But Tjaden is quite fascinated. His otherwise prosy fancy is blowing bubbles. “But look,” he announces, “I simply can’t believe that an emperor has to go to the latrine the same as I have.”

“You can bet your boots on it.”

“Four and a half-wit make seven,” says Kat. “You’ve got a maggot in your brain, Tjaden, just you run along to the latrine quick, and get your head clear, so that you don’t talk like a two-year-old.”

Tjaden disappears.

“But what I would like to know,” says Albert, “is whether there would not have been a war if the Kaiser had said ‘No.’ ”

“I’m sure there would,” I interject, “he was against it from the first.”

“Well, if not him alone, then perhaps if twenty or thirty people in the world had said ‘No.’ ”