He laughed, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he lit his pipe for about the fifteenth time.
"Argument is no good," he said. "I've argued into the early hours of the morning with that fellow Franz von Kreuzenach, who is a fine fellow and the whitest man I've met in Germany. Nothing will convince him that his people were more guilty than ourselves. Perhaps he's right. History will decide. Now we must start afresh—wipe out the black past, confess that though the Germans started the war we were all possessed by the devil—and exorcise ourselves. I believe the German people are ready to turn over a new leaf and start a fresh chapter of history, if we will help them and give them a chance. They have an immense hope that England and America will not push them over into the bottomless abyss, now that they have fulfilled Wilson's demand to get rid of their old rulers and fall into line with the world's democracy. If that hope fails them they will fall back to the old philosophy of hatred with vengeance as its goal—and the Damned Thing will happen again in fifteen—twenty—thirty years."
Brand made one remark that evening which referred, I fancy, to his love-affair with Elsa von Kreuzenach.
"There is so much folly in the crowd that one despairs of reaching a higher stage of civilisation. I am falling back on individualism. The individual must follow his own ideals, strive for his own happiness, find friendship and a little love where he can, and stand apart from world problems, racial rivalries, international prejudices, as far as he may without being drawn into the vortex. Nothing that he can do will alter human destiny, or the forces of evolution, or the cycles of history, which make all striving futile. Let him get out of the rain and comfort himself with any human warmth he can find. Two souls in contact are company enough."
