culture--not with a 'k.' First of all, we are going to kill a great
many Germans. Then we are going to Berlin to knock down all the
ugly statues in the _Sieges-Allee_ and smash the parvenu German
Empire. Then we shall have a new age on classic lines. People will
still use French and English and Italian because there is some beauty
in those languages. But nobody outside of Germany will speak or
read German. It is a barbarous tongue--shapeless and hideous--used
by barbarians who gobble and snort when they talk. Sorry for Kant
and Goethe and Heine and all that crowd, but their time is up;
they've got to go out with their beastly language!"

"Yes," said Phipps-Herrick, "out with them, bag and baggage. Think
what the German spies and propagandists have done in America.
Schools full of pacifist and pro-German teachers; text-books full
of praise of the German Empire and the Hohenzollern Highbinders;
newspapers full of treason, printed in the German language. Why,
it's only a piece of self-defense to clean it all out, root and
branch. No more German taught or spoken, printed or read, in the
United States. Forget it! Twenty-three for the Hun language!"

"Noble," gently murmured Mitchell, shaking his head again; "very
noble! But not very easy and perhaps not entirely wise. Why should I
throw away something that has been useful to me, and may be again?
Why forget the little German that I know and burn my Goethe and
refuse to listen to Beethoven's music? I won't do it, that's all."

"Our little friend is a concealed Kaiserite," said Rosenlaube. "He
wants to Germanize America."

"No, Rosy," said Mitchell, thoughtfully running his hand over some