d Dick of drinking--that's one reason why I'm telling you. Don't
cry, Muetterchen."

"But you have Charley, Ernie! You have Charley!" sobbed his mother.

"No, I haven't Charley. Roger has Charley. None of us deserved her, but
Roger is nearer fit than the rest."

"Don't, Ernest!" pleaded Charley.

"I must, Charley. You'll see in a few moments what I'm getting at. Well,
Papa, in the meantime, there was no money and it looked as if there
would be no food. Roger's plant didn't work out as we'd planned. I wrote
home the difficulties even of hanging a door. You can picture Roger
trying to build a new engine out of wire and a string he had tramped ten
miles into the ranges to find and steal. The alfalfa was dying for lack
of water and there was no adequate pumping system even if we'd had
adequate water.

"It was at this point that I decided to go to Washington, Papa, and try
the Smithsonian. You would have been the one, naturally, for me to turn
to, but even if I'd had the inclination, which I hadn't, Roger
absolutely wouldn't stand for the suggestion. So I went to Washington,
all sort of strung up, you understand, and in bad mental trim because
of--of everything. And in Washington I got a good swift kick. So I went
to New York and spent the rest of Elsa's good money on Broadway. It
didn't take me very far but when I went broke, I looked up your friend
Werner. This is the point where you come in too, Dean Erskine.

"Now I had been brought up at home, naturally, to worship all things
German. I liked to think of myself not as an American but as a German.
At school, this home influence should have been counteracted if America
expects to make real citizens. But it wasn't. The High School taught us
German and no other modern language. In college, all things mental
centered on the German idea in the majority of the departments. And
your department was the worst of all, Dean. You are a Germanophile
yourself and you taught your students to be.

"So behold me, calling on Werner and finding that Werner among other
activities has been the head of an organized effort on the part of the
German government for twenty years to Germanize America--through
schools, churches, singing societies--oh, countless ways. And he was
deeply worried about our British sympathies. And he wanted my influence
in the college and elsewhere and he wanted Roger's big mechanical brain
for Germany and so he offered me fifty thousand dollars for the Sun
Plant