This helped; but still there was my name, which belonged to an ancestor
who had gone from England to Connecticut nearly three hundred years
ago. Palmer did not belong to the Germanic tribe. He must be pro- the
other side. He could not be a neutral and belong to the human kind with
such a name. Only Swenson, or Gansevoort, or Ah Fong could really be a
neutral; and even they were expected to be on your side secretly. If
they weren’t they must be on the other. Are you for us? or, Are you
against us? I grew weary of the question in Germany. If I had been for
them I would have “dug in” and not told them. In France and England
they asked you objectively the state of sentiment in America. But,
possibly, the direct, forcible way is the better for war purposes when
you mean to win; for the Germans have made a study of war. They are
experts in war.
However, this rosy-cheeked German boy, in his green uniform which could
not be washed clean of all the stains of campaigning, whom I met in the
palace grounds at Charlottenberg, did not put this tiresome question
to me. He was the only person I saw in the grounds, whose quiet I had
sought for an hour’s respite from war. One could be shown through the
palace by the lonely old caretaker, who missed the American tourist,
without hearing a guide’s monotone explaining who the gentleman in
the frame was and what he did and who painted his picture. This boy
could have more influence in making me see the German view-point than
the propagandist men in the Government offices and the belligerent
German-Americans in hotel lobbies--those German-Americans who were so
frequently in trouble in other days for disobeying the _verbotens_ and
then asking our State Department to get them out of it, now pluming
themselves over victories won by another type of German.
About twenty-one this boy, round-faced and blue-eyed, who saw in Queen
Louisa the most beautiful heroine of all history. The hole in his
blouse which the bullet had made was nicely sewed up and his wound had
healed. He was fighting in France when he was hit; the name of the
place he did not know. Karl, his chum, had been killed. The doctor
had given him the bullet, which he exhibited proudly as if it were
different from other bullets, as it was to him. In a few days he must
return to the front. Perhaps the war would be over soon; he hoped so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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