sullied to our sight. One might name a number of noble ideals - Brotherhood for comprehensive example at whose mention one must stifle a first feeling of disgust.

But the talking must keep up till what is commonplace to the fit though few becomes such to the multitude, and may not be left to the most gifted only; and if anyone believes that he can offer a new approach to any of the numberless desirable ends he may feel morally bidden to go about it.

This cheerful belief the present pamphleteer confesses not through persuasion of his own originality, but because it has happened to him to stumble in the course of certain explorations of our racial past on a whole scheme of life which was once found both admirable and workable, and which, as it has never been canted about or slopped upon, may be found acceptable by these times in the hearing at least. No, reader; this attempt is not a piece of dilettante antiquarianism or modern showmanism of any sort: though its message is scarcely of panacean promise is doubtless of limited appeal, it is certainly worth delivering to "the right parties.' Of whom if but one the rest is somewhat musty.

2. PROMISSORY

The making of this volume will not, however, mark the first time that some aspects of the sim

ple old Germanic virtue have been mirrored to a more sophisticated and perhaps less "virtuous" age, nor the second, third, or maybe thirtieth attempt on part of various literary pulpiteers to take a teaching for their present from that past. But this will, to my knowledge, be the first time that the most important part of all that former mode of life has been presented with due emphasis upon its deep and permanent importance. Other writers have applauded the commonplaces of Germanic custom apparently without a second thought concerning the most instructive institution of Germanic life and with next to none for the spirit which sprang therefrom and gained in time the power to re-shape all practice after its own law. Small blame to them; for one must bring along with him a good part of whatever he finds anywhere, and it is only because I happen to have brought something hither and here found it strengthened and enforced that what I have to say about this ancient institution claims a moment's present hearing and a somewhat longer patience for its application to some matters of to-day.

Not, however, that I am about to exhume this petrified practice for resuscitation among our modern selves: there is neither need nor chance for it in our general social plan. But because there is both an abiding need and a yet lingering chance to breathe some portion of its spirit into these our present practices I have undertaken this

task of evoking that same spirit from its too-long sleep, of exhibiting some samples of its former animation, of establishing the causes of its growing torpor, and of pointing out some circumstances of its near unbroken hibernation even until now.

And I shall try to do so in somewhat the following way:

I shall try to show how from the practices of this Comitatus - or Companionship, as we shall call it a spirit sprang which in itself exemplified the truest and the loftiest ideal of Duty, literally defined and actually done, that ever dwelt with men and how this spirit was no petty offspring of a narrow system but as broad as humankind, and flourished best not among lilies under smiling skies, but amid blood and battle, storm and gnawing winter's stress among, in short, all ancient antetypes of things in our improved competitive world. I shall show that in the purest of responses which the appeal of a newly spreading Christianity aroused that spirit found its genuine religious counterpart, which it could interpret fully in the terms of its own inner life: but that this response was soon perverted and in time almost entirely corrupted by the base appeals of a later proselytism-at-any-price, and has only in rare cases fully recovered its first purity. I shall roughly trace the parallel growth of this Companionship into a scheme of national government the Feudal System, namely,- and note

furthermore how by the transformation therein of the fluent forms of the old spirit into rigid formulas of duty the deep personal loyalty of ancient life was gradually loosened and eventually came to spend its latent energy in various selfprovident enterprises, out of which it could at length recover nothing of its former state but an impersonal and superficial code of morals, in whose pedantisms, priggeries, and platitudes it has lain sleepful ever since. And I shall point out some few manifestations of our present spiritual state, and find the reader, if he shall not long before have found them for himself or left my neighborhood, some lessons from that former age which, well learned by these complaining times, might make their remedy.

And I shall not, if possible, hereafter practice this unhappy style of circumscriptive speech, but strike straight to the heart of those examples which would speak to us across the stretch of ten forgetful centuries.

3. BEGINNINGS

Several deep diggers of the scholarly persuasion have given us their divers deep opinions on the origin and early growth of the Companionship,— foregoing all which we shall get at once to certain passages in the Germania* of Tacitus which keep for us a portrait of the practice at its highest * Chapters XIII and XIV.

flourishing. This portrayal is at best in abstract outline only: neither the full figure nor the living soul do we find here. But another place and speech supply both lacks; in whose words the shapes are flesh and the spirit breathes discernible therethrough. To these the reader shall in time be brought.

First, then, we find our Roman author telling us that "it is no disgrace for any German youth to show himself among the members of a Company "; and if we wonder why shame might attach to the position we are duly told by certain Tacitean commentators that the legal standing of a Companion toward his chief was that of slave to lord. Such voluntary slavery was the price paid to a chosen leader by the impecunious or aspiring young Germanic warrior for his living and the gift of battle-horse and terrible "bloody and victorious" battle-spear. But, as our historian has hastened to inform us, so far from being held disgraceful, such a servitude was held in highly honorable demand. "For the strength and glory of each chieftain lay in having always a great band of chosen youth about him, as an ornament in time of peace, a guard in war: by means of them his fame might spread not only through his own tribe but to neighboring nations also, gaining him both reverence and gifts and winning wars with his mere name.

Whereby these bands were soon become an indispensability to the most modest princeling and