“I am not a prophet.  But this I can say.  Tell our friends in America—­and also those who do not love us—­that I am looking forward with unshakable confidence to the final victory—­and a well-earned vacation,” he added whimsically.  “I should like nothing better than to visit your Panama Exposition and meet your wonderful General Goethals, the master builder, for I imagine our jobs are spiritually much akin; that his slogan, too, has been ‘durchhalten’ (’hold out’) until endurance and organization win out against heavy odds.”

Then with sudden, paradoxical, terrific quiet earnest:  “Great is the task that still confronts us, but greater my faith in my brave troops.”  One got indelibly the impression that he loved them all, suffered under their hardships and sorrowed for their losses.

“For you, this war is only a titanic drama; we Germans feel it with our hearts,” he said thoughtfully.

The Field Marshal spoke warmly of the Austro-Hungarian troops, and cited the results of the close co-operation between his forces and the Austrian armies as striking proof of the proverb, “In union is strength.”  Like all other German Generals whom I had “done,” he, too, had words of unqualified praise for the bravery of his enemies.  “The Russians fight well; but neither mere physical bravery nor numbers, nor both together, win battles nowadays.”

“How about the steam roller?”

“It hasn’t improved the roads a bit, either going forward or backward,” he said with a grim smile.

“Are you worrying over Grand Duke Nicholas’s open secret?” I asked, citing the report via Petrograd and London of a new projected Russian offensive that was to take the form, not of a steam roller, but of a “tidal wave of cavalry.”

“It will dash against a wall of loyal flesh and blood, barbed with steel—­if it comes,” he said simply.

My impression, growing increasingly stronger the more I have seen, that German military success had been to no small extent made possible by American inventive genius and high-speed American methods, received interesting partial confirmation from the Field Marshal, whose keen, restless mind, working over quite ordinary material, produced the new suggestive combination of ideas that, while “America might possibly be materially assisting Germany’s enemies with arms, ammunition, and other war material, certain it was that America, in the last analysis, had helped Germany far more.”

“But for America, my armies would possibly not be standing in Russia today—­without the American railroading genius that developed and made possible for me this wonderful weapon, thanks largely to which we have been able with comparatively small numbers to stop and beat back the Russian millions again and again—­steam engine versus steam roller.  Were it for nothing else, America has proved one of our best friends, if not an ally.

“We are also awaiting with genuine interest the receipt of our first American guns,” the Field Marshal added.  How was Germany expecting to get guns from America?  He was asked to explain the mystery.