peror, with a distinct love of
discipline and a bias in favor of military training, and with an
experience of actual warfare such as only a score or so of German
officers of my generation have had; but I am bound to say I found this
pounding in of patriotism on every side distinctly nauseating. Boys
and girls, and men and women, ought not to need to be pestered with
patriotism. We had a controversy in America some ten years before the
Franco-German War, where in one battle more men were killed and
wounded than in all the battles Prussia, and later Germany, has fought
since 1860.

In the South, at any rate, we bear the scars and the
mourning of those days still, but nobody would be thanked for
pummelling us with patriotism. In the skirmish with Spain our military
authorities were pestered with candidates for the front. Germany
itself is not more a nation in arms than America would be at the
smallest threat of insult or aggression. But we take those things for
granted. If we have the honor to possess a medal or a decoration, the
gentlemen among us wear it only when asked to do so, or perhaps on the
Fourth of July.

Germany is even now somewhat loosely cemented together. Their leaders
may feel that it is necessary to keep ever in the minds even of the
children, that Germany is a nation with an Emperor and a victory over
France, France in political rags and patches at the time, behind them.

They even carry this teaching of patriotism beyond the boundaries of
Germany. The Allgemeiner Deutscher Schulverein zur Erhaltung des
Deutschtums im Auslande, is a society with headquarters in Berlin
devoting itself to the advancement of German education all over the
world. The society was started privately in 1886, and is now partly
supported by the state. It controls some sixteen hundred centres for
the teaching of German and German patriotism, and German learning.
There are such centres in China, South America, the United States,
Spain, and elsewhere. They number 90 in Europe, 25 in Asia, 20 in
Africa, 70 in Brazil, 40 in Argentina, and 100 in Australia and
Canada. The society is instrumental in having German taught in 5,000
schools and academies in the United States to 600,000 pupils. The work
is not advertised, rather it is concealed so far as possible, but it
is looked upon as a valuable force for the advancement of German
interests throughout the world.

In the schools, too, there is an enemy
of which we know nothing, and t