His leaders loudly proclaimed themselves to be as terrifying as Huns and unblushingly gloried in this profession. Has he agreed or has he silently disagreed? Has he too wished this or has he been unwilling? Is he essentially a Hun, are his family essentially Huns, or are they in reality good and kindly people like our people? Are they temporarily misled?
The humble German families of education who are hospitable, who sing and weep over sentimental songs in their homes, whose duties are modest and revenues small, who have never been out of their provinces, who have had no relations with foreigners and could have no personal cause for hatred--have they been so bloodthirsty about killing and pillaging in alien lands?
Villa Elsa contains a family immune from any foreign influence and matured in the most regular and unsuspecting Teuton way. The German household is the most thoroughly instructed of all households. Its members are disciplined to do most things well. How can it then be Hun in any considerable degree? Impossible, said the nations, and so they remained illy prepared against a frenzied onslaught. But a shocked public has beheld how readily the most erudite of mankind, as the Germans were generally held to be, could officially, deliberately and repeatedly as soldiers, singly and _en masse_, act like their ancestors--the barbarians of the days of Attila.
These are all puzzling queries which this story attempts to illuminate and solve by its pictures and observations of the life of such a modest and typical Teuton home in 1913 and 1914. Admittedly too much light, too much study, cannot be given to the greatest issue civilization as a whole has faced.
Villa Elsa is but Germany in miniature. In the significant character, habits and activities of this household may be found the true pith and essence of real Germanism as normally developed. This Germanism appears ready to continue after the War to be the malignant and would-be assassin of other civilizations. It is, therefore, tragically important to find and act on the right answer to the question:
Is there any possible way to make the Germans become true, peace-loving friends with us--with the rest of mankind?
XXVI. SOME OF THE LESS KNOWN EFFICIENCY 200