as strangely gay for the
capital of a prostrate nation and that all the cafes were crowded with
dancers at night, many readers were amazed and tried to console their
sense of probability by remarking that the Germans are crazy anyway. And
yet this rumor of the dancing mania was an authentic premonition of the
bloodier dance of death led by the Spartacus group. If Berlin did dance
it was a cotillon of despair, caused by infinite war weariness, infinite
hunger to forget humiliation for a few moments, and foreboding of
troubles to come. Whether true or not, no one read the news without
thinking it an ominous whisper.

Coming events cast their rumors before. From a careful study of rumors
the discerning may learn a good deal, providing always that they never
take them at face value but try to read beneath the surface. People
sometimes criticize the newspapers for printing rumors, but it is an
essential part of their function to do so, provided they plainly mark
them as such. Shakespeare speaks of rumors as "stuffing the ears of men
with false reports," yet if so this is not the fault of the rumor
itself, but of the too credible listener. The prosperity of a rumor is
in the ear that hears it. The sagacious listener will take the trouble
to sift and winnow his rumors, set them in perspective with what he
knows of the facts and from them he will then deduce exceedingly
valuable considerations. Rumor is the living atmosphere of men's minds,
the most fascinating and significant problem with which we have to deal.
The Fact, the Truth, may shine like the sun, but after all it is the
clouds that make the sunset beautiful. Keep your eye on the rumors, for
a sufficient number of rumors can compel an event to happen, even
against its will.

No one can set down any hard and fast rules for reading the rumors. The
process is partly instinctive and partly the result of trained
observation. It is as complicated as the calculation by which a woman
tells time by her watch which she knows to be wrong--she adds seventeen
minutes, subtracts three, divides by two and then looks at the church
steeple. It is as exhilarating as trying to deduce what there is going
to be for supper by the pervasive fragrance of onions in the front hall.
And sometimes a very small event, like a very small onion, can cast its
rumors a long way. Destiny is unlike the hen in that she cackles before
she lays the egg.

The first rule to observe about rumors is that the