"But, Kirtley, it scares me. I feel--see--something awful coming. In the universal German hate, the national boundary stops any flow outward of sympathy, good faith, equity. All peoples outside are human insects whom it is proper for the Teuton to tread on if he can, crush the life out of, because they are in his pathway to glory." Kirtley, who had stared at his new friend in this solemnity, turned a serious face toward the clawlike branches of his linden in its gauntness of late autumn-tide. This meaning of the animus that was impelling his odd and yet so normal German household, he began to see, was substantiated by a score of acts and attitudes in its daily life. He scarcely deemed it proper to tell of them. Besides, he did not want to fire up Anderson who already was so unsettled, so comfortless, on the subject. But Kirtley was reasoning out how this animus gave a solidity, a solidarity, to the German household--a satisfied contentment--because it was working toward a definite racial goal. Any such incentive was almost absent in the American family. "And so," wound up Anderson with epigrams, "the years will be left humanity to weep these days of _insouciance_ and neglect. You can see that Germany is a man-made nation. It is not the kind God or Nature would make. God must have turned His face when the Teuton species was manufactured. Germany is like a man-made hot air register. When it isn't throwing up hot air, it is throwing up cold air. It is always throwing up." To change the somewhat painful theme, Kirtley soon began: "I don't see any sports--such as we know them--in Germany. How do they get along without them?" Like all Yankee college men he was alert on these lines. "No sports in Deutschland. Go out on the Dresden golf links of a morning and you'll find hardly a German soul playing. It's the same in Vienna--the same in Berlin. They have links because it's the fashion in England. The Germans ape everything. Go out on the highway to Berlin or Vienna or any of the great roads and you will seldom meet any Germans touring in their motors for pleasure. Only Americans--English. The Germans are spoiling little time by such matters. They are busy--busy working for their Empire--busy like moles boring away to undermine the earth--busy drilling with arms. "So you see no sporting terms incorporated in their daily language, in their newspaper language, such as we see in England and America--terms denoting fair play, square deal, manly courtesy toward the under dog. Our Anglo-Saxon motto, 'Don't hit him when he's down,' is no motto with the Germans. They think that's just the time _to_ hit him. Kick him when he's flattened out. Kick him preferably in the face. That's one reason so many Teutons have scarred faces. The Anglo-Saxon spirit in a sporting crowd is for the little fellow. In Germany, it's for the big fellow--the fellow who already has everything on his side.