much of its horror, the ruin and havoc in humble homes, the unscrupulous scheming in the high places. There is a deep falsity in it all. It has been not food but brandy. We must get back to a world of peace-in spite of its perplexities. We must find tolerance again, and as brothers all together we must work our problems out, slow and toilsome though it be. I put my hope in Science acting through a wider and more generous education upon all the ignorant masses of humanity, upon a new generation with these hatreds left behind.

"I do not believe that the war will end in any lasting dominance by the drill-masters in Berlin, or in Paris or in London. I believe it has let loose forces which will rise against those gentlemen and throw off their despotic rule. You talk against our gas attacks-but they are only a first step in developments more startling. Let the drill-masters plan as they please. We men of science, whom they despise, are going to kill the thing they love. We shall invent such instruments for the annihilation of life, that to the blind foolish people of all countries we shall demonstrate that war is no longer possible and so this butchery will stop. But I do not like to think," he said, "of our drill-masters in Berlin in the first brief years of their triumph. For they will seem to triumph at first-before the new forces against them rise—and in those brutal rigid years I don't want to live in this country. It will not be my Germany, it will be theirs. How they will rule! They will claim all the credit for winning the war. In their blindness they will crush us down-the scientists, the thinkers-without whose aid they would have been beaten."

In his own case this prophecy was realized with a tragic abruptness. Long before he was fully recovered from his serious illness, he received a telegram ordering him back to his work. And a few weeks later, from that building in Berlin with the big red velvet curtain, a post

It was a cramped and narrow place. On both sides were galleries of ugly varnished yellow wood. Little gusts of chill raw air came sifting in through the high windows. The organ had begun to play, and the old men in the front rows began to sing in harsh thin voices. Now in this freezing holy place I could see the breaths of the women around me, and these little clouds of breath began to grow unsteady.

I caught a glimpse of Dorothy's face. She sat rigidly staring up at the pastor, who in his long black gown had risen and begun his address. He spoke of Max, the boy they had known, of his childhood in the village. He spoke of "the bereaved young widow" and of "the mother of the deceased." Thousands of brave men, he said, had given their lives for the Fatherland, and many thousands still must die for the sake of their country and their God. And this was hard and terrible. But their cause was just. I saw my cousin look sharply down; then she stared up at him as before. Among the German mothers and wives the tiny clouds of breath were coming still more unsteadily now, and I could hear some of them sobbing. Again my cousin bowed her head.

He finished and began to pray to "the great all-seeing God" for aid against the Russians and the French and English. When the prayer was over, they began to sing a hymn which since the outbreak of the war had been sent from Berlin to churches throughout the entire land to be used in such services. "What God does is well done," was the refrain.

At last it was over. We left the church and on the village commons outside we gathered on the muddy ground around the granite monument. There on a copper plate were the names of men killed in the FrancoPrussian war. The name of Max Sonfeldt had been added to the list. The thin old man with the white mustache, who had fought in 1870, came forward and spoke

to the people. And then the men took off their hats and stood with bare heads in the cold wind. All faces turned to Dorothy, as the big iron wreath was placed in her hands. She had been told of this in advance, and I could feel her brace herself. Quickly she came and placed the big wreath at the base of the monument. As she stepped back she swayed a little. I drew quickly near her in the crowd, but by a slight motion she kept me away. She had vowed she would go through with this exactly as his parents wished.

"He would want me to," she had said.

Now they were marching off to the grave. We followed them; but looking back during a pause in the slow march, I saw on the empty commons only that granite monument, with the brazen eagle on top glaring down voraciously upon the names on the copper platelike some savage idol of long ago.

When the burial was over, after a brief sobbing goodbye from the stout old woman in black, Dorothy was given back to us, and we took her to the train. What a relief to be alone. At first she sat by the window staring out at the windswept trees-but racking my brains for some way of relaxing the intensity in her eyes, I remembered a letter from Aunt Amelia which had come the

day before. I laid it upon Dorothy's lap. In a few moments she noticed it there. She began to read—and read it through. She read it through a number of times.

In Berlin the next day, at our embassy I had trouble in getting her passport. We had planned to go through England, and she was a German citizen now. At last the trouble was arranged. We left Steve to go back to his hospital and set out on our journey home.

On the voyage back across the Atlantic she kept to her cabin most of the time. There was little I could do for her. And as I tramped the decks alone I grimly tried to clear my thoughts, get some perspective on it all. But

mine was gloomy thinking. The thought of her disaster was ever there before me; and the memories arising out of my year in Germany kept piling up and gathering into one impression-of an overpowering force, precise and systematic, rigid, hard, relentless. How long could humanity stand the strain? I thought of how Max before his death had begun to rebel against it all. I thought of the dramatic critic and the lean workman on the train, and of that chap on the hospital bed who had shaken his fist at the priest. I remembered the Galician peasant who had begged for his old boots-and I wondered if he had found his cows. In those wide regions of despair, what bitter feelings must be brewing! Or had all power of revolt been crushed out of their hearts and minds? Was the thing too prodigious for any rebellion? Were men to become mere fatalists, slaves?

The thing kept spreading, spreading. Would America come in? The ocean, dark and empty, seemed to me to answer, "No." But I began to feel that we must. There was nothing else for us to do.

CHAPTER XIV

1.

"LARRY," said Aunt Amelia, in a voice stern with anxiety, "I'm afraid that it is going to be very hard for Dorothy here."

We had been home but a few hours. Dorothy had gone to bed. Her mother had been with her but had now come down to me, and in response to her searching questions I had told her all I knew-from my talks with Dorothy in Berlin through to the village funeral. When I spoke of how they had made her place that iron wreath on the monument, I saw my aunt's face grow harsh with pain; and suddenly as I looked at her then I realized that she was an old woman, past her seventieth year. Her head bobbed nervously at times. But there was something indomitable in the expression on her face, and in her questions a poignant tone that made me feel how she had gathered her energies for this supreme struggle of her life. Emersed in the war in the last year, my thinking had grown impersonal; but I was back in the family now, with its small deep intimate life, and I began to realize what a struggle this would be. Our country drawn inexorably into the Great War's bitterness, the people here growing tense and strained-and Dorothy the wife of a German, loyal to his memory. The facts were grim.

My aunt's low voice broke in on my thinking:

"Did she love him?"

"Yes and no. I think it was more pity than love." And I went on to give details. "She mothered him," I ended. Dorothy's mother frowned and said,