid commonwealth of Pennsylvania, of whose double fame she had
+never before heard. For, of course, Deming sang constantly of the
+wonders of his native haunts, where wealth flowed out of the ground
+and the trolley system was the best in the world.
+
+Thus the Americanization of Villa Elsa was accomplished in the
+twinkling of an eye. No more did Gard hear of the Yankee pigs. No
+more did he hear of the disgusting Yankee billions. Germany and
+America in union would form the blessed state which would command
+the globe, and the two excelling peoples, by intermarrying, would
+produce a race too far ahead and above Frau Bucher's hoarse
+vocabulary to admit of much more than her Ach Himmels and Ach
+Gotts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+A PEOPLE PECULIAR OR PAGAN?
+
+
+Concurrent with all these lively happenings Kirtley had cultivated
+the acquaintance of Miles Anderson. The two became very friendly.
+Gard had been so rudely treated by the great German professor in the
+lecture room that he was quite willing to conclude he could learn
+from the journalist far more of what he was interested in than from
+a Teuton university pulpit.
+
+Anderson, like himself, had entered Germany ignorant of the nation
+and its folk, and fully disposed to find almost everything worthy
+the highest praise. The elder's vivid convictions, his caustic
+reflections, were honestly born of what he had seen and heard in
+different parts of the land, not of what the Germans said of
+themselves in books, as was the customary rule. By virtue of his
+calling he had superior opportunities for observation. He was
+therefore not a negligible imparter of information.
+
+Gard usually found him in a high-ceilinged, majestic chamber in a
+typical Dresden _pension_, frequented, however, by only three or
+four boarders. It was a little like a home for Anderson, even if
+gloomily august in the German style. Dark woodwork, severely waxed
+floors on which Gard often slipped violently, huge doors, huge
+chairs and tables--everything large to suit the national taste for
+big Teuton gods and supermen. Long, thick stuffs concealed the
+passageways and windows and contributed to the absence of cheering
+light--that sign and symbol of the Gothic environment and
+disposition.
+
+The first question the old man usually plumped was:
+
+"How's your German going?"
+
+"Slowly. Pegging along. I suppose it's because I don't get up much
+of a liking for it. There's something about it that goes against my
+grain."
+
+And then Anderson would be off for that particular session. On one
+early occasion he had said, jestingly:
+
+"I guess you will have to fall back upon the natural method."
+
+"What's that?" had come back the innocent interrogatory.
+
+"Take a sweetheart. She will teach you more useful German in a month
+than you can learn from the pedagogues in a year. Right here in the
+best parts of Dresden are streets where these ladies can be rented
+with their rooms per week or per month cheap, with all the German
+you want thrown in. Are we to assume it is by this system that the
+German universities are able to turn out what the world believes are
+the best students?"
+
+"I never heard anything about that back home," confessed Kirtley,
+always letting the bars down to encourage a monologue.
+
+"Of course not. That would be to interfere with our American
+readiness to admit German transcendence."
+
+"But how do you harmonize the frank state of morals here with the
+fact that the Germans are the great religious authorities? How have
+they established such a reputation abroad for the morality that is
+assumed to go with Protestantism?"
+
+"That is simple enough. First, by claiming that the French are
+degenerate. Second, by retaining religion with its morals as an
+adjunct of an unmoral and authoritative militarism. Religion is to
+them a topic for expert investigation and study just as is
+militarism or any natural product--oil, coal, the chemical elements,
+anything. The Teuton specialist goes at it as at any objective
+science. His analytical and synthetic processes simply explore in
+his own subterranean caverns apropos of theology. He has taken over
+the Bible as the Kaiser has taken over Jerusalem. Wilhelm is
+becoming the Cerberus of Christianity--sole and surly guardian of
+its meanings and influence.
+
+"But you never see any men in these German churches, do you? They
+don't go to church. Nor the women very much. You see old women and
+children at worship. This is because the German has always typically
+worshipped Gott on the battlefield or in the military camps--out in
+the open. The German God is an out-of-doors God and is distinctively
+associated with the thought of war. God within walls, within a
+church, is a deity of good will on earth. He is a deity of peace.
+Naturally this does not appeal to the Goth. He don't pay much
+lively attention to God unless there's a war on hand or in immediate
+prospect. Then he begins to shout and 'holler' at Him to attract His
+attention, because He is so far off from Germany."
+
+Gard laughed. Then, after a moment, he asked, almost shyly,
+
+"If German morals and religion have little necessary
+relation--little actual relation--how about love?"
+
+"The German would never have known of love if he had not heard it
+talked of," replied Anderson with responsive geniality, pleased with
+Kirtley's amused face. "Generally an excess of a moral religion
+destroys love, just as the absence of it in the past has been apt to
+go with an indecent and widespread sensuality. So we have, what is
+called, the beastliness in the Teuton. For he has to go, as you
+know, to an extreme in things--logical extreme. This is why he is
+only partly human, from our standpoint. The human is so constructed
+that he can't stand excess in any direction very long and remain
+human. Everything has to be diluted, alloyed, temporized for him or
+it is not bearable--it will not work successfully.
+
+"We see this in medicine--conspicuously. Medicines pure from the
+hands of Mother Nature are too strong, too rank in their purity, to
+be properly effective. They have to be weakened, reduced, compounded
+with inferior elements, to be of service. So with Truth. People are
+always begging for Truth, seeking the ultimate Truth, as if that
+would bring the perfect state of happiness. This is childlike
+ignorance. Truth in its pure, perfect condition would simply kill
+them--like unadulterated drugs. They could not stand its blinding
+light. They could not stand the shock. Like the rest--to change the
+metaphor--it has to be made up so largely of shoddy to wear well or
+wear at all.
+
+"Love, the same way. When the world talks of love so much, it means
+only friendliness--you like me and I like you--you do something kind
+for me and I will do something kind for you. Love in its alloyed
+form of friendship is its efficacious shape for universal use. Pure
+love, which poor humanity is always reaching out its hands for,
+simply--as George Sand said--simply tears people to pieces without
+doing them any good. The result is tragedy, despair, wrecked lives,
+death before one's time. We see that everywhere depicted in
+fiction, in the drama, at the opera.
+
+"So the German has kept love in a practical state--for him--by
+associating it so prominently with his procreative capacities. It is
+a case of Mars and Venus producing fighting men."
+
+"If the German is not governed by love as an ideal," put in Gard,
+"how is it then that he is so sentimental? People always assure us
+that Fritz must be really at bottom as affectionate, tender,
+emotional, as anyone because he is so sentimental."
+
+"Yes, that's the old conundrum that the enthusiasts over everything
+German confuse one with. The German's fondness--gobbling-down
+fondness--for food does not prove that he is a gourmet. The Teuton
+sentimentality is like mush. It's principally for children. As Fritz
+keeps a good deal of his childishness about him as he grows up, he
+keeps this taste for mush. It takes the place of _sentiment_ which
+is of the proper mental pabulum for enlightened adults. You can't
+write poetry about mush. So the Germans have little poetry worth
+talking about. Where their emotional side ought to be, they are
+slightly developed beyond the youthful stage of sentiment_alism_.
+Their abortive conception of love, their treatment of their women
+and children--other things--all account for this naturally enough.
+One is rather forced, in spite of himself, to take the Germans at
+either of two extremes in order to understand them
+candidly--mushiness or iron."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+MAKING FOR WAR
+
+
+Anderson did not care for the Buchers and only came two or three
+times to Villa Elsa. So Gard did the calling. The elder would
+invariably bring out from his table drawer his "bachelor's bride" in
+the form of a box of clear Havanas, and the "lecture" would begin
+again before, what he said, was the most select audience in
+Deutschland.
+
+"Have you heard anything from your spy?" he queried one day.
+
+"No. You don't seriously mean that Rudolph--you assume it's
+Rudolph--is watching me?" returned Kirtley, a little disturbed over
+the recurrence to this subject. "What am I guilty of? I'm as
+innocent as an unborn lamb."
+
+"Certainly you are. But, my dear boy, what's innocence in Germany?
+The Secret Police can make an alien like you a lot of trouble about
+nothing. You wouldn't believe how systematic they are, and serious
+as stuffed owls. Take my advice and don't do things at too loose
+ends as we are apt to over home. But if you do get into trouble,
+come to me and I will tell you what to say.
+
+"Sometimes they even have one spy spying on another in the home. Of
+course the spy system, like the army and navy, belongs to the
+Kaiser. All the people have to do is to furnish the men and the
+money. It's as Heine said, the royal palaces and so forth are owned
+by the princes, but the debts owing for them are assumed by the
+public. The Hohenzollerns have the property, the Germans have the
+obligations.
+
+"You see, the spy system tends to prevent the Teuton from talking
+politics. But he can theorize concerning the State. The State is an
+active philosophic concept that holds off the people from discussing
+and gossiping about Wilhelm. It does not exist apart from the ruling
+family and apart from the bureaucracy which is the ruling family in
+action. It takes on their character. The State is a mirage which the
+citizen is made to gawk at in the air, thinking he sees something
+besides the frowning German sky. It surrounds the Emperor with the
+divine halo, removes him up above the rumbling clouds where the
+distant views lend enchantment."
+
+There hung about Anderson's talk to-day, as so frequently, a certain
+sententious and acidulous manner that, to Gard, evidenced twinges of
+rheumatism.
+
+The dialogue fell once more on war. After the demonstration in Villa
+Elsa against America, Anderson was gratified by this proof of his
+contentions. While Kirtley admitted the force in the argument that
+this excited and confident condition of feeling among the common
+German people pointed toward hostilities, he could not really
+believe that such a horror would break forth upon Europe. There was
+the Hague Convention--
+
+"Pooh!" exclaimed Anderson. "What does the Hague Convention signify
+in face of the growing armaments? What have you ever seen in
+Prussian history to show that Prussia would stop for any agreement
+when she was sure of winning?"
+
+"You expect war soon," said Gard. "Why soon? Granted the Germans
+want war to carry out their world plans, why should it come before
+another generation, for instance?"
+
+"Because the Kaiser is getting along in years. Time does not wait
+even for him. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon were young in comparison.
+So he is talking a lot about God now and that means war. He wants to
+enjoy ruling Europe awhile before he dies. He does not get on with
+the Crown Prince and is not greatly interested in leaving all such
+glory for him to sport about in. Soon Wilhelm the Deuce will be too
+old to take part in a military campaign. He has not many years to
+live at his age. He is not a well man. The longer he puts it off,
+the shorter will be the triumph he craves."
+
+The talk shifted angles and Anderson was saying after awhile:
+
+"When you have the German statesmen, generals, magnates, press,
+professors, theologians, everybody, insisting on the incomparable
+virtues of the Germans and never on their failings--on their rights
+and privileges and never on their duties to humanity--do you wonder
+that the plain people, like your Buchers, think it devolves upon
+them to turn foreign lands into waste by the sword in order to
+convert them into German countries? It is hard to find in any German
+publication a frank and commending acknowledgment that a foreigner
+has really completed anything to his credit. If such evidence is too
+strong in any case and forces an admission, the foreign inventor or
+discoverer is rather made to appear presumptuous in acting before
+some German got around to it. The Teutons never think, talk and
+write in terms of humanity--only in terms of Germanity. Do you not
+begin to see that the Teutons are, in intent, as murderously
+fanatical about their greatness as the mad Mullah and his followers
+were about their bigotry? The Germans have been educated to these
+views since childhood....
+
+"You tell me that Charlemagne took on Christian religion as a prop
+to, an ally of, his military power--an aid to the extension of his
+rule. Well, then, the Teutons have turned what they call their
+Christianity into a warlike worship of themselves. Their preachers
+must stand in with the Kaiser. He is to them God on earth. It is the
+old story of the throne upheld by the official church."
+
+"But how about all Catholic Germany?" parried Gard. "About one-third
+is Catholic."
+
+"True, true. Yet from what I've seen, the German Catholics will be
+found fighting for the Protestants when war comes, just as the
+Socialists will be found fighting for the Emperor. This is because
+the feeling for race and nation is far stronger than for creed or
+doctrine. If the Kaiser succeeds in getting control of Europe, he
+will take to himself the spiritual and religious headship of the
+world and the Pope will become essentially his vassal, for the Pope
+will be impotent as against the victorious sword. Hasn't Wilhelm
+already assumed to be the head of Mohammedanism?
+
+"And look at it. South Germany, which is Catholic, and Saxony here,
+are cramped up in the interior. Their manufacturing interests are
+increasing by leaps and bounds. Isn't it natural they should want a
+direct outlet to the Atlantic and Mediterranean? Wouldn't these
+Saxons be proud to have a piece of real ocean shore to use as their
+own?
+
+"Another thing. As the Germans are brutal among themselves, I
+predict that, stirred up as they are, they will be brutal like Huns
+in this war. You see how they deal with their own women. Imagine
+what they will do to foreign women. How do you yourself think your
+young military Bucher would act toward Americans if he landed on our
+coast with a gun? The German will be like a Hun just as he was in
+the treacherous days of Ariovistus and Arminius--the Teutoberger
+forest and all that over again. He will red-handedly rebuff
+civilizing influences just as he did in those days."
+
+"How do you define Hun?" asked Gard. "The Germans are not Huns by
+race."
+
+"No. I said _like_ Huns. I mean by Huns a people who insist on their
+tribal sovereign right of conquest by means of ruthless murder and
+senseless destruction--wiping out foreign races and property."
+
+One evening the conversation drifted to this theme:
+
+"Is Luther--Protestantism--one of the reasons why Protestant America
+is so favorably inclined to Germany?" suggested Kirtley.
+
+"Americans would be surprised to find there is no such thing as
+Lutheranism here. A bumptious military cult has usurped its place.
+There are no Lutherans in Deutschland--only Evangelicals and
+Dissidents. And of course Catholics. If you ask an ordinary Teuton
+what Protestantism is, he will scarcely know what you mean
+precisely. American Protestantism and German Protestantism are
+radically unlike. The one is peaceful and trustful, the other is
+warlike and knavish.
+
+"And it seems to me so plain that, besides our religionists, our
+American education is playing in with the Kaiser's plans. It tends
+to weaken faith in our government. It makes unpatriotic citizens.
+Our colleges turn out young men who feel no political duties. We
+teach them to look for benefits without responsibilities. How
+different with the German universities! Our school histories, too,
+nurse active hatred of England, and everywhere with us the main
+opinion about the French is fostered that they are immoral and
+therefore to be despised. All this works in with the advancement of
+German popularity and interests, while at the same time our young
+men, like you, are sent here to study. Only the best in Germany is
+diligently kept before our people. The worst is never known as you
+and I are learning to know it over here."
+
+"So you think," said Gard companionably, "that the Kaiser will set
+his fiery ball rolling this spring."
+
+"I put the date at March first." The old man's hands trembled as he
+relighted his cigar stub. His voice almost broke.
+
+"I know they think I'm getting in my dotage--brain a little
+cracked--and all that. I'm a poor chap possessed of a foolish and
+wicked delusion. Mean well, but head rickety. Sometimes I really
+think I must be crazy, with all the world against me about the
+German danger. They call me Jeremiah and Mother Goose rolled into
+one. But, by God, Kirtley, as my soul's immortal, I tell you I'm
+right--I'm _right_! The _deluge_ is just ahead!--and nothing being
+done to prevent it." He shouted the words till Gard almost shook.
+
+Every time he left Anderson, he would settle back into the lulling
+arms of false security, but always a little less assured. How could
+the old newspaper man be correct and the rest of mankind be in
+error? He used the stock arguments with himself. Granted that the
+obese Germans about him on the tram trundling along toward Loschwitz
+were talking war and preparing for war. They had been doing so for
+forty-three years and no conflict had come. Immense populations of
+peace and unpreparedness were growing up who would discourage a
+world war--would not permit it. There were increasing millions of
+people who had never seen a soldier, never seen a battleship. Would
+they want to pay the cost in blood and billions of treasure? It was
+unthinkable.
+
+And so everyone was floating on with these comfortable
+convictions--floating on toward the imminent cataclysm, smiling
+pityingly on the few lugubrious Andersons who were right.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+SOCIAL ETIQUETTE
+
+
+Balls and dancing are a notable expression of life and character in
+Germany. The Teuton has a passion for them. In what country are they
+so institutional? The German dance music is on the whole by far the
+best any land has composed. The waltzes are fine productions of the
+race. They are not enemic, lascivious or empty of meaning. They are
+noble, wholesome and full-throbbing with the pounding blood of men
+and women.
+
+German balls are most varied in kind, responding to the complete
+scale of existence from high to low. However dowdy, rigid, ungainly
+or sensual they may be, their music is nearly always elevating or
+at least of merit because it is written by thoroughly trained
+composers of whom Germany has a full complement. One of the
+dreams of any American woman in Europe has been to dance with
+a German officer who, in his handsome, well-fitting uniform
+setting off his commanding proportions and guarded forcefully
+by his clattering sword and jingling spurs, appealed to those
+instincts for knightliness and chivalric appearance which excite
+the feminine nature.
+
+Nevertheless the general unloveliness of the social disposition and
+activities of the Teutons is normally reflected in their balls, and
+is increased by their tremendous and perspiring energies in this
+diversion where usually pervades an atmosphere thick with the odors
+of beer, sausage, cheese.
+
+The Royal Court Ball opened the fashionable season every winter in
+Dresden as proper in an orthodox monarchy. It was Kirtley's one
+opportunity to view German royalty, in its intimacy of pumps and low
+necks, at a ceremonious function in a whirl of music and the dance.
+Naturally he wanted to be present with Elsa who was, of course,
+competent in the art of Terpsichore. To say the least she was the
+only young lady he knew well in Saxony, and to have her hair of ripe
+corn color dancing in its luxuriance before his eyes to the
+inspiring melodies of the opera bands would be something to thrill
+him and his memories afterward. He would take a box and somehow
+manage to moor Frau Bucher in its depths.
+
+His hopes had sprung up about it for, luckily, Von Tielitz had gone
+away and Jim, who had put the family in such a state of
+intoxication, was to be in Prague and Warsaw for a month. It would
+be a chance for the obscured Gard to emerge into the light and see
+how Elsa was really affected by the Deming glamor. Of all her booby
+family she had comported herself so far with a dutiful steadiness in
+face of his dizzying _coup de main_. As for Von Tielitz and a
+respectable young woman--how could there be anything serious ahead?
+
+During Jim's trip Fraeulein plunged into her etching to make up for
+absences. But Gard was pleased over the renewal of their piano duos
+which had been abandoned after Deming's arrival. She very loyally
+found a little time for this distraction, and so, as before, they
+played through earnest stuff and tasseled it off with lighter
+emotions in the form of "Heart and Hand," "Love's Dreams,"
+"Affection True"--good things with which to court a musical girl.
+Her cordiality suddenly took on a frank warmness, as if she had come
+back to an old friend. He saw that she felt more at home with him.
+Wasn't she at last becoming like a "pal"? Yet sometimes the doubtful
+impression assailed him that she was merely acting in a sort of
+gratefulness for his having brought the stylish and princely James
+Alexander Deming of Erie, Pay, to Villa Elsa.
+
+Gard was quite happy when his invitation to the ball was accepted.
+Both mother and daughter were most glad to go. He procured the box
+and Frau Bucher, steeped in the practices of economy and judging
+that his means were modest, pooh-pooed with material kindness at his
+idea of an expensive motor car. He insisted on compromising by
+ordering one at five in the morning for the return. It would be an
+event and he wished to carry it off quite grandly for Elsa's sake.
+She had never attended the Court Ball, it turned out, and, like all
+maidens of Saxony, had always longed to go.
+
+Accordingly due preparations were started by her mother and by her
+in what had served, since Deming's arrival, as a kind of boudoir.
+The gala affair was talked over with the usual noisiness in the
+family. Anything that had to do with the King's household was
+wonderful. The neighbors were exultantly apprised. Certainly the
+Buchers were nowadays cutting a high figure--they to whom such
+costly festivities had been unknown. No one had ever associated
+Villa Elsa with the wand of prodigality, and its vulgar Americans
+were dumfounding.
+
+But, four days before the ball, Frau Bucher, in a constant condition
+of agitation in her social upheaval, announced to Gard that she and
+Fraeulein could not accompany him because a telegram had been
+received from Friedrich. His sister at Meissen was coming for the
+occasion and he took it for granted that the Buchers would complete
+his company. Of course Friedrich and his sister could not be
+disappointed. They were old friends--really a part of the family.
+Gard, greatly disappointed, reclaimed his money for the box and
+countermanded the order for the motor. It was provoking, yet such
+things very reasonably happened.
+
+The next morning another telegram from the always excited Von
+Tielitz. Plans were changed. Sister did not think she would be able
+to leave. Frau Bucher would much like to go with Gard. Elsa was so
+anxious to dance at Court. It would be too bad to dash her
+anticipations to the ground. Gard spent the day renewing the
+arrangements. It was a pleasure to do so.
+
+That evening a note couched in the spacious terms of formality was
+handed in at his door by Tekla. Frau Bucher was extremely sorry, but
+Friedrich and his sister had found they could come and were making
+all preparations. Herr Kirtley's invitation must be declined again.
+
+Beginning to be put out, he found that his box could not now be
+returned. And he had no one to go with. It would be stupid to be
+there without even an acquaintance. At last he thought of Anderson.
+The latter announced his satisfaction at the prospect of "seeing the
+Germans jump around." Gard's dancing was cut off, which was
+disappointing enough, yet he could at least see the spectacle.
+
+The following morning, the day before the event, another wire, and
+another cramped, stiff note through the diplomatic channels of the
+kitchen reached the attic. More regrets, but the Von Tielitzes were
+unable to carry out their plan. Would not Herr Kirtley kindly renew
+his invitation? This stately despatching of communications, as with
+a foreign power, went on side by side of and unseparated from the
+usual daily informal intercourse of the family.
+
+Gard's good nature wrestled with his balanced equilibrium and
+overcame it along the lines of gallant generosity. It would be a
+pity to deprive the ladies of what they had looked forward to,
+although his own expectations were already marred. He would bemean
+himself sufficiently to overlook Frau's caddishness. He went in town
+to see if the change would suit his invited friend. Anderson bravely
+rose to the occasion and accepted silently the duty of having to
+tour the ball room now and then with his arm despairingly clasping
+the rotundity of mother Bucher.
+
+When Gard got back to Villa Elsa, another stilted letter with a new
+programme was awaiting him. It had developed that the Von Tielitzes
+could come, though the sister was slightly indisposed. It would be
+nice for all to form a party, and Frau Bucher would be so pleased if
+Herr Kirtley would have them joined in. But transportation to and
+fro must be provided because of the sister. He had so kindly, at
+first, spoken of a motor.
+
+As Friedrich had admittedly no money, Gard saw that this was a
+project--likely on the part of both--to saddle him with the whole
+expense. The clumsy maneuvering had got down to bargaining. He was
+mad. He sent the scullery courier back definitely withdrawing all
+arrangements. The pleasure of his invited guest could not be
+complicated. Result, the Von Tielitzes did not appear, mother and
+daughter Bucher remained at home, and Kirtley went with Anderson.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE COURT BALL
+
+
+The two sat the night out in the box. The reader is familiar with
+Thackeray's amusing references to the stuffy German Court balls.
+After his day and under the sway of the Empire, they had broadened
+and aired out somewhat in their automaton grandeurs.
+
+Precisely at nine o'clock the Saxon Court entered, so far as
+possible in battle array, and unlimbered to a slight extent before
+their revering subjects. No one knew of anything this Royal family
+had ever said, commented Anderson. None of them had done anything
+original or brilliant except Louise, who had run off with the tutor.
+She could not stand the dullness here any longer. And the members of
+this Court represented civilization raised to the famous _n_th
+power!
+
+How commonplace, uninspiring, they _did_ look to Kirtley! As Germans
+can illy take on polish he thought he only beheld Rudolphs and
+Teklas jammed into court dress. The disenchantment of a medieval
+dynasty at near view!
+
+After the midnight supper Anderson, refreshed, told of an
+illuminating book he might write on Germany with journalistic
+brevity and conciseness. It would run something like this:
+
+                  Chapter on Gentlemen and Ladies.
+           There are few gentlemen and ladies in Germany.
+                        Chapter on Manners.
+    There are no manners in Germany. Only orders and servility.
+                   Chapter on Charm and Delicacy.
+                      No specimens to be found.
+               Chapter on the Milk of Human Kindness.
+           There is no milk of human kindness in Germany.
+                Chapter on the Absence of Arrogance.
+            There is no absence of arrogance in Germany.
+
+And so forth. What did Kirtley think of it?
+
+The journalist jestingly identified the dignitaries, the men about
+town, the titled ladies about whose bulbous red shoulders often hung
+scandal, and retailed other gossip from his newspaper files. The
+scene indeed scintillated with lights and diamonds and crystal. Two
+orchestras answered each other in a continuous strain of conquering
+music. Swords and spurs clanked and clattered through the riotous
+German dances, adding their martial clangor to the regal sounds.
+Trains were stepped on, dresses torn. The retiring rooms were often
+sought for repairs. Now and again commotion was caused by some heavy
+person tripping on her skirts and crashing to the floor. It was
+Triumphant Germany celebrating her undisputed position and
+pride--celebrating her mastery of the universe.
+
+Gard really longed at moments to be actively throbbing with it all,
+circling in the throng, and holding Elsa with her blond florescence
+in his arms. Then a certain contentment would possess him as he
+pictured her mother forced to stay home with blighted hankerings.
+What a ridiculous appearance he would have presented towing her
+around here in a waltz before all these florid and grandiose figures
+of state!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kirtley's disposition was somewhat slow-going, sure-footed. He had a
+gentle or quiet conservative tenacity that so often comes with the
+inheritance of a moderate income. It at least gave him time to look
+things deliberately in the face.
+
+He had at first discounted heavily his old friend's pyrotechnic,
+cynical bill of complaints against the Teutons and Teutonism. It was
+diverting, salient, but therefore discouraging to credence. Such
+judgments were apt to be flashes in the pan. They startled but
+lacked rootage. Gard had not sufficiently taken into consideration
+that the journalist was speaking at the end of seven years in
+Germany instead of at the beginning. When one arrives in a country,
+extreme snap-shot impressions readily flare forth in the mind.
+
+Yet the more Kirtley saw, the more did he turn toward the same
+divorced mental attitude. He realized how truly the typical Villa
+Elsa, though in quite a different key, justified Anderson's
+conclusions. The performance Frau Bucher had gone through verified
+another variant in racial traits--a variant which Anderson had
+stressed.
+
+Namely, one must be forcible, even harsh, with a German. He does not
+respond satisfactorily to kindness, leniency, liberality. Little
+sunny courtesies, unselfishnesses, genial endeavors, do not
+characteristically illuminate the tenebrous interior of his
+consciousness. He misinterprets them as feeblenesses, as confessions
+of his dominating rights and privileges. The more one grants to him,
+the more one yields to him, the more advantage and aggressive
+advantage he assumes he is invited to take. To go out of one's way
+to be obliging, to attempt to ingratiate one's self, brings
+difficulties.
+
+But stout decision, sternness, defiant ultimatums, win out with him.
+As long as Gard had tried to make himself agreeable in the affair of
+the Court ball, his efforts were misunderstood and he became a
+handball buffeted about for the superior convenience of others. As
+soon as he finally stiffened up and mentally told them to go to
+perdition, the ingrowing troubles ceased with disciplined
+promptness. A satisfactory relation resulted, and a hearty respect
+for him in the household, he recognized, was measureably and
+contentedly increased.
+
+It was a little different phase of the old pagan German tribal habit
+of considering the outsider as one from whom all should be got that
+was possible, irrespective of return in kind or a decent proportion
+of benefits. To hear in hard, to gouge, are toward the foreigner
+procedures relied on by the Teuton nature as appropriate. In it
+there is to be found little mutuality or respectfulness of feeling
+that curbs, not to speak of the social spirit that restrains or
+breeds a fine dignity of self. A show of weakness in any form,
+however ideal or beautiful, makes small appeal. So far as any other
+"tribe" is concerned, life to the German is at base a knock-down
+argument. Misfortunes in an alien land do not awaken sympathy. They
+are rather to be regarded as windfalls, as a result of which a
+profit is to be grabbed or a steely hand of control inserted where
+it does not belong.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+FRITZI AND ANOTHER CONVERSATION
+
+
+When Jim Deming returned he resumed sway over Villa Elsa, though
+with less vehemence. The Buchers fell promptly again under his
+spell, the duos were dropped, and Gard retired into the attic for
+study, varying its monotony with sojourns in town to familiarize
+himself with the personal peculiarities of the German multitude.
+
+During the long break-up of winter, when the Teuton skies were
+leaden, and it was neither cold enough nor hot enough to stay
+comfortably in his room, owing to the Bucher economy of heat in this
+mid-season, it was pleasanter to be stirring about _en ville_, and,
+when weary of this, seeking the agreeable cosiness of the cafes with
+their warmth of cooking and beverages that thawed one out. He
+usually lunched in some one of these well-known resorts where he
+became acquainted with the _personnel_ and frequenters. It was
+Deming who introduced him to the inn where Fritzi served, whom Von
+Tielitz and Messer had urged upon Gard's attentions. Jim had learned
+of it through the former.
+
+Imagine the tiniest of restaurants. It was scarcely large enough for
+six small tables. The miniature kitchen immediately adjoined this
+dining nook, so that these two rooms were in effect one. When the
+two young Americans first went there together, a very comely girl
+sat cutting colored papers into fantastic shapes with the apparent
+intention of having more floral decorations. For huge artificial
+bouquets decked the boards. The place was freshly painted and
+engagingly clean. The very low walls were covered with queer mottoes
+in grotesque Gothic script, with Meissen wares, Vienna glass, and
+also misshapen oddities that always interest the puerile part of
+mature German nature.
+
+There was a bust of the Emperor covered with ivy and flower
+concoctions in cardboard. The coat of arms of Saxony embellished the
+ceiling which one could almost touch with the upraised hand. A cat
+and a dog were taking their noon-day nap. Sausages and cake in the
+form of the ever-popular _Lebkuchen_ were made a specialty of here,
+and when Fritzi--for this was Fritzi--had served the young men she
+took a seat companionably by them, as became her role.
+
+She had a rustic beauty and was sound and plump as a cherry. Her
+peasant headdress was high and elaborate, winged with chicken
+feathers, and her short skirts gave way before white stockings
+pulpily emerging from painted wooden shoes which clicked over the
+dull tiled floor.
+
+By the table she knitted, watching the eating solicitously, and was
+by turns candid, sociable and saucy as a spoiled child. It was her
+business not to be affronted by familiar remarks and actions. She
+was there to draw trade. She knew how to drop quick curtsies in
+response to compliments and tips. Although Deming acted freely
+toward her like an old acquaintance, he could not make much headway
+owing to the bar of language--her jargon of dialect.
+
+Gard, when touched with loneliness, went there several times and
+struck up quite an intimacy with her, the proprietor and his wife.
+It was a snug spot and she was picturesque. The _Lebkuchen_ and
+famous sausages, which would have been a deadly combination in
+America, seemed to agree with him, soothed with beer. While Fritzi
+appeared _keck_ at intervals, Gard did not see any excuse for
+agreeing with the scandalous hints Von Tielitz and Messer threw out
+about her. They would naturally see the wench in every domestic.
+
+It was from the inn that Kirtley frequently went to Anderson's for
+the afternoon. Gard had found it desirable to write down in a
+notebook some of the facts and reflections he was accumulating on
+the subject of the German. He would want to show them to his old
+tutor when home was reached again. Among them, Anderson's ideas and
+comments were included, flanked by an occasional apothegm.
+
+Gard copied off a sample of their many talks in somewhat the
+abridged form as given below. It was when, on one of these days,
+Kirtley learned that Anderson had moved, and traced him to his new
+abode. From the window of this apartment they could see, through the
+bleary March light, the dowager-like Grosse Garten where Deming
+paraded in style with Frau Bucher and Fraeulein. Although the trees
+and shrubbery were now so gaunt and chilly of aspect, soon they
+would be green and gay with beautiful spring, and Anderson would
+find them cheering.
+
+"I _am_ getting old," he said. "I have never wanted May to hurry up
+so much as this year. Here I can get a good view and the birds will
+come and nest in these branches. They will whistle to me. I can fill
+my pocket with crumbs and go out and make their acquaintance in the
+sunshine and flowers. Since the war failed me again, I can see that
+my friends pull away from me. They doubtless think that no one is
+more worthless than a prophet who cannot pull off his 'stunt' and
+has short gray hair in the bargain. Everyone is blissfully lolling
+in the embraces of enduring tranquillity and I am seeking the
+companionship of trees and birds that are not troubled with the
+machinations and delusions of mankind.
+
+"So there will be this delightful summer of 1914 ahead. Christian
+civilization is spreading rapidly everywhere. More Bibles being sold
+than ever. More Hottentots and cannibals wearing clothes and losing
+their taste for human flesh. And so universal Peace has come to
+stay. There will not be another war.
+
+"And yet the Dresden barracks were never so full of soldiers, and
+the German bases of military supplies are crammed. The munition
+factories are running on extra-time schedules. Has the world turned
+topsy-turvy or have I? Does what one actually see and hear have no
+meaning any more?"
+
+"Why do you stay in Germany?" asked Gard. "The Germans antagonize
+you. And you look upon their Government as a wicked monster prepared
+to leap upon its innocent prey?"
+
+"For about the same reasons that you remain at the Buchers'. Because
+it's so often exasperating here. And that's always exciting. I guess
+it's the Irish strain in us. Want to stick around where there's a
+good prospect for trouble--want something to swear at. And I
+consider it my duty to remain here as a sign post of warning. I am
+carrying about a small red flag with DANGER on it. If the Germans
+win command of the world, I will be here on the ground all ready to
+start in as a German and will have a great advantage over nearly all
+Yankees. I have conned my green book of irregular verbs, which I
+think would bother most of them considerably. I have got accustomed
+to the German eating and drinking which I imagine would prove the
+death of most of them, too. I have learned to sleep athwart the
+German bed--no small feat, as you know. For everything must become
+Germanized under German rule. Teutons know no other method."
+
+"Is that the meaning of the sort of happy, triumphant feeling that
+one finds in Germany? It seems to pervade the whole Empire--rich and
+poor, merchant and peasant, housewife and children."
+
+"Yes, because they know a victorious war is coming and they will all
+be lords and masters. The Empire will stretch out wide and there
+will be work at the highest wages and plenty of money. The German
+will be able to travel on his own railroads throughout most of
+Europe and Turkey. No matter how servile he may be at home, everyone
+will kowtow to him abroad.
+
+"It will be a short, decisive campaign. It will cost some blood and
+some treasure, but then--the German millennium! The people a eager,
+ripe, fit for it. The coveted Government jobs will be more numerous
+and remunerative. They will confer more power on the incumbents,
+for they will be largely connected with conquered provinces. The
+German Michel will be no longer cramped up in his mid-continent."...
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+SOME OF THE LESS KNOWN EFFICIENCY
+
+
+"Why is it that this seems to be a nation of professionals while
+ours seems to be a nation of amateurs? I suppose it is, of course,
+because of the more general spread here of thorough instruction."
+
+"Yes, with us unskilled mediocrity is the popular level because it
+is within the reach of everyone in a democracy. With the German,
+high skilled, highly instructed efficiency is the ideal. The failure
+of America to rise into the expert level is due to our unenforced
+higher education. We compel our people to have a common school
+education in order to preserve the Republic. Its voters must know
+how to read and write and 'figger' or they won't be able to vote
+intelligently.
+
+"Now if we did in addition what Germany does, we would insist, as
+far as practicable, on advanced education or instruction in every
+family. Then we, too, would have a wealth of trained talent.
+Comparing the riches and population of the two countries there is a
+much greater proportion of university men and other competently
+instructed men in Germany. Only relatively few Americans can show
+diplomas for genuine and severe mental training. Take your own
+Bucher family as an illustration. All its men will have sheepskins
+that are worth while to show. With us, out of such a family none
+would have a sheepskin, or at most one. One of the boys might have
+gone to a university. And as for the difference in the women--little
+comparison. Your Frau, as you have told me, has several framed
+diplomas to her credit.
+
+"You can see what a tremendous advantage all this gives the German
+people over us. You have hit it very well--we are nearly always
+amateurs. They are nearly always able to be professionals."
+
+"Is it the same with the laboring classes--the mechanics and all
+that?"
+
+"The same is true, in its way. A poor American boy thinks he will
+like to be a machinist. He gets a job as a new hand on a salary. He
+works at it a couple of years. Then somebody offers him ten dollars
+a week more to drive a truck, which is a simple, elementary task. He
+drops his machinist career for this. He gets more money and it
+requires no tedious training. So he remains an indifferent mechanic.
+It's the money he's looking for, not the satisfaction of proficiency
+in a skilled trade.
+
+"Now, by contrast, the future of the poor German child is decided in
+a fashion at about the age of ten. When a boy is elected to go into
+industry, for instance, he is apprenticed at about fourteen for,
+say, four years to be a mechanic. He is given no wages. In fact he
+has to pay something, very often, for the opportunity to learn. But
+he must, at the same time, attend what they call here continuing
+schools. It is these schools, which we do not have in America, that
+hold him fixed to his line of work--prevent him from jumping from
+one kind of thing to another. He not only works in the shop but is
+forced to go to a continuing school.
+
+"Hence at eighteen the German factory and Government are sure to
+find in him just the kind of instructed worker they need. There has
+never been any danger of his meanwhile changing to driving a truck.
+He sticks to his trade through life. He becomes a master mechanic.
+You can't lure him away into an unskilled channel by more money.
+It's not the money alone he is thinking of. It is also the pride of
+having a specific calling that lifts him out of the great
+commonplace market of untrained labor. So Germany is full of
+competent mechanical men while we limp along with our huge supply of
+the partly experienced. Every such German knows how to do at least
+one thing as well as and usually better than anyone else.
+
+"This is one big reason why Germany is pushing ahead of every nation
+in the industrial world and one reason why I fear her. No matter
+what she wants to do, she has an abundance of efficient brain and
+muscle right at hand with which to do it well and at once. In our
+great United States the lack of this is the bane of American
+industry and development, and causes such immense and continual loss
+in time and money because of our having to deal with such a mass of
+inexperienced young workmen.
+
+"But more than this. The German who is taught a trade acquires not
+only the technic of it in a shop or laboratory, but also acquires
+in his studies something of an enlightening and inspiring knowledge
+of its history and significance. He is, consequently, much more than
+a mere drudge. He is made intelligent about his calling. This
+particular feature, so pregnant and valuable, is not incorporated in
+the American plan, if we can be said to have a plan in these
+matters. For the Yankee ambition is to make plenty of money in _any_
+quick way, and therefore to rise above a trade which a German is
+content to remain in. We feel no keen necessity about careful
+instruction in such vocations. Luck, "pull," "cheek," mere
+cleverness, are prominently relied on in its stead.
+
+"There is another thing in this trade instruction that we do not
+have in any noticeable degree. It teaches the German mechanic to
+become wedded to his Nation and Government. He is made to realize
+the great benefits and responsibilities he owes to them. He becomes
+an integral national citizen ready to serve his homeland. He is
+taught to think of something higher than his pay envelope. Under our
+system such a mechanic grows up loosely connected in thought and
+acts with the governing public under which he enjoys all his
+liberty and opportunity. In so far as national necessities go he is
+apt to be a weakened unit or pulling the wrong way. Unlike the
+German, he has been educated to have no self-sacrificing ideal of
+state or country."
+
+Anderson had, at one time, drawn Gard's attention to the immense
+advantage Germany uniquely derived by completely organizing and
+keeping at work that vast majority of incurable mediocrities--mere
+plodders--who are found in every race and who often weigh down its
+destiny to the point of sinking hopelessness.
+
+Kirtley had since observed that one conspicuous German method was
+largely to employ this empty talent in small Government jobs. In
+general, these tasks seemed to be expressly for the swarming and
+uninspired nonentities, and meant most trivial duties for trivial
+pay. But such tasks kept this population occupied, orderly and more
+than self-respecting. In America incurable mediocrity is left to
+shift for itself in huge masses.
+
+The natural ambition of a Teuton was to be in the national service.
+Rare was the German family who had not one member in "Government
+circles." Or if not, it was building expectations toward such a
+future. One in every eight wage-earning men a bureaucrat! It was not
+only a question of the salary, assured if small, but the honor. Any
+Government clerk or roustabout, not to speak of functionaries in
+higher duties, was looked up to in a way unfamiliar in America, for
+under that continuous regime his position remained fixed for life.
+Government officials and employees in the United States are quite
+freely thrown out under the frequent election upheavals and may
+to-morrow be ordinary citizens bereft of any sort of authority over
+their fellows. So they enjoy only a passing deference.
+
+In Germany, owing to the use of plodders who made up extensively its
+ubiquitous and commanding official class, this bureaucratic scheme
+proved useful in more ways than one. It put faith and expectation
+into these stolid, menial lives and took them out of the ranks of
+the idle and discontented dullards who, in other countries, are a
+source of danger or decay. It attached Fritz firmly and loyally to
+the Nation. It held the links between the ruling caste and the
+people hard and tight. At the same time it tied his family and
+friends to the Hohenzollern, uniting them in a bond almost servile.
+The ever-swelling ranks of bureaucrats, in such a large measure
+imbecile and applying themselves to imbecile occupations,
+strengthened the incomparable solidarity of the race. And it was
+this army of State employees who were actively helping diffuse
+through Germany in 1913 the frothy ideas of a national triumph that
+intoxicated the populace.
+
+But Kirtley, admiring this manifestation of practical and
+administrative wisdom, felt that there must be somewhere a
+tremendous weak spot. The expense of this plan and its withdrawal of
+muscle and even poor brain from directly productive channels, were
+costly. And there was about it a pompous vacancy, an arrogant
+nonsensicalness, a latent peril resulting from such a large number
+of automatons in unquestioned positions, that should all logically
+indicate this: If Germany once broke, it would collapse somewhat
+like an eggshell. It would be a formidable eggshell but with a
+content surprisingly void.
+
+In a sentence, the mighty German bureaucracy kept the population
+from thinking. It meant--Obey and make no inquiry! And where in
+history, Gard asked himself, has a nation of such political and body
+slaves endured as against nations where the common individual was
+free to ask questions? Slavery in any important form is acknowledged
+to be an outworn, decadent economic policy. It cannot compete in the
+long run.
+
+As a result of this bureaucratic domination in Germany there were,
+as Kirtley observed, many aspects of the organized public life so
+excessively worked out and applied in their development as to be
+unbelievable to Americans who had not come in actual contact with
+them. These logical extremes and exhaustive minutiae often enough
+combined a ferocious ostentation and comical absurdness that were so
+little realized by those afar who learned of the mighty seriousness
+and intelligence of the Germans merely from the printed page. The
+conduct and operations of the limitless bureaucracy were usually the
+form in which the foreigner in the flesh ran counter to this
+unconscionable discipline.
+
+Of all this Government routine, the spy system stood out in relief,
+although, at the same time, it was so dovetailed into the civil
+administration as to be frequently indistinguishable. Like a
+typical Yankee Gard, always greatly impressed by the general
+emphasis everywhere laid on the perfection of the Germans and their
+methods in everything, had regarded Anderson's remarks and hints
+about the spy regime as exaggerations. He still could not believe
+that Rudolph was a kind of Government sleuth or that Teuton
+existence was honeycombed from cellar to roof with official
+suspicion and the tyranny of the detective.
+
+But this phase was now brought within range of his personal
+knowledge, and he had a glimpse of this famous German service.
+And through whom? Of all persons, Jim Deming. Strange to relate,
+it brought to a sudden head the latter's stirring courtship of
+Fraeulein Elsa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+THE IMPERIAL SECRET SERVICE
+
+
+After New Year he had organized a little informal dancing club among
+the Americans. He called it the Cinderella Cotillion Coterie, in
+alliterative compliment to the daintiness of the ladies. He was the
+self-constituted secretary and sole official.
+
+For the birthday of the Father of our country he sent out to the
+members a rollicking printed invitation reading:
+
+    In honor of our George's birthday, which comes as usual this
+    year on February the twenty-second, the inimitable CCCs will
+    hold one of their regular reunions in pumps, beginning
+    punctually at nine. Full beer orchestra as usual. No flowers or
+    singing of hymns.
+
+        By order
+
+                       JAMES ALEXANDER DEMING, Sec., CCC.
+            R. S. V. P.--the Senate and the Roman People.
+
+The notice at least gave evidence that Jim had been in Italy.
+
+Several weeks after the pleasant event, when he had forgotten all
+about it, he was loafing in his room one morning after breakfast,
+smoking an eccentric pipe from his collection, and comforting
+himself over his decision once more that German teachers and
+grammars are a failure.
+
+A thump was heard at his door. He called out _Herein!_ whereat a
+person in uniform strode in and stuck into Deming's hands a majestic
+communication from which he made out with some difficulty that he
+was peremptorily ordered to appear at Police Headquarters at eleven
+that forenoon. Fully conscious of the political innocence of his
+conduct, he welcomed this new diversion and, humming the latest
+opera bouffe air, he dressed in his best with a posy in his lapel.
+
+His gay feelings were a little dampened at the Platz where he
+encountered a massive solemnity and sullen looks as if he were an
+arch criminal of State. A ponderous minor individual, not unarmed,
+commanded him to be seated in front of his desk and, eying him
+sternly, handed over one of Jim's invitations to the George
+Washington party.
+
+"Do you know of this?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Jim, surprised that this harmless missive had
+turned up among the Police, and wondering what it could all be
+about.
+
+"Have you authorization?"
+
+"Authorization, sir?"
+
+"What _is_ this?" roared the petty functionary.
+
+"Why, nothing at all. It means dance--ball--a little dance we had."
+
+"Dance--ball." The other repeated the words with a severity that
+champed upon its bits. "Are you this party?" He tried to pronounce
+Jim's formidable name on the card.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"What does this mean--Sec., CCC?" he roared again.
+
+Deming was getting upset, confused besides by his inadequate
+vocabulary.
+
+"I don't know in German, but in English we say Secretary of the
+Cinderella Cotillion Coterie."
+
+"Ah, you say _Secretary_. It is English." And an enlightened
+satisfaction furrowed the hardened face of the interlocutor. Then,
+abruptly to Deming's relief:
+
+"You may go."
+
+As Jim rose to leave he found a court flunkey at either elbow. They
+escorted him out with a military precision and flourish. He
+congratulated himself on the easy way he had got through with it. He
+must have somehow managed it pretty well.
+
+Two days later, in the evening, an attendant from the Intelligence
+Office ushered himself into Deming's room without announcement. He
+bore a summons for the next day.
+
+"Well, of all the damned fools!" Jim exclaimed to himself. "They
+don't seem to know I'm a free American citizen. I'll tell them this
+time. They are getting too familiar--walking into a chap's room
+without waiting to be invited."
+
+This time he was brought before a higher official with a more
+exalted mien, and manners of inextinguishable anger. He held the
+tell-tale notice of February twenty-second in his horny paw. Deming
+was this time not asked to sit down.
+
+"Who's this George?" was demanded.
+
+"Why, that's our great George," confirmed Jim, sharing with jaunty
+confidence this bit of universal knowledge.
+
+"George--George--the king of England," was the gratifying
+conclusion.
+
+"And what does this mean?"
+
+"That's Senate and the Roman People. That's just a joke."
+
+"Senate--Senate! Official."
+
+Several of the glowering army folk stood about. They took on
+menacing airs of importance, following the lead of their chief. An
+international intrigue, involving a foreign king and senate, was
+being rapidly unraveled. Deming was so suddenly and summarily
+dismissed again that he forgot to tell them proudly he was a free
+American citizen--with a hundred million people behind them.
+
+He was becoming worried and consulted the experience of Miles
+Anderson whom he had, of course, met through Kirtley.
+
+"In the toils of the German high police!" chuckled Anderson. "That
+is certainly funny."
+
+"But what am I to do to get rid of them?" inquired Jim anxiously.
+"It seems I have no privacy. And I don't want to be going to the
+Platz all the time. Hadn't I better turn it over to our Consulate?"
+
+"Heavens, no. American consuls won't do anything for you. They are
+considerably Germanic anyhow--work in with the local authorities.
+It's our easy-going American way. If you want anything done, go to
+the British or Japanese. Then you will get action. Our official
+attitude seems to be that an American ought not to be away from
+America. If he is away, he must look out for himself--has few rights
+abroad. The Germans respect the English and Japs for they mean
+business and their consular service is not to be trifled with."
+
+"I don't want to go to foreigners--get this thing all advertised
+about--go to all that trouble."
+
+"Then tell the Germans to go to hell. That's the only way to get on
+with Germans. They are used to being sworn at. They will quit you
+then. If you don't, they will keep you trotting to Headquarters for
+six months. If you try to be nice, try to placate them, you'll
+simply get into hotter water. They don't understand such things.
+They think they are uncovering a vast conspiracy. Cinderella
+Cotillion Coterie! Gad, of all the farcical happenings I have come
+across even in Germany!"
+
+Deming was braced up by this advice, and if anything more came of
+the incident he determined to see it through with some of Anderson's
+good American bluff and independence.
+
+The following morning he was plashing about in his bath tub when the
+door was bluntly opened and then partly closed. He faced around in
+amazement at the audacity of anyone boldly intruding into a bath
+room--the only place left in Germany for the self-respecting Naked
+Cult. His eyes fell upon another uniformed emissary from the Police.
+This one was very obsequious and bowed and scraped his excuses for
+the unseemly interruption.
+
+"Excuse me, mein Herr, but I heard water splashing and I thought you
+were at breakfast."
+
+Jim had adopted the fashion of talking derogatorily in English to
+Germans who, not understanding, usually agreed with his sentiments.
+This always amused him and satisfied his injured feelings.
+
+"That's the way with you Germans. When you hear a noise, you think
+someone is eating."
+
+"Ja wohl, ja wohl, mein Herr," assented the incomer with crude
+agreeableness, all the while grinning in shamefacedness. And
+floating in the water Jim received another order, from the
+retreating and apologizing minion of the law, to stand at attention
+at Headquarters. He was unfamiliar with courts of any sort and did
+not know he should ask for an interpreter. That the officials had
+not as yet used one showed apparently an attempt to let the accused,
+thus handicapped, stumble into an incriminating confession.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+JIM DEMING'S FATE
+
+
+The scene was now transferred to a third chamber which looked
+somewhat like an august tribunal of state. It was an imposing room
+divided by a long high rostrum upon which sat a terrible looking
+individual of the utmost lordliness. The attendants were numerous,
+and if Deming had ever heard of the trial of Warren Hastings he
+would have thought this appeared an occasion of almost equal
+importance and gravity. When he arrived for his ordeal before the
+bench, he seemed a rather small and defenseless figure.
+
+For he was now to be subjected to a sort of "third degree," with a
+court interpreter at hand. Every word that might be significant in
+his bedeviling invitation of February twenty-second was gone over
+with the minatory harshness of medieval inquisitors.
+
+"February twenty-second. Why is that day?"
+
+Deming explained through his intermediary. His interrogators
+persisted in the idea that it was a pregnant date in English history
+and had some sinister meaning like Guy Fawkes day. The pages of
+British annals had evidently been scanned to find the hidden clew.
+
+"'No flowers or singing of hymns.' What is all this?"
+
+"Just a joke, tell him, just a little innocent fun," appealed Jim to
+his translator.
+
+"You signed yourself as Secretary. That contravenes the law. You had
+no authority to assume an official position without conferring."
+
+Then there was the mighty Senate and the Roman People again on the
+mystic communication with its cryptic letters as full of mystery as
+runes to these Germans. It was, of course, the language of a code.
+
+"Tell him that there is no such thing in the world as the Roman
+Senate and People," explained Deming with nervous despair. "That was
+just fooling. Nothing political--nothing _political_!" he exclaimed.
+Everything became less convincing and therefore visibly more
+satisfactory, and looks and voices grew savage in proportion.
+
+There was also the occult CCC.
+
+"Who is Cinderella? Is he in Dresden with you? Where is he to be
+found?" The word was indicated by a big thumb. Poor Jim, whose
+specific information was as limited about Cinderella as about most
+subjects, entered nevertheless on a long explanation not only
+concerning her but concerning the playful innocence of the George
+Washington meeting.
+
+"Tell him it was a harmless little social affair that a few of us
+fellows and girls got up. We will never do it again. I did not know
+it would be any offense. Tell him I was only doing what I would do
+in my own country. There we can get together and dance a little any
+time without disturbing the nation." He wanted to add that the
+United States was not like police-ridden Germany where it almost
+seemed that a chap couldn't tie his shoe without permission from the
+Kaiser. Prudence refrained him.
+
+"Cotillion Coterie. That's French," translated the Ober-Offizier on
+the bench, gravely illuminated. An assistant suggested that _sec_
+might, in fact, refer to champagne. That would be French too.
+
+"When did you leave France the last time?" the other demanded in a
+hoarse, triumphant tone.
+
+"Never been in France," returned Jim in a loud voice.
+
+"Never been in France and yet you use French fluently."
+
+"Tell him I don't know a word of French. I didn't know that was
+especially French. With us it's just dancing language--everybody
+uses it. Tell him"--Jim added encouragingly--"tell him I never knew
+a Frenchman in my life."
+
+"This is evidently a French affair as well as English," commented
+the officer. "Anglo-French. Reaches out."
+
+"What are they saying?" anxiously asked Deming of his intermediary.
+
+On learning the new and extensive ramifications into which the
+sportive CCC was leading him, he threw up his hands before he
+thought and exclaimed, "Oh, my God!" It expressed his disgusted
+confirmation of Mr. Anderson's assertion--"What egregious asses such
+Germans can be!"--and also his _own_ alarm over his situation. When
+would he get back to America at this rate? It was going to cost
+money to escape from this scrape, and how would his governor and
+mother feel about it? A few months in a political prison with rats
+and vermin crawling over him seemed ahead instead of the jolly
+summer he had planned. He cursed under his breath the member of the
+CCC who had carelessly let his card get away from his clutches.
+
+But a greater surprise awaited him. It revealed an example of the
+tremendous thoroughness and immense detail that were the pride of
+the Teuton bureaucracy. Deming was taken off his feet. The chief
+held up a little battered sheet.
+
+"Have you always paid your bills in Germany?"
+
+"Yes, I have, sir," returned Jim, wondering at this strange turn,
+but fully sure of himself on this ground.
+
+"Untruth. Why did you not pay for three candles left in your room at
+Karlsruhe? Here is the unreceipted slip."
+
+"Because I did not use them. I did not want them. I left them on the
+mantel."
+
+"And here is a balance due on your laundry bill at Hamburg--twelve
+cents--unpaid. How do you explain that?" A torn and dirty washing
+schedule was handed down to him to refresh his memory.
+
+"I didn't know I owed any balance," argued Jim to his spokesman.
+"Tell him it was not presented to me. Tell him I will be only too
+glad to pay anything I owe. I always pay what I owe." The examiner
+gingerly took up a crumpled napkin, brown from an overturned
+_demi-tasse_.
+
+"August sixteenth, you spilled coffee on your napkin at
+lunch--half-past twelve. And you went away from the Hotel
+Bellevue--Bavaria--without making it good. What have you to
+say to that?" The sorry cloth was held up contemptuously for
+Jim's inspection and for the edification of the duly pained
+official audience, most of whom, however, doubtless made no
+use of such an article in their daily lives.
+
+"I never heard anything about it!" cried Deming. "In my country
+such things are thrown in. Nothing said about them. But tell him
+I'll pay it--I'll pay anything--everything. How much is it?"
+
+"Twenty-five cents, the bill claims."
+
+"What is the total?" And Jim began digging in his pockets while
+holding up his head testily. He had never before been accused of
+hotel-beating. But payment did not yet appear to be in order. He
+stared at the mass of files and papers before his cross-questioner.
+He realized that his whole record in Germany lay there. The Imperial
+Service had traced him like bloodhounds. Due to his frequent
+irritated displays of proud American independence on his tour, the
+bill of small grievances, now accumulated, no doubt assumed
+troublesome proportions when exposed in its formidable length. Three
+hours had been consumed, accounted for in part by the necessity of
+an interpreter. As meal time was at hand Deming was commanded to
+appear the next morning at nine to have his testimony taken at
+length.
+
+He departed, his buoyant nature rising once more in partial relief.
+True to his Yankee instincts he now concluded they were only after
+the money he owed.
+
+"They want to scare me to make me pay up," he said to himself. "They
+are afraid they won't get it. I'll pay the little two or three
+dollars and that will end the matter. These blamed Germans with
+their ten cents and twenty-five cents! What a system of government
+to be bothering with these idiotic trifles!"
+
+He sought distraction in several games of billiards followed by
+dinner at his favorite cafe. When he returned to his room late that
+night he found that his effects had been ransacked by two
+detectives. Fully incensed by this high-handed procedure he
+determined to place his inalienable rights in the hands of a lawyer
+the first thing after the early morning meeting.
+
+The taking of his testimony was a proceeding held in a small side
+apartment before an elderly crotchety underling who pretended to
+understand English and French, but whose thick-wittedness seemed
+monumental. The slowness and dullness indicated a whole summer's
+programme of this preposterous horseplay. Everything was being
+written down in detail in long hand in the form of questions and
+answers. All Deming's candles, soiled linen, stained napkins and
+what-not, reported from all directions of the Empire, began to be
+raked over. There were green, yellow, red, blue telegrams from half
+the German States. Harassed by this muck and by the leering taunts
+of the old party, Jim was glad to find, at the noon hour, that the
+session was postponed to the second day after.
+
+As he was leaving the room, another offensive inquiry about an
+absurdity caused him suddenly to remember Mr. Anderson's advice. And
+in one immortal moment in his existence he rose to a sublime height
+of moral courage.
+
+"Go to hell!" he shot back. And as he saw the clumsy servitor
+beginning to pen "Answer: Go to h----" in his great book, Jim
+slipped out.
+
+He briskly hunted a lawyer to whom he related all the circumstances,
+winding up elatedly with the last remark.
+
+"Did they write that down too?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The attorney was at first convulsed, familiar with Teuton naivete.
+Then he dubiously shook his head. To Jim's unexpected discomfort the
+affair was regarded seriously. If he had not ejaculated this
+affront, something could be done. But now he had been guilty of what
+the Germans might rightfully construe as a voluntary indignity
+offered to the Imperial Secret Service in the performance of its
+highly responsible duties. If he wanted to avoid important trouble,
+the only simple and effective course would be to quit the country.
+He could leave that night and in not many hours would be in Russia
+and beyond German control.
+
+And so Jim Deming made a hasty and unceremonious exit from the
+Deutschland he had been so fond of, without having time to salute
+any of his many friends good-by. He had to send them a line of
+farewell from St. Petersburg.
+
+"Here you have German bureaucracy in its full flower and odor,"
+remarked Anderson as he recounted the affair to Kirtley. "It
+flourishes to a great extent by exaggerating mole hills into
+mountains with officious vacuity. It is so large that there is not
+enough serious work for it. So something often must be found to do.
+It is a civil army radiating the glory of the Kaiser. The more
+extensive it is, the more entrenched he is. It is official dry rot
+which is part of the price the people pay for having themselves
+governed. It is national graft. But while our American forms of
+graft at least stimulate individual cleverness among our
+compatriots, this German form tends to reduce its recipients to the
+level of donkeys, as seen in the Deming case."
+
+Gard little suspected that he was to drift into a somewhat similar
+misadventure, but of an advanced type.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+WINTER AND SPRING
+
+
+The sudden drop in the life in Villa Elsa occasioned by meteoric Jim
+Deming's disappearance, was terrific. Frau Bucher gasped, caught her
+breath and sank voluminously beneath the waters of social oblivion
+whence she had so grandly emerged. When she finally came up to her
+plain surface of existence she demanded, Where are now the theater
+parties, and drives in the Grosse Garten behind the King? The family
+had almost begun to wonder how they had got on before. She wailed:
+
+"The good Herr Deming, the marvelous Herr Deming! How could he have
+abruptly left us? Something mightily strange must have forced him to
+go. He will surely return. How could he treat Elsa so? Here we are
+with our hopes, our plans and our new underwear. It is terrible."
+
+For several days the house resounded with perturbation. This
+gradually decreased as the readjustment to the former flat
+conditions took place. The transition was not completed until the
+information arrived that Herr Deming was never coming back. The
+final stroke. It was indeed pitiable, tragic, amusing. And all
+because the American custom of flirtation was unknown to these
+matter-of-fact Germans, so deadly in earnest about everything.
+
+But, Teuton-like, the brave ship Villa Elsa soon righted itself,
+being used to blows. It had at least entertained and been
+entertained by one of the Golden Youths of Good Fortune whose
+legends gild the expectations of every race. And it was a superior
+satisfaction to realize that this had not happened elsewhere in
+Loschwitz.
+
+There were left behind no lingering animosities, no painful
+grievings. Feelings were too stout, sensibilities too tough, to
+admit of acknowledging rancors or sickly complaints. The daughter's
+marriageable future was apparently faced again with courageous
+determination. As she could not be a luxurious American queen, she
+must be a German housewife who ranked, to say the least, high
+_enough_ in the eyes of Gott. But what German's wife? Oddly enough
+Frau Bucher, despite all her bluntness, never let a hint out of the
+bag of her franknesses before Kirtley.
+
+After Jim Deming's second riotous invasion of Villa Elsa, when there
+had been confirmed the abject and tumultuous surrender of the two
+ladies, mind, body and soul, to mere money, prostrate at the feet of
+an American "pig," Gard experienced a numbness of heart. True, the
+daughter was tied to the apron strings of her mother. But then Jim
+could only fling his pocketbook in her face. He had done it and she,
+sheep-like, had obviously accepted the situation without a question,
+a murmur.
+
+How could he, as an American, gage such a blank lack of character,
+individuality? How different was this trait from that which was
+exhibited by the energetic prosecution of her talents where her
+personality, shining forth so steadily, held his admiration almost
+undimmed! This was a baffling interrogation that furnished another
+evidence to Kirtley of a gaping chasm separating the Teutons from
+other peoples. The highest ideal of German character is expressed by
+works. The highest ideal of "Christian" character is expressed by
+self.
+
+Spring was now at hand. The sunlit air invited to the out-door
+life. The windows and doors of Villa Elsa, which was stale and
+stuffy from the closed-up winter, stood open and the inmates
+came out of their hibernation, shook themselves and welcomed
+the warmth and lack-luster brightness. The lindens and plane
+trees and shrubberies began to hug the place under their cosy
+leafage. Herr Bucher's rose garden was prepared to grow merry
+with colors. The companionable garden corner for afternoon tea
+and beer became a nook of liveliness. The oncoming summer sent
+forth generally its exulting thrills.
+
+This fine surging-in of sunny, revivifying Nature took at first such
+a strong and glad hold on Gard that his private emotions, which Elsa
+had so promptly sharpened and whose edge had become dulled, seemed
+to lay themselves pleasantly aside for the moment. Whether they were
+to become whetted again into keen interest remained to be seen, for
+the awakening green and white noon-tide of actual existence was
+absorbing.
+
+Apparently she was not greatly affected by Deming's departure.
+She betook herself to her lessons and duties with well-drilled
+diligence. The years were cut out for her. She had only to follow
+the pattern. How much more fortunate it would be, Gard had often
+felt, if she were detached from her semi-civilized household! Her
+own attractions would then be freed from the surrounding thorns,
+prickly hedges, that bruised and tore and dismayed one. An
+American chap could marry her--but oh, her family!
+
+It was not long, however, before she missed meals. She had begun
+again being mysteriously mute at times in her room, over the Heine
+poems. Gard had almost forgotten them.
+
+There were no promenades this early season in the meadow, with the
+poet. No duos were played. Winter, for that matter, was a more
+favorable time for them, as it was also for the family concerts.
+
+Fraeulein observed a meaningless familiarity with Kirtley as if he
+were an old member of the home circle. He wondered again if Rudolph
+had influenced and troubled from the first her relations with
+himself. And nowadays Tekla was surly toward him. She served him
+unwillingly and grabbed his occasional _Trinkgelds_ with scarcely a
+thank-you. Had Rudi, with whom he had had hardly any contact,
+stirred her up against him out of sheer unjustified Satanism?
+
+The spring weather somewhat curtailed, mollified, all the frank
+irascibility and wrangling that went on in the house, and it was
+under the lukewarm spell of this German virgin summer-time that the
+routine took on its most agreeable aspects, though accompanied with
+the usual Teuton domestic din. It was, in fact, very enjoyable,
+contrasted with what the cold months had permitted.
+
+In the winter a pleasant feature had been the theater or opera
+nights. Darkness then came at four. Dinner would be served at five
+in order to reach the amusement place at half past six or seven. By
+eleven the family were back in Loschwitz, sitting down, starved, to
+a bouncing supper where frequently Kirtley regaled himself with the
+toothsome Pumpernickel. Over the hot dishes the feverish points of
+the entertainment were discussed, exclaimed about, while the party
+cooled off and solaced themselves with Schultheiss. These were
+rousing and satisfying little happenings.
+
+Free public lectures had also been a source of enjoyment to the
+Buchers during the long frigid fortnights. Of the five senses, Gard
+reflected, hearing is the only good one the Germans possess. They
+hear, absorb through hearing, to better advantage than other races.
+They close their eyes and drink in seriously. Naturally enough comes
+about the universality of their music and lectures.
+
+Of these public dissertations a course on the Union between Greek
+Philosophy and Greek Poetry was especially raved over in Villa Elsa.
+Gard attended one of these evenings, inspired by the instructional
+ardors of Frau and Fraeulein and Ernst. The example of little Ernst,
+avid of such intellectual pleasures at his tender age, ever
+impressed Gard anew. He thought of American lads in comparison.
+
+The German professor, as is well known, occupies a much more potent
+and exalted position in Germany than the American professor in
+America. He is considered a reliable fount of wisdom. He speaks with
+sure authority. He is an oracle, permanent and sounding afar.
+
+On this occasion, precisely at eight o'clock, in a majestic
+university hall, Kirtley saw this particular grand and popular
+orator ascend the pulpit. He was in full dress--white waistcoat,
+white tie, white kids. He was large, shapely, commanding. The women
+were "at his feet." He stood there solemnly as the clock was
+striking, and slowly removed his gloves and inserted them under his
+coat tail. And for exactly an hour there was a remarkable flow of
+formidable, finished periods, without a note, without a hesitation.
+Gard really felt there would never be anything else to say about
+Beauty, so profound, so complete, so final, seemed this survey of
+the topic.
+
+At the close the audience flocked to the speaker as if to an
+Olympian victor. Frau Bucher was ecstatic, covering him with her
+compliments while insisting on waiting for a propitious moment to
+introduce Herr Kirtley. But as Gard remained there at the lecturer's
+elbow, he met with another disillusion about German professors. This
+locally famous man, so correctly dressed to outward view, wore no
+shirt collar under his beard. His neck and ears showed no signs of
+recent ablutions and were bushy with unkempt hairs. And he exhaled a
+rank odor compounded of perspiration and dirt.
+
+Gard almost choked, being crowded into close contact. Could he ever
+get fully accustomed to German smells? It was most unpleasant,
+disenchanting. He could not, it appeared, find himself attracted
+to Teuton university expounders--those gods of wisdom who had
+repulsed him.
+
+Whether it was his unfortunate luck or not, he was not able to
+summon a desire to go again. He had not forgotten his other
+experience. It was a part of that something fundamentally,
+monumentally lacking in the German race--something shoddy,
+deceptive, which he had met with at so many turns.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+VILLA ELSA OUTDOORS
+
+
+In the vernal season the lectures and theaters were dropped for
+neighborhood excursions of which the Buchers, like all German
+families, were extremely fond. A rendezvous would be made for
+dinner, for instance, at some attractive spot up the Elbe. It would
+be a walking trip from Loschwitz along the winding banks or up on a
+higher path stretching from one smooth, low-lying hilltop to
+another. Everywhere the invigorating odor of pine lay in the air.
+The company assembled by twos or singly at their convenience during
+the late afternoon. Generally the Herr would be last. And when he
+was spied approaching, with a cock's feather in his hat and
+supporting himself authoritatively on his big stick, a chorus of
+acclaim greeted him, for craving appetites were now to be
+satisfied.
+
+The household would pass the evening dining _al fresco_ and enjoying
+the landscape studded with historic and other enduring memories.
+Near by was Hosterwitz, where Weber composed "Oberon" and "Der
+Freischuetz." Often mists from the Elbe rose mystically to engarland
+the crenelated castles here and there on the heights. A drowsy river
+boat in that long agreeable northern twilight would finally gather
+up the family at the dock and drop them off at home.
+
+Sundays were the favorite time for these little outings. Lessons,
+classes, tasks, were then lightened. Gard had quickly become aware
+in Germany that the Sabbath is considerably a day of work as well as
+pleasure. The usual impression in America that the Germans are
+religious, not to speak of being moral, was dispelled. This had been
+a fragment of his erroneous idea that they are active Protestants in
+the sense that carries any Calvinistic or ethical meaning.
+
+Neither the Buchers, nor any of the families whom Kirtley met
+through them, went to church. The Protestant churches were, in fact,
+gloomy, tasteless and almost empty. Their services appeared
+cheerless and forbidding. Tremendous fear was their keynote. It
+seemed far more agreeable to a German to partake of the national
+sacrament out in a beer garden.
+
+His attitude seemed to be that his race were born so
+constitutionally and thoroughly in line with Divineness that they
+did not need to _do_ anything about it. The religious element, as a
+shaper of conduct and thought, was accordingly not required. As for
+any restraining power, the Government furnished all of this that was
+necessary.
+
+At any rate the rulers looked after religion. They observed
+all-sufficiently its rites. They stood next to Deity and represented
+and protected the people. Kirtley remarked that when the ordinary
+German began talking of God, which was rare, he was soon talking of
+the Emperor. Both deities were ever solicitous for him, working
+tirelessly in his behalf. The Kaiser was properly the national
+busybody, the head schoolmaster, who attended to everybody and
+everything and drove all constantly forward toward a unified and
+splendid destiny.
+
+Thus arose the firm belief of the Germans in their natural
+righteousness--the righteousness of how they act, what they
+possess. Gard saw there existed among them little virtue in the way
+of religion to offer the youth of other lands. To send an American
+son or daughter to Deutschland for such influence and benefit was
+but another example of the prevailing misconception of real
+Teutonism.
+
+Many an evening the family dined at the famous Schiller Garden which
+stretched along the shore, just across the river. Knitting and
+sewing and books were taken along, a large table was secured, and
+there the members ate and refreshed themselves with liquids in
+leisurely fashion from six o'clock until bed time. There would be
+plenty of talking and smoking and plying of needles as the moonlight
+or river lights danced forth to guide the active river traffic and
+also the large inflowings and outflowings of restaurant guests. And
+all to the bracing music of a capital orchestra reeling off jubilant
+marches and waltzes.
+
+These were good times when the German was to be observed under the
+most favorable colors. After Tekla's little tragedy snatched her
+away from Villa Elsa, as will soon be seen, this dining out became
+the regular event of the day.
+
+On one of these occasions in the Schiller Garden the conversation
+fell once more on America. The subject had not been touched since
+the eruption over Yankee "pigs". It had lain dormant under the
+mesmeric effect of Jim Deming's appearance.
+
+Gard gathered the following for his notebook. The Buchers maintained
+that, even if the Hohenzollerns were not wanted, they were necessary
+to hold Germany together. Otherwise she would split up into many
+impotent states and be at the mercy of the solidary races adjoining
+her. But who could not want the Hohenzollerns? They had made of
+Germany--really a small, poor country--a mighty power. Look at huge
+America, by contrast! She was weak, disorganized, aimless. She was
+the proverbial giant with few bones. The western half of the United
+States was still practically undeveloped, and yet it abounded in
+natural wealth.
+
+Then there was the Monroe Doctrine. It was a baseless fiat for which
+there was no legal or moral justification--as arrogant a presumption
+as could be claimed of any edict of a Kaiser. The Buchers asserted
+that the Doctrine was a crime against humanity. It had kept, for a
+hundred years, South America and Central America indifferently
+civilized, miserably governed, their thin populations uneducated,
+thriftless, superstitious, bigoted. Said the Herr:
+
+"If our Germany had had full access to that half hemisphere it would
+be in a full blaze of progress. It would be affording prosperous
+homes to untold millions of Europeans now packed together like
+sardines. The mines, forests, rich soils, grazing lands, would have
+long ago been completely opened up, tilled, occupied, for the
+benefit of man who is still, in the main, inadequately fed and
+clothed. We Germans can, admittedly, manufacture cheaper and better
+goods than anyone. We ought to be free in our way and by our own
+methods to supply those Americas with the necessities and comforts
+of civilization and make them rich and happy.
+
+"Their mongrel races are poverty stricken, disease stricken, and
+often fighting among themselves. The United States does little for
+them. Nor will she let anyone else. She plays the dog in the manger
+to the detriment of the world. And this is because she is vain,
+timid and without plan. Is that logical, wise and serving mankind
+for the best? Were conditions reversed, would she herself favor such
+a backward, lagging programme?"
+
+Kirtley admitted to himself that this was a very good and valid
+point of view for Germans. He recognized its general source, for the
+Buchers, in the Dresden newspapers. But he did not enter into
+argument. He had satisfied himself that argument with Teutons, who
+do not have open minds, who are obsessed by fixed ideas bored into
+them, can only end in unpleasantness--a row. He had come to Germany
+to learn. It would be defeating this purpose to air what notions he
+might have.
+
+In Villa Elsa itself a good deal of the feasting in April and May
+was carried on in the garden where flowers and dogs completed the
+picture, together with much open-air singing accompanied by the
+piano up in the salon. Were it not for the musical cult, it would
+have been difficult, Gard had concluded, to live in this household.
+As Anderson said, music had in a degree tamed the German "beast" of
+the north and made it possible to get on with him at all. Music
+rather than woman, religion, or the ideal of social intercourse,
+had partly softened him.
+
+The Bucher sons liked to come to table outdoors with spurs or side
+arms, and the Herr's favorite hunting equipment was often in
+evidence, recalling to him days of valiant sport. With their stiff
+and long strides they affected to be larger, greater, than other
+males. Supermen in the form of Goliaths! The women loved the sight
+of such warlike paraphernalia. Such things added zest to the joyous
+toast--Der Tag! But none of these heroes had yet killed anyone or
+anything, so far as Kirtley discovered.
+
+In warm weather Villa Elsa did not relax in the matter of six daily
+repasts. Breakfast at half-past seven. Bread, slices of cold meat
+and something in addition, at eleven. Luncheon at one, hearty enough
+for a dinner. At half-past four _helles_ beer and tea with
+_Butterbrods_. Dinner at seven. And on going to bed a fortifying
+supper of pigs' feet, sausage, cheese and other man-like delicacies,
+flooded with potations.
+
+Gard had, after the months, adjusted himself somewhat to these
+conditions. He had become, he _thought_, more used to the German
+way of living. To get the best out of it, he realized that one must
+coarsen instead of refine the senses and aptitudes. Instincts should
+be strengthened, roughened, rather than checked or made more
+esthetic. The German puts a heavy hand on things. He takes big bites
+at existence. Thunderous might envelops and clouds his idea of
+perfection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+A CASUAL TRAGEDY
+
+
+One morning early in June when Kirtley, who had been away the
+afternoon and evening before, came down to breakfast, he found the
+household upset. Something bad had happened. Tekla was gone. Rudi
+was not to be seen. Frau had prepared a partial meal and Elsa was
+making ready to sweep and dust and tidy up the rooms.
+
+The parents were in a rage. They made no bones about it. Frau
+blurted out with German unreservedness:
+
+"I packed Tekla off--the animal. She had no consideration for me.
+What do you think, Herr Kirtley? She is going to be a mother. And by
+Rudi. Wouldn't you have thought he would have more sense than
+this--right here at home--break up my service? He let her get him
+into the mess. I have no doubt it was her doings--my poor Rudi. We
+have sent him away for a couple of days. I told Tekla to go--be off.
+And she was out on the street--like _that_--with her bundle of
+belongings under her arm. And here I am with no servant. Ach Gott!
+they are all cattle, of course. One has to put up with them."
+
+Herr was in a growling, ferocious state. He blamed Tekla. He blamed
+his Frau for not knowing what was going on. It was the woman's
+fault. Everything always was. His incomplete breakfast was late.
+
+"Is there nothing left to eat in the house?" he cried out. He took
+on a famished and abused air, although he had had his usual six
+meals the day before. "Give me at least some cheese and bread!"
+
+In this manner Tekla was roundly denounced for interrupting the
+course of family comfort. That she had mortally sinned awakened no
+attention, aroused no concern. There was no sympathy expressed for
+her in her condition, no responsibility felt for her in her downfall
+or anxiety about her future. Whether she would, from this misstep,
+have to take to the streets for a living occurred to no one but
+Kirtley.
+
+Germans are little wrought up about such questions. There is no
+shuddering as from an admitted mortal sin. Natural impulses and
+facts are natural impulses and facts. Why should one be squeamish
+about them or have soul burnings? In general, carnal desires meet
+with no great fastidiousness in the German domestic circle. They are
+rather regarded as honest and healthy like desires for food and
+drink. The Teuton wife is ashamed of barrenness and considers it
+proper for women to be fully sexed in feeling. Sexuality is not
+something to be shrunk from, discouraged or denied, but is a candid,
+copious law of Nature to be recognized.
+
+When Rudi returned shortly from Leipsic, where it had been deemed
+best for him to retire for the moment, he appeared as conceited and
+noisy as if nothing had happened. He was not cowed or penitent. His
+parents, who had got Villa Elsa in running order and were forgetting
+the _contretemps_, almost beamed upon him. He was now a full-fledged
+male. Any lingering uncertainties as to his completed manhood had
+been effectually removed. His affair was viewed from the standpoint
+of potent strength, not lapse from virtue. Young men had their wild
+oats to sow. His mistake had been to disturb his own household. Had
+it been another household, little heed would have been given.
+
+In the Bucher minds the satisfying net result seemed to be that
+another _soldier_ (it was to be hoped) was to be born for the army,
+for the Kaiser. Soldiers had to be. Tekla was to fulfill her highest
+mission as a German servant girl. She was to become a just and
+constituent part of the swelling Empire.
+
+Frau's ideas and information on the subject provided Gard's journal
+with some more condensed material. They were talking out by the
+garden table.
+
+"What becomes of the German servant girl under such conditions?" he
+inquired.
+
+"Oh, she can get into another family and go on as before."
+
+"And the baby? How does she manage with that?"
+
+"She puts it out among poor farm people and pays a little for its
+keep. As the mother usually works about in different
+localities--sometimes being taken far away by her employers--the
+farmer often adopts the baby as it grows up. He can always use more
+help. If it's a girl, she is good for the farm as well as the
+house. If it's a boy, he becomes a soldier. A boy of this kind makes
+the best soldier because he has no parental and no home attachments.
+He only knows the barracks and has the officers to obey. He does not
+learn who his father is, and the mother becomes practically a
+stranger to him as she moves about in the city or country. He is
+ready to serve in the colonies or go anywhere or do anything, having
+no personal ties to hold him."
+
+"Does not your large army badly demoralize these social conditions?"
+
+"You know, we housewives don't like it much when a new regiment
+moves into the vicinity. It makes mothers among our domestics and we
+have to change about. Of course, you see, we have more women than
+men in Germany and we must have children growing up for the barracks
+and the cheap labor market. There seems to be no other way, but it
+is often a great nuisance for us housekeepers. Yet there is this to
+say: The girls rarely have more than one child by the same man. For
+another regiment comes along and there are new relations. The army
+is necessarily a floating population and not very responsible for
+what it does among us civilians because it _protects_ us."
+
+Kirtley concluded that this accounted for the large number of
+detached young men in Germany--in the army and out of it--who
+appeared to be so entirely footloose, ready for any mission or task
+in any part of the globe. As the two sat there talking about the
+question of lovelessness in these relations, Herr Bucher strolled up
+from his flower beds and joined them in his Tyrolean jacket of the
+chase and big army boots. Gard said,
+
+"We were speaking of affection, Herr Bucher. Why do the Germans have
+the ideal of hate when other races are holding up the ideal of
+love?"
+
+"Because it is good to hate!" exclaimed the host with rugged
+forcefulness as he squatted in a seat. "To hate is strong, manly. It
+makes the blood flow. It makes one alert. It is necessary for
+keeping up the fighting instinct. To love is a feebleness. It
+enervates. You see all the nations that talk of love as the keynote
+of life are weak, degenerate. Germany is the most powerful nation in
+the world because she hates. When you hate, you eat well, sleep
+well, work well, fight well. It is best for the health. When you
+love, it is like a sickness and disorganizes and debilitates."
+
+"How do you reconcile that with Christ and His mission of love?"
+pursued Gard.
+
+"There is nothing to reconcile. We simply do not admit all that. It
+is not practical. Christ was not practical. He had no family. He
+made no home. He never even built a house. He did not found a State.
+He let the Romans run over Him. How can one live in a cold northern
+climate without a house, a nation and an army to protect him? No, it
+is not at all practical. Even Christ could not defend Himself. He
+was crucified without any resistance, any struggle. To hate is to
+struggle and that is the mainspring of action. So one must prepare
+himself to struggle successfully. To hate, to cause to be feared,
+are the proper motives for life. They _are_ life. Fear is a stronger
+and far more universal human motive than love. Therefore we Germans
+want to be feared rather than to be loved. So we hate because it
+engenders fear in others. To love is already half a surrender and
+ends logically in death. With Christ the real victory, the real
+heaven aspired to, was in death, not in life."
+
+The Herr had faithfully read Rudi's contemporary German military
+philosophers.
+
+Truly this was too strange a race, Kirtley felt, to admit of any
+levels of genuine, unreserved association and companionship except
+under a _quasi_ truce or other provisional conditions. To form a
+perfect union with it, other races had to adopt its attitude. It
+could not and would not adopt theirs until some sort of a Teuton
+reformation took place.
+
+In the midst of these repulsing discords Gard was surprised, on
+returning to his room a night or two later, to find by his table a
+new red and gold copy of Heine's verse inclosing a sprig of
+forget-me-not. On the fly leaf was inscribed in a youthful, copybook
+hand:
+
+    Immer heller brennt die Licht,
+    Meines schoen' Vergissmeinnicht.
+
+    Offered to her meadow pupil
+    By his meadow teacher.
+
+    (Ever brighter burns the light
+    Of my sweet forget-me-not.)
+
+The Germans are not original in love-making. Elsa had read of such
+things being done. But it was an admission or advance from her as
+unexpected as it was belated. Gard tossed about awhile on his bed,
+thinking of it. As he had often acknowledged to himself, he had been
+interested in her more than any girl he had yet known.
+
+In the morning, when things were clearer in his consciousness, he
+assumed that her enterprising, calculating mother had inspired the
+gift. For it seemed to be _apropos_ of nothing in particular at this
+unpropitious time, although he had made Elsa little presents during
+the fall and early winter. It was evident that the family, after the
+arrival of the mirific Jim Deming, had grown somewhat accustomed to
+Americans and had at length struck a sentimental attitude.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+A GERMAN MARRIAGE PROPOSAL
+
+
+A day or two afterward, another little tragedy visited Villa Elsa,
+following on the heels of the unfortunate departure of Tekla. Ernst
+came home at lunch time with his head swollen in reds and purples
+and hardly able to walk. At his morning drill his sergeant had
+knocked him down by a blow in the face and then kicked him in the
+knee. The little philosopher was a good deal of a dreamer and had
+failed in strict and prompt attention. To strike down and boot the
+rank and file are, of course, a normal part of Prussian army
+discipline.
+
+Kirtley was incensed, horrified. But to his amazement the family
+sided with the officer. Although Ernst stood in grave danger of
+being crippled for life, they were ugly in their censures of him.
+They said it was a good thing to bring him down from the clouds.
+
+The poor little fellow was a pitiable object for some time. He not
+only suffered painfully from his bruises but had to meet the irate
+looks and casehardened bearing of his parents. Brutality made
+soldiers of visionary and idealistic temperaments. It kept the feet
+on the earth.
+
+Gard thought how differently an American father and mother would
+act. Their sons belonged to them and they would resent any outside
+interference that smacked of cruelty. In Germany, the boys, as
+already observed, belonged essentially to the Government. The
+vicious treatment of German children in the home, at school, in the
+army, accounts for the unique Teuton institution of child-suicide.
+The number of these boys and girls who, because of their hardships,
+destroy themselves in despair, is shockingly great. The statistics
+in other races offer little in comparison.
+
+To break down the will by abasing youth before its comrades and
+elders, to lay its self-respect low, to beat dignified individuality
+into callous insensibility, manufactured a docile, automatic unit
+for the German mechanism. The peculiar strength of Deutschland lay
+in this early control and training of its young. And as the young
+surrendered their unimportant consciousness as individuals, they
+gained an important consciousness as factors in the State. For this
+reason, as they learned to be almost servile among their own folk,
+they became domineering among foreigners.
+
+Villa Elsa now was true to the adage that misfortunes do not come or
+loom singly. One forenoon, about the middle of June, Kirtley was
+sitting in his attic, turning over in his mind the fact that his
+year in Germany would soon be up, and endeavoring to explain why he
+felt depressed. The recent events, it was true, had created a very
+unpleasant condition of mind, but his body itself also seemed to
+share in the inharmony. A dullness, a heaviness, had begun to weigh
+upon his physique and yet here were summer, Nature, the green earth,
+rejoicing all about him. It was odd. What was the full explanation?
+
+As he sat there thinking somewhat dolefully about himself and
+forgetting his opened books, a loud knock was heard at his door. It
+was Frau Bucher with her knitting. She had never honored him with a
+call in his room. Something must be the matter.
+
+At his invitation she came in and sank into a chair. Her face and
+hair were mussed. She was laboring under a great strain. The sons
+with their ill-luck had troubled her. The recent mishaps had
+evidently alarmed her, upset her, so that it was now the daughter
+filling the mother's anxious hours.
+
+"Your daughter--Fraeulein Elsa!" Gard exclaimed in astonishment.
+
+"Yes, my poor daughter. Oh, good Herr Kirtley, you have always been
+so kind. I have treated you this winter like a son--just like my own
+sons."
+
+"You have been very good to me, Frau Bucher," interpolated Kirtley,
+hastening to offer any consolation, although he could not imagine
+what distress had brought her to him.
+
+"Well, my daughter--you know it has always been the intention that
+she marry Friedrich--ever since they were almost children. But, mein
+Gott, the poor Friedrich does not arrive at anything. We love him.
+All our friends love him--admire him. But he can get no fixed
+position. We wait, he waits, Elsa waits. Always hopes and more hopes
+and nothing comes. And he is so disappointed. No Kapellmeistership.
+Only small engagements which do not pay much and soon end. He has
+no money and what little we have to give with Elsa will not answer
+until he is permanently established.
+
+"You see Friedrich is a courageous fellow and he is apt to speak his
+mind. You remember how he mimicked the military. My husband and I
+think he makes enemies by his impulsive temper. You know what
+musicians are. They talk right out. We think his enemies put
+difficulties in his way. And so nothing is settled. We keep waiting
+and here we are. Elsa wants to marry. She wants children!" exploded
+the artless Frau.
+
+The abruptness of this confession in the matter-of-fact German way
+almost overcame Gard with embarrassment. He recovered himself at
+length to ask:
+
+"Does she love him?"
+
+"Ach Himmel! does she love him? Haven't you seen her so dumb at
+times? But nothing comes to pass--and when will there be anything?
+She gets her grumpy spells over these postponements--always
+postponements. You know young people are impatient. They don't
+understand such things. She wants to marry. Every young girl wants
+to marry and have children. I may die. My husband may die at any
+time. And she won't be settled for life."
+
+The mother went off in a vigorous scene of upheaval. The slender and
+youthful Kirtley felt himself unequal to the task of trying to
+comfort her bulky person with its commotions.
+
+"But what do you want me to do? Frau Bucher?"
+
+"We all love America, Herr Kirtley!" she burst out. "Elsa loves
+America. Ever since that splendid Herr Deming came, we love America.
+And we feel we can trust _you_. Young men ought to marry early. Elsa
+wants a decent husband and a decent little home. That is not much to
+ask. Of course we would hate to have her go so far away. But you
+have always been so kind to her. You have shown such interest in
+her. And what a good girl Elsa is! We have brought her up so
+carefully--and to be a good wife. She can cook and sew and keep
+house. She can play and paint, and also sing a little. She is
+strong, never sick, and can work--_work_. All you Americans have
+money. We Germans are poor. We can't give her much for a dowry.
+Excuse me, Herr Kirtley, but you see I came naturally to you. Who
+else is there? We have made a son of you this winter." Then Frau
+Bucher almost shrieked out:
+
+"And you can stay here _always_, if you prefer that!"
+
+Full of her brave endeavor the mother bolted through the door
+without any ceremony of leave-taking.
+
+Gard could not collect his tumultuous thoughts there in the room. At
+last the whole secret was out. Had she not foresightedly kept it so
+long with some such purpose in view?
+
+Fresh air was the only place for him. He grabbed his hat to escape
+other fateful contingencies that morning, and made for the pine park
+where it was silent and cool. He walked hastily, with his hat off,
+along the path where Elsa and he used to stroll while conning
+together the passionate lyrics of the passionate Heine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+A WAITRESS DANCE
+
+
+He went on and on through the firs and hemlocks, on the right bank
+of the Elbe, then down toward the city. A multitude of convictions,
+reflections, impressions, flocked in his brain. After awhile he
+seemed to send them all scattering by exclaiming, "I'll be damned!"
+
+They turbulently regathered. There was the sensual ape Von
+Tielitz--they would marry her to him. She could love him, polluted
+and swinish in the low sinks of womankind. There was the flatulent
+Jim Deming with his money--she could quickly marry him. And at last
+the ideals Gard had nourished about her had finally tumbled to the
+ground that day in her mother's crude offer of bargain and sale.
+
+These Germans! They were outside the pale. They were the midway
+people between barbaric Asia and the civilized West. America,
+millions, pigs, morals, love, brutality, erudition, proficiency,
+obscenity--the Teuton race mixed them all up hopelessly, without
+rime or reason.
+
+Gard walked and walked without realizing he was becoming tired. As
+he neared the city he burst out again with, "I'll be damned!" It was
+all the resume he could arrive at. He found himself finally hungry
+and made his way to Fritzi's little inn. He felt almost beaten out.
+Was he really well?
+
+The middle of the afternoon had come. There she was fresh, free,
+like a hardy wild flower. She trotted back and forth, curtseying,
+chattering, with her merry heels clicking on the tiling. The hot
+sausages and _Lebkuchen_ and a stein were hastened in, and she
+switched her short skirts down cosily on a bench in front of him to
+knit and look out after his needs. He had encouraged such
+opportunities for the practice of conversation.
+
+"I've been looking for you to come in," she lisped.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I wanted to ask you to buy a ticket for our Waitress Dance, and I
+did not know at all where you lived." It was a long sentence for
+her and she giggled.
+
+"Number 5, Wiesenstrasse, Loschwitz."
+
+"Gott im Himmel! That's way off."
+
+"When _is_ your dance?"
+
+"It's to-night. And it's only twelve marks." She fumbled out a
+ticket from beneath her white apron with a maid's agitation.
+
+"I'll take it," said Gard.
+
+"But you have to promise to go. They want every ticket holder to
+go."
+
+"Are you going?"
+
+"Of course I'm going. It's all us waitresses. And it's only once a
+year. The waiters have theirs twice a year."
+
+"And are you going to dance?"
+
+"Of course I'm going to dance. I always dance." She perked up her
+head with her young red mouth open in almost childish puzzlement, as
+much as to say, "Why, what are balls for?"
+
+Gard looked down on his fattening supply of smoking sausages and
+honey cakes. A servants' ball might be just the thing to cure his
+disgust with Loschwitz--with himself--with everything. He had heard
+Friedrich, Messer and Jim Deming exclaim enthusiastically about
+these popular fetes. They should not, it appeared, be missed if one
+wanted to see the real German nature let loose.
+
+"Well, if you're going to dance, I'll go," he promised.
+
+"You bet your life I'm going to dance!" Fritzi cried out in the
+Saxon dialect's equivalent as she sprang up, and wheeled off to wait
+on a new visitor. When she had served him she sidled back to Gard's
+table with a doubting, half-disappointed air.
+
+"You're fooling me." She stuck her tongue out on her upper lip in
+peasant bashfulness.
+
+"No, I'll be there as sure as I'm now paying for the ticket." He
+filled her fat hand with the coins which it could hardly hold. She
+went away happy.
+
+The ball did not begin until ten, to give the young ladies time to
+finish their dining-room duties and dress. Kirtley went to a cafe
+and watched the billiards until after dark, then slipped out to
+Villa Elsa, jumped into his evening clothes, and slipped away again.
+He had seen the royalty dance. Now he would see the common people.
+This bustling about was cheering. He was glad to go.
+
+The ball room was big, barn-like, with green branches and cheap
+flowers strung about. Aprons, napkins, table cloths, bills of fare,
+and other insignia of the waitress profession filled in the local
+color of the decorations on the walls. There was not one of the
+everlasting _Verbotens_ to be seen. Alcoves containing tables and
+chairs ranged around.
+
+The entertainment was in full fling when Gard arrived. As the night
+was warm the doors and windows were open wide, and fully as many
+people seemed outside as inside. The throng included a number of
+students. The dancing was everywhere--on the grass, in the doorways,
+in the dressing rooms, on the stage by the orchestra. How free and
+easy compared with the Court affair!
+
+Kirtley took refuge in an alcove. He fancied he would before long
+spy Fritzi. She would be the only person he knew. But she discovered
+him first. She tripped up to him with a green cavalier redolent of
+salad oil and beer. She was very proud to be able to claim Herr
+Kirtley for one of her "sales." Foreigners are always distinguished.
+The music struck up again and off she was whisked without saying
+Aufwiedersehen.
+
+She next came up hanging on to the arms of two dancers. More
+introductions. All were getting sweaty and thirsty. Gard invited
+them to sit and he provided Schultheiss.
+
+Fritzi soon settled upon this spot as headquarters, twirling off
+into the figures and returning with different companions. She
+brought a girl whom she wanted specially to meet the Herr. The girls
+dived into the alcove, then out, back again, and hung about
+flustered, by turns bold or backward. They did not know whether it
+was proper to see that he danced. He was, of course, high above
+their class, but if he didn't wish to dance, why had he come? Fritzi
+wanted to be polite but the situation was above her etiquette. He
+had been so kind as to buy a ticket, and how could he have a good
+time without joining in the festivities? The girls nudged each
+other, balked and snickered.
+
+Gard saw Fritzi's awkward restraint and set her at rest by saying:
+
+"I can't dance the German way."
+
+"The German way?" she echoed bluntly. "Why, I thought everybody in
+the world danced alike."
+
+"We don't whirl round and round as you do," Gard explained.
+
+"Well, I'll swear!" she clucked incredulously, her tongue in her
+cheek as if saying, "What sort of dancing can that be!"
+
+The dust and streams of perspiration began to affect everyone, but
+the music and revolving exertions grew more rapid and vigorous as
+the hours advanced. Beetles and bugs sailed through the air along
+with the familiar German odors that greeted Kirtley's nostrils.
+Everyone became freer. Enjoyment ran higher. Men shed their coats
+and women made themselves equally comfortable. It was beer, beer,
+beer.
+
+When Fritzi had seen that her Herr was not to take part, she began
+to behave toward him with a more bluff unconventionality. She made
+him acquainted with all her partners and girl friends. She confided
+to him the little jingling trinkets she wore. Her face ablaze, her
+hair tousled, her feet keeping on the floor with difficulty, she
+looked to Gard like a flaming maenad. She had come in cheap satin,
+and also in silk hose which she particularly doted on. But like all
+thrifty German maids, after two or three dances she divested
+herself of these and put on stouter stuffs which she had brought
+along and which could stand the wear and tear. The possession of
+those finer things had first to be shown to gratify vanity. Then
+recourse was had to a practical basis for physical pleasure.
+
+Gard mused over the seething picture before him. He knew it had been
+pointed out that while the Germans are lewd, they are not dissolute.
+They do not let their duties suffer. Their ample physiques can stand
+hard strains, and a night of revelry is followed next day by a
+prompt resumption of tasks. These young folk, tearing about like
+disheveled satyrs and nymphs, would be at their jobs in the morning.
+
+The Teuton does not waste his patrimony in riotous living or lead a
+lawless existence. To this extent the influence of the Government,
+in its way, was felt. While it recognized that the forceful animal
+spirits of its people must be indulged to keep them contentedly in
+control, it set its face against waste of time and of belongings in
+any prolonged habits of dissipation. Thus the strength and material
+resources, the plodding industry and economy, of the race were
+conserved as well as energized.
+
+As for the German women, they are not naturally passionate in the
+ordinary emotional and imaginative acceptation of this word. Their
+passions are not extended by any radical complications of romance or
+ideality. In a sense, they keep their heads in any indulgence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+CHAMPAGNE
+
+
+At midnight Kirtley saw a remarkable sight. On the stroke of twelve,
+loud toasts to Der Tag were suddenly lifted high in air as the
+orchestra broke forth with the Wacht am Rhein. An uproar seized the
+assembly. "Gott scourge England! Down with France! Deutschland ueber
+Alles!" In a twinkling it was a crowd mad for war. Beer mugs were
+smashed, various objects of apparel were flung far and wide.
+Improvised orators--students--mounted tables and began crying for
+vengeance on the world in speeches which, in the hubbub, did not get
+much beyond preliminary exclamations.
+
+Hatred of Great Britain stood out above it all. How long must the
+Fatherland be held in check? "Der Kaiser! Hoch der Kaiser!" The
+popular national frenzy had in this spot ripped off any bounds.
+Burn, sack, violate, kill--Gard heard the intimations--the
+threats--of all such frightfulness. In the furor he stood up on his
+table to get a better view of the extraordinary demonstration. It
+sounded fateful, terrible, like descriptions recited of the French
+Revolution. He was almost awestruck. At its height he feared
+personal violence for himself. He had sometimes been taken for a
+Britisher.
+
+Anderson was right again. The Teutons lusted for war now. What a
+spectacle! The old, old German hate. This very lowly class of
+people--waiters and waitresses--had nothing, would be the very first
+to face severe hardships, and the men would suffer more than any at
+the front. They would all be mainly the ones to go hungry, be cold,
+be killed. But here appeared the cannon fodder demanding to be shot
+down in its craze for Triumphant Germany. It was hoarse for Victory
+or Destruction. It was drunk with its physical power. These soldiers
+were angrily impatient to be let loose like hellhounds, from the
+sullen fastnesses of mountains and swamps behind the Rhine, upon the
+Christian populations beyond in the great plains of civilization.
+
+When the tempest had passed and its activities were dwindling into
+the renewed whirlwinds of the dance, Gard resumed his seat, his head
+beginning to swim a little. At last his doubting eyes were as if
+unsealed. A Vandal tribe, a great and powerful Vandal tribe, still
+lived in the world. It was feeding on Conflict--the food of its
+ancient bellicose gods.
+
+How was it, indeed, that our trained American observers, men who had
+been educated in Germany and those who had not, never saw anything
+of this danger that was boiling in the breasts of even the humblest
+classes of Teutons? Yes, Anderson was correct. The Germans were,
+after all, frank enough about it. All was spontaneous and bold.
+Egged on by their military, political, educational, religious
+masters, the populace could easily, at any time, work themselves up
+like this into a frantic state about conquest. And yet Americans
+heard nothing of it. It was as if their channels of information were
+subsidized under German authority.
+
+At one o'clock supper time came and Gard ordered. There were Fritzi
+and another girl and two young men--all very profuse in their
+appreciation of his hospitality. The popping of a few bottles of
+cheap champagne sounded in his ears. He was in the swing of the
+excitement and could not be outdone. His brand was French, of a fine
+quality. It exhilarated his brain far above the plain, distorted
+commonplaces of Loschwitz.
+
+After supper the real frolic set in. The true devotees now alone
+remained. They began doing fancy twists, with legs out far and wide.
+Vests came off, with collars and ties, and feminine charms became as
+familiar as an old story that is read too often to have much meaning
+for the senses. To Gard it all now appeared seemly enough, like an
+opera peasant ballet whose frank rusticities were excused under the
+inspiration of the music.
+
+Fritzi's hair floated loosely over her shoulders. It looked to him
+even brighter than Elsa's. Her snug, many-colored bodice became
+partly unlaced and she had kicked off her tight slippers under
+Gard's table. In their heated condition many of the other waitresses
+were dancing in their unshod feet. He thought it very natural and
+pleasing when Fritzi rushed up with her heirloom of silk stockings
+which she had removed early in the evening. They had been her
+grandmother's who had worn them at some grand baron's wedding long
+ago--the sole tradition and distinction connected with Fritzi's
+lineage. One of her friends had been robbed in the dressing room and
+she was afraid to trust these precious articles there longer. She
+made sure that Gard had tucked them in his pocket for safekeeping.
+As she hurried to rejoin the circles, he saw that she had worn
+through the bottoms of her dancing hose.
+
+Whenever that feeling of discomfort, which he had been conscious of
+early that morning, surged for a moment through him, a sip of
+champagne brought quick relief and gilded the scene and his spirits
+with its necromancy. He felt dizzy but blissful. He became
+drowsy.... He had sunk into a dream, glorious then ugly, foolish but
+haunting.
+
+He dreamed he was an armored knight of the time of Charlemagne. He
+was astride a steed caparisoned for battle, and was riding southward
+from the Alps in the blazing sunlight, along a white road amid what
+he supposed were the gardened plains of Lombardy. By his side, in
+similar array, rode a lovely blond princess of the North with a
+wonderful luxuriance of hair--some daughter of the Frankish race of
+fierce and resplendent Brunnhildas or Fredegondas.
+
+She at last became wearied of her heavy armor, the length of the
+journey and the burning sun. He assisted in extricating her from her
+coat of mail, and took her over into his arms asleep, letting her
+armor ride upright on her charger save for the helmet which he
+fastened to his pommel. As the horses kept onward he held with
+delight her lightsome body, with her miraculous tresses entwining
+him as she slumbered. He held her embraced in tenderness, for had
+not she--a princess--trusted him and gone away with him alone?
+
+He had not thus ridden with her far, before his eyes, alert in every
+direction for the treacherous enemies of the land, beheld with
+gaping fright an immense black serpent, brilliant with scales
+glistening in the scintillating air, slowly uncoiling out of her
+headless panoply that was still riding bolt upright by his side. He
+glared down at her in the certainty that she had turned into a twin
+serpent at his breast. She lay there still in the seductive form of
+a woman. But she had turned loathsome to his touch. He hurled her to
+the ground and the next moment was flying on foot, afield, in
+horror from the spot.
+
+And he recalled in his dream how woman and the snake have been
+allied in legend, religion and history--how they have ever been
+identified in the minds of men. His beautiful queen had been at one
+with the serpent in that suit of metal. Or was it only Elsa?--was it
+only Fritzi?--with their amber hair?
+
+For what seemed a very long time he was fitfully trying to
+decide--when he slowly made out that brawny Frau Bucher stood over
+him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+RECUPERATION
+
+
+She was in the act of giving him a potion for a raging fever. Once
+he realized that Herr Bucher sat silently poring over a book by the
+bed, chucking him back into it when he tossed out. The Bucher
+children occasionally appeared on errands for his comfort. The
+family nursed him more diligently than if he had been their own.
+
+Gard came back to his senses rather rapidly. He had found himself in
+his room. He was in his own bed--that German bed. Summertide was
+steadily flooding in through the grateful leaves of his linden, and
+brightening his confining walls. His narrow-gage American digestive
+apparatus had, it appeared, finally rebelled over the broad German
+fare. All his eating and drinking during the months had proven
+disastrous. When he had begun to feel bad that last day, it only
+needed a little champagne to bring to a head the inevitable revolt.
+And so, toward the end of his year, he was physically not far from
+where he had been on coming to Deutschland for the sake of its
+inspiring virilities.
+
+He had plenty of time to wonder how he had got back to Loschwitz
+from the Waitress Dance. He never inquired, never learned. But
+Fritzi alone knew his address. He had no recollection of anything.
+He went through his pockets. His valuables were intact. His money
+was all there as nearly as he could figure out, except a reasonable
+amount evidently used to pay the supper bill and convey him home.
+Truly those considerate servants had not acted like amateurs.
+
+He finally remembered about Fritzi's hose. They were gone. At length
+Frau Bucher said she had forgotten to tell him that a pretty young
+woman came to reclaim them. He was ashamed enough. To be carried to
+his room in the odor of champagne and with a girl's silk stockings
+in his pocket! _He_--Gard Kirtley! Was this the low estate to which
+German life had brought him?
+
+But he soon observed that the Buchers cared nothing about all this.
+Young men, as we have seen, were expected to go on larks. No one
+spoke of the distressing occurrence. There was no disagreeable
+testimony that he had made great trouble. No looks of reproach
+attacked him. His Puritan habits had been, in fact, very curious to
+the parents. They felt now that he was a youth whom they could
+understand. He was true to the proper type.
+
+It was a relief for him to know that he had not dropped in respect
+before any of the household. He believed he had, on the contrary,
+grown in their estimation, as had Rudi after his "experience." The
+poor Herr Kirtley was considered a much abused victim of an
+unfortunate sickness. Once Frau exclaimed:
+
+"Ach Himmel! our sons have such a hard time of it!"
+
+When he began to eat ravenously after his enforced abstinence,
+hearty foods and heavy drinks were supplied. It is the German
+fashion at such times to build up the strength quickly with lusty
+meals. He was started promptly again on the road to gastric ruin.
+
+Often at night a cold sweat would bead over Gard. What would he do
+about Frau Bucher and Elsa? He had been thrown helpless into their
+hands. Holy Smoke! Would he become a German in spite of himself? He
+sometimes wished the Imperial Secret Service might scare him out of
+the country as had been the case with the lucky Deming.
+
+The Buchers had likely saved his life. He had been brought by them
+faithfully back to health. How was he going to repay? What excuses
+could he offer when the time came to face Frau's proposal? How could
+he possibly make his escape at all agreeably? Was ever a fellow in
+just such a pickle?
+
+And here was the ever-capable Elsa dutifully bringing his viands and
+at times reading to him stories from Hoffmann. She was like a real
+fairy out of a German story book. The new Heine she had given him
+lay there, but neither suggested opening it. It was not a thing to
+get well over.
+
+To a sick man, his nurse seems heavenly. And Elsa looked truly
+golden as she sat there over the Hoffmann, with the sunlight
+streaming about her head. In Gard's phantasmagoria at night there
+had often been a blond maiden, dancing and lovely--but mingled at
+length into some unpleasant circumstance like that connected with
+the phantom princess he had ridden with in Italy.
+
+Ernst, still limping from his beating, came in now and then and read
+out of a ponderous volume on the Relation of German Music to the
+Reformation. It was full of intricate, plodding, dull detail in the
+German style, which the lad found of interest. But Gard, despite
+this kindness, could not make much headway with it. Smoking was, of
+course, permitted to accompany his man-like return to health, and it
+was always a genial hour to have Anderson sitting there in the
+wreaths of nicotine before the summery window, talking, talking.
+
+The correspondent came several times, bringing comic papers. Gard
+pleased him by saying he was veering round to the journalist's way
+of thinking on things German. He related the Der Tag incident at the
+ball. The family life of the Teutons, the life of the plain
+people--all were substantiating the essential and alarming truth of
+the old man's beliefs. At last another American in Germany had been
+found who was experiencing an awakening. The result was a mutual
+appreciation.
+
+One afternoon they were eating some of the big German cherries, and
+the fragrance of Herr Bucher's rose garden below was engaged in
+balmy conflict with the odors of cigars.
+
+"Well, what is the solution about the German people?" Gard
+propounded. "What's to be done with them? Here they are, industrious
+as bees and as fully armed with stings. Will a war cure anything?
+Even if defeated, won't they be the same people? Won't they present
+the same problem? Won't they present the same menace to what we
+consider as the best and most desirable types of civilization?"
+
+Anderson did not interrupt these questions. When they had all come
+out, he gravely took another cigar, leisurely lighted it and turned
+his chair to face the linden at the window. He spoke very mildly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+THE GERMAN PROBLEM. AN ANSWER
+
+
+"I have given this a great deal of thought. I have read a great deal
+and I believe I have never known of a writer who furnished what I
+should call an answer. And that is the most important thing--the
+vital thing. So I have evolved a simple, natural proposal. It is the
+only proposal, I think, that will remedy the evil of the German
+nation--remedy the ugly situation that hangs over the careless
+earth.
+
+"We know that when young foreigners are educated in considerable
+part in a country, they generally become at peace with it.
+Everything, in fact, draws them to this attitude--for instance,
+their excusable satisfaction in feeling that their sojourn abroad
+has been a success for them instead of a failure. Any foreign
+instruction makes the student more of an intelligent, cosmopolitan
+sympathizer. It knits together warm acquaintances abroad. Every
+Rhodes scholar is an ally of England. He goes forth bearing kindly
+messages for her. I have told you how it works with our Americans
+coming over here to the German universities. They nearly all become
+pro-Germanic. And this is one reason why our compatriots at home
+have in general such a downright admiration for what they consider
+the super-excellence of the Teutons.
+
+"But while this providing of the German education for Americans is
+pulling so strong in favor of Germany, we have nothing similar in
+America pulling Germany toward us and our ways. Young Germans are
+not sent to the United States to study and to lead our lives and to
+return home bearing good-will and good reports. They stay where they
+are and become more narrowly, intrinsically Teutons--irreclaimably
+Teutons. They are left with the undisputed idea that their system of
+instruction is altogether the best, as proven by the spectacle of
+aliens coming here for schooling. Why, then, should German lads and
+misses go abroad to learn? And they don't.
+
+"Now as long as this state of things continues, the German race will
+remain a tribe in itself, and radically at loggerheads with the
+world. It will be hopelessly separated, unreconciled, inimical. It
+will be strange and opposed to everyone else--everything else. As
+you have seen yourself, even the meanings of the most common and
+essential terms are usually, to the German, the contrary of what
+they are to the rest of mankind.
+
+"How will there ever be any natural and genuine meeting of the
+minds, fellowship, community of interests, under present programmes?
+For centuries civilized countries have been living side by side with
+the Teutons, have been pursuing education ever more zealously, and
+still the German brain and character stay profoundly different from
+the rest and are not understood. They are so different, in fact,
+that the forces of war and destruction must be maintained as against
+them and are constant irritants to thought and activity.
+
+"My plan is this. Young German men and women should be amicably
+educated abroad in very large numbers--the largest well possible.
+And on a broader basis than the Cecil Rhodes scheme. In our country
+they would become, from youthful association, more or less fond of
+our open homes, our sense of democracy, the untrammeled
+opportunities to go and to do. They would see the advantages of
+these blessings--or at least their human attraction--among boys and
+girls.
+
+"Under my programme these Germans, still adolescent, will return
+home and a little of this foreign education will stick. But their
+children will do the same. More will stick with them. Then their
+children, and still more sticking. After fifty or a hundred years
+you will have a large population in Deutschland thinking and liking
+and to a great extent living like their Christian and less warlike
+neighbors. It will be a tremendous beneficial element introduced for
+the first time into Germany. It will slowly and silently, without
+friction or loss of self-respect, accomplish an internal revolution.
+
+"Foreign education for Teuton boys and girls! That's the only final
+answer I can find--the only true one. You see, a war will never
+accomplish this, nor tariffs or penalties. Such agencies do not
+change human nature or character or modes of existence. They
+antagonize, make stubborn or resentful or malevolent. And, unlike
+other races, the Germans would always remain, as they are to-day,
+UNITED. This is the explanation of their World Power."
+
+Anderson stopped as if waiting for a comment.
+
+"It all sounds well and is a beautiful way to do it, but how is it
+practicable?" asked Gard, who had listened attentively, impressed.
+"How are you going to coax the Germans to enter into this? What
+benefit will they see in it?"
+
+"You are right," returned Anderson. "That's the difficulty at
+present. It can't be put in operation, as I see it, unless Germany
+happens to be defeated in the coming war. If she is defeated she
+will, of course, be humbled and temporarily sick of fighting, and
+this proposal could then be readily forced into adoption as one of
+the post-war measures looking to the quickest rehabilitation of the
+nation. Anything that will put it on its feet again soon will be
+most welcome at that time. Meanwhile, the instruments of war, the
+power to do damage, must not be left in the German's hands. As long
+as he has them, he will prepare to destroy."
+
+"But if Germany is victorious, as you seem to think she will be?"
+suggested Gard.
+
+"Oh, then nothing will work. It won't have a chance. What will there
+be of all this to contemplate? Germany will be the master and its
+semi-paganism will prevail. The modern Teuton tribes will begin to
+level the Christian civilizations to the ground just as the Huns
+leveled the Roman civilization. The Hun disposition in the German
+_must_ be eradicated--_must_ be destroyed. Until this is done the
+world will always have these Huns at its gates."...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was now July in the year of everlasting tragedy--1914. Kirtley
+must leave for home, as Villa Elsa knew. He talked over his route
+with Anderson. His interest in Charlemagne made him wish to see at
+Aix-la-Chapelle the great emperor's tomb, underneath which,
+according to an old-time legend, the ruler still sits in his white
+robes of state in his marble chair, looking forward to resurrection
+to power. So the trip was mapped out through central Germany.
+
+As the time was at hand for Gard to announce his date of setting
+off, his perplexities before Frau and Elsa grew entangled. But,
+happily, their knot was cut for him. Von Tielitz, who had long been
+away, broke in upon the household one morning with glorious news. He
+had received a commission as bandmaster in the army with fair pay.
+Most unexpected. A civilian, who could make sport of the military,
+summoned into the ranks! What could it mean? Something must be in
+the wind.
+
+At all events he had come to arrange to marry Elsa, and converted
+the Villa into a hubbub. He was so beside himself that he appeared
+ready to embrace and marry the first person he met. He was also
+officious as if conducting a rehearsal. He rushed to Gard's room and
+overwhelmed him with the tidings. His eye-glasses kept tumbling off.
+He was upstairs and down, in the flower garden, out at the tea
+table, and now and then he rushed to the Pleyel and rent the air
+with its exultant chords.
+
+The family turned the day into celebration. The wine cellar was
+opened. The kitchen sent forth its hot and overflowing dishes hour
+after hour until well into the evening. The marriageable Jim Deming
+and Gard Kirtley were to Villa Elsa as if they had never been. Frau
+proclaimed in husky sounds that she had not felt so young in thirty
+years. Luckily Fraeulein Wasserhaus had gone off to Brunswick to
+visit a relative soon after Deming's advent, so she was not in
+Wiesenstrasse to encounter this joyous climax and Gard's
+preparations for his eventful journey.
+
+Elsa acted as one overjoyed. It was what she had yearned for and
+what filled the measure of her Teutonic maiden nature. On seeing her
+happy like a yellow mermaid on a sunlit, blissful shore, and knowing
+what Friedrich _was_ with all his talent, Gard realized she was
+never for him or he for her. It had been for him a vagary, an
+irresponsible venture in ethno-psychology, a poorly based confusion
+of appreciation with a vague notion of duty intermingled with
+sentiment.
+
+His illness had cleared his intuitions. The unalluring defects of
+the Teuton systems of love-making overshadowed his own defects as a
+suitor. Elsa had been as truly foreign to him as the German habits
+of eating and drinking. In thinking of her he now knew he had always
+been conscious of her nation. The German woman, as he had already
+learned, is sunk into her race. It swallows up her individuality. In
+marrying her, one married the whole people--the German State--the
+Kaiser. One became possessed not only of a help-meet but of an
+aggressive political idea.
+
+Now that Gard was a friend instead of a lover, how much easier were
+his relations with Fraeulein! Brooding sensitiveness and
+responsibility passed into lightsomeness. The unnatural and
+crankling proceeding of his trying to woo a German girl was smoothed
+away into a genial indifference. The mental picture of Elsa would
+remain as one that had attracted him on the wall of his German
+memories. And like the hundred maids that a youth is smitten with,
+she would gradually blend into the dim gallery of such pleasant
+visions of Kirtley's susceptible spring-time--visions which, in all
+men, fade sweetly into their manhood.
+
+In this manner the cloud of Gard's awkward discomfort in speaking
+out or acting out his answer to Frau's virile project, had melted
+away before these lighted-up faces. He felt as if a fog were lifted
+off his consciousness. He was glad to slip out thus easily. In the
+lively jumble of robust, rejoicing realities about him, he seemed to
+have emerged from the fringy edges of a daze.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+A GERMAN "GOTT BE WITH YE"
+
+
+A dash of adventure was to crown Gard Kirtley's farewell to Germany
+as it had crowned Jim Deming's, but with an ominous wreath of the
+tragic instead of garlands of the comic. War was at hand, yet even
+Anderson did not see it plainly enough to report it. War was often
+in the sky in Germany and often had he been fooled. The Teutons must
+be sure of victory and, he was positive, would avail themselves of a
+long summer for their campaign.
+
+In those days of July something peculiar and tense hung over the
+land, but its sources were untraceable, its form, abstract. The
+unadvised, ordinary people wiped the sweat from their foreheads and
+said it must be the heat. Kirtley would not have been expected to
+interpret Friedrich's surprising engagement in the music ranks of
+the _Landwehr_ as a sign that widespread preparations were being
+made for the fullest onslaught of which the nation could be capable.
+The Government was, nevertheless, quietly laying its hands on all
+its young men--even musicians who were blind in one eye and could
+not see out of it.
+
+Gard was glad to go home through the heart of Germany. Jena, Weimar,
+Erfurt, Eisenach!--the land of Goethe, Schiller, Luther. While these
+figures were discarded from the blatant pageantry of the armed
+Empire, the landmarks associated with them remained to satisfy the
+vision, and he could tell of them to dear old ignorant Rebner who
+would be waiting to hear of his beloved Deutschland which existed no
+more. Afterward, Heidelberg; the trip down the Rhine to the spires
+of Cologne; and then Aix at the western border, where that august
+sovereign slept in a haunting majesty, wrapped in the mystic
+grandeur of the Dark Ages. It was the most fitting and impressive
+place on the frontier from which to bid adieu to Germania.
+
+In gratitude for his recovery Gard made handsome presents to
+everyone at Loschwitz, accompanied by the conventional _Edelweiss_.
+Villa Elsa, in turn, was profuse in its expressions and little acts
+of good will. Herr Bucher gave him a queer pipe, and the boys
+furnished the smoking tobacco. These gifts were to while away the
+lost hours on the tour. From Frau came a flask of cognac for use in
+case he were dizzy on the trains. Fraeulein bestowed on him one of
+her tiny etchings showing the Elbe with the Schiller Garden where
+all had spent so many evenings.
+
+Gard's route, his through ticket to the sea, his traveling clothing,
+were subjects of daily conversation at the table. Although the
+family were entirely obliging, Rudi, odd to say, occupied himself
+the most about the trip. He seemed wonderfully keyed up and more
+full of military talk even than usual. He insisted on seeing about
+time-tables, hotels to be recommended, the favorite dishes and brews
+to be called for at each stopping place for local tone.
+
+Kirtley was pleased over his friendly attentions. He wished to leave
+with good feelings all around.
+
+When Rudi helped him get his trunk from the store room, Gard's
+forgotten passport fell out and excited the other's curiosity.
+
+"I've never seen an American state paper before," he remarked,
+puffing a cigarette. "What a droll looking affair! So different from
+ours. Would you mind if I just glanced at it?"
+
+"Certainly not." Anderson's suspicions of the young German glanced
+through Kirtley's mind. But Rudi was a thick-headed boy, and what
+could he or anyone accomplish with a passport? Gard had scarcely
+been called upon to use it. It had been treated almost as a blank
+formality, an empty courtesy.
+
+"You don't have to show it in German towns--only at the frontier? Am
+I right?" inquired Rudi after he had minutely read it through as if
+he had been an official.
+
+"Only at the frontier." Gard grew wary. This knowing and recent
+familiarity was not becoming entirely agreeable. It would be prudent
+to mystify the son.
+
+"But of course something _might_ happen in a German town and I might
+need it. So it's always convenient to have about."
+
+"Where are you going to carry it, then?" pursued the other, handing
+back the ribboned paper.
+
+"Would you think my grip would be the place?"
+
+"Your grip? Yes, that's just like me. I always shove everything into
+my grip at last. See here, now. I have none of my papers about me.
+All in my grip--even in the house." Rudi opened to view his inside
+coat pocket in testimony, as if he were an important individual.
+Gard shifted ground again.
+
+"I don't know. I may carry it in my pocket--with my ticket. What if
+I leave it in my trunk after all? I shall have to open up at the
+border anyhow."
+
+The subject of the passport kept in Rudi's mind. Three days later he
+called out to Gard:
+
+"I have been thinking it over and I believe you should carry your
+passport in your grip. It may slip out of your pocket while you are
+dozing in the train."
+
+"Danke schoen!" said Gard.
+
+The parents also took great interest in the matter. The paper ought
+to be examined by the German authorities. Was it not Herr Kirtley's
+credentials to the German nation? Nothing would answer but that Herr
+Bucher and Rudolph should take it in town and see that the proper
+officials were duly cognizant. It was another evidence to Gard that
+a Teuton is not content until his Government is given an
+opportunity to approve. The document seemed so vital to Villa Elsa
+that Gard mentioned it to Anderson in the way of gossip.
+
+"Don't leave it in your trunk or grip," cautioned the elder. "Keep
+it on your person. Sew it on your shirt, by golly. One never needs a
+passport, you know, and then you need it like the devil. I've heard
+of two or three persons this month who got separated from their
+passports and were in trouble. Something seems to be really going on
+under the surface. But spring is the classic time for war as well as
+love to break out."
+
+Gard decided to follow Anderson's advice and keep the parchment in
+his innermost pocket. He also checked his trunk through to the
+frontier, contrary to Rudi's suggestion. He said nothing of these
+changes, yet he was far from thinking that the hand of the Goth
+would dare to reach out after him--a friendly foreigner and guest
+leaving this peaceful hearthstone, so effusive in its amicable
+leave-takings.
+
+Just before his departure he felt something of a restraint in the
+household. He attributed it to the social stiffness of the German.
+This increases when intercourse comes to a point. Affecting moments
+jolt hard in him--moments when embarrassment is natural to all
+humans.
+
+At the gate, for the last time, the Herr was energetically smoking
+his long pipe. The Frau frequently wiped her sweating face with a
+handkerchief. The boys kept kicking away the dogs whose barking half
+drowned the parting words. Gard said good-by, too, to the old linden
+by his window. How one can miss a tree!
+
+And Elsa! He flattered himself she looked a mite regretful that he
+was going. She was starting for her class when she joined the
+topsy-turvy group by the gate and waved her creamy hand. Her small
+straw hat, wreathed fatiguingly in roses, clung desperately to her
+head in the awkward way German women have of wearing headgear, and
+made her, despite her blossom-like attractiveness, seem quaint and
+so truly German like the rest. She looked to Gard as pink and blonde
+as the year before when he had first been dazzled by her glistening
+hair.
+
+On crossing the river he could see her moving down their meadow path
+where Heine had sung to him, her etching materials under her arm.
+One last look at the row of knightly castles rimming the heights
+above her and at the storied Elbe at her feet as she hurried along!
+He gulped down a small something in his throat, and turned his face
+toward the station.
+
+After all, Dresden had been a year of his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+A JOURNEY
+
+
+At Eisenach, bound for Frankfort, the train guard punched Kirtley's
+ticket and showed him into a compartment that was empty save for a
+military figure engaged in reading a large newspaper, holding it
+firmly with gloved hands before his face. Although the day was warm,
+an army cap was clapped down low on the head.
+
+Gard sank back on the cushions and closed his eyes. He was somewhat
+fatigued from having climbed the Wartburg whose castle, famed in the
+history of Luther, lay asleep there like a long and oddly shaped
+beetle. He soon fell into a doze. When he became conscious again,
+his companion's countenance was buried as before in the paper.
+Underneath it, gray trousers and large boots protruded in Kirtley's
+direction as if to ward off any familiar approach.
+
+That editorial page must be extensive and absorbing, Kirtley
+commented to himself as he whiffed the refreshing breeze that came
+in his window from Hesse close by on the west. In a delicious
+half-dreaminess he thought the stranger turned the journal and that
+a reddish, be-whiskered visage, with a flat, wide-lobed nose, popped
+into view for a second.
+
+The motionless reading, nevertheless, continued for the remainder of
+the trip. To the sweet July zephyr and the snug landscapes flitting
+by, the soldier paid no heed. How German this was!--Kirtley mused.
+The Teutons are a wintry race and often take their summer joys in a
+hard, hyperborean fashion. He could not but admire this example of
+physical constraint. The iron rigors of Prussian drill had made the
+best army in the world.
+
+Or perhaps this was some queer, abnormal chap. Gard remembered
+fragments of stories he had heard of comic or tragic happenings in
+the separated, locked compartments of continental trains. But the
+tales were too vague in his mind to pique any anxiety. He roused
+himself and took up his German newspaper. Muffled war scares. Always
+war scares more or less in evidence. How dull the Teuton journals
+would be without them! Dog days were coming and brains were no doubt
+effervescing.
+
+The forty-eight hours in the rich old capital on the Main were full
+and Kirtley had almost forgotten his peculiar fellow traveler from
+Eisenach. What was his amazement, after his guard had punched his
+transportation and closed him into his compartment in the train for
+Heidelberg, to find the same individual seated alone again in the
+corner, engrossed in his voluminous and stationary paper!
+
+This began to be disturbing. Gard was not more brave than the
+average mortal, but fear had not really been born into his bones.
+Was this some weird affair? Was it a spy at work, combining German
+earnestness with German farcicalness? The ludicrous extremes of Jim
+Deming's experience flashed over Kirtley's mind. But he felt as full
+confidence in his innocence as had Jim, and he had not given a
+Cinderella party.
+
+It was a short run to the celebrated university town on the Neckar
+through ancient Hesse. What would Gard do? This was a nonsensical
+situation. He decided to crack it open, find out what it was all
+about. He summoned his best German and formally addressed a casual
+remark to the stranger. No answer. He did not hear.
+
+"Oh, deaf! Probably dumb too!" Gard exclaimed to himself. His next
+move was to step across to the other window for the evident purpose
+of throwing out something. A lurch of the train caused him to
+stumble against the high boots. They remained motionless. He
+discovered that the eyes behind the paper were fixed in a stare.
+
+_It was a stuffed figure!_
+
+A mere puppet. And yet a thrill of alarm, for the first time, shot
+through Gard. It was not reassuring. He thought of Rudi. Was this
+some official prank young Bucher had set going? It would be like
+him. He must be a spy, as Anderson had insisted. Was the son trying
+to act with confederates far away over here near the Rhine?
+
+The passport! Rudi and the family knew all about it. Kirtley felt in
+his inside shirt pocket. He was relieved to find the parchment still
+there. How foolish he would have been to leave it in his grip, as
+Rudi had urged! A traveler couldn't be with his grip every moment.
+But why was such a paper considered valuable by the Secret Service?
+
+As he returned to his seat, Kirtley gave the legs a kick "just for
+luck." He could not help laughing. The burlesque! The Germans were
+certainly a curious people. This was like some fantastic tale of
+Hoffmann with its marionettes and other childish stuff so dear to
+the race.
+
+It came over him that this image was thus being conveniently
+transported from one town to another for some show--some Jarley
+waxworks. But how, then, about that other form in the train from
+Eisenach? It had certainly been alive. Had he not seen it turn its
+paper? Yet, was he sure? He had been half asleep and might have
+imagined it.
+
+As he revolved the matter in his mind, he was less and less
+positive. At any rate, how explain the fact that this exact figure
+had been on the two trains and that each time he had been with it
+alone? How was it known here what trains he would take? Only the
+Buchers were advised.
+
+Whether a silly hoax or a performance of the tremendous sleuth
+system of Germany, Gard was too unsettled to enjoy fully his brief
+sojourn at Heidelberg. He decided to trip up any pursuers. Instead
+of resuming by rail his journey to Mannheim, according to that
+section of his ticket, he took an auto. For every reason that would
+be pleasanter. He could see to better advantage the far-famed,
+vine-clad valley of the Neckar where it merges into the wide and
+noble plains of the Rhine.
+
+From Mannheim he went by boat as proposed. His be-whiskered friend
+did not put in an appearance and Kirtley congratulated himself on
+the riddance. The more he reflected, the less he made any sense out
+of it. Coincidence, practical joke, spy system at white heat,
+hallucination--all suggestions seemed equally untenable.
+
+At Cologne he found the newspapers full of discussions about war. On
+the trip he had not read much. He was either sight-seeing,
+traveling, weary or sleepy. For that matter, the public generally
+was not aware that fearful hostilities were imminent, and he gave
+the subject no keen notice.
+
+There is not much to view in the city of odors--Coleridge's city of
+"two and seventy" smells. Only the cathedral. Although the museum
+is mediocre Gard dropped in there at noon to fill in his time. After
+wandering about he became aware that there was, in the distance,
+another visitor whose occasional shuffling footsteps first attracted
+his attention among the eye-obstructing objects. Then he saw, at
+times, a bulky form bending over some curiosity and contemplating
+it.
+
+As Kirtley had no companion on his journey, except the military
+scarecrow, he felt a touch of lonesomeness and was glad when he
+gradually approached near enough to see that this person was a
+kindly looking German who had the wondering air of a sight-seer. In
+their leisurely itineraries they at last met in front of a small
+bronze copy of a Roman horse marked with italics in Gard's guide
+book.
+
+The other looked, too, as if he wanted to speak, and his cheerful
+countenance invited Kirtley's readiness to visit with someone. The
+stranger was in appearance a prosperous man of about thirty-five,
+blond, with a very small curling mustache under a small nose. Though
+he kept smiling he still said nothing, as if doubtful of a first
+advance.
+
+Gard hesitated, then broke the ice.
+
+"I don't know anything about Roman horses," he essayed. "I can't
+tell whether this is a good thing or not." The other was affably
+relieved and was soon pouring out information about the animal.
+
+"Excuse me," he ventured, "but I raise horses on my estate and I
+know a little about them. The Roman horse was, of course, smaller,
+shorter, stockier, than our modern type. Small heads, short necks,
+built closer to the ground. Just like the Roman himself. This is a
+splendid example."
+
+Seeing that Gard followed him he began again with:
+
+"Excuse me." And he plunged into a minute, quite exhaustive,
+discussion of the Latin specimen before them, as they walked round
+and round to view it from all angles. Kirtley had never before
+realized there were so many points--fine points--about this familiar
+quadruped. The German showed why this animal could not speed, could
+not make nearly as many miles a day as his present successor. But,
+like the Roman, he had endurance and he was undoubtedly easier to
+handle. There were the withers, the haunch, the hock, and a score of
+other features upon which Gard's new acquaintance held forth,
+introducing almost every remark with his rather embarrassed "excuse
+me."
+
+The astonishing Teuton erudition again! Gard had to marvel at it
+once more. This German was, by rare exception, ingratiating. They
+finally introduced themselves. Herr Furstenheimer of Wuerttemberg--a
+farmer. Gard concluded he did not dislike Germans of the south.
+Their temperaments, voices, manners, are somewhat softer than those
+of the north.
+
+"I haven't been in Cologne in twenty years," Furstenheimer
+explained. "Just stopped off. I wonder if you--I see you too are a
+tourist--happen to be going my way. Excuse me, but that would be
+odd, wouldn't it?"
+
+"Yes--I'm bound for Rotterdam."
+
+"Rotterdam--- why so am I!" ejaculated the German in a happy moment.
+"I'm on my way to visit my sister there. I haven't seen her for
+years. It's really shameful. What train do you take?"
+
+"The two o'clock. I wish you might be going along. One gets somewhat
+bored traveling alone."
+
+"I'm the same way. I like company. I had intended going on
+to-night, but this Cologne one hears so much about is
+disappointingly dull, isn't it? Nothing to see." They conversed in
+German to Kirtley's linguistic satisfaction.
+
+"But I'm stopping off at Aix-la-Chapelle," he had to say. "That's at
+four. Then I'm taking the late train."
+
+"What is there at Aix? I don't remember."
+
+"I want to see Charlemagne's tomb."
+
+"Oh, _so_? That can't be duller than Cologne, can it? I don't see
+that I would be losing any time by it either. I'll tell you what
+I'll do. If I decide to join you--and I hope I shall--you'll see me
+at the two o'clock. But if I don't--well, Aufwiedersehen!--let us
+hope--and I am delighted to have met you."
+
+Gard was gratified when the sociable Wuerttemberger arrived at the
+station. They went on to Aix in a compartment full of _militaires_.
+The countryside, swimming in the sunlight, lay tidy and dimpling in
+the gentle arms of a peace and prosperity that made the newspaper
+talk of a campaign seem unreal and preposterous.
+
+Furstenheimer appeared to have only the interests of a small
+land-holder, and gossiped about his farm, his horses and prices. He
+was not apparently concerned about the war excitement. Agriculture
+in Wuerttemberg was more important. Like most Germans, whether there
+was war or no war, seemed much the same thing with him. Either must
+be taken naturally and philosophically like a state of Nature.
+Furstenheimer was not fond of being away from home. To be frank, his
+brother-in-law in Rotterdam had got into financial straits and his
+own sister was ill. They had become almost strangers in the long
+separation. And that was not right, _was_ it? He really had had to
+go.
+
+When they arrived at Aix--the German Aachen--they decided to leave
+their grips in an inn, across the station Platz, so that they could
+conveniently dine there and be near at hand for the express. Then
+they started for the cathedral which, with its eleven centuries,
+loomed under a lofty octagon from a low hill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+THE TOMB OF CHARLEMAGNE
+
+
+In a few minutes the two travelers reached the side portal of the
+hoary temple. It represented the seat of Charlemagne's political and
+ecclesiastical power--the capitol of the ancient Franks. The door
+was closed. A service was being held. It would be out at five
+o'clock.
+
+To occupy the interim Gard and his new friend went over to the
+neighboring town hall, located on the site of the emperor's palace.
+They found it a gay Gothic edifice, the roof flanked by two pert
+towers. Inside they tiptoed about with silent respect in the immense
+coronation gallery--one of the largest rooms in the world. Here the
+medieval German emperors were crowned and imperial diets held.
+
+When the tourists returned to the cathedral they met two young,
+clean-shaven Germans, obviously travelers like themselves, also
+wishing to enter. One was tall, the other short. While waiting for
+the audience to file out, the four struck up a casual conversation
+about the edifice. Gard, full of his guide book, was pleased to
+inform them on a subject of which they pleaded ignorance.
+
+They sauntered into the somber, august interior. Above were the
+impressive stained glass windows, high-flung in the octagon.
+Kirtley's binocular, strung over his shoulders, came in handy to the
+others. The Germans seemed somewhat posted on stained glass (Teuton
+erudition!) and with Gard's binocular they went off for an
+inspection from the exterior.
+
+He preferred to remain and contemplate alone the solemn scene about
+him. It was an hour he had looked forward to. He wanted to recall
+what he had read of this historic spot and the epic and romantic
+associations here of the most celebrated of Carolingians.
+
+In the mosaic flooring at his feet, as he sat down, was the
+tombstone which (in the tradition) lies above the imperial victor
+who sits below waiting with his scepter in his hand and his white
+beard ever growing--the king of the Middle Ages. How many, many
+potentates, great and small, during all the intervening centuries,
+had bowed their heads and spoken words of reverence in the presence
+of the only sepulchre remaining _in situ_ and intact of the
+world-conquerors of antiquity! Of all these reputed soliloquies,
+that of Don Carlos, in the spacious Alexandrines of Victor Hugo in
+"Hernani," Gard remembered as being the most famous. He had heard
+what a long and impressive recital it always is as one of the tests
+of the dramatic actor at the Theatre Francais.
+
+His thoughts ran on. Without Charlemagne's military successes, his
+widespread reorganizations, the political and civil grandeur of his
+acts, his picturesque journeys, his union of church and state, what
+would the Dark Ages have been? In its mountains of fact and luring
+mists of fable he had stood mighty and solitary, inspiring its
+imagination, its legends, its superstitions, its songs. He was its
+compelling figure. He it was who unified medievaldom and laid the
+bases of what had since governed in western Europe and prevented it
+from remaining a vast region of large and small tribes fighting
+among themselves. And he alone, among the powerful military
+chieftains of the old, old past, had died both peacefully and
+undefeated.
+
+Why, then, has he faded from view? This was an interesting question
+to Kirtley. Why has Caesar so outshone Charlemagne? Why are Homer and
+Vergil, in comparison, coming ever more to the fore? Why has Dante
+become the masterly profile of medievalism?
+
+A significant answer had before occurred to Gard. These four
+personages could _write_ marvelously well while Charlemagne could
+scarcely even write his name. Had he been a great author, why would
+not his fame be burning brightly like theirs? In every institution
+of education their classic language is kept before both youth and
+professor. Their cults accordingly grow. While the Frank so largely
+shaped the Middle Ages and furnished leading motives for its
+background, the Italian merely pictured it.
+
+And yet the latter has become its most distinct luminary. His art
+has surpassed in renown the medieval sword and crown. His pen is a
+constant self-advertiser while those emblems of state fall to the
+ground. Though every spot associated with the lives of Caesar, of
+Vergil, of Dante, is sought by student and sage, the tomb of
+Charlemagne is being forgotten. Who knows that it exists or cares?
+And is it all because he had no literary skill? A gigantesque
+character, surrounded by his romantic paladins--Roland, Oliver,
+Ganelon and the rest--his face turned alike toward west, east and
+south--to France and Germany and Italy--he nevertheless has long
+been sinking into the ever-darker shadows of a dulled obscurity....
+
+Gard's friend and the other two Germans presently returned and
+interrupted his ruminations. They had seen their fill and were
+anxious to escape from this gray cavern of a dim oblivion. Outdoors
+the party of four found the sun shining, but rain clouds were
+hovering in the east. The strangers had plenty of time as they were
+without a fixed itinerary. They were very agreeable and it was
+suggested that all dine together. Would not a stroll in the environs
+be meanwhile a suitable diversion?--out toward the attractive
+Lousberg and its belvedere?
+
+Herr Furstenheimer had indicated an inquiry to Kirtley as to whether
+he would like to join the other two. Upon his signifying
+affirmatively, the four walked northward. The flat face of one of
+the young men Gard fancied he had seen before. It was, however, of a
+somewhat familiar Teuton variety and lost in the maze of all the
+German visages he had seen.
+
+They idled along, recounting their exciting experiences in
+traveling. Gard told of the wax image in the train as the singular
+incident he had to offer. As it did not appear to appeal to the
+curiosity of his companions, he dropped the subject. The Germans are
+used to the grotesque and egregious.
+
+At intervals the company changed about by twos, their hats coming
+off frequently in the warmth of the evening. On reaching the top of
+a small ascent, a summer inn there invited to cooling drinks. It was
+a low-storied, straggling construction, with a large green yard and
+trees. There were no guests as yet for the approaching meal time.
+
+The cathedral acquaintances took one side of a table under the
+branches, and the companionable Furstenheimer with Gard faced them.
+With the beer they began comparing the parts of the world they
+hailed from. Kirtley belonged to that distant land--America!
+Incredible! He had traveled so far. It was a country the two
+newcomers wished to visit. They could not credit the surprising
+things they had heard concerning the United States. All was so odd
+there.
+
+The smaller German, with the broad face, having lost no time in
+being full of compliments about Kirtley's accent, went on:
+
+"You Americans learn our language better than we do yours. I could
+never get the th in my school. You seem to _do_ everything so
+differently in America, too. Now, there's your great game of cards,
+for instance. I was on a boat once going down the Danube and some of
+your compatriots were playing it. They called it--ach Gott!--what
+did they call it? _You_ know."
+
+"Poker," said Gard, amused.
+
+"No, that isn't it."
+
+"Bridge."
+
+"No, the devil, why can't I think of it? They played it--if I had a
+pack of cards I would show you what I mean. You could name it then."
+
+The German called the attendant. The latter did not come. The other
+hurried into the restaurant and came back waving a deck.
+
+"Now I will try to show you. I can't do it well. I have never seen
+it but once."
+
+"Monte," said Gard. It was not the name the German recognized.
+Kirtley laughed over this old county fair acquaintance. Three card
+monte under the walls of Charlemagne's church! This was bringing the
+ancient and the modern together with a vengeance. Furstenheimer
+thought the game was droll. He had never seen any played like that.
+
+"How can that be a game!" he exclaimed--"only three cards! You must
+have left out something. It looks ridiculous. What's the point?"
+
+"Why, you _bet_!" cried the dealer who was awkwardly manipulating
+the cards. The two strangers wagered with each other, and the
+Wuerttemberger at last got interested and bet first against one,
+then the other. In a few minutes he had lost two hundred marks to
+the dealer, and acted as if worried. The dealer won also from his
+associate, but not so readily.
+
+"A gambler, and playing clumsily to fool me," Gard had promptly said
+to himself. He endeavored to save his friend from falling deeper
+into the toils. He nudged him under the table, but the Teuton
+stupidly understood nothing. He kept on, more and more distraught,
+losing money, then groaning about it and wiping his trickling and
+distressed countenance.
+
+When the dealer finally saw that Kirtley would not wager, he grew
+noisy.
+
+"Not to play your own national game--is it polite, I say?" He
+flaunted the cards before Gard.
+
+"I do not bet," Kirtley repeated as pleasantly as he could, and the
+tall German tried to quiet his mate.
+
+The rain, which had been brewing, presently began to come down and
+was breaking up the sport. They agreed to dine in the inn and go
+back to town when the downpour was over. Gard's friend squared
+accounts--four hundred and eighty marks passed across. He looked
+unhappy enough. But the dealer was still far from satisfied because
+the American had not played. The German had won from the other two.
+Could he not win from an American in an American game? He had been
+eager to wager at one turn all the money he had gained.
+
+"A pair of cheap gamblers," Gard repeated to himself. He wished his
+foolish friend from Wuerttemberg had kept out of it. They were here
+on the edge of a strange city, in an unknown inn, at nightfall. It
+showed that Furstenheimer was a green country man who, as he
+admitted, had seldom been away from home. He had not even seen his
+neighboring Rhine in years.
+
+The rain was now pelting them and they scurried indoors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+THE END OF A LITTLE GAME
+
+
+The short German had worked himself up into an irritable state. He
+led the way about the arrangements for dining, his tall friend all
+the while mildly attempting to soothe his ruffled feelings.
+Furstenheimer, appearing much crest-fallen, meekly followed their
+wishes.
+
+A private room must be had, the dealer announced. They took a
+detached one with the door opening out toward the highway. Each one
+of the three proposed to have a favorite dish from his province.
+
+The little German grew more fussy. He condemned the restaurant
+manager and got at loggerheads with the waiter. He must at least
+have a Mecklenburg salad as he came from Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The
+waiter did not know what it was and the irascible Teuton informed
+him bluntly that he was a _Dummkopf_. The card player would make it
+himself and all must do him the honor of eating it. He proclaimed in
+a loud voice that it was the superior of all salads. He had won at
+cards, the money stuck out of his pockets. He was triumphant and
+becoming insolent.
+
+Kirtley wished he were out of this company. He opened the outside
+door a moment for fresh air. He noticed that the door had a spring
+lock. The rain was coming down in torrents. And he ought not to
+abandon his naive friend.
+
+The repast was begun by drinking the prevailing toast to Der Tag!
+His companions now talked openly about the threatening war, and
+Gard, who had not seen a paper since morning, did not know that
+hostilities were at last in the way of breaking out. From the
+conversation he could but judge that all Belgium and northern France
+were to be made German. This seemed simple and inevitable through
+all the blustering and bragging. England--America--did not appear to
+cut any figure. They had no armies, hence they were negligible.
+
+When the company got down to the Mecklenburg salad, the clamorous
+German expatiated about it at length as he began his bustling
+preparations for its manufacture.
+
+"One of the great points of my salad is plenty of pepper." With a
+flourish he grabbed the little pepper box to suit the action to the
+words, and nothing came out. It was empty.
+
+"Waiter, waiter, bring some pepper, you stupid _Kerl_. Don't you
+know enough to set the table properly?"
+
+Another pepper receptacle was brought, but it would not work. It was
+stopped up.
+
+"Gott im Himmel! waiter, you idiot, bring some _pepper_ and be quick
+about it." And the swaggerer began abusing him, the inn and
+inferentially men who would not wager in a social little card game.
+The servitor raced in, mad and muttering, and banged down a big can
+of the much desired condiment. At last, Gott sei Dank! there was
+pepper by the wholesale. The salad proceeded on its troubled course.
+
+"You like our Germany--yes?" was inserted. Kirtley assured the three
+that he had had a pleasant year.
+
+"Our Germany is a great country," explained the tall Teuton in a
+high, cracked voice. "And after the war it will be a much greater
+country." He was flushed with drink like the other two. The Germans
+lifted their glasses again to Der Tag, and Gard, their guest, joined
+in half-heartedly. There was this time an ugly firmness showing in
+the demonstration that he did not fancy. He was frankly
+uncomfortable. His companions did not like it because he drank
+sparingly in spite of all the vehement urging.
+
+The salad proved to be a wonderful dish, hot and strong, fit for the
+iron stomach of a "blond beast." It not only bit but was
+provocative. In the growing conviviality the subject leaped from
+salad to cards. The winner took out his money. He began shaking it
+in Gard's eyes, insisting once more on wagering it that his American
+friend could not pick the card. With the _demi-tasses_ and cigars he
+ordered the deck and table. He started the game, having locked out
+the blockhead of a waiter and dropped the key into his own pocket.
+
+Gard would not play. His ire was rising. The small German declared
+himself mistreated. He jumped up from the table and burst out in a
+tirade against shoddy Americans. This brought each man to his feet.
+The dealer, violent and familiar, put his hands on Gard.
+
+"You are a dollar American and dare not bet."
+
+"Please keep your hands off me," cried Kirtley and drew back,
+shaking with the affront. The German persisted and Gard's football
+days stood him in good stead. He knocked him down. At this the mask
+was thrown off.
+
+"Get his passport!" yelled the dealer on the floor. The other two
+began to draw weapons and started toward Kirtley. He was almost
+unnerved. His genial Wuerttemberg friend a spy! It was the _Secret
+Service_.
+
+As he stepped back, thunderstruck, his hand grazed the big pepper
+can which had been left on the side table. It sent an inspiration
+whizzing through his brain. He whisked off its unfastened top,
+grabbed a handful of pepper, and with a swing of the kind he used to
+use in his throws from left field to home plate--let go with all his
+force.
+
+The aim was true. The pepper swept into the eyes and mouths of the
+two men. The other was half lying on the floor near their feet and
+he also received a dose. Pepper filled their side of the room and
+blinded them as they sneezed and groped about in pain. Gard bolted
+for the outer, self-locking door and, almost before he realized it,
+was out in the highway in the rain, heading away from the city and
+in the direction of the Dutch border which, he knew, lay not far
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+ARE THEY HUNS?
+
+
+It was an instinctive move to get out of Deutschland--raucous,
+hostile Deutschland, lying athwart his soul. But his grip? his
+overcoat? his umbrella? He faced back toward the town. His mind was
+in a tumult. No, he must make for the frontier at all hazards. The
+Germans, whenever they recovered, would naturally expect him to
+return for his articles and would watch them or have them watched.
+He felt for his passport, money, trunk check. They were safe. He was
+sure his trunk would be at the border for him. He turned about and
+began running. The bellowing condition of the agonized sleuths and
+the locked door would enable him to get a good start under the cover
+of the darkness and storm.
+
+When almost breathless he stopped running and walked forward
+rapidly. There was no travel in his direction. But he had to dodge
+frequent oncoming vehicles with men and materials of some kind. They
+were being concentrated at Aix--a main distributing point for the
+invasion of Belgium.
+
+He was wet through, yet hot as a furnace. The cooling rain was
+grateful. The loss of his grip and things would be inconvenient, not
+serious. He began running again. Then he walked as fast as he could.
+He was more and more convinced that those Germans would count on his
+going back for his belongings. They would not imagine that a dollar
+American would leave his possessions and hoof it to the Dutch
+Limberg on a night like this.
+
+His brain was on fire. He thought of everything. Furstenheimer had
+been a trailing sleuth. He had fooled Kirtley completely. It was a
+masterly piece of work. Gard metaphorically took off his hat to the
+German Secret Service. Notwithstanding the Jim Deming episode and
+Anderson's animadversions, this had been a highly expert
+demonstration of the art.
+
+Gard's mind went over his whole trip from Eisenach, trying to find
+where his suspicions should have been more aroused. He could
+discover no loophole where any unflattering dullness on his part was
+particularly at fault. He had made rather the most advances at
+Cologne to the self-styled Furstenheimer with his Roman horse.
+
+How casually, too, the two confederates had been picked up at the
+cathedral! Their intelligent interest in stained glass! Very clever.
+All had been wonderfully clever. He now saw that when Furstenheimer
+left him at Cologne to decide about joining him, and also when the
+three had gone off to inspect the windows, there had been ample time
+to perfect their scheme.
+
+His passport! What on earth could they want of that! In the German
+way they had used a steam hammer to crack a hickory nut. No one in
+1914 had an inkling of what service American passports were to be to
+the Kaiser's Government. The world was soon to rub its eyes over
+Germany's treacherous, fiendish, employment of chemicals both on
+documents and on humans. Lackadaisical mankind did not then dream of
+the thoroughness and elaboration with which Deutschland was
+preparing her many deep and diabolical designs.
+
+Toward dawn Gard, pretty well winded and in a bath of perspiration,
+trudged along more slowly while his thoughts streamed precipitately
+ahead under the pressure of the stupefying developments. He now knew
+who the little German was. He was that rigid, whiskered, military
+person in the train from Eisenach! The same flat, wide-lobed nose.
+He had not guessed it before because the face, clear of a beard, had
+really suggested in Aix (he now realized) that of the typical shaven
+Teuton waiter. But why had the spy traveled in such a stiff and
+mysterious fashion? Likely to locate the passport--find out whether
+it was then being carried in the grip or on Kirtley's person. In
+some way--probably from the manner in which the grip had been
+handled--the sleuth had convinced himself it was kept in a pocket.
+
+Although Gard could not clearly make it out, the puppet must have
+been an ingenious device to mislead. The ridiculous card dealer,
+going through all his mock part with such desperate earnestness,
+could very well have conceived this eccentric project. Would anyone
+outside Germany have believed in such use of a stuffed figure? The
+maneuver succeeded in a fashion, for Gard had not been as shrewd as
+he imagined in taking the auto from Heidelberg. He may have caused a
+change in tactics, but he had simply fallen into the hands of
+Furstenheimer in the museum. The leisurely stroll, the game of
+cards, the badgering over the betting, everything, had been fully
+worked out. Somehow, through it all, they were to deprive him of his
+state paper--likely when he had become intoxicated, as was evidently
+planned.
+
+But the revelation about the Buchers! That was the finishing blow.
+"Dastards!" Gard hurled out the word. It was not only Rudi but his
+parents who had followed his leadership. The son's surprising
+concern over the passport, their insistence on seeing about his
+route and his ticket, Rudi's persistence about suggestions for
+carrying the document--all was now plain. It must be that war was
+coming and Rudi knew it.
+
+Dastards! To betray their guest, to cause him to go through this
+miserable experience, endanger his health when he had lately been in
+a sick bed! Their kind hospitality, their flush demonstrations of
+friendliness, their little presents! This was the final mark that,
+to Gard Kirtley, branded the German as only a partly reclaimed Goth.
+
+Perhaps the atmosphere of restraint he had detected in the Buchers
+at the last, amid all their cordial expressions and deeds, was due
+to the changed role they then knew they were playing as against an
+American "pig." At their frontier all human relations--obligations,
+honor, amicability, trust, good faith, religion--were exchangeable
+for brutality and dastardly brutality.
+
+Yet who in 1914 would have believed such things? It was the case of
+old Rome asleep, with barbarians swarming in Europe. Gard kept
+coming back to the sole word for it all--Hun!--in the Anderson
+definition.
+
+And what to do with the Huns--about them? Can the world ever get on
+a genuine, fraternal basis for living with them? Can they ever be
+made to become like other people? These questions kept surging
+through his mind as he hurried along.
+
+When Holland was reached that morning, his passport was declared
+impeccable and his faithful trunk caused him no trouble. Although
+the war excitement was seizing that region he fortunately met no
+delay in getting to the coast. Once out of Deutschland he felt
+amazingly well despite the weariness of his exhausting night. He
+concluded that the vigorous exercise and sweating he had been
+through had steamed out of him the vileness he had found in Germany.
+It acted like a rejuvenating process. Gard now seemed to himself
+like a clean, new man. He _was_ to be a new man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+THE ANTI-CHRISTIANS?
+
+
+In England, when war came, the confusion was unbelievable. All that
+Gard had seen, heard, gone through in Deutschland proved the
+awfulness of the Force flung against Europe which had stupidly
+considered itself civilized.
+
+He was burning to enlist. But what a chagrin to find his services
+not wanted! The only satisfaction he could get lay in the suggestion
+to wait. The more he was put off, the more he was bent on reaching
+the firing line.
+
+In his enforced and impatient idleness he took out his German note
+book and began writing letters to Rebner in America, thus giving
+partial vent to his own feelings. The following brief extracts were
+written first as he went about different camps, offering himself,
+then at the front:
+
+    _England, October, 1914._
+
+    ... You know how I went to Germany at your urging, with every
+    favorable impulse toward the Germans. But you had little idea
+    what they are. If our fellow-Americans realized what was thought
+    and said of them beyond the Rhine, they would be in battle now.
+
+    As there is no prospect of our Government wanting fighting men,
+    I am trying to get into the English service. No success yet....
+
+    How could you, my good mentor, be so in error about the race
+    from which you sprang? Had you been in Germany, the scales would
+    have dropped from your eyes. You have never lived with the
+    Germans there--only read the best about the "most advanced" of
+    mankind. They are so different from our American-Germans. You
+    did not know that the educated Teuton at home is apt to be dirty
+    in his person and habits, eats with his knife, walks before
+    women, kicks his children about, has coarse or vulgar ideas on
+    female chastity, enjoys the obscene, has no good words to say of
+    anyone beyond his boundaries.
+
+    Pray do not fancy I am pretending to chide _you_. Weren't we all
+    like you in America, dazzled before what apparently we were
+    humbly ready to admit as the super-race? And yet in a multitude
+    of ways it is so obviously a people set off by itself in much
+    barbarism. There is its Gothic script which offends the eye
+    somewhat like outlandish runes. Its very language growls and
+    snorts at you, sounds threatening as if angry--pardon me for
+    these sentences! There are its mud-colored towns and
+    architecture, its rude life, rough skinned, hairy, ferocious,
+    with tastelessness prevailing.
+
+    The German imagination is never shot through with clear, happy
+    sunshine. The German emotions are distinctively expressed by
+    thumpings in some form. The Teuton's inability to see himself as
+    another sees him--is this not, above all, the stamp of an
+    under-civilized people?...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _England, October, 1914._
+
+    ... Do not think I am unduly harsh, prejudiced, revengeful. I am
+    trying to write in measured terms of what has been forced in
+    upon me and my attention against my wish or expectations.
+
+    I have met but one American who said that war was at hand and
+    knew what the Germans really are at home. He was an elderly
+    journalist in Dresden who was jeered at until he almost imagined
+    himself mentally unbalanced. Others thought him so, at any rate.
+
+    But Anderson was a true prophet. Dear isolated, desolated soul!
+    I wonder where he is now. I wonder if he got out safely. How I
+    wish I could grasp his hand and say, How wise were your
+    convictions!
+
+    Like myself he had gone to Deutschland to admire and love the
+    Germans. But he found what I found--an astonishing amount of
+    ruthlessness. How could one expect that the ultimate
+    world-justice and world-humanity were to evolve out of a race to
+    which the army, armed soldiers and statesmen clad in steel,
+    stand for so much?
+
+    How could anything of universal good come from a people who
+    consider nothing from the viewpoint of a kindly common
+    brotherhood? Contempt, intolerance, physical force, are what
+    they gloat over in international relations. I discovered that
+    when they must ask pardon or make amends, they do so with bad
+    grace. They do not take a magnanimous and frank satisfaction or
+    pleasure in righting a wrong.
+
+    You would not believe how lacking their character is in the
+    capacity for penitence, for atonement. We will never see them
+    sorry for any of their present enormities. The still, small
+    voice in them has not been allowed to develop. Their notion of
+    ethics is so different that it is inadmissible from our
+    standards.
+
+    To be sensitive, grieve, suffer morally, is apart from their
+    normal consciousness. For all this tender and beautiful side of
+    human nature they substitute only the discomforted feelings of
+    defeat. No matter how this present conflict ends, he who looks
+    for any sympathetic actions or noble regrets from them will be
+    dumfounded....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _England, November, 1914_.
+
+    Hurrah! I am at last, after disappointments and frettings, under
+    way for Flanders. Lo, I am become, as it were, an Englishman!
+    The British now see the full peril and are taking almost any
+    kind of men, and I'm going along. I suppose it is because I am
+    so keyed up that I feel so well. I'm surprised at myself. I
+    guess I must have, after all, a little good Anglo-Saxon grit in
+    me.
+
+    I am trying to write this scrawl to you on a round milk
+    container in a camp near London. We are not permitted to tell
+    where....
+
+    As I was on the point of saying in my last letter, Jesus is
+    never a watchword in Germany. The Nazarene meekness makes small
+    appeal there. All is Gott. The Teuton regards Christ as too much
+    of a weakling. Had He an army? Could He shoot, as all Germans
+    can? He would not fight and therefore was properly destroyed.
+    If His foolish ideas were followed, the weak would eventually
+    rule the earth whereas, to the German mind, the strong should
+    manifestly rule the earth. The strongest are the fittest, and
+    the fittest should alone survive.
+
+    To the Goth the Christian religion and philosophy are baneful,
+    baleful. As the result of their feeble policy was not Christ
+    followed--the Germans claim--by the Dark Ages when mankind was
+    obsessed by His superstitious worship? Lifting men out of this
+    morass, the proper practical, scientific and warlike forces came
+    at length into play and we have the magnificent modern regime
+    whose basis is armed strength.
+
+    Hence--it is argued--Germany came into her own and inevitably
+    leads the world. She represents the perfection of organized
+    physical and mental powers which are the antitheses of the
+    Christ ideal.
+
+    And so you never hear much in Deutschland about Peace and Good
+    Will, Do as You would be Done by, Faith, Hope and Charity and
+    the greatest of these is Charity. Such Christian texts and
+    mottoes, which fill our American homes, churches and public
+    places, are little in evidence in Germany because they do not
+    enter into the life. The popular nomenclature is pagan rather
+    than Biblical. Already in this war we behold the Kaiser drawing
+    his names for forts and trenches from his wild pagan mythology,
+    not from Christian sources. And in Deutschland, acts in the
+    field count for so much more than words in the pulpit.
+
+    If the Huns win, Teuton hate will, of course, succeed Christian
+    love as the human creed. Friendship, as we know it, will largely
+    cease to exist. Friends will be those who can be cowed into
+    truculence or bought. There will be no truth, justice, equity,
+    in our meaning. Only the will or whim of the Emperor. His State
+    Church, with its worship of Him, will grow as _the_ church.
+
+    Everything that southern and western Europe stands for, from
+    ancient Greece to the northern points of Scotland and Ireland
+    (with America in addition)--beauty, loveableness, the
+    brightness of life with its joyousness, gayety, grace,
+    charm--will be stamped down under the metallic heels of the
+    Kaiser's battalions and bureaucrats....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Boulogne, January, 1915_.
+
+    After what I have written you from Germany, and since, about my
+    unexpected disillusionment, you will ask me:
+
+    "Well, enough of this. What ought to be done or can be done
+    about it?"
+
+    I am thinking about a solution. Not original, for its framework
+    was suggested by my old journalistic friend. I will send you an
+    outline of his idea as he gave it to me one day. All that he
+    said and prophesied has come so direfully true that I have now
+    full faith and confidence in his vision and practical sense on
+    the subject of the Goth race. For he _lived_ and observed among
+    them seven years.
+
+    That's the great point--_living together_. And I do not mean
+    living together when people are mature or old but when
+    _young_--when minds, sympathies, etc., are plastic and pliable.
+    As long as the young Germans are kept home--never sent abroad
+    unless as spies in some form--the Teutons will remain Huns.
+
+    Granted that they can't help it if they are born with the Hun
+    strain in their blood which their education or instruction not
+    only preserves but enrages. Admit that they want any barbarism
+    eliminated from their veins. That would be an important point
+    over which our world should hold out to them the glad hand....
+
+    Don't be offended, but the best thing that I learned in college
+    was to throw well from left field. At any rate it saved my life,
+    I suppose, at Aix. And I've grown wonderfully fond of pepper. It
+    braces a chap for this Iceland wind that howls down upon us at
+    times. We call baseball and football a part of education. Good,
+    brave things. The Germans don't have them because they have only
+    "instruction."
+
+    From what I observed beyond the Rhine, education is a growth in
+    free and liberal countries. As we are seeing in the war, German
+    instruction turns out experts, but also intellectual monsters
+    and scientific fiends--instructed heathens....
+
+    Strange to say, I don't believe I could have stood this
+    existence here if my system had not got a good cleansing out
+    when I was sick. I am all the time thinking about the Huns. And
+    it is strictly necessary hereabouts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+THE TEUTON PROBLEM. A SOLUTION
+
+
+    _Flanders, a Mudhole, February, 1915._
+
+    ... Is not my old friend Anderson's plan the only natural,
+    practical, efficient method by which to humanize their barbarous
+    instincts? Assuming that they will be defeated, as they _must_
+    be, the Anderson project, as you see, is that a permanent
+    arrangement must be offered them, and if necessary enforced upon
+    them, whereby a multitude of young German men and women shall be
+    sent yearly to foreign democratic lands to _live_ and be
+    educated there for a period. By attractive scholarships, by
+    pecuniary inducements or by any of a number of programmes, young
+    Germans can be tempted to this step. In living and studying,
+    before middle age, under free and liberal conditions, they will
+    begin looking at foreigners in a friendly, or what we should
+    call a Christian, manner. After awhile, after generations
+    perhaps, this leaven will work in the thick, tough, sour Teuton
+    dough. It will transform the people. They will gradually become
+    allies at heart instead of remaining hostiles.
+
+    As it is now, the German eats, drinks, bathes, and nauseatingly
+    does other elemental things much as he did a hundred years ago,
+    because he receives his instruction in his homeland with the
+    idea, not only complacent but aggressive, that his habits are
+    the best. And this is for the reason that he has seen no other
+    kind when young. Do you think, for instance, that a youthful
+    German, after living in the freedom of our young sexes, would
+    return to the Rhine and long be content with the iron-like
+    Teuton customs in love, courtship and marriage?
+
+    A youthful person is apt to admire the people among whom he is
+    staying a long while for the reason that, under such
+    circumstances, aliens are kind. He will always take pride in
+    these foreign connections, pride in what he has learned abroad.
+    He will think himself more fortunate and more advanced than his
+    fellow stay-at-homes. The young German, becoming used to more
+    amiable modes of existence, would naturally become more or less
+    fond of them. A broader, more human social spirit--the true
+    social spirit--would get a hold in him.
+
+    I would go further than my friend Anderson. I would have _all_
+    civilized countries adopt this plan with one another as well as
+    with Germany. The trouble with civilization, as seen in this
+    war, is that no people understands or truly sympathizes with any
+    foreign nation--not even among the Allies. They are strangers
+    because they have been kept strangers. This creates suspicion,
+    envy, enmity, for they have not in any noticeable degree lived
+    together. They do not know one another's customs, habits,
+    perspectives. As a result, armies, navies, tariffs, treaties
+    backed by force, are necessary to hold civilization precariously
+    in shape--and at what colossal effort, anxiety, expense? The
+    different languages, literatures, arts, educations, religions,
+    should become familiar to large numbers in each race and be the
+    open, peaceful highways back and forth instead of, as now,
+    barriers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    _Flanders, another Mudhole, February, 1915._
+
+    ... I see the woeful, tragic need for this international
+    co-education all around us here at the front. The Canadians,
+    Australians, English, French, all quarreling back and forth and
+    pulling against one another as unfriendly strangers.
+
+    Germany is giving--has given--one great lesson to them all and
+    to us Americans at home. And that is, IN UNION THERE IS
+    STRENGTH.
+
+    After this war the tremendous question before the world will be:
+
+    _How are we going to live with the Germans?--how get on with
+    them?_
+
+    The only true and gracious solution I can see is--_To associate
+    and study together when young_! Would not you--would not
+    everyone--agree that this interchange in education, which would
+    not be very troublesome or expensive, is a true manner in which
+    to remove from the German make-up its savage, destructive animus
+    toward mankind? In order really to change a race, the work must
+    be done from the inside outward. And this means _some_ form of
+    education, not merely victories, edicts, Leagues.
+
+    Let or make the Teutons be associated with gentler cultures than
+    their own. What if it does take a hundred, two hundred, years!
+    What is that compared with having the German problem and menace
+    unsolved in the future as in the past?
+
+    Such young German missionaries year after year, as I have
+    indicated, would be bringing back something of sweetness and
+    light to their stubborn, irascible folk. The powerful and
+    exacerbated bias of this folk toward the _echt Deutsch_ would be
+    neutralized and mollified under the contact of its youths with
+    dispositions making for kindliness and courtesy. Confessedly the
+    stoutest race prejudices lie with those who have never stepped
+    outside their own boundaries.
+
+    It is true this plan, in a small way, was tried under the
+    exchange of professors scheme. But the Kaiser won out in that
+    because his professors were too old and, it develops, were
+    simply his emissaries with hostile inclinations and intent. It
+    would appear that most of the young Americans who are partly
+    educated in Germany are pro-German. Had they gone to England or
+    France, they would be pro-British or pro-French.
+
+    It is now being shown that the German's education or instruction
+    does not do away with the Hun element in him. The logical thing,
+    then, is to try foreign education on him. He needs to learn in
+    other countries, and to _live out_, their meanings of good faith
+    and a give-and-take, manly spirit. For he at present considers
+    it right to have no respect for his own spoken word to
+    foreigners, or even his written word.
+
+    This is his old habit of the tribal fanatic. To lie to, to
+    cheat, to steal from, to kill, aliens is no admitted sin in the
+    moral decalogue of the Germans when an advantage can be derived.
+    Murder, senseless destruction, violation of women, obscenity, do
+    not therefore horrify them. If you as a foreigner strike the
+    metallic shield of their character, no resounding ringing of
+    what we know as conscience is heard, because extreme erudition
+    in Germany largely takes the place of moral feelings. "Science
+    without con_science_ is the death of man." And the women and
+    State religion are as Hunnish as the males. All these influences
+    make for war.
+
+    This conscienceless dullness, or immense hollowness, in the
+    Teuton people always suggests to me an eggshell encased in the
+    pomp of steel. Should they be defeated, I feel that the nation
+    may cave in tremendously, horribly. How can it be otherwise with
+    a race that never sees anything foolish in itself, and
+    exaggerates the core of its costly army and bureaucracy at the
+    expense of the kernel?
+
+    By living abroad a part of their study years the young Germans
+    would little by little come to prefer to substitute amity for
+    armaments, confident trust for suspicion, love as a motto
+    instead of hate. For they would see that other peoples are
+    worthy to live. They would learn more chivalry toward women and
+    children, the beautiful significance of humanity and of
+    universal brotherhood. They would learn that what they call
+    weakness desirably lends delicacy, tenderness, spiritual and
+    moral loveliness to existence which the coarse bigness and
+    bow-wowness of the German ideal itself will never attain....
+
+When March came, and the birds flew back to find no trees, no grass,
+no flowers, Gard Kirtley, in his spring-time of life, stepped out
+from his dugout in Flanders with a gun, and faced the Huns of the
+northeast. He was prepared to greet Death which is the fruit of old
+age but which in youth appears as with a crown of laurel.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Villa Elsa, by Stuart Henry
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