And he likes his bath; no monocled Englishman better. Indeed, if you really wish to enjoy a treat, set a rusty shallow pan of water on your lawn, not _too_ near the tulip-bed or shrubbery (Cats!), and see what follows. If you have been thoughtful enough to place a stone or a piece of brick near the rim of the pan, Mr. and Mrs. Jay will step right in and enjoy a thorough wetting without much preliminary skirmishing. But little Willie Jay and his four brothers will exhibit all the delicious trepidation of childhood. While their parents are in the bath, they will be bold enough, even to running up and allowing themselves to be splashed on; but when it comes to actually entering the water, ugh! They will linger around the edge of the pan, fluttering their wings, hop across it, dip their beaks into the water, turn around, and splash the water with their tails--in short, go through all the motions of a small boy having his first "duck under" without the assuring grasp of his father's strong hand. But once let them get in, and oh, what a joyous splashing ensues, what a ruffling of feathers, what a beating of wings, what a fan-like fluttering of the tail! Like most small boys, too, they will stay in until they are thoroughly soaked, scarcely able, in fact, to fly up to some sunny limb where they may preen themselves and dry off out of harm's reach.
No, the jay is not an unprincipled scoundrel, not the bloodthirsty reprobate he is sometimes made out to be. He has his faults, it is true, properly censurable; but he has some very commendable virtues as well. And I am sure that if the reader will watch his career as carefully as I have, from his fledgeling childhood to his gay and dashing cavalier youth, he will agree with me that the imaginations of the blue jay's heart are not wholly evil.
_Divide ut imperes_--make a faction among your enemies, and thus overcome them. This is German policy all over the world. By it the Danes of Slesvig have been to a large extent robbed of their own language and national traditions. By it the Prussian intruders have, with characteristic inability to understand foreign souls, endeavored, in their periods of repose after acts of brutality, to alienate from France the French-speaking and French-minded inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine. It has failed not only there, but notoriously also in Posen or Prussian Poland, where it was long ago abandoned in favor of a system of downright and unscrupulous repression. It has succeeded, for the moment at least, in Russia, which now lies dismembered at the feet of a triumphant betrayer. What was a year ago Russia is now dissolved into Lithuania, Livonia, Esthonia, Courland, Finland, Poland, the Ukraine, the country of the Don Cossacks, the Caucasus, and the vague and fluctuating realm of Bolshevism. Historic memories, linguistic variations, religious differences, local jealousies, class feeling, and commercial rivalries have been emphasized by German agents behind the frontier, and through the gaps thus made the German sword has pushed its point, breaking up the old mortar of loyalty and union. One typical example of the method employed may be cited here. According to the Berlin _Lokal Anzeiger_ of March 26, 1917, Zimmermann, the German Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, our Zimmermann, welcomed a delegation of Lithuanians and piped sweetly to them about the tender interest his government took in the welfare of their people, promising to satisfy various local desires. We have seen the result.