“Exactly. One of our super-dreadnoughts can lie off Rockaway Beach and drop shells from her twelve-inch guns into Union Square, and the twelve-inch guns of your harbour forts, handicapped by their stupid carriages, could never touch her.” The conversation now turned to other subjects and presently the prince was led by enthusiasm or arrogance to make a series of statements that gave extraordinary importance to my interview, since they enraged the whole Anglo-Saxon world, particularly our Western and Middle Western states. Fortunately I submitted my manuscript to Frederick William before cabling the interview to London, so there was no danger of his repudiating my words. With brutal frankness this future ruler of a nation maintained that against German arms America must now go down to defeat just as England went down to partial defeat in 1917 and for the same unchangeable reason that the fittest among nations inevitably survive. “Ask your readers in the London Times, Mr. Langston, why it was that in the fall of 1915 Germany had been able to put into the field nine million fully equipped, highly efficient soldiers, whereas England, with nearly the same population, counting her white colonies, had been able to send out only two and a half million, a third of these being physically defective? Why was that? “Was it lack of guns and ammunition? Lack of officers and training? Partly so, but something else was lacking, I mean patriotism among the English masses that would give them the desire to fight for England, also a high standard of physical excellence that would make them able to fight effectively and to endure the hardships of the trenches. “Now why should there be more patriotism in Germany than in England? Why should the masses of Germany excel the masses of England in physical vigour? “I will tell you why, and the answer applies in some degree to America; it is because the German system of government is better calculated to create patriotism and physical vigour, just as it is better calculated to create an efficient war machine. In Germany we have concentration of power, a benevolent paternalism that knows the needs of the people and supplies them whether the people wish it or not. For example, in Germany we have to a great extent abolished poverty and such degrading slum conditions as prevail in English and American cities. We know that slums lead to drink, vice and physical unfitness. We know that we must kill the slums or see the slums kill efficiency and kill patriotism.