There was a sacrament, a holy one; roses were given the children, and the Angels who gave them shed their blood, for the roses had thorns. The next week the children were to be taken where the roses grew, and they would see that "A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Fern'd grot-- The veriest school Of Peace:--" But they would not have to see the garden to know that God is. We broke bread with the Angels and looked into their joyously weary faces, and then we talked about the very thing I wanted my guests to know, namely: That underneath all our religious or rather credal chaos, we have a national creed if not a national religion. The Herr Director suggested that the fundamental doctrine of our creed is "in gold we trust," and then he began a dissertation upon our national materialism. Perhaps so, I conceded; but I doubted that we are more materialistic than the people of the older world, in fact I was inclined to believe that we are less so; which of course the Herr Director stoutly denied, and I as stoutly affirmed. In justice to myself I must say that when my country's honor is not at stake I am less dogmatic. "Perhaps we are equally materialistic," I continued, "but we are certainly more generous. We make money faster than the people of the Old World, but we also give it away faster, and I believe that there is no country in which there is such a contempt for the merely rich man." "I suppose the second article in your national creed," the Herr Director interrupted, "is that you are the biggest country and the best people under the Sun. "If I were suggesting a motto for a new coinage I would put on one side of it 'In Gold We Trust,' and on the other 'The Biggest and The Best.'" Ignoring this somewhat merited slur I said: "The first and only doctrine of our national creed which we have as yet formulated is that we have a great national destiny." At that the Herr Director jumped excitedly from his seat, and said somewhat sneeringly, "Oh, you mean you have a place under the Sun. All nations have such a creed, but when we Germans try to realize it, you call us a menace to civilization." It was a tense moment in my relationship to my guests, but I ventured to say: "We have a better reason for the faith which is in us than most other nations, for we are trying to realize it without killing off other people. In fact we are trying to realize it at a greater hazard than that of being conquered by an alien enemy. We are keeping open these doors which have swung both ways freely, for nearly three hundred years, and your Old World weary ones have been coming; bringing their traditions, their ideals, their worn out faiths and their heaped up wrath. We did not forbid them; they have come to our towns, our schools, our homes, they are here for better for worse, and we cannot divorce them, or drive them away.