hundreds of them, and I had been made extremely ill at ease one day in
my hotel when a young officer with whom I had started, in the American
fashion, comfortably to shake hands suddenly whacked his heels together
like a couple of Indian clubs and, stiff as a ramrod, snapped his hand
to his cap.

"Did you ever see them salute? They don't do it like a baggage porter--
there's nothing servile about it. They square off and bring that hand
to their heads and look that officer square in the eyes as if to say:
'Now, damn you, salute me!' And he gets his salute, too--like a man!"

You may not like this salute or you may not like the parade step, but
you can be very sure of one thing--that it is not the militarism that
pushes civilians off the sidewalk nor permits an officer to strike his
subordinate--though these things have happened in Germany--that is
holding back England and France and driving the Russian millions out of
East Prussia. It is something bigger than that. Peasants and princes,
these men are dying gladly, backed up by fitness, discipline, and a
passionate unity such as the world has not often seen. This, and not
the futile nurses' tales with which the American public permitted itself
to be diverted during the early weeks of the war, is what strikes one in
Germany. It is a fact, like the Germans being in Belgium, which you
have got to face and think about, whether you like it or not. Berlin,
February, 1915.




Chapter VII