Villa Elsa Part 5

"Can you read German comfortably?" asked Anderson. "What do you make of it? I've been studying it for seven years and sometimes it seems as if I hadn't got much further than the verb to hate."

"You can't give me any short cuts about it, then?" laughed Gard.

"Yes, I can--yes, I can. Here's a little compilation and a.n.a.lysis of the irregular verbs," explained his new acquaintance, pulling a green brochure from his pocket. "Only costs a mark. You can get a second-hand one at the book stalls by the Augustus bridge. I always carry it with me and con it over and over. Good for the p.r.o.nunciation. If you get the irregular verbs of a language well fed into your system, you've got the language by the windpipe.

"Then buy _Simplicissimus_. You'll pick up a good deal from that--the popular expressions, the phrases and exclamations that are going. If you learn to use the exclamations, it makes you interesting and well-liked. It gives the other fellow the chance to do the talking. _Simplicissimus_ and that kind of thing are better than the dry, stilted German cla.s.sics--'Ekkehard,' 'Nathan der Weise' and all that discarded stuff. But remember that _esprit_ was not given the Germans, because it would hide their Boeotian stupidity."

"I haven't yet seen--I suppose I shall see"--said Kirtley, "why the general American student like me is so persistently encouraged to come to Germany. Why is it?"

"Because we are d.a.m.n fools," heartily rejoined Anderson. "The Germans don't have education. They have instruction. The one makes gentlemen. The other makes experts. It is hard for an expert to be a gentleman. They don't have gentlemen in Germany. No such word in their language. It is a nation of experts, but that's precisely the reason it should be feared. Why, education would teach a German not to s...o...b..r at his meals.

"It is his strenuous ingrowing instruction that cultivates his extreme national egotism until it has become like a boil. His racial egoism helps obscure the obscure sunlight here in Germany and blinds him. He has to wear spectacles. It is a natural cry, his cry for a place in the sun."

"Should I have gone to England or France?" suggested Gard.

"Yes. At any rate, not here. The German procedure roughens the fiber and lowers the moral standards of the general student. Instruction here is along mental and manual lines. The Teuton is meant to be a specialist. He is competent but not refined."

The two compatriots gossiped along about this and that.

"I'm having a devil of a time sleeping on my bed," confessed Gard.

"You ought to know about German beds. How do you get on with them?"

"The German bed helps to give the German his bad disposition. I put two beds side by side and sleep across the middle. That's one way to fool the German bed. If I saw yours I might be able to suggest something."

Anderson frankly expressed a desire to visit the Loschwitz home. So on Gard's invitation they had lunch and went out to his suburb.

CHAPTER X

SPIES AND WAR

They took off the bed clothes, including the two huge feather bolsters in the center.

"These bolsters are for the gingerbread effect that the German likes everywhere," explained the visitor. They examined the remaining construction. It was narrow and short. It suggested a granite-like base.

"Rock of Ages!" commented Anderson. "As you can't ask for an additional bed, all I can see is for you to swill beer and then you don't care where you sleep. That's the way the Germans do."

The journalist appeared disappointed in not meeting any of the family that first day. Frau was overwhelmed in kitchen duties and not presentable. The other members were away, working, working.

Anderson had to be contented with Gard's description of them, after the latter had pa.s.sed the cigars.

"Who's the spy in your family?" abruptly asked the elder.

"The spy?"

"Yes, the spy. Every well-regulated German family should have a spy in it."

"What for?" queried Kirtley in surprise.

"Why, for the Kaiser, of course. Who else? The Teutons call him euphemistically the Government. But without Wilhelm there wouldn't be any German Government."

"Why should he want spies in his own German families?" interrogated Gard innocently.

"Didn't every medieval feudal lord keep close tab on his subjects--the people he owned? The Kaiser wants to know of any signs of disloyalty. If a household harbors any foreigners, as your family is doing, he wants to know what they are up to."

"Do you mean to say that the Government knows about me--that I'm being watched?"

"They are at least ready to watch you. Mind you, Germany is a real block-house, and the elaborate spy system is an integral part of it.

I should say, from what you tell me of the Buchers, that young Rudolph is the sleuth here."

"Rudolph?"

"Yes. He's doubtless keeping an eye on you and reporting to the authorities if there's anything suspicious about you and your actions."

And then the journalist, pleased to have a fresh listener, launched upon his pet idea.

"The Kaiser is preparing an abysmal pitfall for the world and it won't take heed. I tell you, Kirtley--and I want you to mark my words--Deutschland is going to spring at Europe like a tiger. The army and navy are ready for the onslaught. When they spring, it will be farewell to civilization--except the German--unless something like a miracle supervenes. The French army is being moth-eaten by the Socialists, the British navy has dry rot. I look to see Wilhelm practically the ruler of the earth. If not, he will cause it to pay a cost that will make the next fifty years groggy."

Kirtley thought this was jesting. He later learned that the "old man" was regarded as "cracked" on this topic. Every spring he prophesied war, but it had not come. The Kaiser failed to rush to Paris and there dictate terms to an astounded and cowed universe.

People politely laughed in their sleeves. Yes, Anderson was a fine fellow, but they wearied of his dismal forebodings that came to naught. Some said it was because German had been hard for him to learn. He had taken it up when more than fifty and had become tangled in its snarling roots--its beer-drunken syntax. "He had got mad at the language." It was natural that he should get mad at the people.

Gard saw a light.

"Perhaps," he said, "that's what the Buchers really mean about the German army conquering everybody whenever it wants to."

"That's it, that's it!" Anderson was gratified by the confirmation.

He went on with grave seriousness.

"I'm a journalist. I have opportunities to see behind the curtain, haven't I? I have been at the army maneuvers, at the officers'

messes and dinners, when they were sober and when they were drunk.

Beer loosened their tongues and they did not care. They talk of it, boast of it, and the civilian, too. I'm telling no secrets. They are very frank about it. Don't you hear the Buchers openly discussing it? They all give us warning and we say it's a fine day. Did you ever read any of the Kaiser's speeches in German? There you find it all. But he's crazy, they say. Crazy or not, he has the most thoroughly organized and powerful nation behind him that the globe ever saw. And behind him to a man."

"Why don't you write it up, then--tell people over home?" Gard ventured, somewhat impressed.

"Write it up? Tell people? That's what I _have_ been doing for five years. But what's the use of shouting to a world of fools? No one will pay any attention to it. My paper sends my stuff back and says it don't want war talk--it wants peace talk. Americans are happy and they don't want to be disturbed. They only want to hear about what they want to believe. So it seems to be everywhere."

"I guess you are right about that," Gard testified. "I have been a pretty fair reader of our papers and periodicals and have never been made to feel there was any need for alarm."

"Exactly," Anderson scolded. "Why, look at our Exchange professors.

They are coming over here, ready to swallow the Germans whole. The Kaiser invites them to lunch on his yacht, gives them a pat on the shoulder blade, and they are his. While the Germans plainly despise us, our educators go home crying Great is Germany! How superior are her people! Let us send our sons over there to drink of her wisdom and grandeur! What inanity! Bah!"

"And so here I am," Gard smiled. "But I have bunted into you almost the first thing."

"Couldn't do better--couldn't do better," repeated Anderson with a cheering turn. "I'll tell you what to do. I'll give you a little practical advice--free."

"It won't be worth much if it's free, will it?"