and sideboard. Around this simple but satisfying piece of furniture
the three transient tenants of the dugout had just played a game
of dummy bridge, and now sat smoking and bickering as peacefully
as if they were in a college club-room in America. The night on
the front was what the French call _"relativement calme."_
Sporadic explosions above punctuated but did not interrupt the
debate, which eddied about the high theme of Education--with a
capital "E"--and the particular point of dispute was the study of
languages.

"Everything is going to change after the war," said Phipps-Herrick,
a big Harvard man from Bryn Mawr and a member of the Unsocial
Socialists' Club. "We are going to make a new world. Must have a
new education. Sweep away all the old stuff--languages, grammar,
literature, philosophy, history, and all that. Put in something modern
and practical. Montessori system for the little kids. Vocational
training for the bigger ones. Teach them to make a living. Then
organize them politically and economically. You can do what you
like, then, with England, France, and America together. Germany
will be shut out. Why study German? From a practical point of view,
I ask you, why?"

"Didn't you take it at Harvard?" sarcastically drawled Rosenlaube,
a Princeton man from Rittenhouse Square. (His grandfather was born
at Frankfort-on-the-Main, but his mother was a Biddle, and he had
penetrated about an inch into the American diplomatic service when
the war summoned him to a more serious duty.) "I understood that
all you Harvard men were strong on modern languages, especially
German."