Further Foolishness by Stephen Leacock (howl and other poems .TXT) 📕

There I was, seated on the grassy bank of a country road.

I knew it was Germany at once. There was no mistaking it. The whole landscape had an orderliness, a method about it that is, alas, never seen in British countries. The trees stood in neat lines, with the name of each nailed to it on a board. The birds sat in regular rows, four to a branch, and sang in harmony, very simply, but with the true German feeling.

There were two peasants working beside the road. One was picking up fallen leaves, and putting them into neat packets of fifty. The other was cutting off the tops of the late thistles that still stood unwithered in the chill winter air, and arranging them according to size and colour. In Germany nothing is lost; nothing is wasted. It is perhaps not generally known that from the top of the thistle the Germans obtain picrate of ammonia, the most deadly explosive known to modern chemistry, while from the bulb below, butter, crude rubber and sweet cider are extracted in large quantities.

The two peasants paused in their work a moment as they saw me glance towards them, and each, with the simple gentility of the German working man, quietly stood on his head until I had finished looking at him.

I felt quite certain, of course, that it must only be a matter of a short time before I would inevitably be arrested.

I felt doubly certain of it when I saw a motor speeding towards me with a stout man, in military uniform and a Prussian helmet, seated behind the chauffeur.

The motor stopped, but to my surprise the military man, whom I perceived to be wearing the uniform of a general, jumped out and advanced towards me with a genial cry of:

"Well, Herr Professor!"

I looked at him again.

"Why, Fritz!" I cried.

"You recognize me?" he said.

"Certainly," I answered, "you used to be one of the six German waiters at McCluskey's restaurant in Toronto."

The General laughed.

"You really took us for waiters!" he said. "Well, well. My dear professor! How odd! We were all generals in the German army. My own name is not Fritz Schmidt, as you knew it, but Count von Boobenstein. The Boobs of Boobenstein," he added proudly, "are connected with the Hohenzollerns. When I am commanded to dine with the Emperor, I have the hereditary right to eat anything that he leaves."

"But I don't understand!" I said. "Why were you in Toronto?"

"Perfectly simple. Special military service. We were there to make a report. Each day we kept a record of the velocity and direction of the wind, the humidity of the air, the distance across King Street and the height of the C.P.R. Building. All this we wired to Germany every day."

"For what purpose?" I asked.

"Pardon me!" said the General, and then, turning the subject with exquisite tact: "Do you remember Max?" he said.

"Do you mean the tall melancholy looking waiter, who used to eat the spare oysters and drink up what was left in the glasses, behind the screen?"

"Ha!" exclaimed my friend. "But why did he drink them? Why? Do you know that that man—his real name is not Max but Ernst Niedelfein—is one of the greatest chemists in Germany? Do you realise that he was making a report to our War Office on the percentage of alcohol obtainable in Toronto after closing time?"

"And Karl?" I asked.

"Karl was a topographist in the service of his High Serenity the King Regnant of Bavaria"—here my friend saluted himself with both hands and blinked his eyes four times—"He made maps of all the breweries of Canada. We know now to a bottle how many German soldiers could be used in invading Canada without danger of death from drought."

"How many was it?" I asked.

Boobenstein shook his head.

"Very disappointing," he said. "In fact your country is not yet ripe for German occupation. Our experts say that the invasion of Canada is an impossibility unless we use Milwaukee as a base—But step into my motor," said the Count, interrupting himself, "and come along with me. Stop, you are cold. This morning air is very keen. Take this," he added, picking off the fur cap from the chauffeur's head. "It will be better than that hat you are wearing—or, here, wait a moment—"

As he spoke, the Count unwound a woollen muffler from the chauffeur's neck, and placed it round mine.

"Now then," he added, "this sheepskin coat—"

"My dear Count," I protested.

"Not a bit, not a bit," he cried, as he pulled off the chauffeur's coat and shoved me into it. His face beamed with true German generosity.

"Now," he said as we settled back into the motor and started along the road, "I am entirely at your service. Try one of these cigars! Got it alight? Right! You notice, no doubt, the exquisite flavour. It is a Tannhauser. Our chemists are making these cigars now out of the refuse of the tanneries and glue factories."

I sighed involuntarily. Imagine trying to "blockade" a people who could make cigars out of refuse; imagine trying to get near them at all!

"Strong, aren't they?" said von Boobenstein, blowing a big puff of smoke. "In fact, it is these cigars that have given rise to the legend (a pure fiction, I need hardly say) that our armies are using asphyxiating gas. The truth is they are merely smoking German-made tobacco in their trenches."

"But come now," he continued, "your meeting me is most fortunate. Let me explain. I am at present on the Intelligence Branch of the General Staff. My particular employment is dealing with foreign visitors—the branch of our service called, for short, the Eingewanderte Fremden Verfullungs Bureau. How would you call that?"

"It sounds," I said, "like the Bureau for Stuffing Up Incidental Foreigners."

"Precisely," said the Count, "though your language lacks the music of ours. It is my business to escort visitors round Germany and help them with their despatches. I took the Ford party through—in a closed cattle-car, with the lights out. They were greatly impressed. They said that, though they saw nothing, they got an excellent idea of the atmosphere of Germany. It was I who introduced Lady de Washaway to the Court of Franz Joseph. I write the despatches from Karl von Wiggleround, and send the necessary material to Ambassador von Barnstuff. In fact I can take you everywhere, show you everything, and" —here my companion's military manner suddenly seemed to change into something obsequiously and strangely familiar—"it won't cost you a cent; not a cent, unless you care—"

I understood.

I handed him ten cents.