And we went.  In dead silence.  That immense crowd.  Quietly, like people going out of church; moved, like people coming away from communion.  I walked beside Helena, who was crying, with my head very high and my chin in the air, trying not to cry too, for then they would have been more than ever persuaded that I’m a promising little German, but I did desperately want to.  I could hardly not cry.  These cheated people!  Exploited and cheated, led carefully step by step from babyhood to a certain habit of mind necessary to their exploiters, with certain passions carefully developed and encouraged, certain ancient ideas, anachronisms every one of them, kept continually before their eyes,—­why, if they did win in their murderous attack on nations who have done nothing to them, what are they going to get individually?  Just wind; the empty wind of big words.  They’ll be told, and they’ll read it in the newspapers, that now they’re great, the mightiest people in the world, the one best able to crush and grind other nations.  But not a single happiness really will be added to the private life of a single citizen belonging to the vast class that pays the bill.  For the rest of their lives this generation will be poorer and sadder, that’s all.  Nobody will give them back the money they have sacrificed, or the ruined businesses, and nobody can give them back their dead sons.  There’ll be troops of old miserable women everywhere, who were young and content before all the glory set in, and troops of dreary old men who once had children, and troops of cripples who used to look forward and hope.  Yes, I too obeyed the Kaiser and went home and prayed; but what I prayed was that Germany should be beaten—­so beaten, so punished for this tremendous crime, that she will be jerked by main force into line with modern life, dragged up to date, taught that the world is too grown up now to put up with the smashings and destructions of a greedy and brutal child.  It is queer to think of the fear of God having to be kicked into anybody, but I believe with Prussians it’s the only way.  They understand kicks.  They respect brute strength exercised brutally.  I can hear their roar of derision, if Christ were to come among them today with His gentle, “Little children, love one another.”

  Your Chris.

  Berlin, Sunday, August 2nd, 1914.

My precious mother,

Just think,—­when I had my lesson yesterday Kloster wouldn’t talk either about the war or the Kaiser.  For a long time I thought he was ill; but he wasn’t, he just wouldn’t talk.  I told him about Friday, and the Kaiser’s “Geht nach Hause und betet,” and how I had felt about it and the whole thing, and I expected a flood of illuminating and instructive and fearless comment from him; and instead he was dumb.  And not only dumb, but he fidgeted while I talked, and at last stopped me altogether and bade me go on playing.

Then I asked him if he were ill, and he said, “No, why should I be ill?”