_I have grown old and gray in the service of the German tongue and German letters in America. One of the most vivid recollections of my childhood is the positive declaration of the German elders that I was not a German but an_ Amerikaner. _On the other hand, the Americans were just as emphatic in their declaration that I was a German. Then the “hyphen” came to the rescue and I blossomed out into a German-American with a_ dicken Bind-estrich _(thick hyphen). Later I heard that the Kaiser had given it as his opinion that there were only Germans and Americans. The true Americans of my own country endorsed this point of view. So I concluded that I would have to make a place in the sun for myself. And now, with the snow gathering on my hair, I am an American only: nothing more (if there be such) and surely nothing less. In my American heart there is and always will be a shrine dedicated to that which came into my life from the soul of my father and mother. But they have long ago gone into the land from which no traveler returns and they have left a son who can love but one flag, although he has often nailed the Star-Spangled Banner to a staff of good solid German oak. I am now an old man, whose work is almost done. I cherish but one more great hope--that on the stars and stripes of my country’s flag there shall ultimately be written the gospel which will redeem the world--the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man._ When he had finished reading that letter, Jeremy Robson dropped his head between his doubled fists and lost himself in thought. It was not pleasant thought. Self-reproach was a burning element in it. Here was a man German-born, German-bred, German by every tie of life except the profounder bonds of conscience and patriotism, saying to the German-Americans of Centralia, in no uncertain tones, that which he, the editor of The Guardian, had had in mind to say--when the time should come. And, behold, the time had come! Any hour in which a man great of soul and clear of vision to meet the issue would speak out, was the appointed hour. He, Jeremy Robson, despite all his good intentions and brave promises, had procrastinated and paltered and dallied, while another, with far more to lose, had lifted the banner and set it up for a challenge to the disloyal, the unloyal, and the half-loyal. A sorry enough champion Jeremy Robson seemed in his own eyes! Doubt of his own courage, smothered under the pressing emergencies of the past few months, lifted up a strident and whimpering voice. And that was a doubt with which young Mr. Robson could not live on any terms.