This state of mind has its advantages. It is favourable to the maintenance of public order. Since everyone rests content in his own sphere, there is no friction, there is no waste of energy, no mutual suspicion between the classes. Authority, certain of its durability, can take long views, it has elbow-room. Whilst those in authority are loved, they can give themselves up to their natural bent, which is to regulate—to regulate the workman at home, the employer abroad; to wrap themselves in purple, to cut a dash, to astonish the universe. All these things are done for their own sake, for the pleasure they give, but they serve also to shed a reflected glory on German commerce. This political nullity of the crowd has hitherto had good results. But hitherto the crowd has consisted of fat kine. Association with the worthy Michael day after day in these times when every one is rationed, when poverty and death stalk abroad, has led me to think that the political nullity of the people, precious to those in authority, is hardly likely to produce a tenacious and trustworthy patriotism, and that in the long run it may well eventuate in disaster. * * * * * For nearly a year I have been studying life in this corner of Germany. I observe, I ask questions, and I listen. They are now quite tamed. No longer do they cry death on us. No longer do they call out _kaput_, except as a joke. In the villages, when the working gang arrives, the children flock to the scene from all directions, bare-footed, somewhat timid, at once shy and smiling. They have heard their fathers say that the French are splendid soldiers, “the only ones who can hold their ground against the grey-blues.” The description has raised us in these youngsters’ esteem. They know, too, that we receive parcels, many parcels. They believe us to be extraordinarily wealthy. The gossips even state with definite assurance that there are six millionaires and one multi-millionaire at Fort Orff; and, for what reason I know not, I am the multi-millionaire. This little world is astonished that persons of such eminence, terrible on the battlefield, should be so friendly with their humble selves. The German bourgeois and the junkers, we gather, have less agreeable manners. Finally, the villagers have been informed that our prison society is a true republic, that we have suppressed all distinctions of fortune, that the “sans-parcels” gain just as much advantage from the coming of the French mail as the “little-parcels” and the “big-parcels.” This communism, natural as it seems to us, touches and vanquishes them.