As the train pulled into one small station, Metternich by name, I saw a tall, raw-boned yokel, lounging on the platform. He was a mere boy, nineteen or twenty, six feet tall, broad-shouldered, horny-handed, and with as vacuous a face as it is possible for an individual to possess. A cheap, wide-brimmed, soft hat, offensively new, and of a dusty mud color, sat low over one ear; and around it, to my astonishment, was twined a slim garland of flowers and leaves which, interwoven and chained, hung ridiculously down his back. He was all alone, gazing sheepishly about him and yet doing his best to wear his astounding honors with an air of bravado. I was looking at his collarless shirt, his big feet and hands and his bow legs, when I heard a German in the next seat remark to his neighbor, “He won’t look like that long.” “Three months--he’ll be fine.” They went on reading their papers and I fell to wondering what they could mean. At the next station were five more yokels, all similarly crowned, and around them a bevy of rosy, healthy village girls. These five, constituting at once a crowd and a center of attention, were somewhat more assured--more swaggering--than the lone youth we had seen. “What is that?” I asked the man over the seat. “What are they doing?” “They’ve been drawn for the army,” he replied. “All over Germany the young men are being drawn like this.” “Do they begin to serve at once?” “At once.” I paused in amazement at this trick of statecraft which could make of the drawing for so difficult and compulsory a thing as service in the army a gala occasion. For scarcely any compensation--a few cents a day--these yokels and village men are seized upon and made to do almost heroic duty for two years, whether they will or no. I did not know then, quite, how intensely proud Germany is of her army, how perfectly willing the vast majority are to serve, how certain the great majority of Germans are that Germany is called of God to rule--_beherrschen_ is their vigorous word--the world. Before I was out of Frankfort and Berlin, I could well realize how intensely proud the average boy is to be drawn. He is really a man then; he is permitted to wear a uniform and carry a gun; the citizens from then on, at least so long as he is in service, respect him as a soldier. By good fortune or ability he may become a petty officer. So they crown him with flowers, and the girls gather round him in admiring groups. What a clever custom thus to sugar-coat the compulsory pill. And, in a way, what a travesty.