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 FrÄulein 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