In The Slough

Hoch soil er leben, Hock soil er leben, Hoch soil er leben. Dreimal Hoch!

So chanted the assembled guests and banged till the glasses rattled. It was the 80th birthday, last week, of Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, Wartime commander of Germany's Navy, until 1916. The little mountain inn at Feldafing, Bavaria, on the shores of the Wurm See was crowded with Prussian Generals and Bavarian Princes. Perspiring waiters, imported from Munich, rushed to and from the kitchen bearing caviar, Rhine salmon, venison -in all 50 mountainous courses of food for the distinguished guests.

Every few moments the guests sprang up, raised brimming glasses toward the white oriflamme of the Admiral's forked beard, and downed a deep health to the man whose famed policy of "sea-frightfulness" brought the U.S. into the War. Smiling pinkly behind his white whiskers, the Grand Admiral toped in response to each toast, declared at last to correspondents with perfect poise and pontifical gravity: "Despite the stark materialism of the present day, there still remains in Germany the germ of something that will get us out of the slough."