freedom. We are stirring things up. The spirit of the times still sneaks about the streets here in carpet slippers."
"We'll put spurs on them," declared Diederich.
"Your health!"
"Here's to you! But they'll be my spurs"—Diederich glared. "Your scepticism and your flabby point of view are out of date. Intellectual weapons"—he breathed heavily—"are no use to-day. National deeds"—he banged his fist on the table—"will win the future!"
To this Buck retorted with a pitying smile: "The future? That's just where you are mixed. National deeds have died out in the course of centuries. What we see, and what we shall still experience, is the spasmodic twitching and the odour of their corpse. It will not sweeten the air."
"From you I did not expect anything better than that you should drag what is most sacred into the dust!"
"Sacred! Unapproachable! Why not call it eternal and have done with it! Except in the realm of the ideal, your nationalism will never, never be seen again. Formerly, it may have been possible, in that dark period of history when you people were not yet born. But now you are here and the world has moved on to its goal. Darkness and hatred amongst nations, that is the end and you cannot avoid it."
"We are living in strenuous times," Diederich declared seriously.
"Not so much strenuous as conscienceless. … I am not sure that the people whose lot was cast in the period of the Thirty Years' War believed in the immutability of their by no means easy circumstances. And I am convinced that the fantastic obstinacy of those whom they overthrew was regarded as unconquerable. Otherwise, there would have been no revolution. Whereabouts, in those periods of history which we can still spiritually enter, is there an age which would have declared itself permanent, and prided itself before eternity on
