All the Federated German Societies of the State of Centralia in annual convention assembled might sing their federated German heads off for all that Jeremy Robson cared. He mildly approved the music, not so much for the sense as for the sound, under cover of which he was enabled to question his neighbor, Galpin, of The Guardian, concerning the visiting notabilities upon the stage. For young Mr. Robson was still a bit new to his work on The Record, and rather flattered that an assignment of this importance should have fallen to him. The local and political celebrities he already knew--the Governor; the Mayor; Robert Wanser, President of the Fenchester Trust Company; State Senator Martin Embree; Carey Crobin, the “Boss of the Ward”; Emil Bausch, President of the local Deutscher Club; and a dozen of the other leading citizens, all ornamented with conspicuous badges. Galpin obligingly indicated the principal strangers. Gordon Fliess, of Bellair, head of the Fliess Brewing Company; the Reverend Theo Gunst, the militant ecclesiast of a near-by German Theological Seminary; Ernst Bauer, of the Marlittstown Herold und Zeitung; Pastor Klink, the recognized head of the German religious press of the region; Martin Dolge, accredited with being the dictator of the State’s educational system; and the Herr Professor Koerner, of the University of Felsingen, special envoy from Germany to the United States for the propagation of that wide-spread and carefully fostered Teutonic plant, Deutschtum, the spirit of German Kultur in foreign lands. At the close of the musical exaltation of Germany above all the world, including, of course, the hospitably adoptive nation under whose protection the singers sat, the exercises proceeded with a verbal glorification of the Fatherland. The Governor, in complimentary and carefully memorized German, lauded the Teutons as the prop of the State. The Mayor, in strongly Teutonized English, proclaimed them the hope of the city. Several other speakers, whose accents identified them as more American than their sentiments, acclaimed the upholders of Deutschtum as salt of the earth and pillars of Society. Then a chorus of public school children, in the colors of imperial Germany rose to sing “Die Wacht am Rhein,” and everybody rose with them, or nearly everybody. They sang it directly in the face of his Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm, gazing, bewreathed, down at them from over the stage, with stern and martial approval. “They do it mighty well,” commented young Jeremy Robson. “Ay-ah. Why would n’t they!” returned Galpin. “You mean they’ve been specially drilled for it?” “Specially nothing! That’s part of their regular school exercises.” “In the German schools?” “In the _public_ schools. Our schools. Paid for out of our taxes. ‘Come to order.’ Tap-tap-tap with Teacher’s ruler. ‘Der bupils will now rice und zing “Die Wacht am Rhein.”’ But try em with ‘America,’ and they would n’t know the first verse.”