More than he needed her, if
even in his wildest dreams he had permitted himself visions of an
earthly paradise, he needed to prove to his blood and his spirit that he
was actually and truly American. He had no doubt of his intelligence,
his reason, his choice. The secret lay hidden in the depths of him, and
he knew it came from the springs of the mother who had begotten him. His
mother had given him birth, and by every tie he was mostly hers.

Kurt had been in college during the first year of the world war. And his
name, his fair hair and complexion, his fluency in German, and his
remarkable efficiency in handicrafts had opened him to many a hint, many
a veiled sarcasm that had stung him like a poison brand. There was
injustice in all this war spirit. It changed the minds of men and women.
He had not doubted himself until those terrible scenes with his father,
and, though he had reacted to them as an American, he had felt the
drawing, burning blood tie. He hated everything German and he knew he
was wrong in doing so. He had clear conception in his mind of the
difference between the German war motives and means, and those of the
other nations.

Kurt's problem was to understand himself. His great fight was with his
own soul. His material difficulties and his despairing love had suddenly
been transformed, so that they had lent his spirit wings. How many poor
boys and girls in America must be helplessly divided between parents and
country! How many faithful and blind parents, obedient to the laws of
mind and heart, set for all time, must see a favorite son go out to
fight against all they had held sacred!

That was all bad enough, but Kurt had more to contend with. No illusions
had he of a chastened German spirit, a clarified German mind, an
unbrutalized German heart. Kurt knew his father. What would change his
father? Nothing but death! Death for himself or death for his only son!
Kurt had an incalculable call to prove forever to himself that he was
free. He had to spill his own blood to prove himself, or he had to spill
that of an enemy. And he preferred that it should be his own. But that
did not change a vivid and terrible picture which haunted him at times.
He saw a dark, wide, and barren shingle of the world, a desert of
desolation made by man, where strange, windy shrieks and thundering
booms and awful cries went up in the night, and where drifting palls of
smoke made starless sky, and bursts of reddish fires made