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 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.