Villa Elsa. Stuart Oliver Henry

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

Triumphant Germany in 1913

       Table of Contents

      IN the late summer of 1913 a quiet American college man of twenty-three, tall, lean, somewhat listless in bearing, who had been idling on a trip in Germany without a thought of adventure, was observing, without being able to define or understand, one of the most remarkable conditions of national and racial exhilaration that ever blessed a country in time of ripest peace.

      He had never been out of America, and supposed his Yankee people, with all their wide liberty, contemplated life with as much enjoyment as any other. But in that land which is governed with iron, where (as Bismarck said) a man cannot even get up out of his bed and walk to a window without breaking a law, Gard Kirtley was finding something different, strange, wonderful, in the way of marked happiness. It pulsated everywhere, in every man, woman and child. It seemed to be a sensation of victory, yet there had been no victory. It appeared to reflect some mighty distinctive human achievement or event of which a whole race could be proud in unison. There had been nothing of the sort.

      And yet it was there, a certain exuberance. The people, with heads carried high, quickly moving feet and pockets full of money, were enlivened by a public joyousness because they were humans and, above all, because they were Germans. It seemed a joy of human prestige, of wholesale well-being, of an assuredly auspicious future. Multitudes of toasts were being drunk. The marching and counter-marching of soldiers looked excessive even for Germany. A season of patriotic holidays was apparently at hand. Festivals, public rites, celebrated the widespread exultation. The whole country conducted itself as on parade, en fête.

      Wages were higher and comforts greater than ever known there. For