An old woman with a heavy basket on her back was trudging past a group of these.  “How do you like them?” I asked.  “We shall really miss them when they go,” she said.  “They seem part of the village now.  The poor fellows, it must be sad for them so far from home.”

Evidently the spirit of new Germany had not saturated her.

I went through crooked streets, bordered with houses brightly frescoed with biblical scenes, to the Pension Dahein, the home of the man I wished to see.  As he rose from his pottery bench to welcome me, I felt that beneath his great blue apron and rough garb of the working man was true nobility.  I did not need to ask if he was Anton Lang.  I had seen his picture and had often been told that his face was the image of His Who died on the Cross.  I expected much, but found infinitely more.  I felt that life had been breathed into a Rubens masterpiece.  No photograph can do him justice, for no lens can catch the wondrous light in his clear blue eyes.

I was the only guest at the Pension Daheim; indeed, I was the only stranger in Oberammergau.  I sat beside Anton Lang in his work room as his steady hands fashioned things of clay, I ate at table with him, and in the evening we pulled up our chairs to the comfortable fireside, where we talked of his country and of my country, of the Passion Play and of the war.

I had been sceptical about him until I met him.  I wondered if he was self-conscious about his goodness, or if he was a dreamer who could not get down to the realities of this world, or if he had been spoiled by flattery, or if piety was part of his profession.

When I finally went from there I felt that I really understood him.  His life has been without an atom of reproach, yet he never poses as pious.  He does not preach, or stand aloof, or try to make you feel that he is better than you, but down in your heart you know that he is.  He has been honoured by royalty and men of state, yet he remains simple and unaffected, though quietly dignified in manner.  He is truly Nature’s Nobleman, with a mind that is pure and a face the mirror of his mind.

To play well his role of Christus is the dominating passion of his life.  Not the make-up box, but his own thoughts must mould his features for the role, which has been his in 1890, 1900 and 1910.

His travels include journeys to Rome and to the Holy Land.  He is well read, an interesting talker, and an interested listener.  He commented upon the great change in the spirit of the people, a change from the intoxicating enthusiasm of victory to a war-weary feeling of trying to hold out through a sense of duty.  To my question as to when he thought the war would end, he answered:  “When Great Britain and Germany both realise that each must make concessions.  Neither can crush the other.”

The doctrine that “only through hate can the greatest obstacles in life be overcome” has not reached his home, nor was there hanging on the wall, as in so many German homes, the famous order of the day of Crown Prince Rupert of Bavaria, which commences with “Soldiers of the army!  Before you are the English!” in which he exhorts his troops with all the tricky sophistry of hate.