mother's knee. We've often talked of
this, you and I, little mother. You know the sort of thing, and have
got that side yourself,--even you, you dear objective one. The three
things up to now that have got me most on that side, got me on the very
raw of it--I'll tell you now, now that I can't see your amused eyes
looking at me with that little quizzical questioning in them--the three
things that have broken my heart each time I've come across them and
made me only want to sob and sob, are when Kurwenal, mortally wounded,
crawls blindly to Tristan's side and says, "_Schilt mich nicht dass der
Treue auch mitkommt_" and Siegfried's dying "_Brunnhild, heilige
Braut_," and Tannhauser's dying "_Heilige Elisabeth, bitte fur mich_."
All three German things, you see. All morbid things. Most of the
sentimentality seems to have come from Germany, an essentially brutal
place. But of course sentimentality is really diluted morbidness, and
therefore first cousin to cruelty. And I have a real and healthy
dislike for that Tannhauser opera.

But seeing how the best of us--which is you--have these little hidden
swamps of emotionalness, you can imagine the effect of the Kaiser
yesterday at such a moment in their lives on a people whose swamps are
carefully cultivated by their politicians. Even I, rebellious and
hostile to the whole attitude, sure that the real motives beneath all
this are base, and constitutionally unable to care about Kaisers, was
thrilled. Thrilled by him, I mean. Oh, there was enough to thrill one
legitimately and tragically about the poor people, so eager to offer
themselves, their souls and bodies, to be an unreasonable sacrifice and
satisfaction for the Hohenzollerns. His speech was wonderfully suited
to the occasion. Of course it would be. If he were not able to
prepare it himself his officials would have seen to it that some
properly eloquent person did it for him; but Kloster says he speaks
really well on cheap, popular lines. All the great reverberating words
were in it, the old big words ambitious and greedy rulers have conjured
with since time began,--God, Duty, Country, Hearth and Home, Wives,
Little Ones, God again--lots of God.

Perhaps you'll see the speech in the papers. What you won't see is
that enormous crowd, struck quiet, struck into religious awe, crying
quietly, men and women like little children gathered to the feet of,
positively, a heavenly Father. "Go to your homes," he said,