Villa Elsa | Page 2

character, habits and activities of this household may be found the true pith and essence of real Germanism as normally developed. This Germanism appears ready to continue after the War to be the malignant and would-be assassin of other civilizations. It is, therefore, tragically important to find and act on the right answer to the question:
Is there any possible way to make the Germans become true, peace-loving friends with us--with the rest of mankind?

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD vii
I. TRIUMPHANT GERMANY IN 1913 1
II. DEUTSCHLAND UEBER ALLES 6
III. GARD KIRTLEY 11
IV. VILLA ELSA 19
V. FAMILY LIFE 29
VI. THE HOME 36
VII. GERMAN LOVING 46
VIII. GERMAN COURTSHIP 54
IX. A JOURNALIST 64
X. SPIES AND WAR 71
XI. GERMAN WAYS 78
XII. HABITS AND CHILDREN 86
XIII. DOWN WITH AMERICA! 94
XIV. AFTERMATH 106
XV. MILITARY BLOCKHEADS 113
XVI. A LIVELY MUSICIAN 120
XVII. IMMORALITY AND OBSCENITY 125
XVIII. THE NAKED CULT 134
XIX. JIM DEMING OF ERIE, PAY 145
XX. AN AMERICAN VICTORY 152
XXI. A PEOPLE PECULIAR OR PAGAN? 160
XXII. MAKING FOR WAR 168
XXIII. SOCIAL ETIQUETTE 178
XXIV. THE COURT BALL 186
XXV. FRITZI AND ANOTHER CONVERSATION 192
XXVI. SOME OF THE LESS KNOWN EFFICIENCY 200
XXVII. THE IMPERIAL SECRET SERVICE 210
XXVIII. JIM DEMING'S FATE 218
XXIX. WINTER AND SPRING 229
XXX. VILLA ELSA OUTDOORS 238
XXXI. A CASUAL TRAGEDY 247
XXXII. A GERMAN MARRIAGE PROPOSAL 256
XXXIII. A WAITRESS DANCE 263
XXXIV. CHAMPAGNE 272
XXXV. RECUPERATION 279
XXXVI. THE GERMAN PROBLEM. AN ANSWER 285
XXXVII. A GERMAN "GOTT BE WITH YE" 294
XXXVIII. A JOURNEY 302
XXXIX. THE TOMB OF CHARLEMAGNE 313
XL. THE END OF A LITTLE GAME 323
XLI. ARE THEY HUNS? 329
XLII. THE ANTI-CHRISTIANS? 336
XLIII. THE TEUTON PROBLEM. A SOLUTION 347

VILLA ELSA
CHAPTER I
TRIUMPHANT GERMANY IN 1913
In the late summer of 1913 a quiet American college man of twenty-three, tall, lean, somewhat listless in bearing, who had been idling on a trip in Germany without a thought of adventure, was observing, without being able to define or understand, one of the most remarkable conditions of national and racial exhilaration that ever blessed a country in time of ripest peace.
He had never been out of America, and supposed his Yankee people, with all their wide liberty, contemplated life with as much enjoyment as any other. But in that land which is governed with iron, where (as Bismarck said) a man cannot even get up out of his bed and walk to a window without breaking a law, Gard Kirtley was finding something different, strange, wonderful, in the way of marked happiness. It pulsated everywhere, in every man, woman and child. It seemed to be a sensation of victory, yet there had been no victory. It appeared to reflect some mighty distinctive human achievement or event of which a whole race could be proud in unison. There had been nothing of the sort.
And yet it was there, a certain exuberance. The people, with heads carried high, quickly moving feet and pockets full of money, were enlivened by a public joyousness because they were humans and, above all, because they were Germans. It seemed a joy of human prestige, of wholesale well-being, of an assuredly auspicious future. Multitudes of toasts were being drunk. The marching and counter-marching of soldiers looked excessive even for Germany. A season of patriotic holidays was apparently at hand. Festivals, public rites, celebrated the widespread exultation. The whole country conducted itself as on parade, en fête.
Wages were higher and comforts greater than ever known there. For the first time chambermaids often drank champagne and wore on their heads lop-sided creations of expensive millinery with confident awkwardness--creations which they said came from Paris. The chimney sweeps had high hats and smoked good tobacco which they may have thought came from London. For the imported was the high water mark of plenty in Germany as always elsewhere, though she claimed to make the best goods.
The scene should not be painted in too high colors--colors too fixed. To the careless observer it doubtless appeared little different from the annual flowering forth of the German race in its short summer season. Always at that time were the open gardens lively, the roses blooming with the crude, dense hues that the Teutons like, and all the folk pursuing their busy tasks and vigorous pleasures with a sort of goose-step alacrity.
But the closer, more sensitive onlooker felt something more in 1913--something widely organized, unified, puissant, imperial indeed, such as, he may have imagined, had not existed since the days of the great emperors in Rome. What the Germans told all comers was that they had the best of governments, and that no nation had been so thoroughly, soundly and extensively prosperous.
For each citizen read in his daily paper of successful and growing Teuton activities in the most distant parts of the earth--in ports, regions and among peoples whose names he had never heard before and could not pronounce. At breakfast his capacious paunch and his wife's fat, flowing bosom expanded with pride in hearing of