Stockholm and eventually gone to sea in Swedish vessels. Swansen, the Swede, showed no particular devotion to the country in which the Finn had taken refuge, but planned to make his way eventually to Seattle and become a good American.
For Paul, the situation of Otto was the most interesting, for it involved a curious blend of sentiment and compulsion. Otto had run away from school five years previously, and within the next six months would have to return to Germany for a period of military or naval training. The captain had promised him his discharge on arrival in Australia.
Paul had been a little shocked to learn that young men in European countries were conscripted in this fashion. It made him feel slightly apprehensive, as he had been wont to feel in the days of estrangement when he had seen John Ashmill and Skinny Wiggins making snowballs with stone kernels and storing them in the fastnesses of a snow fort. The thought of obligatory training was hard to reconcile with his preconceived notions of Otto's fatherland; an abode of music and poetry; the eclectic land where Aunt Verona had passed an exquisite youth; where Werther had loved and sighed and wept; where kindly millers ground corn which kindly bakers made into cake, "der immer den Kindern besonders gut schmeckt."
"Why do they make you train?" he had asked Otto.
"So we'll know how to fight when the time comes."
"Is there going to be a war?"
"There are always wars."
"But why should any country want to go and fight?"
"To protect its honour."
"How? Are there good countries and bad ones?"
"Yes."
"What bad country is there for your country to fight?"
"France is bad. And England."
"It isn't! They aren't!"
