Over my beer I fell into conversation with an old merchant from Nürnberg and his sister-in-law. The pair were the most nearly resentful toward America of any persons I met in Germany, yet not so much so but that we passed a most agreeable evening together. The man clung doggedly to a theory that seemed to be moribund in Germany that America’s only real reason for entering the war was to protect her investments in the Allied cause. The woman had been a hack writer on sundry subjects for a half-century, and a frequent contributor to German-language papers in America. As is frequently the case with her sex, she was far more bitter and decidedly less open-minded toward her country’s enemies than the men. Her chief complaint, however, was that America’s entrance into the war had cut her off from her most lucrative field, and her principal anxiety the question as to how soon she would again be able to exchange manuscripts for American drafts. She grew almost vociferous in demanding, not of me, but of her companion, why American writers were permitted to roam at large in Germany while the two countries were still at war, particularly why the Allies did not allow the same privileges to German writers. I was as much in the dark on that subject as she. Her companion, however, assured her that it was because Germany had always been more frank and open-minded than her enemies; that the more freedom allowed enemy correspondents the sooner would the world come to realize that Germany’s cause had been the more just. She admitted all this, adding that nowhere were justice and enlightenment so fully developed as in her beloved Fatherland, but she rather spoiled the assertion by her constant amazement that I dared go about the country unarmed. In all the torrent of words she poured forth one outburst still stands out in my memory:
“Fortunately,” she cried, “Roosevelt is dead. He would have made it even harder for poor Germany than Wilson has. Why should that man have joined our enemies, too, after we had treated him like a king? His daughter accepted a nice wedding-present from our Kaiser, and then he turned against us!”
One sensed the curious working of the typical German mind in that remark. The Kaiser had given a friendly gift, he had received a man with honor, hence anything the Kaiser chose to do thereafter should have met with that man’s unqualified approval. It was a most natural conclusion, from the German point of view. Did not the Kaiser and his clan rise to the height from which they fell partly by the judicious distribution of “honors” to those who might otherwise have successfully opposed them, by the lavishing of badges and medals, of honorariums and preferences, of iron crosses and costly baubles?