And then Anderson would be off for that particular session. On one early occasion he had said, jestingly:
"I guess you will have to fall back upon the natural method."
"What's that?" had come back the innocent interrogatory.
"Take a sweetheart. She will teach you more useful German in a month than you can learn from the pedagogues in a year. Right here in the best parts of Dresden are streets where these ladies can be rented with their rooms per week or per month cheap, with all the German you want thrown in. Are we to assume it is by this system that the German universities are able to turn out what the world believes are the best students?"
"I never heard anything about that back home," confessed Kirtley, always letting the bars down to encourage a monologue.
"Of course not. That would be to interfere with our American readiness to admit German transcendence."
"But how do you harmonize the frank state of morals here with the fact that the Germans are the great religious authorities? How have they established such a reputation abroad for the morality that is assumed to go with Protestantism?"
"That is simple enough. First, by claiming that the French are degenerate. Second, by retaining religion with its morals as an adjunct of an unmoral and authoritative militarism. Religion is to them a topic for expert investigation and study just as is militarism or any natural product—oil, coal, the chemical elements, anything. The Teuton specialist goes at it as at any objective science. His analytical and synthetic processes simply explore in his own subterranean caverns apropos of theology. He has taken over the Bible as the Kaiser has taken over Jerusalem. Wilhelm is becoming the Cerberus of Christianity—sole and surly guardian of its meanings and influence.
"But you never see any men in these German churches, do you? They don't go to church. Nor the women very much. You see old women and children at worship. This is because the German has always typically worshipped Gott on the battlefield or in the military camps—out in the open. The German God is an out-of-doors God and is distinctively associated with the thought of war. God within walls, within a church, is a deity of good will on earth. He is a deity of peace. Naturally this does not appeal to the Goth. He don't pay much lively attention to God unless there's a war on hand or in immediate prospect. Then he begins to shout and 'holler' at Him to attract His attention, because He is so far off from Germany."
Gard laughed. Then, after a moment, he asked, almost shyly,