“The disastrous crime of Sarajevo,” continued Pastor Wienicke, “cannot in this connection pass unnoticed.  To smite down a God’s Anointed!” He held up his hands.  “Not yet, it is true, an actually Anointed, but set aside by God for future use.  It is typical of the world outside our Fatherland.  Lawlessness and its companion Sacrilege stalk at large.  Women emerge from the seclusion God has arranged for them, and rear their heads in shameless competition with men.  Our rulers, whom God has given us so that they shall guide and lead us and in return be reverently taken care of, are blasphemously bombed.”  He flung both his arms heavenwards.  “Arise, Germany!” he cried.  “Arise and show thyself!  Arise in thy might, I say, and let our enemies be scattered!”

Then he wiped his forehead, looked round in recognition of the sehr guts and ausserordentlich schon gesagts that were being flung about, re-lit his cigar with the aid of the Herr Lehrer, who sprang obsequiously forward with a match, and sat down.

Wasn’t it a good thing he sat down.  I felt so much happier.  But just as it was at the meals at Frau Berg’s so it was at the coffee party here,—­I was singled out and talked to, or at, by the entire company.  The concentration of curiosity of Germans is terrible.  But it’s more than curiosity, it’s a kind of determination to crush what I’m thinking out of me and force what they’re thinking into me.  I shall see as they do; I shall think as they do; they’ll shout at me till I’m forced to.  That’s what I feel.  I don’t a bit know if it isn’t quite a wrong idea I’ve got, but somehow my very bones feel it.

Would you believe it, they stayed to supper, all of them, and never went away till ten o’clock.  Frau Bornsted says one always does that in the country here when invited to afternoon coffee.  I won’t tell you any more of what they said, because it was all on exactly the same lines, the older men singling me out one by one and very loudly telling me variations of Pastor Wienicke’s theme, the women going for me in twos and threes, more definitely bloodthirsty than the men, more like Frau Berg on the subject of blood-letting, more openly greedy.  They were all disconcerted and uneasy because nothing more has been heard of the Austrian assassination.  The silence from Vienna worries them, I gather, very much.  They are afraid, actually they are afraid, Austria may be going to do nothing except just punish the murderers, and so miss the glorious opportunity for war.  I wonder if you can the least realize, you sane mother in a sane place, the state they’re in here, the sort of boiling and straining.  I’m sure the whole of Germany is the same,—­lashed by the few behind the scenes into a fury of aggressive patriotism.  They call it patriotism, but it is just blood-lust and loot-lust.