After one or two visits from him we decided that, by some higher authority, he had been assigned to the dual task of ascertaining our own views regarding Germany's part in the conflict and of influencing our minds if possible to accept the views he and his class held. He may have had an even more important mission; we thought sometimes that he perhaps was doing a little espionage work, either on his own account or under orders, because he began to seek our company about the time we noted a cessation of clumsy activities on the part of those two preposterously mysterious sleuths of the German Secret Service who, until then, had been watching us pretty closely. Be this as it may, he manifested a gentlemanly but persistent curiosity regarding our observations and regarding the articles which he knew we were writing for American consumption. And meantime he lost no opportunity of preaching into our ears the theories and the dogmas of his Prussianized _Kultur_. I remember that, on almost his first call upon us, either my companion or myself remarked upon the united and the whole-hearted devotion the civilian populace of the province, from the youngest to the oldest, exhibited for the German cause. Instantly his posture changed. From the polite interviewer he turned into the zealot who preaches a holy cause. His lensed eyes became pallid blue sparks; and he said: "Surely--and why not? For forty-odd years we have been educating our people to believe that only through war and through conquest could our nation achieve its place in the sun--elbowroom for its industrial and its spiritual development. Germany is a giant--the giant of the universe and she must have breathing space; and only by the swallowing up of smaller states can she get that breathing space. Almost at the mother's breast we teach our babies that. Do you know, my friends, what the first question is, in the first primer of geography, which German children hear when they enter school? "No? Then I will tell you. The first question is 'What is Germany?' And the answer is 'My Fatherland--a country entirely surrounded by Enemies!' "So you see, gentlemen, we start at the cradle and at the kindergarten to teach our young people what it means to live with Russia on one side of them and with France and Belgium and Britain on the other. They cannot forget for one instant the task that lies before them. Their educators--parents, teachers, pastors, military instructors, officials of every rank and every grade--never let them forget it." XII