The accident of improving my limited knowledge of the German language brought me in contact with primers and readers covering all standards and classes. In making my way from the Child’s First Reader to the volumes in use in High Schools, I learnt a good deal more than the actual study of words and grammar. From the Infants’ to the Upper Standards one note was struck again and again with monotonous regularity--praise of the Army, glorification of the Hohenzollerns. I came into rapid conflict with my Child’s First Reader when on the first page I was confronted with a little poem saying that, though a tiny child, my great aim in life should be to shoot straight and grow up into a fine soldier. Then came a fulsome hymn to the Kaiser swearing lifelong fidelity to that noble man. Then followed a series of short stories, no less fulsome, about the goodness and greatness of the Royal Family. The book of course included other material, but glorification of the Hohenzollerns permeated its pages, and the same thing repeated itself exactly in all the following standards. Thoroughly bored with the Child’s Reader, I tried some of the more advanced books only to find an elaborated edition of the same theme. One priceless story in a middle-standard book told a marvellous tale about the adventures of a humble family in Berlin, the Empress, the Emperor’s daughter, and a cow. The curtain rises on a child weeping bitterly in a Berlin park. The beautiful and tender-hearted Princess drives by in a glittering phaëton lined with plush and drawn by two spanking ponies. Flinging the reins to a groom, she hastens to the assistance of poverty in distress. A tale of woe is in due course unfolded. A family, humble but virtuous, have lost a cow on which the entire prosperity of the household pivoted. The Princess comforts the weeping child, gives her money, and says that though the matter lies beyond her powers, her mother will certainly call and deal with the cow situation. The Princess is as good as her word. To the stupefaction of the district, a royal carriage containing the Empress visits the humble home the next day. The Empress administers more consolation; virtue is to be upheld in the hour of trial. A cow is following immediately from the royal farm; indeed it is on its way, lowing, so to speak, at the moment in the streets of Berlin. The anxieties of the family consequently will be at an end. The paralysed couple, falling flat on their faces, stammer suitable words of gratitude and praise. Thanks to the cow and the prestige attaching to it, the family fortunes prosper exceedingly. The whole district tumbles over itself in the effort to drink a glass of Imperial milk. But unhappily one day the woman is knocked down and mortally hurt in a street accident. Lying in the hospital at the point of death, the matron sees there is something on her mind. On inquiry the patient replies that if only once again she