“He asked me to sit in his box at the convention meeting of the Federated German Societies.”
“Oh, you got an invitation from the Societies, did you?”
“Yes. Issued by Bausch as secretary.”
“I bet he spit in the ink before he signed it. Going?”
“What do you think?”
“Sure.”
“Expediency again, eh?”
“Ay-ah. There’s no principle in turning down an invitation, even if it will do us some good!”
“All right, Andy. I’ll go,” laughed the editor.
He sat in the Governor’s box at the meeting. There was the same pan-Germanic atmosphere that there had been two years before, but magnified. The Imperial banners were more flamboyant, more triumphant. The verve and swing of “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles,” was more martial; it defied the world. The speeches were more fiery, more challenging, more instinct with the fierce pride of a dominant nationalism; and again Jeremy felt resentfully, in the references to the adoptive republic, that tone of bland and intolerable condescension to a lesser people.