"
"Oh, I think you are wrong there," said Michael. "You believe that only
because we don't talk about it. It's--it's like what we agreed about
Parsifal. We don't talk about it because it is so much part of us."
Falbe sat up.
"I deny it; I deny it flatly," he said. "I know where I get my power of
foolish, unthinking enjoyment from, and it's from my English blood. I
rejoice in my English blood, because you are the happiest people on the
face of the earth. But you are happy because you don't think, whereas
the joy of being German is that you do think. England is lying in the
shade, like us, with a cigarette and a drink--I wish I had one--and a
golf ball or the world with which she has been playing her game. But
Germany is sitting up all night thinking, and every morning she gives an
order or two."
Michael supplied the cigarette.
"Do you mean she is thinking about England's golf ball?" asked Michael.
"Why, of course she is! What else is there to think about?"
"Oh, it's impossible that there should be a European war," said Michael,
"for that is what it will mean!"
"And why is a European war impossible?" demanded Falbe, lighting his
cigarette.
"It's simply unthinkable!"
"Because you don't think," he interrupted.
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