I was born in a small town, and I’m a small town guy. A small town always gets the full advantage of propaganda, and as people in small towns do not have a great variety of subjects to talk about when they once get a good one it has a long season. The folks around the towns where I had lived in the West and Middle West had been led to believe that while the ideal environment for the ground work of stability of character was to be found in the broad, open atmosphere of the country west of the Mississippi, yet for further polish and refinement it was necessary to seek the Eastern States, or better, to sojourn a while in England or France. There was some discussion as to which was the better of these two places. However, for the final graduation in culture, it was an entirely different story—there were no two sides to the argument at all that the post graduate course in refinement could be obtained but at one place in the whole wide world. There was no alternative. It was thoroughly agreed that if one aspired to become a finished product with the proper veneer, that person must beat it to Germany and become Kultured. Perhaps this feeling was the result of well-directed German propaganda; at any rate, it was a firmly established belief where I lived, at least. This “Kultur” bunk had never interested me, for I always had felt that the United States was good enough. A man who had good tips on the horse races was a hundred times more interesting to me than a much vaunted German Count who came from the wonderful country of Wagner, Goethe and Schiller. At that, though, I had studied German a couple of years in preparatory school, but I want to say here and now that the only reason for my doing it was because the only other choice was Latin, which was entirely beyond the possibilities of my mind. So when I finished the laborious German course at school I promptly proceeded to forget it. Now fortune had thrust upon me the opportunity for which many Americans before the war had vainly wished—namely, a sojourn in Germany and a course in Kultur, for, indeed, was I not being entertained as a guest of the German Government—or was it the jest of the German Government? Thus in spite of the fact that I never aspired to become Kultured, it was certain that I was going to get it whether I wished it or not. It was like the compulsory inoculations and vaccinations in the army—there was no choice in the matter for the poor guy who’s getting it. Perhaps the condition of my appetite had something to do with the shaping of my observations as to the actual working of German Kultur, for I was hungry when I was made prisoner and that empty feeling never left me from the time I was shot down until several weeks after I was released.