lobby I addressed myself to a group of
the men I had seen dotted among the rows of children. The men were
schoolmasters. The occasion was an experiment. The children were of
the public schools of Frankfurt--not the oldest scholars, but the
middle grades of the schools. For the oldest, Frankfurt had already
provided opera days, but this was the first ever given for these
younger boys and girls. The cost was twelve-and-a-half cents a seat.
If it proved a success, a second would follow in two weeks. At the
theater, throughout each winter school term, plays were given
expressly for them in this way--the great German classics; but never
any opera before to-day.

Well, the performance went on; but I was obliged, near the end of it, to
hasten away to my train for Nauheim, most reluctantly leaving the sight
and company of those two thousand joyous children of the Frankfurt
public schools. "Rosy cheeks predominated; eyeglasses were rare."--Again
I quote from my own diary:--"The children seemed between ten and
fifteen. The boys had good foreheads and big backs to their heads."

V

Nothing can efface this memory, nothing can efface the whole
impression of Germany; in retrospect this picture rises clear--the
fair aspect and order of the country and the cities, the well-being of
the people, their contented faces, their grave adequacy, their
kindliness; and, crowning all material prosperity, the feeling for
beauty as shown by their gardens, and, better and more important
still, the reverent value for their great native poets and musicians,
so attentive, so cherishing, seeing to it that the young generation
began early its acquaintance with the masterpieces that are Germany's
heritage of inspiration.

Such was the splendor of this empire as it unrolled before me through
May and June, 1914, that by contrast the state of its two great
neighbors, France and England, seemed distressing and unenviable.
Paris was shabby and incoherent, London full of unrest. Instead of
Germany's order, confusion prevailed in France; instead of Germany's
placidity, disturbance prevailed in England; and in both France and
England incompetence seemed the chief note. The French face, alike in
city or country, was too often a face of worried sadness or revolt;
men spoke of political scandals and dissensions petty and unpatriotic
in spirit, and a political trial, revealing depths of every sort of
baseness and dishonor, filled the newspapers; while in