Their
passions are not extended by any radical complications of romance or
ideality. In a sense, they keep their heads in any indulgence.

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAMPAGNE

At midnight Kirtley saw a remarkable sight. On the stroke of twelve,
loud toasts to Der Tag were suddenly lifted high in air as the
orchestra broke forth with the Wacht am Rhein. An uproar seized the
assembly. "Gott scourge England! Down with France! Deutschland ueber
Alles!" In a twinkling it was a crowd mad for war. Beer mugs were
smashed, various objects of apparel were flung far and wide.
Improvised orators--students--mounted tables and began crying for
vengeance on the world in speeches which, in the hubbub, did not get
much beyond preliminary exclamations.

Hatred of Great Britain stood out above it all. How long must the
Fatherland be held in check? "Der Kaiser! Hoch der Kaiser!" The
popular national frenzy had in this spot ripped off any bounds.
Burn, sack, violate, kill--Gard heard the intimations--the
threats--of all such frightfulness. In the furor he stood up on his
table to get a better view of the extraordinary demonstration. It
sounded fateful, terrible, like descriptions recited of the French
Revolution. He was almost awestruck. At its height he feared
personal violence for himself. He had sometimes been taken for a
Britisher.

Anderson was right again. The Teutons lusted for war now. What a
spectacle! The old, old German hate. This very lowly class of
people--waiters and waitresses--had nothing, would be the very first
to face severe hardships, and the men would suffer more than any at
the front. They would all be mainly the ones to go hungry, be cold,
be killed. But here appeared the cannon fodder demanding to be shot
down in its craze for Triumphant Germany. It was hoarse for Victory
or Destruction. It was drunk with its physical power. These soldiers
were angrily impatient to be let loose like hellhounds, from the
sullen fastnesses of mountains and swamps behind the Rhine, upon the
Christian populations beyond in the great plains of civilization.

When the tempest had passed and its activities were dwindling into
the renewed whirlwinds of the dance, Gard resumed his seat, his head
beginning to swim a little. At last his doubting eyes were as if
unsealed. A Vandal tribe, a great and powerful Vandal tribe, still
lived in the world. It was feeding on Conflict--the food of its
ancient bellicose gods.

How was it, indeed, th