Rudolph's excited pronouncements ran along a different line, interchanged with voluminous whiffs of tobacco.
"Under our Government, Herr Kirtley, the German flag is seen in all parts of the globe. And wherever it is seen, it is respected, feared. Who ever sees the American flag? Even _I_ don't know what it looks like. It is not feared. It is only noticed out of voluntary courtesy. And a nation can't be really great without an army like ours. The army is the spine of the country. It makes a country a vertebrate. What would even Germany be without its army? Almost nothing. The army consolidates, trains, disciplines. It gives us health, good constitutions, industrious habits, exactness. It makes a nation superior because it fortifies human effort. In the constant changing of our regiments about to different sections of the Empire, our soldiers come to be well acquainted everywhere. They make friends and are at home in every direction. They learn to realize how great we are and this strengthens the German feeling and makes all parts of the nation one.
"Of course we have the only first-class army. All our General Staff has to do any day is to say the word and, as I have so often said, our army can go out and defeat the world. Our navy will soon be in a position to destroy England's. We are getting her trade routes, her mail routes. Our goods are now selling everywhere. It is not only because they are the best and the cheapest, but because our army and our navy stand behind them to _make_ people know what is best for them. Every little German box of goods has a big gun behind it. Of course we don't need to use the gun--_yet_--because people are crying for our manufactures all over the world. If we had occupied your big and half-developed country in your place, we would have long ago been the only great State. There would have been no others. We would have annihilated them if they were not willing to become German provinces."
Rudi took a long pull at his cigarette, with his elbows outspread like the haughty wings of the Prussian eagles of war. Emitting a long streamer of smoke, he summed up the whole thing in a nutshell with a derisory--Pouf!
Kirtley was inwardly fired up with resentment. Then he had to smother a laugh. This exhibition of the family taken off its guard was more instructive than volumes of discussion he might read about the true German attitude toward America--toward everyone. Were these but Goths with the German skins scratched off a little? He kept thinking of Anderson--how it furnished the pure evidence of what the latter was despairing of before deaf ears! Gard's respect, his sympathy, for the old man, jumped up with patriotic fervor.