“A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Fern’d grot—
The veriest school
Of Peace:—”
But they would not have to see the garden to know that God is.
We broke bread with the Angels and looked into their joyously weary faces, and then we talked about the very thing I wanted my guests to know, namely: That underneath all our religious or rather credal chaos, we have a national creed if not a national religion.
The Herr Director suggested that the fundamental doctrine of our creed is “in gold we trust,” and then he began a dissertation upon our national materialism.
Perhaps so, I conceded; but I doubted that we are more materialistic than the people of the older world, in fact I was inclined to believe that we are less so; which of course the Herr Director stoutly denied, and I as stoutly affirmed. In justice to myself I must say that when my country’s honor is not at stake I am less dogmatic.
“Perhaps we are equally materialistic,” I continued, “but we are certainly more generous. We make money faster than the people of the Old World, but we also give it away faster, and I believe that there is no country in which there is such a contempt for the merely rich man.”
“I suppose the second article in your national creed,” the Herr Director interrupted, “is that you are the biggest country and the best people under the Sun.
“If I were suggesting a motto for a new coinage I would put on one side of it ‘In Gold We Trust,’ and on the other ‘The Biggest and The Best.’”
Ignoring this somewhat merited slur I said: “The first and only doctrine of our national creed which we have as yet formulated is that we have a great national destiny.”
At that the Herr Director jumped excitedly from his seat, and said somewhat sneeringly, “Oh, you mean you have a place under the Sun. All nations have such a creed, but when we Germans try to realize it, you call us a menace to civilization.”