Villa Elsa Part 14

Gard, when touched with loneliness, went there several times and struck up quite an intimacy with her, the proprietor and his wife.

It was a snug spot and she was picturesque. The _Lebkuchen_ and famous sausages, which would have been a deadly combination in America, seemed to agree with him, soothed with beer. While Fritzi appeared _keck_ at intervals, Gard did not see any excuse for agreeing with the scandalous hints Von Tielitz and Messer threw out about her. They would naturally see the wench in every domestic.

It was from the inn that Kirtley frequently went to Anderson's for the afternoon. Gard had found it desirable to write down in a notebook some of the facts and reflections he was acc.u.mulating on the subject of the German. He would want to show them to his old tutor when home was reached again. Among them, Anderson's ideas and comments were included, flanked by an occasional apothegm.

Gard copied off a sample of their many talks in somewhat the abridged form as given below. It was when, on one of these days, Kirtley learned that Anderson had moved, and traced him to his new abode. From the window of this apartment they could see, through the bleary March light, the dowager-like Grosse Garten where Deming paraded in style with Frau Bucher and Fraulein. Although the trees and shrubbery were now so gaunt and chilly of aspect, soon they would be green and gay with beautiful spring, and Anderson would find them cheering.

"I _am_ getting old," he said. "I have never wanted May to hurry up so much as this year. Here I can get a good view and the birds will come and nest in these branches. They will whistle to me. I can fill my pocket with crumbs and go out and make their acquaintance in the sunshine and flowers. Since the war failed me again, I can see that my friends pull away from me. They doubtless think that no one is more worthless than a prophet who cannot pull off his 'stunt' and has short gray hair in the bargain. Everyone is blissfully lolling in the embraces of enduring tranquillity and I am seeking the companionship of trees and birds that are not troubled with the machinations and delusions of mankind.

"So there will be this delightful summer of 1914 ahead. Christian civilization is spreading rapidly everywhere. More Bibles being sold than ever. More Hottentots and cannibals wearing clothes and losing their taste for human flesh. And so universal Peace has come to stay. There will not be another war.

"And yet the Dresden barracks were never so full of soldiers, and the German bases of military supplies are crammed. The munition factories are running on extra-time schedules. Has the world turned topsy-turvy or have I? Does what one actually see and hear have no meaning any more?"

"Why do you stay in Germany?" asked Gard. "The Germans antagonize you. And you look upon their Government as a wicked monster prepared to leap upon its innocent prey?"

"For about the same reasons that you remain at the Buchers'. Because it's so often exasperating here. And that's always exciting. I guess it's the Irish strain in us. Want to stick around where there's a good prospect for trouble--want something to swear at. And I consider it my duty to remain here as a sign post of warning. I am carrying about a small red flag with DANGER on it. If the Germans win command of the world, I will be here on the ground all ready to start in as a German and will have a great advantage over nearly all Yankees. I have conned my green book of irregular verbs, which I think would bother most of them considerably. I have got accustomed to the German eating and drinking which I imagine would prove the death of most of them, too. I have learned to sleep athwart the German bed--no small feat, as you know. For everything must become Germanized under German rule. Teutons know no other method."

"Is that the meaning of the sort of happy, triumphant feeling that one finds in Germany? It seems to pervade the whole Empire--rich and poor, merchant and peasant, housewife and children."

"Yes, because they know a victorious war is coming and they will all be lords and masters. The Empire will stretch out wide and there will be work at the highest wages and plenty of money. The German will be able to travel on his own railroads throughout most of Europe and Turkey. No matter how servile he may be at home, everyone will kowtow to him abroad.

"It will be a short, decisive campaign. It will cost some blood and some treasure, but then--the German millennium! The people a eager, ripe, fit for it. The coveted Government jobs will be more numerous and remunerative. They will confer more power on the inc.u.mbents, for they will be largely connected with conquered provinces. The German Michel will be no longer cramped up in his mid-continent."...

CHAPTER XXVI

SOME OF THE LESS KNOWN EFFICIENCY

"Why is it that this seems to be a nation of professionals while ours seems to be a nation of amateurs? I suppose it is, of course, because of the more general spread here of thorough instruction."

"Yes, with us unskilled mediocrity is the popular level because it is within the reach of everyone in a democracy. With the German, high skilled, highly instructed efficiency is the ideal. The failure of America to rise into the expert level is due to our unenforced higher education. We compel our people to have a common school education in order to preserve the Republic. Its voters must know how to read and write and 'figger' or they won't be able to vote intelligently.

"Now if we did in addition what Germany does, we would insist, as far as practicable, on advanced education or instruction in every family. Then we, too, would have a wealth of trained talent.

Comparing the riches and population of the two countries there is a much greater proportion of university men and other competently instructed men in Germany. Only relatively few Americans can show diplomas for genuine and severe mental training. Take your own Bucher family as an ill.u.s.tration. All its men will have sheepskins that are worth while to show. With us, out of such a family none would have a sheepskin, or at most one. One of the boys might have gone to a university. And as for the difference in the women--little comparison. Your Frau, as you have told me, has several framed diplomas to her credit.

"You can see what a tremendous advantage all this gives the German people over us. You have hit it very well--we are nearly always amateurs. They are nearly always able to be professionals."

"Is it the same with the laboring cla.s.ses--the mechanics and all that?"

"The same is true, in its way. A poor American boy thinks he will like to be a machinist. He gets a job as a new hand on a salary. He works at it a couple of years. Then somebody offers him ten dollars a week more to drive a truck, which is a simple, elementary task. He drops his machinist career for this. He gets more money and it requires no tedious training. So he remains an indifferent mechanic.

It's the money he's looking for, not the satisfaction of proficiency in a skilled trade.

"Now, by contrast, the future of the poor German child is decided in a fashion at about the age of ten. When a boy is elected to go into industry, for instance, he is apprenticed at about fourteen for, say, four years to be a mechanic. He is given no wages. In fact he has to pay something, very often, for the opportunity to learn. But he must, at the same time, attend what they call here continuing schools. It is these schools, which we do not have in America, that hold him fixed to his line of work--prevent him from jumping from one kind of thing to another. He not only works in the shop but is forced to go to a continuing school.

"Hence at eighteen the German factory and Government are sure to find in him just the kind of instructed worker they need. There has never been any danger of his meanwhile changing to driving a truck.

He sticks to his trade through life. He becomes a master mechanic.

You can't lure him away into an unskilled channel by more money.

It's not the money alone he is thinking of. It is also the pride of having a specific calling that lifts him out of the great commonplace market of untrained labor. So Germany is full of competent mechanical men while we limp along with our huge supply of the partly experienced. Every such German knows how to do at least one thing as well as and usually better than anyone else.

"This is one big reason why Germany is pushing ahead of every nation in the industrial world and one reason why I fear her. No matter what she wants to do, she has an abundance of efficient brain and muscle right at hand with which to do it well and at once. In our great United States the lack of this is the bane of American industry and development, and causes such immense and continual loss in time and money because of our having to deal with such a ma.s.s of inexperienced young workmen.

"But more than this. The German who is taught a trade acquires not only the technic of it in a shop or laboratory, but also acquires in his studies something of an enlightening and inspiring knowledge of its history and significance. He is, consequently, much more than a mere drudge. He is made intelligent about his calling. This particular feature, so pregnant and valuable, is not incorporated in the American plan, if we can be said to have a plan in these matters. For the Yankee ambition is to make plenty of money in _any_ quick way, and therefore to rise above a trade which a German is content to remain in. We feel no keen necessity about careful instruction in such vocations. Luck, "pull," "cheek," mere cleverness, are prominently relied on in its stead.

"There is another thing in this trade instruction that we do not have in any noticeable degree. It teaches the German mechanic to become wedded to his Nation and Government. He is made to realize the great benefits and responsibilities he owes to them. He becomes an integral national citizen ready to serve his homeland. He is taught to think of something higher than his pay envelope. Under our system such a mechanic grows up loosely connected in thought and acts with the governing public under which he enjoys all his liberty and opportunity. In so far as national necessities go he is apt to be a weakened unit or pulling the wrong way. Unlike the German, he has been educated to have no self-sacrificing ideal of state or country."

Anderson had, at one time, drawn Gard's attention to the immense advantage Germany uniquely derived by completely organizing and keeping at work that vast majority of incurable mediocrities--mere plodders--who are found in every race and who often weigh down its destiny to the point of sinking hopelessness.

Kirtley had since observed that one conspicuous German method was largely to employ this empty talent in small Government jobs. In general, these tasks seemed to be expressly for the swarming and uninspired nonent.i.ties, and meant most trivial duties for trivial pay. But such tasks kept this population occupied, orderly and more than self-respecting. In America incurable mediocrity is left to shift for itself in huge ma.s.ses.

The natural ambition of a Teuton was to be in the national service.

Rare was the German family who had not one member in "Government circles." Or if not, it was building expectations toward such a future. One in every eight wage-earning men a bureaucrat! It was not only a question of the salary, a.s.sured if small, but the honor. Any Government clerk or roustabout, not to speak of functionaries in higher duties, was looked up to in a way unfamiliar in America, for under that continuous regime his position remained fixed for life.

Government officials and employees in the United States are quite freely thrown out under the frequent election upheavals and may to-morrow be ordinary citizens bereft of any sort of authority over their fellows. So they enjoy only a pa.s.sing deference.

In Germany, owing to the use of plodders who made up extensively its ubiquitous and commanding official cla.s.s, this bureaucratic scheme proved useful in more ways than one. It put faith and expectation into these stolid, menial lives and took them out of the ranks of the idle and discontented dullards who, in other countries, are a source of danger or decay. It attached Fritz firmly and loyally to the Nation. It held the links between the ruling caste and the people hard and tight. At the same time it tied his family and friends to the Hohenzollern, uniting them in a bond almost servile.

The ever-swelling ranks of bureaucrats, in such a large measure imbecile and applying themselves to imbecile occupations, strengthened the incomparable solidarity of the race. And it was this army of State employees who were actively helping diffuse through Germany in 1913 the frothy ideas of a national triumph that intoxicated the populace.

But Kirtley, admiring this manifestation of practical and administrative wisdom, felt that there must be somewhere a tremendous weak spot. The expense of this plan and its withdrawal of muscle and even poor brain from directly productive channels, were costly. And there was about it a pompous vacancy, an arrogant nonsensicalness, a latent peril resulting from such a large number of automatons in unquestioned positions, that should all logically indicate this: If Germany once broke, it would collapse somewhat like an eggsh.e.l.l. It would be a formidable eggsh.e.l.l but with a content surprisingly void.

In a sentence, the mighty German bureaucracy kept the population from thinking. It meant--Obey and make no inquiry! And where in history, Gard asked himself, has a nation of such political and body slaves endured as against nations where the common individual was free to ask questions? Slavery in any important form is acknowledged to be an outworn, decadent economic policy. It cannot compete in the long run.

As a result of this bureaucratic domination in Germany there were, as Kirtley observed, many aspects of the organized public life so excessively worked out and applied in their development as to be unbelievable to Americans who had not come in actual contact with them. These logical extremes and exhaustive minutiae often enough combined a ferocious ostentation and comical absurdness that were so little realized by those afar who learned of the mighty seriousness and intelligence of the Germans merely from the printed page. The conduct and operations of the limitless bureaucracy were usually the form in which the foreigner in the flesh ran counter to this unconscionable discipline.

Of all this Government routine, the spy system stood out in relief, although, at the same time, it was so dovetailed into the civil administration as to be frequently indistinguishable. Like a typical Yankee Gard, always greatly impressed by the general emphasis everywhere laid on the perfection of the Germans and their methods in everything, had regarded Anderson's remarks and hints about the spy regime as exaggerations. He still could not believe that Rudolph was a kind of Government sleuth or that Teuton existence was honeycombed from cellar to roof with official suspicion and the tyranny of the detective.

But this phase was now brought within range of his personal knowledge, and he had a glimpse of this famous German service.

And through whom? Of all persons, Jim Deming. Strange to relate, it brought to a sudden head the latter's stirring courtship of Fraulein Elsa.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE IMPERIAL SECRET SERVICE

After New Year he had organized a little informal dancing club among the Americans. He called it the Cinderella Cotillion Coterie, in alliterative compliment to the daintiness of the ladies. He was the self-const.i.tuted secretary and sole official.

For the birthday of the Father of our country he sent out to the members a rollicking printed invitation reading:

In honor of our George's birthday, which comes as usual this year on February the twenty-second, the inimitable CCCs will hold one of their regular reunions in pumps, beginning punctually at nine. Full beer orchestra as usual. No flowers or singing of hymns.

By order

JAMES ALEXANDER DEMING, Sec., CCC.

R. S. V. P.--the Senate and the Roman People.