Part 7 (2/2)

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On the day and hour appointed I presented the school card to the elevator operator, who punched it after the manner of his kind, and duly deposited me on the level of schools for boys of the professional groups. A lad of about sixteen met me at the elevator and conducted me to the school designated.

The master greeted me with obsequious gravity, and waved me to the visitor's seat on a raised platform. ”You will be asked to speak,” he said, ”and I beg that you will tell the boys of the wonderful chemical discoveries that won you the honours of election to paternity.”

”But,” I protested, as I glanced at the boys who were being put through their morning drill in the gymnasium, ”I fear the boys of such age will not comprehend the nature of my work.”

”Certainly not,” he replied, ”and I would rather you did not try to simplify it for their undeveloped minds, merely speak learnedly of your work as if you were addressing a body of your colleagues. The less the boys understand of it the more they will be impressed with its importance, and the more ambitious they will be to become great chemists.”

This strange philosophy of education annoyed me, but I did not have time to argue further for the bell had rung and the boys were filing in with strict military precision. There were about fifty of them, all in their twelfth year, and of remarkable uniformity in size and development. The blanched skin, which marked the adult faces of Berlin, was, in the pasty countenance of those German boys, a more horrifying spectacle. Yet they stood erect and, despite their lack of colour, were evidently a well nourished, well exercised group of youngsters.

As the last boy reached his place the master motioned with his hand and fifty arms moved in unison in a mechanical salute.

”We have with us this morning,” said the master, ”a chemist who has won the honours of paternity with his original thought. He will tell you about his work which you cannot understand--you should therefore listen attentively.”

After a few more sentences of these paradoxical axioms on education, the master nodded, and, as I had been instructed, I proceeded to talk of the chemical lore of poison gases.

”And now,” said the master, when I resumed my seat, ”we will have a review lesson. You will first recite in unison the creed of your caste.”

”We are youth of the super-race,” began the boys in a sing-song and well timed chorus. ”We belong to the chemical group of the intellectual levels, being born of sires who were great chemists, born of great chemists for many generations. It is our duty to learn while we are yet young all that we may ever need to know, to keep our minds free from forbidden knowledge and to resist the temptation to think on unnecessary things. So we may be good Germans, loyal to the House of Hohenzollern and to the wors.h.i.+p of the old German G.o.d and the divine blood of William the Great.”

The schoolmaster, who had nodded his head in unison with the rhythm of the recitation, now smiled in satisfaction. ”That was very good,” he said. ”I did not hear one faltering voice. Now you may recite individually in your alphabetical order.

”Anton, you may describe the stages in the evolution of the super-man.”

Anton, a flaxen-haired youngster, arose, saluted like a wooden soldier, and intoned the following monologue:

”Man is an animal in the process of evolving into a G.o.d. The method of this evolution is a struggle in which the weak perish and the strong survive. First in this process of man's evolution came the savage, who lived with the lions and the apes. In the second stage came the dark races who built the so-called ancient civilizations, and fought among themselves to possess private property and women and children. Third came the barbarian Blond Brutes, who were destined to sire the super-race, but the day had not yet come, and they mixed with the dark races and produced the mongrel peoples, which make the fourth. The fifth stage is the pure bred Blond Brutes, uncontaminated by inferior races, which are the men, who under G.o.d's direction, built the Armoured City of Berlin in which to breed the Supermen who are to conquer the mongrel peoples. The sixth, last and culminating stage of the evolution of man is the Divinity in human form which is our n.o.ble House of Hohenzollern, descended physically from William the Great, and spiritually from the soul of G.o.d Himself, whose statue stands with that of the Mighty William at the portals of the Emperor's palace.”

It had been a n.o.ble effort for so young a memory and as the proud master looked at me expectantly I could do nothing less than nod my appreciation.

The master now gave Bruno the following cue:

”Name the four kinds of government and explain each.”

From the sad-eyed youth of twelve came this flow of wisdom:

”The first form of government is monarchy, in which the people are ruled by a man who calls himself a king but who has no divine authority so that the people sometimes failed to respect him and made revolutions and tried to govern themselves. The second form of government is a republic, sometimes called a democracy. It is usually co-existent with the lawyer, the priest, the family and the greed for gold. But in reality this government is by the rich men, who let the poor men vote and think they have a share in the government, thus to keep them contented with their poverty. The third form of government is proletariat socialism in which the people, having abolished kings and rich men, attempt to govern themselves; but this they cannot do for the same reason that a man cannot lift himself by his shoestraps--”

At this point Bruno faltered and his face went chalky white. The teacher being directly in front of the standing pupil did not see what had happened, while I, with fleeting memory of my own school days, suppressed my mirth behind a formal countenance, as the stoic Bruno resumed his seat.

The master marked zero on the roll and called upon Conrad, next in line, to finish the recitation.

”The fourth and last form of government,” recited Conrad, ”is autocratic socialism, the perfect government that we Germans have evolved from proletariat socialism which had destroyed the greed for private property and private family life, so that the people ceased to struggle individually and were ready to accept the Royal House, divinely appointed by G.o.d to govern them perfectly and prepare them to make war for the conquest of the world.”

The recitations now turned to repet.i.tions of the pedigree and ranking of the various branches of the Royal House. But it was a mere list of names like the begats of Genesis and I was not able to profit much by this opportunity to improve my own neglected education. As the morning wore on the parrot-like monologues s.h.i.+fted to elementary chemistry.

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