Michael hesitated a moment.

“But you said not long ago that you were also the most practical nation,” he said.  “You are a nation of soldiers, also.”

“And who would not willingly give himself for such a Fatherland?” said Falbe.  “If need be, we will lay our lives down for that, and die more willingly than we have lived.  God grant that the need comes not.  But should it come we are ready.  We are bound to be ready; it would be a crime not to be ready—­a crime against the Fatherland.  We love peace, but the peace-lovers are just those who in war are most terrible.  For who are the backbone of war when war comes?  The women of the country, my friend, not the ministers, not the generals and the admirals.  I don’t say they make war, but when war is made they are the spirit of it, because, more than men, they love their homes.  There is not a woman in Germany who will not send forth brother and husband and father and child, should the day come.  But it will not come from our seeking.”

He turned to Michael, his face illuminated by the red glow of the sinking sun.

“Germany will rise as one man if she’s told to,” he said, “for that is what her unity and her discipline mean.  She is patient and peaceful, but she is obedient.”

He pointed northwards.

“It is from there, from Prussia, from Berlin,” he said, “that the word will come, if they who rule and govern us, and in whose hands are all organisation and equipment, tell us that our national existence compels us to fight.  They rule.  The Prussians rule; there is no doubt of that.  From Germany have come the arts, the sciences, the philosophies of the world, and not from there.  But they guard our national life.  It is they who watch by the Rhine for us, patient and awake.  Should they beckon us one night, on some peaceful August night like this, when all seems so tranquil, so secure, we shall go.  The silent beckoning finger will be obeyed from one end of the land to the other, from Poland on the east to France on the west.”

He turned away quickly.

“It does not bear thinking of,” he said; “and yet there are many, oh, so many, who night and day concern themselves with nothing else.  Let us be English again, and not think of anything serious or unpleasant.  Already, as you know, I am half English; there is something to build upon.  Ah, and this is the sentimental hour, just when the sun begins to touch the horizon line of the stale, weary old earth and turns it into rosy gold and heals its troubles and its weariness.  Schon, Schon!”

He stood for a moment bareheaded to the breeze, and made a great florid salutation to the sun, now only half-disk above the horizon.

“There!  I have said my evensong,” he remarked, “like a good German, who always and always is ridiculous to the whole world, except those who are German also.  Oh, I can see how we look to the rest of the world so well.  Beer mug in one hand, and mouth full of sausage and song, and with the other hand, perhaps, fingering a revolver.  How unreal it must seem to you, how affected, and yet how, in truth, you miss it all.  Scratch a Russian, they say, and you find a Tartar; but scratch a German and you find two things—­a sentimentalist and a soldier.  Lieber Gott!  No, I will say, Good God!  I am English again, and if you scratch me you will find a golf ball.”