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

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

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

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

"Well, it's worth this rotten German cigar you've given me. Read the
editorials and correspondence in the Dresden papers. They're a good
sample. There you'll see what the German attitude toward us is
officially, and what German hatred feeds on day by day. The trouble
with Americans over here is they don't read anything serious. Of
course our students study their text books. But generally our people
just fly around, hear music, drink beer in the cafes, but they don't
read. Too nervous--afraid of being bored. So they don't learn much."

Anderson ran on into other subjects.

"One great thing about the German system is that it would make such
people work to some purpose. We don't. It also makes its plodders
work. This Government recognizes frankly that most of its
population, like all populations, are plodders, and it gives them
something regularly to do and sees that they do it. This converts
this dull element into an organized strength--a source of power. The
Germans practice their wonderful economies with respect to the
poorest kind of human energy. They kick something into their drones.
So they are such a mighty nation in a small land.

"In America, in other countries, this element is rather a
disorganized weakness. It is not pushed. It is for the most part
waste material or neglected material. Our public system, when
economies are concerned, first considers money, property. It seems
sometimes as if our free individualistic plan of government were,
after all, adapted for the minority of the bright-witted."

CHAPTER XI

GERMAN WAYS

"Had the Buchers ever known an American before you came?" Anderson
interrupted himself.

"No."

"How do you think they like you?"

"I guess if I dropped out of their lives, I would not create much of
a sp