"At last we are going to wipe off old scores against France," Doctor Krummlaut spluttered through his soup today at Frau Berg's with shining eyes,I should have thought it was France who had the old scores that need wiping"and Russia, the barbarian Colossus, will topple over and choke in its own blood."
Then Frau Berg capped that with sentiments even more bloodthirsty.
Then the Swede, who never used to speak, actually raised her voice in terms of blood too, and expressed a wish to see a Cossack strung up by his heels to every electric-light standard along the Lindens.
Then Hilda Seeberg said if her Papathat Papa she told me once she hadn't at all likedwere only alive, it would be the proudest moment of his life when, at the head of his regiment, he would go forth to slay President Poincare. "And if," she said, her eyes flashing, "owing to his high years his regiment was no longer able to accept his heroic leadership, he would, I know, proceed secretly to France as an assassin,
flicking the obstructing policemen on one side with a sort of little kick of his spur, came up all amazement and salutes to inquire of his most gracious cousin what in the world she was doing in a taxi. He said it was hopeless to try to get to the Schlossplatz in it, but if we would allow him to escort us on foot he would be proudthe gracious cousin would permit him to offer her his arm, and the young ladies would keep very close behind him.
So we set out, and it was surprising the way he got us through. If the crowd didn't fall apart instantly of itself at his approach, an obsequious policemanone of those same Berlin policemen who are so rude to one if one is alone and really in need of helpsprang up from nowhere and made it. It's as far from the Friedrichstrasse to the Schlossplatz as it is from here to the Friedrichstrasse, but we did it very much quicker than we did the first half in the taxi, and when we reached it there they all were, the drunken crowdsthat's the word that most exactly describes themyelling, swaying, cursing the ones in their way or who trod on their feet, shouting hurrahs and bits of patriotic songs, every one of them decently dressed, obviously respectable people in ordinary times. That's what is so constantly strange to me,these solid burghers and their families behaving like drunken hooligans. Somehow a spectacled professor with a golden chain across his blackwaistcoated and impressive front, just roaring incoherently, just opening his mouth and hurling any sort of noise out of it till the veins on his neck and forehead look as though they would burst, is the strangest sight in the world to me. I can imagine nothing stranger, nothing that makes one more uncomfortable and ashamed. It is what will always jump up before my eyes in the future at the words German patriotism. And to see a stout elderly lady, who ought to be presiding with slow dignity in some ordered home, hoarse with shouting, tear the feathered hat she otherwise only uses tenderly on Sundays off her respectable grey head and wave it frantically, screaming hochs every time a prince is seen or a general or one of the ministers, makes one want to cry with shame at the indignity put upon poor human beings, at the exploiting of their passions, in the interests of one family.
The Grafin's smart cousin got us on to some steps and stood with us, so that we should not be pushed off them instantly again, as we would have been if he had left us. I think they were the steps of a statue, or fountain, or something like that, but the whole whatever it was was so covered with people, encrusted with them just like one of those sticky fly-sticks is black with flies, that I don't know what it was really. I only know that it wasn't a house, and that we were quite close to the palace, and able to look down at the sea beneath us, the heaving, roaring sea of distorted red faces, all with their mouths wide open, all blistering and streaming in the sun.
The Grafin, who had recovered her calm in the presence of her inferiors of the middle classes, put up her eyeglasses and examined them with interest and indulgence. Helena stared. The cousin twisted his little moustache, standing beside us protectingly, very elegant and slender and nonchalant, and remarked at intervals, "Fabelhafte Enthusiasmus, was ?"
It came into my mind that Beerbohm Tree must sometimes look on like that at a successful dress rehearsal of his well-managed stage crowds, with the same nonchalant satisfaction at the excellent results, so well up to time, of careful preparation.
Of course I said "Colossal " to the cousin, when he expressed his satisfaction more particularly to me.
"Dreckiges Yolk, die Russen " he remarked, twisting his little moustache's ends up. "Werden lernen was es heisst, frech sein gegen uns. Wollen sie blau und schwartz dreschen ."
You know German, so I needn't take its peculiar flavour out by transplanting the young man's remarks.
"_Oh pardonaber meine Gnadigstetausendmal pardon" he protested the next minute in a voice of tremendous solicitude, having been pushed rather hard and suddenly against me by a little boy who had scrambled down off whatever it was he was hanging on to; and he turned on the little boy, who I believe had tumbled off rather than scrambled, with his hand flashing to his sword, ready to slash at whoever it was had dared push against him, an officer; and seeing it was a child and therefore not satisfactionsfahig as they say, he merely called him an infame and verfluchte Bengel and smacked his face so