One of our old-school cattlemen, used to shooting all the game, cutting all the timber, and using all the water he wanted to, would doubtless say, without seeing a soldier, that it was “their damned police!” No, when people think they are talking about German militarism, they are quite as likely to be talking about the way German faces are made or about German collectivism—­the uncanny ability Germans have for taking orders, for team-work, for turning every individual energy into the common end.

One may, however, run across a certain feeling toward war, quite local and unconscious, yet very different from the French love of “gloire” and the English keenness for war as a sort of superior fox-hunting or football.  You are, let us say, watching one of the musical comedies which the war has inspired.

The curtain rises on a darkened stage, through whose blackness you presently discover, twinkling far below, as if you were looking down from an aeroplane, the lights of Paris, the silver thread of the Seine and its bridges.  There is a faint whirring, and two faces emerge vaguely from the dark—­the hero and heroine swinging along in a Taube.  And as they fly they sing a wistful little waltz song, a sort of cradle song: 

“Ich glau-u-be...  Ich glau-u-be Da oben fliegt... ’ne Taube...”

They are thinking, so the song runs, that there is a Taube overhead; it has flown here out of its German nest, and let’s hope it will not let anything fall on them.  And, as they sing, the young man makes a motion with his hand, there is a sort of glowworm flash, and a few seconds later, away down there among the Paris roofs a puff of red smoke and fire.  The illusion is perfect, and the audience is enchanted—­that ride through the velvet night, so still, so quaint, so roguish in its way, and the flash far below, that has flung some unsuspecting citizen on the cobblestones like a bundle of old rags.

And, whirring gently, the Taube sails on through the night: 

’Ich glaube..  Da oben fliegt Ich glaube.. ‘ne Taube’

Again the glowworm flash, and a moment later, over on the left bank, not far from the Luxembourg, apparently, another of those eloquent little puffs of fire.  The crowd is as delighted as children would be with bursting soap-bubbles.

Or we are, let us say, at “Woran Wir Denken” ("What We’re Thinking Of”) with delightful music and such verses as we rarely enough hear in musical comedies at home.  In the spotlight there is a square young man dressed in a metallic coat and conical helmet, so as to suggest the famous forty-two-centimetre shell—­the shell which makes a hole like a cellar and smashed the Belgian forts as if an earthquake had struck them.  And singing with him an exquisite, nun-like creature in a dove-colored robe, typifying the Taube.  They are singing to each other: 

“I am delicate and slender And made for the salon...”  “And I am the biggest smasher In all the present season...”  “High up above the clouds I fly at heart’s desire...”  “And I’m a child of Krupp’s, Whom nobody knew about...”  “I fly, trackless as a breath...”  “I slash on with smoke and roar...”