“Ah, well,” Herr Selingman declared, “opportunities will come.  You have perhaps lost some post.  Well, there are others.  I should not, I think, be far away from the truth, sir, if I were to surmise that you had held some sort of an official position?”

“Perhaps,” Norgate assented.

“That is interesting,” Herr Selingman continued.  “Now with the English of commerce I talk often, and I know their views of me and my country.  But sometimes I have fancied that among your official classes those who are ever so slightly employed in Government service, there is—­I do not love the word, but I must use it—­a distrust of Germany and her peace-loving propensities.”

“I have met many people,” Norgate admitted, “who do not look upon Germany as a lover of peace.”

“They should come and travel here,” Herr Selingman insisted eagerly.  “Look out of the windows.  What do you see?  Factory chimneys, furnaces everywhere.  And further on—­what?  Well-tilled lands, clean, prosperous villages, a happy, domestic people.  I tell you that no man in the world is so fond of his wife and children, his simple life, his simple pleasures, as the German.”

“Very likely,” Norgate assented, “but if you look out of the windows continually you will also see that every station-master on the line wears a military uniform, that every few miles you see barracks.  These simple peasants you speak of carry themselves with a different air from ours.  I don’t know much about it, but I should call it the effect of their military training.  I know nothing about politics.  Very likely yours is a nation of peace-loving men.  As a casual observer, I should call you more a nation of soldiers.”

“But that,” Herr Selingman explained earnestly, “is for defence only.”

“And your great standing army, your wonderful artillery, your Zeppelins and your navy,” Norgate asked, “are they for defence only?”

“Absolutely and entirely,” Herr Selingman declared, with a new and ponderous gravity.  “There is nothing the most warlike German desires more fervently than to keep the peace.  We are strong only because we desire peace, peace under which our commerce may grow, and our wealth increase.”

“Well, it seems to me, then,” Norgate observed, “that you’ve gone to a great deal of expense and taken a great deal of trouble for nothing.  I don’t know much about these things, as I told you before, but there is no nation in the world who wants to attack Germany.”

Herr Selingman laid his finger upon his nose.

“That may be,” he said.  “Yet there are many who look at us with envious eyes.  I am a good German.  I know what it is that we want.  We want peace, and to gain peace we need strength, and to be strong we arm.  That is everything.  It will never be Germany who clenches her fist, who draws down the black clouds of war over Europe.  It will never be Germany, I tell you.  Why, a war would ruin half of us.  What of my crockery?  I sell it all in England.  Believe me, young gentleman, war exists only in the brains of your sensational novelists.  It does not come into the world of real purpose.”