THE YELLOW DOVE
“Then why do you dislike us so much?” he asked with a smile.
“It is not your people that I dislike so much, General von Stromberg. Many of the most charming people I have ever known have been Germans. It is not what you are, but what you want to be, that I dislike; not your habits or your tastes, but your intolerance of any civilization which happens to differ from yours.”
She paused, a little frightened at her temerity, but von Stromberg still smiled.
“Go on,” he chuckled, “you speak very prettily.”
“I am an American, General von Stromberg, from the United States, where people are accustomed to speak what they feel, without fear of lèse majesté. If the President of the United States did something that I didn’t like I would write him a letter.”
“And would he answer it?” he purred.
“If he had time, yes. If anyone wrote such a letter to your Emperor, he would be boiled in oil.”
Von Stromberg roared with delight. “Boiled in oil!” he repeated.
“Yes—or perhaps some more exquisite cruelty that your ingenious people have devised,” she said coolly. “To prosaic minds like mine, Excellenz, you Germans are the wonders of the age. You are both godlike and Saturnian; a nation of military fanatics, a nation of silly sentimentalists; a nation trained to scientific brutality, which shares the sorrows of the dying rose. Which is it that you want us to think you, the god or the satyr?”
“We know that we are the god,” he said, showing his teeth, “but we want you to think us the satyr.”
“You have succeeded, Excellenz,” she replied calmly.
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