Making for War
ANDERSON did not care for the Buchers and only came two or three times to Villa Elsa. So Gard did the calling. The elder would invariably bring out from his table drawer his "bachelor's bride" in the form of a box of clear Havanas, and the "lecture" would begin again before, what he said, was the most select audience in Deutschland.
"Have you heard anything from your spy?" he queried one day.
"No. You don't seriously mean that Rudolph—you assume it's Rudolph—is watching me?" returned Kirtley, a little disturbed over the recurrence to this subject. "What am I guilty of? I'm as innocent as an unborn lamb."
"Certainly you are. But, my dear boy, what's innocence in Germany? The Secret Police can make an alien like you a lot of trouble about nothing. You wouldn't believe how systematic they are, and serious as stuffed owls. Take my advice and don't do things at too loose ends as we are apt to over home. But if you do get into trouble, come to me and I will tell you what to say.
"Sometimes they even have one spy spying on another in the home. Of course the spy system, like the army and navy, belongs to the Kaiser. All the people have to do is to furnish the men and the money. It's as Heine said, the royal palaces and so forth are owned by the princes, but the debts owing for them are assumed by the public. The Hohenzollerns have the property, the Germans have the obligations.
"You see, the spy system tends to prevent the Teuton from talking politics. But he can theorize concerning the State. The State is an active philosophic concept that holds off the people from discussing and gossiping about Wilhelm. It does not exist apart from the ruling family and apart from the bureaucracy which is the ruling family in action. It takes on their character. The State is a mirage which the citizen is made to gawk at in the air, thinking he sees something besides the frowning German sky. It surrounds the Emperor with the divine halo, removes him up above the rumbling clouds where the distant views lend enchantment."
There hung about Anderson's talk to-day, as so frequently, a certain sententious and acidulous manner that, to Gard, evidenced twinges of rheumatism.
The dialogue fell once more on war. After the demonstration in Villa Elsa against America, Anderson was gratified by this proof of his contentions. While Kirtley admitted the force in the argument that this excited and confident condition of feeling among the common German people pointed toward hostilities, he could not really believe that such a horror would break forth upon Europe. There was the Hague Convention—
"Pooh!" exclaimed Anderson. "What does the Hague Convention signify in face of the growing armaments? What have you ever seen in Prussian history to show that Prussia would stop for any agreement when she was sure of winning?"