"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.