lly from his bruises but had to meet the irate
looks and casehardened bearing of his parents. Brutality made
soldiers of visionary and idealistic temperaments. It kept the feet
on the earth.

Gard thought how differently an American father and mother would
act. Their sons belonged to them and they would resent any outside
interference that smacked of cruelty. In Germany, the boys, as
already observed, belonged essentially to the Government. The
vicious treatment of German children in the home, at school, in the
army, accounts for the unique Teuton institution of child-suicide.
The number of these boys and girls who, because of their hardships,
destroy themselves in despair, is shockingly great. The statistics
in other races offer little in comparison.

To break down the will by abasing youth before its comrades and
elders, to lay its self-respect low, to beat dignified individuality
into callous insensibility, manufactured a docile, automatic unit
for the German mechanism. The peculiar strength of Deutschland lay
in this early control and training of its young. And as the young
surrendered their unimportant consciousness as individuals, they
gained an important consciousness as factors in the State. For this
reason, as they learned to be almost servile among their own folk,
they became domineering among foreigners.

Villa Elsa now was true to the adage that misfortunes do not come or
loom singly. One forenoon, about the middle of June, Kirtley was
sitting in his attic, turning over in his mind the fact that his
year in Germany would soon be up, and endeavoring to explain why he
felt depressed. The recent events, it was true, had created a very
unpleasant condition of mind, but his body itself also seemed to
share in the inharmony. A dullness, a heaviness, had begun to weigh
upon his physique and yet here were summer, Nature, the green earth,
rejoicing all about him. It was odd. What was the full explanation?

As he sat there thinking somewhat dolefully about himself and
forgetting his opened books, a loud knock was heard at his door. It
was Frau Bucher with her knitting. She had never honored him with a
call in his room. Something must be the matter.

At his invitation she came in and sank into a chair. Her face and
hair were mussed. She was laboring under a great strain. The sons
with their ill-luck had troubled her. The recent mishaps had
evidently alarmed her, upset her, so that it was now the daughter
filling