It is true this plan, in a small way, was tried under the exchange of professors scheme. But the Kaiser won out in that because his professors were too old and, it develops, were simply his emissaries with hostile inclinations and intent. It would appear that most of the young Americans who are partly educated in Germany are pro-German. Had they gone to England or France, they would be pro-British or pro-French. It is now being shown that the German's education or instruction does not do away with the Hun element in him. The logical thing, then, is to try foreign education on him. He needs to learn in other countries, and to _live out_, their meanings of good faith and a give-and-take, manly spirit. For he at present considers it right to have no respect for his own spoken word to foreigners, or even his written word. This is his old habit of the tribal fanatic. To lie to, to cheat, to steal from, to kill, aliens is no admitted sin in the moral decalogue of the Germans when an advantage can be derived. Murder, senseless destruction, violation of women, obscenity, do not therefore horrify them. If you as a foreigner strike the metallic shield of their character, no resounding ringing of what we know as conscience is heard, because extreme erudition in Germany largely takes the place of moral feelings. "Science without con_science_ is the death of man." And the women and State religion are as Hunnish as the males. All these influences make for war. This conscienceless dullness, or immense hollowness, in the Teuton people always suggests to me an eggshell encased in the pomp of steel. Should they be defeated, I feel that the nation may cave in tremendously, horribly. How can it be otherwise with a race that never sees anything foolish in itself, and exaggerates the core of its costly army and bureaucracy at the expense of the kernel? By living abroad a part of their study years the young Germans would little by little come to prefer to substitute amity for armaments, confident trust for suspicion, love as a motto instead of hate. For they would see that other peoples are worthy to live. They would learn more chivalry toward women and children, the beautiful significance of humanity and of universal brotherhood. They would learn that what they call weakness desirably lends delicacy, tenderness, spiritual and moral loveliness to existence which the coarse bigness and bow-wowness of the German ideal itself will never attain.... When March came, and the birds flew back to find no trees, no grass, no flowers, Gard Kirtley, in his spring-time of life, stepped out from his dugout in Flanders with a gun, and faced the Huns of the northeast. He was prepared to greet Death which is the fruit of old age but which in youth appears as with a crown of laurel. THE END