The Ronan pioneer., 1917-10-19
MONTANA READING
BOOK BY GERARD
STORY OF HUSBAND OF MARCUS
DALY'S DAUGHTER WILL
RANK IN HISTORY.
Will Shed Much Light on Matters Lit
tie Understood by Americans as the
Time for Making Peace With Teu-
tonic Military Autocracy Draws
Nearer.

All America is reading the newly
published volume by James w. Ger.
ard, former ambassador to Germany
entitled my Four Years in Ger
many" and Montana is particularly
interested in the book because
Jimmy Gerard married the
daughter of Marcus DAILY and with
his wife has been spending several
weeks recently in the Bitter Root val
ley
This book Of Ambassador Gerard s
Will take commanding rank in his
tory, and will have no equal in in
terest in connection with America S
participation in the war.
In the second rank of Importance,
for the moment, but increasingly
useful as the time for making peace
approaches, will be Mr. Gerard's ex-
plantations of political conditions
within Germany. The constitutional
peculiarities, clearly shown by him,
which makes the reichstag powerless,
give rich and titled men preponder-
ant power at the polls in Prussia and
make Prussia supreme over the en-
pire, are still not sufficiently we'll
understood in this country.
It is in this field perhaps that the
book will be found most enlightening.
Where, for instance, could one turn
for so complete an account in the
English language of the Zabern Incl
dent and it's momentous political con-
sequences? Every one knows that
a boy officer sabered a lame shoe
maker; the part he played in hasten
ing the war is less appreciated.
Closeup of "kultur."
OF proof there is plenty in details
which at first seem almost trivial and
lightly amusing, but which, in comu-
latiOn, furnish movie closeup of
the German mentality-of kultur.
There is the fact that there are in
Berlin more diplomats than any
where else in the world-and such
diplomats!-since each petty Ger
man state sends it's own. That the
German social season lasts only six
weeks, because if Germans of wealth
stay longer in Berlin they are liable
to the local income tax. That a king
of Saxony could be so unkingly as to
refuse his hand to a royal princess
because her country sent him no sep
arate envoy; and could be so neatly
rebuked by her.
Some German Customs.
That German officer could push
his way, unrebuked, before a waiting
line at ticket window, and even in
trude himself and his wife into the
ambassadorial box at horse race
but not unrebuked That crown
prince who makes a hobby of Napo-
leon relics could openly announce his
desire to make war if his father did
not. That a prince holding great es-
tates in Hungary is so narrowly
bound by entail provisions that there
are only 13 girls in the world from
whom he may choose a wife lest he
forfeit the lands.
Not all this matter reflects on Ger
many alone. Mr.. Gerard slyly shows
the state department itself accredit-
ing ambassadors to Germany" when
no such country officially exists. He
permits himself one of his frequent
flashes of humor in describing the
American woman, war bound in Ber-
lin, who consented to go home on a
cruiser (supposed to be sent for the
derelicts) if she could have state
room with a bath and Walker-Go
don milk for her children. He is
justly indignant with those Ameri-
cans in Germany who distinguished
themselves by abuse of their country.
Ambassador Gerard's book is, Of
course, more than literature and
more than history-being, in fact, |
not quite either. 1t is trumpet call
to American patriotism.