"You know, we housewives don't like it much when a new regiment moves into the vicinity. It makes mothers among our domestics and we have to change about. Of course, you see, we have more women than men in Germany and we must have children growing up for the barracks and the cheap labor market. There seems to be no other way, but it is often a great nuisance for us housekeepers. Yet there is this to say: The girls rarely have more than one child by the same man. For another regiment comes along and there are new relations. The army is necessarily a floating population and not very responsible for what it does among us civilians because it protects us."
Kirtley concluded that this accounted for the large number of detached young men in Germany—in the army and out of it—who appeared to be so entirely footloose, ready for any mission or task in any part of the globe. As the two sat there talking about the question of lovelessness in these relations, Herr Bucher strolled up from his flower beds and joined them in his Tyrolean jacket of the chase and big army boots. Gard said,
"We were speaking of affection, Herr Bucher. Why do the Germans have the ideal of hate when other races are holding up the ideal of love?"
"Because it is good to hate!" exclaimed the host with rugged forcefulness as he squatted in a seat. "To hate is strong, manly. It makes the blood flow. It makes one alert. It is necessary for keeping up the fighting instinct. To love is a feebleness. It enervates. You see all the nations that talk of love as the keynote of life are weak, degenerate. Germany is the most powerful nation in the world because she hates. When you hate, you eat well, sleep well, work well, fight well. It is best for the health. When you love, it is like a sickness and disorganizes and debilitates."
"How do you reconcile that with Christ and His mission of love?" pursued Gard.
"There is nothing to reconcile. We simply do not admit all that. It is not practical. Christ was not practical. He had no family. He made no home. He never even built a house. He did not found a State. He let the Romans run over Him. How can one live in a cold northern climate without a house, a nation and an army to protect him? No, it is not at all practical. Even Christ could not defend Himself. He was crucified without any resistance, any struggle. To hate is to struggle and that is the mainspring of action. So one must prepare himself to struggle successfully. To hate, to cause to be feared, are the proper motives for life. They are life. Fear is a stronger and far more universal human motive than love. Therefore we Germans want to be feared rather than to be loved. So we hate because it engenders fear in others. To love is already half a surrender and ends logically in death. With Christ the real victory, the real heaven aspired to, was in death, not in life."
The Herr had faithfully read Rudi's contemporary German military philosophers.
Truly this was too strange a race, Kirtley felt, to admit of any levels of genuine, unreserved association and companionship except under a quasi truce or other provisional conditions. To form a perfect union with it, other races had to adopt its attitude. It could not and would not adopt theirs until some sort of a Teuton reformation took place.
In the midst of these repulsing discords Gard was surprised, on returning to his room a night or two later, to find by his table a new red and gold copy of Heine's verse inclosing a sprig of forget-me-not. On the fly leaf was inscribed in a youthful, copybook hand:
Immer heller brennt die Licht,
Meines schoen' Vergissmeinnicht.