saved and Oberammergau has kept its promise. You see, if I had
accepted those theatrical offers I could never again live in my
native village, and that would break my heart."

There is carefully preserved in the town hall at Oberammergau an
old chronicle which tells of the plague. There will undoubtedly be
preserved in the family of Lang a new chronicle, a product of the
war, printed in another country, a chronicle which did not rest
content with a notice of Anton's obituary, but told the details of
his death in battle.

Frau Lang showed me this chronicle. She seemed to have something
on her mind of which she wished to speak, after I told her that I
was an American journalist. At length one evening, after the three
younger children bad gone to bed, and the eldest was industriously
studying his lessons for the next day, she ventured. "American
newspapers tell stories which are not at all true, don't they?" she
half stated, half asked.

My natural inclination was to defend American journalism by
attacking that of Germany, but something restrained me, I did not
know what. "Of course," I explained, "in a country such as ours
where the Press is free, evils sometimes arise. We have all kinds
of newspapers. A few are very yellow, but the vast majority seek
to be accurate, for accuracy pays in the long run in
self-respecting journalism." I thought that perhaps she was
referring to the announcement of the death of the man who was
sitting with us in the room. We both agreed, however, that such a
mistake was perfectly natural since two Langs of Oberammergau had
already been killed. In fact, Anton had read of his own death
notice in a Munich paper. The American correspondent who had
cabled the news on two occasions had presumably simply "lifted" the
announcement from the German papers. Frau Lang could understand
that very well when I explained, but how about the stories that
Anton had been serving a machine-gun, and other details which were
pure fiction?

She had trump cards which she played at this point. Two gaudily
coloured "Sunday Supplements" of a certain newspaper combination in
the United States were spread before me. The first told of how
Anton Lang had become a machine-gunner of marked ability, and that
he served his deadly weapon with determination. Could the
Oberammergau Passion Play ever exert the old influence again, after
this? was the query at the end of the article.

A second had all the det