It was a member of this tribe who once told me that I was not to think. I confess that I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I heard that.
The case has some bearing on the subject discussed here, and for that reason I will refer to it briefly.
At the American embassy at Berlin they had put my passport into proper shape, as they thought. A Mr. Harvey was positive that such was the case. But at the border it was found that somebody was mistaken. The Tenth Army, in whose bailiwick I found myself, had changed the passport regulations, and the American embassy at Berlin seemed not to have heard of the change.
A very snappy sergeant of the border survey service wanted to know how I had dared to travel with an imperfectly viséd passport. There was nothing else to say but that I thought the passport was in order.
"_Sie haben kein Recht zu denken_" ("You have no right to think"), snarled the man.
That remark stunned me. Here was a human being audacious enough to deny another human being the right to think. What next?
The result of some suitable remarks of mine were that presently I was under arrest and off for an interview with the _Landrat_--the county president at Bentheim.
The _Landrat_ was away, however--hunting, as I remember it. In his stead I found a so-called assessor. I can say for the man that he was the most offensive government official or employee I have ever met. He had not said ten words when that was plain to me.
"Ah! You _thought_ the passport was in order," he mocked. "You _thought_ so! Don't you know that it is dangerous to _think_?"
There and then my patience took leave of me. I made a few remarks that left no doubt in the mind of the official that I reserved for myself the right to think, whether that was in Germany or in Hades.
Within a fortnight I was back in Berlin. I am not given to making a mountain out of every little molehill I come across, but I deemed it necessary to bring the incident at Bentheim to the attention of the proper authorities.
What I wanted to know was this: Had the race which in the past produced some of the best of thinkers been coerced into having thinking prohibited by an erstwhile sergeant or a _mensur_-marked assessor?
Of course, that was not the case, I was told. The two men had been overzealous. They would be disciplined. I was not to feel that I had been insulted. An eager official might use that sort of language. After all, what special harm was there in being told not to think? Both the sergeant and the assessor had probably meant that I was not to surmise, conclude, or take things for granted.