As I traveled first to Frankfort, then to Mayence, Coblenz and Cologne and again from Cologne to Frankfort and Berlin, and thence out of the country via Holland, the wonder grew. I should say now that if Germany has any number of defects of temperament, and it truly has from almost any American point of view, it has virtues and capacities so noteworthy, admirable and advantageous that the whole world may well sit up and take notice. The one thing that came home to me with great force was that Germany is in no way loose jointed or idle but, on the contrary, strong, red-blooded, avid, imaginative. Germany is a terrific nation, hopeful, courageous, enthusiastic, orderly, self-disciplining, at present anyhow, and if it can keep its pace without engaging in some vast, self-destroying conflict, it can become internally so powerful that it will almost stand irresistible. I should say that any nation that to-day chose to pick a quarrel with Germany on her home ground would be foolish in the extreme. It is the beau ideal of the aggressive, militant, orderly spirit and, if it were properly captained and the gods were kind, it would be everywhere invincible. * * * * * When I entered Germany it was with just two definite things in mind. One was to seek out my father’s birthplace, a little hamlet, as I understood it, called Mayen, located somewhere between the Moselle and the Rhine at Coblenz,--the region where the Moselle wines come from. The other was to visit Berlin and see what Germany’s foremost city was really like and to get a look at the Kaiser if possible. In both of these I was quickly successful, though after I reached Frankfort some other things transpired which were not on the program. Frankfort was a disappointment to me at first. It was a city of over four hundred thousand population, clean, vigorous, effective; but I saw it in a rain, to begin with, and I did not like it. It was too squat in appearance--too unvarying in its lines; it seemed to have no focal point such as one finds in all medieval cities. What has come over the spirit of city governments, directing architects, and individual enterprise? Is there no one who wants really to do the very exceptional thing? No German city I saw had a central heart worthy of the name--no Piazza del Campidoglio such as Rome has; no Piazza della Signoria such as Florence has; no Piazza San Marco such as Venice has; not even a cathedral center, lovely thing that it is, such as Milan has. Paris with its Gardens of the Tuileries, its Champs-de-Mars, its Esplanades des Invalides, and its Arc de Triomphe and Place de l’Opéra, does so much better in this matter than any German city has dreamed of doing. Even London has its splendid focal point about the Houses of Parliament, St. Paul’s and the Embankment, which are worth something. But German cities! Yet they are worthy cities, every one of them, and far more vital than those of Italy.