rrunning our tidy, busy,
well-ordered Germany. But Treitschke--who was he?

And then, of course, it is not always easy to put one's finger on just
what people mean by militarism. Some have objected to militarism
because they didn't like the manners of the German waiters at the Savoy,
and some because--"Well, those people somehow rub you the wrong way!" It
is not universal conscription, because many nations have that, nor the
amount spent per capita on soldiers and ships, for we ourselves spend
almost as much as the Germans, and the French even more.

One of our old-school cattlemen, used to shooting all the game, cutting
all the timber, and using all the water he wanted to, would doubtless
say, without seeing a soldier, that it was "their damned police!" No,
when people think they are talking about German militarism, they are
quite as likely to be talking about the way German faces are made or
about German collectivism--the uncanny ability Germans have for taking
orders, for team-work, for turning every individual energy into the
common end.

One may, however, run across a certain feeling toward war, quite local
and unconscious, yet very different from the French love of "gloire" and
the English keenness for war as a sort of superior fox-hunting or
football. You are, let us say, watching one of the musical comedies
which the war has inspired.

The curtain rises on a darkened stage, through whose blackness you
presently discover, twinkling far below, as if you were looking down
from an aeroplane, the lights of Paris, the silver thread of the Seine
and its bridges. There is a faint whirring, and two faces emerge
vaguely from the dark--the hero and heroine swinging along in a Taube.
And as they fly they sing a wistful little waltz song, a sort of cradle
song:

"Ich glau-u-be... Ich glau-u-be Da oben fliegt... 'ne Taube..."

They are thinking, so the song runs, that there is a Taube overhead; it
has flown here out of its German nest, and let's hope it will not let
anything fall on them. And, as they sing, the young man makes a motion
with his hand, there is a sort of glowworm flash, and a few seconds
later, away down there among the Paris roofs a puff of red smoke and
fire. The illusion is perfect, and the audience is enchanted--that ride
through the velvet night, so still, so quaint, so roguish in its way,
and the flash far below, that has flung some unsuspecting citizen on the
cobblestones like a bundle of old