One afternoon they were eating some of the big German cherries, and the fragrance of Herr Bucher's rose garden below was engaged in balmy conflict with the odors of cigars.
"Well, what is the solution about the German people?" Gard propounded. "What's to be done with them? Here they are, industrious as bees and as fully armed with stings. Will a war cure anything? Even if defeated, won't they be the same people? Won't they present the same problem? Won't they present the same menace to what we consider as the best and most desirable types of civilization?"
Anderson did not interrupt these questions. When they had all come out, he gravely took another cigar, leisurely lighted it and turned his chair to face the linden at the window. He spoke very mildly.
CHAPTER XXXVI
The German Problem. An Answer
IHAVE given this a great deal of thought. I have read a great deal and I believe I have never known of a writer who furnished what I should call an answer. And that is the most important thing—the vital thing. So I have evolved a simple, natural proposal. It is the only proposal, I think, that will remedy the evil of the German nation—remedy the ugly situation that hangs over the careless earth.
"We know that when young foreigners are educated in considerable part in a country, they generally become at peace with it. Everything, in fact, draws them to this attitude—for instance, their excusable satisfaction in feeling that their sojourn abroad has been a success for them instead of a failure. Any foreign instruction makes the student more of an intelligent, cosmopolitan sympathizer. It knits together warm acquaintances abroad. Every Rhodes scholar is an ally of England. He goes forth bearing kindly messages for her. I have told you how it works with our Americans coming over here to the German universities. They nearly all become pro-Germanic. And this is one reason why our compatriots at home have in general such a downright admiration for what they consider the super-excellence of the Teutons.
"But while this providing of the German education for Americans is pulling so strong in favor of Germany, we have nothing similar in America pulling Germany toward us and our ways. Young Germans are not sent to the United States to study and to lead our lives and to return home bearing good-will and good reports. They stay where they are and become more narrowly, intrinsically Teutons—irreclaimably Teutons. They are left with the undisputed idea that their system of instruction is altogether the best, as proven by the spectacle of aliens coming here for schooling. Why, then, should German lads and misses go abroad to learn? And they don't.