I am thinking about a solution. Not original, for its framework was suggested by my old journalistic friend. I will send you an outline of his idea as he gave it to me one day. All that he said and prophesied has come so direfully true that I have now full faith and confidence in his vision and practical sense on the subject of the Goth race. For he _lived_ and observed among them seven years. That's the great point--_living together_. And I do not mean living together when people are mature or old but when _young_--when minds, sympathies, etc., are plastic and pliable. As long as the young Germans are kept home--never sent abroad unless as spies in some form--the Teutons will remain Huns. Granted that they can't help it if they are born with the Hun strain in their blood which their education or instruction not only preserves but enrages. Admit that they want any barbarism eliminated from their veins. That would be an important point over which our world should hold out to them the glad hand.... Don't be offended, but the best thing that I learned in college was to throw well from left field. At any rate it saved my life, I suppose, at Aix. And I've grown wonderfully fond of pepper. It braces a chap for this Iceland wind that howls down upon us at times. We call baseball and football a part of education. Good, brave things. The Germans don't have them because they have only "instruction." From what I observed beyond the Rhine, education is a growth in free and liberal countries. As we are seeing in the war, German instruction turns out experts, but also intellectual monsters and scientific fiends--instructed heathens.... Strange to say, I don't believe I could have stood this existence here if my system had not got a good cleansing out when I was sick. I am all the time thinking about the Huns. And it is strictly necessary hereabouts. CHAPTER XLIII THE TEUTON PROBLEM. A SOLUTION _Flanders, a Mudhole, February, 1915._