"Oh, that is different," I said. I tossed the paper to him. "You are welcome to the paper."
I covertly watched him as he tried to read the French. By and by he passed the paper back.
"I am not a very good French scholar, and the French are tiresome."
"They would not have been if they had had a General who thought more of fighting than of wearing pretty clothes."
"Oh, it would not have mattered," confidently.
"Prussia was once humbled by a Frenchman." I was irritating him with a purpose in view.
"Bah!"
"The only reason the French were beaten was because they did not think the German race worth troubling about."
He laughed pleasantly. "You Americans have a strange idea of the difference between the German and the Frenchman."
This was just what I wanted.