ssion. The question arose:
What is the best sign that a government is doing well by its people--is
agreeing with its people, so to speak? None of us were quite so sure as
we used to be that our native formula, "Of the people, by the people,
for the people," is the universal ultimate truth.

Twice two is four, wherever you go; this is as certain in Berlin as
it is at Washington or in the cannibal islands. But, until mankind
grows uniform, can government be treated as you treat mathematics?
Until mankind grows uniform, will any form of government be likely to
fit the whole world like a glove? So long as mankind continues as
various as men's digestions, better to look at government as if it
were a sort of diet or treatment. How is the government agreeing with
its people? This is the question to ask in each country. And what is
the surest sign? Could any sign be surer than the general expression,
the composite face of the people themselves? This goes deeper than
skyscrapers and other material aspects.

I had sailed away from skyscrapers and limited expresses; from
farmers sowing crops wastefully; from houses burned through
carelessness; from forests burned through carelessness; from heaps of
fruit rotting on the ground in one place and hundreds of men hungry in
another place. I had sailed away from the city face and the country
face of America, and neither one was the face of content. They looked
driven, unpeaceful, dissatisfied. The hasty American was not looking
after his country himself, and nobody was there to make him look after
it while he rushed about climbing, climbing--and to what? A higher
skyscraper. It was very restful to come to a place where the spirit of
man was in stable equilibrium; where man's lot was in stable
equilibrium; where never a schoolboy had been told he might become
President and every schoolboy knew he could not be Emperor.

The students on a walking holiday from their universities often
wandered singing through Nauheim. Somewhat Tyrolese in get-up,
sometimes with odd, Byronic collars, too much open at the neck, they
wore their knapsacks and the caps that showed their guild. They came
generally in the early morning while the invalids were strolling at
the Sprudel. The sound of their young voices singing in part-chorus
would be heard, growing near, passing close, then dying away
melodiously among the trees.

A single little sharp discord vibrated through all this German harmony
one day when