“Do you mean she is thinking about England’s golf ball?” asked Michael.
“Why, of course she is! What else is there to think about?”
“Oh, it’s impossible that there should be a European war,” said Michael, “for that is what it will mean!”
“And why is a European war impossible?” demanded Falbe, lighting his cigarette.
“It’s simply unthinkable!”
“Because you don’t think,” he interrupted. “I can tell you that the thought of war is never absent for a single day from the average German mind. We are all soldiers, you see. We start with that. You start by being golfers and cricketers. But ‘der Tag’ is never quite absent from the German mind. I don’t say that all you golfers and cricketers wouldn’t make good soldiers, but you’ve got to be made. You can’t be a golfer one day and a soldier the next.”
Michael laughed.
“As for that,” he said, “I made an uncommonly bad soldier. But I am an even worse golfer. As for cricket—”
Falbe again interrupted.
“Ah, then at last I know two things about you,” he said. “You were a soldier and you can’t play golf. I have never known so little about anybody after three—four days. However, what is our proverb? ‘Live and learn.’ But it takes longer to learn than to live. Eh, what nonsense I talk.”