Villa Elsa Part 26

_Flanders, a Mudhole, February, 1915._

... Is not my old friend Anderson's plan the only natural, practical, efficient method by which to humanize their barbarous instincts? a.s.suming that they will be defeated, as they _must_ be, the Anderson project, as you see, is that a permanent arrangement must be offered them, and if necessary enforced upon them, whereby a mult.i.tude of young German men and women shall be sent yearly to foreign democratic lands to _live_ and be educated there for a period. By attractive scholarships, by pecuniary inducements or by any of a number of programmes, young Germans can be tempted to this step. In living and studying, before middle age, under free and liberal conditions, they will begin looking at foreigners in a friendly, or what we should call a Christian, manner. After awhile, after generations perhaps, this leaven will work in the thick, tough, sour Teuton dough. It will transform the people. They will gradually become allies at heart instead of remaining hostiles.

As it is now, the German eats, drinks, bathes, and nauseatingly does other elemental things much as he did a hundred years ago, because he receives his instruction in his homeland with the idea, not only complacent but aggressive, that his habits are the best. And this is for the reason that he has seen no other kind when young. Do you think, for instance, that a youthful German, after living in the freedom of our young s.e.xes, would return to the Rhine and long be content with the iron-like Teuton customs in love, courtship and marriage?

A youthful person is apt to admire the people among whom he is staying a long while for the reason that, under such circ.u.mstances, aliens are kind. He will always take pride in these foreign connections, pride in what he has learned abroad.

He will think himself more fortunate and more advanced than his fellow stay-at-homes. The young German, becoming used to more amiable modes of existence, would naturally become more or less fond of them. A broader, more human social spirit--the true social spirit--would get a hold in him.

I would go further than my friend Anderson. I would have _all_ civilized countries adopt this plan with one another as well as with Germany. The trouble with civilization, as seen in this war, is that no people understands or truly sympathizes with any foreign nation--not even among the Allies. They are strangers because they have been kept strangers. This creates suspicion, envy, enmity, for they have not in any noticeable degree lived together. They do not know one another's customs, habits, perspectives. As a result, armies, navies, tariffs, treaties backed by force, are necessary to hold civilization precariously in shape--and at what colossal effort, anxiety, expense? The different languages, literatures, arts, educations, religions, should become familiar to large numbers in each race and be the open, peaceful highways back and forth instead of, as now, barriers.

_Flanders, another Mudhole, February, 1915._

... I see the woeful, tragic need for this international co-education all around us here at the front. The Canadians, Australians, English, French, all quarreling back and forth and pulling against one another as unfriendly strangers.

Germany is giving--has given--one great lesson to them all and to us Americans at home. And that is, IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTH.

After this war the tremendous question before the world will be:

_How are we going to live with the Germans?--how get on with them?_

The only true and gracious solution I can see is--_To a.s.sociate and study together when young_! Would not you--would not everyone--agree that this interchange in education, which would not be very troublesome or expensive, is a true manner in which to remove from the German make-up its savage, destructive animus toward mankind? In order really to change a race, the work must be done from the inside outward. And this means _some_ form of education, not merely victories, edicts, Leagues.

Let or make the Teutons be a.s.sociated with gentler cultures than their own. What if it does take a hundred, two hundred, years!

What is that compared with having the German problem and menace unsolved in the future as in the past?

Such young German missionaries year after year, as I have indicated, would be bringing back something of sweetness and light to their stubborn, irascible folk. The powerful and exacerbated bias of this folk toward the _echt Deutsch_ would be neutralized and mollified under the contact of its youths with dispositions making for kindliness and courtesy. Confessedly the stoutest race prejudices lie with those who have never stepped outside their own boundaries.

It is true this plan, in a small way, was tried under the exchange of professors scheme. But the Kaiser won out in that because his professors were too old and, it develops, were simply his emissaries with hostile inclinations and intent. It would appear that most of the young Americans who are partly educated in Germany are pro-German. Had they gone to England or France, they would be pro-British or pro-French.

It is now being shown that the German's education or instruction does not do away with the Hun element in him. The logical thing, then, is to try foreign education on him. He needs to learn in other countries, and to _live out_, their meanings of good faith and a give-and-take, manly spirit. For he at present considers it right to have no respect for his own spoken word to foreigners, or even his written word.

This is his old habit of the tribal fanatic. To lie to, to cheat, to steal from, to kill, aliens is no admitted sin in the moral decalogue of the Germans when an advantage can be derived.

Murder, senseless destruction, violation of women, obscenity, do not therefore horrify them. If you as a foreigner strike the metallic shield of their character, no resounding ringing of what we know as conscience is heard, because extreme erudition in Germany largely takes the place of moral feelings. "Science without con_science_ is the death of man." And the women and State religion are as Hunnish as the males. All these influences make for war.

This conscienceless dullness, or immense hollowness, in the Teuton people always suggests to me an eggsh.e.l.l encased in the pomp of steel. Should they be defeated, I feel that the nation may cave in tremendously, horribly. How can it be otherwise with a race that never sees anything foolish in itself, and exaggerates the core of its costly army and bureaucracy at the expense of the kernel?

By living abroad a part of their study years the young Germans would little by little come to prefer to subst.i.tute amity for armaments, confident trust for suspicion, love as a motto instead of hate. For they would see that other peoples are worthy to live. They would learn more chivalry toward women and children, the beautiful significance of humanity and of universal brotherhood. They would learn that what they call weakness desirably lends delicacy, tenderness, spiritual and moral loveliness to existence which the coa.r.s.e bigness and bow-wowness of the German ideal itself will never attain....

When March came, and the birds flew back to find no trees, no gra.s.s, no flowers, Gard Kirtley, in his spring-time of life, stepped out from his dugout in Flanders with a gun, and faced the Huns of the northeast. He was prepared to greet Death which is the fruit of old age but which in youth appears as with a crown of laurel.

THE END