preliminary into a lecture on Germany that lasted hours and held his
audience spellbound. It was colorful, complete, and it did not seem
to have been memorized. But that was art.

He had no word of blame for England. He even had praise, when praise
made German virtue seem by that much greater; and the inference from
first to last was of German super-virtue.

Some one in the crowd--who bore a bullet-mark in proof he did not
jest--suggested to him that the British army was the biggest and
fiercest in the world. So he told them of a German army, millions
strong, that marched in league--long columns--an army that guarded by
the prosperous hundred thousand factory chimneys that smoked until
the central European sky was black.

Long, long after midnight, in a final burst of imagination, he
likened Germany to a bee--hive from which a swarm must soon emerge
for lack of room inside. And he proved, then, that he knew he had
made an impression on them, for he dismissed them with an impudence
that would have set them laughing at him when he first began to speak.

"Ye have my leave to go!" he said, as if he owned the place; and
they all went except one.

"That is a lot of talk," said Ranjoor Singh, when the last man had
started for the stairs. "What does it amount to? When will the bees
swarm?"

The German eyed him keenly, but the Sikh's eyes did not flinch.