"Right you are!" cried Dick joyously. "Can the Kaiser! We all agree
to that. And here the bout ends, with honors for both sides, and
a special prize for the Governor."

The professor smiled, recognizing in the name more affection than
disrespect. He leaned forward in his chair, lighting a fresh cigar
with gusto.

"Not yet," he said, "O too enthusiastic youth! Our friend here has
not yet come to the point at which I was aiming. The application of
my remarks to the Kaiser--whom I regard as a gifted paranoiac--is
altogether too personal and limited. I was thinking of something
larger and more important. Do you give me leave to develop the
idea?"

"Fire away, sir," said Dick.

Hardman nodded his assent. "I should like very much to hear in
what possible way you connect the misconduct of Germany, which
I admit, with your idea of the present value of classical study,
which I question."

"In this way," said the professor earnestly. "Germany has been
living for fifty years with a closed mind. Oh, I grant you it was an
active mind, scientific, laborious, immensely patient. But it was
an ingrowing mind. Sure of its own superiority, it took no counsel
with antiquity and scorned the advice of its neighbors. It was
intent on producing something entirely new and all its own--a purely
German _Kultur_, independent of the past, and irresponsible