."

"You vary in that respect as much as sardines in a can! I traveled
once all the way from London to Glasgow alone in one compartment with
an Englishman. Talk? My, we were garrulous! I offered him a
newspaper, cigarettes, matches, remarks on the weather suited to his
brand of intelligence--(that's your sole national topic of talk between
strangers!)--and all he ever said to me was 'Haw-ah!' I'll bet he was
afraid of seeming to start trouble!"

"He didn't start any, did he?" asked Monty.

"Pretty nearly he did! I all but bashed him over the bean with the
newspaper the third time he said 'haw-ah!'"

Monty laughed. Fred Oakes was busy across the room with his most
amazing gift of tongues, splicing together half-a-dozen of them in
order to talk with the old lazaretto attendant, so he heard nothing;
otherwise there would have been argument.

"Then it would have been you, not he who started trouble,"' said I, and
Yerkes threw both hands up in a gesture of despair.

"Even you're afraid of starting something!" He stared at both of us
with an almost startled expression, as if he could not believe his own
verdict, yet could not get away from it. "Else you'd give the
Bundesrath story to the papers! That German skipper's conduct ought to
be bruited round the world! You said you'd do it. You promised us!
You told the man to his face you would!"

"Now," said Monty, "you've touched on another national habit."

"Which one?" Yerkes demanded.

"Dislike of telling tales out of school. The man's dead. His ship's
at the bottom. The tale's ended. What's the use? Besides--?"

"Ah! You've another reason! Spill it!"

"As a privy councilor, y'know, and all that sort of thing--?"

"Same story! Afraid of starting something!"

"The Germans--'specially their navy men--drink to what they call Der
Tag y'know--the day when they shall dare try to tackle England. We all
know that. They're planning war, twenty years from now perhaps, that
shall give them all our colonies as well as India and Egypt. They're
so keen on it they can't keep from bragging. Great Britain, on the
other hand, hasn't the slightest intention of fighting if war can be
avoided; so why do anything meanwhile to increase the tension? Why
send broadcast a story that would only arouse international hatred?
That's their method. Ours--I mean our government's--is to give hatred
a chance to die down. If our papers got hold of the Bundesrath story
th