Germany and the Germans from an American point of view

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

AT LOS ANGELES

o ?«• DUE on the last date stamped be'<

..SOUTHERN BRANCH,
WttVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

LI6J&RY,
ANGELES, CALIF.

GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

FROM

AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW

BY

PRICE COLLIER

2 £ 74^ 3

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK : : : : 1914

COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published May. 1913

So
MY WIFE KATHARINE

WHOSE DESERVING FAR OUTSTRIPS MY GIVING

G 7 y 3

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAOB

INTRODUCTION ....... ix

I. THE CRADLE OF MODERN GER-

MANY .......... 1

II. FREDERICK THE GREAT TO BIS-

MARCK ......... 46

^III. THE INDISCREET ...... 105

IV. GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND

THE PRESS ....... 156

V. BERLIN .........

VI. "A LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS" 275
VII. THE DISTAFF SIDE ..... 335

VIII. "OHNE ARMEE KEIN DEUTSCH-

LAND," ......... J10

\ IX. GERMAN PROBLEMS ..... 461

*•

X. "FROM ENVY, HATRED, AND MAL-

ICE" . . . , ...... 525

XI. CONCLUSION . 580

INTRODUCTION

THE first printed suggestion that America
should be called America came from a German.
Martin Waldseemiiller, of Freiburg, in his Cos-
mographice Introductio, published in 1507, wrote:
"I do not see why any one may justly forbid it to
be named after Americus, its discoverer, a man
of sagacious mind, Amerige, that is the land of
Americus or America, since both Europe and
Asia derived their names from women."

The first complete ship-load of Germans left
Gravesend July the 24th, 1683, and arrived in
Philadelphia October the 6th, 1683. They set-
tled in German town, or, as it was then called,
on account of the poverty of the settlers, Armen-
town.

Up to within the last few years the majority
of our settlers have been Teutonic in blood and
Protestant in religion. The English, Dutch,
Swedes, Germans, Scotch-Irish, who settled in
America, were all, less than two thousand years
ago, one Germanic race from the country sur-
rounding the North Sea.

Since 1820 more than 5,200,000 Germans have

x INTRODUCTION

settled in America. This immigration of Ger-
mans has practically ceased, and it is a serious
loss to America, for it has been replaced by a
much less desirable type of settler. In 1882
western Europe sent us 563,174 settlers, or 87
per cent., while southern and eastern Europe and
Asiatic Turkey sent 83,637, or 13 per cent. In
1905 western Europe sent 215,863, or 21.7 per
cent., and southern and eastern Europe and
Asiatic Turkey, 808,856, or 78.9 per cent, of our
new population. In 1910 there were 8,282,618
white persons of German origin in the United
States; 2,501,181 were born in Germany; 3,911,-
847 were born in the United States, both of
whose parents were born in Germany; 1,869,590
were born in the United States, one parent born
in the United States and one in Germany.

Not only have we been enriched by this mass
of sober and industrious people in the past, but
Peter Miihlenberg, Christopher Ludwig, Steu-
ben, John Kalb, George Herkimer, and later
Francis Lieber, Carl Schurz, Sigel, Osterhaus,
Abraham Jacobi, Herman Ridder, Oswald Ot-
tendorfer, Adolphus Busch, Isidor, Nathan, and
Oscar Straus, Jacob Schiff, Otto Kahn, Fred-
erick Weyerheuser, Charles P. Steinmetz, Claus
Spreckels, Hugo Mtinsterberg, and a catalogue
of others, have been leaders in finance, in in-

INTRODUCTION xi

dustry, in war, in politics, in educational and
philanthropic enterprises, and in patriotism.

The framework of our republican institutions,
as I have tried to outline in this volume, came
from the "Woods of Germany." Professor H. A.
L. Fisher, of Oxford, writes: "European repub-
licanism, which ever since the French Revolution
has been in the main a phenomenon of the Latin
races, was a creature of Teutonic civilization in
the age of the sea-beggars and the Roundheads.
The half -Latin city of Geneva was the source of
that stream of democratic opinion in church and
state, which, flowing to England under Queen
Elizabeth, was repelled by persecution to Hol-
land, and thence directed to the continent of
North America."

In these later days Goethe, in a letter to Eck-
ermann, prophesied the building of the Panama
Canal by the Americans, and also the prodigious
growth of the United States toward the West.

In a private collection in New York, is an auto-
graph letter of George Washington to Frederick
the Great, asking that Frederick should use his
influence to protect that French friend of Amer-
ica, Lafayette.

In Schiller's house in Weimar there still hangs
an engraving of the battle of Bunker Hill, by
Miiller, a German, and a friend of the poet.

xii INTRODUCTION

Bismarck's intimate friend as a student at
Gottingen, and the man of whom he spoke with
warm affection all his life, was the American his-
torian Motley.

The German soldiers in our Civil War were
numbered by the thousands. We have many
ties with Germany, quite enough, indeed, to
make a bare enumeration of them a sufficient
introduction to this volume.

On more than one occasion of late I have been
introduced in places, and to persons, \vhere a
slight picture of what I was to meet when the
doors were thrown open was of great help to
me. I was told beforehand something of the his-
tory, traditions, the forms and ceremonies, and
even something of the weaknesses and peculiar-
ities of the society, the persons, and the person-
ages. I am not so wise a guide as some of my
sponsors have been, but it is something of the
kind that I have wished and planned to do for
my countrymen. I have tried to make this book,
not a guidebook, certainly not a history; rather,
in the words of Bacon, "grains of salt, which
will rather give an appetite than offend with
satiety," a sketch, in short, of what is on the
other side of the great doors when the announcer
speaks your name and you enter Germany.

GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW

GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW

THE CRADLE u* ^lujJEKiS GERMANY

^-<^7^S

EIGHTY-ONE years before the discovery
of America, seventy-two years before
Luther was born, and forty-one years be-
fore the discovery of printing, in the year 1411,
the Emperor Sigismund, the betrayer of Huss,
transferred the Mark of Brandenburg to his
faithful vassal and cousin, Frederick, sixth Bur-
grave of Nuremberg. Nuremberg was at one
time one of the great trading towns between
Germany, Venice, and the East, and the home
later of Hans Sachs. Frederick was the lineal
descendant of Conrad of Hohenzollern, the first
Burgrave of Nuremberg, who lived in the days
of Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1189); and this
Conrad is the twenty -fifth lineal ancestor of
Emperor William II of Germany. It is interest-
ing to remember in this connection that when

1

2 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

we count back our progenitors to the twenty-
first generation, they number something over
two millions. When we trace an ancestry so
far, therefore, we must know something of the
multitude from which the individual is descended,
if we are to gather anything of value concerning
his racial characteristics. The solace of all gen-
ealogical investigation is the infallible discovery,
that the greatest among us began in a small
way.

If you paddle up the Elbe and the Havel from
Hamburg to Potsdam, you will find yourself in
the territory conquered from the heathen Wends
in the days of Henry I, the Fowler (918-935),
which was the cradle of what is now the German
Empire.

The Emperor Sigismund, who was often em-
barrassed financially by reason of his wars and
journey ings, had borrowed some four hundred
thousand gold florins from Frederick, and it was
in settlement of this debt that he mortgaged
the territory of Brandenburg, and on the 8th of
April, 1417, the ceremony of enfeoffment was
performed at Constance, by which the House of
Hohenzollern became possessed of this territory,
and was thereafter included among the great
electorates having a vote in the election of the
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 3

It was Henricus Auceps, or Henry the Fowler,
(so called because the envoys sent to offer him
the crown, found him on his estates in the Hartz
Mountains among his falcons), who fought off
the Danes in the northwest, and the Slavonians,
or Wends, in the northeast, and the Hungarians
in the southeast, and established frontier posts
or marks for permanent protection against their
ravages. These marks, or marches, which were
boundary lines, were governed by markgrafs or
marquises, and finally gave the name of marks
to the territory itself. The word is historically
familiar from its still later use in noting the old
boundaries between England and Scotland, and
England and Wales, which are still called marks.

Henry the Fowler was also called Henry "the
City Builder." After the death of the last of
the Charlemagne line of rulers, the Franks
elected Conrad, Duke of Franconia, to succeed
to the throne, and he on his death-bed advised
his people to choose Henry of Saxony to succeed,
for the times were stormy and the country
needed a strong ruler. The Hungarians in the
southeast, and the Wends, the old Slavonic
population of Poland, were pillaging and harry-
ing more and more successfully, and the more
successfully the more impudently. Henry be-
gan the building of strong-walled, deep-moated

4 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

cities along his frontier, and made one, drawn by
lot, out of every ten families of the countryside,
go to live in these fortified towns. Their rulers
were burgraves, or city counts. Titles now
so largely ornamental were then descriptive of
duties and responsibilities.

In the light of their future greatness, it is well
to take note of these two frontier counties, or
marches. The first, called the Northern March,
or March of Brandenburg, was the religious
centre of the Slavs, and was situated in the midst
of forests and marshes just beyond the Elbe.
This March of Brandenburg was won from the
Slavs in the first instance by the Saxons and
Franks of the Saxon plain. When the bur-
grave, Frederick of Hohenzollern, came to take
possession of his new territory he was received
with the jesting remark: "Were it to rain bur-
graves for a whole year, we should not allow
them to grow in the march." But Frederick's
soldiers and money, and his Nuremberg jewels,
as his cannon were called, ended by gaining
complete control, a control in more powerful
hands to-day than ever before.

The second, called the Eastern or Austrian
March, was situated in the basin of the Danube.
These two great states were formed in lands
that had ceased to be German and had be-

come Slav or Finnish territory. The fighting
appetite of the German tribes, and the spirit of
chivalry later, which had drawn men in other
days in France to the East, in Spain against the
Moors, in Normandy against England, were of-
fered an opportunity and an outlet in Germany,
by forays and fighting against the Finns and
Slavs.

Out of the conquest and settlement of these
territories grew, what we know to-day, as the
German Empire and the Austrian Empire. Out
of their margraves, who were at first sentinel
officers guarding the outer boundaries of the
empire, and mere nominees of the Emperor,
have developed the Emperor of Germany and
the Emperor of Austria, the one ruling over the
most powerful nation, the other the head of the
most exclusive court, in Europe.

When a man becomes a power in the world,
these days, our first impulse is to ask about his
ancestry. Who were his father and his mother;
what and who were his grandfathers and grand-
mothers, and who were their forebears. Where
did they come from, what was the climate; did
they live by the sea, or in the mountains, or in
the plains. We are at once hot on the trail of his
success. Be he an American, we wish to know
whether his people came from Holland, from

6 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

France, from England, or from Belgium; where
did they settle, in New England, in New York,
or in the South. We no longer accept ability as
a miracle, but investigate it as an evolution. If
the man be great enough, cities vie with each
other to claim him as their child; he acquires
an Homeric versatility in cradles.

Whatever one may think of William II of
Germany, he is just now the predominating
figure in Europe, if not in the world. This must
be our excuse for a word or two concerning the
race from which came his twenty-fifth lineal
ancestor.

It is exactly five hundred years since his pres-
ent empire was founded in the sandy plains
about the Elbe, and a thousand years before
that brings us to the dim dawn of any histori-
cal knowledge whatever about the Germans.
When the Cimbrians and Teutonians came into
^contact with the Romans, in 113 B. C., is the
\beginning of all things for these people. In
that year the inhabitants of the north of Italy
awoke one morning to find a swarm of blue-
eyed, light-haired, long-limbed strangers coming
down from the Alps upon them. The younger
and more light-hearted warriors came tobog-
ganing down the snow-covered mountain-sides
on their shields. They had been crowded out

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 7

of what is now Switzerland, and called them-
selves, though they were much alike in appear-
ance, the Cimbri and the Teutones. They de-
feated the Roman armies sent against them,
and, turning to the south and west, went on
their way along the north shores of the Med-
iterranean into what is now France. They had
no history of their own. Tacitus writes that
they could neither read nor write: "Literarum
secreta viri pariter ac feminse ignorant." Very
little is to be found concerning them in the
Roman writers. The books of Pliny which
treated of this time are lost. It was toward the
middle of the century before Christ that Csesar
advanced to the frontier of what may be called/.
Germany. He met and conquered there these
men of the blood who were to conquer Rome,
and to carry on the name under the title of the
Holy Roman Empire. Csesar met the ancestors
of those who were to be Caesars, and with an eye
on Roman politics, wrote the "Commentaries,"
which were really autobiographical messages,
with the Germans as a text and an excuse.

Tacitus, born just about one hundred years
after the death of Csesar, and who had access to
the lost works of Pliny, was a moralist historian
and a warm friend of the Germans. Over their
shoulders he rapped the manners and morals of

8 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

his own countrymen. "Vice is not treated by
the Germans" (German, the etymologists say,
is composed of Gery meaning spear or lance, and
Man, meaning chief or lord; Deutsch, or Teutsch,
comes from the Gothic word Thiudu, meaning
nation, and a Deutscher, or Teutscher, meant one
belonging to the nation), he tells his countrymen,
"as a subject of raillery, nor is the profligacy of
corrupting and being corrupted called the fash-
ion of the age. " With Rooseveltian enthusiasm
he writes that the Germans consider it a crime
"to set limits to population, by rearing up only a
certain number of children and destroying the
rest."

The republicanism of Europe and America
had its roots in this Teutonic civilization. "No
man dictates to the assembly; he may persuade
but cannot command. When anything is ad-
vanced not agreeable to the people, they reject
it with a general murmur. If the proposition
pleases, they brandish their javelins. This is
their highest and most honorable mark of ap-
plause; they assent in a military manner, and
praise by the sound of their arms," continues
our author.

The great historian of the Roman historians,
and of Rome, Gibbon, lends his authority to this
praise of Tacitus in the sentence: "The most

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 9

civilized nations of modern Europe issued from
the woods of Germany; and in the rude institu-
tions of those barbarians we may still distin-
guish the original principles of our present laws
and manners."

Rome, which was not only a city, a nation, an
empire, but a religion; Rome, which replied to a
suggestion that the people of Latium should be
admitted to citizenship, "Thou hast heard,
O Jupiter, the impious words that have come
from this man's mouth. Canst thou tolerate,
O Jupiter, that a foreigner should come to sit in
the sacred temple as a senator, as a consul?"
Rome welcomed later the barbarians from the
woods of Germany not only as citizens and con-
suls, but as emperors; and their descendants
rule the world.

It was no Capuan training that finally dis-
tilled itself in a Charlemagne, an Otho, a Luther,
a Frederick the Great, and a Bismarck; in an
Alfred, a William the Conqueror, a Cromwell, a
Clive, a Rhodes, or a Gordon; in a Washington,
a Lincoln, a Grant, a Jackson, and a Lee.

Beyond the certified beyond, we see dimly
through the mists of history, hosts of men march-
ing, ever marching from the east, spreading some
toward Norway and Sweden, some skirting the
Baltic Sea to the south; .driving their cattle

10 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

before them, and learning the arts of peace
and war, and self-government, from the harsh
school-masters of pressing needs and tyrannical
circumstances, the only teachers that confer de-
grees of permanent value. They become fisher-
men and small landholders in Sweden, Norway,
and Denmark. "Jeudi," or Jupiter's day, be-
comes their god Thor's day, or Thursday;
"Mardi," or Mars's day, is their Tiu's day, or
Tuesday; "Mercredi, " or Mercury's day, is
Odin's or Woden's day, or Wednesday.

These men trained to solitude in small bands,
owing to the geographical exigencies of their
northern country, become the founders of the
particularist or individualistic nations, Great
Britain and the United States among others.
Those who had gone south, driven by pressure
from behind, follow the Danube to the north
and west, find the Rhine, and push on into what
is now southwestern Europe.

It is worth noting that the Rhine and the
Danube have their sources near together, and
form a line of water from the North Sea to the
Black Sea, a significant line in Europe from the
beginning down to this day. This line of water
divides not only lands but nations, manners,
customs, and even speech, and what we call the
North, and what we call the South, may be said

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 11

to be, with negligible exceptions, what is north
and what is south of those two rivers. It is and
always has been the Mason and Dixon's line of
Europe.

All of these peoples mould their institutions,
from the habits and customs forced upon them
by their surroundings. The members of the
tribe of the Suevi, now Swabians, were not al-
lowed to hold fixed landed possessions, but were
forced to exchange with each other from time to
time, so that no one should become wedded to the
soil and grow rich thereby. Readers of history
will remember, that Lycurgus attempted similar
legislation among the Spartans, hoping thus to
keep them simple and hardy, and fit for war.

How many hundreds of years, these various
tribes were working out their rude political and
domestic laws, no man knows. The imaginative
historian pushes his way through the mists, and
sees that the tribes who lived in the Scandinavian
peninsula were forced by their cramped territory
to become fishermen and sailors, and cultivators
of small areas of land, accustomed therefore
to rule themselves in small groups, and hence
independent and markedly individualist. Such
historians divide even these rude tribes sharply
between the patriarchal and the particularist.
The particularist commune developed from the

12 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

estate which was self-sufficient, isolated, and
independent. When they were associated to-
gether it was for special and limited purposes,
so that independence might be infringed upon
to the least possible extent. The patriarchal
commune, on the other hand, proceeded from the
communal family which provided everything for
everybody. It was a general and compulsory
partnership, monopolizing every kind of business
that might arise. The particularist group then,
and their moral and political descendants now,
strive to organize public authority, and public
life in such a way, that they are distinctly sub-
ordinate to private and individual independence.
In the one the Emperor is the father of the
J family — the Russian Emperor is still called "Lit-
tle Father" -the independence of each mem-
ber of the family is swallowed up in the complete
authority of the head of the national family ; in
the other the president, or constitutional king, is
the executive servant of independent citizens,
to whom he owes as much allegiance as they
owe to him.

In Saxony, to-day, more than ninety per cent,
of the agricultural population are independent
peasant proprietors, and the most admirable and
successful agriculturists in the world. It is said
indeed that the Curia Regis, which is the Latin-

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 13

ized form of the Witenagemote, or assembly of
wise men, of the Norman and Angevin kings, is
the foundation of the common law of England,
and the common law of England is the law of
more than half of the civilized world.

Whatever the varieties and distinctions of
government anywhere in the world, these two
differences are the fundamental and basic dif-
ferences, upon which all forms of government
have been built up and developed.

In the one, everything so far as possible is
begun and carried on by individual initiative;
in the other the state gradually takes control of
all enterprise. The philosophy of the one is
based upon the saying: love one another; the
political philosophy of the other is based upon
the assumption that men are not brethren, but
beasts and mechanical toys, who can only be
governed by legislation and the police. The
ideal of the one is the good Samaritan, the ideal
of the other is the tax-collector. The one de-
pends upon the wine and oil of sympathy and
human brotherhood; the other claims that the
right to an iron bed in a hospital, and the ser-
vices of a state-paid and indifferent physician,
are "refreshing fruit," as though sympathy and
consideration, which are what our weaker breth-
ren most need, could be distilled from taxes !

14 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

It is claimed for these Teutonic tribes, that
those of them which drifted down from the Scan-
dinavian peninsula, are the blood and moral an-
cestors of the particularist nations now in the
ascendant in the world. The love of independent
self-government, born of the geographical neces-
sities of the situation, stamped itself upon these
people so indelibly, that Englishmen and Ameri-
cans bear the seal to this day. This change from
the patriarchal to the particularist family took
place in this German race, and took place not in
those who came from the Baltic plain, but in
those who came from the Saxon plain.

The tribes from the Baltic plain, the Goths, for
example, merely overran the Roman civilization,
spread over it, drowned it in superior num-
bers, and with superior valor; but it was
the Germans from the Scandinavian peninsula
who conquered Rome, and conquered her not
by force alone, but by offering to the world a
superior social and political organization. It
was to this branch of the German race that Varus
lost his legions, at the place where the Ems has
its source, at the foot of the Teutoburger Wald.
Charlemagne was of these, and Jiis name Karl, or
Kerl, or peasant, and the fact that his title is the
only one in the world compoun«d of greatness
and the people in equal measure, is the pith of

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 15

what the Germans brought to leaven the whole
political world. He made the common man so
great, that the world has consented to his unique
and superlative baptismal title of Karl the Great,
or Carolus Magnus, or Charlemagne.

The pivotal fact to be remembered is that these
German tribes saved Europe by their love of
liberty, and by their virility, from the decadence
of an orientalized Rome. Rome, and all Rome
meant, was not destroyed by these ancestors of
ours; on the contrary, they saved what was best
worth saving from the decline and fall of Rome,
and made out of it with their own vigorous laws
a new world, the modern western world. Great
Britain, Germany, and the United States are
not descended from Egypt, Greece, or Rome,
but from "those barbarians who issued from the
woods of Germany."

Every school-boy should be taught that Rome
died of a disease contracted from contact with
the Oriental, the Syrian, the Jew, the Greek, the
riffraff of the eastern and southern shores of the
Mediterranean; who, by the way, make up the
bulk of the immigration into America at this
time. Rome was an incurable invalid long be-
fore the Germans took control of the western
world and saved it.

When the Roman Emperor Augustus died, in

16 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

14 A. D., to be succeeded by Tiberius, the Roman
Empire was bounded on the north and east by
the Rhine, the Danube, the Black Sea and its
southern territory, and Syria; by all the known
country from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean
in northern Africa on the south; and by the
Atlantic Ocean as far north as the river Elbe on
the west. Five hundred years later, about 500
A. D., the Barbarians, as they were called, had
thrust aside the Roman Empire. The Saxons
controlled the southern and eastern coasts of
England; the Franks were rulers in the whole
country from the Loire to the Elbe; south of
them the Visigoths ruled Spain; Italy and all
the country to the north and east of the Adri-
atic, as far as the Danube, were in the hands of
the Ostrogoths. The Roman Empire had been
pushed to the eastern end of the Mediterranean,
with its capital at Constantinople.

In another three hundred years, or in 800
A. D., the king of one of these German tribes re-
vived the title of Roman Emperor, was crowned
by the Pope, Leo III, and governed Europe as
Charlemagne. His banner with the double-
headed eagle, representing the two empires of
Germany and Rome, is the standard of Austria
to-day. Charles Martel, who led the West
against the East, defeating the Arabs in the coun-

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 17

try between what is now Tours and Poitiers,
was Charlemagne's grandfather. What is now
western Europe, became the home and the con-
solidated kingdom of the German tribes who had
drifted down from the west of the Baltic, and
into the Saxon plain. They had become mas-
ters in this territory: after victories over the
Mongolian tribes, and the Huns under Attila,
who had conquered and plundered as far as
Strasburg, Worms, and Treves, and were finally
defeated near what is now Chalons; after driv-
ing off the Arabs under Charles the Hammer
(732) ; after imposing their rule upon the Roman
Empire, the remains of which cowered in Con-
stantinople, where the Ottoman Turk took even
that from it in 1453, which date may well be
taken as marking the beginning of modern his-
tory, and became themselves thereafter one of
the first powers in Christian Europe; a power
which is now, in 1912, the quarrel ground of the
Western powers.

These are Brobdingnagian strides through
history, to reach the days of Dante, Petrarch,
Boccaccio, Chaucer, Froissart, and the first
translation of the Bible into a vulgar tongue by
Wickliffe, to the days when Lorenzo de Medici
breathed Greece into Europe, and the feeling
for beauty changed from invalidism to conva-

18 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

lescence; to the days when cannon were first
used, printing invented, America discovered,
and the man Luther, who gave the Germans
their present language by his translation of the
Bible, and who delivered us from papal tyranny,
born; and Agincourt, and Joan of Arc, are pict-
uresque and poignant features of the historical
landscape.

These rude German tribes had been welded by
hardship and warfare, into compact and self-
governing bodies. These loosely bound masses
of men, women, and children, straggling down
to find room and food, are now, in 1400 A. D.,
France, England, Austria, Germany, Scotland,
and Spain. The same spirit and vigor that
roamed the coasts all the way from Sweden and
Norway to the mouth of the Thames, and to the
Rhine, the Seine, and to the Straits of Gibraltar,
are abroad again, landing on the shores of Amer-
ica, circumnavigating Africa, and bringing home
tales of Indians in the west, and Indians in the
east. This virile stock that had been hammered
and hewn was now to be polished; and in Italy,
France, England, and Germany grew up a pas-
sion for translating the rough mythology, and
the fierce fancy of the north, into painting, build-
ing, poetry, and music.

France, Germany, England, Spain, Holland,

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 19

Belgium, Italy, too, grew out of these German
tribes, who poured down from the territory
roughly included between the Rhine, the North
Sea, the Oder, and the Danube.

As we know these countries to-day, the defi-
nite thing about them is their difference. You
cross the channel in fifty minutes from Dover
to Calais, you cross the Rhine in five minutes,
and the peoples seem thousands of miles apart.
"How did it happen," asks Voltaire, "that, set-
ting out from the same point of departure, the
governments of England and of France arrived
at nearly the same time, at results as dissimilar
as the constitution of Venice is unlike that of
Morocco?"

One might ask as well how it happened, that
the speech of one German invasion mixing itself
with Latin became French, of another Spanish,
of another Portuguese, of another Italian, of
another English. These are interesting inqui-
ries, and in regard to the former it is not diffi-
cult to see, that men grew to be governed differ-
ently, according as the geographical exigencies
of their homes were different, and as they occu-
pied themselves differently.

The observant traveller in the United States,
may see for himself what differences even a few
years of differing climate, and circumstances,

20 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

and custom will produce. The inhabitants of
Charleston, South Carolina, are evidently and
visibly different from those in Davenport, Iowa.
Two towns of similar size and wealth, Salisbury,
Maryland, and Hingham, Massachusetts, are
almost as different, except in speech, and even
in speech the accent is perceptibly different even
to the careless listener, as though Salisbury were
in the south of France, and Hingham in the north
of Germany. These changes and differences are
only inexplicable, to those who will not see the
ethnographical miracles taking place under their
noses. Look at the mongrel crowd on Fifth
Avenue at midday, and remember what was
there only fifty years ago, and the differentia-
tion which has taken place in Europe due to
climate, intermarriage, laws, and customs seems
easy to trace and to explain.

The fishermen and tillers of the soil in the
Scandinavian peninsula, afterward the settlers
in the Saxon plain and in England, recognized
him who ruled over their settled place of abode
as king; while roaming bands of fighting men
would naturally attach themselves to the head
of the tribe, as the leader in war, and recognize
him as king. As late as the death of Char-
lemagne, when his powerful grip relaxed, the
tribes of Germans, for they were little more

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 21

even then, fell apart again. Another family like
that of Pepin arose under Robert the Strong,
and under Hugue Capet (987) acquired the
title of Kings of France. The monarchy grew
out of the weakening of feudalism, and feudalism
had been the gradual setting, in law and custom,
of a way of living together, of these detached
tribes and clans, and their chiefs.

A powerful warrior was rewarded with a horse,
a spear; later, when territory was conquered
and the tribe settled down, land was given as
a reward. Land, however, does not die like a
horse, or wear out and get broken like a spear,
and the problem arises after the death of the
owner, as to who is his rightful heir. Does it
revert to the giver, the chief of the tribe, or does
it go to the children of the owner? Some men
are strong enough to keep their land, to add to it,
to control those living upon it, and such a one
becomes a feudal ruler in a small way himself.
He becomes a duke, a dux or leader, a count,
a margrave, a baron, and a few such powerful
men stand by one another against the king.
A Charlemagne, a William the Conqueror, a
Louis XIV is strong enough to rule them and
keep them in order for a time. Out of these
conditions grow limited monarchies or absolute
monarchies and national nobilities.

22 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

More than any other one factor, the Crusades
broke up feudalism. The great noble, impelled
by a sense of religious duty, or by a love of ad-
venture, arms himself and his followers, and
starts on years of journeyings to the Holy Land.
Ready money is needed above all else. Lands
are mortgaged, and the money-lender and the
merchant buy lands, houses, and eventually
power, and buy them cheap. The returning
nobles find their affairs in disarray, their fields
cultivated by new owners, towns and cities
grow up that are as strong or stronger than the
castle. Before the Crusades no rofarier, or mere
tiller of the soil, could hold a fief, but the de-
mand for money was so great that fiefs were
bought and sold, and Philippe Auguste (1180)
solved the problem by a law, declaring that when
the king invested a man with a sufficient hold-
ing of land or fief, he became ipso facto a noble.
This is the same common-sense policy which
led Sir Robert Peel to declare, that any man
with an income of $50,000 a year had a right to
a peerage. There can be no aristocracy except
of the powerful, which lasts. The difference
to-day is seen in the puppet nobility of Austria,
Italy, Spain, and Germany as compared with
the nobility of England, which is not a nobility
of birth or of tradition, but of the powerful:

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 23

brewers and bankers, and statesmen and law-
yers, and leaders of public opinion, covering their
humble past with ermine, and crowning their
achievements with coronets.

The Crusades brought about as great a shift-
ing of the balance of power, as did later the rise
of the rich merchants, industrials, and nabobs in
England. As the power of the nobles decreased,
the central power or the power of the kings in-
creased; increased indeed, and lasted, down to
the greatest crusade of all, when democracy or- (
ganized itself, and marched to the redemption
of the rights of man as man, without regard to
his previous condition of servitude.

During the thousand years between the time
when we first hear of the German tribes, in 113
B. C., and the year 1411, which marks the be-
ginnings of what is now the Prussian monarchy,
customs were becoming habits, and habits were
becoming laws, and the political and social ori-
gins of the life of our day were being beaten into
shape, by the exigencies of living together of
these tribes in the woods of Germany.

There it was that the essence of democracy
was distilled. Democracy, Demos, the crowd, the
people, the nation, were already, in the woods of
Germany, the court of last resort. They growled
dissent, and they gave assent with the brandish-

24 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ing of their weapons, javelins, or ballots. They
were called together but seldom, and between the
meetings of the assembly, the executive work, the
judicial work, the punishing of offenders, was left
to a chosen few; left to those who by their con-
trol over themselves, their control over their fam-
ilies, their control over their neighbors, seemed
best qualified to exercise the delegated control
of all.

The chief aim of their organized government,
such as it was, seems to have been to leave them-
selves free to go about their private business,
with as little interference from the demands of
public business as possible. The chief concern
of each one was to secure his right to mind his
own business, under certain safeguards provided
by all. If those delegated to govern became au-
tocratic, or evil-doers, or used their power for
self-advancement or self-enrichment, they were
speedily brought to book. The philosophy of
government, then, was to make men free to go
about their private business. That the time
might come when politics would be the ab-
sorbing business of all, dictating the hours and
wages of men under the earth, and reaching up
to the institution of a recall for the angel Gabriel,
and a referendum for the Day of Judgment, was
undreamed of. The chiefs of the clans, the

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 25

chiefs of the tribes, the kings of the Germans, and
finally the emperors were all elective. The di-
vine right of kings is a purely modern develop-
ment. The descendants of these German tribes
in England, elected their king in the days of Wil-
liam the Conqueror even, and as late as 1689 the
Commons of England voted that King James had
abdicated, and that the throne was vacant!

The so-called mayors of the palace, who be-
came kings, were in their day representatives of
the landholders, delegates of the people, who ad-
vised the king and aided in commanding the
armies. These hereditary mayors of the palace
drifted into ever greater and greater control, un-
til they became hereditary kings. The title was
only hereditary, however, because it was conven-
ient that one man of experience in an office should
be succeeded by another educated to, and fa-
miliar with, the same experiences and duties,
and this system of heredity continues down to
this day in business, and in many professions, and
so long as there is freedom to oust the incompe-
tent, it is a good system. There can never be
any real progress until the sons take over the
accumulated wisdom and experience of the
fathers; if this is not done, then each one must
begin for himself all over again. The hereditary
principle is sound enough, so long as there is

26 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

freedom of decapitation in cases of tyranny or
folly.

There has continued all through the history of
those of the blood of the German tribes, whether
in Germany, England, America, Norway, Swe-
den, or Denmark, the sound doctrine that ability
may at any time take the place of the rights of
birth. Power, or command, or leadership by
heredity is looked upon as a convenience, not
as an unimpeachable right.

Charlemagne (742-814), a descendant of a
mayor of the palace who had become king by
virtue of ability, swept all Europe under his sway
by reason of his transcendent powers as a warrior
and administrator. He did for the first time for
Europe what Akbar did in his day for India. In
forty -five years he headed fifty-three campaigns
against all sorts of enemies. He fought the Sax-
ons, the Danes, the Slavs, the Arabs, the Greeks,
and the Bretons. What is now France, Ger-
many, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, and
most of Italy were under his kingship. He was
a student, an architect, a bridge-builder, though
he could neither read nor write, and even began a
canal which was to connect the Danube and the
Rhine, and thus the German Ocean, with the
Black Sea. He is one of many monuments to
the futility of technical education and mere
book-learning.

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 27

The Pope, roughly handled, because negli-
gently protected, by the Roman emperors, turns
to Charlemagne, and on Christmas Day (800)
places a crown upon his head, and proclaims him
"Csesar Augustus" and " Christianissimus Rex."
The empire of Rome is to be born again with this
virile German warrior at its head. Just a thou-
sand years later, another insists that he has suc-
ceeded to the title by right of conquest, and gives
his baby son the title of "King of Rome," and
just a thousand years after the death of Charle-
magne, in 814, Napoleon retires to Elba. There
is a witchery about Rome even to-day, and an
emperor still sits imprisoned there, claiming for
himself the right to rule the spiritual and intel-
lectual world: "sedet, eternumque sedebit In-
felix Theseus."

Louis, called "the Pious," because the latter
part of his life was spent in mourning his out-
rageous betrayal, mutilation, and murder of his
own nephew, whose rivalry he feared, succeeded
his father, Charlemagne. He was succeeded
again by his three sons, Lothair, Pepin, and
Louis by his first wife, and Charles, who was his
favorite son, by his second wife. He had already
divided the great heritage left him by Charle-
magne between his three sons Lothair, Pepin,
and Louis; but now he wished to make another

28 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

division into four parts, to make room for, and
to give a kingdom to, his son Charles by his
second wife. The three elder sons revolt against
their father, and his last years are spent in vain
attempts to reconcile his quarrelsome children.
At his death war breaks out. Pepin dies, leav-
ing, however, a son Pepin to inherit his king-
dom of Aquitaine. Louis and Charles attempt
to take his kingdom from him, his uncle Lo-
thair defends him, and at the great battle of
Fontenay (841) Louis and Charles defeat Lo-
thair. Lothair gains the adherence of the Sax-
ons, and Charles and Louis at the head of their
armies confirm their alliance, and at Strasburg
the two armies take the oath of allegiance: the
followers of Louis took the oath in German, the
followers of Charles in French, and this oath,
the words of which are still preserved, is the ear-
liest specimen of the French language in exist-
ence.

In 843 another treaty signed at Verdun, be-
tween the two brothers Lothair and Louis and
their half-brother Charles, separated for the first
time the Netherlands, the Rhine country, Bur-
gundy, and Italy, which became the portion of
Lothair; all Germany east of this territory, which
went to Louis ; and all the territory to the west of
it, which went to Charles. Germany and France,

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 29

therefore, by the Treaty of Verdun in 843, be-
came distinct kingdoms, and modern geography
in Europe is born.

From the death of Henry the Fowler, in 936,
down to the nomination of Frederick I of Bava-
ria, sixth Burgrave of Nuremberg, to be Mar-
grave of Brandenburg, in 1411, the history of
the particular Germany we are studying is
swallowed up in the history of these German
tribes of central Europe and of the Holy Roman
Empire. It is in these years of the seven Cru-
sades, from 1095 to the last in 1248; of Frederick
Barbarossa; of the centuries-long quarrel be-
tween theWelfs,or Guelphs,and the Waiblingers,
or Ghibellines, which were for years in Italy,
and are still in Germany, political parties; of
the Hanseatic League of the cities to protect
commerce from the piracies of a disordered and
unruled country; of the Dane and the Nor-
man descents upon the coasts of France, Ger-
many, and England, and of their burning, kill-
ing, and carrying into captivity; of the Saracens
scouring the Mediterranean coasts and sack-
ing Rome itself; of the Wends and Czechs,
Hungarian bands who dashed in upon the east-
ern frontiers of the now helpless and amorphous
empire of Charlemagne, all the way from the
Baltic to the Danube; of the quarrel between

30 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Henry IV and that Jupiter Ecclesiasticus, Hilde-
brand, or Gregory VII, who has left us his biog-
raphy in the single phrase, "To go to Canossa";
of Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes; of the
long fight between popes and emperors over the
right of investiture; of Rudolph of Hapsburg; of
the throwing off of their allegiance to the Empire
of the Kings of Burgundy, Poland, Hungary, and
Denmark; of the settlement of the question of
the legal right to elect the emperor by Charles IV,
who fixed the power in the persons of seven rulers :
the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the
Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, the Margraf of
Brandenburg, and the three Archbishops of May-
ence, Treves, and Cologne; of the independence
of the great cities of northern Italy; of Otto the
Great, whose first wife was a granddaughter of
Alfred the Great, and who was the real founder
of the Holy Roman Empire, in the sense that a
German prince rules over both Germany and
Italy with the approval of the Pope, and in the
sense that he, a duke of Saxony, appropriates the
western empire (962), goes to Rome, delivers
the Pope, subdues Italy, and fixes the imperial
crown in the name and nation of Germany; of
the beginning of that hope of a world-church and
a world-state, of a universal church and a uni-
versal kingdom, which took form in what is

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 31

known as the Holy Roman Empire; of that
greatest of all forgeries, the Donation of Con-
stantine by the monk Isidor, discovered and re-
vealed by Cardinal Nicolaus, of Cura, in which it
is pretended that Constantine handed over Rome
to the Pope and his successors forever, with all
the power and privileges of the Caesars, and of
the effects of this, the most successful lie ever
told in the world, during the seven hundred
years it was believed: it is in these years of tur-
bulence and change that one must trace the
threads of history, from the first appearance of
the Germans, down to the time when what is
now Prussia became a frontier post of the empire
under the rule of a Hohenzollern.

It is, perhaps, of all periods in history, the
most interesting to Americans, for then and there
our civilization was born. Writing of the con-
quest of the British Isles by the Germans, J. R.
Green says: "What strikes us at once in the new
England is this, that it was the one purely Ger-
man nation that rose upon the wreck of Rome.
In other lands, in Spain or Gaul or Italy, though
they were equally conquered by German peoples,
religion, social life, administrative order, still re-
mained Roman. " The roots of our civilization,
are to be dug for in those days when the German
peoples met the imperialism and the Christian-

ity of Rome, and absorbed and renewed them.
The Roman Empire, tottering on a foundation of,
it is said, as many as fifty million slaves — even
a poor man would have ten slaves, a rich man
ten or twenty thousand — and overrun with the
mongrel races from Syria, Greece," and Africa,
and hiding away the remnants of its power in
the Orient, became in a few centuries an easy
prey to our ancestors "of the stern blue eyes,
the ruddy hair, the large and robust bodies."

"Caerula quis stupuit lumina? flavam
Caesariem, et madido torquentem cornua cirro?
Nempe quod haec illis natura est omnibus una,"

writes Juvenal of their resemblance to one an-
other.

By the year 1411 long strides had been made
toward other forms of social, political, religious,
and commercial life, due to the German grip
upon Europe. Dante, whose grandmother was a
Goth, was not only a poet but a fighter for free-
dom, taking a leading part in the struggle of the
Bianchi against the Neri and Pope Boniface, was
born in 1265 and died in 1321; Francis of As-
sisi, born in 1182, not only represented a demo-
cratic influence in the church, but led the earli-
est revolt against the despotism of money; the
movement to found cities and to league cities to-

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 33

gether for the furtherance of trade and industry,
and thus to give rights to whole classes of people
hitherto browbeaten by church or state or both,
began in Italy; and the alliance of the cities of
the Rhine, and the Hansa League, date from the
beginning of the thirteenth century; the dis-
covery of how to make paper dates from this
time, and printing followed; the revolt of the
Albigenses against priestly dominance which
drenched the south of France in blood began in
the twelfth century; slavery disappeared except
in Spain; Wycliffe, born in 1324, translated the
Gospels, threw off his allegiance to the papacy,
and suffered the cheap vengeance of having his
body exhumed and its ashes scattered in the
river Swift; Aquinas and Duns Scotus delivered
philosophy from the tyranny of theology; Roger
Bacon (1214) practically introduced the study
of natural science; Magna Charta was signed in
1215; Marco Polo, whose statue I have seen
among those of the gods, in a certain Chinese
temple, began his travels in the thirteenth cen-
tury; the university of Bologna was founded be-
fore 1200 for the untrammelled study of medicine
and philosophy; Abelard, who died in 1142, rep-
resented, to put it pithily, the spirit of free in-
quiry in matters theological, and lectured to
thousands in Paris. What do these men and

34 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

movements mean? I am wofully wrong in my
ethnographical calculations if these things do not
mean, that the people of whom Tacitus wrote,
"No man dictates to the assembly; he may per-
suade but cannot command," were shaping
and moulding the life of Europe, with their pas-
sionate love of individual liberty, with their
sturdy insistence upon the right of men to think
and work without arbitrary interference. Out
of this furnace came constitutional government
in England, and republican government in Amer-
ica. We owe the origins of our political life to
the influence of these German tribes, with their
love of individual freedom and their stern hatred
of meddlesome rulers, or a meddlesome state or
legislature.

Germany had no literature at this time.
When Froissart was writing French history, and
Joinville his delightful chronicles; when Chau-
cer and Wycliffe were gayly and gravely making
play with the monks and priests, the only names
known in Germany were those of the mystics,
Eckhart and Tauler. When the time came, how-
ever, Germany was defiantly individualist in
Luther, and Protestantism was thoroughly Ger-
man. It was not from tales of the great, not
from knighthood, chivalry, or their roving singer
champions, that German literature came; but

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 35

from the fables and satires of the people, from
Hans Sachs and from the Luther translation of
the Bible. This is roughly the setting of civili-
zation, in which the first Hohenzollerns found
themselves when they took over the Mark of
Brandenburg, in the early years of the fifteenth
century.

Here is a list of them, of no great interest in
themselves, but showing the direct descent
down to the present time; for from the Peace
of Westphalia (1648) to the French Revolution
the German states were without either men or
measures, except Frederick the Great, that call
for other than dreary comment:

Frederick I of Nuremberg— 1417

Frederick II 1440

Albert III 1470

Johannlll 1476

Joachim I 1499

Joachim II 1535

Johann George 1571

Joachim Frederick 1598

Johann Sigismund of Poland (Urst Duke

of Prussia) 1608

George William 1619

Frederick William (the Great Elector) . 1640
Frederick III, Frederick I of Prussia
(crowned first King of Prussia in

1701) 1657-1713

36 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Frederick William I (son of Frederick I of

Prussia) 1688-1740

Frederick II (the Great) (son of Fred-
erick William I) 1712-1786

Frederick William II (son of Augustus
William, brother of Frederick the
Great) 1744-1787

Frederick William III (son of Frederick

William II) 1770-1840

Frederick William IV (son of Frederick
William III, 1795-1861), reigned

1840-1861

William I (son of Frederick William III,
brother of Frederick William IV,
1797-1888), reigned .... 1861-1888

Frederick III (son of William I, 1831-
1888), reigned from March 9 to June
15, 1888.

William II (son of Frederick III and Prin-
cess Victoria of England), born Jan.
27, 1859, succeeded Frederick III in
1888.

These incidents, names, and dates are mere
whisps of history. It is only necessary to indi-
cate that to articulate this skeleton of history,
clothe it with flesh, and give it its appropriate
arms and costumes would entail the putting of
all mediaeval European history upon a screen, to
deliver oneself without apology from any such
task. It may be for this reason that there is no

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 37

history of Germany in the English tongue, that
ranks above the elementary and the mediocre.
There is a masterly and scholarly history of the
Holy Roman Empire by an Englishman, which no
student of Germany may neglect, but he who
would trace the beginnings of Germany from
113 B. C. down to the time of the Great Elector,
1640, must be his own guide through the track-
less deserts, of the formation into separate nations,
of modern Europe. It is even with misgivings
that the student picks his way from the time of
the Great Elector to Bismarck, and to modern
Germany.

The Peace of Westphalia, 1648, marks the end
of the Thirty Years' War, and finds Germany
with a population reduced from sixteen millions
to four millions. Famine which drove men and
women to cannibalism, bands of them being
caught cooking human bodies in a caldron for
food; slaughter that drove men to make laws
authorizing every man to have two wives, and
punishing men and women who became monks
and nuns; lawlessness that bred roving bands of
murderers, who killed, robbed, and even ate their
victims, demanded a ruler of no little vigor to
lead his people back to civic, moral, and material
health. The Great Elector wrested east Prussia
from Poland, he defeated and drove off theSwedes,

whom Louis XIV had drawn into an alliance
against him, he travelled from end to end of his
country, seeking out the problems of distress and
remedying them by inducing immigration from
Holland, Switzerland, and the north, by building
roads, bridges, schools, and churches, and by en-
couraging planting, trade, and commerce. He
built the Frederick William Canal connecting the
Oder and the Spree, and introduced the potato
to his countrymen. Germany now produces in
normal years fifteen hundred million bushels of
potatoes. The splendid equestrian statue of the
Great Elector on the long bridge at Berlin, is a
worthy monument to the first great Hohenzollern.
When Charles II of Spain died, Louis XIV,
the Emperor Leopold I of the Holy Roman
Empire, and the Elector of Bavaria, all three
claimed the right to name his successor. In
the war that followed and which lasted a dozen
years, the Emperor, Holland, England, Portu-
gal, the Elector of Hanover, and the Elector
Frederick III of Brandenburg, the son of the
Great Elector, were allied against France.
Frederick, the Elector of Brandenburg, was
permitted by the Emperor, in return for his
services at this time, to assume the title of King,
and he crowned himself and his wife Sophia
Elizabeth, at Konigsberg, King and Queen of

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 39

Prussia, taking the title of Frederick I of Prus-
sia, January 18th, 1701.

This novus homo among sovereigns was now a
fellow king with the rulers of England, France,
Denmark, and Sweden, and the only crowned
head in the empire, except the Emperor himself,
and the Elector of Saxony, who had been chosen
King of Poland in 1697. By persistent syco-
phancy he had pushed his way into the inner
circle of the crowned. Those who have picked
social locks these latter days by similar sycophan-
cies, by losses at bridge in the proper quarter,
by suffering sly familiarities to their women folk,
and by wearing their personal and family dignity
in sole leather, may know something of the hu-
miliating experiences of this new monarch. He
was a feeble fellow, but his son and successor,
Frederick William I, " a shrewd but brutal boor,"
so Lord Rosebery calls him, and there could not
be a better judge, amazed Europe by his taste
for collecting tall soldiers, by his parsimony, his
kennel manners in the treatment of his family
and his subjects, and leaves a name in history
as the first, greatest, and the unique collector
of human beings on a Barnumesque scale. All
known collectors of birds, beetles, butterflies,
and beasts accord him an easy supremacy, for
his aggregation of colossal grenadiers.

40 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

It is temptingly easy to be epigrammatic, per-
haps witty, at the expense of Frederick William I
of Prussia. The man, however, who freed the
serfs; who readjusted the taxes; who insisted
upon industry and honesty among his officials;
who proclaimed liberty of conscience and of
thought; who first put on, to wear for the rest
of his life, the uniform of his army, and thus
made every officer proud to wear the uniform
himself; and who left his son an army of eighty
thousand men, thoroughly equipped and trained,
and an overflowing treasury, may not be dis-
missed merely with anecdotes of his eccentric
brutality.

Only the ignorant and the envious, nibble at
the successes of other men, with vermin teeth
and venomous tongue. Those people who can
never praise anything whole-heartedly come by
their cautious censure from an uneasy doubt of
their own deserving. The contempt of Fred-
erick William I for learning and learned men,
left him leisure for matters of far more impor-
tance to his kingdom at the time. His ha-
bitual roughness to his son was due, perhaps,
to the fact that there was a curious strain of
effeminate culture in the man who deified Vol-
taire. Poor Voltaire, who called Shakespeare
" le sauvage ivre, " or to quote him exactly : "On

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 41

croirait que cet ouvrage (Hamlet) est le fruit
de 1'imagination d'un sauvage ivre," who said
that Dante would never be read, and that the
comedies of Aristophanes were unworthy of pres-
entation in a country tavern ! One is tempted to
believe that the father was a man of robuster
judgment in such matters than the son, whose
own rather mediocre literary equipment, made
him the easy prey of that acidulous vestal of lit-
erature, Voltaire. However that may be, he left
a useful and unexpected legacy to his son, pro-
vided, indeed, the sinews for the making of a
powerful Prussian kingdom.

March the 31st, 1740, this eccentric miser died,
to be succeeded by his son, Frederick II, "the
Great," then twenty -eight years old. Here was
a surprise indeed. Of these German kings and
princes in their small dominions it has been writ-
ten: "And these magnates all aped Louis XIV
as their model. They built huge palaces, as
like Versailles as their means would permit, and
generally beyond those limits, with fountains
and avenues and dismally wide paths. Even in
our own day a German monarch has left, fortu-
nately unfinished, an accurate Versailles on a
damp island in a Bavarian lake. In those gran-
diose structures they cherished a blighting eti-
quette, and led lives as dull as those of the aged
and torpid carp in their own stew-ponds. Then,

42 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

at the proper season, they would break away into
the forest and kill game. Moreover, still in
imitation of their model, they held, as a neces-
sary feature in the dreary drama of their exist-
ence, ponderous dalliances writh unattractive mis-
tresses, in whom they fondly tried to discern the
charms of a Montespan or a La Valliere. This
monotonous programme, sometimes varied by
a violent contest whether they should occupy a
seat with or without a back, or with or without
arms, represented the even tenor of their lives. "
This good stock was evidently lying fallow,
and humanity is neither dignified nor pleas-
ant in the part of fertilizer. Frederick the
Great, it should be remembered, was a Prussian
and for Prussia only. He cared no more about
a united Germany than we care for a united
America to include Canada, Mexico, and the Ar-
gentine. He cared no more for Bavarians and
Saxons than for Swedes and Frenchmen, and,
as we know, he was utterly contemptuous of
German literature or the German language. He
redeemed the shallowness and the torpidity of
those other mediocre rulers by resisting, and
resisting successfully, for what must have been
to him seven very long years, the whole force
of Austria and some of the lesser German pow-
ers, with the armies of Russia and France back
of them.

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 43

He had a turbulent home life; his father on
one occasion even attempted to hang him with
his own hands with the cords of the window cur-
tains, and when he fled from home he captured
him and proposed to put him to death as a de-
serter, and only the intervention of the Kings
of Poland and Sweden and the Emperor of Ger-
many prevented it. His accomplice, however,
was summarily and mercilessly put to death
before his eyes. There is no illustration in all
history, of such a successful outcome of the rod
theory in education, as this of Frederick the
Great. The father put into practice what Wes-
ley preached: " Break their wills betimes, what-
ever it costs; break the will if you would not
damn the child. Let a child from a year old
be taught to fear the rod and to cry softly."

The meanness and cruelty, the parsimony and
the eccentricities, of the father left the son an
army of eighty thousand troops, troops as supe-
rior to other troops in Europe as are the Japanese
infantry to-day, to the Manchu guards that pick
the weeds in the court-yards of the palace at
Mukden; and he left him, too, a kingdom with no
debts and an overflowing treasury. It is seldom
that such insane vanities leave such a fair estate
and an heir with such unique abilities for its
skilful exploitation. Of Frederick's wars against

44 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Austria, against France, Russia, Saxony, Sweden,
and Poland ; of his victories at Prague, Leu then,
Rossbach, and Zorndorf ; of his addition of Silesia
and Polish Prussia to his kingdom; of his comical
literary love affair with Voltaire; of his brutal
comments upon the reigning ladies of Russia
and France, which brought upon him their bit-
ter hatred; of his restoration and improvement
of his country; of his strict personal economy
and loyalty to his own people, scores of volumes
have been written. The hero-worshipper, Car-
lyle, and the Jove of reviewers, Macaulay, have
described him, and many minor scribes besides.
It is said of his victory of Rossbach, in 1757,
that then and there began the recreation of Ger-
many, the revival of her political and intellectual
life, and union under Prussia and Prussian kings.
Frederick the Great deserves this particular en-
comium; for as Luther freed Germany, and all
Christendom indeed, from the tyranny of tradi-
tion, as Lessing freed us from the tyranny of the
letter, from the second-hand and half-baked
Hellenism of a Racine and a Corneille, so Freder-
ick the Great freed his countrymen at last from
the puerile slavery to French fashions and tradi-
tions, which had made them self-conscious at
home and ridiculous abroad. He first made a
Prussian proud to be a Prussian.

CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY 45

This last quarter of the eighteenth century in
Germany saw the death of Lessing in 1781, the
publication of Kant's "Kritik der Reinen Ver-
nunft" in the same year, and the death of the
great Frederick in 1786. These names mark the
physical and intellectual coming of age of Ger-
many. Lessing died misunderstood and feared
by the card-board literary leaders of his day,
men who still wrote and thought with the geo-
metrical instruments handed them from France ;
Kant attempted to push philosophical inquiry
beyond the bounds of human experience, and
Frederick left Prussia at last not ashamed to be
Prussia. Napoleon was eighteen years old when
Frederick died, and he, next to Bismarck, did
more to bring about German unity than any
other single force. Unsuccessful Charlemagne
though he was, he without knowing it blazed the
political path which led to the crowning of a
German emperor in the palace at Versailles, less
than a hundred years after the death of Frederick
the Great. In 1797 at Montebello, Napoleon
said : " If the Germanic System did not exist,
it would be necessary to create it expressly for
the convenience of France."

II

FREDERICK THE GREAT TO
BISMARCK

FREDERICK THE GREAT died in 1786,
leaving Prussia the most formidable mili-
tary power on the Continent. In finan-
cial, law, and educational matters he had made
his influence felt for good. He distributed work-
horses and seed to his impoverished nobles; he
encouraged silk, cotton, and porcelain industries ;
he built the Finow, the Planesche, and Brom-
berger Canals; he placed a tariff on meat, ex-
cept pork, the habitual food of the poor, and
spirits and tobacco and coffee were added to the
salt monopoly; he codified the laws, which we
shall mention later; he aided the common
schools, and in his day were built the opera-house,
library, and university in Berlin, and the new
palace of Sans Souci at Potsdam.

Almost exactly one hundred years after the
death of Frederick the Great, there ended prac-
tically, at the death of the Emperor William I,
in 1888, the political career of the man, who with

46

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 47

his personally manufactured cement of blood
and iron, bound Germany together into a nation.
The middle of the seventeenth, the middle of the
eighteenth, and the middle of the nineteenth
centuries, with the Great Elector, Frederick the
Great, and Bismarck as the central figures, mark
the features of the historical landscape of Ger-
many as with mile-stones.

How difficult was the task to bring at last an
emperor of all Germany to his crowning at Ver-
sailles, January 18, 1871, and how mighty the
artificer who accomplished the work, may be
learned from a glance at the political, geograph-
ical, and patriotic incoherence of the land that is
now the German Empire.

Germany had no definite national policy from
the death of Frederick the Great till the reign
of Bismarck began in 1862. Hazy discussions
of a confederation of princes, of a Prussian em-
pire, of lines of demarcation, of acquisitions of
German territory, were the phantoms of a pol-
icy, and even these were due to the pressure of
Prussia.

The general political torpidity is surprisingly
displayed, when one remembers that Goethe
(1749-1832), who Jived through the French Rev-
olution, who was thirty-seven years old when
Frederick the Great died, and who lived through

48 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the whole flaming life of Napoleon, was scarcely
more stirred by the political features of the time
than though he had lived in Seringapatam. He
was a superlatively great man, but he was as
parochial in his politics as he was amateurish in
his science, as he was a mixture of the coxcomb
and the boor, in his love affairs. Lessing, who
died in 1781, Klopstock, who died in 1803, Schil-
ler, who died in 1805, Kant, who died in 1804,
Hegel, who died in 1831, Fichte, who died in
1814, Wolf, who died in 1824, "Jean Paul"
Friedrich Richter, who died in 1825, Voss, who
died in 1826, Schelling, who died in 1854, the
two Schlegels, August Wilhelm and Frederick,
who died in 1845 and in 1829, Jacob Grimm,
who died in 1863, Herder, Wieland, Kotzebue,
what a list of names! What a blossoming of
literary activity! But no one of them, these
the leaders of thought in Germany, at the time
when the world was approaching the birthday
of democracy through pain and blood, no one
of these was especially interested in politics.

There was theoretical writing about freedom.
Heine mocked at his countrymen and at the
world in general, and deified Napoleon, from his
French mattress, on which he died, in 1856,
only fifty-seven years old. Fichte ended a course
of lectures on Duty, with the words: "This

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 49

course of lectures is suspended till the end of the
campaign. We shall resume if our country be-
come free, or we shall have died to regain our
liberty." But Fichte neither resumed nor died!
Herder criticised his countrymen for their slavish
following of French forms and models in their lit-
erature, as in their art and social life. And well
he might thus criticise, when one remembers how
cramped was the literary vision even of such men
as Voltaire and Heine. We have already men-
tioned some of Voltaire's literary judgments in
the preceding chapter, and Heine ventured to
compare Racine to Euripides ! No wonder that
Germany needed schooling in taste, if such were
the opinions of her advisers. Such literary can-
ons as these could only be accepted by minds long
inured to provincial, literary, and social slavery.

Just as every little princeling of those days in
Germany took Louis XIV for his model, so every
literary fledgling looked upon Voltaire as a god,
and modelled his style upon the stiff and pom-
pous verses of the French literary men of that
time.

Not even to-day has Germany escaped from
this bondage. In Baden three words out of ten
that you hear are French, and the German wher-
ever he lives in Germany still invites you to
Mittagessen at eight p. M. because he has no
word in his own language for diner, and must

50 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

still say anstdndiger or gebildeter Mensch for
gentleman. To make the German even a Ger-
man in speech and ideals and in independence
has been a colossal task. One wonders, as one
pokes about in odd corners of Germany even
now, whether Herder's caustic contempt, and
Bismarck's cavalry boots, have made every Ger-
man proud to be a German, as now he surely
ought to be. The tribal feeling still exists there.

Fichte's lectures on Nationality were sup-
pressed and Fichte himself looked upon askance.
The Schlegels spent a lifetime in giving Germany
a translation of Shakespeare. Hegel wrote the
last words of his philosophy to the sound of the
guns at the battle of Jena. Goethe writes a
paragraph about his meeting with Napoleon.
Metternich, born three years before the Amer-
ican Revolution, and who died a year before the
battle of Bull Run, declared: "The cause of all
the trouble is the attempt of a small faction to
introduce the sovereignty of the people under
the guise of a representative system."

If this was the attitude of the intellectual
nobility of the time, what are we to suppose that
Messrs. Muller and Schultze and Fischer and
Kruger, the small shop-keepers and others of
their ilk, and their friends thought? Even forty
years later Friedrich Hebbel, in 1844, paid a
visit to the Industrial Exposition in Paris. He

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 51

writes in his diary: "Alle diese Dinge sind mir
nicht allein gleichgiiltig ; sie sind mir wider-
wartig." Germany had not awakened even
then to any wide popular interest in the world
that was doing things. As Voltaire phrased
it, France ruled the land, England the sea,
and Germany the clouds, even as late as the
middle of the nineteenth century. This is the
more worth noting, as giving a peg upon which
to hang Germany's astounding progress since
that time. Even as late as Bismarck's day he
complained of the German: "It is as a Prus-
sian, a Hanoverian, a Wurtemberger, a Bava-
rian, or a Hessian, rather than as a German,
that he is disposed to give unequivocal proof of
patriotism." The present ambitious German
Emperor said, in 1899, at Hamburg: "The slug-
gishness shown by the German people in inter-
esting, themselves in the great questions moving
the world, and in arriving at a political under-
standing of those questions, has caused me deep
anxiety. " What kind of material had the nation-
makers to work with ! What a long, disappoint-
ing task it must have been to light these people
into a blaze of patriotism! In those days Amer-
ica, though the population of the American colo-
nies was only eleven hundred and sixty thousand
in 1750, talked, wrote, and fought politics. The
outstanding personalities of the time were patri-

52 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ots, soldiers, politicians, not a dreamer among
them.

England was so nonchalantly free already,
that the betting-book at White's Club records
that, "Lord Glengall bets Lord Yarmouth one
hundred guineas to five that Buonaparte returns
to Paris before Beau Brummel returns to Lon-
don!" Burke and Pitt, and Fox and North, and
Canning might look after politics; Hargreaves
and Crompton would take care to keep English
industries to the fore, and Watt, and the great
canal-builder Brindley, would solve the problem
of distributing coal; their lordships cracked
their plovers' eggs, unable to pronounce even the
name of a single German town or philosopher,
and showed their impartial interest, much as
now they do, in contemporary history, by back-
ing their opinions with guineas, with the odds
on Caesar against the "Beau."

Weimar was a sunny little corner where
poetry and philosophy and literature were
hatched, well out of reach of the political storms
of the time. The Grand Duke of Sachsen-
Weimar-Eisenach with his tiny court, his Fal-
staffian army, his mint and his customs-houses,
with his well-conducted theatre and his suite of
litterateurs, was one of three hundred rulers in
the Germany of that time.

The Holy Roman Empire, consisting, in Na-

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 53

poleon's time, of Austria, Prussia, and a mass of
minor states, these last grouped together under
the name of the Confederation of the Rhine, and
wholly under French influence, lasted one thou-
sand eight hundred and fifty-eight years, or from
Caesar's victory of Pharsalia down to August the
1st, 1806, when Napoleon announced to the Diet
that he no longer recognized it.

This institution had no political power, was
merely a theoretical political ring for the theoret-
ical political conflicts of German agitators and
dreamers, and was composed of the representa-
tives of this tangle of powerless, but vain and self-
conscious little states. This Holy Roman Em-
pire, with an Austrian at its head, and aided by
France, strove to prevent the development of a
strong German state under the leadership of Prus-
sia. After Napoleon's day it became a struggle
between Prussia and Austria. Austria had only
eight out of thirty-six million German population,
while Prussia was practically entirely German, and
Prussia used her army, politics, and commerce to
gain control in Germany. Even to-day Austria-
Hungary contains the most varied conglomeration
of races of any nation in the world. Austria has
26,000,000 inhabitants, of whom 9,000,000 are
Germans, 1,000,000 Italians and Rumanians,
6,000,000 Bohemians and Slovacs, 8,000,000
Poles and Ruthenians, 2,000,000 Slovenes and

54 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Croatians. Of the 19,000,000 of Hungary there
are 9,000,000 Magyars, 2,000,000 Germans,
2,500,000 Slovacs and Ruthenians, 3,000,000 Ru-
manians, and nearly 3,000,000 Southern Slavs.

Weimar was one of the three hundred capitals
of this limp empire, with tariffs, stamps, coins,
uniforms, customs, gossip, interests, and a sov-
ereign of its own. When Bismarck undertook
the unifying of the customs tariffs of Germany,
there were even then fifteen hundred different
tariffs in existence!

Weimar had its salon, its notables: Goethe,
Schiller, Wieland, Frau von Stein, Dr. Zimmer-
mann as a valued correspondent; its Grand Duke
Karl August and his consort; Herder, who jeal-
ous of the renown of Goethe, and piqued at the
insufficient consideration he received, soon de-
parted, to return only when the Grand Duchess
took him under her wing and thus satisfied his
morbid pride; its love affair, for did not the
beautiful Frau von Werthern leave her husband,
carry out a mock funeral, and, heralded as dead,
elope to Africa with Herr von Einsiedel? But
Weimar was as far away from what we now
agree to look upon as the great events of the
day, as were Lords Glengall and Yarmouth at
White's, in Saint James's.

It requires imagination to put Goethe and

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 55

Schiller and Wieland in the bow window at
White's, and to place Lords Glengall and Yar-
mouth in Frau von Stein's drawing-room in
Weimar; but the discerning eye which can see
this picture, knows at a glance why England mis-
understands Germany and Germany misunder-
stands England. For White's is White's and
Weimar is Weimar, and one is British and one
is German as much now as then ! In the one the
winner of the Derby is of more importance than
any philosopher; in the other, philosophers, poets,
professors, and playwrights are almost as well
known, as the pedigrees of the yearlings to be
sold at Newmarket, are known at White's.
They still have plover's eggs early in the season
at White's, and they still recognize the subtle
distinction there between "port wine" and
"port"; while in Weimar nobody, unless it be
the duke, even boils his sauerkraut in white
wine !

One could easily write a chapter on Weimar
and its self-satisfied social and literary activi-
ties. There were three hundred or more capitals
of like complexion and isolation: some larger,
some smaller, none perhaps with such a splendid
literary setting, but all indifferent with the in-
difference of distant relatives who seldom see one
another, when the French Revolution exploded

56 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

its bomb at the gates of the world's habits of
thought.

No intelligent man ever objected to the French
Revolution because it stood for human rights,
but because it led straight to human wrongs.
The dream was angelic, but the nightmare in
which it ended was devilish. The French Rev-
olution was the most colossal disappointment
that humanity has ever had to bear.

More than the demagogue gives us credit for,
are the great majority of us eager to help our
neighbors. The trouble is that the demagogue
thinks this, the most difficult of all things, an
easy task. God and Nature are harsh when
they are training men, and we, alas, are soft,
hence most of our failures. Correction must
be given with a rod, not with a sop. There lies
all the trouble.

The political and philanthropic wise men were
setting out for the manger and the babe, their
eyes on the star, laden with gifts, when they
were met by a whiff of grape-shot from the guns
commanded by a young Corsican genius. The
French Revolution found us all sympathetic,
but making men of equal height by lopping off
their heads; making them free by giving no one
a chance to be free; making them fraternal by
insisting that all should be addressed by the same

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 57

title of, " citizen," was soon seen to be the method
of a political nursery.

It was no fault of the French Revolution that
it was no revolution at all, in any political sense.
Men maddened by oppression hit, kick, bite, and
burn. They are satisfied to shake the burden of
the moment off their backs, even though the bur-
den they take on be of much the same character.
"It is perfectly possible, to revive even in our
own day the fiscal tyranny which once left even
European populations in doubt whether it was
worth while preserving life by thrift and toil.
You have only to tempt a portion of the popula-
tion into temporary idleness, by promising them
a share in a fictitious hoard lying in an imaginary
strong-box which is supposed to contain all hu-
man wealth. You have only to take the heart out
of those who would willingly labor and save, by
taxing them ad misericordiam for the most laud-
able philanthropic objects. For it makes not
the smallest difference to the motives of the
thrifty and industrious part of mankind whether
their fiscal oppressor be an Eastern despot, or a
feudal baron, or a democratic legislature, and
whether they are taxed for the benefit of a cor-
poration called Society or for the advantage of
an individual styled King or Lord," writes Sir
Henry Maine. In short it matters not in the

58 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

least what you baptize oppression, so long as it
is oppression, or whether you call your tyrant
"Jim" or "My Lord," so long as he is a tyrant.
Many people are slowly awakening to the fact
in England and in America, that plain citizen
"Jim" can be a most merciless tyrant in spite
of his unpretentious name and title. No royal
tyrant ever dared to attempt to gain his ends
by dynamiting innocent people, as did the trades-
unionists at Los Angeles, or to starve a whole
population as did the trades-unionists in Lon-
don. We have not escaped tyranny by chang-
ing its name. The idea of the Contrat Social
and of all its dilutions since, has been that indi-
viduals go to make up society, and that society
under the name of the state must take charge
of those individuals. The French Revolution
was a failure because it fell back upon that tire-
some and futile philosophy of government which
had been that of Louis XIV. Louis XIV took
care of the individual units of the state by ex-
ploiting them. He was a sound enough Socialist
in theory. France gained nothing of much value
along the lines of political philosophy.

Whether it is Louis XIV who says "1'etat c'est
moi" or the citizens banded together in a state,
who claim that the functions of the state are to
meddle with the business of every man, matters

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 59

little. It is the same socialistic philosophy at
bottom, and it has produced to-day a France of
thirty-eight millions of people pledged to steril-
ity, one million of whom are state officials super-
intending the affairs of the others at a cost, in
salaries alone, of upward of five hundred million
dollars a year.

In no political or philosophical sense was the
French Revolution a revolution at all. It was
a change of administration and leaders, but not
a change of political theory. The French Revo-
lution put the state in impartial supremacy over
all classes by destroying exemptions claimed by
the nobility and the clergy, and thus extended
the power of the state. The English Revolution
without bloodshed reduced the power of the
state, not for the advantage of any class, but
for individual liberty and local self-government.
We Americans are the political heirs of the latter,
not of the former, revolution.

Germany was stirred slightly to hope for free-
dom, but stirred mightily to protest against
anarchy later. These were the two influences
from the French Revolution that affected Ger-
many, and they were so contradictory that Ger-
many herself was for nearly a hundred years in
a mixed mood. One influence enlivened the
theoretical democrat, and the other sent the ar-

60 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

mies of all Europe post-haste to save what was
left of orderly government in France.

But Prussia was not what she had been under
Frederick the Great. Frederick was more Louis
XIV than Louis XIV himself. The economic
and political errors of the French Revolution
found their best practical exponent in Frederick
the Great. In the introduction to his code of
laws we have already mentioned are the words:
'The head of the state, to whom is intrusted the
duty of securing public welfare, which is the
whole aim of society, is authorized to direct and
control all the actions of individuals toward this
end." Further on the same code reads: "It is
incumbent upon the state to see to the feeding,
employment, and payment of all those who can-
not support themselves, and who have no claim
to the help of the lord of the manor, or to the help
of the commune: it is necessary to provide such
persons with work which is suitable to their
strength and their capacity."

When Frederick died he left Prussia in the grip
of this enervating pontifical socialism, which al-
ways everywhere ends by palsying the individ-
ual, and through the individual the state, with
the blight of demagogical and theoretical legisla-
tion. The fine army grew pallid and without
spirit, the citizens lost their individual pride, the

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 61

nation as a whole lost its vigor, and when Napo-
leon marched into Berlin, he remarked that the
country hardly seemed worth conquering.

The century from the death of Frederick the
Great, in 1786, to the death of William the First,
in 1888, includes, in a convenient period to re-
member: the downfall of Frederick's patriotic
edifice; the apathy and impotency that followed
upon the breaking up of the bureaucracy he had
welded into efficiency; the shuffling of the Ger-
man states by Napoleon as though they were
the pack of cards in a great political game; a re-
vival of patriotism in Prussia after floggings and
insults that were past bearing; the jealousies
and enmities of the various states, the betrayal
of one by the other, and finally the struggle
between Austria and Prussia to decide upon a
leader for all Germany; and at last the war
against France, 1870-71, which was to make it
clear to the world that Germany had been Prus-
sianized into an empire.

Frederick William II, the nephew of Frederick
the Great, who succeeded him, was King of
Prussia from 1786 to 1797. Frederick William
III, his son, and the husband of the beautiful
and patriotic Queen Louisa, was King of Prus-
sia from 1797 to 1840. Frederick William IV,
a loquacious, indiscreet, loose-lipped sovereign,

62 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

of moist intellect and mythical delusions, was
King of Prussia from 1840 to 1857, when his
mental condition made his retirement necessary,
and he was succeeded by his brother, Frederick
William Ludwig, first as regent, then as king in
1861, known to us as that admirable King and
Emperor, William I, who died in 1888.

Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of
these sovereigns, to those of us who look upon
Germany to-day as autocratically governed in
fact and by tradition, is their willing surrender to
the people, on every occasion when the demand
has been, even as little insistent as the German
demand has been. In the case of Frederick Wil-
liam IV, his claim, at least in words, upon his
divine rights as a sovereign was the mark of a
wavering confidence in himself. He was not sat-
isfied with a rational sanction for his authority,
but was forever assuring his subjects that God
had pronounced for him; much as men of low
intelligence attempt to add vigor to their state-
ments by an oath. "I hold my crown," he said,
"by the favor of God, and I am responsible to
Him for every hour of my government. " Much
under the influence of the two scholars Niebuhr
and Ranke, he hated the ideas of the French
Revolution, and dreamed of an ideal Christian
state like that of the Middle Ages. He was cari-

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 63

catured by the journals of the day, and laughed
at by the wits, including Heine, and pictured as
a king with "Order" on one hand, "Counter-
order" on the other, and "Disorder" on his fore-
head.

Though Frederick William II marched into
France in 1792, to support the French monarchy,
neither his army nor his people were prepared or
fit for this enterprise, and he soon retired. In
1793, Prussia joined Russia in a second partition
of Poland, but in 1795, angry with what was
considered the double dealing of Austria and
Russia, Prussia concluded a peace with France,
the treaty of Basle was signed in 1795, and for
ten years Prussia practically took no part in the
Napoleonic wars.

Napoleon took over the lands on the left bank
of the Rhine, took away the freedom of forty-
eight towns, leaving only Hamburg, Bremen,
Frankfort, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, and in
1803 he took Hanover. Later, in 1805, Bavaria,
Wiirtemberg, and Baden aided Napoleon to
fight the alliance against him of Austria, Eng-
land, Russia, and Sweden. In that same year the
Electors of Wiirtemberg and Bavaria were made
kings by Napoleon. In 1806 Bavaria, Baden,
Wiirtemberg, and Hessen seceded from the Ger-
man Empire, formed themselves into the Con-

64 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

federation of the Rhine, and acknowledged Na-
poleon as their protector. In 1806 Francis II,
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, resigned,
and there was neither an empire nor an emperor
of Germany, nor was there a Germany of united
interests.

In 1806 Frederick William III, driven by the
grossest insults to his country and to his wife,
finally declared war against France; there fol-
lowed the battle of Jena, in which the Germans
were routed, and in that same year Napoleon
marched into Berlin unopposed. In 1807 the
Russian Emperor was persuaded to make peace,
and Prussia without her ally was helpless. The
Peace of Tilsit, in July, 1807, deprived Prussia
of the whole of the territory between the Elbe
and the Rhine, and this with Brunswick, Hes-
se-Cassel, and part of Hanover was dubbed
the Kingdom of Westphalia, and Napoleon's
youngest brother Jerome was made king. The
Polish territory of Prussia was given to the
Elector of Saxony, who was also rewarded for
having deserted Prussia after the battle of Jena
by being made a king. Prussia was further
required to reduce her army to forty-two thou-
sand men.

It is neither a pretty nor an inspiriting story,
this of the mangling of Germany by Napoleon;

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 65

of the German princes bribed by kingly crowns
from the hands of an ancestorless Corsican; but
it all goes to show how far from any sense of
common aims and duties, how far from the
united Vaterland of to-day, was the Germany of
a hundred years ago. It adds, too, immeasur-
ably to the laurels of the man who produced the
present German Empire out of his own pocket,
and stood as chief sponsor at its christening at
Versailles in 1871.

This Prussia that sent twenty thousand troops
to aid Napoleon against Russia, and which dur-
ing the retreat from Moscow went over bodily
to the enemy; this Prussia whose vacillating
king simpered with delight at a kind word from
Napoleon, and shivered with dismay at a harsh
one; this army with its officers as haughty as
they were incapable, and its men only prevented
from wholesale desertion by severe punishment,
an army rotten at the core, with a coat of varnish
over its worm-eaten fabric; this Prussia humil-
iated and disgraced after the battle of Jena, in
1806, in seven years' time came into its own
again. Vom Stein, Scharnhorst, the son of a
Hanoverian peasant, and Hardenberg put new
life into the state. At Waterloo the pummelled
squares of red-coats were relieved by these Prus-
sians, and Bliicher, or "Old Marschall Vorwarts"

66 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

as he was called, redeemed his countrymen's
years of effeminate lassitude and vacillation.

"Such was Vorwarts, such a fighter,
Such a lunging, plunging smiter,
Always stanch and always straight,
Strong as death for love or hate,
Always first in foulest weather,
Neck or nothing, hell for leather,
Through or over, sink or swim,
Such was Vorwarts — here's to him!"

Napoleon goes to Saint Helena and dies in 1821.
What he did for Germany was to prove to her
how impossible was a cluster of jealous, malicious
provincial little state governments in the heart
of Europe, protecting themselves from falling
apart by the ancient legislative scaffolding of the
Holy Roman Empire. He squeezed three hun-
dred states into thirty-eight, and the very year
of Waterloo, on April the 1st, a German Napo-
leon was born who was to further squeeze these
states into what is known to-day as the German
Empire.

The Congress of Vienna was a meeting of the
European powers to redistribute the possessions,
that Napoleon had scattered as bribes and re-
wards among his friends, relatives, and enemies,
so far as possible, among their rightful owners.

From the island of Elba, off the coast of
Tuscany, Napoleon looked on while the allies

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 67

quarrelled at this Congress of Vienna. Prussia
claimed the right to annex Saxony; Russia de-
manded Poland, and against them were leagued
England, Austria, and France, France repre-
sented by the Mephistophelian Talleyrand, who
strove merely to stir the discord into another
war. In the midst of their deliberations word
came that the wolf was in the fold again. Na-
poleon was riding to Paris, through hysterical
crowds of French men and women, eager for
another throw against the world, if their Little
Corporal were there to shake the dice for them.
He had another throw and lost. The French
Revolution in 1789, followed by the insurrection
of all Europe against that strange gypsy child
of the Revolution, Napoleon, from 1807-1815,
ended at last at Waterloo. This lover, who won
whole nations as other men win a maid or two;
this ruler, who had popes for handmaidens and
gave kingdoms as tips, who dictated to kings
preferably from the palaces of their own capi-
tals; this fortunate demon of a man, who had
escaped even Mile. Montausier, was safely dis-
posed of at Saint Helena, and the ordinary ways
of mortals had their place in the world again.

The Congress of Vienna reassembled, and the
readjustment of the map of Europe began over
again. Prussia is given back what had been

G8 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

taken away from her. A German confederation
was formed in 1815 to resist encroachments, but
with no definite political idea, and its diet, to
which Prussia, Austria, and the other smaller
states sent representatives, became the laughing-
stock of Europe. Jealous bickerings and insist-
ence upon silly formalities paralyzed legisla-
tion. Lawyers and others who presented their
claims before this assembly from 1806-1816 were
paid in 1843! The liquidation of the debts of
the Thirty Years' War was made after two
hundred years, in 1850! The laws for the mil-
itary forces were finally agreed upon in 1821,
and put in force in 1840!

There were three principal forms of govern-
ment among these states : first, Absolutist, where
the ruler and his officials governed without ref-
erence to the people, as in Prussia and Austria;
second, those who organized assemblies (Land-
stande), where no promises were made to the
people, but where the nobles and notables were
called together for consultation; and third, a sort
of constitutional monarchy with a written con-
stitution and elected representatives, but with
the ruler none the less supreme. One of the first
rulers to grant such a constitution to his people
was the Grand Duke who presided over the
little court at Weimar.

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 69

The mass of the people were wholly indiffer-
ent. The intellectuals were divided among them-
selves. The schools and universities after 1818
form associations and societies, the Burschen-
schaft, for example, and in a hazy professorial
fashion talk and shout of freedom. They were
of those passionate lovers of liberty, more intent
on the dower than on the bride; willing to talk
and sing and to tell the world of their own de-
serts, but with little iron in their blood.

When a real man wants to be free he fights, he
does not talk; he takes what he wants and asks
for it afterward; he spends himself first and
affords it afterward. These dreamy gentlemen
could never make the connection between their
assertions and their actions. They were as in-
consistent, as a man who sees nothing unreason-
able in circulating ascetic opinions and a peram-
bulator at the same time. They were dreary
and technical advocates of liberty.

At a great festival at the Wartburg, in 1817,
the students got out of hand, burned the works
of those conservatives, Haller and Kotzebue, and
the Code Napoleon. This youthful folly was
purposely exaggerated throughout Germany,
and was used by the party of autocracy to
frighten the people, and also as a reason for pass-
ing even severer laws against the ebullitions of

70 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

liberty. At a conference at Carlsbad in 1819
the representatives of the states there assembled
passed severe laws against the student societies,
the press, the universities, and the liberal pro-
fessors.

From 1815-1830 the opinions of the more en-
lightened changed. The fear of Napoleon was
gradually forgotten, and the hatred of the abso-
lutism of Prussia and Austria grew.

In 1830 constitutions were demanded and
were guardedly granted in Brunswick, Saxony,
Hanover, and Hesse-Cassel. In 1832 things had
gone so far that at a great student festival the
black, red, and gold flag of the Burschenschaft
was hoisted, toasts were drunk to the sover-
eignty of the people, to the United States of
Germany, and to Europe Republican ! This was
followed by further prosecutions. Prussia con-
demned thirty-nine students to death, but con-
fined them in a fortress. The prison-cell of the
famous Fritz Reuter may be seen in Berlin to-
day. In Hesse, the chief of the liberal party,
Jordan, was condemned to six years in prison;
in Bavaria a journalist was imprisoned for four
years, and other like punishments followed else-
where. It was in 1837, when Queen Victoria
came to the throne, that Hanover was cut off
from the succession, as Hanover could not de-

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 71

scend to a woman. The Duke of Cumberland
became the ruler of Hanover, and England
ceased to hold any territory in Europe.

From 1839-1847 there was comparative quiet
in the political world. The rulers of the various
states succeeded in keeping the liberal profes-
sorial rhetoric too damp to be valuable as an
explosive.

Interwoven with this party in Germany, de-
manding for the people something more of rep-
resentation in the government, was a movement
for the binding together of the various states in
a closer union. In 1842 when the first stone was
laid for the completion of the Cologne Cathe-
dral, at a banquet of the German princes pre-
sided over by the King of Prussia, the King of
Wiirtemberg proposed a toast to "Our common
country!" That toast probably marks the first
tangible proof of the existence of any important
feeling upon the subject of German unity.

At a congress of Germanists at Frankfort, in
1846, professors and students, jurists and his-
torians, talked and discussed the questions of a
German parliament and of national unity more
perhaps than matters of scholarship.

In 1847 Professor Gervinus founded at Heidel-
berg the Deutsche Zeitung, which was to be lib-
eral, national, and for all Germany.

72 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

I should be sorry to give the impression that I
have not given proper value to the work of the
German professor and student in bringing about
a more liberal constitution for the states of Ger-
many. Liebig of Munich, Ranke of Berlin,
Sybel of Bonn, Ewald of Gottingen, Mommsen
in Berlin, Dollinger in Munich, and such men as
Schiemann in Berlin to-day, were and are, not
only scholars, but they have been and are politi-
cal teachers; some of them violently reaction-
ary, if you please, but all of them stirring men
to think.

No such feeling existed then, or exists now,
in Germany, as animated Oxford some fifty
years ago when the greatest Sanscrit scholar
then living was rejected by a vote of that body,
one voter declaring: "I have always voted
against damned intellect, and I trust I always
may!" A state of mind that has not altogether
disappeared in England even now. Indeed I
am not sure, that the most notable feature of
political life in England to-day, is not a growing
revolt against legislation by tired lawyers, and
an increasing demand for common-sense govern-
ing again, even if the governing be done by
those with small respect for "damned intellect."

The third French revolution of 1848 set fire
to all this, not only in Germany but in Austria,

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 73

Hungary, Roumania, and elsewhere. We must
go rapidly through this period of seething and of
political teething. The parliament at Frankfort
with nothing but moral authority discussed and
declaimed, and finally elected Archduke John
of Austria as "administrator" of the empire.
There followed discussions as to whether Aus-
tria should even become a member of the new
confederation. Two parties, the "Little Ger-
manists" and the "Pan Germanists," those in
favor of including, and those opposed to the in-
clusion of Austria, fought one another, with
Prussia leading the one and Austria, with the
prestige of having been head of the former Holy
Roman Empire, the other.

In 1849 Austria withdrew altogether and the
King of Prussia was elected Emperor of Ger-
many, but refused the honor on the ground that
he could not accept the title from the people, but
only from his equals. There followed riots and
uprisings of the people in Prussia, Saxony, Baden,
and elsewhere throughout Germany. The Prus-
sian guards were sent to Dresden to quell the
rioting there and took the city after two days'
fighting. The parliament itself was dispersed
and moved to Stuttgart, but there again they
were dispersed, and the end was a flight of the
liberals to Switzerland, France, and the United

74 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

States. We in America profited by the coming
of such valuable citizens as Carl Schurz and
many others. There were driven from Ger-
many, they and their descendants, many among
our most valuable citizens. The descendant of
one of the worthiest of them, Admiral Osterhaus,
is one of the most respected officers in our navy,
and will one day command it, and we could not
be in safer hands. In 1849 the German Federal
fleet was sold at auction as useless; Austria was
again in the ascendant and German subjects in
Schleswig were handed over to the Danes.

In 1850 both the King of Prussia and the Em-
peror of Austria called congresses, but Prussia
finally gave up hers, and the ancient confedera-
tion as of before 1848 met as a diet at Frankfort
and from 1851-1858 Bismarck was the Prussian
delegate and Austria presided over the delib-
erations.

A factor that made for unity among the
German states was the Zollverein. From 1818-
1853 under the leadership of Prussia the various
states were persuaded to join in equalizing their
tariffs. Between 1834-5 Prijssia, Bavaria, Wiir-
temberg, Saxony, Baden, Hesse-Nassau, Thur-
ingia, and Frankfort agreed upon a common
standard for customs duties, and a few years
later they were joined by Brunswick, Hanover,

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 75

and the Mecklenburgs. German industry and
commerce had their beginnings in these agree-
ments. The hundreds of different customs duties
became so exasperating that even jealous little
governments agreed to conform to simpler laws,
and probably this commercial necessity did more
to bring about the unity of Germany than the
King, or politics, or the army.

With the struggles of the various states to ob-
tain constitutions we cannot deal, nor would it
add to the understanding of the present polit-
ical condition of the German Empire.

Prussia, after riots in Berlin, after promises and
delays from the vacillating King, who one day
orders his own troops out of the capital and his
brother, later William I, to England to appease
the anger of the mob, and parades the streets
with the colors of the citizens in revolt wrapped
about him; and the next day, surly, obstinate,
but ever orating, holds back from his pledges,
finally accepts a constitution which is probably
as little democratic as any in the world.

Of the sixty-five million inhabitants of the
German Empire, Prussia has over forty millions.
The Landtag of Prussia is composed of two
chambers, the first called the Herrenhaus, or
House of Lords, and the second the Abgeord-
netenhaus, or Chamber of Deputies. This up-

7G GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

per house is made up of the princes of the
royal family who are of age; the descendants of
the formerly sovereign families of Hohenzollern-
Hechingen and Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen ; chiefs
of the princely houses recognized by the Con-
gress of Vienna; heads of the territorial nobility
formed by the King; representatives of the uni-
versities; burgomasters of towns with more
than fifty thousand inhabitants, and an un-
limited number of persons nominated by the
King for life or for a limited period. This upper
chamber is a mere drawing-room of the sover-
eign's courtiers, though there may be, and as a
matter of fact there are at the present time, rep-
resentatives even of labor in this chamber, but
in a minority so complete that their actual influ-
ence upon legislation, except in a feeble advisory
capacity, amounts to nothing. In this Herren-
haus, or upper chamber, of Prussia there are at
this writing among the 327 members 3 bankers,
8 representatives of the industrial and merchant
class, and 1 mechanic; 12 in all, or not even four
per cent., to represent the industrial, financial,
commercial, and working classes. Even in the
lower chamber, or Abgeordnetenhaus, there are
only 10 merchants, 19 manufacturers, 7 labor
representatives, and 1 bank director, or 37
members who represent the commercial, manu-

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 77

facturing, and industrial interests in a total
membership of 443.

In the other states of Germany much the
same conditions exist. In Bavaria, in the upper
house, or Kammer der Reichsrdte, there is no
representative, and in the lower house of 163
members only 29 representatives of the indus-
trial world.

In Saxony, the most socialistic state in Ger-
many, the upper chamber with 49 members has
5 industrials; the lower chamber with 82 mem-
bers has 40 representatives of commercial, indus-
trial, and financial affairs.

In Wiirtemberg, in the upper chamber writh
51 members there are 3 industrials; and in the
second chamber with 63 members there are 17
industrials.

In Baden, of the 37 members of the upper
house there are 6 industrials; of the 73 mem-
bers of the lower house there are 23 representa-
tives of commerce and industry.

This condition of political inequality is the
result of the maintenance of the old political
divisions, despite the fact that in the last thirty
years the whole complexion of the country has
changed radically, due to the rapid increase of
the city populations representing the industrial
and commercial progress of a nation that is now

78 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the rival of both the United States and Great
Britain. In more than one instance a town with
over 300,000 inhabitants will be represented in
the legislature in the same proportion as a coun-
try population of 30,000. Stettin, for example,
with a population of 245,000, which is a seventh
of the total population of Pomerania, has only
6 of the 89 provincial representatives. Further,
the three-class system of voting in Prussia and
in the German cities, is a unique arrangement
for giving men the suffrage without either power
or privilege. According to this system every
male inhabitant of Prussia aged twenty-five is
entitled to vote in the election of members of
the lower house. The voters, however, are di-
vided into three classes. This division is made
by taking the total amount of the state taxes
paid in each electoral district and dividing it
into three equal amounts. The first third is
paid by the highest tax-payers ; the second third
by the next highest tax-payers, and the last
third by the rest. The first class consists of a
comparatively few wealthy people; it may even
happen that a single individual pays a third of
the taxes in a given district. These three classes
then elect the members of an electoral college,
who then elect the member of the house. In
Prussia it may be said roughly that 260,000

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 79

wealthy tax-payers elect one-third; 870,000 tax-
payers elect one-third, and the other 6,500,000
voters elect one-third of the members of the
electoral college, with the consequence that the
6,500,000 are not represented at all in the lower
house of Prussia. In order to make this three-
class system of voting quite clear, let us take the
case of a city where the same principle may be
seen at work on a smaller scale. In 1910, in
the city of Berlin, there were:

931 voters of the first class paying 27,914,593

marks of the total tax.
32,131 voters of the second class paying 27,908,-

776 marks of the total tax.
357,345 voters of the third class paying 16,165,-

501 marks of the total tax.

Roughly the voters in the first class each paid
$7,500; those in the second class $218; those
in the third class $11. The 931 voters elected
one-third, 32,131 voters elected one-third, and
357,345 elected one-third of the town council-
lors. In this same year in Berlin there were:

521 persons with incomes between $25,000 and

$62,500.
139 persons with incomes between $62,500 and

$125,000.

80 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

22 persons with incomes between $125,000 and
$187,500.

19 persons with incomes between $187,000 and
$250,000.

19 persons with incomes of $250,000 or more.
Or 720 persons in Berlin in 1912 with in-
comes of over $25,000 a year, and they are
practically the governors of the city.

As a result of these divisions according to taxes
paid, of the 144 town councillors elected, only 38
were Social-Democrats, though Berlin is over-
whelmingly Social-Democratic, and consequently
the affairs of this city of more than 2,000,000
inhabitants are in the hands of 33,062 persons
who elect two-thirds of the town councillors.

In the city of Diisseldorf there were, exclud-
ing the suburbs, 62,443 voters at the election for
town councillors in 1910. The first class was
composed of 797 voters paying from 1,940 to
264,252 marks of taxes; 6,645 voters paying
from 222 to 1,939 marks; and 55,001 voters pay-
ing 221 marks or less. These 7,442 voters of the
first and second classes were in complete control
of the city government by a clear majority of
two-thirds.

It is this three-class system of voting that
makes Prussia, and the Prussian cities as well,
impregnable against any assault from the demo-

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 81

cratically inclined. In addition to this system,
the old electoral divisions of forty years ago
remain unchanged, and consequently the agri-
cultural east of Prussia, including east and west
Prussia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Posen, and
Silesia, with their large landholders, return more
members to the Prussian lower house than the
much greater population of western industrial
Prussia, which includes Sachsen, Hanover, West-
phalia, Schleswig-Holstein, Hohenzollern, Hes-
sen-Nassau, and the Rhine. Further, the execu-
tive government of Prussia is conducted by a
ministry of state, the members of which are
appointed by the King, and hold office at his
pleasure, without control from the Landtag.

How little the people succeeded in extorting
from King Frederick William IV in the way
of a constitution may be gathered from this
glimpse of the present political conditions of
Prussia.

The local government of Prussia is practically
as centralized in a few hands as the executive
government of the state itself. The largest areas
are the provinces, whose chiefs or presidents also
are appointed by the sovereign, and who repre-
sent the central government. There are twelve
such provinces in Prussia, ranging in size from
the Rhineland and Brandenburg, with 7,120,519

82 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

and 4,093,007 inhabitants respectively, to Schles-
wig-Holstein, with 1,619,673.

Each province is divided into two or more
government districts, of which there are thirty-
five in all. At the head of each of these districts
is the district president, also appointed by the
crown.

In addition there is the Kreis, or Circle, of
which there are some 490, with populations vary-
ing from 20,000 to 801,000. These circles are,
for all practical purposes, governed by the Land-
rath, who is appointed for life by the crown,
and who is so fully recognized as the agent of the
central government and not as the servant of
the locality in which he rules, that on one oc-
casion several Landrathe were summarily dis-
missed for voting against the government and in
conformity to the wishes of the inhabitants of
the circle in which they lived! Though the
Landrath is nominated by the circle assembly for
appointment by the crown, he can be dismissed
by his superiors of the central hierarchy. As his
promotion, and his career in fact, is dependent
upon these superiors, he naturally sides with the
central government in all cases of dispute or
friction.

Further, and this is important, all officials in
Germany are legally privileged persons. All

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 83

disputes between individuals and public author-
ities in Germany are decided by tribunals quite
distinct from the ordinary courts. These courts
are specially constituted, and they aim at pro-
tecting the officials from any personal responsi-
bility for acts done by them in their official
capacity.

In America, and I presume in Great Britain
also, any disputes between public authorities and
private individuals are settled in the ordinary
courts of justice, under the rules of the ordinary
law of the land. This super-common-law posi-
tion of the Prussian official is a fatal incentive to
the aggravating exaggeration of his importance,
and to the indifference of his behavior to the
private citizen. There may be officials who are
uninfluenced by this sheltered position, indeed I
know personally many who are, but there is
equally no doubt that many succumb to arro-
gance and lethargy as a consequence.

How thoroughly Prussia is covered by a net-
work of officialdom, is further discovered when
it is known, that the entire area of Prussia is
some twenty thousand square miles less than
that of the State of California. The whole Prus-
sian doctrine of local self-government, too, is
entirely different from ours. Their idea is that
self-government is the performance by locally

84 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

elected bodies of the will of the state, not neces-
sarily of the locality which elects them. Local
authorities, whether elected or not, are supposed
to be primarily the agents of the state, and only
secondarily the agents of the particular locality
they serve. In Prussia, all provincial and circle
assemblies and communal councils, may be dis-
solved by royal decree, hence even these elected
assemblies may only serve their constituencies
at the will and pleasure of the central authority.
It would avail little to go into minute details
in describing the government of Prussia; this
slight sketch of the electoral system, and of the
centralization of the government, suffices to show
two things that it is particularly my purpose to
make clear. One is the preponderating influ-
ence of Prussia in the empire, due to the mainte-
nance of power in a single person ; and the other
is to show how ridiculously futile it is to refer
to Prussia as an example of the success of social
legislation. The state ownership of railroads,
old-age pensions, accident and sickness insur-
ance, and the like are one thing in Prussia which
is a close corporation, and quite another in any
community or country under democratic govern-
ment. What takes place in Prussia would cer-
tainly not take place in America or in England.
To draw inferences from a state governed as is

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 85

Prussia, for application to such democratic com-
munities as America or England, is as valuable
as to argue from the habits of birds, that such
and such a treatment would succeed with fish.

It was with this autocratic Prussia at his back,
that the greatest man Germany has produced,
succeeded in bringing about German unity and
the foundation of the German Empire. As the
representative of Prussia in the Diet, as her
ambassador to Russia, and to France, he gained
the insight into the European situation which
led him to hold as his political creed, that only
by blood and iron, and not by declamations and
resolutions, could Germany be united.

"During the time I was in office," he writes,
"I advised three wars, the Danish, the Bohemian,
and the French ; but every time I have first made
clear to myself whether the war, if successful,
would bring a prize of victory worth the sacri-
fices which every war requires, and which now
are so much greater than in the last century.
... I have never looked at international quar-
rels which can only be settled by a national war
from the point of view of the Gottingen student
code; . . . but I have always considered simply
their reaction on the claim of the German peo-
ple, in equality with the other great states and
powers of Europe, to lead an autonomous polit-

86 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ical life, so far as is possible on the basis of our
peculiar national capacity." In 1863 he writes
to von der Goltz, then German ambassador in
Paris: "The question is whether we are a great
power or a state in the German federation,
and whether we are conformably to the former
quality to be governed by a monarch, or, as in
the latter case would be at any rate admissible,
by professors, district judges, and the gossips of
the small towns. The pursuit of the phantom
of popularity in Germany which we have been
carrying on for the last forty years has cost us
our position in Germany and in Europe; and we
shall not win this back again by allowing our-
selves to be carried away by the stream in the
persuasion that we are directing its course, but
only by standing firmly on our legs and being,
first of allf a great power and a German federal
state afterward"

After Napoleon and the interminable elocu-
tionary squabbles of the German states, first,
for constitutional rights, and, second, for some
basis of unity among themselves, which were
the two main streams of political activity, there
were three main steps in the formation of the
now existing empire: first, in 1866, the North
German Confederation under the presidency of
Prussia and excluding Austria; second, the con-

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 87

elusion of treaties, 1866-1867, between the North
German Confederation and the south German
states; third, the formal union of the north and
south German states as an empire in 1871.

Although the Holy Roman Empire ceased to
exist legally in 1806, it is to be remembered that
as a fiction weighing still upon the imagination
of German politicians, it did not wholly disap-
pear until the war between Prussia and Austria,
for then Prussia fought not only Austria but
Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, Saxony, Hanover, Nas-
sau, Baden, and the two Hesse states, and at
Sadowa in Bohemia the war was settled by the
defeat of the Austrians before they could be
joined by these allies, who were disposed of in
detail. Frankfort was so harshly treated that
the mayor hanged himself, and the Prussianizing
of Hanover has never been entirely forgiven,
and the claimants to the throne in exile are still
the centre of a political party antagonistic to
Prussia. The taking over of north Schleswig,
of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and Nassau by Prus-
sia after the Austrian war was according to the
rough arbitrament of conquest. "Our right,"
replied Bismarck to the just criticism of this
spoliation, "is the right of the German nation
to exist, to breathe, to be united; it is the
right and the duty of Prussia to give the Ger-

88 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

man nation the foundation necessary for its
existence." In taking Alsace-Lorraine from
France, Bismarck insisted that this was a neces-
sary barrier against France and that Germany's
possession of Metz and Strassburg were necessi-
ties of the situation also.

The history of German unity is the biography
of Bismarck. Otto Eduard Leopold von Bis-
marck was born in Schonhausen, in that Mark of
Brandenburg which was the cradle of the Prus-
sian monarchy, on the first of April, 1815. His
grandfather fought at Rossbach under the great
Frederick. He was confirmed in Berlin in 1831
by the famous pastor and theologian, Schleier-
macher, and maintained all his life that without
his belief in God he would have found no reason
for his patriotism or for any serious work in life.

He matriculated as a student of law and
science at Gottingen in May, 1832, and later
at Berlin in 1834. He was a tall, large-limbed,
blue-eyed young giant, the boldest rider, the
best swordsman, and the heartiest drinker of his
day. He is still looked upon in Germany as the
typical hero of corps student life, and his pipe,
or his Schlager, or his cap, or his Kneipe jacket
is preserved as the relic of a saint. His was not
the tepid virtue born of lack of vitality. One
has but to remember Augustine and Origen and

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 89

Ignatius Loyola, to recall the fact that the
preachers of salvation, the best of them, have
generally had themselves to tame before they
mastered the world.

This youth Bismarck must have had some
vigorous battles with Bismarck before he mar-
ried Johanna Friederika Charlotte Dorothea
Eleanore von Puttkamer, July 28, 1847, much
against the wishes of her parents, and settled
down to his life-work. As was said of John Pym,
"he thought it part of a man's religion to see that
his country was well governed," and his country
became his passion. Like most men of intense
feeling, he loved few people and loyally hated
many. More men feared and envied him than
liked him. His wife, his sister, his king, a
student friend, Keyserling, and the American,
Motley, shared with his country his affection.
Germany might well take it to heart that it was
Motley the American who was of all men dearest
to her giant creator. The same type of American
would serve her better to-day than any other,
did she only know it! In 1849 he was elected
to the Prussian Chamber. In 1852 a whiff of
the old dare-devil got loose, and he fought a duel
with Freiherr von Vincke.

In 1852 he is sent on his first responsible mis-
sion to Vienna, and found there the traditions

90 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

of the Metternich diplomacy still ruling. What
Napoleon had said of Metternich he no doubt
remembered: "II ment trop. II faut mentir
quelquefois, mais mentir tout le temps c'est
trop!" for he adopted quite the opposite policy
in his own diplomatic dealings.

In 1855 he became a member of the upper
house of Prussia, and in 1859 is sent as minister
to St. Petersburg. In May, 1862, he is sent as
minister to Paris, and learns to know, and not
greatly to admire, the third Napoleon and his
court.

On the 23d of September, 1862, he is appointed
Staats-minister, and a week later thunders out
his famous blood-and-iron speech. On October
the 8th, 1862, he is definitely named Minister
President and Minister for Foreign Affairs.

William I had succeeded his brother as king.
He was a soldier and a believer in the army, and
wished to spend more on it, and to lengthen the
time of service with the colors to three years.
The legislature opposed these measures. A min-
ister was needed who could bully the legisla-
ture, and Bismarck was chosen for the task. He
spent the necessary money despite the legisla-
tive opposition, pleading that a legislature that
refused to vote necessary supplies had ipso facto
laid down its proper functions, and the king

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 91

must take over the responsibilities of govern-
ment that they declined to exercise. The cav-
alry boots were beginning to trample their way
to Paris, and to the crowning of an emperor.

In February, 1864, Prussia and Austria to-
gether declare war upon Denmark over the
Schleswig-Holstein succession. They agree to
govern the spoils between them, but fall out over
the question of their respective jurisdiction, and
the Prussian army being ready, and the Moltke
plan of campaign worked out, war is declared,
and in seven weeks the Treaty of Prague is
signed, in 1866, by which Austria gives up all her
rights in Schleswig-Holstein, and abandons her
claim to take part in the reorganization of Ger-
many. The North German Confederation is
formed to include all lands north of the Main;
Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, the Hesse states,
Nassau, and Frankfurt-am-Main become part of
Prussia; and the south German states agree to
remain neutral, but allies of Prussia in war.

On the llth of March, 1867, a month after the
formation of the Confederation of the North
German States, Bismarck proclaims with pride
in the new Reichstag: "Setzen wir Deutschland,
so zu sagen, in den Sattel ! Reiten wird es schon
konnen!"

October 13th, 1868, Leopold von Sigmaringen,

92 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

a German prince of the House of Hohenzollern,
is named for the first time as a candidate for
the Spanish throne. Nobody in Germany, or
anywhere else, was much more interested in this
candidature, than we are now interested in the
woman's suffrage or the prohibition candidate
at home. But France had looked on with jeal-
ous eyes at the vigorous growth and martial suc-
cesses of Prussia. It was thought well to attack
her and humiliate her before she became stronger.
All France was convinced, too, that the southern
German states would revert to their old love in
case of actual war, and side with the nephew of
their former friend, the great Napoleon. The
French ambassador is instructed to force the
pace. Not only must the Prussian King disavow
all intention to support the candidacy of the Ger-
man prince, but he must be asked to humiliate
himself by binding himself never in the future
to push such claims.

William I is at Ems, and Benedetti, the French
ambassador, reluctantly presses the insulting
demand of his country upon the royal gentle-
man as he is walking. The King declines to see
Benedetti again, and telegraphs to Bismarck the
gist of the interview. Lord Acton writes: "He
[Bismarck] drew his long pencil and altered the
text, showing only that Benedetti had presented

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 93

an offensive demand, and that the King had re-
fused to see him. That there might be no mis-
take he made this official by sending it to all the
embassies and legations. Moltke exclaimed,
' You have converted surrender into defiance.
The altered telegram was also sent to the Nord-
deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and to officials. It
is not perhaps generally known that General
Lebrun went to Vienna in June, 1870, to discuss
an alliance with Austria for an attack on the
North German Confederation in the following
spring. Bismarck knew this. This was on the
13th of July, 1870; on the 16th the order was
given to mobilize the army, on the 31st followed
the proclamation of the King to his people:
"Zur Errettung des Vaterlandes." On Au-
gust the 2d, King William took command of the
German armies, and on September 1st, Napo-
leon handed over his sword, and on January
the 18th, 1871, King William of Prussia was
proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of the
Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles.

"It sounds so lovely what our fathers did,
And what we do is, as it was to them,
Toilsome and incomplete."

It is easy to forget in such a rapid survey of
events that Bismarck could have had any seri-

94 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ous opposition to face as he tramped through
those eight years, from 1862 to 1870, with a king-
dom on his back. It is easy to forget that King
William himself wished to abdicate in those dark
hours, when his people refused him their confi-
dence, and called a halt upon his endeavors to
strengthen the absolutely essential instrument
for Prussia's development, the army; it is easy
to forget that even the silent and seemingly im-
perturbable Moltke hesitated and wavered a
little at the audacity of his comrade; it is easy
to forget the conspiracy of opposition of the
three women of the court, the Crown Princess,
Frau von Blumenthal, and Frau von Gottberg,
all of English birth, and all using needles against
this man accustomed to the Schlager and the
sWord; it is easy to forget that even Queen Vic-
toria's influence was used against him to pre-
vent the reaping of the justifiable fruits of vic-
tory in 1871; it is easy to forget what a bold
throw it was to go to war with Austria, and to
array Prussia against the very German states
she must later bind to herself; it is easy to for-
get the dour patience of this irascible giant with
the petulant and often petty legislature with
which he had to deal.

I cannot understand how any German can
criticise Bismarck, but there are official prigs

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 95

who do; little decorated bureaucrats who live
their lives out poring over papers, with an eye
out for a "von" before their bourgeois names,
and as void of audacity as a sheep; men who
creep up the stairway to promotion and recogni-
tion, clinging with cautious grip to the banis-
ters. One sees them, their coats covered with
the ceramic insignia of their placid servitude,
decorations tossed to them by the careless hand
of a master who is satisfied if they but sign his
decrees, with the i's properly dotted, and the t's
unexceptionably crossed. They are the crumply
officials who melted into defencelessness and
moral decrepitude after Frederick the Great,
and again at the glance of Napoleon, and who
owe the little stiffness they have to the fact that
Bismarck lived. It is one of the things a
full-blooded man is least able to bear in Ger-
many, to hear the querulous questioning of the
great deeds of this man, whose boot-legs were
stiff er than the backbones of those who decry
him.

What a splendid fellow he was!

"Give me the spirit that, on this life's rough

sea,

Loves to have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble and his masts do

crack,

96 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water and her keel ploughs air.
There is no danger to a man that knows
What life and death is — there's not any law
Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
That he should stoop to any other law."

He was no worshipper of that flimsy culture
which is, and has been for a hundred years, an
obsession of the German. He knew, none knew
better indeed, that the choicest knowledge is
only mitigated ignorance. He surprised Dis-
raeli with his mastery of English, and Napoleon
with his fluency in French, both of which he had
learned from his Huguenot professors. The pop-
ular man, the popular book, the popular music,
picture, or play, were none of them a golden
calf to him. He mastered what he needed for
his work, and pretended to no enthusiasm for
intellectualism as such. He knew that there
is no real culture without character, and that
the mere aptitude for knowing and doing with-
out character is merely the simian cleverness
that often dazzles but never does anything of
importance. "Culture!" writes Henry Morley,
"the aim of culture is to bring forth in their due
season the fruits of the earth." Any learning,
any accomplishments, that do not serve a man
to bring forth the fruits of the earth in their due

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 97

season are merely mental gimcracks, flimsy toys,
to admire perhaps, to play with, and to be thrown
aside as useless when duty makes its sovereign
demands.

Much as Germany has done for the develop-
ment of the intellectual life of the world, she
has suffered not a little from the superficial be-
lief still widely held that instruction, that learn-
ing, are culture. Their Great Elector, their
Frederick the Great, and their Bismarck, should
have taught them the contrary by now.

The newly crowned German Emperor left
Versailles on March 7th for Berlin, and on March
21st the first Diet of the new empire was
opened, and began the task of adapting the con-
stitution to the altered circumstances of the new
empire.

The German Empire now consists of four
kingdoms: Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Wiir-
temberg; .of six grand duchies: Baden, Hesse-
Darmstadt, Saxe-Weimar, Oldenburg, Meck-
lenburg-Strelitz, and Mecklenburg-Schwerin ; of
five duchies: Saxe-Meinigen, Saxe-Altenburg
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Brunswick, and Anhalt; of
seven principalities: Schwartzburg-Sondershau-
sen, Schwartzburg-Rudolstadt, Waldeck, Reuss
(older line), Reuss (younger line), Lippe, and
Schaumburg-Lippe ; of three free towns: Ham-

98 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

burg, Bremen, and Liibeck; and of one imperial
province: Alsace Lorraine.

The new empire is in a sense a continuation of
the North German Confederation. There are
25 states, the largest, Prussia, with a population
of over 40,000,000; the smallest, Schaumburg-
Lippe, with a population of a little more than
46,000 and an area of 131 square miles.

The central or federal authority controls the
army, navy, foreign relations, railways, main
roads, canals, post and telegraph, coinage,
weights and measures, copyrights, patents, and
legislation over nearly the whole field of civil
and criminal law, regulation of press and associ-
ations, imperial finance and customs tariffs,
which are now the same throughout Germany.

Bavaria still manages her own railways, and
Saxony and Wiirtemberg have certain privileges
and exemptions. Administration is still almost
entirely in the hands of the separate states.

The law is imperial, but the judges are ap-
pointed by the states, and are under its authority.
The supreme court of appeal (Reichsgericht)
sits at Leipsic.

The head of the executive government is the
Emperor, no longer elective but hereditary, and
attached to the office of the King of Prussia.
Outside of Prussia he has little power in civil

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 99

matters and no veto on legislation. He is com-
mander-in-chief of the army and of the navy;
foreign affairs are in his hands, and in the
federal council, or Bundesrath, he exercises a
mighty influence due to Prussia's preponderating
influence and voting power. There is no cabinet,
just as there is no cabinet in Great Britain, that
modern institution being merely a legislative
fiction down to this day. The chancellor of
the empire, who is also prime minister of Prus-
sia, with several secretaries of state, is chief
minister for all imperial affairs. The chancellor
presides in the Bundesrath, and has the right to
speak in the Reichstag, and frequently does
speak there. Indeed, all his more important pro-
nouncements are made there. The chancellor
is responsible to the Emperor alone, by whom he
is nominated, and not to the representatives of
the people.

The federal council, or Bundesrath, or upper
chamber of the empire, consists of delegates ap-
pointed by and representing the rulers of the
various states. There are 58 members. Prussia
has 17, Bavaria 6, Saxony 4, Wurtemberg 4,
Baden 3, Hessen 3, Mecklenburg-Schwerin 2,
Brunswick 2, and each of the other states 1.

This body meets in Berlin, sits in secret, and
the delegates have no discretion, but vote as

100 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

directed by their state governments. Here it is
that Prussia, and through Prussia the Emperor,
dominates. This Bundesrath is the most power-
ful upper chamber in the world. With respect
to all laws concerning the army and navy, and
taxation for imperial purposes, the vote of Prus-
sia shall decide disputes, if such vote be cast in
favor of maintaining existing arrangements. In
other words, Prussia is armed in the Bundesrath
with a conservative veto! In declaring war and
making treaties, the consent of the Bundesrath
is required. The following articles also give
the Bundesrath a very complete control of the
Reichstag. Article 7 reads: "The Bundesrath
shall take action upon (1) the measures to be
proposed to the Reichstag and the resolutions
passed by the same; (2) the general administra-
tive provisions and arrangements necessary for
the execution of the imperial laws, so far as no
other provision is made by law; (3) the defects
which may be discovered in the execution of the
imperial laws or of the provisions and arrange-
ments heretofore mentioned."

The Reichstag, or lower house, is elected by
universal suffrage in electoral districts which
were originally equal, but as we have noted are
far from equal now. This house has three hun-
dred and ninety-seven members, of whom two

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 101

hundred and thirty-five are from Prussia. It
sits for five years, but may be dissolved by the
Bundesrath with the consent of the Emperor.
All members of the Bundesrath, as well as the
chancellor, may speak in the Reichstag. Nor
the chancellor, nor any other executive officer,
is responsible to the Reichstag, nor can be re-
moved by its vote, and the ministers of the Em-
peror are seldom or never chosen from this body.
This Reichstag is really only nominally a portion
of the governing body. It has the right to refuse
to pass a bill presented by the government, but
if it does so it may be summarily dismissed, as
has happened several times, and another election
usually provides a more amenable body.

Of the various political parties in the Reichs-
tag we have written elsewhere. It is, perhaps,
fair to say that such powerful parties as the So-
cialists and the Centrum must be reckoned with
by the chancellor. He cannot actually trample
upon them, nor can he disregard wholly their
wishes in framing and in carrying through legis-
lation. It would be going much too far in char-
acterizing the weakness of the Reichstag to leave
that impression upon the reader. None the less
it remains true that it is the executive who rules
and has the whip-hand, and who in a grave crisis
can override the representatives of the people

102 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

assembled in the Reichstag, and on more than
one occasion this has been done.

It seems highly unnecessary to announce after
this description of the imperial constitution that
there is no such thing in Germany as democratic
or representative government. But this fact
cannot be proclaimed too often since in other
countries it is continually assumed that this
is the case. All sorts of deductions are made,
all sorts of illustrations used, all sorts of legis-
lative and social lessons taught from the example
of Germany, without the smallest knowledge
apparently on the part of those who make them,
that Germany to-day is no more democratic than
was Turkey twenty years ago.

What can be done and what is done in Ger-
many has no possible bearing upon what can be
done in America or in England. All analogies
are false, all illustrations futile, all examples
valueless, for the one reason that the empire
of Germany is governed by one man, who de-
claims his independence of the people and admits
his responsibility to God alone. This may be
either a good or a bad thing. Certainly in many
matters of economical and comfortable govern-
ment for the people — witness more particularly
the development and wise control of their mu-
nicipalities— they are a century ahead of us, but

FREDERICK TO BISMARCK 103

this is not the question under discussion. The
point is, that a compact nation under strict
centralized control, served by a trained horde
of officials with no wish for a change, and
backed by a standing army of over seven hun-
dred thousand men, who are not only a defence
against the foreigner, but a powerful police
against internal revolution, cannot serve as a
model in either its successes or failures for a
democratic country like ours. Where in Ger-
many legislative schemes succeed easily when
this huge bureaucratic machine is behind them,
they would fail ignominiously in a country lack-
ing this machinery, and lacking these pitia-
bly tame people accustomed to submission.

In France, for example, that thrifty and indi-
vidualistic folk made a complete failure of the at-
tempt to foist contributory old-age pensions upon
them, and I doubt whether such sumptuary leg-
islation can succeed with us. That, however,
is neither here nor there. The gist of the mat-
ter is, that because such things succeed in Ger-
many, gives not the slightest reason for sup-
posing that they will succeed with us. If this
outline of their history and this sketch of their
government have done nothing else, it must have
made this clear. It may also help to show how
vapid is the talk about what the German people

104 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

will or will not do; whether they will or will not
have war, for example. We shall have war
when the German Kaiser touches a button and
gives an order, and the German people will have
no more to say in the matter than you and I.

Ill

THE INDISCREET

THE casual observer of life in England
would find himself forced to write of
sport, even as in India he would write
of caste, as in America he would note the un-
due emphasis laid upon politics. In Germany,
wherever he turns, whether it be to look at the
army, to inquire about the navy, to study the
constitution, or to disentangle the web of
present-day political strife; to read the figures
of commercial and industrial progress, or the
results of social legislation; to look on at the
Germans at play during their yachting week at
Kiel, or their rowing contests at Frankfort, he
finds himself face to face with the Emperor.

The student visits Berlin, or Potsdam, or
Wilhelmshohe ; or with a long stride finds him-
self on the docks at Hamburg or Bremen, or
beside the Kiel Canal, or in Kiel harbor facing
a fleet of war-ships; or he lifts his eyes into the
air to see a dirigible balloon returning from a
voyage of two hundred and fifty miles toward

105

106 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

London over the North Sea, and the Emperor
is there. Is it the palace hidden in its shrub-
bery in the country ; is it the clean, broad streets
and decorations of the capital; is it a discussion
of domestic politics, or a question of foreign pol-
itics, the Emperor's hand is there. His opinion,
his influence, what he has said or has not said,
are inextricably interwoven with the woof and
wreb of German life.

We may like him or dislike him, approve or
disapprove, rejoice in autocracy or abominate it,
admire the far-reaching discipline, or regret the
iron mould in which much of German life is en-
cased, but for the moment all this is beside the
mark. Here is a man who in a quarter of a
century has so grown into the life of a nation,
the most powerful on the continent, and one of
the three most powerful in the world, that when
you touch it anywhere you touch him, and when
you think of it from any angle of thought, or
describe it from any point of view, you find
yourself including him.

Personally, I should have been glad to leave
this chapter unwritten. I have no taste for the
discussion and analysis of living persons, even
when they are of such historic and social im-
portance, and of such magnitude, that I am thus
given the proverbial license of the cat. But to

THE INDISCREET 107

write about Germany without writing about the
Emperor is as impossible as to jump away from
one's own shadow. When the sun is behind
any phase or department of German life, the
shadow cast is that of Germany's Emperor.

This is not said because it is pleasing to whom-
soever it may be, for in Germany, and in much
of the world outside Germany, this situation is
looked upon as unfavorable, and even deplor-
able; and certainly no American can look upon
it with equanimity, for it is of the essence of
his Americanism to distrust it. It is, however,
so much a fact that to neglect a discussion of
this personality would be to leave even so slight
a sketch of Germany as this, hopelessly lop-sided.
He so pervades German life that to write of the
Germany of the last twenty-five years without
attempting to describe William the Second,
German Emperor, would be to leave every
question, institution, and problem of the coun-
try without its master-key.

In other chapters dealing more particularly
with the political development of Germany, and
with the salient characteristics, mental and
moral, of the people, we shall see how it has
come about, that one man can thus impregnate
a whole nation of sixty-five millions with his
own aims and ambitions, to such an extent, that

they may be said, so to speak, to live their
political, social, martial, religious, and even
their industrial, life in him. It is a phenomenon
of personality that exists nowhere else in the
world to-day, and on so large a scale and among
so enlightened a people, perhaps never before in
history.

Nothing has made scientific accuracy in deal-
ing with the most interesting and most important
factors in the world, so utterly inaccurate and
misleading, as those infallibly accurate and im-
personal agents, electricity and the sun. If one
were to judge a man by his photographs, and the
gossip of the press, one would be sure to know
nothing more valuable about him than that his
mustache is brushed up, and that his brows are
permanently lowering. Personality is so evasive
that one may count upon it that when a machine
says "There it is!" then there it is not! You
will have everything that is patent and nothing
that is pertinent.

We are forever talking and writing about the
smallness of the world, of how much better we
know one another, and of how much more we
should love one another, now that we flash
photographs and messages to and fro, at a speed
of leagues a second. Nothing could be more
futile and foolish. These things have empha-

THE INDISCREET 109

sized our differences, they have done nothing
to realize our likeness to one another. We are
as far from one another as in the days, late in
the tenth century, when they complained in
England that men learned fierceness from the
Saxon of Germany, effeminacy from the Flem-
ing, and drunkenness from the Dane.

As probably the outstanding figure and best-
known, superficially known, man in the world,
the German Emperor has escaped the notice of
very few people who notice anything. His like-
ness is everywhere, and gossip about him is on
every tongue. He is as familiar to the Ameri-
can as Roosevelt, to the Englishman as Lloyd-
George, to the Frenchman as Dreyfus, to the
Russian as his Czar, and to the Chinese and
Japanese as their most prominent political figure.
And yet I should say that he is comparatively
little known, either externally or internally, as
he is.

It is perhaps the fate of those of most influ-
ence to be misunderstood. Of this, I fancy,
the Emperor does not complain. Indeed, those
feeble folk who complain of being misunder-
stood, ought to console themselves with the
thought that practically all our imperishable
monuments, are erected to the glory of those
whom we condemned and criticised; starved

110 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

and stoned; burned and crucified, when we had
them with us.

William II, German Emperor and King of
Prussia, was born January 27, 1859, and be-
came German Emperor June 15, 1888. He is,
therefore, in the prime of life, and looks it. His
complexion and eyes are as clear as those of an
athlete, and his eyes, and his movements, and
his talk are vibrating w7ith energy. He stands,
I should guess, about five feet eight or nine,
has the figure and activity of an athletic youth
of thirty, and in his hours of friendliness is as
careless in speech, as unaffected in manner, as
lacking in any suspicion of self-consciousness, or
of any desire to impress you with his importance,
as the simplest gentleman in the land.

Alas, how often this courageous and gentle-
manly attitude has been taken advantage of! I
have headed this chapter The Indiscreet, and I
propose to examine these so-called indiscretions
in some detail, but for the moment I must ask:
Is there any excuse for, or any social punish-
ment too severe for, the man who, introduced
into a gentleman's house in the guise of a gen-
tleman, often by his own ambassador, leaves it,
to blab every detail of the conversation of his
host, with the gesticulations and exclamation
points added by himself? To add a little to his

THE INDISCREET 111

own importance, he will steal out with the con-
versational forks and spoons in his pockets, and
rush to a newspaper office to tell the world that
he has kept his soiled napkin as a souvenir.
The only indiscretion in such a case is wiien the
host, or his advisers, or gentlemen anywhere,
heed the lunatic laughter of such a social
jackal.

To count one's words, to tie up one's phrases
in caution, to dip each sentence in a diplomatic
antiseptic, in the company of those to whom
one has conceded hospitality, what a feeble
policy! Better be brayed to the world every
day as indiscreet than that!

It is a fine quality in a man to be in love with
his job. Even though you have little sympathy
with Savonarola's fierceness or Wesley's hard-
ness, they were burning up all the time with
their allegiance to their ideals of salvation.
They served their Lord as lovers. Many men,
even kings and princes and other potentates,
give the impression that they would enjoy a
holiday from their task. They seem to be
harnessed to their duties rather than possessed
by them; they appear like disillusioned hus-
bands rather than as radiant lovers.

The German Emperor is not of that class.
He loves his job. In his first proclamation to

GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

his people he declared that he had taken over
the government "in the presence of the King of
kings, promising God to be a just and merciful
prince, cultivating piety and the fear of God."
He has proclaimed himself to be, as did Frederick
the Great and his grandfather before him, the
servant of his people. Certainly no one in the
German Empire works harder, and what is far
more difficult and far more self-denying, no one
keeps himself fitter for his duties than he. He
eats no red meat, drinks almost no alcohol,
smokes very little, takes a very light meal at
night, goes to bed early and gets up early. He
rides, walks, shoots, plays tennis, and is as much
in the open air as his duties permit.

It is not easy for the American to put side by
side the attitudes of a man, who is the auto-
cratic master and at the same time declares
himself to be the first servant of his people.
Perhaps if it is phrased differently it will not
seem so contradictory. What this Emperor
means, and what all princes who have believed
in their right to rule meant, was not that they
were the servants of their people, but the ser-
vants of their own obligations to their people,
and of the duties that followed therefrom. If
in addition to this the claim is made by the sov-
ereign, that his right to rule is of divine origin,

THE INDISCREET 113

then his service to his obligations becomes of
the highest and most sacred importance.

We should not allow our democratic prejudices
to stifle our understanding in such matters. We
are trying to get clearly in perspective a ruler,
who claims to rule in obedience to no mandates
from the people, but in obedience to God. We
could not be ruled by such a one in America;
and in England such a ruler would be deemed
unconstitutional. It is elementary, but neces-
sary to repeat, that we are writing of Germany
and the Germans, and of their history, tradi-
tions, and political methods. We are making no
defence of either the German Emperor or the
German people; neither are we occupying an
American pulpit to preach to them the superi-
ority of other methods than their own. My sole
task is to make clear the German situation, and
not by any means to set up my own or my coun-
trymen's standards for their adoption. I am
not searching for that paltry and ephemeral
profit that comes from finding opportunities to
laugh or to sneer. I am seeking for the German
successes, and they are many, and for the reasons
for them, and for the lessons that we may learn
from them. Any other aim in writing of another
people is ignoble.

This attitude of the ruler will be as incom-

114 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

prehensible to the democratic citizen as al-
chemy, but, in order to draw anything like
true inferences or useful deductions, in order to
understand the situation and to get a true like-
ness of the ruler, one must take this utterly un-
familiar and to us incomprehensible claim into
consideration, and acknowledge its existence
whether we admit the claim as justifiable or not.
The relation of such a ruler to his people is like
that of a Catholic bishop to his flock. The
contract is not one made with hands, but is an
inalienable right on the one hand, and an undis-
severable tie upon the other. Bismarck wrote
on this subject: "Fur mich sind die Worte, * von
Gottes Gnaden,' welche christliche Herrscher
ihrem Namen beifiigen, kein leerer Schall, son-
dern ich sehe darin das Bekenntniss, dass die
Fiirsten das Scepter was ihnen Gott verliehen
hat, nur nach Gottes Willen auf Erden fiihren
wollen."

On several occasions the German Emperor
has made it unmistakably clear that this is his
view of the origin and sanctity of his responsi-
bilities. "If we have been able to accomplish
what has been accomplished, it is due above all
things to the fact that our house possesses a
tradition by virtue of which we consider that
we have been appointed by God to preserve and

THE INDISCREET 115

direct, for their own welfare, the people over
whom he has given us power." These words
are from a speech made in 1897 at Bremen. In
1910, at Konigsberg, he declares: "It was in
this spot that my grandfather in his own right
placed the royal crown of Prussia upon his head,
insisting once again that it was bestowed upon
him by the grace of God alone, and not by par-
liaments and meetings and decisions of the
people. He thus regarded himself as the chosen
instrument of heaven, and as such carried out
his duties as a ruler and lord. I consider myself
such an instrument of heaven, and shall go my
way without regard to the views and opinions
of the day."

Prince Henry of Prussia, the popular, and de-
servedly popular, sailor brother of the Emperor,
has signified his entire allegiance to this doctrine
by saying that he was actuated by one single
motive: "a desire to proclaim to the nations
the gospel of your Majesty's sacred person, and
to preach that gospel alike to those who will
listen and to those who will not."

This language has a strange and far-away
sound to us. It is as though one should come
into the market-place with the bannered pomp
of Milton's prose upon his lips. The vicious
would think it a trick, the idle would look upon

116 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

it as a heavy form of joking, the intelligent
would see in it a superstition, or a dream of
knighthood that has faded into unrecognizable
dimness. Some men, on the other hand, might
wish that all rulers and governors whatsoever
were equally touched with the sanctity of their
obligations.

It is somewhat strange in this connection to
remember, that we all wish to have our wives
and daughters believers; that we all wish to
bind to us those whom we love with more
sacred bonds than those which we ourselves
can supply. We are none of us loath to have
those who keep our treasures, believe in some
code higher than that of "honesty is the best
policy." As Archbishop Whately said: "Hon-
esty is the best policy, but he who is honest for
that reason is not an honest man."

Far be it from me to appear as an advocate
of the divine right of kings; but I am no fit
person for this particular task if I have only a
sniff, or a guffaw, as an explanation of another's
beliefs. History sparkles with the lives of men
and women, who proclaimed themselves mes-
sengers and servants of God, obedient to him
first, and utterly and courageously negligent of
that feline commodity, public opinion. Every
man, even to-day,

THE INDISCREET 117

"Who each for the joy of the working, and each in his separate

star,

Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God' of Things as
They Are,"

has a grain of this salt of divine independence
in him. To-day, even as in the days of Pericles:
"It is ever from the greatest hazards that the
greatest honors are gained," and the greatest
hazard of all is to shut your visor and couch
your lance and have at your task with a whis-
pered: God and my Right! It is well to re-
member that under no government, whether
democratic or aristocratic, has the individual
ever been given any rights. He has always
everywhere been pointed to his duties ; his rights
he must conquer for himself.

The liberal in theology, as the liberal in
politics, has perhaps leaned too far toward
softness. The democratization of religion has
gone on with the rest, and in our rebound from
Calvin, and John Knox, and Jonathan Edwards,
we have left all discipline and authority out of
account. We have preached so persistently of
the fatherhood of God, of his nearness to us, of
his profound pity for us, that we have lost sight
of his justice and his power. This nearness has
become a sort of innocuous neighborliness, and
God is looked upon not as a ruler, but as a
vaporish good fellow whose chief business it is

118 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

to forgive. We have substituted a feverish-
handed charity for a sinewy faith, and are ex-
cusing our divorce from divinely imposed duties,
by a cheerful but illicit intercourse with chance
acquaintances, all of whom are dubbed social
service.

This Cashmere-shawl theology is as idle an
interpretation of man's relation to the universe,
and far more debilitating, than any that has
gone before. When we come to measure rulers
who make divine claims for their duties, from
any such coign of flabbiness as this, no wonder
we stand dumb. I am willing to concede that
perhaps even an emperor has been baptized
with the blood of the martyrs, and feels himself
to be in all sincerity the instrument of God; if
we are to understand this one, we must admit
so much.

In certain departments of life, we not only
grant, but we demand, that our wives and
mothers should look upon their special duties
and peculiar functions as divinely imparted, and
as beyond argument, and as above coercion.
This assumption, therefore, of inalienable rights
is not so strange to us; on the contrary, it is an
every -day affair in most of our lives. This par-
ticular manifestation of it is all that is new or
surprising. We Americans and English look

THE INDISCREET 119

upon it as dangerous, but the Germans, more
mystical and far more lethargic about liberty
than are we, are not greatly disturbed by it.
The secular press, largely in Jewish hands, and
the new socialist members of the Reichstag,
jealous of their prerogatives but unable to as-
sert them, criticise and even scream their abhor-
rence and unbelief; but I am much mistaken,
if the mass of the Germans are at heart much
disturbed by their Emperor's assertions of his
divine right to rule. A conservative member
of the Reichstag speaks of, "a parliament which
will maintain the monarch in his strong posi-
tion as the wearer of the German imperial
crown, not the semblance of a monarch but one
that is dependent upon something higher than
party and parliament — one dependent upon
the King of all kings."

To a thoroughbred American, with two and
more centuries of the traditions of independence
behind him, this question of the divine right of
kings is a commonplace. He is a king himself,
he holds his own rights to be divine, and his
influence and his power to be limited only by
his character and his abilities, like that of any
other sovereign. He may rule over few or
many, he may control the destiny of only one
or of many subjects, he may be well known or

120 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

little known, but that he is a sovereign individual
by the grace of God, it never occurs to him to
doubt. It is perhaps for this reason that the
real American is placid and unself -conscious be-
fore this claim. It is those who admit and suf-
fer from the exactions and tyrannies of such a
claim that he pities, not the man who makes it,
whom he distrusts. I carry my sovereignty un-
der my hat, says the American; if any man or
men can knock off the hat and take away the
sovereignty, there is a fair field and no favor; for
those who whimper and complain of tyranny he
has long since ceased to have a high regard.

That William the Second is the chief figure
of interest in the world to-day is due, not alone
to this assumption of a divine relation to the
state, or to his own vigorous and electric per-
sonality, but to the freedom to develop and to
express that personality. Men in politics have
dwindled in importance and in power, as the
voters have increased in numbers and in influ-
ence. Genius must be true to itself to bloom
luxuriantly. It is impossible to be seeking the
suffrage of a constituency and at the same time
to be wholly one's self. The German Emperor
is unhampered, as is no other ruler, by considera-
tions of popular favor; and at the same time he
directs and influences not Russian peasants, nor

THE INDISCREET

Turkish slaves, but an instructed, enlightened,
and ambitious people. This environment is
unique in the world to-day, and the Germans
as a whole seem to consider their ruler a valua-
ble asset, despite occasional vagaries that bring
down their own and foreign criticism upon him.

Here we have a versatile and vigorous per-
sonality with no shadow of a stain upon his
character, and with no question upon the part
of his bitterest enemy of the honesty of his in-
tentions, or of his devotion to his country's in-
terests. So far as he has been assailed abroad,
it is on the score that he has made his country
so powerful in the last twenty-five years that
Germany is a menace to other powers; so far
as he has been criticised at home it is on the
score of his indiscretions.

It is of prime importance, therefore, both to
glance at the progress of Germany and to ex-
amine these so-called indiscretions. Through-
out these chapters will be found facts and figures
dealing with the fairy-like change which has
taken place in Germany since my own student
days. I can remember when a chimney was a
rare sight. Now there are almost as many
manufacturing towTns as then there were chim-
neys. Leipzig was a big country town, Pforz-
heim, Chemnitz, Oschatz, Elberfeld, Riesa,

Kiel, Essen, Rheinhausen, and their armies of
laborers, and their millions of output, were mere
shadows of what they are now.

In 1873, when Bismarck began his attempts
at railway legislation, Germany was divided into
sixty -three "railway provinces," and there were
fifteen hundred different tariffs, and it is to be
remembered that it was only as late as 1882
that the state system of railways at last tri-
umphed in Prussia. In only ten years the rail-
way trackage has increased from 49,041 to
52,216 miles; the number of locomotives from
18,291 to 26,612; freight-cars from 398,000 to
558,000; the passengers carried from 804,000,000
to 1,457,000,000; and the tons of freight car-
ried from 341,000,000 tons to 519,000,000 tons.
In Prussia alone there are 1,000,000 more horses,
1,000,000 more beef cattle, and 10,000,000 more
pigs. The total production of beet sugar in
the world approximates 7,000,000 tons; of
this amount Germany produces 2,500,000 tons.
Great Britain consumes more sugar per head of
the population than any other country, and of
her consumption of 1,460,000 tons of beet sugar
all of it is produced from beets grown on the
continent. Between 1885 and 1912 the popu-
lation increased from 46,000,000 to 66,000,000.
The expenditure on the navy has increased in

THE INDISCREET 123

the last ten years from $47,500,000 to $110,000,-
000, and the number of men from 31,157 to
60,805, with another increase in both money
and men, voted at the moment of this writing
in the summer of 1912.

The debt of Germany, exclusive of paper
money, in 1887 was 486,201,000 marks; in 1903
it stood at 2,733,500,000. In 1911 the funded
debt of the empire was 4,524,000,000 marks,
and the funded debt of the states 14,880,000,000;
and the floating debt amounts to 991,000,000,
of which Prussia alone bears 610,000,000 and
the empire 300,000,000. Between the years
1871 and 1897 a debt of $500,000,000 was in-
curred, bearing an average interest charge of
3% per cent. In the year 1908 the combined
expenditures of the states and of the empire
reached the enormous total of $1,775,000,000.
The debt of the city of Berlin alone in 1910 had
reached $110,750,000 and has increased in the
last two years.

For purposes of comparison one may note that
our own later national budgets run roughly to
$1,000,000,000. The British budget for 1911
was $906,420,000. After the French war, specu-
lation on a large scale ensued. The payment of
the $1,000,000,000 indemnity had a bad effect.
As has often happened in America, money, or

124 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the mere means of exchange, was taken for
wealth. The earth will be as cold as the moon
before men learn that the only real wealth is
health. Many schemes and companies were
floated and after 1873 there was a prolonged
financial crisis in Germany. It is said that
bankruptcy and the liquidation of bubble com-
panies entailed a loss of a round $90,000,000.
It was in 1876-77, when Germany was thus
suffering, that the policy of protection was
mooted and finally put into operation by Bis-
marck in 1879. Ten years later the laws for
accident, old age, and sickness insurance were
passed, at the instigation and under the direct
influence of the present Emperor.

The tonnage of steam vessels under 4,000
tons in Great Britain (net tons) was, some five
years ago, 8,165,527; in Germany (gross tons),
977,410; but the tonnage of steam vessels of
4,000 tons and over was in Great Britain
1,446,486, in Germany 1,119,537! It should be
added that no small part of Great Britain's big
ships belong to the American Shipping Trust,
sailing under the British flag. Albert Ballin be-
came a director of the Hamburg-American line
in 1886, and was made general director in 1900.
During his directorship the capital of the line has
been increased from 15,000,000 to 125,000,000

THE INDISCREET 125

of marks, and the number of steamers from 26
to 170.

Germany's combined export and import trade
in 1880 was $1,429,025,000; in 1890, $1,875,-
050,000; and in 1905 it was $3,324,018,000; in
1910, $4,019,072,250. The German production
of coal and coal products in 1910 was the highest
in its history, amounting to 265,148,232 metric
tons. It would be easy enough to chronicle the
commercial and industrial strides of Germany
during the last quarter of a century by the com-
pilation of a catalogue of figures. It is not my
intention to persuade the reader to believe in
any such fantastic theory as that the present
Kaiser is entirely responsible for this progress.
I am no Pygmalion that I can make an Em-
peror by breathing prayers before pages of
statistics.

It is only fair, however, in any sketch of the
Emperor to give this skeleton outline of what
has taken place in the empire over which he
rules, and which, in certain quarters, it is said,
he menaces by his predilection for war. These
few figures spell peace, they do not spell war,
and the ruler who has some 700,000 armed men
at his back, and a navy the second in strength
in the world guarding his shores, and a mer-
cantile marine carrying his trade which is hard

126 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

on the heels of Great Britain as a rival, but who
has none the less kept his country at peace with
the world for twenty-five years, may be cred-
ited at least with good intentions.

It may be said in answer to this same argu-
ment that this building and training and en-
riching of a nation are a threat in themselves.
True, a strong man is more dangerous than a
weak one; but it is equally true that a strong
man is a greater safeguard than a weak one
where the question of peace is at stake. It is
also true that a rich and powerful man must
needs take more precautions against attack and
robbery than a tramp. A tramp seldom carries
even a bunch of keys, and pays no premium on
fire, accident, or burglary insurance.

William the Second knows his history as well
as any of his people, and incomparably better
than his English, French, or American critics.
He knows that only twenty years after the
death of Frederick the Great, the Prussian power
went down before Napoleon like a house of
cards, and that the country's humiliation was
stamped in bold outlines when Napoleon was
received in Berlin with the ringing of bells, the
firing of cannons, and he himself greeted as a
savior and a benefactor. That was only a hun-
dred years ago. Is it an indiscretion, then,

THE INDISCREET 127

when the present ruler, speaking at Branden-
burg the 5th of March, 1890, says: "I look
upon the people and nation handed on to me as
a responsibility conferred upon me by God, and
that it is, as is written in the Bible, my duty to
increase this heritage, for which one day I shall
be called upon to give an account; those who
try to interfere with my task, I shall crush"?

On his accession to the throne his first two
proclamations were to the army and the navy,
his third to the people. On the 14th of July,
1888, he reviewed the fleet at Kiel, and for the
first time an Emperor of Germany and King of
Prussia appeared there in the uniform of an
admiral. In April, 1897, Queen Victoria cele-
brated the sixtieth year of her reign, and Prince
Henry represented Germany, appearing as ad-
miral of the fleet in an old battle-ship, the King
William. On the 24th of April the Emperor
telegraphed to his brother: "I regret exceed-
ingly that I cannot put at your disposition for
this celebration a better ship, especially when
all other countries are appearing with their
finest ships of war. It is a sad consequence of
the manoeuvring of those unpatriotic persons
who have obstructed the construction of even
the most necessary war-ships. But I shall know
no rest till I have placed our navy on a par for

128 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

strength with our army." From that day to
this he has gone steadily forward demanding of
his people a strong army and a powerful fleet.
He now has both. He has pulled Germany out
of danger and beyond the reach, for the moment
at least, of any repetition of the catastrophe
and humiliation of a hundred years ago. This
is a solid fact, and for this situation the Em-
peror is largely, one might almost say wholly,
responsible.

One hears and one reads criticisms of the
Emperor's habit of speaking and writing of
"my navy." It is said that the other states of
Germany have borne taxation to build the fleet,
and that it is no more the Emperor's than that
of the King of Bavaria, or of Wlirtemberg, or of
Saxony. This is the petty, pin-pricking bab-
ble of boarding-school girls, or of those official
supernumeraries who have turned sour in their
retirement. Even the honest democrat is made
indignant. If the German navy is not the
work of William the Second, then its parentage
is far to seek; and if the German navy is not
proud to be called "my navy," it is wofully
lacking in gratitude to its creator.

No man who looks back over his own career,
say of twenty -five years, but is both chastened
and amused. He is chastened by the unfore-

THE INDISCREET 129

seen dangers that he has escaped; he is amused
by the certificates of failure, and the prophecies
of disaster, that always everywhere accompany
the man who takes part in the game in prefer-
ence to sitting in the reserved seats, or peeking
through a hole in the fence. I have not been
honored with any such intimate association with
the German Emperor as would enable me to say
whether he has a highly developed sense of
humor or not. I can only say for myself, that
if I had lived through his Majesty's last twenty-
five years, I should need no other fillip to diges-
tion than my chuckles over the prophecies of
my enemies.

It has been said of him that he is volatile;
that he flies from one task to another, finishing
nothing; that his artistic tastes are the extrava-
gant dreams of a Nero; that he loves publicity
as a worn and obese soprano loves the centre of
the stage; that his indiscretions would bring
about the discharge of the most inconspicuous
petty official. Others speak and write of him
as a hero of mythology, as a mystic and a
dreamer, looking for guidance to the traditions
of mediaeval knighthood; while others, again,
dub him a modernist, insist that he is a com-
mercial traveller, hawking the wares of his coun-
try wherever he goes, and with an eye ever to

130 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the interests of Bremen and Hamburg and Essen
and Pforzheim. Again, you hear that he is a
Prussian junker, or that he is a cavalry officer,
with all the prejudices and limitations of such
a one; while, on the other hand, he is chided
for enlisting the financial help of rich Jews and
industrials. He is versatile, but versatility is a
virtue so long as it does not extend to one's
principles. Every man who has profoundly in-
fluenced the life of the world, from Moses to
Lincoln, has been versatile. Carlyle goes so far
as to say: "I confess, I have no notion of a truly
great man that could not be all sorts of men."
He speaks French well enough to address the
Academic; he speaks English as well as a cul-
tivated American, and no one speaks it more
distinctly, more crisply, more trippingly upon
the tongue, these days; he preaches a capital
sermon; he is an accomplished binder of books;
he is a successful and enthusiastic farmer, and
he is frankly audacious in his loves and hatreds,
his ambitions and his beliefs. He has, in short,
no vermin blood in him at any rate. If you
do not like him, you know why; and if you do,
you know why as easily. He even knows what
he believes about woman's suffrage and about
God, a rare conciseness of thinking in these
troublous times.

THE INDISCREET 131

There stands before you a man apparently as
sound in mind and in body as any man who treads
German soil; a man of great vivacity of mind
and manner, and of wholesome delight in living;
who bears huge responsibilities with good humor,
and that most unwholesome of all things, un-
disputed power, with humility. At a banquet
in Brandenburg the 5th of March, 1890, speak-
ing of his many voyages, he said: "He who,
alone at sea, standing on the bridge, with noth-
ing over him but God's heaven, has communed
with himself will not mistake the value of such
voyages. I could wish for many of my country-
men that they might live through similar hours
of self-contemplation, where a man takes stock
of what he has tried to do, and of what he has
accomplished. Then it is that a man is cured
of vanity, and we have all of us need of that."

It is obvious that a man cannot be modest,
as the above quotation would indicate, and at
the same time preening with vanity; a Sir
Philip Sidney and a Jew peddler; a careless,
dashing cavalry officer or proud Prussian squire,
and at the same time a wary and astute insur-
ance agent for the empire; a preacher of duty
and honor, and belief in God, and at the same
time a political comedian deceiving his rivals
abroad, and hoodwinking his subjects at home.

Not a few men, even of slight powers of ob-

servation and of meagre experience, have noted
the strange fact that a blank and direct state-
ment of the truth is very apt to be put down as
a lie; and that a man who frankly expresses his
beliefs and ambitions, and openly goes about
his business and his pleasures with no thought
of concealment, is often regarded as Machiavel-
lian and deceitful, because a timid and cautious
world finds it hard to believe that he is really as
audacious as he appears.

Even those with the most limited list, of the
great names of history at their disposal, cannot
fail to remember that simplicity and directness
have in the persons of their highest exemplars
been misunderstood; hunted down like wild
beasts, burned, crucified, and then, when they
were well out of the way, crowned and held up
to humanity as the saviors of the race. We will
have none of them when authority, faith, truth,
courage, show us our distorted images in the
mirror of their lives. Crucify him, crucify him!
has always been the cry when such a one asserts
his moral kingship, or his sonship to God, or
his audacious intention to live his own life; and
in less tragic fashion, but none the less along
the same lines, the world tends to pick at, and
to fray the moral garments of, its leaders still
to-day. When such a one succeeds through
sheer simplicity, then that last feeble epitaph

THE INDISCREET 133

of mediocrity is applied to him: "He is lucky,"
because so few people realize that "luck," is
merely not to be dependent upon luck.

It is apparent from the quotations I have
given, and many more of the same tenor are at
our disposal, that the personality we are study-
ing has a very definite image of his place in the
world, of the duties he is called upon to perform,
of his rights according to his own conception of
his authority and responsibilities, and of his
intentions.

It is equally apparent that he looks upon his-
tory in quite another way than that usually
accepted by the modern scientific historian.
Taine and Green may explain everything, even
kings and emperors, by the forces of climate,
environment, and the slow-heaving influence of
the people. This school of historians will tell
you how Charlemagne, and Luther, and Crom-
well, and Napoleon are to be accounted for by
purely material explanations.

The German Emperor apparently believes
that the history of the world and the develop-
ment of mankind are due to a series of mighty
factors, mysteriously endowed from on high and
bearing the names of men, and not infrequently
the names of emperors and kings. He is con-
tinually recalling his ancestors, the Great Elec-
tor, Frederick the Great, and William I, his

134 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

grandfather. These men made Prussia and
Prussia made the German Empire, he declares.
To the Brandenburg Parliament he says: "It
is the great merit of my ancestors that they have
always stood aloof from and above all parties,
and that they have always succeeded in making
political parties combine for the welfare of the
wrhole people."

Due to a quality in the German character
that need not be discussed here, it is true that
they have been led, and driven, and welded by
powerful individuals. No Magna Charta, no
Cromwell, no Declaration of Independence is to
be found in German history. No vigorous de-
mand from the people themselves marks their
progress. You can read all there is of German
history in the biographies of the Great Elector,
of Frederick William the First, of Frederick the
Great, of Yorck, of vom Stein, Hardenberg,
Scharnhorst, and Bliicher, of Bismarck, William
I, and the present Emperor.

WTiat the Kaiser believes of history is true of
German history. If he asserts himself as he
does in Germany, it is because two hundred and
fifty years of German history put him wholly
and entirely in the right. It is to be presumed
that what every student of German history may
see for himself, has not escaped the flexible in-
telligence of the present Emperor, and that is,

THE INDISCREET 135

that only the autocratic kings of Prussia suc-
ceeded, and that only an autocratic statesman
succeeded, in bringing the whole country into
line, by the acknowledgment of the King of Prus-
sia, and his heirs forever, as German emperors.

The first so-called indiscretion of the present
Emperor was magnificent. He dismissed Bis-
marck two years after he came to the throne.
If you have ever been the owner of a yacht and
your sailing-master has grown to be a tyrant,
and you have taken your courage in your hand
and bundled him over the side, you have had
in a microcosmic way the sensations of such an
experience.

It is said that Bismarck, then seventy-five
years old, and since 1862 accustomed to undis-
puted power, demurred to the wish of the Em-
peror that the other ministers should have access
to him directly, and not as heretofore only
through the chancellor. It is said too that the
matter-of-fact and somewhat cynical Bismarck,
had but scanty respect for the mystical view of
his grandfather as a saint, that the Emperor
everywhere proclaimed. In 1896, the 20th of
February, in speaking of his grandfather, he re-
fers to him as: "The Emperor William, that
personality which has become for us in some
sort that of a saint.'

Bismarck, too, objected to the Emperor's
policy as regards the treatment of, and the
legislation for, the workingmen. On February
the 5th, 1890, he writes to Bismarck: "It is the
duty of the state to regulate the duration and
conditions of work in such manner that the
health and the morality of the workingman
may be preserved, and that his needs may be
satisfied and his desire for equality before the
law assured."

"Now this is the tale of the Council the German
Kaiser decreed,

"And the young king said: — 'I have found it,

the road to the rest ye seek:
The strong shall wait for the weary, and the

hale shall halt for the weak;
With the even tramp of an army where no man

breaks from the line,
Ye shall march to peace and plenty, in the

bond of brotherhood — sign ! ' '

Whatever the reasons, the criticisms, or the
causes, the man whom we have been describing
was as certain to dismiss Bismarck from office,
as a bird is certain to fly and not to swim. The
ruler who at a banquet May the 4th, 1891, pro-
claimed: ;' There is only one master of the
nation: and that is I, and I will not abide any

THE INDISCREET 137

other"; and later, on the 16th of November, in
an address to recruits said: "I need Christian
soldiers, soldiers who say their Pater Nosier.
The soldier should not have a will of his own,
but you should all have but one will and that
is my will; there is but one law for you and
that is mine." Again, in addressing the recruits
for the navy on the 5th of March, 1895, he said
to them: "Just as I, as Emperor and ruler,
consecrate my life and my strength to the ser-
vice of the nation, so you are pledged to give
your lives to me." Such a man could not share
his rule with Bismarck.

Bismarck left Berlin amid groans and tears.
A prop had been rudely pushed from beneath
the empire. The young Emperor would stumble
and sway, and fall without this strong guide be-
side him. Men said this was the first sign of
an imperious will and temper.

There is an Arab proverb which runs: "When
God wishes to destroy an ant he gives it wings."
The Kaiser was to be given power for his own
destruction. But what has happened? Abso-
lutely nothing of these evil prophecies. In 1884
Bismarck was saying to Gerhard Rohlfs, the
African explorer: "The main thing is, we neither
can nor really want to colonize. We shall never
have a fleet like France. Our artisans and

138 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

lawyers and time-expired soldiers are no good
as colonists." If the ideas of William the
Second were to prevail, it was time that Bis-
marck went over the side as pilot of the ship of
state. The Kaiser in appropriate terms re-
gretted the loss of this tried public servant and
said: "However, the course remains the same -
full steam ahead!"

Three days after the Jameson raid, on the
3d of January, 1896, the Kaiser telegraphed to
President Kriiger: "I beg to express to you my
sincere congratulations that, without help from
foreign powers, you have succeeded with your
own people and by your own strength in driv-
ing out the armed bands which attempted to
disturb the peace of your country, and in re-
establishing order and in defending the inde-
pendence of your people from attacks from
outside."

On the 28th of October, 1908, The Daily Tele-
graph of London published a long interview
with the Emperor, the gist of which was that
the British press and people continued to dis-
trust him, while all the time he was and had
been the friend of Great Britain. The Emperor
cited instances of his friendship, declared the
English were as mad as March hares not to be-
lieve in him; insisted that by reason of Ger-

THE INDISCREET 139

many's increasing foreign commerce, and on
account of the growing menace to peace in the
Pacific Ocean, Germany was determined to have
an adequate fleet, which perhaps one day even
England might be glad to have alongside of her
own.

In addition to these two incidents, the Em-
peror had written a letter to Lord Tweedmouth,
who was already then a sick man, and probably
not wholly responsible, in which it was said he
had offered advice as to the increase of the
British navy.

I have described these furious indiscretions,
as they were called at the time, together,
though they were years apart; for these utter-
ances, and the constant repetition of his sense
of responsibility to God, and not to the people
he governs, are the heart of this whole conten-
tion that the German Emperor is indiscreet, is
indiscreet even to the point of damaging his
own prestige, and injuring his country's interests
abroad.

Of all these so-called indiscretions there is the
question to ask: Should these things have been
said? Should these things have been written?
There are several things to be said in answer to
these questions. I shall treat each one in turn,
but all these statements told the truth and

cleared the air. The Kriiger telegram was not
written by the Emperor, and when the worst
construction is put upon it, it expressed what?
It was merely the condemnation of freebooting
methods, a condemnation, be it said, that it re-
ceived from many right-minded and sincerely
patriotic Englishmen, a condemnation too that
was re-echoed from America. Only the hon-
orable and winning personality of one of the
most patriotic and charming men in England,
Sir Starr Jameson, saved the raid from looking
like piracy. A brave man spoke his mind about
it, and he happened to be in a position so con-
spicuous that the rumble of his words was
heard afar.

So far as The Daily Telegraph interview is
concerned, the secret history of the incident has
never been fully divulged. One may say, how-
ever, without fear of contradiction that the
importance of the matter was unduly magni-
fied, by those, both at home and abroad, who
had something to gain by exaggeration. It is
admitted on all sides by those best informed
that at any rate the Emperor was neither re-
sponsible for the publication, a point to be kept
in mind, nor for the choice of expressions used
in the interview.

The letter to Lord Tweedmouth was a friendly

THE INDISCREET 141

communication dealing with the conditions of
the British and German fleets in the past and
present, and without a word in it that might
not have been published in The Times. It was
quite innocent of the sinister significance placed
upon it by those who had not seen it; and the
British Ministry declined to publish it for en-
tirely different reasons, reasons in no way con-
nected with the German Emperor.

As we read The Daily Telegraph interview
to-day, it is a plain document. Every word of
it is true. The moment one looks at it from
the point of view, that the Emperor of Germany
is sincerely desirous of an amiable understand-
ing with England, and that he is, for the peace
and quiet of the world, working toward that
end, there is no adverse criticism to be passed
upon it. The English are thoroughly and com-
pletely mistaken about the attitude of the
German Emperor toward them. He is far and
away the best and most powerful friend they
have in Europe, and I, for one, would be willing
to forgive him were he irritated at their mis-
understanding of him. Personally, I have not
the shadow of a doubt that had France or
Russia treated the German Emperor with the
cool distrust shown him by the British, the Ger-
man army and fleet would have moved ere this.

142 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

To those who know the Britisher he is for-
given for those luxuries of insular stupidity
which punctuate his history. I know what a
fine fellow he is, and I pass them by. Mr.
Churchill speaks of the German fleet as a
"luxury"; but this is only one of those cold-
storage impromptus that a reputation for clev-
erness must keep on hand, and when Lord
Haldane in a clumsy attempt to praise the
German Emperor speaks of him as "half Eng-
lish" I laugh, as one laughs at the story of fat
Gibbon kneeling to propose to a lady and re-
quiring a servant to get him on his legs again.
British courting often needs a lackey to keep it
on its legs.

Could anything be more burningly irritable
to the Germans than those two unnecessary
statements? For the moment I am dealing
with the attitude of the Emperor alone. Of
the tirades of Chamberlain and Woltmann,
Schmoller, Treitschke, Delbruck, Zorn, and
other under-exercised professors, one may speak
elsewhere. They are as unpardonable as the
yokel rhetoric of our British friends. Of the
Emperor's insistence upon his friendliness, of his
outspoken betrayal of his real feelings, of his
audacious policy of telling the blunt truth, I am,
alas, no fair judge, for I am too entirely the ad-

THE INDISCREET 143

vocate of keeping as few cats in the bag as
possible. If these things had not been said and
written, it is true that there would have been
no tumult; having been said and written, I fail
to see the slightest indication in the political
life of either Germany or England to-day that
they did harm. Certainly, from his own point
of view of what his position entails, they can
hardly, as the radicals in Germany claim, be
considered as unconstitutional or beyond his
prerogative.

When the German Emperor says: "I," he
refers to the authority and responsibility and
dignity of the German imperial crown. He is
not magnifying his personal importance; he is
emphasizing the dignity and importance of
every German citizen. Let us try to under-
stand the situation before we pass judgment!
Both German radicalism and German socialism
are peculiar to Germany, and everywhere mis-
understood abroad. They both demand things
of the government for the easement of their
position, they both demand certain privileges,
but they do not seek or want either authority
or responsibility. Look at the figures of their
proportionate increase and compare this with
their actual influence in the Reichstag to-day.
From 1881 to 1911, here is the percentage of

144 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

votes cast by the five representative political
parties :

1881

1893

1911

The National Liberals

14.6

12.9

14.0

The Freisinnige and South German
Volkspartei

23.2

14.2

13.1

The Conservatives, including the
Deutsche and Freikonservative . . .
The Centrum (Catholic party) ....
The Social Democrats

23.7
23.2
6.1

20.4
19.0

23.2

12.4
16.3
34.8

If it were thought for a moment in Germany
that the Socialists could come into real power,
their vote and the number of their representa-
tives in the Reichstag would dwindle away in
one single election.

The average German is no leader of men, no
lover of an emergency, no social or political
colonist, and he would shrink from the initia-
tive and daring and endurance demanded by a
real political revolution and a real change of
authority, as a hen from water. The very
quality in his ruler that we take for granted he
must dislike is the quality that at the bottom
of his heart he adores, and he reposes upon it
as the very foundation of his sense of security,
and as the very bulwark behind which he makes
grimaces and shakes his fist at his enemies.
Such men as the present chancellor, von Beth-

THE INDISCREET 145

mann-Hollweg, a very calm spectator of his
country's doings, and the Emperor himself,
both know this.

As he looks at history and at life, it follows
that he must be interested in everything that
concerns his people, and not infrequently take
a hand in settling questions, or in pushing en-
terprises, that seem too widely apart to be dealt
with by one man, and too far afield for his con-
stitutional obligations to profit by his interfer-
ence. Certainly German progress shows that
the Germans can have no ground to quote:
"Quicquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi,"
of their Emperor.

In the discussion of this question, I may re-
mind my American readers, although the Ger-
man constitution is dealt with elsewhere, that
there is one difference between Germany and
America politically, that must never be left out
of our calculations. Such constitution and such
rights as the German citizens have, were granted
them by their rulers. The people of Prussia,
or of Bavaria, or of Wurtemberg, have not
given certain powers to, and placed certain
limitations upon, their rulers; on the contrary,
their rulers have given the people certain of
their own prerogatives and political privileges,
and granted to the people as a favor, a certain

share in government and certain powers, that
only so long as seventy years ago belonged to
the sovereign alone. It is not what the people
have won and then shared with the ruler, but
it is what the ruler has inherited or won and
shared with the people, that makes the ground-
work of the constitutions of the various states,
and of the empire of Germany. Nothing has
been taken away from the people of Prussia or
from any other state in Germany that they once
had; but certain rights and privileges have
been granted by the rulers that were once
wholly theirs. Bear this in mind, that it is
William II and his ancestors who made Prussia
Prussia, and voluntarily gave Prussians certain
political rights, and not the citizens of Prussia
who stormed the battlements of equal rights
and made a treaty with their sovereign.

The King of Prussia is the largest landholder
and the richest citizen of Prussia. We have
seen what he expects of his navy and of his
army. Speaking on the 6th of September,
1894, he says: "Gentlemen, opposition on the
part of the Prussian nobility to their King is a
monstrosity."

But arid details are not history, and in this
connection let us have done with them. I have
documented this chapter with dates and quota-

THE INDISCREET 147

tions because the situation politically, is so far
away from the experience or knowledge of the
American, that he must be given certain facts
to assist his imagination in making a true pict-
ure. I have done this, too, that the Kaiser may
have his real background when we undertake
to place him understandingly in the modern
world. Here we have patriarchal rule still
strong and still undoubting, coupled with the
most successful social legislation, the most suc-
cessful state control of railways, mines, and
other enterprises ; and a progress commercial and
industrial during the last quarter of a century,
second to none.

This ruler believes it to be essentially a part
of his business to be a Lorenzo de Medici to his
people in art; their high priest in religion; their
envoy extraordinary to foreign peoples; their
watchful father and friend in legislation dealing
with their daily lives; their war-lord, and their
best example in all that concerns domestic hap-
piness and patriotic citizenship. He fulfils the
words of the old German chronicle which reads:
"Merito a nobis nostrisque posteris pater patrise
appelatur quia erat egregius defensor et fortis-
simus propugnator nihili pendens vitam suam
contra omnia adversa propter justitiam op-
ponere."

148 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

If history is not altogether valueless in its
description of symptoms, the Germans are of a
softer mould than some of us, more malleable,
rather tempted to imitate than led by self-
confidence to trust to their own ideals, and less
hard in confronting the demands of other peo-
ples, that they should accept absorption by
them.

Spurned and disdained by Louis XIV, they
fawned upon him, built palaces like his, dressed
like his courtiers, wrote and spoke his language,
copied his literary models, and even bored them-
selves with mistresses because this was the fash-
ion at Versailles. He stole from them, only to
be thrown the kisses of flattery in return. He
sneered at them, only to be begged for his favors
in return. He took their cities in time of peace,
and they acknowledged the theft by a smirking
adulation that he allowed one of their number
to be crowned a king.

As for Napoleon, he performed a prolonged
autopsy upon the Germans. They were dis-
membered or joined together as suited his
plans. At his beck they fought against one an-
other, or against Russia, or against England.
He tossed them crowns, that they still wear
proudly, as a master tosses biscuits to obedient
spaniels. He put his poor relatives to rule over

THE INDISCREET 149

them, here and there, and they were grateful.
He marched into their present capital, took
away their monuments, and the sword of Fred-
erick the Great, and they hailed him with tears
and rejoicing as their benefactor, while their
wittiest poet and sweetest singer, lauded him
to the skies.

It is unpleasant to recall, but quite unfair to
forget, these happenings of the last two hundred
years in the history of the German people.
What would any man say, after this, was their
greatest need, if not self-confidence; if not
twenty-five years of peace to enable them to
recover from their beatings and humiliation;
if not a powerful army and navy to give them
the sense of security, by which alone prosperity
and pride in their accomplishments and in
themselves can be fostered; if not a ruler who
holds ever before their eyes their ideals and the
unfaltering energy required of them to attain
them!

What nation would not be self-conscious after
such dire experiences? What nation would not
be tenderly sensitive as to its treatment by
neighboring powers? What nation would not
be even unduly keen to resent any appearance
of an attempt to jostle it from its hard-won
place in the sun? Their self -consciousness and

150 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

sensitiveness and vanity are patent, but they
are pardonable. As the leader of the Conserva-
tive party in the Reichstag, Doctor von Heyde-
brandt, speaking at Breslau in October, 1911,
anent the Morocco controversy, said, after al-
luding to the "bellicose impudence" of Lloyd-
George: "The [British] ministry thrusts its fist
under our nose, and declares, I alone command
the world. It is bitterly hard for us who have
1870 behind us." They feel that they should
no longer be treated to such bumptiousness.

I trust that I am no swashbuckler, but I have
the greatest sympathy with the present Em-
peror in his capacity as war-lord, and in his insis-
tent stiffening of Germany's martial backbone.

When shall we all recover from a certain in-
ternational sickliness that keeps us all feverish?
The continual talk and writing about interna-
tional friendships, being of the same family, or
the same race, the cousin propagandism in
short, is irritating, not helpful. I do not go to
Germany to discover how American is Germany,
nor to England to discover how American is
England; but to Germany to discover how
German is Germany, to England to see how
English is England. I much prefer Americans
to either Germans or Englishmen, and they pre-
fer Germans or Englishmen, -as the case may be,

THE INDISCREET 151

to Americans. What spurious and milksoppy
puppets we should be if it were not so. So long
as there are praters going about insisting that
Germany, with a flaxen pig-tail down her back,
and England, in pumps instead of boots, and a
poodle instead of a bulldog, shall sit forever in
the moonlight hand in hand; or that America
shall become a dandy, shave the chin-whisker,
wear a Latin Quarter butterfly tie of red, white,
and blue, and thrum a banjo to a little brown
lady with oblique eyes and a fan, all day long;
just so long will the bulldog snarl, the flaxen-
haired maiden look sulky, the chin-whisker be-
come stiffer and more provocative, and the
fluttering fan seem to threaten blows.

We have been surfeited with peace talk till
we are all irritable. One hundredth part of an
ounce of the same quality of peace powders that
we are using internationally would, if prescribed
to a happy family in this or any other land,
lead to dissensions, disobedience, domestic dis-
aster, and divorce. Mr. Carnegie will have
lived long enough to see more wars and inter-
national disturbances, and more discontent born
of superficial reading, than any man in history
who was at the same time so closely connected
with their origin. Perhaps it were better after
all if our millionaires were educated!

152 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

The peace party need war just as the atheists
need God, otherwise they have nothing to deny,
nothing to attack. Peace is a negative thing
that no one really wants, certainly not the kind
of peace of which there is so much talking
to-day, which is a kind of castrated patriotism.
Peace is not that. Peace can never be born of
such impotency. When German statesmen de-
clare roundly that they will not discuss the
question of disarmament, they are merely say-
ing that they will not be traitors to their coun-
try. If the Emperor rattles the sabre occasion-
ally, it is because the time has not come yet,
when this German people can be allowed to
forget what they have suffered from foreign
conquerors, and what they must do to protect
themselves from such a repetition of history.

When the final judgment is passed upon the
Emperor, we must recall his deep religious feel-
ing that he is inevitably an instrument of God;
his ingrained and ineradicable method of read-
ing history as though it were a series of the ipse
dixits of kings; his complacent neglect of how
the work of the world is done by patient labor;
of how works of art are only born of travail and
tears: his obsession by that curious psychology
of kings that leads them to believe that they
are somehow different, and under other laws,

THE INDISCREET 153

as though they lived in another dimension of
space. In addition, he is a man of unusually
rapid mental machinery, of overpowering self-
confidence, of great versatility, of many advan-
tages of training and experience, and, above all,
he is unhampered. He is answerable directly
to no one, to no parliament, to no minister, to
no people. He is father, guardian, guide, school-
master, and priest, but in no sense a servant re-
sponsible to any master save one of his own
choosing.

The only wonder is that he is not insupport-
able. Those who have come under the spell of
his personality declare him to be the most de-
lightful of companions; what Germany has
grown to be under his reign of twenty -five years
all the world knows, much of the world envies,
some of the world fears; what his own people
think of him can best be expressed by the state-
ment that his supremacy was never more as-
sured than to-day.

I agree that no one man can be credited with
the astonishing expansion of Germany in all
directions in the last thirty years; but so inter-
woven are the advice and influence, the ambi-
tions and plans, of the German Emperor with
the progress of the German people, that this one
personality shares his country's successes as no

154 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

single individual in any other country can be
said to do.

Whether he likes Americans or not one can
hardly know. No doubt he has made many of
them think so; and, alas, we suffer from a
national hallucination that we are liked abroad,
when as a matter of fact we are no more liked
than others; and in cultured centres we are in
addition, laughed at by the careless and sneered
at by the sour.

That the Kaiser is liked by Americans, both
by those who have met him and by those who
have not, is, I think, indisputable. He is of
the stuff that would have made a first-rate
American. He would have been a sovereign
there as he is a sovereign here. He would have
enjoyed the risks, and turmoil, and competition;
he would have enjoyed the fine, free field of
endeavor, and he would have jousted with the
best of us in our tournament of life, which has
trained as many knights sans peur et sans
reproche as any country in the world.

I believe in a man who takes what he thinks
belongs to him, and holds it against the world;
in the man who so loves life that he keeps a
hearty appetite for it and takes long draughts
of it; who is ever ready to come back smiling
for another round with the world, no matter

THE INDISCREET 155

how hard he has been punished. I believe that
God believes in the man who believes in Him,
and therefore in himself. Why should I debar
a man from my sympathy because he is a king
or an emperor? I admire your courage, Sir; I
love your indiscretions; I applaud your faith
in your God, and your confidence in yourself,
and your splendid service to your country.
Without you Germany would have remained a
second-rate power. Had you been what your
critics pretend that they would like you to be,
Germany Nvould have been still ruling the
clouds.

Here's long life to your power, Sir, and to
your possessions, and to you! And as an
Anglo-Saxon, I thank God, that all your coun-
trymen are not like you!

158 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

5,000,000. It is calculated that there is a daily,
a weekly, and a monthly magazine circulated
for every single family in America. Not an
unmixed blessing, by any means, when one re-
members that thousands, untrained to think
and uninterested, are thus dusted with the
widely blown comments of undigested news.
Editorial comment of any serious value is, of
course, impossible, and the readers are given a
strange variety of unwholesome intellectual food
to gulp down, with mental dyspepsia sure to
follow, a disease which is already the curse of
the times in America, where superficiality and
insincerity are leading the social and political
dance.

To carry the comparison further, there are
22,806 newspapers published in America; 9,500
in England; 8,049 in Germany; and 6,681 in
France: or 1 for every 4,100 of the population
in America; 1 for every 4,700 in Great Britain;
1 for every 7,800 in Germany, and 1 for every
5,900 in France.

That a prime minister should have been a
contributor to the press, as was Lord Salisbury;
that a correspondent or editorial writer of a
newspaper should find his way into cabinet cir-
cles, into diplomacy, or into high office in the
colonies; that the editor and owner of a great

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 159

newspaper should become an ambassador to
England, as in the case of Mr. Reid, is impos-
sible in Germany. The character of the men
who take up the profession of journalism suf-
fers from the lack of distinction and influence
of their task. Raymond, Greeley, Dana, Laf-
fan, Godkin, in America, and Delane, Hutton,
Lawson, and their successors, Garvin, Strachey,
Robinson, in England, are impossible products
of the German journalistic soil at present.

There have been great changes, and the place
of the newspaper and the power of the journalist
is increasing rapidly, but the stale atmosphere of
censordom hangs about the press even to-day.
Freedom is too new to have bred many powerful
pens or personalities, and the inconclusive re-
sults of political arguments, written for a people
who are comparatively apathetic, lessen the en-
thusiasm of the political journalist. There are
not three editors in Germany who receive as
much as six thousand dollars a year, and the
majority are paid from twelve hundred to three
thousand a year. This does not make for inde-
pendence. I am no believer in great wealth as
an incentive to activity, but certainly solvency
makes for emancipation from the more debasing
forms of tyranny.

Several of the more popular newspapers are

IV

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND
THE PRESS

IN the days when Bismarck was welding the
German states into a federal organization
and finally into an empire, he used the press
to spray his opinions, wishes, and suspicions over
those he wished to instruct or to influence. He
used it, too, to threaten or to mislead his enemies
at home and abroad. The Hamburger Nachricht-
en was the newspaper for which he wrote at
one time, and which remained his confidential
organ, though as his power grew he used other
journals and journalists as well.

As Germany has few traditions of freedom,
having rarely won liberty as a united people,
but having been beaten into national unity by
her political giants, or her robuster sovereigns,
so the press before and during Bismarck's long
reign, from 1862 to 1890, was kept well in hand
by those who ruled. It is only lately that
caricature, criticism, and opposition have had
freer play. That a journalist like Maximilian

Harden (a friend and confidant of Bismarck,

156

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 157

by the way) should be permitted to write with-
out rebuke and without punishment that the
present Kaiser "has all the gifts except one,
that of politics," marks a new license in journal-
istic debate. That this same person was able,
single-handed, to bring about the exposure and
downfall of a cabal of decadent courtiers whose
influence with the Emperor was deplored, proves
again how completely the German press has
escaped from certain leading-strings. A sharp
criticism of the Emperor in die Post, even as
lately as 1911, excited great interest, and was
looked upon as a very daring performance.

There are some four thousand daily and more
than three thousand weekly and monthly pub-
lications in Germany to-day; but neither the
press as a whole, nor the journalists, with a few
exceptions, exert the influence in either society
or politics of the press in America and in
England. As compared with Germany, one is
at once impressed with the greater number of
journals and their more effective distribution at
home. In America there are £,472 daily papers;
16,269 weeklies; and 2,769 monthlies. Tri-
weekly and quarterly publications added bring
the total to 22,806. One group of 200 daily
papers claim a circulation of 10,000,000, while
five magazines have a total circulation of

160 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

owned and controlled by the Jews, and to the
American, with no inborn or traditional preju-
dice against the Jews as a race, it is somewhat
difficult to understand the outspoken and uncon-
cealed suspicion and dislike of them in Germany.
There is no need to mince matters in stating
that this suspicion and dislike exist. A comedy
called "The Five Frankfurters" has been given
in all the principal cities during the last year
and has had a long run in Berlin. It is a scath-
ing caricature of certain Jewish peculiarities of
temperament and ambition.

There is even an anti-semitic party, small
though it be, in the Reichstag, while the party
of the Centre, of the Conservatives and the
Agrarians, is frankly anti-semitic as well. No
Jew can become an officer in the army, no Jew
is admitted to one of the German corps in the
universities, no Jew can hold office of importance
in the state, and I presume that no unbaptized
Jew is received at court. I am bound to record
my personal preference for the English and Amer-
ican treatment of the Jew. In England they
have made a Jew their prime minister, and in
America we offer him equal opportunities with
other men, and applaud him whole-heartedly
when he succeeds, and thump him soundly with
our criticism when he misbehaves. The Ger-

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 161

man fears him ; we do not. We have made Jews
ambassadors, they have served in our army and
navy, and not a few of them rank among our
sanest and most generous philanthropists.

To a certain extent society of the higher and
official class shuts its doors against him. One
of the well-known restaurants in Berlin, until
the death of its founder, not long ago, refused
admission to Jews.

I venture to say that no intelligent American
stops to think whether the Speyer brothers, or
Kahn, or Schiff, or the members of the house of
Rothschild, are Jews or not, in estimating their
political, social, and philanthropic worth. Even
as long ago as the close of the fourteenth cen-
tury the great strife between the princes of Ger-
many and the free cities ceased, in order that
both might unite to plunder the Jews.

Luther preached: "Burn their synagogues and
schools; what will not burn bury with earth that
neither stone nor rubbish remain." "In like
manner break into and burn their houses."
"Forbid their rabbis to teach on pain of life
and limb." "Take away all their prayer-books
and Talmuds, in which are nothing but godless-
ness, lies, cursing, and swearing." In the chron-
icles of the time occurs frequently " Judsei occisi,
combusti."

162 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

The German comes by his dislike of the Jew
through centuries of traditional conflict, plun-
der, and hatred, and the very moulder of the
present German speech, Luther, was a furious
offender. The Jews have been materialists
through all ages, claim the Germans: "The Jews
require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom;
but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a
stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolish-
ness." It is to be in our day the battle of battles,
they claim, whether we are to be socially, mor-
ally, and politically orientalized by this advance
guard of the Orient, the Jews, or whether we are
to preserve our occidental ideals and traditions.
Many more men see the conflict, they maintain,
than care to take part in it. The money-mar-
kets of the world are ramparts that few men
care to storm, but, if the independent and the
intelligent do not withstand this semitization of
our institutions, the ignorant and the degraded
will one day take the matter into their own
hands, as they have done before, and as they do
to this day in some parts of Russia.

There are 600,000 Jews in Germany, 400,000
of them in Prussia and 100,000 of these in Ber-
lin. In New York City alone there are more
than 900,000. They are always strangers in our
midst. They are of another race. They have

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 163

other standards and other allegiances. Perhaps
we are all of us, the most enlightened of us,
provincial at bottom, we like to know who and
what our neighbors are, and whence they came ;
and we dislike those who are outside our racial
and social experiences, and our moral and re-
ligious habits, and the Jew is always, every-
where, a foreigner. At any rate, so the German
maintains.

Strange as it may sound in these days, the
Germans are not at heart business men. There
are more eyes with dreams in them in Germany
than in all the world besides. They work hard,
they increase their factories, their commerce,
but their hearts are not in it. The Jew has
amassed an enormous part of the wealth of Ger-
many, considering his small proportion of the
total population. The German, because he is
not at heart a trader, is an easy prey for him.

These things trouble us in America very little,
and we smile cynically at the not altogether un-
truthful portraits of "Potash and Pearlmutter,"
and their vermin-like business methods. There
is an undercurrent of feeling in America, that the
virile blood is still there which will stop at nothing
to throw off oppression, whether from the Jew
or from any one else. If we are pinched too hard
financially, if confiscation by the government or

1G4 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

by individuals goes too far, no laws even will
restrain the violence which will break out for
liberty. So we are at peace with ourselves and
with others, trusting in that quiet might which
will take governing into its own hands, at all
hazards, if the state of affairs demands it.

With the Germans it is different. No people
of modern times has been so harried and har-
rowed as these Germans. The Thirty Years'
war left them in such fear and poverty that even
cannibalism existed, and this was years after
Massachusetts and Maryland were settled.
But nothing has tarnished their idealism.
Whether as followers of Charlemagne, or as
hordes of dreamers seeking to save Christ's
tomb and cradle in the Crusades, or as intoxi-
cated barbarians insisting that their emperor
must be crowned at Rome, or as the real torch-
bearers of the Reformation, or even now as
dreamers, philosophers, musicians, and only in-
dustrial and commercial by force of circum-
stances, they are, least of all the peoples, mate-
rialists.

They have given the world lyric poetry,
music, mythology, philosophy, and these are still
their souls' darlings. They entered the modern
world just as science began to marry with com-
merce and industry, and so their unworn, fresh,

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 165

and youthful intellectual vigor found expression
in industry. Renan writes that he owes his
pleasure in intellectual things to a long ances-
try of non-thinkers, and he claims to have in-
herited their stored-up mental forces. Germany
is not unlike that. Her recent industrial and
intellectual activity may be the release from
bondage, of the centuries of stored-up intellect-
ual energy from the "Woods of Germany."

It is true that they are easily governed and
amenable, but this is due not wholly to the fact
that they have been so long under the yoke of
rulers, or because they are of cow-like disposi-
tion, but because their ideals are spiritual, not
material. The American seeks wealth, the Eng-
lishman power, the Frenchman notoriety, the
German is satisfied with peaceful enjoyment of
music, poetry, art, and friendly and very simple
intercourse with his fellows.

Certainly I am not the man to say he is
wrong, when I see how spiritual things in my
own country are cut out of the social body as
though they were annoying and dangerous ap-
pendices.

The German of this type looks down upon the
spiritual and intellectual development of other
countries as far inferior to his own. Such an
one in talking to an Englishman feels that he is

166 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

conversing with a high-spirited, thoroughbred
horse; to a Frenchman, as though he were a
cynical monkey; to an American, as though he
were a bright youth of sixteen.

The German considers his dealings with the
intangible things of life to be a higher form, in-
deed the highest form, of intellectual employ-
ment. He is therefore racially, historically, and
by temperament jealous or contemptuous, ac-
cording to his station in life, of the cosmopolitan
exchanger of the world, the Jew. He denies to
him either patriotism or originality, and looks
upon him as merely a distributer, whether in
art, literature, or commerce, as an exchanger
who amasses wealth by taking toll of other men's
labor, industry, and intellect. It has not escaped
the German of this temper, that the whirling
gossip and innuendoes that have lately annoyed
the present party in power in England, have had
to do with three names: Isaacs, Samuels, and
Montagu, all Jews and members of the govern-
ment.

German politics, German social life, and the
German press cannot be understood without this
explanation. The German sees a danger to his
hardly won national life in the cosmopolitanism
of the Jew; he sees a danger to his duty -doing,
simple-living, and hard-working governing aris-

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 167

tocracy in the tempting luxury of the recently
rich Jew; and besides these objective reasons, he
is instinctively antagonistic, as though he were
born of the clouds of heaven and the Jew of the
clods of earth. This does not mean that the
German is a believer, in the orthodox sense of
the word, for that he is not. He loves the
things of the mind not because he thinks of
them as of divine creation, and as showing an
allegiance to a divine Creator, but because they
are the playthings of his own manufacture that
amuse him most. His superiority to other na-
tions is that he claims to enjoy maturer toys.
Not even France is so entirely unencumbered by
orthodox restraints in matters of belief.

So far, therefore, as the German press is Jew-
controlled, it is suspected as being not German
politically, domestically, or spiritually; as not
being representative, in short. It should be
added that, though this is the attitude of the
great majority in Germany, there is a small class
who recognize the pioneer work that the Jew has
done. Few men are more respected there, and
few have more influence than such men as
Ballin and Rathenau and others. For the very
reason that the German is an idealist the Jew
has been of incomparable value to him in the
development of his industrial, commercial, and
financial affairs. Not only as a scientific finan-

168 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

cier has he helped, not only has he provided
ammunition when German industrial undertak-
ings were weak and stumbling, but along the
lines of scientific research, as chemists, physi-
cists, artists — perhaps no one stands higher
than the Jew Liebermann as a painter — the
Jew has done yeoman service to the country in
return for the high wages that he has taken.
There are Germans who recognize this, and
there are in the Jewish world not a few men to
whom the doors of enlightened society are al-
ways open.

Whatever one may feel of instinctive dislike,
the open-minded observers of the historical prog-
ress of Germany, all recognize that Germany
would not be in the foremost place she now occu-
pies in the competitive markets of the world, if
she had not had the patriotic, intelligent, and
skilful backing of her better-class Jewish citizens.

Printing was born in Germany, and the town
of Augsburg had a newspaper as early as 1505,
while Berlin had a newspaper in 1617 and Ham-
burg in 1628. Every foreigner who knows Ger-
many at all, knows the names of the Kolnische
Zeitung, the Lokal Anzeiger and Der Tag, Ham-
burger Nachrichten, Berliner Tageblatt, Frank-
furter Zeitung, and the Norddeutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung, this last the official organ of the foreign
office. The Neue Preussische Zeitung, better

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 169

known by its briefer title of Kreuz Zeitung, is a
stanch conservative organ, and for years has pub-
lished the scholarly comments once a week of Pro-
fessor Schiemann, who is a political historian of
distinction, and a trusted friend of the Emperor.
The Deutsche Tageszeitung is the organ of the
Agrarian League. The Reichsbote is a conserva-
tive journal and the organ of the orthodox party
in the state church. Vorwarts is the organ of
the socialists and, whatever one may think of its
politics, one of the best-edited, as it is one of the
best- written, newspapers in Germany. The Zu-
kunft, a weekly publication, is the personal organ
of Harden, is Harden, in fact. The Zukunft in
normal years sells some 22,000 copies at 20
marks, giving an income of 440,000 marks; this
with the advertisements gives an income of say
500,000 marks. The expenses are about 350,000
marks, leaving a net income to this daring and
accomplished journalist of 150,000 marks a year.
In Germany such an income is great wealth.
The Zukunft and its success is a commentary of
value upon the appreciation of, as well as the
rarity of, independent journalism in Germany.

The Vossische Zeitung, or ''Aunty Voss" as it
is nicknamed, is a solid, bourgeois sheet and mod-
erately radical in tone. It is proper, wipes its
feet before entering the house, and may be safely
left in the servants' hall or in the school-room.

170 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Die Post represents the conservative party polit-
ically, is welcome in rich industrial circles, and
is rather liberal in religious matters, though
hostile to the government in matters of foreign
politics, and of less influence at home than the
frequent quotations from it in the British press
would lead one to suppose. The two official or-
gans of the Catholics are the Germania and the
Kolnische Volks Zeitung, of Cologne, whose edi-
tor is the well-known Julius Bachern. TheJLokcd
Anzeiger and the Tageblatt of Berlin attempt,
with no small degree of success, American meth-
ods, and give out several editions a day with
particular reference to the latest news.

Leipsic, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Strass-
burg, Dresden, Konigsberg, Breslau, with its
Schlessische Zeitung, and the Rhine provinces
and the steel and iron industries represented
by the Rheinisch-Westfdlische Zeitung, and other
cities and towns have local newspapers. A good
example of such little-known provincial news-
papers is the Augsburger Abendzeitung, with its
first-rate reports of the parliamentary proceed-
ings in Bavaria and its well-edited columns.
The circulation of these journals is, from our
point of view, small. The Berliner Tageblatt in a
/ recent issue declares its paid circulation to have
been 73,000 in 1901; 106,000 in 1905; 190,000 in
1910; and 208,000 in 1911.

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 171

The custom in Germany of eating in restau-
rants, of taking coffee in the cafes, of writing
one's letters and reading the newspapers there,
no doubt has much to do with the small subscrip-
tion lists of German journals of all kinds, whether
daily, weekly, or monthly. The German econ-
omizes even in these small matters. A German
family, or small cafe or restaurant, may, for a
small sum, have half a dozen or more weekly
and monthly journals left, and changed each
week; thus they are circulated in a dozen places
at the expense of only one copy. Where a family
of similar standing in America takes in regularly
two morning papers and an evening paper, sev-
eral weekly and monthly, and perhaps one or two
foreign journals, the German family may take
one morning paper. The custom of having half
a dozen newspapers served with the morning
meal, as is done in the larger houses in America
and in England, is practically unknown. Econ-
omy is one reason, indifference is another, pro-
vincial and circumscribed interests are others.

The German has not our keen appetite for
what we call news, which is often merely sur-
mises in. bigger type. Only the very small num-
ber who have travelled and made interests and
friends for themselves out of their own country,
have any feeling of curiosity even, about the
political and social tides and currents elsewhere.

172 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

An astounding number of Germans know Soph-
ocles, ^Esehylus, and Shakespeare better than we
do, but they know nothing, and care nothing, for
the sizzling, crackling stream of purposeless inci-
dent, and sterile comment, that pours in upon the
readers of American newspapers, and which has
had its part in making us the largest consumers
of nerve-quieting drugs in the world. All too
many of the pens that supply our press are with-
out education, without experience, without re-
sponsibility or restraint. What Mommsen writes
of Cicero applies to them: "Cicero was a jour-
nalist in the worst sense of the term, over-rich
in words as he himself confesses, and beyond
all imagination poor in thought."

No one of these journals pretends to such
power or such influence as certain great dailies
in America and in England. They have not
the means at their command to buy much cable
or telegraphic news, and lacking a press tariff
for telegrams, they are the more hampered.
The German temperament, and the civil-service
and political close-corporation methods, make it
difficult for the journalist to go far, either so-
cially or politically. The German has been
trained in a severe school to seek knowledge, not
to look for news, and he does not make the same
demands, therefore, upon his newspaper.

German relations with the outside world are

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 173

of an industrial and commercial kind, and until
very lately the German has not been a traveller,
and is not now an explorer, and their colonies are
unimportant; consequently there is no very keen
interest on the part of the bulk of the people in
foreign affairs. Even Sir Edward Grey's an-
swering speech on the Morocco question did not
appear in full in Berlin until the following day,
though Germany had roused itself to an unusual
pitch of excitement and expectancy.

As the Germans are not yet political animals,
so their newspapers reflect an artificial political
enthusiasm. Society, too, is as little organized
as politics. There are no great figures in their
social world. A Beau Brummel, a d'Orsay, a
Lady Palmerston, a Lady Londonderry, a Duke
of Devonshire, a Gladstone, a Disraeli, a Rose-
bery, would be impossible in Germany, espe-
cially if they were in opposition to the party in
power. When a chancellor or other minister is
dismissed by the Kaiser, he simply disappears.
He does not add to the weight of the opposition,
but ceases to exist politically. This has two bad
results: it does not strengthen the criticism of
the administration, and it makes the office-holder
very loath to leave office, and to surrender his
power. An ex-cabinet officer in America or in
England remains a valuable critic, but an ex-

174 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

chancellor in Germany becomes a social recluse,
a political Trappist. Even the leading political
figures are after all merely shadowy servants of
the Emperor. They represent neither themselves
nor the people, and such subserviency kills inde-
pendence and leaves us with mediocrities ges-
ticulating in the dark, and making phrases in a
vacuum.

There are, it is true, charming hostesses in
Berlin, and ladies who gather in their drawing-
rooms all that is most interesting in the intel-
lectual and political life of the day; but they are
almost without exception obedient to the tra-
ditional officialdom, leaning upon a favor that
is at times erratic, and without the daring of
independence which is the salt of all real per-
sonality.

There are, too, country-houses. One castle in
Bavaria, how well I remember it, and the accom-
plished charm of its owner, who had made its
grandeur cosey, a feat, indeed! But all this is
detached from the real life of the nation, which
is forever taking its cue from the court, leaving
any independent or imposing social and political
life benumbed and without vitality. There is no
free and stalwart opposition, no centres of power;
and much as one tires of the incessant and fever-
ish strife political and social at home, one returns

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 175

to it taking a long breath of the free air after
this hot-house atmosphere, where the ther-
mometer is regulated by the wishes of an auto-
crat.

The press necessarily reflects these conditions.
The Social Democrats, divided into many small
parties, and the Agrarians and Ultramontanes,
divided as well, give the press no single point of
leverage. These political parties wrangle among
themselves over the dish of votes, but what is
put into the dish comes from a master over wrhom
they have no control. If they upset the dish
they are turned out as they were in 1878, 1887,
1893, and 1907, and when they return they are
better behaved.

The parties themselves are not real, since thou-
sands of voters lean to the left merely to express
their discontent; but they would desert the So-
cial Democrats at once did they think there was
a chance of real governing power for them. A
small industrial was warned of the awful things
that would happen did the Socialists come into
power. "Ah," he replied, "but the government
would not permit that ! " What has the press to
chronicle with insistence and with dignity of such
flabby political and social conditions?

The press may be, and often is, annoying, as
mosquitoes are annoying, but its campaigns are
dangerous to nobody. As I write, it is hard to

176 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

believe that within a few days the members of a
new Reichstag are to be elected. There are po-
litical meetings, it is true, there are articles and
editorials in the newspapers, there is some lan-
guid discussion at dinner-tables and in society,
but there is a sense of unreality about it all, as
though men were thinking : Nothing of grave im-
portance can happen in any case! We shall
have something to say farther on of political
Germany; here it suffices to say that the press
of Germany betrays in its political writing that
it is dealing with shadows, not with realities.
;'They have been at a great feast of language,
and stolen the scraps," that's all.

The snarling Panther that was sent to Agadir,
teeth and claws showing, came back looking like
an adventurous tomcat that wished only to hide
itself meekly in its accustomed haunts; and its
unobtrusive bearing seemed to say, the less said
about the matter the better. What a storm of
obloquy would have burst upon such inept di-
plomacy in America, or in England, or even in
France. Not so here. Everybody was sore and
sorry, but the newspapers and the journalists
could raise no protest that counted. It is all
explained by the fact that the people do not
govern, have nothing to do with the whip or
the reins, nor have they any constitutional way
of changing coachmen, or of getting possession

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 177

of whip and reins ; and hooting at the driver, and
jeering at the tangled whip-lash and awkwardly
held reins, is poor-spirited business. Only one
political writer, Harden, does it with any effect,
and his pen is said to have upset the Caprivi
government.

As one reads the newspapers day by day, and
the weekly and monthly journals, it becomes ap-
parent that the German imagines he has done
something when he has had an idea; just as the
Frenchman imagines he has done something
when he has made an epigram. We are less
given either to thinking or phrasing, and far less
gifted in these directions than either Germans or
Frenchmen, and perhaps that is the reason we
have actually done so much more politically.
We do things for lack of something better to do,
while our neighbors find real pleasure in their
dreams, and take great pride in their epigrams.

As all great writing, from that of Xenophon
and Caesar till now, is born of action or the love
of it, or as a spiritual incitement to action, so a
people with little opportunity for political action,
and no centres of social life with a real sway or
sovereignty, cannot create or offer substance for
the making of a powerful and independent press.

There is no New York, no Paris, no London,
no Vienna even, in Germany. Berlin is the capi-

178 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

tal, but it is not a capital by political or social
evolution, but by force of circumstances. Ger-
many has many centres which are not only not
interested in Berlin, but even antagonistic.
Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, Leipsic, Frankfort,
Dresden, Breslau, and besides these, twenty-six
separate states with their capitals, their rulers,
courts, and parliaments, go to make up Ger-
many, and perhaps you are least of all in Ger-
many when you are in Berlin. It is true that
we have many States, many capitals, and many
governors in America, but they have all grown
from one, and not, as in Germany, been beaten
into one, and held together more from a sense
of danger from the outside than from any inter-
est, sympathy, and liking for one another.

With us each State, too, has a powerful rep-
resentation both in the Senate and in the House
of Representatives, which keeps the interest
alive, while in Germany Prussia is overwhelm-
ingly preponderant. In the upper house, or
Bundesrat, Prussia has 17 representatives; next
comes Bavaria with 6; and the other states with
4 or less, out of a total of 58 members. In the
Reichstag, out of a total of 397 representatives,
Prussia has 236.

Political society is not all centred in Berlin, as
it is in London, Paris, or Washington, nor is social

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 179

life there representative of all Germany. Ber-
lin's stamp of approval is not necessary to play,
or opera, or book, or picture, or statue, or per-
sonality. Indeed, Berlin often takes a lead in
such matters from other cities in Germany where
the artistic life and history are more fully de-
veloped, as, for instance, in other days, Wei-
mar, and now Munich, Dresden, and, in literary
matters, Leipsic. A recent example of this,
though of small consequence in itself, is the case
of the opera, the "Rosen Kavalier," which was
given repeatedly in Dresden and Leipsic, whither
many Berlin people went to hear it, before the
authorities in Berlin could be persuaded to pro-
duce it.

The nobility, the society heavy artillery, come
to Berlin only for three or four weeks, from the
middle of January to the middle of February, to
pay their respects to their sovereign at the vari-
ous court functions given during that time.
They live in the country and only visit in Berlin.
It is complained, that the double taxation inci-
dent to the up-keep of an establishment both in
town and in the country, makes it impossible for
them to be much in Berlin. They stay in hotels
and in apartments, and are mere passing visitors
in their own capital. They have, therefore,
practically no influence upon social life, and Ber-

180 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

lin is merely the centre of the industrial, military,
official, and political society of Prussia. It is the
clearing-house of Germany, but by no means the
literary, artistic, social, or even the political capi-
tal of Germany, as London is the English, or
Paris the French, or as Washington is fast grow-
ing to be the American, capital.

There is no training-ground for an accom-
plished or man-of-the-world journalist, and the
views and opinions of a journalist who is more
or less of a social pariah, and he still is that with
less than half a dozen exceptions, and of a man
who begs for crumbs from the press officials at
the foreign or other government offices, are
neither written with the grip of the independent
and dignified chronicler, nor received with confi-
dence and respect by the reader.

It may be a reaction from this negligence with
which they are treated that produces a quality,
both in the writing and in the illustrations of the
German newspapers, which is unknown in Amer-
ica. Many of the illustrated papers indulge in
pictorial flings which may be compared only to
the scribbling and coarse drawings, in out-of-
the-way places, of dirty-minded boys. With the
exception of the well-known Fliegende Blatter,
Kladderadatsch, and one or two less representa-
tive, there is nothing to compare with the artistic

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 181

excellence and restrained good taste of Life or
Punch, for example.

There is one illustrated paper published in
Munich, Simplicissimus, which deserves more
than negligent and passing comment. It has
two artists of whom I know nothing except what
I have learned from their work, Th. Th. Heine
and Gulbransson. These men are Aristophanic
in their ability as draughtsmen and as censors,
in striking at the weaknesses, political, military,
and official, of their countrymen. Their work is
something quite new in Germany, and worthy of
comparison with the best in any country. It is
not elegant, it is Rabelaisian; and though I have
nothing to retract in regard to coarseness, and
no wish to commend the attitude taken toward
German political and social life, in fairness one is
bound to call attention to the pictorial work in
this particular paper as of a very high order, and
to recognize its power. If Heine could have
turned his wit into the drawings of Hogarth, we
should have had something not unlike Simplicis-
simus, and any German annoyed at the criti-
cisms of his national life from the pen of a for-
eigner, may well turn to his own Simplicissimus,
and be humbly grateful that no foreign pen-
point can possibly pierce more deeply, than this
domestic pencil, at work in his own country.

182 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

The danger for the critic and the wit, which
few avoid, is that with incomparable advantages
over his opponent he will not play fair. In spite
of the awful reputation of our so-called "yellow
press," which is often boisterously impudent, and
sometimes inclined to indulge in comments and
revelations of the private affairs of individuals
which can only be dubbed coarse and cowardly,
there is seldom a descent to the indescribably in-
decent caricatures which one finds every week in
the illustrated papers in Germany. As we have
noted elsewhere, just as the citizens of Berlin, as
one sees them in the streets and in public places,
give one the impression that they are not house-
trained, so many of the pens and pencils which
serve the German press, leave one with the feeling
that their possessors would not know how to
behave in a cultivated and well-regulated house-
hold.

Every gentleman in Germany must have been
ashamed of the writing in the German press after
the sinking of the Titanic. There was a blaze of
brutal pharisaism that put a bar-sinister across
any claim to gentlemanliness on the part of the
majority. When every brave man in the world
was lamenting the death of Scott, the English
Arctic explorer, one German paper intimated
that he had committed suicide to avoid the

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 183

bankruptcy forced upon him by England's lack
of generosity toward his expedition. It is al-
most unbelievable that such a cur should have
escaped unthrashed, even among the German
journalists. These two examples of lack of fine
feeling mark them for what they are. Among
gentlemen no comment is necessary. The mark
of breeding is more often discovered in what
one does not say, does not write, does not do,
than in positive action. There was much, at
that time, when fifteen hundred people had been
buried in icy water, and scores of American and
English gentlemen had gone down to death, just
in answer to: "Ladies first, gentlemen!" that
should have been left unsaid and unwritten.
The quality of the German journalist, with half
a dozen exceptions, was betrayed to the full
in those few days, and many a German cheek
mantled with shame.

However, a man may eat with his knife and
still be an authority on bridge-building; he may
tuck his napkin under his chin preparatory to,
and as an armor against, the well-known vagaries
of liquids, before he takes his soup or his soft-
boiled eggs, and still be an authority on soap-
making; he may wear a knitted waistcoat with a
frock-coat to luncheon, and be deeply versed in
Russian history. He may have no inkling of

184 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the traditions of fair play, or of the reticences of
courtesy, no shred of knightliness, and yet be a
scholar in his way. Indeed, in none of the other
cultured countries does one find so many men of
trained minds, but with such untrained manners
and morals. In their lack of sensation-mongering,
in their indifference to social gossip, in their
trustworthy and learned comments upon things
scientific, musical, theatrical, literary, and his-
torical, they are as men to school-boys com-
pared to the American press. They have the
utter contempt for mere smartness that only
comes with severe educational training. They
have the scholar's impatience with trivialities.
They skate, not to cut their names on the ice,
but to get somewhere, and the whole industrial
and scientific world knows how quickly they have
arrived.

Our newspapers make a business of training
their readers in that worst of all habits, mental
dissipation. The German press is not thus
guilty. Despite all I have written, I am quite
sure that if I were banished from the active world
and could see only half a dozen journals on my
lonely island, one of them would be a German
newspaper. It may be that I have a perverted
literary taste, for I can get more humor, more
keen enjoyment, out of a census report or an ety-

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 185

mological dictionary than from a novel. My
favorite literary dissipation is to read the works
of that distinguished statistician at Washington,
Mr. O. P. Austin, the poet-laureate of industrial
America, or the toilsome and exciting verbal
journeys of the Rev. Mr. Skeat. The classic hu-
morists do not compare with them, in my humble
opinion, as sources of fantastic surprises. This,
perhaps, accounts for my sincere admiration for
that quality of scholarship, learning, and accu-
racy in the German press. Nor does the pos-
session of these qualities in the least controvert
the impression given by the German press of
political powerlessness, of social ignorance and
incompetence, and of boorish ignorance of the
laws of common decency in international com-
ment and controversy. A great scholar may be
a booby in a drawing-room, and a lamentable
failure as an adviser in matters political and so-
cial. "As a bird that wandereth from her nest,
so is a man that wandereth from his place."
Germany has put some astonishing failures to
her credit through her belief that learning can
take the place of common-sense, and scholarship
do the tasks of that intelligent and experienced
observation to which the abused word, worldli-
ness, is given. Perhaps it is as well that the
German press declines to keep a social diary;

186 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

well, too, that it has no candidates for the office
of society Haruspex, whose ghoulish business it
is to find omens and prophecies in the entrails
of his victims. In that respect, at any rate,
both society and the press in Germany are as is
the salon to the scullery, compared with ours.
As for that little knot of illustrated weekly
papers in England, with their nauseating letter-
press for snobs inside, and their advertisements
of patent complexion remedies and corsets out-
side, there is nothing like them in Germany or
anywhere else, so far as I know. You may ad-
vertise your shooting-party, your dance, or your
dinner-party, and thus keep yourself before the
world as though you were a whiskey, a soap, or
a superfluous-hair-destroy er, if you please, and,
alas, many there are who do so. At least Ger-
many knows nothing of this weekly auction of
privacy, this nauseating snobbery which is a
fungus-growth seen at its strongest in British
soil.

I am bound, both by tradition and experience
as an American, to discover the reason for such
conditions in the lack of fluidity in social and
political life in Germany. The industrials, the
military, the nobility, the civil servants, and to
some extent the Jews, are all in separate social
compartments; and the political parties as well

keep much to themselves and without the per-
sonal give and take outside of their purely official
life which obtains in America and in England.

It is an impossible suggestion, I know, but if
the upper and lower houses of the empire, or of
Prussia, could meet in a match at base-ball, or
golf, or cricket; if the army could play the civil
service; if the newspaper correspondents could
play the under-secretaries ; if they could all be
induced occasionally, to throw off their mental
and moral uniforms, and to meet merely as men,
a current of fresh air would blow through Ger-
many, that she would never after permit to be
shut out.

Personal dignity is refreshed, not lost, by a
romp. Who has not seen distinguished Ameri-
cans and distinguished Englishmen, in their own
or in their friends' houses, or at one or another
of our innumerable games, behaving like boys
out of school, crawling about beneath improvised
skins and growling and roaring in charades; in-
dulging in flying chaff of one another; in the
skirts of their wives and sisters playing cricket,
or base-ball, or tennis with the one hand only;
caricaturing good-humoredly some of their own
official business, or arranging a match of some
kind where their own servants join in to make
up a side; or, and well I remember it, half a

188 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

dozen youths of about fifty playing cricket with
one stump and a broom-handle for an hour one
hot afternoon, amid tumbles and shouts of laugh-
ter, and a shower of impromptu nicknames, and
one or two of them bore names known all over
the English-speaking world. Nobody loses any
dignity, any importance; but there is an uncon-
querable stiffness in Germany that makes me
laugh almost as I make this suggestion. We
have only a certain reserve of serious work in us.
To attempt to be serious all the time is never
to be at rest. This worried busyness, which is a
characteristic of the more mediocre of my own
countrymen also, is really a symptom of deficient
vitality. Things are in the saddle and you are
the mule and not the man, if you are such an one.
The stiffness and self-consciousness of the Ger-
mans is really a sign of their lack of confidence
in themselves. Youth is always more serious
than middle age, for the same reason. A man
who is at home in the world laughs and is gay;
he who is shy and doubtful scowls. It is the
God-fearing who are not afraid, it is the man-
fearing who are awkward and uncomfortable.

The first thing to be afraid of is oneself, but
after oneself is conquered why be afraid to let
him loose!

It would be quite untrue to give the impres-

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 189

sion that there is no fun, no larking, no chaff, in
Germany, although I am bound to say that there
is little of this last. I can bear witness to a
healthy love of fun, and to an exuberant exploi-
tation of youthful vitality in many directions
among the students and younger officers, for
example. Better companions for a romp exist
nowhere. Having been blessed with an undue
surplus of vitality, which for many years kept
me fully occupied in directing its expenditure,
alas, not always with success, I can only add that
I found as many youthful companions in a simi-
lar predicament in Germany, as any\vhere else.
But with the Englishman and the Ameri-
can, both temperament and environment permit
youthfulness to last longer. The German must
soon get into the mill and grind and be ground,
and he is by temperament more easily caught
and put into the uniform of a constantly correct
behavior. As for us, we are all boys still at
thirty, many of us at fifty, and some of us die
ere the school-boy exuberance has all been
squeezed or dried out of us. Not so in Germany.
One sees more men in Germany who give the
impression that they could not by any possi-
bility ever have been boys than with us. They
begin to look cramped at thirty, and they are
stiff at fifty, as though they had been fed on a

190 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

diet of circumspection, caution, and obedience.
They are drilled early and they soon become
amenable, and then even indulgent, toward the
drill-master.

This German people have not developed into a
nation, they have been squeezed into the mould
of a nation. The nation is not for the people,
the people are for the nation. "By the word
Constitution," writes Lord Bolingbroke, "we
mean, whenever we speak with propriety and
exactness, the assemblage of laws, institutions,
and customs derived from certain fixed princi-
ples of reason, directed to certain fixed objects
of public good, that compose the general sys-
tem by which the community hath agreed to be
governed." The Germans have no such con-
stitution, for the community was scarcely con-
sulted, much less hath it agreed to the general
system by which it is governed.

Of course, in every nation its affairs are, and
must be, conducted by officials. That is as true
of America as of Germany. The fundamental
difference is that with us these official persons
are executive officers only, the real captain is the
people; while in Germany these official persons
are the real governors of the people, subject to
the commands of one who repeatedly and pub-
licly asserts that his commission is from God and

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 191

not from the people. This puts whole classes of
the community permanently into uniform, and
the wearers of these uniforms are almost afraid
to laugh, and would consider it sacrilege to romp.
Caution is a very puny form of morality.
' 'He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and
he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap."
It is as true politically as of other spheres of life
that "he or she who lets the world or his own
portion of it choose his plan of life for him has
no need of any other faculty than the ape-like
one of imitation." Thus writes John Stuart
Mill, and what else can be said of the political
activities of the Germans? What journalist or
what patriot indeed can take seriously a majority
that has no power? What people can call itself
free to whom its rulers are not responsible?
The Social Democrats, at the moment of writ-
ing, have won one hundred and ten seats in the
Reichstag, but the army and navy estimates are
beyond their reach, the taxes are fixtures, a con-
stitution is a dream, and if they are cantankerous
or truculent the Reichstag will be dismissed by a
wave of the hand. Say what one will, they are a
mammillary people politically, and the strongest
party in the Reichstag is merely an energetic
political mangonel. Their leaders moult opin-
ions, they do not mould them, and could not
translate them into action if they did.

192 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Not since 1874 has there been a Reichstag so
strongly radical, but nothing will come of it.
The Reichskanzler, Doctor von Bethmann-Holl-
weg, did not hesitate to take an early opportu-
nity, after the opening of the new Reichstag, to
state boldly that the issue was Authority versus
Democratization, and that he had no fear of the
result. It is customary for the newly elected
Praesidium, the president and two vice-presi-
dents of the Reichstag, to be received in audi-
ence by the Emperor. On this occasion the So-
cialists forbade their representative to go, and
the Emperor, therefore, refused to receive any
of them. As usual, they played into his hands.
Hans bleibt immer Hans, and on this occasion
his vulgar lack of good manners only brought
contumely upon the whole Reichstag, and left
the Emperor as the outstanding dignified figure
in the controversy. Such behavior is not cal-
culated to invite confidence, and not likely to
induce this enemy-surrounded nation to put its
destinies in such hands, not at any rate for some
time to come. "Though thou shouldest bray a
fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle,
yet will not his foolishness depart from him."

Intellectually Germany is a republic, and we
Americans perhaps beyond all other peoples
have profited by her literature, her philosophy,
her music, her scientific and economic teaching.

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 193

We have kneaded these things into our political
as well as into our intellectual life. "Intel-
lectual emancipation, if it does not give us at
the same time control over ourselves, is poison-
ous." And who writes thus? Goethe! But
the intellectual freedom of Germany has done
next to nothing to bring about political or, in
the realm of journalism, personal self-control.

It is a strange state of affairs. Intelligent
men and women in Germany do not realize it.
Not once, but many times, I have been told:
"You foreigners are forever commenting upon
our bureaucracy, our officialdom, but it is not
as all-powerful as you think. We have plenty
of freedom!" These people are often them-
selves officials, nearly always related to, or of
the society, of the ruling class. The rulers and
the ruling class have naturally no sense of op-
pression, no feeling that they are unduly subject
to others, since the others are themselves. I
am quite willing to believe of my own and of
other people's personal opinions that they are
not dogmas merely because they are baptized in
intolerance. I must leave it to the reader to
judge from the facts, whether or no the Germans
have a political autonomy, which permits the
exercise and development of political power. A
glance at the political parties themselves will
make this perhaps the more clear.

194 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

The official organization of the conservative
party, may be said to date back to the founding
of the Neue Preussische Zeitung in 1848, and the
organization of the party in many parts of Ger-
many. Earlier still, Burke was the hero of the
pioneers of this party, whose first newspaper had
for editor, no less a person than Heinrich von
Kleist, and whose first endeavors were to sup-
port God and the King, and to throw off the
yoke of foreign domination.

In 1876 was formed the Deutsch-Konservativ
party supporting Bismarck. "Konigthum von
Gottes Gnaden" is still their watchword, with op-
position to Social Democracy, support of im-
perialism, agrarian and industrial protection, and
Christian teaching in the schools, as the planks
of their platform. They also combat Jewish in-
fluence everywhere, particularly in the schools.
Allied to this party is the Bund der Landwirte
and the Deutscher Bauernbund. In the election
of 1912 they elected forty -five representatives to
the Reichstag, a serious falling off from the sixty-
three seats held previous to that election. The
Free Conservative portion of the Conservative
party, is composed of the less autocratic mem-
bers of the landed nobility, but there is little
difference in their point of view.

The Centrum, or Catholic party, is in theory
not a religious party; in practice it is, though it

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 195

does not bar out Protestant members who hold
similar views to their own. Its political activity
began in 1870, and the first call for the formation
of the party came from Reichensperger in the
Kolnischer Volkszeitung. The famous leader of
the party, and a politician who even held his own
against Bismarck, was the Hanoverian Justiz-
minister, Doctor Ludwig Windthorst. The7
stormy time of the party was from 1873 to 1878,
when Bismarck attempted to oppose the growing
power of the Catholic Church, and more par-
ticularly of the Jesuits. The so-called May laws
of that year forbade Roman Catholic interven-
tion in civil affairs; obliged all ministers of re-
ligion to pass the higher-schools examinations
and to study theology three years at a university ;
made all seminaries subject to state inspection;
and gave fuller protection to those of other
creeds. In 1878 Bismarck needed the support
of the Centrum party to carry through the new
tariff, and the May laws, except that regarding
civil marriage, were repealed. The party stands
for religious teaching in the primary schools,
Christian marriage, federal character of empire,
protection, and independence of the state.
More than any other party it has kept its rep-
resentation in the Reichstag at about the same
number. In 1903 they cast 1,875,300 votes and
had 100 members. In 1907 they had 103 mem-

196 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

bers, and in the last election of 1912 they won
93 seats. Even this Catholic party is now di-
vided. Count Oppersdorff leads the "Only-
Catholic" party, against the more liberal section
which has its head-quarters at Cologne, where
the late Cardinal Fischer was the leader. At the
session of the Reichstag in 1913, when the ques-
tion of the readmission of the Jesuits was raised,
the Centrum party even sided with the Social-
ists in the matter of the expropriation law for
Posen, in order to annoy the chancellor for his
opposition to themselves. Such political mis-
cegenation as this does not show a high level of
faith or of policy.

It may be of interest to the reader to know
that in 1903 the population of Germany was
58,629,000, and the number qualified to vote
12,531,000; in 1907 the population was 61,983,-
000, and the number qualified to vote, 13,353,-
000; in 1912 the population was 65,407,000, and
the qualified voters numbered over 14,000,000,
of whom 12,124,503 voted. In 1903 there were
9,496,000 votes cast; in 1907, 11,304,000. The
German Reichstag has 397 members, or 1 rep-
resentative to every 156,000 inhabitants; the
United States House of Representatives has 433
members, or 1 for every 212,000 inhabitants;
England, 670 members, or 1 for every 62,000;
France, 584, or 1 for every 67,000; Italy, 508, or

1 for every 64,000; Austria, 516, or 1 for every
51,000.

Despite the fact that the Conservative and
the Catholic parties have much in common, and
are the parties of the Right and Centre: these
names are given the political parties in the
Reichstag according to their grouping on the
right, centre, and left of the house, looking from
the tribune or speaker's platform, from which all
set speeches are delivered, they are often at odds
among themselves, and Bismarck and Billow
brought about tactical differences among them
for their own purposes. Their programme may
be summed up as "As you were," which is not
inspiring either as an incentive or as a command.

The Liberal parties are the National liberale;
Fortschrittspartei, or Progressives; and the Frei-
sinnige Volkspartei, or Liberal Democratic party.

The National Liberal party was strongest dur-
ing the days when Prussia's efforts were directed
mainly toward a federation and a strengthening
of the bonds which hold the states together;
"unter dem Donner der Kanonen von Konig-
gratz ist der nationalliberale Gedanke geboren."
Loyalty to emperor and empire, country above
party, a fleet competent to protect the country
and its overseas interests, are watchwords of the
party. The party is protectionist, and in matters

198 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

of school and church administration in accord
with the Free Conservatives.

The Liberal Democratic party demands elec-
toral reform, no duties on foodstuffs, and im-
perial insurance laws for the workingmen.

The Fortschrittspartei finds its intellectual
beginnings, in the condensing of the hazy clouds
of revolution in 1848, in the persons of Wilhelm
von Humboldt and Freiherr von Stein. Politi-
cally, the party came into being in 1861, and
Waldeck, von Hoverbeck, and Virchow are fa-
miliar names to students of German political
history; later Eugen Richter was the leader of
the party in the Reichstag. This party is still
for free-trade, in opposition to military and bu-
reaucratic government, favorable to parliamen-
tary government. Of the grouping and regroup-
ing of these parties; of their divisions for and
against Bismarck's policies; of their splits on the
questions of free-trade and protection; of their
leanings now to the right, now to the left; of
their differences over details of taxation for
purposes of defence; of their attitudes toward a
powerful fleet, and toward the Jesuits, it would
require a volume, and a large one, to describe.
Though it is dangerous to characterize them,
they may be said without inaccuracy to repre-
sent the democratic movement in Germany both

in thought and political action, and to hold a
wavering place between the Conservatives and
the Social Democrats.

The Social Democratic party, the party of the
wage-earners, only assumed recognizable outlines
after the appeal of Ferdinand Lassalle for a
workingman's congress at Leipsic in 1863. In
1877 they mustered 493,000 voters. Bismarck
and the monarchy looked askance at their grow-
ing power. It was attempted to pass a law,
punishing with fine and imprisonment: "wer in
einer den offentlichen Frieden gefahrdenden
Weise verschiedene Klassen der Bevolkerung
gegeneinander offentlich aufreizt oder wer in
gleicher Weise die Institute der Ehe, der Fa-
milie und des Eigentums offentlich durch Rede
oder Schrift angreift." This was a direct attack
upon the Socialists, but the Reichstag refused to
pass the law. In May, 1878, and shortly after
in June, two attempts were made upon the life of
the Kaiser. Bismarck then easily and quickly
forced through the new law against the So-
cialists.

Under this law newspapers were suppressed,
organizations dissolved, meetings forbidden, and
certain leaders banished. For twelve years the
party was kept under the watchful restraint of
the police, and their propaganda made difficult
and in many places impossible. After the repeal

200 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

of this law, and for the last twenty years, the
party has increased with surprising rapidity. In
1893 the Social Democrats cast 1,787,000 votes;
in 1898, 2,107,000; in 1903, more than 3,000,000;
and in the last election, 1912, 4,238,919; and they
have just returned 110 delegates to the Reichstag
out of a total of 397 members.

It is noteworthy that in America there is one
Socialist member of the House of Representa-
tives; while in Germany, which combines auto-
cratic methods of government, with something
more nearly approaching state ownership and
control, than any other country in the world, the
most numerous party in the present Reichstag
is that of the Social Democrats.

Freedom is the only medicine for discontent.
There is no rope for the hanging of a demagogue
like free speech; no such disastrous gift for the
socialist as freedom of action. Imagine what
would have happened in America if we had at-
tempted to suppress Bryan! The result of giv-
ing him free play and a fair hearing, the result of
allowing the people to judge for themselves, has
been a prolonged spectacle of political hari-kiri
which has had a wholesome though negative
educational influence. The most accomplished
oratorical Pierrot of our day, who changes his
political philosophy as easily as he changes his
costume, has seen one hundred and sixty cities

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 201

and towns in America turn to government by
commission, and has kept the heraldic donkey
always just out of reach of the political carrots,
until the Republican party itself fairly pushed
the donkey into the carrot-field, but even then
with another leader. No autocrat could have
done so much.

As early as 1887 Auer, Bebel, and Liebknecht
outlined the programme of the party, and this
programme, again revised at Erfurt in 1891,
stands as the expression of their demands. They
claim that: "Die Arbeiterklasse kann ihre oko-
nomischen Kampfe nicht fiihren und ihre okono-
mische Organisation nicht entwickeln ohne polit-
ische Rechte." Roughly they demand : the right
to form unions and to hold public meetings ; sepa-
ration of church and state; education free and
secular, and the feeding of school-children; state
expenditure to be met exclusively by taxes on
incomes, property, and inheritance; people to
decide on peace and war; direct system of voting,
one adult one vote; citizen army for defence;
referendum; international court of arbitration.
Their leader in the Reichstag to-day is Bebel,
and from what I have heard of the debates in
that assembly I should judge that they have
not only a majority over any other party in
numbers, but also in speaking ability. The
members of the Socialist party always leave the

202 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

house in a body, at the end of each session, just
before the cheers are called for, for the Emperor.
They have become more and more daring of late
in their outspoken criticism of both the Emperor
and his ministers. In consequence, they are re-
plied to with ever-increasing dislike and bitter-
ness by their opponents. At a recent banquet of
old university students in Berlin, Freiherr von
Zedlitz, presiding, quoted Barth and Richter:
"The victory of Social Democracy means the
destruction of German civilization, and a Social
Democratic state would be nothing more than a
gigantic house of correction."

In addition to the four important political
divisions in the Reichstag, the Conservative,
Liberal, Clerical, and Socialist, there are many
subdivisions of these. Since 1871 there have
been some forty different parties represented,
eleven conservative, fourteen liberal, two cleri-
cal, nine national-particularist, and five socialist.
To-day, besides four small groups and certain
representatives acknowledging no party, there
are some eleven different factions.

1871

1881

1893

1907

1912

Right, or Con-

servative ....

895,000

1,210,000

1,806,000

2,141,000

1,149,916

Liberal

1,884,000

1,948,000

2,102,000

3,078,000

3,227,846

Clerical

973,000

1,618,000

1,920,000

2,779,000

2,012,990

Social Democrats

124,000

312,000

1,787,000

3,259,000

4,238,919

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 203

So far as one may so divide them, the voters
have aligned themselves as follows: In the last
elections, in 1912, the Conservatives and their
allies elected 75 members; the Clericals, 93; the
Poles, 18; and the Guelphs, 5; and these come
roughly under the heading of the party of
the Right. Under the heading Left, the Na-
tional Liberals and Progressive party elected 88,
and the Social Democrats 110 members to the
Reichstag. The parties stand therefore roughly
divided at the moment of writing as 191 Conser-
vative, and 200 Radical, with 6 members unac-
counted for. The Poles with 18 seats, the
Alsatians with 5, the Guelphs and Lorrainers
and Danes with 8 seats, and the no-party with
2 seats, are also represented, but are here placed
with the party of the Right. To divide the
parties into two camps gives the result that,
roughly, four and a half millions voted that they
were satisfied, and seven and a half millions
that they were not.

No doubt any chancellor, including Doctor
von Bethmann-Hollweg, would be glad to divide
the Reichstag as definitely and easily as I have
done. Theoretically these divisions may be use-
ful to the reader, but practically to the leader
they are useless. Bebel, the leader of the Social
Democrats, declares himself ready to shoulder a

204 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

musket to defend the country ; Heydebrandt, the
leader of the Conservatives, and possibly the
most effective speaker in the Reichstag, has
spoken warmly in favor of social reform laws ; the
Clericals are for peace, almost at any price; the
Agrarians or Junkers for a tariff on foodstuffs and
cattle, and one might continue analyzing the
parties until one would be left bewildered at their
refining of the political issues at stake. Back to
God and the Emperor; and forward to a consti-
tutional monarchy with the chancellor responsi-
ble to the Reichstag, and perhaps later a repub-
lic, represent the two extremes. Between the
two everything and anything. It is hard to put
together a team out of these diverse elements
that a chancellor can drive with safety, and with
the confidence that he will finally arrive with his
load at his destination. In addition to these
parties there are the frankly disaffected repre-
sentatives of conquered Poland, of conquered
Holstein, of conquered Alsace-Lorraine, and of
conquered Hanover, this last known as the
Guelph party; all of them anti-Prussian.

It is not to be wondered at that the com-
ments, deductions, and prophecies of foreigners
are wildly astray when dealing with German pol-
itics. In America, religious differences and ra-
cial differences play a small role at Washington;

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 205

but the 220 Protestants, the 141 Catholics, the 3
Jews, the 5 free-thinkers, and so on, in the last
Reichstag are in a way parties as well. In that
same assembly 2 members were over 80, 78
over 60, 271 between 40 and 60, 42 under 40,
and 3 under 30 years of age. One hundred and
six members were landed proprietors; 220 were
of the liberal professions, including 37 authors,
35 judges or magistrates, 21 clericals, 7 doctors,
and 1 artist; 13 merchants; 21 manufacturers;
and 20 shopkeepers and laborers. Seventy-two
members were of the nobility, a decided falling
off from 1878, when they numbered 162. Two
hundred and fifty members were educated at a
university, and practically all may be said to
have had an education equal if not superior to
that given in our smaller colleges.

In the American Congress, in the House of
Representatives, we have 212 lawyers, though
there are only 135,000 lawyers in our population
of 90,000,000. We have in that same assembly
50 business men, representing the 15,000,000 of
our people engaged in trade and industry. Per-
haps the German Reichstag is as fairly represent-
ative as our own House of Representatives,
though both assemblies show the babyhood of
civilization which still votes for flashing eyes,
thumping fists, hollering patriotism, and smooth

206 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

phrases. The surprising feature of elective as-
semblies is that here and there Messrs. Self-
Control, Ability, Dignity, and Independence
find seats at all. The members are paid, since
1906, a salary7 of 3,000 marks, with a deduction
of 20 marks for each day's absence. They have
free passes over German railways during the
session. The Reichstag is elected every five
years.

The appearance of the Reichstag to the
stranger is notable for the presence of military,
naval, and clerical uniforms. It is, as one looks
down upon them, an assembly where at least
one-fourth are bald or thin-haired, and together
they give the impression of being big in the
waist, careless in costume, slovenly in carriage,
and lacking proper feeding, grooming, and ex-
ercise. It is clearly an assemblage, not of men
of action, but of men of theories. Not only
their appearance betrays this, but their debates
as well, and what one knows of their individual
training and preferences goes to substantiate this
judgment of them. There are no soldiers, sail-
ors, explorers, governors of alien people; no men,
in short, who have solved practical problems
dealing with men, but only theorists. Such men
as Gotzen, Solf , and others, who have had actual
experience of dealing with men, are rare excep-

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 207

tions. Probably the best men in Germany wish,
and wish heartily, that there were more such
men; indeed, I betray no secret when I declare
that the most intelligent and patriotic criticism
in Germany coincides with my own.

The electoral divisions of Germany, as we have
noted elsewhere, have not been changed for
forty years, with a consequent disproportionate
representation from the rural, as over against the
enormously increased population, of the urban
and industrial districts. The Conservatives, for
example, in 1907 gained 1 seat for every 18,232
votes ; the Clericals or Centrum, 1 seat for every
20,626 votes; the National Liberals, 1 for every
30,635 votes; and the Social Democrats, 1 for
every 75,781 votes. It may be seen from this,
how overwhelming must be the majority of votes
cast by the Social Democrats, in order to gain a
majority representation in the Reichstag itself.
In 1912 they cast more than one-third of the
votes, and are represented by 110 members out
of the total of 397.

For the student of German politics it is im-
portant to remember, that the Social Demo-
crats are not all representatives of socialism or of
democracy. Their demands at this present time
are far from the radical theory that all sources of
production should be in the hands of the people.

208 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Only a small number of very red radicals demand
that. Their successes have been, and they are
real successes, along the lines of greater protec-
tion and more political liberty for the working-
man. The number of their votes is swelled by
thousands of voters who express their general
discontent in that way. The state in Germany
owns railroads, telegraph and telephone lines;
operates mines and certain industries, and both
controls and directly helps certain large manu-
factories which are either of benefit to the state,
or which, if they were entirely independent,
might prove a danger to the state. The state
enforces insurance against sickness, accident, and
old age, and the three million office-holders are
dependent upon the state for their livelihood and
their pensions.

It is a striking thing in Germany to see human
nature cropping out, even under these ideal con-
ditions; for it is difficult to see how the state
could be more grandmotherly in her officious care
of her own. But this is not enough. Physical
safety is not enough, the demand is for political
freedom, and for a government answerable to
the people and the people's representatives.
Rich men, powerful men, representative men by
the thousands, men whom one meets of all sorts
and conditions, and who are neither radical nor

GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES 209

socialistic, vote the Social Democrat ticket.
The Social Democrats are by no means all demo-
crats nor all socialists. As a body of voters they
are united only in the expression of their discon-
tent with a government of officials, practically
chosen and kept in power over their heads, and
with whose tenure of office they have nothing
to do.

The fact that the members of the Reichstag
are not in the saddle, but are used unwillingly
and often contemptuously as a necessary and
often stubborn and unruly pack-animal by the
Kaiser-appointed ministers; the fact that they
are pricked forward, or induced to move by a
tempting feed held just beyond the nose, has
something to do, no doubt, with the lack of
unanimity w^hich exists. The diverse elements
debate with one another, and waste their energy
in rebukes and recriminations which lead no-
where and result in nothing. I have listened to
many debates in the Reichstag where the one
aim of the speeches seemed to be merely to un-
burden the soul of the speaker. He had no
plan, no proposal, no solution, merely a con-
fession to make. After forty-odd years the
Germans, in many ways the most cultivated
nation in the world, are still without real rep-
resentative government.

210 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Why should the press or society take this as-
sembly very seriously, when, as the most im-
portant measure of which they are capable, they
can vote to have themselves dismissed by de-
clining to pass supply bills; and when, as has
happened four times in their history, they return
chastened, tamed, and amenable to the wishes of
their master?

No wonder the political writing in the press
seems to us vaporish and without definite aims.
It is perhaps due to this weakness that the writ-
ing in the German journals upon other subjects
is very good indeed. The best energies of the
writers are devoted to what may be called edu-
cational and literary expositions. In the field
of foreign politics the German press is less well-
informed, less instructive, and consequently irri-
tating. The poverty of material resources makes
such writing as that of Sir Valentine Chirrol,
and in former days that of Mr. G. W. Smalley,
beyond the reach of the German journalist, and
their press is painfully narrow, frequently unfair,
and often purposely insulting to foreign coun-
tries. They are not only anti-English, but anti-
French, an ti- American, and at times bitter. If
the American people read the German news-
papers there would be little love lost between us.

BERLIN

HE is a fortunate traveller who enters
Berlin from the west, and toward the
end of his journey rolls along over the
twelve or fifteen miles of new streets, glides
under the Brandenburger Tor, and finds himself
in Unter den Linden. The Kaiserdamm, Bis-
marck Strasse, Berliner Strasse, Charlottenbur-
gerchaussee, Unter den Linden, give the most
splendid street entrance into a city in the world.
The pavement is without a hole, without a
crack, and as clear of rubbish of any kind as a
well-kept kitchen floor. The cleanliness is so
noticeable that one looks searchingly for even a
scrap of paper, for some trace of negligence, to
modify this superiority over the streets of our
American cities. But there is no consolation;
the superiority is so incontestable that no com-
parison is possible. For the whole twelve or
fifteen miles the streets are lined with trees, or
shrubs, or flowers, with well-kept grass, and with
separate roads on each side for horsemen or foot-
passengers. In the spring and summer the

streets are a veritable garden.

211

212 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Broadway is 80 feet wide; Fifth Avenue is 100
feet wide; the Champs Elysees is 233 feet wide;
and Unter den Linden is 196 feet wide, and has
70 feet of roadway.

For every square yard of wood pavement in
Berlin there are 24 square yards of asphalt and
37 square yards of stone. The total length of
streets cleaned in Berlin, which has an area of
25 square miles, according to a report of some
few years ago, was 316 miles; there are 700
streets and some 70 open places, and the area
cleaned daily was 8,160,000 square yards. The
cost of the care of the Berlin streets has risen
with the growth of the city from 1,670,847
marks,1 in 1880, to 6,068,557 marks, in 1910.
The total cost of the street-cleaning in New
York, in 1907, was $9,758,922, and in Manhat-
tan, The Bronx, and Brooklyn 5,129 men were
employed; while the working force in Berlin, in
1911, was 2,150. It should be said also that in
New York an enormous amount of scavenging is
paid for privately besides. In New York the
street-sweepers are paid $2.19 a day; in Berlin
the foremen receive 4.75 marks the first three
years, and thereafter 5 marks; the men 3.75
marks the first three years, then 4 marks, arid
after nine years' service 4.50 marks. The boy

'The mark is equal to a little less than twenty-five cents.

BERLIN 213

assistants receive 2 marks, after two years 2.25
marks, and after four years' service 3 marks.
The whole force is paid every fourteen days.
The street-cleaning department is divided into
thirty-three districts, these districts into four
groups, each with an inspector, and all under a
head-inspector. Attached to each district are
depots with yards for storage of vehicles, appa-
ratus, brooms, shovels, uniforms, with machine
shops, where on more than one occasion I have
seen enthusiastic workmen trying experiments
with new machinery to facilitate their work.

Over this whole force presides, a politician?
Far from it; a technically educated man of wide
experience, and, of the official of my visit I may
add, of great courtesy and singular enthusiasm
both for his task and for the men under him.
What his politics are concerns nobody, what the
politics of the party in power are concerns him
not at all. That an individual, or a group of in-
dividuals, powerful financially or politically,
should influence him in his choice or in his
placing of the men under him is unthinkable.
That a political boss in this or in that district,
should dictate who should and who should not,
be employed in the street-cleaning department,
even down to the meanest remover of dung with
a dust-pan, as was done for years in New York

214 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

and every other city in America, would be
looked upon here as a farce of Topsy-Turvydom,
with Alice in Wonderland in the title-role.

The streets are cleaned for the benefit of the
people, and not for the benefit of the pockets of a
political aristocracy. The public service is a
guardian, not a predatory organization. In our
country when a man can do nothing else he be-
comes a public servant; in Germany he can only
become a public servant after severe examina-
tions and ample proofs of fitness. The supe-
riority of one service over the other is moral, not
merely mechanical.

*The street-cleaning department is recruited
from soldiers who have served their time, not
over thirty -five years of age, and who must pass
a doctor's examination, and be passed also by
the police. The rules as to their conduct, their
uniforms, their rights, and their duties, down to
such minute carefulness as that they may not
smoke on duty "except when engaged in pecul-
iarly dirty and offensive labor," are here, as in all
official matters in Germany, outlined in laby-
rinthine detail. Sickness, death, accident, are
all provided for with a pension, and there are
also certain gifts of money for long service.
The police and the street-cleaning department
co-operate to enforce the law, where private com-

BERLIN 215

panics or the city-owned street-railways are neg-
ligent in making repairs, or in replacing pave-
ment that has been disturbed or destroyed.
There is no escape. If the work is not done
promptly and satisfactorily, it is done by the city,
charged against the delinquent, and collected ! '

One need go into no further details as to why
and wherefore Berlin, Hamburg, even Cologne
in these days, Leipsic, Diisseldorf, Dresden,
Munich, keep their streets in such fashion, that
they are as corridors to the outside of Irish
hovels, as compared to the city streets of Amer-
ica; for the definite and all-including answer
and explanation are contained in the two words:
no politics.

Berlin is governed by a town council, under a
chief burgomaster and a burgomaster, and the
civic magistracy, and the police, these last, how-
ever, under state control. The chief burgomas-
ter and the burgomaster are chosen from trained
and experienced candidates, and are always men
of wide experience and severe technical training,
who have won a reputation in other towns as
successful municipal administrators.

In May, 1912, Wermuth, the son of the blind
King of Hanover's right-hand man, and he him-
self the recently resigned imperial secretary of
the treasury, was elected Oberburgomaster of

216 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Berlin. Such is the standing of the men named
to govern the German cities. It is as though
Elihu Root should be elected mayor of New
York, with Colonel John Biddle as police com-
missioner, and Colonel Goethals as commissioner
of street-cleaning. May the day come when we
can avail ourselves of the services of such men to
govern our cities!

The magistracy numbers 34, of whom 18 re-
ceive salaries. The town council consists of
144 members, half of whom must be household-
ers. They are elected for six years, and one-
third of them retire every two years, but are
eligible for re-election. They are elected by the
three-class system of voting, which is described
in another chapter. This three-class system of
voting results in certain inequalities. In Prus-
sia, for example, fifteen per cent, of the voters
have two-thirds of the electoral power, and rela-
tively the same may be said of Berlin.

Unlike the municipal elections in American
cities, the voters have only a simple ballot to put
in the ballot-box. National and state politics
play no part, and the voter is not confused by
issues that have nothing to do with his city gov-
ernment. The government of their cities is ar-
ranged for on the basis that officials will be honest,
and work for the city and not for themselves.

BERLIN 217

Our city organizations often give the air of living
under laws framed to prevent thievery, bribery,
blackmailing, and surreptitious murder. We
make our municipal laws as though we were in
the stone age.

These German cities are also, unlike Ameri-
can cities, autonomous. They have no state-
made charters to interpret and to obey; they are
not restricted as to debt or expenditure; and they
are not in the grip of corporations that have
bought or leased wrater, gas, electricity, or street-
railway franchises, and these, represented by the
wealthiest and most intelligent citizens, become,
through the financial undertakings and interests
of these very same citizens, often the worst ene-
mies of their own city. The German cities are
spared also the confusion, which is injected into
our politics by a fortunately small class of re-
formers, with the prudish peculiarities of morbid
vestals; men who cannot work with other men,
and who bring the virile virtues, the sound char-
ities, and wholesome morality into contempt.

We all know him, the smug snob of virtue.
You may find him a professor at the university;
you may find him leading prayer-meetings and
preaching pure politics; you may find him the
bloodless philanthropist; you may find him a
rank atheist, with his patents for the bringing

218 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

in of his own kingdom of heaven. These are
the men above all others who make the Tam-
manyizing of our politics possible. Honest men
cannot abide the hot-house atmosphere of their
self-conscious virtue. Nothing is more discour-
aging to robust virtue than the criticisms of
teachers of ethics, who live in coddled comfort,
upon private means, and other people's ideas.

Germany is just now suffering from the
spasms of moral colic, due to overeating. All
luxury is in one form or another overeating.
Berlin itself has grown too rapidly into the vi-
cious ways of a metropolis, where spenders and
wasters congregate. In 1911 the betting-ma-
chines at the Berlin race-tracks took in $7,546,-
000, of which the state took for its license, 16%
per cent. There were 128 days of racing, while in
England they have 540 days' racing in the year !

In 1911, 1,300,000 strangers visited Berlin,
of whom 1,046,162 were Germans, 97,683 Rus-
sians, 39,555 Austrians, 30,550 Americans, and
16,600 English. Berlin killed 2,000,000 beasts
for food, including 10,500 horses; she takes
care of 3,000 nightly in her night-shelters, puts
away $17,500,000 in savings-banks, and has
deposits therein of $90,500,000. On the other
hand, she has built a palace of vice costing
$1,625,000, in which on many nights between

BERLIN 219

11 P. M. and 2 A. M. they sell $8,000 worth of
champagne. No one knows his Berlin, who has
not partaken of a "Kalte Ente," or a "Land-
wehrtopp," a "Schlummerpunsch," or "Erne
Weisse mit einer Strippe." There is still a
boyish notion about dissipation, and they have
their own great classic to quote from, who in
"Faust" pours forth this rather raw advice for
gayety:

"Greift nur hinein ins voile Menschenleben!
Ein jeder lebt's, nicht vielen ist's bekannt,
Und wo Ihr's packt, da ist es interessant!"

Berlin is still in the throes of that sophomor-
ical philosophy of life which believes that it is,
from the point of view of sophistication, of age,
when it is free to be befuddled with wine and
befooled by women. But the German mind has
no sympathy with hypocrisy. They may be bru-
tal in their rather material views of morals, but
they are frank. There may be mental prigs
among them, but there are no moral prigs. In
both England and America we suffer from a cer-
tain morbid ethical daintiness. There is a ripe-
ness of moral fastidiousness that is often difficult
to distinguish from rottenness. It is part of the
feminism of America, born of our prosperity, for
not one of these fastidious moralists is not a rich
man, and Germany escapes this difficulty.

220 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

The government of a German city is so sim-
ple in its machinery that every voter can easily
understand it. No doubt Seth Low and George
L. Rives could explain to an intelligent man the
charter under which New York City is governed,
but they are very, very rare exceptions.

Our city government is bad, not because de-
mocracy is a failure, not because Americans are
inherently dishonest, but because we are a super-
ficially educated people, untrained to think, and,
therefore, still worshipping the Jeffersonian fe-
tich of divided responsibility between the three
branches of the government. The judicial, the
legislative, and the executive are, with minute
care, forced to check and to impede one another,
and we even carry this antiquated superstition,
born of a suspicious and timid republicanism,
into the government of our cities. With the ex-
ception of those cities in America which are gov-
erned by commissions, our cities are slaves as
compared with the German cities. They are
slaves of the predatory politicians, and they, on
the other hand, are the bribed taskmasters of
the rich corporations. The German asks in be-
wilderment why our men of wealth, of leisure,
and of intelligence are not devoting themselves to
the service of the state and the city. Alas, the
answer is the pitiable one that the electoral ma-

BERLIN 221

chinery is so complicated that the voters can be
and are, continually humbugged; and worse,
many of the wealthy and intelligent, through
their stake in valuable city franchises, are incom-
petent to deal fairly with the municipal affairs of
their own city. Both in England and in America,
the man in the street is quite sound in his judg-
ment, when he declines to trust those who dab-
ble in securities with which their own department
has dealings. The British Caesar's wife official,
caught with a handkerchief on her person, woven
on the looms of a company whose directors are
dealing with the British government, can hardly
claim exemption from suspicion, because she
bought the handkerchief in America. We all
know that when London sniffles the value of
handkerchiefs goes up in New York. Caesar's
wife finds it difficult to persuade honorable
men that she merely had a financial cold,
but not the smallest interest in a corner in
handkerchiefs.

In the great majority of German cities public-
utility services, gas, water, electricity, street-
railways, slaughter-houses, and even canals,
docks, and pawn-shops are owned and controlled
by the cities themselves. There is no loop-hole
for private plunder, and there is, on the contrary,
every incentive to all citizens, and to the rich in

222 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

particular, to enforce the strictest economy and
the most expert efficiency.

What theatres, opera-houses, orchestras, mu-
seums, what well-paved and clean streets, what
parks Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and
San Francisco might have, had these cities only
a part of the money, of which in the last twenty-
five years they have been robbed ! It is true that
the older cities of Germany have traditions be-
hind them that we lack. Art treasures, old build-
ings, and an intelligent population demanding
the best in music and the drama we cannot hope
to supply, but good house-keeping is another
matter. Berlin, for example, is a new city as
compared with New York, Boston, Philadelphia,
and Detroit, and its growth has been very rapid.

It cannot be said for us alone that we have
grown so fast that we have had no time to keep
pace with the needs of our population. Berlin,
all Germany indeed, has been growing at a pro-
digious rate. The population of Berlin in 1800
was 100,000; in 1832 only 250,000; hardly half a
million in 1870; while the population now is over
2,000,000, and over 3,000,000 if one includes the
suburbs, which are for all practical purposes part
and parcel of Berlin. Charlottenburg, for ex-
ample, with a population of 19,517 in 1871, now
has a population of 305,976, and the vicinage of

BERLIN 223

Berlin has grown in every direction in like pro-
portions.

There were no towns in Germany till the
eighth century, except those of the Romans on
the Rhine and the Danube. In 1850 there were
only 5 towns in Germany with more than 100,000
inhabitants, and in 1870 only 8; in 1890, 26; in
1900, 33; in 1905, 41; in 1910, 47; and nearly the
whole increase of population is now massed in the
middle-sized and large cities. The same may be
said of the drift of population in America. "A
thrifty but rather unprogressive provincial town
of 60,000 inhabitants," writes Mr. J. H. Harper,
of New York, in 1810.

Between 1860 and 1900 the proportion of ur-
ban to rural population in the United States more
than doubled. In the last ten years the per-
centage of people living in cities, or other incorpo-
rated places of more than 2,500 inhabitants, in-
creased from 40.5 to 46.3 per cent, of the total;
while twenty years ago only 36.1 per cent, of the
population lived in such incorporated places.

As late as the thirteenth century the Christian
chivalry of the time was spending itself in the
task of converting the heathen of what is now
Prussia; and it was well on into the nineteenth
century before serfdom was entirely abolished in
this region. It is the newness and rawness of

224 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the population, in the streets of the great German
and Prussian capital which surprise and puzzle
the American, almost more than the cleanliness
and orderliness of the streets themselves. It is
as though a powerful monarch had built a fine
palace and then, for lack of company, had invited
the people from the fields and farm-yards to be
his companions therein.

"Jamais un lourdaud, quoi qu'il fasse
Ne saurait passer pour galaud."

One should read Hazlitt's "Essay on the Cock-
ney" to find phrases for these Berliners. It is a
gazing, gaping crowd that straggles along over
the broad sidewalks. Half a dozen to a dozen
will stop and stare at people entering or leaving
vehicles, at a shop, or hotel door. I have seen a
knot of men stop and stare at the ladies entering
a motor-car, and on one occasion one of them
wiped off the glass with his hand that he might
see the better. It is not impertinence, it is merely
bucolic naivete. The city in the evening is like
a country fair, with its awkward gallantries,
its brute curiosity, its unabashed expressions of,
affection by hands and lips, its ogling, coughing,
and other peasant forms of flirtation. It should
be remembered that this people as a race show
somewhat less of reticence in matters amatory

BERLIN 225

than we are accustomed to. In the foyer of the
theatre you may see a young officer walking
round and round, his arm under that of his
fiancee or bride, and her hand fondly clasped in
his. It is a commentary, not a criticism, on
international manners that the German royal
princess, a particularly sweet and simple maiden,
just engaged to marry the heir of the house
of Cumberland, is photographed walking in the
streets of Berlin, her hand clasped in that of her
betrothed, and both he, and her brother who ac-
companies them, smoking! Gentlemen do not
smoke when walking or driving with ladies, with
us, though I am not claiming that it is a moral
disaster to do so. It is a difference in the
gradations of respect worth noting, but noth-
ing more. I have even seen kissing, as a couple
walked up the stairs from one part of the theatre
to another. In the spring and summer the paths
of the Tiergarten of a morning are strewn with
hair-pins, a curious, but none the less accurate,
indication of the rather fumbling affection of the
night before.

To live in a fashionable hotel, in a land whose
people you wish to study, is as valueless an ex-
perience as to go to a zoological garden to learn
to track a mountain sheep or to ride down a wild
boar. You must go about among the people

226 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

themselves, to their restaurants, to their houses,
if they are good enough to ask you, and to the
resorts of all kinds that they frequent.

The manners are better than in my student
days, but there is still a deal of improvised eating
and drinking. There is much tucking of nap-
kins under chins that the person may be shielded
from misdirected food-offerings. There is not a
little use of the knife where the fork or spoon is
called for; but this last I always look upon as a
remnant of courage, of the virility remaining in
the race from a not distant time when the knife
served to clear the forest, to build the hut, to kill
the deer, and to defend the family from the wolf;
and the traditions of such a weapon still give it
predominance over the more epicene fork, as a
link with a stirring past. Mere daintiness in
feeding is characteristic of the lapdog and other
over-protected animals. Unthinking courage in
the matter of victuals is rather a relief from
the strained and anxious hygienic watchfulness
of the overcivilized and the overrich. The
body should be, and is, regarded by who esome-
minde4 people, not as an idol, but as an in-
strument. The German no doubt sees some-
thing ignominious in counting as one cliews a
chop, in the careful measuring of one's liquids,
in the restricting of oneself to the diet of the

BERLIN 227

squirrel and the cow. He would perhaps prefer
to lose a year or two of life rather than to nut
and spinach himself to longevity. The whole-
some body ought of course to be unerring and
automatic in its choice of the quantity and
quality of its fuel.

A well-dressed man in Berlin is almost as con-
spicuous as a dancing bear. This comparison
may lead the stranger to infer, in spite of what
has been said of the orderliness of Berlin, that
dancing bears are permitted in the streets. It is
only fair to Berlin's admirable police president,
von Jagow, to say that they are not.

' If one leaves the officers, who are a fine, up-
standing, well-groomed lot, out of the* account,
the inhabitants of Berlin are almost grotesque in
their dowdiness. This is the more remarkable
for the reason that the citizens of Berlin, wher-
ever you see them, not only in the West-end, but
in the tenement districts, in the public markets,
going to or coming from the suburban trains, in
the trams and underground railway, in the
cheaper restaurants and pleasure resorts, taking
their Sunday outing, or in the fourth-class car-
riages of the railway trains, or their children in
the schools, show a high level of comfort in their
clothing. There is poverty and wretchedness in
Berlin, of which later, but in no great city even

228 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

in America, does the mass of the people give such
an air of being comfortably clothed and fed.

We have been deluged of late years with figures
in regard to the cost of living in this country and
in that, and never are statistics such "damned
lies" as in this connection. There is better and
cheaper food in Berlin, and in the other cities of
Germany, than anywhere else in our white man's
world. Having for the moment no free-trade, or
protectionist, or tariff-reform axe to grind, and
having tested the pudding not by my prejudices
but my palate, and having eaten a fifteen-pfen-
nig luncheon in the street, and climbed step by
step the gastronomical stairway in Germany all
the way up to a supper at the court, where eight
hundred odd people were served with a care and
celerity, and with hot viands and irreproachable
potables, that made one think of the " Arabian
Nights," I offer my experience and my opinion
with some confidence. You can get enough to
stave off hunger for a few pfennigs, you can get a
meal for something under twenty -five cents, and
the whole twenty-five cents will include a glass
of the best beer in the world outside of Munich.
If you care to spend fifty cents there are countless
restaurants where you can have a square meal
and a glass of beer for that price ; and for a dollar

I will give you as good a luncheon with wine as

"

BERLIN 229

any man with undamaged taste and unspoiled
digestion ought to have.

There is one restaurant in Berlin which feeds
as many as five thousand people on a Sunday,
where you can dine or sup, and listen to good
music, and enjoy your beer and tobacco for an
hour afterward, and all for something under fifty
cents if you are careful in your ordering. During
my walks in the country around Berlin, I have
often had an omelette followed by meat and
vegetables, and cheese, and compote, and Rhine
wine, with all the bread I wanted, and paid a bill
for two persons of a little over a dollar. The
Brodchen, or rolls, seem to be everywhere of uni-
form size and quality, and the butter always
good.

Paris is fast losing its place as the home of
good all-round eating as compared with Berlin.
Of course, New York for geographical reasons,
and also because the modern Maecenas lives
there, is nowadays the place where Lucullus
would invite his emperor to dine if he came back
to earth; but I am not discussing the nectar and
ambrosia classes, but the beer, bread, and pork
classes, and certainly Berlin has no rival as a
provider for them.

After all our study of statistics, of figures, of
contrasts, I am not sure that we arrive at any

230 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

very valuable conclusions. American working-
classes work ever shorter hours, gain higher
wages, but they are indubitably less happy, less
rich in experience, less serene than the Germans.
This measuring things by dollars, by hours, by
pounds and yard-sticks, measures everything ac-
curately enough except the one thing we wish to
measure, which is a man's soul. We are pro-
ducing the material things of life faster, more
cheaply, more shoddily, but it is open to ques-
tion whether we are producing happier men and
women, and that is what we are striving to do
as the end of it all. Nothing is of any value in
the world that cannot be translated into the terms
of man-making, or its value measured by what
it does to produce a man, a woman, and children
living happily together. Wealth does not do
this; indeed, wealth beyond a certain limit is
almost certain to destroy the foundation of all
peace, a contented family.

A shady beer-garden, capital music, and happy
fathers and mothers and children, what arith-
metic, or algebra, or census tells you anything of
that? The infallible recipe for making a child
unhappy, is to give it everything it cries for of
material things, and never to thwart its will.
We throw wages and shorter hours of work at
people, but that is only turning them out of prison

BERLIN 231

into a desert. No statistics can deal compe-
tently with the comparative well-being of nations,
and nothing is more ludicrous than the results
arrived at where Germany is discussed by the
British or American politician. Whatever fig-
ures say, and whatever else they may lack, they
are better clothed, better fed and cared for, and
have far more opportunities for rational enjoy-
ment, and a thousand-fold more for aesthetic en-
joyment, than either the English or the Ameri-
cans. That they lack freedom, in our sense, is
true, but freedom is for the few. The world-
wide complaint of the hardship of constant work
is rather silly, for most of us would die of mo-
notony if we were not forced to work to keep
alive, and to make a living.

The city, with its broad, clean streets, its beau-
tiful race-course, shaded walks, its forests and
lakes, toward Potsdam, or at Tegel, or Werder,
when the blossoms are out, with its well-kept
gardens, its profusion of flowers and shrubs and
trees, is physically the most wholesome great
city in the world; but Hans bleibt immer Hans!
Goethe, after a visit to Berlin, wrote: "There are
no more ungodly communities than in Berlin."1

No one knows his Berlin better than that
prince of German literary Bohemians, Paul Lin-

1 " Es giebt keine gottlosere Volker als in Berlin."

232 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

dau, and he makes a character in one of his
novels say of it: "untidy and orderly, so boister-
ous and so regulated, so boorish and so kindly,
so indescribable — so Berlinish — just that!" l

In another place the same author writes: "Ber-
lin as the Capital of the German Empire! There
are many respects in which it nevertheless hasn't
yet succeeded in taking on the character of a cos-
mopolitan city." 2 Not even literature finds
material for a city novel. There is no Balzac,
no Thackeray. Germany is still dominated by
the village and the town. Goethe, Auerbach,
Spielhagen, Heyse, Gottfried Keller, Freytag,
my unread favorite "Fritz" Reuter, deal not
with the life of cities. There is as yet no drama,
no novel, no art, no politics born of the city.
There is no domineering Paris or London or
New York as yet.

After some years of acquaintance with Ger-
many as school-boy, as student at the universi-
ties, and lately as a most hospitably received
guest by all sorts and conditions of men, I do not
remember meeting a fop. A German Beau
Brummel is as impossible as a French Luther,

1 "Staubig und ordentlich, so laut und geregelt, so grob und gemtlt-
lich, so unbeschreiblich, so berlinerisch, gerade so!"

2 "Berlin als Hauptstadt des deutschen Reiches: in mancher Bezie-
hung hatte es sich dem weltstadtischen Charakter doch noch nicht
aneignen konnen."

BERLIN 233

an American Goethe, or an English Wagner.
We have had attempts at foppery in America,
but no real fops. A genuine fop, whether in art,
in literature, or in costumes, must have brains,
ours have been merely effigies, foppery taking
the dull commercial form of a great variety of rai-
ment. It is a strange contradiction in German
life that while they are as a people governed
minutely and in detail, forbidden personal free-
dom along certain lines to which we should find
it hard to submit, they are freer morally, freer
in their literature, their art, their music, their
social life, and in their unself -conscious expression
of them than other people. There is a curious
combination of legal and governmental slavery,
and of spiritual and intellectual freedom; of in-
numerable restrictions, and great liberty of per-
sonal enjoyment, and that enjoyment of the
most nai'f kind. They seem to have done less
to destroy life's palate with the condiments of
civilization, and therefore, still find plain things
savorous.

I am not sure that the ecumenical sophistica-
tion, known as world-etiquette, marks a very high
degree of knowledge or usefulness anywhere.
To know which hat goes with which boots, and
what collar and tie with what coat and waistcoat,
and what costume is appropriate at 10 A. M.,

234 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

and what at 10 p. M., and to know the names of
the head-waiters of the principal restaurants,
are minor matters. These are the conveniences
of the gentleman, but the characteristic bur-
dens of the ass. Such a mental equipment is
not the stuff of which soldiers, sailors, states-
men, explorers, or governors are made.

We must not overrate the value of this femi-
nine worldliness in judging the Germans. This
effeminate categorical imperative of etiquette has
not influenced them greatly as yet. But on the
other hand, one must claim for the amenities of
life that they have their value, that they are, after
all, the external decorations of an inward disci-
pline. It is not necessarily a fine disdain of mate-
rial things, but rather a keen sense of moral and
physical efficiency, which pays due heed to where-
withal ye shall be clothed, at any rate outside of
Palestine. Those who dream and discuss may
wear anything or nothing. It mattered not what
Socrates wore. But men of action must wear
the easy armor that fits them best for their par-
ticular task. Men who toil either at their pleas-
ure or at their work must change their raiment,
if only for the sake of rest and health. Now that
government is in the hands of the vociferators
rather than the meditaters, even politicians must
look to their costumes, merely out of regard to

BERLIN 235

cleanliness. Evening clothes with a knitted tie
dribbling down the shirt front; a frock-coat as a
frame for a colored waistcoat, such as at shoot-
ing, or riding, or golf, we permit ourselves to
break forth in, as a weak surrender to the tailor,
or to the ingenuity of our womenfolk who are
not "unbred to spinning, in the loom unskilled";
the extraordinary indulgence in personal fancies
in the choice of colored ties, as though the male
citizens of Berlin had been to an auction of the
bastards of a rainbow; the little melon-shaped
hats with a band of thick velvet around them;
the awkward slouching gait, as of men physically
untrained; the enormous proportion of men over
forty, who follow behind their stomachs and
turn their toes out at an angle of more than
forty-five degrees, whose necks lie in folds over
their collars, and whose whole appearance de-
notes an uncared-for person and a negligence of
domestic hygiene: these things are significant.
No man who walks with his toes pointing south-
west by south, and southeast by south, when he is
going south, will ever get into France on his
own feet, carrying a knapsack and a rifle. Cra-
nach's painting of Duke Henry the Pious, in the
Dresden Gallery, gives an accurate picture of the
way many Germans still stand and walk; while
every athlete knows that runners and walkers put

236 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

their feet down straight, or with a tendency to
turn them in rather than out. The Indians of
northwest India, and the Indians of our own West
are good examples of this.

•It is evident that the orderliness of Berlin is
enforced orderliness and not voluntary orderli-
ness. Both pedestrians and drivers of all sorts of
vehicles, take all that is theirs and as much more
as possible. There is none of the give and take,
and innate love of fair play and instinctive wish
to give the other fellow a chance, so noticeable
in London streets, whether on the sidewalks or
in the roadway. There is a general chip-on-the-
shoulder attitude in Prussia, which may be said,
I think not unfairly, to be evident in all ranks,
from their recent foreign diplomacy, down to the
pedestrians and drivers.

Many people whom I have met, not only for-
eigners but Germans from other parts of Ger-
many, are loud in their denunciations of the Ber-
liners. "Freeh" and "roh" are adjectives often
used about them. There is a surly malice of
speech and manner among the working classes,
that seems to indicate a wish to atone for po-
litical impotence, by braggart impudence to
those whom they regard as superior. When
we played horse as children, we champed the
wooden bit, shied, and balked and kicked, and

BERLIN 237

the worse we behaved the more spirited horses
we thought ourselves. There is a certain social
and political radicalism verging upon anarchy,
which plays at life in much the same way, with
no better reason, and with little better result.
Shying, balking, and kicking, and champing the
political bit, are only spirited to the childish.

Their awkward and annoying attentions to
women alone on the streets; their staring and
gaping; their rudeness in pushing and shoving;
the general underbred look, the slouching gait,
the country-store clothes, hats, and boots; the
fearful and wonderful combinations of raiment;
the sweetbread complexions, as of men under-
exercised and not sufficiently aired and scrubbed ;
their stiff courtesy to one another when they
recognize acquaintances with hat-sweeping bows;
their fierce gobbling in the restaurants ; their lack
of small services and attentions to their own
women when they go about in public with them ;
their selfish disregard of others in public places,
their giving and taking of hats, coats, sticks, and
umbrellas at the garde-robes of the theatres, fpr
example; their habit of straggling about in the
middle of the streets, like the chickens and geese
on a country road: all these things I have noted
too, but I must admit the surprising personal
conclusion that I have grown to like the people.

238 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

A good pair of shoulders and an engaging smile
go far to mitigate these nuisances. It makes for
good sense in this matter of criticism always to
bear in mind that delicious piece of humor of
the psalmist: "Let the righteous rather smite me
friendly; and reprove me. But let not their
precious balms break my head." The "precious
balms" of the lofty and righteous critic are not
of much value when they merely break heads.

I have been all over Berlin, and in all sorts of
places, by day and by night. I have found my-
self seated beside all sorts of people in restau-
rants and public places, and I have yet to chron-
icle any rudeness to me or mine. I like their
innocent curiosity, their unsophisticated ways,
their bumpkin love-making in public; and many
a time I have found entertainment from odd
companions who seated themselves near me,
when I have strayed into the cheaper restau-
rants, to hear and to see something of the Ber-
liner in his native wilds. Their malice and rude-
ness and apparent impertinences are due to lack
of experience, to the fact that their manners are
still untilled, I believe, rather than to intentional
insult. They are not house-broken to their new
capital, that is all, and that will come in time.
Their malicious jealousy peeps out in all sorts of
ways. In the lower house of the Prussian Diet,

BERLIN 239

recently, a member protested vigorously against
the employment of an American singer in the
Opera House! Chauvinism carried to this ex-
treme becomes comic, and is noted here only to
indicate to what depths of farm-yard provin-
ciality some of the citizens of this great city can
descend.

(They are dreamers and sentimentalists too.
There are more kissing, more fondling, more
exuberance of affection, more displays of friend-
liness in Germany in a week than in England and
America in six months. I confess without shame
that I like to see it, and when it comes my way,
as beyond my deserts it has, I like to feel it.
How lasting is this friendliness I have no means
of knowing till the years to come tell me, but
that it is a pleasant atmosphere to live in there
can be no doubt.

The driving is of the very worst. A man be-
hind a horse, or horses, who knows even the ele-
ments of handling the reins and the whip and
the brake, would be a curiosity indeed. I have
not seen a dozen coachmen, private or public,
to whom my youngest child could not have given
invaluable suggestions as to the bitting, har-
nessing, and handling of his cattle. On the other
hand, I one day saw a street sign twisted out of
its place. I was fascinated by this unexampled

240 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

mark of negligence. I determined to watch that
sign; alas, within forty-eight hours it was put
right again.

Let it not be understood that there are no fine
horses to be seen in Berlin. You will go far to
find a better lot of horse-flesh, or better-looking
men on the horses, than you will see when the
Kaiser rides by to the castle after his morning
exercise; and he sits his horse and manages him
with the easy skill of the real horseman, and looks
every inch a king besides. It is told of Daniel
Webster, walking in London, that a navvy
turned to his companion and remarked: "That
bloke must be a king ! " You would say the same
of the Kaiser if you saw him on horseback.

At horse shows and in the Tiergarten, and in
riding-places in other cities, I have looked at
hundreds of horses, and, if I mistake not, Ger-
many is both buying and breeding the very best
in the way of mounts, though their civilian riders
are often of the scissors variety. There are com-
paratively few harness horses, and in Berlin
scarcely a dozen well-turned-out private car-
riages, outside the imperial equipages, which are
always superbly horsed and beautifully turned
out; so my eyes tell me at least, and I have
watched the streets carefully for months. The
minor details of a properly turned-out carriage

BERLIN 241

(bits, chains, liveries, saddle-cloths, and so on)
are still unknown here. I have had the privilege
of driving and riding some of the horses in the
imperial stables; and I have seen all of them at
one time or another being exercised in harness
and under the saddle. I have never driven a
better-mannered four, or ridden more perfectly
broken saddle-horses. There are three hundred
and twenty-six horses in his Majesty's stables,
and for a private stable of its size it has no equal
in the world. I may add, too, that there is
probably no better "whip" in the world to-day,
whether with two horses, four horses, or six
horses, than the gentleman who trains the har-
ness horses in the imperial stables. This German
coachman would be a revelation at a horse show
in either New York or London. If the citizens
of Berlin wrere as well-mannered as the horses
in the imperial stables, this would be the most
elegant capital in the world. It is to be re-
gretted that his Majesty's very accomplished
master of the horse cannot also hold the position
of censor morum to the citizens of Berlin. In-
dividual prowess in the details of cosmopolitan
etiquette has not reached a high level, but in all
matters of mere house-keeping there are no bet-
ter municipal housewives than these German
cities and towns.

242 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

As a further example, the statues of Berlin are
carefully cleaned in the spring, but what statues !
With the exception of the Lessing, the Goethe,
and the Great Elector statues, the statue of
Frederick the Great, and the reclining statues
of the late emperor and empress, by Begas, and
one or two others, one sees at once that these
citizens are no more capable of ornamenting
their city than of dressing themselves.

Poor Bismarck! Grotesque figures (men,
women, animals) surround the base of his statue
in Berlin, in Leipsic; and in Hamburg, clad in
a corrugated golf costume, with a colossal two-
handed sword in front of him, he is a melancholy
figure, gazing out over a tumble-down beer-gar-
den. At Wannsee, near Berlin, there is, I must
admit, a really fine bust of Bismarck. On a
solid square pedestal of granite, covered with
ivy and surrounded by the whispering, or sigh-
ing, or creaking and cracking trees that he loved,
and facing the setting sun, and alone in a se-
cluded corner, just the place he would have
chosen, there are the head and shoulders of the
real Bismarck. Here for once he has escaped the
fussy attentions of the artistry that he detested.
Lehnbach, who painted Bismarck so many 'scores
of times, never gave him the color that his face
kept all through life, and with the exception of

BERLIN 243

this bust, of the scores of Bismarck memorials
one sees all commiserate the lack of artist
ability; they do not commemorate Bismarck.
If this is what they do to the greatest man in
their history, what is to be expected elsewhere?
What has poor Joachim Friedrich done that he
should pose forever in the Sieges Alice as an in-
toxicated hitching-post? What, indeed, have
his companions done that they should stand in
two rows there, studies in contortion, with a
gilded Russian dancer with wings at one end of
their line, and a woodeny Roland at the other?
But there they are, simpering a paltry patriot-
ism, insipid as history and ridiculous as art.
What has become of Lessing, and Winckelmann,
and Goethe, and their teachings? Is this the
price that a nation must pay for its industrial
progress?

The German, with all his boasting about the
"centre of culture," has not discovered that the
beauty of antiquity is the expression of those vir-
tues which were useful at the time of Theseus,
as Stendhal rightly tells us. Individual force,
which was everything of old, amounts to almost
nothing in our modern civilization. The monk
who invented gunpowder modified sculpture;
strength is only necessary now among subalterns.
No one thinks of asking whether Frederick the

244 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Great and Napoleon were good swordsmen. The
strength we admire, is the strength of Napoleon
advancing alone upon the First Battalion of the
royal troops near Lake Loffrey in March, 1815;
that is strength of soul. The moral qualities
with which we are concerned are no longer the
same as in the days of the Greeks. Before this
cockney sculpture was planned, there should
have been a closer study of the history and phi-
losophy of art in Berlin.

It is true that we in America are living in a
glass house to some extent in these matters, but
where in all Germany is there any modern
sculpture to compare with our Nathan Hale, our
Minute Man, and that most spirited bit of mod-
ern plastic art in all the world, the Shaw Monu-
ment in Boston? You cannot stand in front of
it without keeping time, and here lips of bronze
sing the song of patriotism till your heart
thumps, and you are ready to throw up your hat
as the splendid young figure and his negro sol-
diers march by — and they do march by ! It is
almost a consolation for what Boston has done to
that gallant soldier and humble servant of God,
that modest gentleman, Phillips Brooks. In a
statue to him they have travestied the virtues he
expounded, slain the ideal of the Christ he
preached, theatricalized the least theatrical of

BERLIN 245

men, and placed this piece of mortifying mis-
understanding in bronze under the very eaves of
the house that grew out of his simple eloquence.
There is in Leipsic a similar misdemeanor in a
statue of Beethoven. He sits, naked to the waist,
in a bronze chair, with a sort of bath-towel
drapery of colored marble about his legs, and an
eagle in front of him. He has a chauffeurish ex-
pression of anxious futility, as though he were
about to run over the eagle.

Men are without great dreams in these days,
and art is elaborate and fussy and self-conscious.
The technical part of the work is predominant.
One sees the artist holding up a mirror to him-
self as he works. Pygmalion congratulates the
statue upon the fact that he carved it, instead of
being lost in the love of creating. It is as though
a lover should sing of himself instead of singing of
his lady. The subtle poison of self-advertisement
has crept in, and peers like a satyr from the pict-
ure and from the statue. Even the most prom-
inent name in German music at this writing is
that of a man who is notorious as an expert sales-
man of symphonic sensationalism.

/Though the streets are so well kept, the build-
ings in these miles of new streets are flimsy-look-
ing, and evidently the work of the speculative
builder. The more pretentious buildings ape a

246 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

kind of Nuremberg Renaissance style, and are as
effective as a castle made of cardboard. This
does not imply that there are not simple and
solid buildings in Berlin and, in the case of the
new library and a score of other buildings, wor-
thy architecture; but the general impression is
one of haste multiplied by plaster.

The whole city blossoms with statuary, like a
cosmopolitan 'Arriet who cannot get enough
flowers and feathers on her Sunday hat. A cer-
tain comic anthropomorphism is to be seen, even
on the balustrades of the castle, where the good
Emperor William is posed as Jupiter, the Em-
press Augusta as Juno, Emperor Frederick as
Mars, and his wife as Minerva ! On the f agades
of houses, on the bridges, on the roofs of apart-
ment houses, on the hotels even, and scattered
throughout the public gardens, are scores of
statues, and they are for the most part what
hastily ordered, swiftly completed art, born of
the dollar instead of the pain and travail of love
and imagination, must always be.

A certain literary snob taken to task by Doc-
tor Parr for pronouncing the one-time capital of
Egypt "Alexandria," with the accent on the
long i, quoted the authority of Doctor Bentley.
"Doctor Bentley and I," replied Doctor Parr,
"may call it 'Alexandria,' but I should advise

BERLIN 247

you to call it 'Alexandria.' ' It was all very well
for the Medici, to ornament their cities and their
homes with the fruit of the great artistic spring-
time of the world, but I should strongly advise
the Berliners to pronounce it "Alexandria" for
some years to come. No matter how fervid the
lover, nor how possessed he may be by his mis-
tress, he cannot turn out every day, even,

"A halting sonnet of his own poor brain,
Fashion'd to Beatrice."

All this pretentious over-ornamentation is cos-
meticism, the powder and paint of the vulgarian
striving to conceal by a futile advertisement her
lack of refinement. Paris was teaching the
world when there was no capital in Germany;
London has been a commercial centre for a
thousand years, and Oxford was a hundred years
old before even the University of Prague, the
first in Germany, was founded by Charles IV in
1348. You may like or dislike these cities, but,
at any rate, they have a bouquet; Berlin has
none.

When Germany deals with the inanimate and
amenable factors of life, she brings the machinery
of modern civilization well-nigh to the point of
perfection. As a municipal and national house-
wife she has no equal, none. But art has noth-

248 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ing to do with brooms and dust-pans, and
human nature is woven of surprises and emer-
gencies, and what then? An interesting example
in the streets of Berlin is the difference between
the perfection of the street-cleaning, which deals
with the inanimate and with accurately cal-
culable factors, and the governing of the street
traffic. Horses and men and motor-driven ve-
hicles are not as dependable as blocks of pave-
ment. When the traffic in the Berlin streets
grows to the proportions of London, Paris, and
New York, one wonders what will happen. No-
where are there such broad, well-kept streets in
which the traffic is so awkwardly handled.

sThe police are all, and must be, indeed, non-
commissioned officers of the army, of nine years'
service, and not over thirty-five years of age.
They are armed with swords and pistols by night,
and in the rougher parts of the town with the
same weapons by day as well. After ten years'
service they are entitled to a pension of twenty-
sixtieths of their pay, with an increase of one-
sixtieth for each further year of service. They
are not under the city, but under state control,
and the chief of police is a man of distinction,
nearly always a nobleman, and nominated by,
and in every case approved by, the Emperor.
In Berlin he is appointed by the King of Prussia.

BERLIN 249

He is a man of such standing that he may be
promoted to cabinet rank. The men are well-
turned out, of heavy build, very courteous to
strangers, so far as my experience can speak for
them, and quiet and self -controlled. Under the
police president are one colonel of police, re-
ceiving from 6,000 to 8,500 marks, according to
his length of service; 3 majors, receiving from
5,400 to 6,600 marks; 20 captains, receiving from
4,200 to 5,400 marks; 156 lieutenants, receiving
from 3,000 to 4,500 marks; 450 sergeants, re-
ceiving from 1,650 to 2,300 marks; and 5,382
patrolmen, receiving from 1,400 to 2,100 marks.
There are also some 300 mounted police, re-
ceiving from 1,400 to 2,600 marks. The colonel,
majors, and captains receive 1,300 marks addi-
tional, and the lieutenants 800 marks additional,
for house rent. The mounted police are well-
horsed, but it is no slight to them to say, how-
ever, that their horses are not so well trained
and well mannered, nor the men such skilful
horsemen, as those of our mounted squad in New
York, who, man for man and horse for horse, are
probably unequalled anywhere else in the world.
The demand for these non-commissioned offi-
cers of nine years of army discipline, who cannot
be called upon to serve in the army again, has
grown with the growth of the great city, with its

250 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

need of porters, watchmen, and the like, and so
valuable are their services deemed that the pres-
ent police force of Berlin is short of its proper
number by some seven hundred men.

The examination of those about to become
policemen extends over four weeks, and includes
every detail of the multiplicity of duties, which
ranges from the protection of the public from
crime, down to tracking down truants from
school, and the regulation of the books of the
maid-servant class. The policeman who aspires
to the rank of sergeant undergoes a still more
rigorous examination, extending over twenty
weeks of preparation, during which time he
studies — note this list, ye "young barbarians all
at play," German, rhetoric, writing, arithmetic,
common fractions, geography, history, especially
the history of the House of Hohenzollern from
the time of the margraves to the present time (!),
political divisions of the earth, especially of
Prussia and Germany, the essential features of
the constitution of the Prussian Kingdom and
German Empire, the organization and working of
the various state authorities in Prussia and Ger-
many, elementary methods of disinfection, com-
mon veterinary remedies, the police law as ap-
plicable to innumerable matters from the treat-
ment of the drunk, blind, and lame, to evidences

BERLIN 251

of murder, and the press law. The man who
passes such an examination would be more than
qualified to take a degree, at one of our minor
colleges, if he knew English and the classics
were not required, and could well afford to sniff
disdainfully at the pelting shower of honorary
degrees of Doctor of Divinity, which descend
from the commencement platforms of our more
girlish intellectual factories of orthodoxy.

The cost of the police in Berlin in 1880 was
2,494,722 marks; in 1890, 3,007,879 marks; in
1900, 6,065,975 marks; and in 1910, 8,708,165
marks.

I fancy that after an accident has taken place
the literary, legal, and hygienic details are cared
for by the Berlin police as nowhere else. In their
management of the traffic they are distinctly
lacking in decision and watchfulness. On the
western side of the Brandenburger Tor there is
seldom an hour, without a tangle of traffic which
is entirely unnecessary if the police knew their
business. On the Tiergarten Strasse, a rather
narrow and much used thoroughfare in the fash-
ionable part of the town, trucks, cabs, and other
vehicles are not kept close to the curbs, often
they drive along in pairs, slowing up all the
traffic, and at the east end of the street is a cor-
ner which could easily be remedied by the build-

252 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ing of a "refuge," and an authoritative police-
man to guard the three approaches. Not once,
but scores of times, at the very important corner
of Unter den Linden and Wilhelm Strasse I have
seen the policeman talking to friends on the curb,
quite oblivious to a scramble of cabs, wagons,
and motors at cross purposes in the street. Pots-
darner Platz presents a difficult problem at all
times of the day, especially when the crowds are
coming from or going toward home, but a few
ropes and iron standards, and four alert Irish
policemen, would make it far plainer sailing than
now it is. It is to be remembered, too, that the
traffic is a mere dribble as compared to a tor-
rent, when one remembers Paris, New York, and
London. In 1909 the street accidents in Paris
numbered 65,870, and there was one summons
for every 77 motor taxicabs, but Paris is now
without a rival as the dirtiest, worst-paved cap-
ital in Europe, and the home of social anarchy;
a place where adventurous spirits will go soon
rather than to Africa, or to the Rocky Moun-
tains, for excitement in affrays with revolvers,
vitriol, and chloroform.

In London, in 1909, there were 13,388 acci-
dents. In Berlin there was a total of 4,895 ac-
cidents in 1900; 4,797 in 1905; and 4,233 in 1910.
One hundred persons were killed in 1900; 115 in

BERLIN 253

1905; and 136 in 1910. In this connection it is
to be said, that Berlin has fewer and much less
adventurous inhabitants, very much less com-
plicated traffic, much broader and better streets,
and far fewer problems than the older cities. If
the citizens of Berlin were anything like as capa-
ble of taking care of themselves in the streets, as
they should be, there would be hardly any acci-
dents at all. The new police regulation of the
traffic has been only some four or five years in
existence in its more rigid form, and perhaps
neither people nor police are accustomed to it.
Even then, out of the total of 4,233 accidents in
1910, 1,876 of them were caused by the street-
railway cars. This shows of itself how light the
traffic must be, for worse driving and more awk-
ward pedestrians one would go far to find.

The cost of Berlin housekeeping increases by
leaps and bounds. The total city expenses were:
45,221,988 marks in 1880; 89,364,270 in 1890;
121,405,356 in 1900; and 355,424,614 in 1910.
The debt of Berlin has risen from 126,161,605
marks in 1880, and 272,912,350 in 1900, to 475,-
799,231 in 1910, with a very considerable addi-
tion voted for 1912. In the ten years alone be-
tween 1897 and 1907 the debt of German cities
including only those with a population of more
than 10,000, increased by $1,050,000,000. Mu-

254 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

nicipal expenditure in Paris has risen in the last
ten years from $59,200,000 to $76,000,000.
The budget expenditure of France has reached
$1 ,040,000,000. In 1898 it was only $600,000,000.

It cannot be expected that the best-kept,
cleanest, and most orderly cities in the world, and
there need be no hesitation in saying this of the
German cities, should not spend much money,
and the states in which they are situated much
money as well. The various states of the em-
pire spent, according to a report of four years
ago, $1,352,500,000; and the empire itself $738,-
250,000, or a total of $2,090,750,000. From the
various state or empire controlled enterprises,
such as railways, forests, mines, post and tele-
graph, imperial printing-office, and so on, the
states and empire received a net income of
$216,525,000, and the balance was, of course,
raised by direct and indirect taxation.

One may put appropriately enough under this
heading, the invaluable and unpaid services of a
host of honorary officials, who render expert ser-
vice both in the state and city governments.
There are over ten thousand honorary officials
in the city of Berlin alone, more than three thou-
sand of whom serve under the school authorities.
They are chosen from citizens of standing, edu-
cation, wealth, and ability, and assist in all the

BERLIN 255

departments with advice and expert knowledge,
and sit upon the various committees. The Ger-
man citizen has not only his pocket taxed, but
his patriotism also, and a capital philosophy of
government this implies.

A friend, a large landholder in Saxony, gives,
between his services as a reserve officer in the
army and his magisterial and other duties, some-
thing over nine weeks of his time to the state
every year, and he is by no means an exception,
he tells me. A certain amount of this is required
of him by the state, with a heavy fine for non-
performance of these duties. The same is true
of the many members of the various standing
committees in the cities. Each citizen is com-
pelled to contribute a certain proportion of his
mental and moral prowess to the service of his
state and city, but he receives a return for it in
his beautifully kept city, in the educational ad-
vantages, in the theatres, concerts, opera, and in
the peaceful orderliness, the value of which only
the foreigner can fully appreciate.

Almost all the court theatres, for example,
throughout Germany are under a director who
works in harmony with the reigning prince.
The King of Prussia gives for his theatres in Ber-
lin, Wiesbaden, Hanover, and Cassel, more than
$625,000 a year from his private purse; the Duke

of Anhalt, $75,000 a year to the Dessauer the-
atre. The players have a sure position under
responsible and intelligent government, and feel
themselves to be not mere puppets, but educa-
tional factors with a certain pride and dignity
in their work.;

There are more Shakespeare plays given in
Germany in a week than in all the English-speak-
ing countries together in a year. This is by no
means an exaggeration. The theatre is looked
upon as a school. Fathers and mothers arrange
that their older children as well as themselves
shall attend the theatre all through the winter,
and subscribe for seats as we would subscribe
to a lending library. During the last year in
Germany, the plays of Schiller were given 1,584
times, of Shakespeare 1,042 times, the music-
dramas of Wagner 1,815 times, the plays of
Goethe 700 times, and of Hauptmann 600 times.
There is no spectacular gorgeousness, as when
an Irving, a Booth, or a Beerbohm Tree sugar-
coats Shakespeare to induce us barbarians to
go, in the belief that we are after all not wast-
ing our time, since the performance tastes a
little of the more gorgeous music halls. The
scenery and costumes are sufficient, and the
performance always worth intelligent attention,
for the reason that both the director and his

BERLIN 257

players have given time and scholarship to its
interpretation. The acting is often indifferent
as compared to the French stage, but it is at
least always in earnest and intelligent. The
theatre prices in Berlin are high, even as com-
pared with New York prices, but in other cities
and towns of Germany cheaper than in Eng-
land, France, or America.

Pericles passed a law in Athens by which each
citizen was granted two oboli, one to pay for his
seat at the theatre, the other to provide himself
with refreshment. In Athens the play began at
6 or 7 A. M., and during the morning three trage-
dies and a satirical drama were played, followed
in the afternoon by a comedy. The theatre of
Dionysius seated 30,000 people, who brought
their cushions, food, and drink, and occasionally
used them to express their dislike of the perform-
ance or the performers. At one of the larger in-
dustrial towns in Germany, during a Sunday of
my visit, there were three performances; one at
11 A. M., of a patriotic melodrama, "Glaube und
Heimat"; another, at 3.30 p. M., of "Der Frei-
schiitz"; and another, at 7.30 p. M., of Suder-
mann's play, "Die Ehre." The prices of seats
for the morning performance ranged from eight
cents to forty-five cents ; a little more in the after-
noon; and from seventeen cents to $1.15 in the

258 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

evening. At the performance I attended the
house was crowded and attentive. I was not
enough of an Athenian to attend all three. Even
at the Music Hall in Berlin, where, as in other
cities, the thinly covered salacious is ladled out
to the animal man, there was a capital stage carM
cature of (Edipus, which atoned for the custom-
ary ewig L,egliche, which now rules in these re-
sorts. If for some untoward reason women
ceased to have legs, what would the British and
American theatrical trust managers do!

The German takes his theatre and his music,
as from the beginnings of these it was intended
we all should do. They are not a distraction
merely, but an education, an education of the
senses, and through the senses of the whole man.
There are music-lovers and serious playgoers in
America; but for the most part our theatres cater
to, and are filled by, a public seeking a soothing
and condimented mental atmosphere, in which to
finish digestion. Theatrical salmagundi is served
everywhere, and seems to be the dish best suited
to the American aesthetic palate as thus far educa-
ted. We cannot complain, since other wares would
be quickly provided did we but ask for them.

America has suffered because she was over-
taken by a great material prosperity before she
had a sufficient spiritual and intellectual develop-

BERLIN 259

ment, and up to now the material side of life has
had the upper hand. We buy the best pictures,
the rare books and manuscripts, armor and silver
and porcelain, and it must be said that there is a
fine idealism here, because they are bought al-
most without exception by uncultured, often
almost unlettered, rich men, who know nothing
and care very little for these things, but who
are providing rare educational opportunities for
another generation. In 1910 objects of art to
the value of $22,000,000 were imported, in 1911
$36,000,000 worth, and in 1912 sixty per cent,
more than in 1911. In the same way we hire
the best musicians and singers, but our surround-
ings and the powerful circumambient ambitions,
have not tempted us as yet to live contentedly
and understandingly in any such atmosphere as
the Germans do. It is a striking contrast, per-
haps of all the contrasts the most interesting to
the student, this of America growing from in-
dustrialism toward idealism, of Germany growing
out of idealism into industrialism.

Germany floats in music; in America a few, a
very few, float on it. In Germany everybody
sings, almost everybody plays some instrument,
and from the youngest to the oldest everybody
understands music; at least that is the impres-
sion you carry away with you from the land of

260 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Brahms,
and Beethoven, and Wagner, and I might fill the
page with the others.

You are at least on the ramparts of Paradise,
in the Thomas Kirche in Leipsic at the weekly
Saturday concert of the scholars of the Thomas
Schule. The worldliness is melted out of you,
as you sit in the cool, quiet church with the sun-
light slanting in upon you, and the atmosphere
alive with sweet sounds. And this is only one
of hundreds of such experiences all over Ger-
many. At the Kreuz Kirche in Dresden, at the
great Dom church in Berlin at Easter time, for
the asking you may have the oil and wine of
music's Good Samaritan poured upon the wounds
of those sore-pressed travellers, your hopes and
ideals, your dreams and ambitions, that have
fallen among thieves, on the long, long way from
Jericho to Jerusalem.

It is, I must admit, a drab and dreary crowd
to look at, these Germans at the theatre, at the
opera, in the concert halls. They do not dress,
or if they are women undress, for their music as
do we ; their music dresses for them. They come,
most of them, in the clothes that they have worn
all day, each quidlibet induitus. They have
many of them a meal of meat, bread, and beer
during the long pause between two of the acts,

BERLIN 261

always provided for this purpose. Some of them
bring little bags with their own provisions, and
only buy a glass of beer. They are solemnly at-
tentive, an educated and experienced audience
there for a purpose, and not to be trifled with,
the most competently critical audience in the
world. I wonder as I look at them whether the
fact that they have no backs to their heads, em-
phasized nowadays by the fact that many men
wear their hair clipped close to the head, and no
chins (the lack of chins in Germany is almost a
national peculiarity) has any physiological or
psychological relation to their prowess in, and
love of, and critical appreciation of, the more
nebulous arts: music, poetry, philosophy, and
the serious drama.

They are as adamant in their observance of the
rules in such matters. More than once I ar-
rived at the opera a few minutes late, once four
minutes late, the doors are closed and guarded,
and I listen to the overture from the outside.
At a concert led by the famous von Billow half a
dozen women come in after the music has begun,
rustling, sibilant, and excited. The music stops,
the great conductor turns to glare at them, and,
referring to the geese which are said to have
saved Rome by their hissing, thunders: "Hier ist
kein Capitol zu retten!"

262 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

There are some forty thousand professional
musicians in Germany. The town council of
Berlin is now discussing gravely the sum to be al-
lotted to the support of the Symphony Orchestra,
and Charlottenburg is building an opera house
of its own, and Spandau a theatre; and there has
just been formed in Berlin a "Society of the
German Artistes' Theatre," with a capital of
$200,000, which is a project along the general
lines of the Comedie Frangaise. The discussions
and arguments relating to these municipal ex-
penditures, as I read them in the newspapers,
are all based upon the assumption that the
people have a right to good and cheap music,
just as they have a right to good and cheap beer
and bread.

At Diisseldorf one of the theatres, managed by
a woman, and supported by the best people in
the town, is not only a playhouse, but a school
for actors, and a proving-ground for the drama.
It is a treat indeed to attend the performances
there. We have tried similar things in America,
but with sad results. Fifty millionaires, no one
of whom had ever read the text of a serious play
in his life, build a temple for the drama, but
there are no plays, no actors, no audience, noth-
ing is accomplished. There is no critical body
of real lovers of the drama, and there are no

BERLIN 263

cheap seats, and there is still that fatuous notion
that exclusiveness, except in the trifling mat-
ter of physical propinquity, can be bought with
dollars.

The only impenetrably exclusive thing in the
world is intellect, he is the only aristocrat left
in these democratic days, and we are not devot-
ing much attention as yet to his breeding. We
do not realize that the only valuable democrat
must be an aristocrat. "Culture seeks to do
away with classes and sects; to make the best
that has been thought and known in the world
current everywhere; to make all men live in an
atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they
may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely;
nourished and not bound by them. This is the
social idea; and the men of culture are the true
apostles of equality."

In Germany there are more men of culture
per thousand of the population than in any other
land, but they rule the country not by "sweet-
ness and light," but by force. This seems at
first a contradiction. It is not. Religion, life,
and love are all savage things. Because we have
known men who preach but do not believe; men
who breathe and walk who have not lived; men
who protest but who have not loved, we are
prone to think of religion, life, and love as soft.

264 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

We have conquered and chastened so much of
nature : the air, the water, the bowels of the earth
that we fool ourselves with thinking that cul-
ture also is tame, that religion, life, and love are
tame too. Savage things they are! You may
know them by that! If you find them nice,
vivacious, amusing, amenable, be sure that they
are forgeries.

This is the profound fallacy underlying the
present-day economic peace propagandism,
whose heaviest underwriter, Mr. Carnegie, is,
by the way, an agnostic. While there is faith
there will be fighting. Do away with either and
society would crumble. What the Puritans did
for us, the Prussians have done for Germany.
They have fought, are fighting, and will fight for
their faith. Though they have many unpleas-
ant characteristics, this is their most admirable
quality. They believe in an aristocracy of cul-
ture with a right to rule. Goethe said of Luther
that he threw back the intellectual progress of
mankind by centuries, by calling in the passions
of the multitude to decide on subjects that ought
to have been left to the learned. This is a good
example of imitation culture. This is very much
the view that Mr. Balfour holds in regard to
Cromwell. But Luther and Bismarck made
Germany. The one taught Germany to bark,

BERLIN 265

the other taught Germany to bite. The great
deliverers of the world came, not to bring peace,
but a sword.

When you leave the drab crowd in the streets,
and enter the houses of the real rulers of Ger-
many, the contrast between the aristocrat and
the plebeian is nowhere so outstanding. I have
seen no finer-looking specimens of mankind in
face and figure and manner than the best of these
men. If you stroll though the halls of the
Krieges Akademie, where the pick of the young
officers of the German army, are preparing them-
selves for the examinations which admit a very
small proportion of them, to appointments on the
general staff, you will be delighted with the faces
and figures, and the air of alertness and intelli-
gence there: And you will find as fine a type of
gentlemen, in face, manners, and figure, at their
head as exists anywhere.

There are complaints that this Prussian aris-
tocracy is socially exclusive, is given office both
in the army and in civil life too readily ; but what
an aristocracy it is! These are the men whose
families gave, often their all, to make Prussia,
and then to make Germany. Service of king
and country is in their blood. They get small
remuneration for their service. There is no lux-
ury. They spurn the temptations of money.

266 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Hundreds and hundreds of them have never been
inside the house of a rich parvenu, nor have their
women. They work as no other servants work,
they live on little, they and their women and
children; and you may count yourself happily
privileged if they permit you the intimacy of
their home life.

Officers and gentlemen there are, living on two
thousand five hundred dollars a year, and most of
them on much less, and their wives, as well born
as themselves, darning their socks and count-
ing the pfennigs with scrupulous care. These
are the women whose ancestors flung themselves
against the Roman foe, beside their husbands and
brothers; these are the women who gave their
jewels to save Prussia; these are the women, with
the glint of steel and the light of summer skies
braided in their eyes, who have taken their
hard, self-denying part in making Prussia, and
the German Empire. No wonder they despise
the mere money-maker, no wonder they will
have none of his softness for themselves, and
hate what Milton calls "lewdly pampered lux-
ury," as a danger to their children. They know
well the moral weapons that won for this
starved, and tormented, and poverty-stricken
land its present place in the world as a great
power.

BERLIN 267

"And as the fervent smith of yore
Beat out the glowing blade,
Nor wielded in the front of war

The weapons that he made,
But in the tower at home still plied
His ringing trade;

"So like a sword the son shall roam

On nobler missions sent;
And as the smith remained at home

In peaceful turret pent,
So sits the while at home the mother
Well content."

I, convinced democrat that I am, know very well
that there are, and always have been, and always
will be aristocrats, for there is no national salva-
tion without them anywhere in the world. The
aristocrats are the same everywhere, no matter
what their distinctions of title, or whether they
have none. They are those who believe that
they owe their best to God and to men, and they
serve. Likewise the plebeians are the same all
over the world; whatever their presumptions or
denials, they believe that they are here to get
what they can out of God and men, and they
take far more than they give.

Perhaps no feature of German life is so little
known, so little understood, as this simple-living,
proud, and exclusive caste, who have made, and

268 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

still protect and guard, Prussia and Germany.
They say: "We made Prussia and Germany, and
we intend to guard them, both from enemies at
home and from enemies abroad!" My admira-
tion for these men and women is so unbounded,
that I would no more carry criticism with me
into their homes, than I would carry mud into a
sanctuary.

They have done much for Germany, but the
best, perhaps, of all is that they have made
economy and simple living feasible and even
fashionable; they have made talent aristocratic;
they have insisted that social life shall be founded
on service and breeding and ability. They will
have no dealings with Herr Miiller, the rich shop-
keeper, but whatever name the distinguished
artist, or public servant, or man of science, or
young giant in any field of intellectual prowess
may bear, he is welcomed. In general this wel-
come given by German society to talent holds
good. There is, however, a society composed
of the great landed proprietors, who live in the
country, who come to Berlin rarely, and whose
horizon is limited severely to their own small
interests, their restricted circle, and by their pro-
vincial pride. They recognize nobody but them-
selves, for the reason that they know nobody and
nothing else. There is an exclusiveness born of

BERLIN 269

stupidity, just as there is an exclusiveness born
of a sense of duty to one's position and traditions
in the world. One must recognize that this side
of social life exists in Germany just as it exists
in England, and France, and Austria, but it is
fast losing its importance and its power.

One hears it lamented that society is changing,
that the rich Jew and the rich gentile are re-
ceived where twenty -five years ago the social por-
tals were shut against them, and that many go to
their houses who would not have gone not many
years ago. My experience is too slender to weigh
these matters in years; my contention is only
that, from an American or English stand-point,
their social life is notably simple, and still largely
founded on merit and service, rather than upon
the means to provide luxury.

Though there are thousands of people received
at court each year, this does not mean that they
are invited to the intimate parties of those in the
more intimate court circles. They are tolerated,
not welcomed. Such people are invited to the
court ball, but never thought of, even, as guests at
the small supper party of, say, a court official later
in the evening. Prussia and Germany are still
ruled socially and politically by a small group of,
roughly, fifty thousand men, eight thousand of
them in the frock-coat of the civilian official, and

270 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the rest in military uniforms. Added to this
must be named a few great financiers, shipping
and mining and industrial magnates, and great
land-owners, and less than half a dozen journal-
ists, and as many professors.

According to the census there are in all only
720 persons in Berlin with incomes of more than
$25,000 a year, and 521 of these have between
$25,000 and $60,000 a year, leaving a very small
number, indeed, with incomes adequate, from an
American point of view, for extravagant social
expenditure. Of these 200, probably not 50 are
figures in the social life of the capital. It may
be seen at once, therefore, that entertaining can-
not be on a lavish or spectacular scale.

The minister of foreign affairs and the im-
perial minister of the interior receive salaries of
36,000 marks, with 14,000 marks additional for
expenses. The Prussian ministers have the
same. Other ministers receive 30,000 marks and
14,000 additional for expenses. The chancellor
of the empire receives 36,000 marks and 64,000
additional for expenses. The highest receivable
pension is three-fourths of the salary — not count-
ing the additional sum for expenses, or, as it
is named, Reprdsentationsaufwand — after forty
years of service. The foreign ambassadors to
the more expensive capitals, London, Paris,

BERLIN 271

Washington, Saint Petersburg, receive 150,000
marks a year. Where one has seen something
of the innumerable demands upon the income
of a foreign ambassador, one is the more amazed
that a great democracy like ours should so re-
strict the salaries of its representatives abroad
that only rich men dare undertake the duty.
What could be more undemocratic!

Germany is a rich, very rich, country in the
sense that it has the most intelligent, hardest-
working, most fiercely economical, and the most
rationally and most easily contented population
of any of the great powers. But Germany is not
rich in surplus and liquid capital as compared
with England, France, or America. It is the
more to her credit that her capital is all hard at
work. There is just so much less for luxury.
The people in the streets; the shop- windows; the
scale of charges at places of public resort and
amusement; the very small number of well-
turned-out private vehicles; the comparatively
few people who live in houses and not in apart-
ments; the simplicity of the gowns of the women,
and their inexpensive jewelry and other orna-
ments; the fewer servants; the salaries and
wages of all classes, point decisively to plain liv-
ing on the part of practically everybody. Let
me say very emphatically, however, that this

272 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

economy means no lack of generosity. I doubt
if there are people anywhere so restricted as
to means, and so delightfully hospitable at the
same time. Berlin is not as yet under that cloud
that covers the new, uncultivated, and rich so-
ciety in America, that tyranny of money which
makes men and women fearful of being without
it. Such people shiver at the bare thought of
losing what money will buy, for the shameful
reason that then there would be nothing left to
them; and they are driven, many of them, both
in London and in New York, to any humilia-
tion, often to any degradation, to avoid it.
They grossly overrate the value of money, and
they exaggerate the terrors of being without it.
Professor William James, who succeeded in
analyzing what is at the back of men's brains as
well as anybody, writes: "We have grown liter-
ally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who
elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his
inner life. We have lost the power of even
imagining what the ancient idealization of pov-
erty could have meant : the liberation from mate-
rial attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier
indifference, the paying our way by what we are
or do, and not by what we have, the right to
fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly
— the more athletic trim, in short, the moral

BERLIN 273

fighting shape. ... It is certain that the prev-
alent fear of poverty among the educated classes
is the worst moral disease from which our civili-
zation suffers." They suffer from this malady
less in Germany than in America or in England.
I should like to introduce such people into dozens
of households in Berlin; alas, they could not
speak or understand the moral or mental lan-
guage there, where there is everything that
makes a home's heart beat proudly and peace-
ably, except money. "La prosperite decouvre
les vices, et 1'adversite les vertus."

These people need no tribute from me, and
for their hospitality and friendliness I can make
no adequate return. I sigh to think that we
in America know so little of them. Germany
would not be where she is without them; and I
offer them as an example to my countrymen, and
to my countrywomen especially, as showing what
self-sacrifice and simplicity, and loyal service can
do for a nation in times of stress; and what high
ideals and sturdy independence and contempt
for luxury can do in the dangerous days of
prosperity. Unadvertised, unheralded, keeping
without murmuring or envy to their own tradi-
tions, they are here, as everywhere, the saviors
of the world.

In this great city of Berlin it may seem that I

have over-emphasized their part in the drama of
the city's life. Not so ! They are the backbone
of the municipal as of the national body corpo-
rate. It is no easy industrial progress, no in-
creasing wealth and population, no military
prowess, no isolated great leader that makes a
nation or a city. It is the men and women giv-
ing the high and unpurchasable gift of service
to the state; giving the fine example of self-sacri-
ficing and simple living; giving the prowess won
by years of hard mental and moral training; giv-
ing the gentle courtesy and kindly welcome of
the patrician to the stranger, who lift a nation or
a city to a worthy place in the world. Seek not
for Germany's strength first in her fleet, her
army, her hordes of workers, nay, not even in her
philosophers, teachers, and musicians, though
they glisten in the eyes of all the world, for you
will not find it there. It is in these quiet and
simple homes, that so few Americans and Eng-
lishmen ever enter, that you will find the sweet-
ness and the sternness, the indomitable pride of
service, and the self-sacrificing loyalty that won,
and that keep for Germany her place in the
world.

VI

"A LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS"

IT can hardly be doubted that could Lord
Palmerston have seen what I have seen of
the changes in Germany, he would at least
have placed the "damned," in another part of
his famous sentence. These professors have
turned their prowess into channels which have
given Germany, in this scientific industrial age,
a mighty grip upon something more than theo-
ries. It may be dull reading to tell the tale of
damned professordom, but it is to Germany
that we must all go to school in these matters.
The American chooses his university or college
because it is in the neighborhood; because his
father or other relatives went there; because his
school friends are going there; on account of the
prestige of the place; sometimes, too, because
one is considered more democratic than another;
sometimes, and perhaps more often than we
think, on account of the athletics; because it is
large or small; or on account of the cost.

The German youth, owing to widely different
customs and ideals, chooses his university for

275

276 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

other reasons. If he be of the well-to-do classes,
and his father before him was a corps student,
he is likely to go first to the university, where his
father's corps will receive him and discipline him
in the ways of a corps student's life, and rigor-
ous ways they are, as we shall see. Young men
of small means, and who can afford to waste
little time in the amusements of university life,
go at once where the more celebrated professors
in their particular line of work are lecturing.

Few students in Germany reside during their
whole course of study at one university. The
student year is divided into two so-called sem-
esters. The student remains, say, in Heidel-
berg two years or perhaps less, and then moves
on, let us say, to Berlin, or Gottingen, or Leipsic,
or Kiel, to hear lectures by other professors, and
to get and to see something of the best work in
law, theology, medicine, history, or belles-lettres,
along the lines of his chosen work.

One can hardly say too much in praise of this
system. Many a medical, or law, or theological,
or philosophical student, or one who is going in
for a scientific course in engineering or mining,
would profit enormously could he go from Har-
vard to Yale, or to Johns Hopkins, or to Prince-
ton, or to Columbia, and attend the lectures of
the best men at these and other universities.

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 277

Many a man would have gone eagerly to Har-
vard to hear James in philosophy, Peirce in
mathematics, Abbot in exegesis, or to read Greek
with Palmer; or to Yale to have heard Whitney
in philology in my day; or now, to name but a
few, Van Dyke at Princeton, Sloane at Colum-
bia, Wheeler at the University of California,
Paul Shorey at Chicago, and many others are
men whom not to know and to hear in one's
student days is a loss.

The German student is at a distinct advantage
in this privilege of hearing the best men at what-
ever university they may be. The number of
students, indeed, at particular German universi-
ties rises and falls in a large measure according to
the fame and ability of the professors who may
be lecturing there. One can readily imagine how
such men as Hegel, or Ranke, or Mommsen,
who lectured at Berlin; or Liebig or Dollinger, at
Munich; or Ewald, at Gottingen; or Sybel, at
Bonn; or Leibnitz or Schlegel, in their day, or
Kuno Fischer, in my day, at Heidelberg, must
have drawn students from all parts of Germany;
just as do Harnack, and Schmidt, and Lam-
precht, and Adolph Wagner, Schmoller, or
Gierke, or Schiemann, or Wach, Haeckel, List,
Deitsch, Hering, or Verworm, in these days.
Though the German professors are somewhat

278 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

hampered by the fact that they are servants of
the state, and their opinions therefore on theo-
logical, political, and economic matters restricted
to the state's views, they are free as no other
teachers in the world to exploit their intellectual
prowess for the benefit of their purses. Each
student pays each professor whose lectures he
attends, and as a result there are certain pro-
fessors in Germany whose incomes are as high
as $50,000 a year.

Even in intellectual matters state control pro-
duces the inevitable state laziness and indiffer-
ence. One could tell many a tale of profess-
ors who arrive late at their lecture-rooms, who
read slowly, who give just as little matter as
they can, in order to make their prepared work
go as far as possible. Some of them, too, read
the same lectures over and over again, year
after year, quite content that they have made a
reputation, gained a fixed tenure of their posi-
tions, and are sure of a pension.

There are twenty-one universities in Germany,
with another already provided for this year in
Frankfort, and practically the equivalent of a
university in Hamburg. The total number of
students is 66,358, an increase since 1895 of
37,791. Geographically speaking, one has the
choice between Kiel, Konigsberg, and Berlin in

the north, Munich in the south, Strassburg on
the boundaries of France, or Breslau in Silesia.
At the present writing Berlin has 9,686 students,
and some 5,000 more authorized to attend
lectures, over half of them grouped under the
general heading "Philosophy"; next comes Mu-
nich with 7,000, nearly 5,000 of them grouped
under the headings "Jurisprudence" and "Phi-
losophy"; then Leipsic with 5,000; then Bonn
with 4,000 ; and last in point of numbers Rostock
with 800 students. There are now some 1,500
women students at the German universities, but
a total of 4,500 who attend lectures, and Doctor
Marie Linden at the beginning of 1911 was ap-
pointed one of the professors of the medical fac-
ulty at Bonn, but the appointment was vetoed
by the Prussian ministry.

In addition to the universities is the modern
development of the technical high-schools, of
which there are now eleven, one each in Berlin,
Dresden, Braunschweig, Darmstadt, Hanover,
Karlsruhe, Munich, Stuttgart, Danzig, Aix, and
Breslau. These schools have faculties of archi-
tecture, building construction, mechanical en-
gineering, chemistry, and general science, includ-
ing mathematics and natural science. They
confer the degree of Doctor of Engineering, and
admit those students holding the certificate of

280 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the Gymnasium, Real gymnasium, and Oberreal-
schule. They rank now with the universities,
and their 17,000 students may fairly be added to
the grand total number of German students,
making 83,000 in all, and if to this be added the
4,000 unmatriculated students, we have 87,000.
While the population of Germany has in-
creased 1.4 per cent, in the last year, the num-
ber of students has increased 4.6 per cent, and of
the total number 4.4 per cent, are women. Since
the founding of the empire the population has
increased from 40,000,000 to 65,000,000, but the
number of students has increased from 18,000 to
60,000. The teaching staffs in the universities
number 3,400, and in the technical high-schools
753, or, roughly, there are, in the higher-educa-
tion department of Germany, nearly 90,000 per-
sons engaged; as these figures do not include
officials and many unattached teachers and
students indirectly connected with the univer-
sities. There are in addition agricultural high-
schools, agricultural institutes, and technical
schools such as veterinary high-schools, schools
of mining, forestry, architecture and building,
commercial schools, schools of art and industry;
a naval school at Kiel; a colonial institute at
Hamburg, with sixty professors and tutors,
where men are trained for colonial careers, and

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 281

which serves also the purpose of distributing
information of all kinds regarding the colonies;
there are 400 schools which prepare for a busi-
ness career, with 50,000 pupils, and the Social-
ists in Berlin maintain an academy for the in-
struction of their paid secretaries and organizers
in the rudiments and controversial points of
socialism, military academies at Berlin and
Munich, besides some 50 schools of navigation,
and 20 military and cadet institutions. There
are also courses of lectures, given under the
auspices of the German foreign office, to in-
struct candidates for the consular service in the
commercial and industrial affairs of Germany.

At several of the universities evening exten-
sion lectures are given, an innovation first tried
at Leipsic, where more than seven thousand
persons paid small fees to attend the lectures
in a recent year.

If one considers the range of instruction from
the Volksschulen and Fortbildungsschulen up
through the skeleton list I have mentioned to the
universities, and then on beyond that to the
thousands still engaged as students in the com-
merce and industry of Germany, as, for example,
the technically employed men in the Krupp
Works at Essen, or the Color Works at Elber-
feld, to mention two of hundreds, it is seen that

282 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Germany is gone over with a veritable fine-tooth
comb of education. There is not only nothing
like it, there is nothing comparable to it in the
world. If training the minds of a population
were the solution of the problems of civilization,
they are on the way to such solution in Germany.
Unfortunately there is no such easy way out of
our troubles for Germany or for any other na-
tion. Some of us will live to see this fetich of
regimental instruction of everybody disappear
as astrology has disappeared. There is a Jap-
anese proverb which runs, "The bottom of light-
houses is very dark."

As early as 1717 Frederick William I in an
edict commanded parents to send their children
to school, daily in summer, twice a week in win-
ter. Frederick the Great at the close of the
Seven Years' War, 1764, insisted again upon
compulsory school attendance, and prescribed
books, studies, and discipline. At the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century began a great
change in the primary schools due to the influ-
ence of Pestalozzi, and in the secondary schools
owing to the efforts of Herder, Frederic August
Wolf, William Humboldt, and Siinern. Hum-
boldt was the Prussian minister of education for
sixteen months. In 1809 he sent a memorial to
the King, urging the establishment and endow-

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 283

ment of a university in Berlin. He used his
authority and his great influence to further
higher and secondary education, and fixed the
main lines of action which were followed for a
century. He hoped that a liberal education
of his countrymen would make for both an in-
tellectual and moral regeneration, and emanci-
pate the people from their sluggish obedience
to conventionality. The schools then were part
of the ecclesiastical organization and have never
ceased to be so wholly, and until recently the
title of the Prussian minister has been: "Min-
ister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, Instruction, and
Medical Affairs." That part of the minister's
title, "Medical Affairs," has within the last few
months been eliminated.

The French Revolution, and the dismember-
ment of Prussia at Tilsit, put a stop to orderly
progress. Stein and his colleagues, however,
started anew; students were sent to Switzerland
to study pedagogical methods ; provincial school-
boards were established, and about 1850 all pub-
lic-school teachers were declared to be civil ser-
vants; and later, in 1872, during Bismarck's
campaign against the Jesuits, all private schools
were made subject to state inspection. In
Prussia to-day no man or woman may give in-
struction even as a governess or private tutor,
without the certificate of the state.

284 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

This control of education and teaching by a
central authority is an unmixed blessing. In
Prussia, at any rate, the officials are hard-work-
ing, conscientious, and enthusiastic, and the
system, whether one gives one's full allegiance
to it or not, is admirably worked out. Above
all, it completely does away with sham physi-
cians, sham doctors of divinity, sham engineers,
and mining and chemical experts, sham dentists
and veterinary surgeons, who abound in our
country, where shoddy schools do a business of
selling degrees and certificates of proficiency in
everything from exegesis to obstetrics. These
fakir academies are not only a disgrace but a
danger in America, and here, as in other matters,
Germany has a right to smile grimly at certain
of our hobbledehoy methods of government.

The elementary schools, or Volkschulen, are
free, and attendance is compulsory from six to
fourteen; in addition, the Fortbildungsschulen, or
continuation schools, can also be made compul-
sory up to eighteen years of age. There are
some 61,000 free public elementary schools with
over 10,000,000 pupils, and over 600 private ele-
mentary schools with 42,000 pupils who pay fees.

Under a regulation of the Department of
Trade and Industry, towns with more than
twenty thousand inhabitants are empowered to
make their own rules compelling commercial

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 285

employees under eighteen to attend the contin-
uation schools a certain number of hours
monthly, and fining employers who interfere with
such attendance. It has even been suggested
that this law be extended to include girls.

In Berlin this has already been put into opera-
tion, and this year some 30,000 girls will be com-
pelled to attend continuation schools, where they
will be taught cooking, dress-making, laundry
work, house-keeping economy, and for those who
wish it, office work. It will require some train-
ing even to pronounce the name of this new in-
stitution, which requires something more than
the number of letters in the alphabet to spell
it, for it has this terrifying title: MadchenpfiiGht-
fortbildungssehule.3 -2-

The work in these PfliGhtfortbildungsscliulen-2f*
or compulsory continuation schools, is practical
and thorough. The boys are from fourteen to
eighteen years of age, and are obliged to attend
three hours twice a week. Shopkeepers and
others, employing lads coming under the pro-
visions of the law, are obliged by threat of heavy
fines to send them. The boys pay nothing.
There are some 34,000 of such pupils under one
jurisdiction in Berlin, and the cost to the city
is $300,000 annually. The curriculum includes
letter-writing, book-keeping, exchange, bank-

286 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

credits, checks and bills, the duty of the busi-
ness man to his home, to the city, and to his
fellow business men, his legal rights and duties,
and, in great detail, all questions of citizenship.
Methods of the banks, stock exchange, and in-
surance companies are explained. The business
man's relations in detail to the post-office, the
railways, the customs, canals, shipping agencies
are dealt with. The investigation of credits and
the general management from cellar to attic of
what we call a "store" are taught, and lectures
are given upon business ethics and family rela-
tions and morals.

In towns where factories are more common
than shops there are schools similar in kind, as
at Dortmund, for example, where you may begin
with horse-shoeing in the cellar, and go up
through the work of carpenter, mason, plumber,
sign-painter, poster-designer, to the designing of
stained-glass windows and the modelling of ani-
mals and men.

In the strictly agricultural districts of Prussia
the number of courses open to those who work
upon the land has steadily increased. In 1882
there were 559 courses of instruction and 9,228
pupils; in 1902, 1,421 such courses and 20,666
pupils; and in 1908, 3,781 courses and 55,889
pupils. About five per cent, of the cost of such

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 287

instruction, which cost the state 566,599 marks
in 1908, is paid by the fees of the pupils them-
selves.

To those interested in ways and means it may
serve a purpose to say that the total cost of
these elementary schools amounts to $130,715,-
250 a year, of which the various state govern-
ments pay $37,500,000 and local authorities
the rest. In 1910 the city of Berlin spent
$9,881,987 on its schools. The average cost per
pupil is $13.50. In some of the towns of differ-
ent classes of population that I have visited the
number of pupils per 100 inhabitants stands as
follows: Berlin, 11.1; Essen, 16.5; Dortmund, 16;
Diisseldorf, 13.2; Charlottenburg, 9; Duisburg,
16.7; Oberhausen, 17.7; Bielefeld, 14.7; Bonn,
11.1; Cologne, 13.1.

There are 170,000 teachers in these elementary
schools, of whom 30,000 are women. They be-
gin with $250 a year, which is raised to $300
when they are given a fixed position. By a
graduated scale of increase a teacher at the age
of forty-eight (when he may retire) may receive
a maximum of $725. A woman teacher's salary
would vary from $300 to $600 as the maximum.
These figures are for Prussia. In other states
of the empire, in Bavaria and Saxony, for ex-
ample, the scale of salaries is somewhat higher.

288 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

The secondary schools are the well-known
Gymnasien and Progymnasien, the Realgymna-
sien, and the Realschulen. Roughly the Gym-
nasien prepare for the universities, and the Real-
schulen for the technical schools. Admission to
the universities and to any form of employment
under the civil service demands a certificate
from one or another of these secondary schools.

In 1890, two years after the present Emperor
came to the throne, he called together a confer-
ence of teachers and in an able speech suggested
that these secondary schools devote more time
and attention to technical training. As a result
of this, the certificates of the Realgymnasien and
Realschulen are now received as equivalent to
those conferred by the Gymnasien, where Latin
and Greek are, as they were then, still para-
mount.

Of these secondary schools some are state
schools; others are municipal or trade-supported
schools; some are private institutions; but all
are amenable to the rules, organization, and
curricula approved by the state. All secondary
and elementary teachers must meet the exam-
inational requirements of the state, which fixes
a minimum salary and contributes thereto. In
the universities and technical high-schools all
professors are appointed by the state, and largely

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 289

paid by the state as well. In the year 1910 the
German Empire expended under the general
heading of elementary instruction $130,715,250.
Prussia alone spent $60,424,325; Bavaria, $8,-
955,825 (though nearly $750,000 of this total
went for building and repairs for both churches
and schools); Baden, $4,176,075; Saxony, $4,-
573,250; the free city of Hamburg, $5,561,900.
The total expenditures of the empire and of the
states of the empire combined in 1910 amounted
to $2,225,225,000; of this, as we have seen,
more than $130,000,000 went for instruction and
allied uses; $198,748,775 was the cost of the
army; and $82,362,650 the cost of the navy,
not counting the extraordinary expenditures for
these two arms of the service, which amounted
to $5,624,775 for the army, and $28,183,125 for
the navy. The total expenditure of the Father-
land for schools, army, and navy amounted,
therefore, to one-fifth of the total, or $416,-
108,225.

I have grouped these expenditures together
for the reason, that I am still one of those who
remain distrustful and disdainful of the Carnegie
holy water, and a firm believer that the two best
schools in Germany, or anywhere else where they
are as well conducted as there, are the army and
the navy. Even if they were not schools of war,

290 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

they would be an inestimable loss to the coun-
try were they no longer in existence as manhood-
training schools. This is the more clear when it
is remembered that, according to the army stand-
ard, both the German peasant and the urban
dweller are steadily deteriorating. In ten years
the percentage of physically efficient men in the
rural districts decreased from 60.5 to 58.2 per
cent., and this decrease is even more marked in
particular provinces. Infant mortality, despite
better hygienic conditions and more education,
has not decreased, and in some districts has in-
creased; while the birth-rate, especially in Prus-
sia and Thuringia, has fallen off as well. For the
whole of Germany, the births to every thousand
of the inhabitants were, in 1876, 42.63; in 1891.
38.25; in 1905, 34; and in 1909, 31.91. In Ber-
lin the births per thousand in 1907 were 24.63
and in 1911 only 20.84.

The observer who cares nothing for statis-
tics, who rambles about in the district of Leip-
sic, Chemnitz, Riesa, Oschatz, and in the moun-
tainous district of southeast Saxony, may see
for himself a population lacking in size, vigor,
and health, noticeably so indeed. Education at
one end turning out an unwholesome, "white-
collared, black-coated proletariat," as the So-
cialists call them; and industry and commerce,

which even tempt the farmer to sell what he
should keep to eat, at the other, are making
serious inroads upon the health and well-being
of the population.

The Chancellor, von Bethmann-Hollweg,
speaking in the Reichstag February 11, 1911,
said: "The fear that we may not be working
along the right lines in the education of our
youth is a cause of great anxiety to many people
in Germany. We shall not solve this problem
by shunning it!"

Many social economists hold that higher edu-
cation is unfitting numbers of young men from'
following the humbler pursuits, while at the same
time it is not making them as efficient as are
their ambitions; and such men are recognized as
the most potent chemical in making the milk of
human kindness to turn sour. At a meeting of
the Goethebund this year, advocating school re-
form, it was evident that many intelligent men
in Germany were not satisfied with present
methods of education, which were characterized
as wasting energy in mechanical methods of
teaching, and so robbing youth of its youth. It
is beginning to be understood in Germany, as it
has been understood by wise men in all ages,
that "to spend too much time in studies is sloth:
to use them too much for ornament is affecta-

292 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

tion; to make judgment wholly by their rules is
the humour of the scholar." This commen-
tary of Bacon should be on the walls of every
school and university in Germany. An ed-
ucation can do nothing more for a man than
to make him less fearful of what he does not
know, and to save him from the vulgarity of be-
ing pre-empted wholly by the present, because
he knows something of the past. You cannot
educate a man to be a poet or a preacher or a
pianist; that we know. We are only just dis-
covering that the much-lauded technical edu-
cation will not make him an engineer or a ship-
builder or an architect. You may give him the
tools and the elementary rules, but the rest he
must do himself. Nine-tenths of the techni-
cally educated men to-day are working for men
who were liberally educated, or who educated
themselves. Germany is producing a race of
first-rate clerks and skilled mechanics, who are
working hard to enrich the Jews.

In America, it is true, we have gone ahead
along educational lines. In 1800, it is said, the
average adult American had 82 days of school
attendance; in 1900, 146 days. In the last
quarter of a century our secondary schools have
increased in number from 1,400 to 12,000; and
during the last eighteen years the proportion of

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 293

our youth receiving high-school instruction has
doubled, and attendance at American colleges
has increased 400 per cent, while the population
increased by 100 per cent. But education is by
no means so strenuous as in Germany. The
hours are shorter, holidays longer, standards
lower, and the emphasis far less insistent. A
boy who has not the mental energy to pass the
entrance examinations at Harvard, for instance,
and proceed to a degree there, ought to be
drowned, or to drown himself. I would not say
as much of the requirements in Germany, for
they are far more severe. Prince von Hohenlohe
in his memoirs gives an account of a conversa-
tion between the Emperor, the Emperor's tutor,
and himself. The Emperor was regretting the
severity of the examinations in the secondary
schools, and it was replied to him that this was
the only way to prevent a flood of candidates for
the civil service!

There is another all-important factor in Ger-
many bearing upon this point. A boy must have
passed into the upper section of the class before
the last, " Secunda," as it is called, or have
passed an equivalent examination, in order to
serve one year instead of three in the army. To
be an Einjahriger is, therefore, in a way the mark
of an educated gentleman. The tales of suicide

294 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

and despair of school-boys in Germany are, alas,
too many of them true; and it is to be remem-
bered that not to reach a certain standard here
means that a man's way is barred from the army
and navy, civil service, diplomatic or consular
service, from social life, in short. The unedu-
cated man of position in Germany does not exist,
cannot exist. This is, therefore, no phantom,
but a real terror. The man of twenty -five who
has not won an education and a degree faces a
blank wall barring his entrance anywhere; and
even when, weaponed with the necessary aca-
demic passport, he is permitted to enter, he
meets with an appalling competition, which has
peopled Germany with educated inefficients who
must work for next to nothing, and who keep
down the level of the earnings of the rest because
there is an army of candidates for every vacant
position. On the other hand, the industries of
Germany have bounded ahead, because the
army of chemists and physicists of patience,
training, and ability, who work for small salaries
provide them with new and better weapons than
their rivals.

There are two sides to this question of fine-
tooth-comb education. Its advantages both
America and England are seeing every day in
these stout rivals of ours; but its disadvantages

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 295

are not to be concealed, and are perhaps doing
an undermining work that will be more apparent
in the future than now it is. The very fact that
an alien, an oriental race, the Jews, have taken
so disproportionate a share of the cream of Ger-
man prosperity, and have turned this technical
prowess to purposes of their own, is, in and of
itself, a sure sign that there, may be an educated
proletariat working slavishly for masters whom,
with all their learning and all their mental dis-
cipline, they cannot force to abdicate.

Strange to say, the federal constitution of
1871, which gave Germany its emperor, did not
include the schools, and each state has its own
school system, but in 1875 an imperial school
commission was formed which has done much to
make the system of all the states uniform.

The three classes of schools recognized as lead-
ing later to a university career are the Gymna-
sium, in which Latin and Greek are still the fun-
damental requirements; the Realgymnasium, in
which Latin but no Greek is required; the Ober-
realschule, in which the classics are not taught
at all, but emphasis is laid upon modern lan-
guages and natural science. In addition to these
there are the so-called Reformschulen, of very
recent growth, which are an attempt to put less
emphasis upon the classics, but without exclud-

296 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ing them entirely from the course, and to pay
more attention proportionately to modern lan-
guages, French in particular. There are in addi-
tion some four hundred public and one thousand
or more private higher girls' schools, with an at-
tendance of a quarter of a million, all subject to
state supervision.

If one were to make a genealogical tree of
the German schools which educate the children
from the age of six up to the age of entrance to
the university, it might be described as follows:
First are the Volkschulen, which every child
must attend from six to fourteen. In the
smaller country schools the children of all ages
may be in one school-room and under one
teacher; in another, divided into two classes; in
another, into three or four classes; up to the
large city schools, in which they are divided on
account of their number into as many as eight
classes. Next would come the Mittelschulen,
where the pupils are carried on a year farther,
and where the last year corresponds to the first
year of the so-called Lehrerbildungsanstalten, or
training schools for teachers. These again are
divided into two, one called Prceparanda, the
other Seminar, the former carrying the pupil on
to his sixteenth year, the latter to the nineteenth
year and turning him out a full-fledged Volk-

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 297

schule teacher, and giving him the right to serve
only one year in the army.

If boy or girl goes on from the fourteenth
year, the hohere Knabenschulen and the hoh&re
Mddchenschulen take them on to the eighteenth
or nineteenth year. Many boys go on till they
have passed from the lower Secunda, next to the
last class, which is divided into upper and lower
Secunda, into the upper Secunda, when their cer-
tificate entitles them to serve one year only in
the army, when they quit school. Many boys,
too, intending to become officers, leave school at
sixteen or seventeen and go to regular cramming
institutions, where they do their work more
quickly and devote themselves to the special
subjects required. For boys intending to go on
through the higher schools, there are schools
taking them on from the age of nine, with a cur-
riculum better adapted than that of the Volk-
schulen to that end.

In all these higher schools there is less atten-
tion paid to mere examinations, and more atten-
tion paid to the general grip the pupils have on
the work in hand; and of the teaching, as men-
tioned elsewhere, too much cannot be said in its
praise.

For those boys who finish their public school-
ing at the age of fourteen and then turn to earn-

298 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ing their living, there are the continuation
schools, which are in many parts of the country
compulsory, and which are nicely adapted, ac-
cording to their situation in shopkeeping cit-
ies, in factory towns, or in the country, to give
the pupils the drilling and instruction necessary
for their particular employment. The average
amount of expenditure for these continuation
schools is $6,250,000. In Prussia there are some
1,500 of these schools, with an average attend-
ance of 300,000 pupils.

According to the last census the proportion of
illiterates among the recruits for the army was
0.02 per cent. The number of those who could
neither read nor write in Germany was, in 1836,
41.44 per cent.; in 1909, 0.01 per cent. If one
were to name all the agricultural schools; tech-
nical schools; schools of architecture and build-
ing; commercial schools, for textile, wood,
metal, and ceramic industries; art schools;
schools for naval architecture and engineering
and navigation; and the public music schools, it
would be seen that it is no exaggeration to speak
of fine-tooth-comb education.

I have visited scores of all sorts of schools all
over Germany, from a peasant common school in
Posen up to that last touch in education, the
schools in Charlottenburg, the Schulpforta Acad-

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 299

emy, and such a private boys' school as Die
Schtilerheim-Kolonie des Arndt-Gymnasiums in
the Grunewald near Berlin, and the training
schools for the military cadets. Through the
courtesy of the authorities I was permitted, when
I wished it, to sit in the class-rooms, and even to
put questions to the boys and girls in the classes.
From the small boys and girls making their first
efforts at spelling to the young woman of seven-
teen who translated a paragraph of the "Ger-
mania" of Tacitus, not into German but into
French, for me (a problem I offered as a good test
of whether I was merely assisting at a prepared
exhibition of the prowess of the class or whether
the minds had been trained to independence),
I have looked over a wide field of teaching and
learning in Germany. If that young person was
typical of the pupils of this upper girls' school,
there is no doubt of their ability to meet an in-
tellectual emergency of that kind.

Of one feature of German education one can
write without reservation, and that is the teach-
ing. Everywhere it is good, often superlatively
good, and half a dozen times I have listened to
the teaching of a class in history, in Latin, in
German literature, in French literature, where it
was a treat to be a listener. I remember in
particular a class in physical geography, another

300 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

reading Ovid, another reading Shakespeare, and
another reading Goethe's "Hermann and Doro-
thea," where I enjoyed my half -hour, as though
I had been listening to a distinguished lecturer
on his darling subject.

We know how little these men and women
teachers are paid, but there is such a flood of in-
tellectual output in Germany that the competi-
tion is ferocious in these callings, and the schools
can pick and choose only from those who have
borne the severest tests with the greatest suc-
cess. The teaching is so good that it explains
in part the amount of work these poor children
are enabled to get through. School begins at
seven in summer, at eight in winter. The
course for those intending to go to the univer-
sity is nine years; the recitation hours alone
range from twenty-five to thirty-two hours a
week; to which must be added two hours a week
of singing and three hours a week of gymnastics,
and this for forty-two weeks in the year. The
preparation for class-work requires from two
and a half to four hours more. It foots up to
something like fifty hours a week!

At Eton, in England, the boys grumble be-
cause they only have a half-holiday every other
day, and four months of the year vacation. It
will be interesting to see which educational

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 301

method is to produce the men who are to win the
next Waterloo. No wonder that nearly seventy
per cent, of those who reach the standard re-
quired of those who need serve only one year
instead of three in the army are near-sighted,
and that more than forty-five per cent, are put
on one side as physically unfit. The increase in
population in Germany is so great, however, and
the candidates for the army so numerous, that
the authorities are far more strict in those they
accept than in France, for example. There is
more manhood material for the German army
and navy every year than is needed.

In the first year of the nine-years' course in a
Gymnasium the 25 hours a week are divided:
religion, 3 hours; German, 4 hours; Latin, 8
hours; geography, 2 hours; mathematics, 4
hours; natural science, 2 hours; writing, 2 hours.
In the last year: religion, 2 hours; German, 3
hours; Latin, 7 hours; Greek, 6 hours — Greek is
begun in the fourth year; French, 3 hours -
French is begun in the third year; history, 3
hours; mathematics, 4 hours; natural science, 2
hours.

In the first year in a Realgymnasium: religion,
3 hours; German, 4 hours; Latin, 8 hours;
geography, 2 hours; mathematics, 4 hours; nat-
ural science, 2 hours; writing, 2 hours. In the

302 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

last year of the course: religion, 2 hours; German,
3 hours; Latin, 4 hours; French — begun in
third year — 4 hours ; English — begun in fourth
year — 3 hours; mathematics, 5 hours; natural
science, 5 hours; drawing, 2 hours.

In the first year in an Oberrealschule: religion,
3 hours; German, 5 hours; French, 6 hours;
geography, 2 hours; mathematics, 5 hours; nat-
ural science, 2 hours; writing, 2 hours. In the
last year: religion, 2 hours; German, 4 hours;
French, 4 hours; English — begun in the fourth
year — 4 hours; history, 3 hours; geography, 1
hour; mathematics, 5 hours; natural science, 6
hours; free-hand drawing — begun in the second
year — 2 hours.

It may be seen from these schedules where the
emphasis is laid in each of these schools. So far
as results are concerned, the pupils about to leave
for the universities seemed to me to know their
Latin, Greek, French, German, and English, and
their local and European history well. Their
knowledge of Latin and of either French or Eng-
lish, sometimes of both, is far superior to any-
thing required of a student entering any college
or university in America. I have asked many
pupils to read passages at sight in Latin, French
and English in schools in various parts of Ger-
many and there is no question of the grip they

have upon what they have been taught. I am,
alas, not a scholar, and can only judge of the re-
quirements and of the training and its results
in subjects where I am at home; and I must take
it for granted that these boys and girls are as
well trained in other subjects where I am in-
capable of passing judgment. It is improbable,
however, that the same thoroughness does not
characterize their work throughout the whole
curriculum. The examination at the end of the
secondary-school period, called Abiturienten-
examen, is more thorough and covers a wider
range than any similar examination in America.
It is a test of intellectual maturity. It permits
no gaps, covers a wide ground, leaves no subject
dropped on the way, and sends a man or woman
to the university, with an equipment entirely
a.dequate for such special work as the individual
proposes to undertake.

It seemed to me that in many class-rooms the
ventilation was distinctly bad, but here too I
must admit an exaggerated love for fresh air,
born of my own love of out-door exercise.

There are practically no schools in Germany
like the public schools for boys in England, and
our own private schools for boys, like Saint
Paul's, Groton, Saint Mark's, and others, where
the training of character and physique are em-

304 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

phasized. Here again I admit my prejudice in
favor of such education. I should be made
pulp, indeed, did I try to run through the boys
of a fifth or sixth form at home, but, from the
look of them, I would have undertaken it for a
wager in Germany.

It is not their fault, poor boys. Practically
the whole emphasis is laid upon drilling the mind.
Moral and physical matters are left to the home,
and in the home there are no fathers and brothers
interested in games or sport, and in this busy,
competitive strife, and with the small means at
the disposal of the majority, there is no time and
no opportunity. Boys and girls seldom leave
home for distant boarding-schools. They go from
home to school and from school home every day,
and have none of the advantages to be gained
from intercourse with men outside their own
circles. It shows itself in a deplorable lack of
orientation as compared with our lads of the
same relative standing. In dress and bearing, in
at-homeness in the world, in ability to take care
of themselves under strange conditions or in an
emergency, and in domestic hygiene they are in-
ferior, and yet they are so competent to push the
national military, industrial, and commercial ball
along as men, that one wonders whether Bage-
hot's gibe at certain well-to-do classes of the

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 305

Saxons, that "they spend half their time washing
their whole persons," may not have a grain of
truth in it.

Another feature of the school life which is
prominent, especially in Prussia, is the incessant
and insistent emphasis laid upon patriotism.
In every school, almost in every class-room, is a
picture of the Emperor; in many, pictures also of
his father and grandfather. Even in a municipal
lodging-house, where I found some tiny waifs
and strays being taught, there were pictures of
the sovereign, and brightly colored pictures of
the war of 1870-71, generally with German per-
sonalities on horseback, and the French as pris-
oners with bandages and dishevelled clothing.
This war, which began with the first movement
of the German army on August 4, and on the 2d
of September next Napoleon was a prisoner; this
war, in which the German army at the beginning
of operations consisted of 384,000 officers and
men and wrhich had grown during the truce to
630,000 on March 1 ; lost in killed and those who
died from wounds 28,278, of whom 1,871 were
officers; this war is flaunted at the population of
Germany continually, and from every possible
angle. We hear very little of our war of 1861-
1865, that cost us $8,000,000,000 with killed and
wounded numbering some 700,000. We do not

306 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

find it necessary to feed our patriotism with a
nursing-bottle.

At a kindergarten two tots, a boy and a girl,
stood at the top of some steps while the rest
marched by and saluted; they later descended
and went through the motions of reviewing the
others. They were playing they were Kaiser
and Kaiserin!

Two small boys in a school-yard discussing
their relative prowess as jumpers end the dis-
cussion when one says as a final word: "Oh, I
can jump as high as the Kaiser!"

We have noted in another article how even
police sergeants must be familiar with the history
of the House of Hohenzollern.

I am an admirer of Germany and her Emperor,
with a distinct love of discipline and a bias in
favor of military training, and with an experi-
ence of actual warfare such as only a score or
so of German officers of my generation have
had; but I am bound to say I found this pound-
ing in of patriotism on every side distinctly nau-
seating. Boys and girls, and men and women,
ought not to need to be pestered with patriotism.
We had a controversy in America some ten years
before the Franco-German War, where in one
battle more men were killed and wounded than
in all the battles Prussia, and later Germany,
has fought since 1860.

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 307

In the South, at any rate, we bear the scars
and the mourning of those days still, but nobody
would be thanked for pummelling us with patri-
otism. In the skirmish with Spain our military
authorities were pestered with candidates for the
front. Germany itself is not more a nation in
arms than America would be at the smallest
threat of insult or aggression. But we take those
things for granted. If we have the honor to
possess a medal or a decoration, the gentlemen
among us wear it only when asked to do so, or
perhaps on the Fourth of July.

Germany is even now somewhat loosely ce-
mented together. Their leaders may feel that it
is necessary to keep ever in the minds even of
the children, that Germany is a nation with an
Emperor and a victory over France, France in po-
litical rags and patches at the time, behind them.

They even carry this teaching of patriotism
beyond the boundaries of Germany. The All-
gemeiner Deutscher Schulverein zur Erhaltung des
Deutschtums im Auslande, is a society with head-
quarters in Berlin devoting itself to the advance-
ment of German education all over the world.
The society was started privately in 1886, and
is now partly supported by the state. It con-
trols some sixteen hundred centres for the teach-
ing of German and German patriotism, and Ger-
man learning. There are such centres in China,

308 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

South America, the United States, Spain, and
elsewhere. They number 90 in Europe, 25 in
Asia, 20 in Africa, 70 in Brazil, 40 in Argentina,
and 100 in Australia and Canada. The society
is instrumental in having German taught in
5,000 schools and academies in the United States
to 600,000 pupils. The work is not advertised,
rather it is concealed so far as possible, but it is
looked upon as a valuable force for the advance-
ment of German interests throughout the world.
In the schools, too, there is an enemy of which
we know nothing, and that is the active propa-
gandism of socialism, which is anti-military, anti-
monarchical, and anti-status quo. Leaflets and
books and pamphlets are widely distributed
among the school children; many of the teachers
are in sympathy with these obstructionist meth-
ods; and the authorities may feel that they must
do what they can to combat this teaching. In
Prussia, on every side, and in the industrial
towns of Saxony, one sees the evidence of this im-
potent discontent expressing itself either openly
or in surly malice of speech and manner. The
streets of Berlin, and of the industrial towns,
show this condition at every turn, and when the
Reichstag closes with cheers for the Emperor,
the Socialist members leave in a body before that
loyal ceremony takes place.

We in America are brought up to believe that
the best cure for such maladies is to open the
wound, to give freedom of speech, to let every
boy and girl and man and woman find out for
himself his citizen's path to walk in. We have
no policemen on our public platforms, no gags in
the mouths of our professors or preachers, no
lurid pictures of battles, no plastering of the
walls of our schools and seminaries with pictures
of our rulers, and withal our German immigrants
are perhaps our best and most patriotic citizens.
In America they think less and do more, and
for most men this is the better way. It makes
life very complicated to think too much about it.

Self-consciousness is the prince of mental and
social diseases, as vanity is the princess, and
even self-conscious patriotism seems a little un-
wholesome, not quite manly, and often even
grotesque. It is easy to say: "Die mihi si fueris
tu leo, qualis eris?" and if one is a person of no
great importance, it is an embarrassing question
to answer. In this connection I can only say
that I should assume that my lionhood was
taken for granted without so much roaring,
bristling of the mane, and switching of the tail.
It irritates those who are discontented, it posi-
tively infuriates the redder democrats, and it
bores the children, and, worst of all, proclaims to

310 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

everybody that the lion is not quite comfortable
and at his ease. The German lion is a fine, big
fellow now, with fangs, and teeth, and claws as
serviceable as need be, and it only makes him
appear undignified to be forever looking at him-
self in the looking-glass.

Whatever may be the right or wrong of
these comparative methods of training, Germans
trained in the investigation of such matters agree
in telling me that the boys who come up to the
universities, especially in the large cities and
towns, are somewhat lax in their moral standards
as regards matters upon which the puritan still
lays great stress.

In Berlin particularly, where there are some
thirty-five hundred registered and nearly fifty
thousand unregistered women devoting them-
selves to the seemingly incompatible ends of
rapidly accumulating gold while frantically pur-
suing pleasure, there is an amount of immorality
unequalled in any capital in Europe. In the
whole German Empire the average of illegiti-
macy is ten per cent, but in Berlin the average
for the last few years is twenty per cent. Out of
every five children born in Berlin each year one
is illegitimate! It is questionable whether the
increasing demands of the army and navy re-
quire such laxity of moral methods in providing
therefor.

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 311

There is, however, a state church in Germany
with its head in Berlin, and no doubt we may
safely leave this matter in these better hands
than ours. I beg to say that in mentioning this
subject I am quoting unprejudiced scientific in-
vestigators, who, I may say, agree, without a
dissenting voice of importance, that Berlin has
become the classical problem along such lines.
In the endeavor to compete with the gayeties
elsewhere, a laxity has been encouraged and per-
mitted that has won for Berlin in the last ten
years, an unrivalled position as a purveyor of
after-dark pleasures. Berlin not only produces
a disproportionate number of such people as
Diotrephes, in manners, but also a veritable
horde of those who are like unto the son of
Bosor.

After the sheltered home life and the severe
discipline of the higher schools, a German youth
is permitted a freedom unknown to us at the
university. There is no record kept of how or
where he spends his time. He matriculates at
one or another of the universities, and for three,
four, or, in the case of medical students, five
years, he is free to work or not to work, as he
pleases.

There are, however, three factors that serve
as bit and reins to keep him in order. The final
examination is severe, thorough, and cannot be

312 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

passed successfully by mere cramming; very few
of the students have incomes which permit of a
great range of dissipation; and not to pass the
examination is a terrible defeat in life, which
cuts a man off from further progress and leaves
him disgraced.

These are forces that count, and which prevail
to keep all but the least serious within bounds.
German life as a whole is so disciplined, so fitted
together, so impossible to break into except
through the recognized channels, that few men
have the optimistic elasticity of mind and spir-
its, the demonic confidence in themselves, that
overrides such considerations.

We in America suffer from a superabundance
of men of aleatory dispositions, men who love
to play cards with the devil, who rejoice to
wager their future, their reputation, their lives,
against the world. I admit a sneaking fondness
for them. They are a great asset, and a new
country needs them, but if we have too many,
Germany has too few. They are forever crying
out in Germany for another Bismarck. When-
ever in political matters, in foreign affairs, even
in their religious controversies, things go wrong,
men lift their hands and eyes to heaven and say,
"How different if Bismarck were here!" Bis-
marck and two of his predecessors as nation-

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 313

builders were not afraid to throw dice with the
world, and what "the land of damned profess-
ors" could not do, they did.

When the young men from the Gymnasium
come into the freedom of university life, they
toss their heads a bit, kick up their heels, laugh
long and loud at the Philistine, but just as every
German climax is incomplete without tears, so
they too are soon singing: "Ich weiss nicht wras
soil es bedeuten dass ich so traurig bin!" the
gloom of the Teutoburger Wald settles down on
them, and they buckle to and work with an
enduring patience such as few other men in the
world display, and join the great army here
who, bitted and harnessed, are pulling the Vater-
land to the front.

The British Empire between 1800 and 1910
grew from 1,500,000 square miles to 11,450,000
square miles, and its trade from $400,000,000
to $11,020,000,000; not to mention the United
States of America, now considered to be of
noticeable importance, though we are universally
sneered at by the Germans, to an extent that no
American dreams of who has not lived among
them, as a land of dollars, and, from the point
of view of book-learning, dullards. But it is
this, none the less, that Germany envies, and
has set out to rival and if possible to surpass.

314 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

No wonder the training must be severe for the
athletes who propose to themselves such a task.

For a semester or two, perhaps for three, the
German student gives himself up to the rollick-
ing freedom of the corps student's life. That
life is so completely misunderstood by the for-
eigner that it deserves a few words of explana-
tion.

I am not yet old enough to envy youth, nor
sourly sophisticated enough to deal sarcastically
or even lightly with their worship and their
creeds, that once I shared, and with which lately
I have been, under the most hospitable circum-
stances, invited to renew my acquaintance at the
Commers and the Mensur.

One may be no longer a constant worshipper
at the shrine of blue eyes, pink cheeks, flaxen
hair, and the enshrouding mystery of skirts,
which make for curiosity and reverence in youth ;
one may have learned, however, the far more
valuable lesson that the best women are so much
nobler than the best men, that the best men
may still kneel to the best women; just as the
worst women surpass the worst men in con-
sciencelessness, brutal selfishness, disloyalty,
and degradation. The female bandit in society,
or frankly on the war-path outside, takes her
weapons from an armory of foulness and cruelty

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 315

unknown to men; just as the heroines and angels
among women fortify themselves in sanctuaries
to which few, if any, men have the key.

One returns, therefore, to the playground of
one's youth with not less but with more sympa-
thy and understanding. Far from being "bru-
talizing guilds," far from being mere unions for
Swilling and slashing, the German corps, by their
codes, and discipline, and standards of manners
and honor, are, from the chivalrous point of
view, the leaven of German student life. In
these days many of them have club-houses of
their own, where they take their meals in some
cases and where they meet for their beer-drink-
ing ceremonies.

There is of course a wide range of expenditure
by students at the German universities, whether
they are members of the corps or not. At one
of the smaller universities in a country town like
Marburg, for example, a poor student, with a
little tutoring and the system of frei Tisch —
money left for the purpose of giving a free mid-
day meal to poor students — may scrape along
with an expenditure of as little as twenty dollars
a month. A member of a good corps at this
same university is well content with, and can do
himself well on, seventy dollars a month. I
have seen numbers of students' rooms, with bed,

316 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

writing-table, and simple furniture, perhaps with
a balcony where for many months in the year
one may write and read, which rent for sixty
dollars a year. One may say roughly that at the
universities outside the large towns, and not in-
cluding the fashionable universities, such as
Bonn or Heidelberg, the student gets on com-
fortably with fifty dollars a month. They have
their coffee and rolls in the morning, their mid-
day meal which they take together at a restau-
rant, and their supper of cold meats, preserves,
cheese, and beer where they will. For seventy-
five cents a day a student can feed himself.

The hours are Aristotelian, for it was Aristotle
in his "Economics," and not a nursery rhymer,
who wrote: "It is likewise well to rise before
daybreak, for this contributes to health, wealth,
and wisdom." "Early to bed and early to rise"
is a classic.

At Bonn, a member of one of the three more
fashionable corps spends far more than these
sums, and his habits may be less Spartan. The
ridiculous expenditure of some of our mamma-
bred undergraduates, who go to college primarily
to cultivate social relations, are unknown any-
where in Germany, for a student would make
himself unpopularly conspicuous by extrava-
gance. Two to three thousand dollars a year,

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 317

even at Bonn, as a member of the best corps,
would be amply sufficient and is considered an
extravagant expenditure.

When the Earl of Essex was sent to Cam-
bridge in Queen Elizabeth's time, he was pro-
vided with a deal table covered with baize, a
truckle-bed, half a dozen chairs, and a wash-
hand basin. The cost of all this was about $25.
When students from all over Europe tramped
to Paris to hear Abelard lecture, they begged
their way. They were given special licenses as
scholars to beg. Learning then, as it is still in
Germany, alone of all the nations, was con-
sidered to be a pious profession deserving well
of the world. We do not even know the names
of our scholars in America. How many Amer-
icans have heard of Gibbs, the authority on the
fundamental laws regulating the trend of trans-
formation in chemical and physical processes,
or of Hill and his theory of the moon, or of Hale
who explains the mystery of sun spots and meas-
ures the magnetic forces that play around the
sun? How many Frenchmen know Pierron's
translation of JEschylus, or Patin's studies in
Greek tragedies, or Charles Maguin, or Maurice
Croiset, or Paul Magou or Leconte de Lisle?
while in England the mass of the people not
only do not know the names of their scholars,

318 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

but distrust all mental processes that are super-
canine.

The origin of the Landsmannschaften, Bursch-
enschaften, and the Corps among the students
dates back to the days when the students
aligned themselves with more rigidity than now,
according to the various German states from
which they came. The names of the corps still
bear this suggestion, though nowadays the align-
ment is rather social than geographical. The
Burschenschaften societies of students had their
origin in political opposition to this separation
of the students into communities from the vari-
ous states. The originators of the Burschen-
schaften movement, for example, were eleven
students at Jena. Sobriety and chastity were
conditions of entrance, and "Honor, Liberty,
Fatherland" were their watchwords. It was
deemed a point of honor that a member breaking
his vows should confess and retire from the
society.

The societies of the Burschenschaften are still
considered to have a political complexion and
the corps proper have no dealings with them.

In any given semester the number of students
in one of these corps varies from as few as ten,
to as many as twenty-five, depending, much as
do our Greek-letter societies and college clubs,

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 319

upon the number of available men coming up to
the university. Certain corps are composed al-
most exclusively of noblemen, but none is dis-
tinctly a rich man's club.

An active member of a corps during his first
two semesters may do a certain amount of seri-
ous work, but as a rule it is looked upon as a
time "to loaf and invite one's soul," and little at-
tempt is made to do more. Not a few men
whom I have known, have not even entered
a class-room during the two or three semesters
of this blossoming period.

I have spent many days and nights with these
young gentlemen, at Heidelberg, at Leipsic, at
Marburg, at Bonn, and been made one of them
in their jollity and good-fellowship, and I have
agreed, and still agree, that "Wir sind die Ko-
nige der Welt, wir sind's durch unsere Freude."

They are by no means the swashbuckling,
bullying, dissolute companions painted by those
who know nothing about them. They may
drink more beer than we deem necessary for
health, or even for comfort; and they may take
their exercise with a form of sword practice that
we do not esteem, they may be proud of the
scars of these imitation duels, but these are all
matters of tradition and taste.

When one writes of eating and drinking, it is

hardly fair to make comparisons from a personal
stand-point. An adult of average weight re-
quires each day 125 grams of proteid or building
material, 500 grams of carbohydrates, 50 grams
of fat. This equals, in common parlance, one
pound of bread, one-half pound of meat, one-
quarter pound of fat, one pound of potatoes, one-
half pint of milk, one-quarter pound of eggs,
assuming that one egg equals two ounces, and
one-eighth pound of cheese. Divided into three
meals, this means: for breakfast, two slices of
bread and butter and two eggs; for dinner: one
plateful potato soup, large helping of meat with
fat, four moderate-sized potatoes, one slice bread
and butter; for tea: one glass of milk and two
slices of bread and butter; for supper: two slices
of bread and butter and two ounces of cheese.

Plain white bread supplies more caloric, or
energy, for the price than any other one food,
and, with one or two exceptions, more proteid,
or building material, than any other one food.

One to one and a half fluid ounces of alcohol
is about the amount which can be completely
oxidized in the body in a day. This quantity is
contained in two fluid ounces of brandy or whis-
key, five fluid ounces of port or sherry, ten of
claret or champagne or other light wines, and
twenty of bottled beer. All this means that a

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 321

pint of claret, or two glasses of champagne, or a
bottle of beer, or a glass of whiskey with some
aerated water during the day will not hurt a
man, and adds perhaps to the " agreeableness of
life," as Matthew Arnold phrases it. At any
rate, this table of contents is a much safer stand-
ard of comparison, in judging the eating and
drinking habits of other people, than either your
habits or mine.

The German student probably drinks too
much, and it is said by safe authorities in Ger-
many that his heart, liver, and kidneys suffer;
but he has been at it a long time, and in certain
fields of intellectual prowess he is still supreme,
and as we only drink with him now occasionally
when he is our host, perhaps he had best be left
to settle these questions without our criticism.

In general terms, I have always considered, as
a test of myself and others, that a healthy man is
one who lies down at night without fear, rises in
the morning cheerfully, goes to a day's serious
work of some kind rejoicing in the prospect,
meets his friends gayly, and loves his loves bet-
ter than himself.

It is folly to maintain, that it does not require
pluck and courage to stand up to a swinging
Schlager, and take your punishment without
flinching, and then to sit without a murmur

322 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

while your wounds are sewn up and bandaged.
I cannot help my preference for foot-ball, or
base-ball, or rowing, or a cross-country run with
the hounds, or grouse or pheasant shooting, or
the shooting of bigger game, or the driving of
four horses, or the handling of a boat in a breeze
of wind, but the "world is so full of a number of
things" that he has more audacity than I who
proposes to weigh them all in the scales of his
personal experience, and then to mark them with
their relative values.

First of all, it is to be remembered that these
Schldger contests between students are in no
sense duels; a duel being the setting by one man
of his chance of life against another's chance,
both with deadly weapons in their hands. These
contests with the Schldger at the German uni-
versities, wrongly called duels, are so conducted
that there is no possibility of permanent or even
very serious injury to the combatants. The
attendants who put them into their fighting
harness, the doctors who look after them during
the contest and who care for them afterward,
are old hands at the game, and no mistakes are
made.

There is no feeling of animosity between the
swordsmen as a rule. They are merely candi-
dates for promotion in their own corps who

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 323

meet candidates from other corps, and prove
their skill and courage auf die Mensur, or fight-
ing-ground.

When a youth joins a corps he chooses a coun-
sellor and friend, a Leibbursch, as he is called,
from among the older men, whose special care it
is, to see to it that he behaves himself properly
in his new environment; he pledges himself to
respect the traditions and standards of the corps,
and to keep himself worthy of respect among his
fellows, and among those whom he meets out-
side. A companionship and guardianship not un-
like this, used to exist in the Greek-letter society
to which I once belonged. He of course abides
by the rules and regulations of the order. It is
a time of freedom in one sense, but it is a free-
dom closely guarded, and there is rigid disci-
pline here as in practically all other depart-
ments of life in Germany.

The young students, or Fiichse, as they are
called, are instructed in the way they should go
by the older students, or Burschen, whose au-
thority is absolute. This authority extends even
to the people whom they may know and consort
with, either in the university or in the town, and
to all questions of personal behavior, debts, dis-
sipation, manners, and general bearing. In
many of the corps there are high standards and

324 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

old traditions as regards these matters, and every
member must abide by them. Every corps stu-
dent is a patriot, ready to sing or fight for
Kaiser and Vaterland, and socialism, even criti-
cism of his country or its rulers, are as out of
place among them as in the army or navy.
They are particular as to the men whom they
admit, and a man's lineage and bearing and rela-
tions with older members of the corps are care-
fully canvassed before he is admitted to member-
ship. Both the present Emperor and one of his
sons have been members of a corps.

Let us spend a day with them. It is Saturday.
We get up rather late, having turned in late after
the Commers of Friday, when the men who are
to fight the next day were drunk to, sung to, and
wished good fortune on the morrow, and sent
home early. The trees are turning green at
Bonn, the shrubs are feeling the air with hesi-
tating blossoms, you walk out into the sunshine
as gay as a lark, for the champagne and the beer
of the night before were good, and you sang away
the fumes of alcohol before you went to bed.
There was much laughter, and a speech or two
of welcome for the guest, responded to at 1 A. M.
in German, French, English, and gestures with a
beer-mug, and punctuated with the appreciative
comments of the company.

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 325

It was a time to slough off twenty years or so
and let Adam have his chance, and the company
was of gentlemen who sympathize with and un-
derstand the "Alter Herr," and are only too de-
lighted if he will let the springs of youth bubble
and sparkle for them, and glad to encourage him
to return to reminiscences of his prowess in love
and war, and ready to pledge him in bumper
after bumper success in the days to come. You
might think it a carouse. Far from it.

The ceremony is presided over by a stern
young gentleman, who never for a moment al-
lows any member of the company to get out of
hand, and who, when a speech is to be made,
makes it with grace and complete ease of manner.
Indeed, these young fellows surprise one with
their easy mastery of the art of speech-making.
Even the spokesman for the Fuchse, or younger
students, at the lower end of the table, rises and
pledges himself and his companions in a few
graceful words, with certain sly references to the
possibility that the guest may not have lost his
appreciation of the charms of German woman-
kind, which the guest in question here and now,
and frankly admits; but not a word of coarse-
ness, not a hint that totters on the brink of an
indiscretion, and what higher praise can one give
to speech-making on such an occasion!

326 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

My particular host and introducer to his old
corps is youngest of all, and though seemingly as
lavish in his potations as any one, sings his way
home with me, head as clear, legs as steady, eyes
as bright, as though it were 10 A. M. and not
2 A. M., and as though I had not seemed to see
his face during most of the evening through the
bottom of a beer-mug.

That was the night before. The next morning
we stroll over to the room where the Schldger
contests are to take place. It is packed with stu-
dents in their different-colored caps. Beer there
is, of course, but no smoking allowed till the
bouts are over.

I go down to see the men dressing for the fray.
They strip to the waist, put on a loose half -shirt
half -jacket of cotton stuff, then a heavily padded
half-jerkin that covers them completely from
chin to knee. The throat is wrapped round and
round with heavy silk bandages. The right arm
and hand are guarded with a glove and a heavily
padded leather sleeve; all these impervious to
any sword blow. The eyes are guarded with steel
spectacle frames fitted with thick glass. Noth-
ing is exposed but the face and the top of the
head. The exposed parts are washed with anti-
septics, as are also the swords, repeatedly during
the bout. The sword, hilt and blade together,

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 327

measures one hundred and five centimetres.
There is a heavy, well-guarded hilt, and a pliable
blade with a square end, sharp as a razor on
both edges for some six inches from the end.

The position in the sword-play is to face
squarely one's opponent, the sword hand well
over the head with the blade held down over the
left shoulder. The distance between the com-
batants is measured by placing the swords be-
tween them lengthwise, each one with his chest
against the hilt of his own weapon, and this
marks the proper distance between them. When
they are brought in and face one another, the
umpire, with a bow, explains the situation. The
two seconds with swords crouch each beside his
man, ready to throw up the swords and stop the
fighting between each bout. Two other men
stand ready to hold the rather heavily weighted
sword arm of their comrade on the shoulder dur-
ing the pauses. Two others with cotton dipped in
an antiseptic preparation keep the points of the
swords clean. Still another official keeps a rec-
ord in a book, of each cut or scratch, the length
of time, the number of bouts, and the result.
The doctor decides when a wound is bad enough
to close the contest.

At the word "Los!" the blades sing and
whistle in the air, the work being done almost

328 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

wholly with the wrist, some four blows are ex-
changed, there is a pause, then at it again, till
the allotted number of bouts are over, or one or
the other has been cut to the point where the
doctor decides that there shall be no more. We
follow them downstairs again, where, after being
carefully washed, the combatants are seated in
a chair one after the other, their friends crowd
around and count the stitches as the surgeon
works, and comment upon what particular twist
of the wrist produced such and such a gash.

I have seen scores of these contests, and during
the last year as many as a dozen or more. There
is no record of any one ever having been seriously
injured; indeed, I doubt if there are not more
men injured by too much beer than too much
sword-play.

It is perhaps expected that the foot-ball player
should sneer at bull-fighting; the boxer at
fencing; the rider to hounds at these Schldger
bouts; and that we game-players should say con-
temptuous things of the contests of our neigh-
bors. Personally, if one could eliminate the
horse from the contest, I go so far as to believe
that even bull-fighting is better than no game
at all. As for these Schldger contests, they seem
to me no more brutal than our own foot-ball,
which is only brutal to the shivering crowd of

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 329

the too tender who have never played it, and
not so dangerous as polo or pig-sticking, and a
thousand times better than no contest at all.

I am not of those who believe that the human
body and that human life are the most precious
and valuable things in the world. They are only
servants of the courageous hearts and pure souls
that ought to be their masters. Without train-
ing, without obedience, without the instant will-
ingness to sacrifice themselves for their masters,
the human body and human life are contemptible
and unworthy. I claim that it braces the mind
to expose the body ; that an education in the pre-
pared emergencies of games and sport, is the best
training for the unprepared emergencies with
which life is strewn.

The most cruel people I have ever known were
gentle enough physically, but they were hard
and sour in their social relations, and often
enough called " good " by their fellows. The dis-
appointments, losses, sorrows, defeats, of each
one of us, trouble, even though imperceptibly,
the waters of life that we all must drink of; and
to ignore or to rejoice at these misfortunes is only
muddying what we ourselves must drink. I be-
lieve the hardening of the body goes some way
toward softening the heart and cleansing the
soul, and toward fitting a man with that cheerful

330 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

charity that supplies the oil of intercourse in a
creaking world of rival interests.

To see a youth swinging a sword at his fellow's
face with delighted energy; to see a man riding
off vigorously at polo; to see a man hard at it
with the gloves on; to see another flinging him-
self and his horse over a wall or across a ditch;
to see a man taking his nerves in hand, to make
a two-yard put for a half, when he is one down
and two to play; to see these things without
seeing that — perhaps often enough in a muddy
sort of way — the soul is making a slave of
the body, that courage is mastering cowardice,
that in an elementary way the youth is learn-
ing how to give himself generously when some
great emergency calls upon him to give his
life for an ideal, a tradition, a duty, is to see
nothing but brutality, I admit. Who does not
know that the Carthaginians at Cannae were one
thing, the Carthaginians at Capua another! I
have therefore no acidulous effeminacy to pour
upon these German Schldger bouts. I prefer
other forms of exercise, but I am a hardened
believer in the manhood bred of contests, and
though their ways are not my ways, I prefer
a world of slashed faces to a world of soft
ones.

Prosit, gentlemen! Better your world than

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 331

the world of Semitic haggling and exchange; of
caution and smoothness; of the disasters born of
daintiness; of sliding over the ship's side in
women's clothes to live, when it was a moral
duty to be drowned. Better your world than
any such worlds as those, for

"If one should dream that such a world began
In some slow devil's heart that hated man,
Who should deny it?"

Milton held that "a complete and generous
education fits a man to perform justly, skilfully,
and magnanimously all the offices, both private
and public, of peace and war." It is my opinion
that the Schldger has its part to play in this
matter of education. A mind trained to the
keenness of a razor's edge, but without a sound
body controlled by a steel will, is of small ac-
count in the world. The whole aim of education
is, after all, to make a man independent, to make
the intelligence reach out in keen quest of its
object, and at its own and not at another's bid-
ding. An education is intended to make a man
his own master, and so far as any man is not
his own master, in just so far is he uneducated.
What he knows, or does not know, of books does
not alter the fact.

Much of the pharisaism and priggishness on

332 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the subject of education arises from the fact that
the world is divided into two camps as regards
knowledge: those who believe that the astrono-
mer alone knows the stars, and those who be-
lieve that he knows them best who sleeps in the
open beneath them. In reality, neither type of
mind is complete without the other.

To turn from any theoretical discussion of
the subject, it remains to be said that Germany
has trained her whole population into the best
working team in the world. Without the natu-
ral advantages of either England or America she
has become the rival of both. Her superior men-
tal training has enabled her to wrest wealth from
by-products, and she saves and grows rich on
what America wastes. Whether Germany has
succeeded in giving the ply of character to her
youth, as she folds them in her educational fac-
tories, I sometimes doubt. That she has not
made them independent and ready to grapple
with new situations, and strange peoples, and
swift emergencies, their own past and present
history shows.

It is a very strenuous and economical exist-
ence, however, for everybody, and it requires a
politically tame population to be thus driven.
The dangerous geographical situation of Ger-
many, ringed round by enemies, has made sub-

LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS 333

mission to hard work, and to an iron autocratic
government necessary. To be a nation at all it
was necessary to obey and to submit, to sacri-
fice and to save. These things they have been
taught as have no other European people.
Greater wealth, increased power, a larger role
in the world, are bringing new problems. Edu-
cation thus far has been in the direction of fitting
each one into his place in a great machine, and
less attention has been paid to the development
of that elasticity of mind which makes for inde-
pendence; but men educate themselves into inde-
pendence, and that time is coming swiftly for
Germany.

"Also he hath set the world in their heart,"
and one wonders what this population, hitherto
so amenable, so economical, and so little worldly,
^ill do with this new world. The temptations of
wealth, the sirens of luxury, the opportunities
for amusement and dissipation, are all to the
fore in the Germany of to-day as they were cer-
tainly not twenty-five years ago. Ulysses, alas,
does not bind himself to the mast very tightly
as he passes these enchanted isles of modern
luxury. "The land of damned professors" has
learned its lessons from those same professors
so well, that it is now ready to take a post-
graduate course in world politics; and as I said

334 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

" ~&

in the beginning, some of our friends are put-
ting the word "damned" in other parts of this,
and other sentences, when they describe the
rival prowess and progress of the Germans.

VII
THE DISTAFF SIDE

MADAME NECKER writes of women:
"Les femmes tiennent la place de ces
legers duvets qu'on introduit dans les
caisses de porcelaine; on n'y fait point d' atten-
tion, mais si on les retire, tout se brise."

When one sees women and dogs harnessed to-
gether dragging carts about the streets; when
one sees women doing the lighter work of sweep-
ing up leaves and collecting rubbish in the for-
ests and on the larger estates ; doing the garden-
ing work in Saxony and other places; when one
sees them by the hundreds working bare-legged in
the beet-fields in Silesia and elsewhere through-
out Germany; when one reads "Viele Weiber
sind gut weil sie nicht wissen wie man es machen
muss um bose zu sein," and "Der Mann nach
Freiheit strebt, das Weib nach Sitte," two
phrases from the German classics, Lessing and
Goethe ; when one recalls the shameless careless-
ness of Goethe's treatment of all women; of how
his love-poems were sometimes sent by the same
mail to the lady and to the press; and the un-
restrained worship of Goethe by the German

335

women of his day; when one sees time and time
again all over Germany the women shouldered
into the street while the men keep to the side-
walk; when one sees in the streets, railway car-
riages, and other public conveyances, the insult-
ing staring to which every woman is subjected
if she have a trace of good looks, one realizes
that at any rate Madame Necker was not writing
of German women. Let me add that so far as
the great Goethe is concerned, it is by no Pu-
ritan yard-stick that I am measuring him, but
by the German's own high standard which de-
spises any mating of true sentiment with com-
mercialism. " Beatus ille qui procul negotiis,"
certainly applies to one's affairs of the heart.

In the gallery at Dresden, where the loveliest
mother's face in all the world shines down upon
you from Raphael's canvas like a benediction,
there is a small picture by Rubens, "The Judg-
ment of Paris." The three goddesses — induitur
formosa est; exuitur ipsa forma est — have taken
literally the compliment paid to a certain beau-
tiful customer by a renowned French dress-
maker: "Un rien et madame est habillee!"
They are coquettishly revealing their claims to
the Eve-bitten fruit which Paris holds in his
hand. Paris and his friend are in the most non-
chalant of attitudes. They could not be more
indifferent, or more superior in appearance, were

THE DISTAFF SIDE 337

they dandies judging the class for costermonger's
donkeys at a provincial horse-show. The three
most beautiful women in the world are squirm-
ing and posturing for praise, and a decision, be-
fore two as sophisticated and self-satisfied men
as one will ever see on canvas or off it.

The same subject is treated by a man of the
same breed, but of a later day, named Feuer-
bach, and his picture hangs, I think, in Breslau.
Here again the supersuperiority of the male is
portrayed.

In the Church of Saint Sebaldus at Nurem-
berg, there is a delightful mural painting which
makes one merry even to recall it. The subject
is the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are
being lectured by an elderly man in flowing
robes with a long white beard. His beard alone
would more than supply Adam and Eve with
the covering they lack. In an easy attitude,
with neither haste nor anxiety, he is pointing out
to them the error of their ways. He is as de-
tached in manner as though he were Professor
Wundt, lecturing to us at Leipsic on the fourth
dimension of space. Adam is somewhat de-
jected and reclines upon the ground. Eve, un-
abashed, with nothing on but the apple which
she is munching, is evidently in a reckless mood.
She looks like a child of fifteen, with her hair
down her back; the defiance of her attitude is

338 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

that of a naughty little girl. The world-old
problem is under discussion, but with an air of
good humor and cheerfulness on the part of the
lecturer, as though there were still time in the
world, as though hurry were an undiscovered
human attribute, as though possibly the world
would still go on even if the problem were left
unsolved, and this first leafy parliament ad-
journed sine die.

They were so much wiser than are we ! They
knew then that there would be other sessions of
congress, and that it was not necessary to decide
everything on that spring day of the year One.
But here again in this picture it is the male atti-
tude toward the woman that is of chief interest.
Adam is plainly bored. What if the woman has
broken into the sanctuary of knowledge, she will
only be the bigger fool, he seems to say. As for
the professor in the red robes, his easy, patron-
izing manner is indicative enough of his mental
top-loftiness toward the woman question. You
can almost hear him say as he strokes his beard :
"Kiiche, Kinder, Kirche!"

From the fields of Silesia, where the beet in-
dustry is possible only because there are hun-
dreds of bare-legged girls and women to single
the beets, a process not possible by machinery,
at a wage of from twenty -five to thirty cents a
day, to these German paintings with their illus-

THE DISTAFF SIDE 339

trations of the spiritual and moral attitude of
the German man toward the German woman,
one sees everywhere and among practically all
classes an attitude of condescension toward
women among the polite and polished; an atti-
tude of carelessness bordering on contempt
among the rude. Their attitude is like that of
the Jews who cry in their synagogues, "Thank
God for not having made me a woman!"

One can judge, not incorrectly, of the status
of women in a country by the manners and habits
of the men, entirely dissociated from their rela-
tions to women. When one sees men equipped
with small mirrors and small brushes and combs,
which they use in all sorts of public places, even
in the streets, in the street-cars, in omnibuses,
and in the theatres; when one opens the door
to a knock to find a gentleman, a small mirror
in one hand and a tiny brush in the other, pre-
paring himself for his entrance into your hotel
sitting-room; you are bound to think that these
persons are in the childhood days of personal
hygiene, as it cannot be denied that they are,
but also that their women folk must be still in
the Eryops age of social sophistication, not to
put a stop to such bucolic methods of grooming.
Even though the Eryops is a gigantic tadpole, a
hundred times older than the oldest remains of
man, this is hardly an exaggeration.

340 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

In no other country in the cultured group of
nations is the animal man so naively vain, so de-
liciously self-conscious, so untrained in the ways
of the polite world, so serenely oblivious, not
merely of the rights of women but of the simple
courtesy of the strong to the weak. It is the only
country I have visited where the hands of the men
are better cared for than the hands of the women ;
and this is not a pleasant commentary upon the
question of who does the rough work, and who
has the vanity and who th« leisure for a meticu-
lous toilet. One must not forget that regular and
systematic cleansing of the person is a very
modern fashion. As late as the early part of
the nineteenth century, tooth-brushes were not
allowed in certain French convents, being looked
upon as a luxury. Cleanliness was not very com-
mon a century and a half ago in any country.
In 1770 the publication of Monsieur Perrel's
" Pogonotomie, ou 1'Art d'apprendre a se raser
soi-me'me," created a sensation among fashion-
able people, and enthusiasts studied self -shaving.
The author of "Lois de la Galanterie" in 1640
writes: "Every day one should take pains to
wash one's hands, and one should also wash one's
face almost as often!"

The copious streams of hot and cold water,
turned into a porcelain tub at any time of the

THE DISTAFF SIDE 341

day or night; the brushes, and soaps, and towels,
and toilet waters, and powders of our day were
quite unknown to our not far-off ancestors.
The oft-repeated and minute ablutions of our
day are almost as modern as bicycles, and not
as ancient as the railways. The Germans are
only a little behind the rest of us in this soap and
water cult, that is all.

In the streets and public conveyances of the
cities, in the beer-gardens and restaurants in the
country, in the summer and winter resorts from
the Baltic to the Black Forest, from the Rhine
to Bohemia, it is ever the same. They seat
themselves at table first, and have their napkins
hanging below their Adam's apples before their
women are in their chairs; hundreds of times
have I seen their women arrive at table after
they were seated, not a dozen times have I seen
their masters rise to receive them; their prefer-
ence for the inside of the sidewalk is practically
universal; even officers in uniform, but this is
of rare occurrence, will take their places in a
railway carriage, all of them smoking, where
two ladies are sitting, and wait till requested
before throwing their cigars away, and what ci-
gars! and then by smiles and innuendoes make
the ladies so uncomfortable that they are driven
from the carriage. Even eleven hundred years

342 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ago the German woman had rather a rough time
of it. Charlemagne had nine wives, but he
seems to have been unduly uxorious or unweary-
ing in his infatuations. He made the wife travel
with him, and all nine of them died, worn out
by travel and hardship. There is a constancy
of companionship which is deadly.

The inconveniences and discomfort of going
about alone, for ladies in Germany, I have heard
not from a dozen, but in a chorus from German
ladies themselves. I am reciting no grievances
of my compatriots, for I have seen next to noth-
ing of Americans for a year or more, and I have
no personal complaints, for these soft advent-
urers scent danger quickly, and give the masters
of the world, whether male or female, a wide
berth.

These gross manners are the result of two fac-
tors in German life that it is well to keep in
mind. They are a poor people, only just emerg-
ing from poverty, slavery, and disaster; poor
not only in possessions, but poor in the experi-
ence of how to use them. They do not know
how to use their new freedom. They are as
awkward in this new world of theirs, of greater
wealth and opportunity, as unyoked oxen that
have strayed into city streets. The abject
deference of the women, who know nothing

THE DISTAFF SIDE 343

better than these parochial masters, adds to
their sense of their own importance. It is
largely the women themselves who make their
men insupportable.

The other factor is the rigid caste system of
their social habits. There is no association be-
tween the officers, the nobility, the officials, the
cultured classes, and the middle and lower classes.
The public schools and universities are learning
shops; they do not train youths in character,
manners, or in the ways of the world. They do
not play together, or work together, or amuse
themselves together. The creeds and codes,
habits and manners of the better classes are,
therefore, not allowed to percolate and permeate
those less experienced. There is no word for gen-
tleman in German. The words gebildeter and an-
stdndiger are used, and it is significant to notice
that the stress is thus laid on mental develop-
ment or upon obedience to formal rules. A man
may be a very great gentleman and a true gentle-
man and not be a scholar. The late Duke of
Devonshire cared more for horses than for books
and pictures, and Abraham Lincoln was one of
the greatest gentlemen of all time.

In Homburg one day I saw a tall, fine-looking,
elderly man step aside and off the sidewalk to
let two ladies pass. It was for Germany a no-
ticeable act. He turned out to be a famous

344 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

general then in waiting upon the Emperor.
There are not a few such courtly gentlemen in
Germany, not a few whose knightliness compares
with that of any gentleman in the world. Alas
for the great bulk of the Germans, they never
come into contact with them, their example is
lost, their leaven of high breeding and courtesy
does not lighten the bourgeois loaf ! In America
and in England we are all threading our way in
and out among all classes. We are much more
democratic. Men of every class are in contact
with men of every other, we play together and
work together, and consequently the level of
manners and habits is higher. This state of
things is less marked in south Germany than
in Prussia, but is more or less true everywhere.
But how can this be possible, I hear it replied,
in that land where every officer clacks his heels
together with a report like an exploding torpedo,
ducks his head from his rigid vertebrae, and then
bends to kiss the lady's hand; and where every
civilian of any standing does the same? I am
not writing of the nobility and of the corps of
officers in this connection. No doubt there are
black sheep among them, though I have not
met them. Of the many scores of them whom
I have met, whom I have ridden with, dined
with, romped with, drunk with, travelled with, I
have only to say that they are as courteous, as

THE DISTAFF SIDE 345

unwilling to offend or to take advantage, as are
brave men in other countries I know. I am
writing of the average man and woman, of those
who make up the bulk of every population, of
those upon whom it depends whether a national
life is healthy or otherwise.

The very stiffness of these mannerisms, the
clacking of heels, the ducking of heads, the kiss-
ing of hands, the countless grave formalities
among the men themselves, are all indicative of
social weakness. They are afraid to walk with-
out the crutches of certain formulae, of certain
hard-and-fast rules, of certain laws that they
worship and fall down before. Slavery is still
upon them. Escaped from a bodily master they
fly to the refuge of a moral and spiritual one.
These formalities are prescribed forms which
they wear as they wear uniforms; they are not
the result of innate consideration.

Uniform-wearing is a passion among the Ger-
mansTand may be included as still another indi-
cation of the universal desire to take refuge
behind forms, and laws, and fixed customs, the
universal desire to shrink from depending upon
their own judgment and initiative. They will
not even bow or kiss a lady's hand, without a
prescription from a social physician whom they
trust.

The German officials are always officials, al-

346 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ways addressed and addressing others punctil-
iously by their titles. They do not throw off
officialdom outside their duties and their offices
as we do, but they glory in it. We throw off our
uniforms as soon as may be; we feel hampered
by them. This leads to a feeling on the part of
the Germans that we are too free and easy, and
not respectful enough toward our own dignity
or toward theirs. We feel, on the other hand,
that it is a farce to go to the every-day markets
of life, whether for daily food or for daily social
intercourse, with the bullion and certified checks
of our official dignity; we go rather with the
small change that jingles in all pockets alike,
and is ready to be handed out for the frequent
and unimportant buying and selling of the day
and hour. We look upon this grallatory attitude
toward life as artificial and hampering, and pre-
fer to walk among our neighbors as much as
possible upon our own feet.

I am not pretending to fix standards of eti-
quette. I can quite understand that when we
grab the hand of -the German's wife and shake
it like a pump-handle instead of bowing over it;
that when we nod cheerfully to him in the street
with a wave of the hand or a lifting of a cane or
umbrella instead of taking off our hat; that
when we fail to address both him and his lady
with the title belonging to them, no matter how

THE DISTAFF SIDE 347

commonplace that title, we shock his prejudices
and his code of good manners.

If there is a stranger, a lady, in the drawing-
room before dinner the German men line up in
single file and ask to be presented to her. If the
lady is tall and handsome and the party a large
one, it looks almost like an ovation. If you go
to dine at an officers' mess the men think it their
duty to come up and ask to be presented to you.
They wear their mourning bands on the forearm
instead of the upperarm; they wear their wed-
ding-rings on the fourth finger of the right hand ;
many of them wear rather more conspicuous
jewelry than we consider to be in good taste.

The^sfifa, too, plays a role in German house-
holds and offices torwHTciri have sought in vain
for an explanation. Not even German archae-
ology supplies a historical ancestry for this sofa
cult. It is the place of honor. If you go to tea
you are enthroned on the sofa. Even if you go
to an office, say of the police, or of the manager
of the city slaughter-house, or of the hospital
superintendent, you are manoeuvred about till
they get you on the sofa, generally behind a table.
I soon discovered that this was the seat of honor.
Sofas have their place in life, I admit. There
are sofas that we all remember with tears, with
tenderness, with reverence. They have been
the boards upon which we first appeared in the

348 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

role of lover perhaps; or where we have fondled
and comforted a discouraged child; or where we
have pumped new ambitions and larger life into
a weaker brother; or where we have tossed in
the agony of grief or disappointment; or where
we have waited drearily and alone the result of
a consultation of moral or physical life and death
in the next room. Indeed, this all reminds me
that I could write an essay on sofas that would be
poignant, touching, autobiographical, luminous,
as could most other men, but this would not ex-
plain the position of the sofa in Germany in the
least. "Travels on a Sofa" — I must do it one
day, and perhaps, with more serious study of the
subject, light may be thrown upon this question
of the sofa in Germany.

Even at large and rather formal dinner-parties
the host bows and drinks to his guests, first one
and then another. At the end of the meal, in
many households, it is the custom to bow and
kiss your hostess's hand and say "Mahlzeit" a
shortened form of "May the meal be blessed to
you." You also shake hands with the other
guests and say "Mahlzeit." In some smarter
houses this is looked upon as old-fashioned and is
not done. I look upon it as a charming custom,
and think it a pity that it should be done away
with.

Young unmarried girls and women courtesy to

THE DISTAFF SIDE 349

the elder women and kiss their hands, also a
custom I approve. On the other hand, where a
stalwart officer appears in a small drawing-room
and seats himself at the slender tea-table for a
cup of afternoon tea, holding his sword by his side
or between his legs, that seems to me an unneces-
sary precaution, even when Americans are pres-
ent, for many of us nowadays go about unarmed.

Except on official or formal occasions it seems
a matter of questionable good taste to appear,
say in a hotel restaurant, with one's breast hung
with medals or with orders on one's coat or in
the button-hole. Let 'em find out what a big
boy am I without help from self-imposed placards
seems to me to be perhaps the more modest way.
The method in vogue in Japanese temples, where
the worshippers jangle a bell to call the attention
of the gods to their prayers or offerings, seems
out of place where the god is merely the casual
man in the street, in a Berlin restaurant.

At more than one dinner the soup is followed
by a meat course, after which comes the fish.
This does not mean that the dinners are not
good. I fondly recall a dish of sauerkraut boiled
in white wine and served in a pineapple. I may
not give names, but the dinners of Mr. and Mrs.
Fourth of December, of Mrs. Twenty -first of
January, of Mr. and Mrs. Thirtieth of January,
and of Mr. and Mrs. February First, and others

350 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

rank very high in my gastronomic calendar. Do
not imagine from what I have written that Lucul-
lus has left no disciples in Germany. I could
easily add a page to the list I have mentioned,
and because we look upon some of these customs
of the German as absurd is no reason for for-
getting that he often, and from his stand-point
rightly, looks upon us as boors. I like the Ger-
mans and I pretend to have learned very much
from them. To sneer at superficial differences
is to lose all profit from intercourse with other
peoples. Goethe is right, "Ueberall lernt man
nur von dem, den man liebt!" The argument
is only all on our side when we are impervious to
impressions and to other standards of manners
and morals than our own.

"Am Ende hangen wir doch ab
Von Kreaturen die wir machten"

are two lines at least from the second part of
"Faust" that we can all understand.

It is sometimes thrown at us Americans that
we love a title, and that we are not averse to the
ornamentation of our names with pseudo and
attenuated "Honorables" and "Colonels" and
"Judge" and so on; and I am bound to admit
the impeachment, for I blush at some of my be-
colonelled and becaptained friends, and wonder
at their rejoicing over such effeminate honorifics,

THE DISTAFF SIDE 351

especially those colonelcies born of clattering be-
hind a civilian governor, on a badly ridden horse,
a title which may be compared with that most
attenuated title of all, that of a Texan, who
when asked why he was called "colonel" replied,
that he had married the widow of a colonel!

I prefer "Esqr." to "Mr." merely because it
makes it easier to assort the daily mail; "Mr.,"
"Mrs.," and "Miss" are so easily taken for one
another on an envelope, and particularly at
Christmas time this more distinctly legible title
avoids the deplorable misdirection of the secrets
of Santa Glaus; aside from that I am happy to
be addressed merely by my name, like any other
sovereign.

We are, too, somewhat overexcited when for-
eign royalties appear among us. "What wud
ye do if ye were a king an' come to this coun-
thry?" asked Mr. Hennessy.

"Well," said Mr. Dooley, "there's wan thing
I wuddent do. I wuddent r-read th' Declaration
iv Independence. I'd be afraid I'd die laughin'."

In^G_ermany not only are titles showered upon
the populace, but it is distinctly and officially
stated by what title the office-holder shall be
addressed.

In a case I know, a certain lady failed to sign
herself to one of the small officials working upon

352 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

her estate as, let us say, "I remain very sincerely
yours," or its German equivalent; whereupon
the person addressed wrote and demanded that
communications addressed to him should be
signed in the regulation manner. A lawyer was
consulted, and it was found that a similar case
had been taken to the courts and decided in
favor of the recipient of wounded vanity.

In hearty and manly opposition to this atti-
tude toward life is the example of Admiral X.
He had served long and gallantly, and just before
he retired a friend said to him: "I hear that
they're going to knight you." "By God, sir,
not without a court-martial!" was the prompt
reply. Indeed, things have come to such a pass
in England that the offer of a knighthood to a
gentleman of lineage, breeding, and real dis-
tinction, has been for years looked upon as either
a joke or an insult.

Not so among my German friends ; they have
a ravenous appetite for these flimsy tickets of
passing commendation. At many, many hospi-
table boards in Berlin I have been present where
no left breast was barren of a medal, and where
the only medal won by participation in actual
warfare, belonging to one of the guests, was
safely packed away in his house. And as for the
titles, there is no room in a small volume like

THE DISTAFF SIDE 353

this to enumerate them all; and the women folk
all carry the titles of the husband, from Frau
Ober-Postassistent, Frau Regierungs Assessor,
up to the Chancellor's lady, who, by the way,
wears a title in her mere face and bearing. Not
long ago I saw in a provincial sheet the notice of
the death of a wroman of eighty, who wras gravely
dignified by her bereaved relatives with the title,
and as the relict of, a veterinary.

Upon a certain funicular at a mountain resort,
where the cars pass one another up and down
every twenty minutes, the conductors salute one
another stiffly each time they pass.

Of the army of people with titles of Ober-
Regierungsrat, Geheimer Regierungsrat, Wirk-
licher Geheimer Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Ge-
heimer Ober-Regierungsrat, Wirklicher Geheim-
erat, who also carries the additional title of
"Excellenz" with his title; Referendar, Assessor,
Justizrat, Geheimer Justizrat, Gerichts- Assessor,
Amtsrichter, Amtsgerichtrat, Oberamtsrichter,
Landgerichtsdirector, Amtsgerichtsprasident, Ge-
heimer Finanzrat, Wirklicher Geheimer Ober
Finanzrat, Legationsrat, Wirklicher Geheimer
Legationsrat, Vice Konsul, Konsul, General
Konsul, Commercienrat, Wirklichercommer-
cienrat, Staatsanwalt, Staatsanwaltschaftsrat,
Herr Erster Staatsanwalt, where the "Herr" is

354 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

a legal part of the title; of those who must be
addressed as " Excellenz," and in addition mili-
tary and naval titles, and the horde of handles to
names of those in the railway, postal, telegraph,
street-cleaning, forestry, and other departments,
one must merely throw up one's hands in despair,
and bow to the inevitable disgrace of being quite
unable to name this Noah's-ark procession of
petty dignitaries.

In the department of post and telegraph a
new order has gone forth, issued during the last
few months, by which, after passing certain ex-
aminations, the employees may take the title of
Ober-Postschaffner and Ober-Leitungsaufseher.
After thirty years' service the postman is digni-
fied with the title of Ober-Brieftrager. It is
difficult to understand the^type ofjnind which
is flattered by such infantile honors. At any
rate, it is a cheap system of rewards, and so long
as men will work for such trumpery ends the
state profits by playing upon their childish
vanity. During the year 1912 more than 7,000
decorations were distributed, and some 1,500 of
these were of the three classes of the Order of
the Red Eagle. On the twenty-fifth anniver-
sary of the reign of the present Emperor, in
1913, still another medal is to be struck, to be
given to worthy officials and officers.

THE DISTAFF SIDE 355

All the professions and all the trades, too, have
their pharmacopoeia of tags and titles, and you
will go far afield to find a German woman who
is not Frau Something-or-other Schmidt, or
Fischer, or Miiller. Every day one hears women
greeting one another as Frau Oberforstmeister,
Frau Superintendent, Frau Medicinalrat, Frau
Oberbergrat, Frau Apothek, Frau Stadt-Mu-
sikdirektor, Frau Doktor Rechtsanwalt, Frau
Geschaftsfiihrer, and the like. All these titles,
too, appear in the hotel registers and in all
announcements in the newspapers. Even when
a man dies, his title follows him to the grave,
and even beyond it, in the speech of those
left behind.

These uniforms and titles and small formali-
ties do make, I aHmitr,~for orderliness and rigid-
ity, and perhaps for contentment; since every
man and woman feels that though they are below
some one else on the ladder they are above oth-
ers; and every day and in every company their
vanity is lightly tickled by hearing their impor-
tance, small though it be, proclaimed by the
mention of their titles.

It pleases the foreigners to laugh and some-
times to jeer at the universal sign of " Verboten"
(Forbidden) seen all over Germany. They look
upon it as the seal of an autocratic and bureau-

350 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

cratic government. It is nothing of the kind.
The army, the bureaucracy, the autocratic
Kaiser at the helm, and the landscape bestrewn
with "Verboten" and " Nicht gestattet" (Not al-
lowed), these are necessities in the case of these
people. They do not know instinctively, or by
training or experience, where to expectorate and
where not to; where to smoke and where not to;
what to put their feet on and what not to; where
to walk and where not to; when to stare and
when not to; when to be dignified and when to
laugh; and, least of all, how to take a joke; how,
when, or how much to eat, drink, or bathe, or
how to dress properly or appropriately. The
Emperor is almost the only man in Germany
who knows what chaff is and when to use it.

The more you know them, the longer you live
among them, the less you laugh at "Verboten"
The trouble is not that there are too many of
these warnings, but that there are not enough!
When you see in flaring letters in the street-cars,
" In alighting the left hand on the left-hand rail,"
when you read on the bill of fare in the dining-
car brief instructions underlined, as to how to
pour out your wine so that you will not spill it
on the table-cloth ; when you see the list of from
ten to fifteen rules for passengers in railway car-
riages; when you see everywhere where crowds

THE DISTAFF SIDE 357

go and come, "Keep to the right"; when you
see hanging on the railings of the canals that
flow through Berlin a life-buoy, and hanging over
it full instructions with diagrams for the rescue
of the drowning; when you see over a post-box,
"Aufschrift und Marke nicht vergessen" (Do
not forget to stamp and address your envelope) ;
when you see in the church entrances a tray
with water and sal volatile, and the countless
other directions and remedies and preventives
on every hand, you shrug your Saxon shoulders
and smile pityingly, if you do not stand and stare
and then laugh outright, as I was fool enough
to do at first. But you soon recover from this
superficial view of matters Teutonic. In one
cab I rode in I was cautioned not to expectorate,
not to put my feet on the cushions, not to tap
on the glass with stick or umbrella, not to open
the windows, but to ask the driver to do it, and
not to open the door till the auto-taxi stopped;
one hardly has time to learn the rules before the
journey is over.

In April, 1913, more laws are to come into
effect for the street traffic. People may not
walk more than three abreast; they may not
swing their canes and umbrellas as they walk;
they may not drag their garments in the street;
they may not sing, whistle, or talk loudly in the

358 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

street, nor congregate for conversation; there
will follow, of course, a regulation as to the
length of women's dresses to be worn in the
street, and no doubt the police commissioner, an
amiable bachelor, will decree that the shorter
the better. All these fussy regulations are ridic-
ulous to us, but in reality they are horrible and
give one a feeling of suffocation when living in
Germany. In the days when everybody rode a
bicycle, each rider was obliged to pass an exami-
nation in proficiency, pay a small tax, and was
given a number and a license. Women who per-
sisted in wearing dangerous hat-pins have been
ejected from public vehicles.

After April 1, 1913, no shop in Berlin can
advertise or hold a bargain sale without permis-
sion of the police. The changed prices must be
affixed to the goods four days before the sale
for inspection by the police, and only two such
sales are permitted a year, and these must take
place either before February 15, or between
June 15 and August 1st. All particulars of the
sale must be handed to the police a week in
advance. In a carriage on the Bavarian rail-
road, a husband who kissed and petted his tired
wife was complained of by a fellow-passenger.
The husband was tried, judged guilty, and fined.
There was no question but that the woman was

THE DISTAFF SIDE 359

his wife; thus there is no loop-hole left for the
legally curious, and thousands of male Germans
hug and kiss one another on railway-station
platforms who surely ought to be fined and im-
prisoned or deported or hanged ! All this may
be a relic of Roman law. Cato dismissed Mari-
lius from the Senate because he kissed his own
wife by daylight in the presence of their own
daughter.

Shortly after leaving Germany, I returned
from a few weeks' shooting in Scotland. We
bundled out of the train onto the station plat-
form in London. Dogs, gun-cases, cartridge-
boxes, men and maid servants, trunks, bags,
baskets, bunches of grouse, and the passengers
seemed in a chaotic huddle of confusion. In
Germany at least twenty policemen would have
been needed to disentangle us. I was so torpid
from having been long Teutonically cared for,
that I looked on momentarily paralyzed. There
was no shouting, not a harsh word that I heard;
and as I was almost the last to get away, I can
vouch for it that in ten minutes each had his
own and was off. I had forgotten that such
things could be done. I had been so long steeped
in enforced orderliness, that I had forgotten that
real orderliness is only born of individual self-
control. I forgot that I was back among the

free spirits who govern a quarter of the habitable
globe and whose descendants are making Amer-
ica; and even if .here and there one or more,
and they are often recently arrived immigrants,
are intoxicated by freedom and shoot or steal
like drunken men; I realized that I am still an
Occidental barbarian, thank God, preferring
liberty, even though it is punctuated now and
then with shots and screams and thefts, to
official guardianship, even though I am thus
saved the shooting, the screaming, and the
thieving.

In the nine years ending 1910, our Fourth of
July celebrations cost America in killed, 1,800;
in wounded, 35,000; but even that is better
than the civic throttling of the German method.
It seems to be forgotten that the men who keep
the world fresh with their saline vigor, love
risks as they love fresh air. They should be
curbed, but not strangled!

You read their history, you watch closely
their manners, you prowl about among them, in
their streets, their shops, their houses, their
theatres; you accompany the crowds on a holi-
day in the trains, in the forests, in the summer
resorts, at their concerts or their picnics, in their
beer-gardens and restaurants, and you soon see
that the orderliness is all forced upon them from

THE DISTAFF SIDE 361

without, and not due to their own knowledge of
how to take care of themselves.

In a recent volume by a distinguished German
prison official he writes that, after a careful
study of the figures from 1882 to 1910, he has
discovered that one person now living in every
twelve in Germany has been convicted of some of-
fence. Doctor Finkelnburg shows that the num-
ber of "criminals" in Germany is 3,869,000, of
whom 3,060,000 are males, and 809,000 females.
Every 43d boy and every 213th girl between the
ages of twelve and eighteen has been punished
by fine or imprisonment. This does not mean
that the Germans are criminal or disorderly, but, '
on the contrary, it shows how absurdly petty
are the violations of the law punished by fine
or imprisonment.

Their whole history, from Charlemagne down
until the last fifty years, is a series of going to
pieces the moment the strong hand of authority
is taken away from them. The German, and
especially the Prussian policeman, has become
the greatest official busybody in the world. No
German's house is his castle. The policeman
enters at will and, backed by the authorities,
questions the householder about his religion, his
servants, the attendance of his children at school,
the status of the guests staying in his house, and

362 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

about many other matters besides. If one of
his children by reason of ill health is taught at
home, the authorities demand the right to send
an inspector every six months to examine him
or her, to be sure that the child is properly
taught. The policeman is in attendance on the
platform at every public meeting, armed with
authority to close the meeting if either speeches
or discussion seem to him unpatriotic, unlawful,
or strife-breeding. Professors, pastors, teachers
are all muzzled by the state, and must preach and
teach the state orthodoxy or go! A young pro-
fessor of political economy in Berlin only lately
was warned, and has become strangely silent since.

The de-Germanizing of the German abroad is
in line with this, and a constant source of annoy-
ance to the powers that be. Buda-Pesth was
founded by Germans in 1241, and now not one-
tenth of the population is German. As the
Franks became French, as the Long Beards be-
came Italians, so the Germans become Americans
in America, English in England, Austrian and
Bohemian in Austria and Bohemia. It has been
a problem to prevent their becoming Poles where
the state has settled Germans for the distinct
purpose of ousting the Poles.

In China, in South America, and even in
Sumatra I have heard German officials tell with

THE DISTAFF SIDE 363

indignation of how their compatriots rapidly
take the local color, and lose their German
habits and customs and point of view.

One of the half dozen best-known bankers in
Berlin has lamented to me that he must change
his people in South America every few years, as
they soon go to pieces there. Army officers
came home from China indignant to find their
compatriots there speaking English and unwill-
ing even to speak German. Even as long ago as
the time of the Thirty Years' War a forgotten
chronicler, Adam Junghaus von der Ohritz,
writes: "Further, it is a misfortune to the Ger-
mans that they take to imitating like monkeys
and fools. As soon as they come among other
soldiers, they must have Spanish or other out-
landish clothes. If they could babble foreign lan-
guages a little, they would associate themselves
with Spaniards and Italians." \Mlhelm von
Polentz, in his "das Land der Zukunft," writes:
"die Deutsch-x\merikaner sind fur die alte
Heimat dauernd verloren, politisch ganz und
kulturell beinahe vollstandig."

Bismarck knew these people and the present
Emperor knows these people, better than do
you and I! Bismarck even insisted upon using
the German text, and once returned a letter of
congratulation from an official body because it

364 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

was written in the Latin text. Even the Great
Elector must have recognized this weakness
when he said: "Gedenke dass du bist ein Deut-
scher!" The present Kaiser lends his whole
social influence to keep the Germans German.
He will have the bill of fare in German, he pre-
fers the dreadful word Mundtuch to napkin.
His officers very often demand that the bill of
fare in a German hotel shall be presented to
them in German and not in French. And they
are quite right to do so, and quite right to hang
the German world with the sign "Verboten";
quite right to distribute titles and medals and
\ orders, for the more they are uniformed and deco-
rated and ticketed and drilled, and taken care
of, the better they like it, and the more contented
these people are. Overorganization has brought
this about. Their theories have hardened into
la veritable imprisonment of the will. They have
jdrifted away from Goethe's wise saying: "That
man alone attains to life and freedom who daily
has to conquer them anew."

Let me refer again just here to the socialist
propaganda, which seems to the outsider so
strong here in Germany. Even this is far flab-
bier than it looks, as I have attempted to explain
elsewhere. In such strong and out-and-out in-
dustrial centres as Essen, Duisburg-Mllhlheim,

THE DISTAFF SIDE

365

Saarbriicken, and Bochum, where a vigorous
fight has been made against socialism, the fol-
lowing are the figures of the last election in 1912
when the socialists largely increased their vote
throughout other parts of Germany:

NATIONALUBEHAL

ZENTRUM

SOCIALDEMOKKAT

Essen

25,937

42,832

40,503

D uisburg-Miihlheim
Saarbriicken . .

33,934
25,108

31,559

24,228

34,187
4,157

Bochum

42,257

37,650

64,833

I cite this example because it seems as though
the growth of socialism in Germany were in
direct contradiction to my argument that they
are a soft, an impressionable, an amenable, and
easily led and governed people.

State socialism as thus far put into practice
in Germany is, in a nutshell, the decision on the
part of the state or the rulers that the individual
is not competent to spend his own money, to
choose his own calling, to use his own time as he
will, or to provide himself for his own future and
for the various emergencies of life. And by the
minute state control, they are rapidly bringing
the whole population to an enfeebled social and
political condition, where they can do nothing
for themselves.

366 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

They have been knocked about and dragooned
by their own rulers and, be it said and empha-
sized, they have received certain compensations
and gained certain advantages, if nothing else
an orderliness, safety, and care for the people by
the state unequalled elsewhere in the world.
But there is no gainsaying, on the other hand,
that they have lost the fruits that are plucked
by the nations of more individualistic training.

They have clean streets, cheap music and
drama, and a veritable mesh of national educa-
tion with interstices so small that no one can
escape, and they are coddled in every direction;
but they have no stuff for colonizers, and they
have been not infrequently wofully lacking in
stalwart statesmen, and leaders.

To deprive the worker of his choice of expendi-
ture, by taking all but a pittance of it in taxation,
is a dangerous deprivation of moral exercise. To
be able to choose for oneself is a vitally neces-
sary appliance in the moral gymnasium, even if
here and there one chooses wrong. It is a curi-
ous trend of thought of the day, which proposes
to cure social evils always by weakening, rather
than by strengthening the individual.

Socialism is merely a moral form of putting a
sharper bit in humanity's mouth; when of course
the highest aim, the optimistic view, is to train

THE DISTAFF SIDE 367

people to go as fast and straight and far as pos-
sible, with the least possible hampering of their
natural powers by legislation. "Some men are
by nature free, others slaves," writes Aristotle,
but whether this axiom can be accepted fully or
not, it is undoubtedly true that you can first
dragoon and then coddle a whole people, into a
lack of independence and a shrinking from the
responsibilities of freedom.

We are drugging the people ourselves just now
with legislation as a cure for the evils of indus-
trialism, but such legislation will only do what
soporifics can do, they numb the pain, but they
never bring health. What a forlorn philosophy
it is! Men take advantage, rob and steal, we
say, and to do away with this we give up the
fight for fair play and orderliness and propose
sweeping away all the prizes of life, hoping thus
to do away with the highwaymen of commerce
and finance. If there is no booty, there will be
no bandit, we say, forgetting altogether the cor-
ollary that if there are no prizes there will be no
prizemen! Neither God nor Nature gives any-
thing to those who do not struggle, and both God
and Nature appoint the stern task-master,
Necessity, to see to it that we do struggle. Now
come the ignorant and the socialists, demanding
that the state step in and roll back the very laws

368 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

of creation by supplying what is not earned from
the surplus of the strong. Who cannot see an-
archy looming ahead of this programme, for it
is surely a lunatic negation of all the laws of God
and Nature? They do not seem to see either in
America or in England that state supervision
carried too far leads straight to the sanction of
all the demands of socialism and syndicalism.
Legislation was never intended to be the father
of a people, but their policeman. Overlegisla-
tion, whether by an autocrat or a democratic
state, leads straight to revolution, to Caesarism,
or to slavery.

In Germany the state by giving much has
gained an appalling control over the minute de-
tails of human intercourse. I am no philosophic
adviser to the rich; it is as the champion of the
poor man that I detest socialism and all its works,
for in the end it only leads backward to slavery.
Every vote the workingman gives to a policy of
wider state control is another link for the chains
that are meant for his ankles, his wrists, and his
neck. If the state is to take care of me when I
am sick or old or unemployed, it must necessarily
deprive me of my liberty when I am well and
young and busy, and thus make my very health
a kind of sickness. A year in Germany ought
to cure any sensible workingman of the notion

THE DISTAFF SIDE 369

that the state is a better guardian of his purse
and his powers than he is himself. A distin-
guished German publicist, criticising this over-
powering interference of the state, writes: "Mir
ist wohl bewusst dass diese Gedanken einstweilen
fromme Wiinsche bleiben werden: die Schatten
lahmender Miidigkeit die iiber unserer Politik
lagern, lassen wenig Hoffnung auf frohliche Initi-
ative. Allein immer kann und wird es nicht so
bleiben." And he ends with the ominous words:
"Reform oder Revolution!"

One often hears the apostles of a certain kit-
tenish humanitarianism, talking of the great good
that would result if we in America would provide
light wines and beer and music, and parks and
gardens, for our people. They see the crowds of
men and women and children flocking by thou-
sands to such resorts in Germany, where they
eat tons of cakes and Brodchens and jam, and
where they drink gallons of beer and wine, and
where they sit hour after hour apparently quite
content. Why, Lord love you, ladies and gentle-
men, our populace would never be content with
such mild amusements! Fancy "Silver Dollar"
Sullivan or "Bath-house" John attempting to
cajole their cohorts in such fashion!

It may be a pity that our people are not thus
easily amused, but, on the other hand, it means

370 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

simply that our energy, our vitality, our national
nervousness if you like, will not be so easily
satisfied. Our disorderly nervousness, or ner-
vous disorderliness, though it has been a tre-
mendous asset in keeping us bounding along in-
dustrially and commercially, and though it gives
an exhilarating, champagne-like flavor to our
atmosphere, has cost us dear. If you will have
freedom, you will have those who are ruined by
it; just as, if you will have social and political
servitude, you will have a stodgy, unindependent
populace.

Only one out of sixty perpetrators of homi-
cidal crime suffers the extreme penalty attach-
ing to such crimes in America, and these figures,
I admit, are a shocking revelation of supine jus-
tice and sentimental executive, as when politics
can even bend our President to grant silly par-
dons, with baleful results upon the doings of
other wealthy criminals. We use as large an
amount of habit-forming drugs per capita as is
used in the Chinese empire, so says Dr. Wright,
who was commissioned by the State Department
to gather facts on this subject. We import and
consume 500,000 pounds of opium yearly,
when 70,000 pounds, including its derivatives
and preparations, should suffice for our medical
needs. In the year 1910 no less than 185,000

THE DISTAFF SIDE 371

ounces of cocaine were imported, manufactured,
and consumed, although 15,000 ounces would
supply every legitimate need. America col-
lected $340,000,000 from tariff taxes in 1911,
and $40,000,000 of this from tobacco and
alcoholics.

My readers may look back to the title of this
chapter and ask: What has all this to do with
the status of women in Germany? I have told
you in these few pages the whole secret. The
men are not independent; what can you expect
of the women ! The men have, until very lately,
had no surplus wealth or leisure, and have now,
to all appearance, little surplus vitality or energy.
Germany is getting to be a very tired-looking
nation. One hears almost as little laughter in
Germany as in India. Gayety and laughter are
the bubbles and foam on the glass of life, proving
that it is charged with energy. Do not believe
me, although I have carefully watched many
thousands of Germans in all parts of Germany
taking their pleasure and their ease; come over
and see for yourself! These thousands at their
simple recreations are not gay. I grant the
dangers we run by the opposite policy, but these
are the results we have to fear from the German
methods.

It is the men who must supply the leisure, the

372 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

independence, the setting, the background for
the women. All Europe says that our women
are spoiled, that they are tyrants, that they
treat us men badly, that they flout us, do not
do their duty by us, and finally divorce us. We
can afford to let them say it! We have given
our women an independence that many of them
abuse, it is true. We perhaps give them more
than their share to spend, and more of luxury
than is good for them; and all too many of the
underbred among them paint and be jewel and
begown themselves to imitate the lecherous bar-
barism of the too free. But one of the greatest
ladies in Germany tells me, "I am never so flat-
tered as when I am taken for an American!" I
can pay her no handsomer compliment than to
reply that she is worthy of the mistake. Our
women revive the drooping dukedoms of Eng-
land, and few will maintain that some of them
at least are unsuited to the position. I have
seen them in Germany as Frau Grafin this or
that, and not only their appearance but their
house-keeping machinery, running noiselessly
and accurately, proves that there is something
more than dollars behind them.

One of the rare human beings whom I have
known, who has at the same time the character-
istics of the generous comrade, the good fellow,

THE DISTAFF SIDE 373

and the fine gentleman; who in moral courage
in time of terrible strain, or in physical courage
when one's back is to the wall, never quailed,
is an American woman; and thousands of my
countrymen will say the same.

You cannot produce this type without free-
dom, without giving them opportunity, and
taking the risks that are inherent in giving free
scope to personal prowess. But they are not the
women whom our blatant newspapers exploit,
nor the women who buy the British aristocracy
to launch them socially, nor the women who
pervade the continental hotels and restaurants,
nor the women whom as a rule the foreigner
has the opportunity to meet. They are the
women who have helped us to absorb the
21,000,000 aliens who have entered America
since the Civil War; the women who stood be-
hind us when we fought out that war for four
years, leaving a million men on the fields of
battle; the women who in the realm of house-
keeping, to come down to practical levels, have
revolutionized these duties and turned a drudgery
into an art as have no other women in the world.
The best answer the American can make to the
luxurious lawlessness of some of our women, is to
point to the house-keeping and home-making of
his compatriots, not only at home but right here

374 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

in Germany. Fifty years ago it could not have
been said, but to-day there is no doubt in my
mind that American house-keeping is the best
in the world. In comfort, in the smooth run-
ning of the household machinery, in good food
and drink, perhaps in too lavish and too luxurious
hospitality, we are nowadays almost in a class
by ourselves in matters of housewifery.

The English attitude of women toward men is
somewhat that of comradeship, and once mar-
ried the man's comfort is looked after with some
care; the American attitude of women toward
men, in the more luxurious circles, is often, I
admit, that of a spoiled child toward a gift-
bringing uncle, and she permits him to worship
her along the lines of a restricted rubric; but in
Germany the subordination, the unquestioning
and unthinking adulation, the blind acceptance
of inferiority have not only softened the men
but robbed the women of even sufficient inde-
pendence to make them the helpmates that they
try to be. There have been women of social and
even political influence: Bettina von Arnim,
Caroline Schlegel, Charlotte Stieglitz, Rahel
Varnhagen, and lately Frau Lebin, who seems
to have been a soothing adjunct of the Foreign
Office. It is rather as admirers than as execu-
tives that they shine. Their attitude toward the

THE DISTAFF SIDE 375

great Goethe, and his nonchalant polygamy to-
ward them, is difficult for us to understand and
approve.

" The gentle Henrietta then,
And a third Mary next did reign,
And Joan and Jane and Andria;
And then a pretty Thomasine,
And then another Katherine,
And then a long et cetera."

No real man is a misogynist, for not to like
women is not to be a man. There are, how-
ever, many men, both in Germany and out of it,
who greatly dislike sham women; that is, women
who shirk their functional responsibilities. This
form of dislike is a healthy instinct. Women
are given the greatest and most inspiring of all
tasks: to make men; and a woman who cannot
make a man, by giving birth to one, or by de-
veloping one as son or husband, has failed more
deplorably even than a man who cannot make a
living. This task of theirs constitutes a superi-
ority impossible to deny or to overcome. A
woman, therefore, who craves man's activities
and standards is as foolish as though a wheat-
field should long to be a bakery. Most healthy-
minded men hold this view, though some of us
may think that German men overemphasize it.

The coarse sentimentality of the lower classes

376 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

has been noted, but it is not confined to them.
The premarital relations of all but the most cult-
ured and experienced, are marked by a mawkish
sweetness which is all the more noticeable in
contrast with the dull routine of saving and
slaving which follows. She begins by being
photographed sitting in her hero's lap, and ends
by sitting on the less comfortable chair to darn
his socks and to tend his babies. There are
women enthroned, and who deserve to be, in
Germany as in other countries ; but taken in the
mass, speaking in hundreds of thousands, it is
not an inaccurate picture to say that the women
are not taken seriously in Germany except as
mothers and servants.

The census of 1910 shows that there are
32,040,166 men in Germany and 32,885,827
women, or 845,661 more women than men.
_J The number of men in proportion to the number
of women is steadily increasing in Germany,
showing that the habits of the men are more and
more feminine, that the state provides for them
and protects them, and that the women take
good care of them.

In a virile state, where the men take risks,
where they play hazardous games, wrhere they
travel and seek adventure, where they emigrate
to seek new opportunities, the women will greatly

THE DISTAFF SIDE 377

outnumber the men. The excess of females in
England and Wales in 1871 was 594,000; in 1881,
694,000; in 1891, 896,000; in 1911, 1,178,000.
The United Kingdom has the largest surplus of
women of leisure in the world, and just now they
are taking advantage of their numerical superior-
ity in the most delightful and comical feminine
fashion. They are proving their right to assist in
coercing others to obey the laws, by disobeying
the laws themselves. By pouring vitriol on golf-
greens, by pinning their defiance to these di-
shevelled greens with hair-pins, they propose to
provoke the recalcitrant to recognition of their
right to pin their names to seats in the House of
Commons. It is all so sweetly feminine, that
the stranger is astonished to hear such women
dubbed unwomanly. Pray, what could be more
womanly in England, than to pin a protest to a
golf -green with a hair-pin!

The German army, which is in itself a school of
hygiene for the man, where the death-rate is the
lowest of any army in Europe, and the many pro-
visions for the state care of the population, all go
to coddle the men and protect them. The va-
rious forms of labor insurance alone in Germany
cost the state over $250,000 a day, and if we in-
clude the amount expended in compensation in
all its forms, the yearly bill of the state for the care
of its sick, injured and aged, amounts to nearly

378 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

$170,000,000. No wonder that between the care
of a grandmotherly state, and the attentions of
a subservient womankind, the male population
increases. I sometimes question whether there
is not something of the hot-house culture about
this male crop. Certainly consumption and
other diseases are very wide-spread. A very
detailed and careful investigation of certain
forms of weakness is being made by our Rocke-
feller Institute at this time, and if I am not mis-
taken in the results of what these investigations
have thus far disclosed, it will be found that
Germany has her full share of rottenness to deal
with. To those who care to corroborate these
hints with facts I recommend the reading of
certain recent numbers of the hygienic Rund-
schau, a German technical magazine of repute.

There is a lack of vitality and elasticity, a
stodgy, plodding way of working, much indul-
gence in gregarious eating and drinking, and very
mild forms of exercise and holiday-making, com-
paratively little sport, almost no game-playing
where boys and men hustle one another about
as in foot-ball and polo, and very long hours of
\ application, from the school-boy to the ministers
of state, all of which tend to and do produce a
physical lack of alertness, vivacity, and audacity
in the men of practically all classes.

The way to see the people of a country is to

THE DISTAFF SIDE 379

i
stand by the hour in the large industrial towns

and watch them as they go to and from their
work; to. watch them flocking in and out of
railway stations, and at work in large numbers
in the fields of Saxony, Silesia, and other parts
of Prussia; to spend hours, and I admit that
they are tedious hours, strolling through fac-
tories, ship-yards, mines, and offices, paying no
attention to the talk of your guide, but studying
the faces and physique of the men and women.
Having done this, an impartial observer is bound
to remark that industrial and commercial Ger-
many is taking a tremendous toll for the rapid
progress she has made. It may be no worse
here than elsewhere, but neither has the problem
of a healthy, happy, toiling population been
satisfactorily solved here, though perhaps better
here than elsewhere. I have heard the women
and girls in factories singing at their work, but
the bird is no less caged because it sings.

Men who ought to know better set an exam-
ple of long hours of confinement at their work
which is quite unnecessary. They tell you with
pride that they are at it from eight or nine in the
morning till seven and often till later at night.
That is something that no sane man ought to
be proud of. On investigation you find that in
industrial and commercial circles, and in the

380 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

offices of the state, men take two hours for
luncheon and then return to work till nightfall.
Two hours in the open air at the end of the day
could be managed easily, but they do not want
it. There is no vitality left for a game, for exer-
cise, for a bath, and a change.

They drug themselves with work, and slip
away to the theatre, to a concert, to a Verein or
circle, unwashed, ungroomed, and physically
torpid, and the great mass of the population,
high and low alike, outside the army officers,
look it.

The army officer's career is dependent upon
his mental and physical vigor. The cylinder is
quickly handed him and the helmet taken away
if he grows too fat and too slow physically and
mentally. There is no nepotism, no favoritism,
and on reaching a certain rank he goes, if he falls
below the standard required, and consequently
he keeps himself fit. But a huge bureaucracy,
with its stupid promotions by years and not by
ability, with its government stroke, and its dan-
gling pensions, positively breeds lassitude, lazi-
ness, and dulness. You may see it on every hand
in government offices, in the railway and postal
services, where men are evidently kept on not
for their fitness but by the tyranny of the sys-
tem. High officials admit as much.

THE DISTAFF SIDE 381

In the little state of Prussia the railways pay
well and are well managed, but they are clogged
to a certain extent by inefficient and unnecessary
employees, and were the system spread over the
United States the chaos in a dozen years would
be almost irreparable, and even here the com-
plaints are many and vigorous. Probably one
male over twenty-five years of age out of every
four is in government employ. This alone would
account for the general air of lassitude which is
one of the most noticeable features of German
life. The Germans as a whole are beginning
to look tired. It is a German, not an Italian or
a Frenchman, the philosopher Nietzsche, who
writes: "Seit es Menschen giebt, hat der
Mensch sich zu wenig gefreut; das allein ist
unsere Erbsiinde."

There has been a great change in the status of
women in the last twenty-five years. The ap-
ophthegm of Pericles, or rather of Thucydides,
"that woman is best who is least spoken of
among men, either for good or evil," is not so
rigidly enforced. Increased \vealth throughout
Germany has left the German woman more lei-
sure from the drudgery of the home. She is not
so wholly absorbed by the duties of nurse, cook,
and house-maid as she once was. But even to-
day her economies and her ability to keep her

382 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

house with little outside assistance are amazing.
Some of the most delightful meals I have taken,
have been in professional households, where small
incomes made it necessary that wife and daugh-
ters should do most of the work.

The German professor has his faults, but in
his own simple home, the work of the day behind
him, his family about him at his well-filled but
not luxurious board, with some member of the
family not unlikely to be an accomplished musi-
cian and with his own unrivalled store of learning
at your service, when he raises his glass to you,
filled with his best, with a smile and a hearty
" Prosit," he is hard to beat as a host, to my
thinking. Perhaps there is nothing like over-
indulgence to make one crave simplicity, and
no doubt this accounts for the fact that the
really great ones of earth are satisfied and happy
with enough, and abhor too much.

They tell me that the Dienstmtiflchen is no
longer what she used to be, but to my untutored
eye her duties still seem to be as comprehensive
as those of a Sioux squaw, and her performances
unrivalled. As is to be expected, Germany is
not blessed with trained servants. They are
helpers rather than professional servants. In
the scores of houses, public and private, where
I have been a guest, only in one or two had the

THE DISTAFF SIDE 383

servants more than an alphabetical knowledge
of what was due to one's clothes and shoes.
The servants are rigidly protected by the state:
they must have so much time off, they cannot
be dismissed without weeks of warning, and they
themselves carry books with their moral and
professional biographies therein, which are al-
ways open to the inspection of the police; and
they must all be insured.

In many towns, and cities too, there are hos-
pitals and bands of nurses who for a small annual
payment undertake to take over and care for a
sick servant. If the doctor prescribes a "cure"
for your servant, away she goes at the expense
of the state to be taken care of. Wages are very
small as compared with ours. Ten dollars a
month for a cook, five for a house-maid, ten for
a man-servant, forty to fifty for a chauffeur, and
of course more in the larger and more luxurious
establishments; though a chef who serves din-
ners for forty and fifty in an official household I
know is content with twenty dollars a month.
A nursery governess can be had for twelve, and
a well-educated English governess for twenty
dollars a month. Even these wages are higher
than ten years ago. To be more explicit, in a
small household where three servants are kept
the cook receives 30 marks, the maid-servant 25

384 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

marks, and the nursery governess 35 marks a
month. In the household of an official of some
means the man-servant receives 45 marks, the
cook 30 marks, and the maid-servant 30 marks
a month. When dinners or other entertainments
are given, outside help is called in. In the house-
hold of a rich industrial, whose family consists
of himself, wife, and four children, the man-
servant receives 80 marks, the chauffeur 200,
the cook 45, the lady's maid 35, the house-maid
25, kitchen-maid 12, and the governess 30 marks
a month.

I carry away with me delightful pictures of
German households, big, little, and medium; and
though it does not fit in nicely with my main
argument, households whose mistresses were pat-
terns of what a chatelaine should be. But I
must leave that loop-hole for the critics, for I
am trying only to tell the truth and to be fair,
and not to be scientific or to bolster up a
thesis.

I can see the big castle, centuries old, with its
rambling buildings winging away from it on
every side, and in the court-yard its regal-looking
mistress positively garlanded with her dozen
children. There is no sign of the decadence of
the aristocracy here. We sit down twenty or
more every day at the family luncheon. Tutors

THE DISTAFF SIDE 385

and governesses are at every turn. A French
abbe, as silken in manner and speech as his own
soutane, bowls over all my prejudices of creed
and custom, as I watch him rule with the lightest
of hands and the softest of voices a brood of ter-
magant small boys; to turn from this to a game
of billiards, and from that to the Merry Widow
waltz on the piano, that we may dance. An
aide-de-camp trained in India and a French
abbe, I am convinced that these are the apo-
theosis of luxury in a large household. My
Protestant brethren would, I am sure, throw
their prejudices to the winds could they spend
an evening with my friend, Monsieur 1'Abbe!
Nor Erasmus, nor Luther, nor Calvin would have
had the heart to burn him. He is just as good
a fellow as we are, knows far more, can turn his
hand to anything from photography to the driv-
ing of a stubborn pony, knows his world as few
know it, and yet is inviolably not of it. I have
chatted with Jesuit priests teaching our Western
Indians; I have travelled with a preaching friar
in Italy on his round of sermonizing; I have seen
them in South America, in India, China, and
Japan, and I recognize and acclaim their self-
denying prowess, but no one of them was a more
dangerous missionary than my last-named friend
among them, Monsieur PAbbe!

386 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

"For ever through life the Cure goes

With a smile on his kind old face —
With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair,
And his green umbrella-case."

There was a profusion at this castle, a hearti-
ness of welcome, a patriarchal attitude toward
the countless servants and satellites, an acreage
of roaming space in the buildings, that smacked
of the feudalism back to which both the castle
and the family dated. How many Englishmen
or Americans who sniff at German civilization
ever see anything of the inside of German homes?
Very few, I should judge, from the lame talk and
writing on the subject. Let us go from this me-
diaeval setting for modern comfort to a smaller
establishment. Here a miniature Germania,
with blue eyes and golden hair, presides, looking
like a shaft of sunlight in front of you as she
leads the way about the paths of her gloomy
forest. In these, and in not a few other houses,
there is little luxury, no waste, a certain Spartan
air of training, but abundance of what is neces-
sary and a cheery and frank welcome.

I sometimes think the Germans themselves
lose much by their rather overdeveloped ten-
dency to meet not so often in one another's
homes as in a neutral place: a restaurant, a
garden, a Verein or circle, of which there is an in-

THE DISTAFF SIDE 387

terminable number. You certainly get to know
a man best and at his best in his own home, and
you never get to know a wife and a mother out
of that environment; for a woman is even more
dependent than a man upon the sympathetic
atmosphere that frames her. I should be, after
my experience, and I am, the last person in the
world to say that the Germans are not hospitable;
but there is much less visiting even among them-
selves, and much less of constant reception of
strangers in their homes, than with us. Habit,
lack of wealth, lack of trained servants, and a
certain proud shyness, and in some cases indiffer-
ence and a lack of vitality which welcomes the
trouble of being host, account for this. No
doubt, too, the old habit of economy remains
even when there is no longer the same necessity
for it, and saving and gayety do not go well
together. In Geldsachen hort die Gemuthlichkeit
auf.

I should be sorry to spoil my picture by the
overemphasis of details. The reader will not see
what I have intended to paint, if he gets only
an impression of caution, of economy, of sordid-
ness and fatigue. No nation that gives birth to
an untranslatable word like Gemuthlichkeit can
be without that characteristic. The English
words "home" and "comfort," the French word

388 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

"esprit," and the German word Gemiithlichkeit
have no exact equivalents in other languages.
This in itself is a sure sign of a quality in the
nation which bred the word. The difficulty lies
in the fact that another language is another life.
The Germans are not cheerful as we are cheer-
ful; they are not happy as we are happy; they
are not free as we are free; they are not polite
as we are polite; they are not contented as we
are contented; and no one for a moment who is
even an amateur observer and an amateur phi-
lologist combined would claim that the three
words, love and amour and Liebe mean the same
thing. No word in the English language is used
so often from the pulpit as the word love, but
this cannot be said of the use of amour in France
or of Liebe in Germany. Nations pour them-
selves into the tiny moulds of words and give us
statuettes of themselves. The Anglo-Saxon, the
Latin, and the Teuton have filled these three
words with a certain vague philosophy of them-
selves, a hazy composite photograph of them-
selves. No one writer or painter, no one incident,
no one tragedy, no one day or year of history
has done this. To us, love is the coldest, clean-
est, as it is perhaps the most loyal of the three.
L 'amour sounds to us seductive, enticing, often
indeed little more than lust embroidered to make

THE DISTAFF SIDE 389

a cloak for ennui. Liebe is to us friendly, soft,
childlike.

The nations of the earth, close as they are to-
gether in these days, are worlds apart in thought.
Each builds its life in words, and the words are
as little alike as in the days of Babel; and thus
it comes about that we misunderstand one an-
other. We translate one another only into our
own language, and understand one another as
little as before, because we only know one an-
other in translations, and the best of the life of
each nation remains and always will remain un-
translatable. No one has ever really translated
the Greek lyrics or the choruses of JEschylus, or
the incomparable songs of Heine. Who could
dream of putting the best of Robert Louis
Stevenson into German, or Kipling's rollicking
ballads of soldier life into Spanish, or Walter
Pater into Dutch, or Edgar Allan Poe into Rus-
sian! The one language common to us all,
music, tells as many tales as there are men to
hear. Each melody melts into the blackness or
the brightness of the listener's soul and becomes
a thousand melodies instead of one. What does
the moaning monotony of a Korean love-song
mean to the westerner, or what does the Swan
song mean to the Korean? Only God knows.
We can never translate one nation into the Ian-

1390 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

guage of another; our best is only an interpreta-
tion, and we must always meet the criticism that
we have failed with the reply that we had never
hoped to succeed. We are forever explaining
ourselves even in our own small circles ; how can
we dare to suggest even, that we have made one
people to speak clearly in the language of an-
other? The best we can do is to give a kindly,
a good-humored, and, at all times and above all
things, a charitable interpretation. Informa-
tion, facts, are merely the raw material of cult-
ure; sympathy is its subtlest essence.

There is a world of good humor, of cheerful-
ness, of contentment, of domestic peace and
happiness in Germany. There are courtesy,
politeness, even grand manners here and there.
But these words mean one thing to them, another
thing to us, and it is that I am striving, feebly
enough to be sure, to make clear. May I beg
the reader and the student to follow me with
this point clearly in mind? While I am out-
lining with these painful details that their ways
are not as our ways, I am not denouncing their
ways, but merely offering matter for considera-
tion and comparison.

A nation is most often punished for its faults
by the exaggeration of its qualities, and if, as it
seems to me, Germany suffers like the rest of

THE DISTAFF SIDE 391

us in this respect, it is none of my doing. It
will be my failure and the reader's failure, if we
do not profit by watching these qualities in
ourselves, and in others festering into faults.
Woman's position and ambitions, the home, the
amusements, and the satisfactions of life, are
very different in Germany from ours. I note
these as facts, not as inferiorities. I note, too,
that in Germany, as elsewhere, Hegel was pro-
foundly right in his dictum, that everything car-
ried to its extreme becomes its contrary. Too.
much caution may become a positive menace to
safety; too much orderliness may result in in-
dividual incapacity for self-control; just as
liberty rots into license, and demos descends to
a crown and sceptre and tyranny. I am merely
calling attention to this great law of national
development, that the exaggeration of even fine
qualities is the road to the punishment of our
faults, in Germany, as in every other nation under
the sun.

It is only when you have had a peep into a
small farmer's house in Saxony, into the artisans'
houses in the busy Rhine and Westphalia coun-
try; spent a night in a peasant's house and
stable, for they are under the same roof, in the
mountains of the South; and visited the greater
establishments of the large land-holder and the

392 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

less pretentious houses of the gentleman farmer,
and the country houses, big and little, in all parts
of Germany, that you get anything of the real
flavor of Germany.

If, as Burke says, it is impossible to indict a
whole nation, it is even more difficult to fit a
people with a few discriminating and really en-
lightening adjectives. One word I dare to apply
to them all, though I know well how differ-
ent they are in the north and south and east
and west, as diversified indeed as any nation in
the world, and that is the word patient. They
can stand longer, sit longer, eat longer, drink
longer, work longer hours, and dream longer, and
dawdle longer than any people except the Ori-
entals. This custom may date back to far dis-
tant times. Sitting, in the Greek view, was a
posture of supplication (Odyssey, XIV, 29-31).
The Emperor himself sets the example. He is
an indefatigable stander, if I may coin the word,
and on horseback he can apparently spend the
day and night without inconvenience. Their pa-
tient quarry work in archaeology and in com-
parative philology laid the foundations for the
new history -writing of Heeren and Mommsen;
and their scholarship to-day is still of the digging
kind. They seldom produce a Jebb, a Jowett,
a Verrall, and never that type of scholar, wit

THE DISTAFF SIDE 393

and poet combined, a Lowell or an Arthur Hugh
Clough. Indeed, with a suspicious self-con-
sciousness the German professional mind inclines
to be contemptuous of any learning that is not
unpalatably dry. What men can read with en-
joyment cannot be learning, they maintain.

I have visited half a dozen hospitals, and on
one or two occasions been present at an operation
by a famous surgeon. It is evident from the bear-
ing of patients, nurses, and students that they
are dealing with a less highly strung population
than ours. Indeed, the surgeons who know both
countries tell me that here in Germany they
have more endurance of this phlegmatic kind.
They suffer more like animals. Their patience
reaches down to the very roots of their being.

On that delightful big fountain, in that para-
dise of fountains, Nuremberg, the statues of the
electors and citizens picture men who were un-
troubled and cheerful, slow-moving, contented,
patient; while the little figures on the guns are
positively jolly. The only mournful figure on
the whole fountain is a man with a book on his
knees teaching a child. He is pallid, even in
bronze, and his face is lined as he muses over the
problem that has stumped the wisest of us : how
to make a man by stuffing a child with books!
It cannot be done, but we follow this will-o'-the-

394 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

wisp through the swamps of experience with the
pitiable enthusiasm of despair.

Only liberty can make a man, and she is such
a costly mistress that with our increasing hordes
of candidates for independence we cannot afford
her; so we go on fooling the people with mechan-
ical education. But even this figure is patient!

The Germans are patient even with their
food. What would become of them without the
goose, the pig, the calf, and the duck, that
meagre alimentary quartette? The country is
white with home-raised geese, and yet they im-
ported 8,337,708 in 1910, and 7,236,581 in 1911.

One of their most charming bits of classic art
is the famous miniature statue of the Gooseman;
and the real name of the great Gutenberg, who,
by his invention of printing, did more than any
other mortal to make it easy for the human race
to acquire the anserine mental habits, and the
anserine moral characteristics, was Gansfleisch!

The goose is really the national bird of the
German people. You eat tons of goose, and
then you sleep beneath the feathers. The goose
first nourishes you and then protects your diges-
tion. The extraordinary make-up of the German
bed must be laid to the door of the guilty goose.
The pillows are so soft that your head is ever
sinking, never at rest. Instead of easily applied

THE DISTAFF SIDE 395

blankets, that you can adapt to the temperature,
you are given a great cloud of feathers, sewn in
a balloon-like bag, which floats upon you accord-
ing to your degree of restlessness, and leaves you
for the floor, when in stupid sleepiness you en-
deavor to protect your whole person at once
with its flimsy and wanton formlessness. As a
rule the bed is built up at the head so that you
are continually sliding down, down under the
goose feathers, your nose and mouth are soon
covered, and who can breathe with his toes !

They accumulate comfort very slowly. The
wages are small and the satisfactions are small.
On the street-cars the conductor is grateful for
a tip of five pfennigs, and his daily customers
are handed from the car-steps and respectfully
saluted in return for this tiny douceur. When
you dine or lunch at a friend's house you are ex-
pected to leave something in the expectant palm
of his servant who sees you out.

Women carry small parcels of food to the
theatre, to the tea and beer gardens, and thus
save the small additional expense. Many a
time have I seen these thrifty housewives pocket
the sugar and the zwiebacks and Brodchen left
over. In the hotels, soap, paper, and common
conveniences of the kind are taken, so I am told,
not, I maintain, as a theft, but as an economy.

396 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

We are in the habit of carrying our small change
loose in a trousers pocket, but the German al-
most without exception carries even his ten and
five pfennig pieces carefully in a purse. Outside
many of the big shops is placed a row of niches
where you may leave your unfinished cigar till
you return. The economy thus illustrated shows
a certain disregard, of a not altogether agreeable
chance of interchangeability, that might even be
dangerous to health. On the other hand, it is
a wise precaution that marks beer-glasses and
beer- jugs with a line, to show just how much
beer you are entitled to. This puts the foam-
stealing vendor at your mercy.

The entertainments, dinners, luncheons, teas,
except among the small cosmopolitan companies
who do not count as examples of German man-
ners and customs, are very prolonged affairs.
There is much standing about. At ten o'clock,
having dined at half-past seven, beer, tea, coffee,
sandwiches are brought in, and you begin the
gastronomies over again on a smaller scale.
There is no occasion when eating and drinking
are not part of the programme. If you go to
the play or the opera you may eat and drink
there; if you go for a walk the goal is not a bath
and a rub-down, but beer or chocolate and cakes.

I am not sure that there i? not something in

THE DISTAFF SIDE 397

the theory that their soil has less iron in it, being
so intensively cultivated, and that our food is
consequently stronger than theirs; at all events,
they eat more frequently and more copiously
than we do. It seems to me that both the men
and the women show it in their faces and figures.
They are a heavy, puffy, tumbling lot after forty;
and with my prepossessions on the subject I am
inclined to put it down to irregular eating, to too
much eating of soft and sweet food, too much
drinking of fattening beverages, and much, much
too little regular exercise, and to the fact that
they are still infants in the matter of personal
hygiene. Dressing-gowns, slippers, proper care
of the teeth and hair, regular ablutions, changing
of clothes, all these dozens of helps to health are
patiently neglected. It is just as troublesome to
take care of yourself, to groom your person, to
be regular in your habits, and restrained and
careful in your diet as to take proper care of a
horse or a dog. It shows a rather high grade of
persistent prowess in a man just to keep himself
fit, to keep himself in working or playing health.
Without the drilling they receive in the army in
these matters, one wonders where this popula-
tion would be.

The doggedness, the patience of the German
is notable, but the alertness, vivacity, the energy

398 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

easily on .tap, these are lacking both among the
men and the women, and, as it seems to me, for
these easily apparent reasons. There are more
rest-cures, rheumatism, heart, liver, kidney,
anaemic cures in Germany, and to suit all purses,
than in all Anglo-Saxondom combined, even if
subject territories are included. In Saxony
alone, which is not renowned for its cures, the
number of visitors at Augustus Bad, Bad Elster,
Hermanns Bad, Schandau, and some seven others
has increased from 13,000 ten years ago to
30,000 in 1910.

Between 1900 and 1909, while the population
of Germany increased 15 per cent., the days of
sickness in the insurance funds increased 59 per
cent, and the expenditure 95 per cent. Some
alterations were made in the law between those
years permitting a certain extension of the days
of sickness, but an accurate percentage may be
taken between the years 1905 and 1909. Dur-
ing those years the population increased by 7
per cent., the days of sickness by 17 per cent.,
and the expenditure out of the sick-funds by 32
per cent. The total cost of sickness insurance
in 1900 was $42,895,000 and in 1909 $83,640,000.
What will happen in Great Britain when sickness
insurance comes into thorough working order is
worthy of caricature. The way my Irish friends

THE DISTAFF SIDE 399

will play that game fills me with joy. It is an
abominable harness to put on the Anglo-Saxon,
and he has my very best wishes if he refuses to
wear it tamely. It is only another piece of tired
legislation that solves nothing. Even Germany
would be a thousand times better off without it.
This attempting to make pills and powders take
the place of love one another, is merely the
politician sneaking away from his problem. Of
course, it is impossible to tell how many people
are sick by being paid for it, probably not a small
number. We all have mornings when we would
turn over and stick to our pillows if we were sure
of payment for doing so. The German appar-
ently is the only person in the world who is happy,
cegrescit medendo. The Germans keep going, we
must all admit that, but at a slower pace, with
less energy to spare, and with far less robust love
of life.

If the men are patient, the women must be
more so, and they are. The marriage service
still reads: "He shall be your ruler, and you
shall be his vassal." The women are not only
patient with all that requires patience of the
men, but they are patient with the men besides,
a heavy additional burden from the American
point of view. Beethoven writes: "Resigna-
tion! Welch' elendes Hulfsmittel! Und doch

400 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

bleibt es mir das einzige ubrige." They take
resignation for granted as we never do.

Some ten years ago only, was formed the
Women's Suffrage League in Germany. It was
necessary to organize in the free city of Hamburg,
because women were not allowed either to form
or to join political unions in Prussia ! It is only
within a very few years that the girls' higher
schools have been increased and cared for in due
proportion to the schools provided for the higher
education of the boys. The first girls' rowing
club was organized at Cassel in 1911. Even now
as I write there are protests and petitions from
the male masters against women teachers in the
higher positions of even these schools. In the
discussions as to the proper subjects to be taught
to the girls, who in 1912 began attending the
newly constituted continuation schools for girls
in Berlin, there is a strong party who argue that
all of them should be taught only house-keeping
and the duties pertaining thereto. To the great
majority of German men, children and the
kitchen are and ought to be the sole preoccupa-
tions of women, with occasional church attend-
ance thrown in.

There have been enormous changes in the
place women hold in the German world in the
last thirty years. The Red Cross organization

THE DISTAFF SIDE 401

of the women throughout Germany is admirable
and as complete and efficient as the army that it
is intended to help; one can hardly say more.
There are many private charities in Berlin and
other cities, managed entirely by women, and
doing excellent and sensible work; such as the
kindergartens, the Pestalozzi-Froebelhaus for ex-
ample, where four hundred children are taken
care of daily and fifteen thousand ten-pfennig
meals provided, besides classes for the young
women students under the supervision of the
Berliner Verein fur Volkserziehung, with courses
in the elements of law and politics and other
matters likely to concern them in their activities
as teachers, nurses, or charity helpers; the in-
valid-kitchens; the societies for looking after
young girls ; the work in the Temperance League ;
the Lette-Verein, one of the most sane and sen-
sible institutions in the world for the training of
girls and young women, where they turn out
some two thousand girls a year trained in house-
wifely economy ; the wonderful and pitiful colony
at Bielefeld, founded by one of Germany's great-
est organizers and saints, Pastor Bodelschwing,
and now carried on by his equally able son, and
aided largely by the sympathy and resources of
women. Only another Saint Francis could have
imagined, and produced, and loved into useful-
ness such an institution.

402 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

The summer colonies, called gartenlauben col-
onies, where the outlying and unused land on the
outskirts of the cities is divided up into small
parcels and rented for a nominal sum to the
poorer working people of the city, constitute a
most sensible form of philanthropy. You see
them, each named by its proprietor, with a flag
flying, with the light barriers dividing them, and
with the small huts erected as a shelter, where
flowers and fruits and vegetables are grown,
often adding no small amount to income, and
in every case offering the soundest kind of work
and recreation. These colonies were started by
a woman in France, and the idea worked its
way through Belgium to Germany, and they are
now supported and helped by the direct inter-
est of the Empress. The woman who put this
scheme into operation ought to have a monu-
ment ! At Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin, on
a plot lent by the city, there are thirteen of these
colonies divided into over a thousand plots.

There are three-quarters of a million women
in Germany who are independent owners and
heads of establishments of different kinds, and
some ten million who are bread-winners. Of the
increase in the number of women students I have
written in another chapter, and of their increas-
ing participation in the political, economical,
literary, and scholarly life of the nation there

THE DISTAFF SIDE 403

are many examples. Once or twice I have even
heard them speak in public, and speak well,
while if my memory serves me, this was prac-
tically unknown in my university days here.
The problem of domestic apprenticeship is also
being wrorked out by the women of Germany.
In Munich, in Frankfurt-am-Main and elsewhere
this most difficult and delicate question is being
partially answered at least. Girls are appren-
ticed to families needing them, under the super-
vision of a committee of women. The girls and
their families agree to certain terms, and the
families agree also to teach them household
duties, give them proper food, eight hours' sleep,
their Sunday out, and so on. The German
women's societies who have thus boldly tackled
this problem are plucky indeed, and prove easily
enough that there is a large and growing body
of women in Germany, who have minds and wills
of their own and great executive ability.

Let me suggest to some of our idle women that
they pay a visit to the Hausf rauenbund at Frank-
fort and the Frauenverein-Arbeiterinnenheim
at Munich, before they pass judgment upon this
chapter. For I should be sorry to leave the im-
pression that all the women of Germany are list-
less, oppressed, and without any feeling of civic
responsibility.

All these things have been accomplished by

404 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

women in Germany with far less sympathy from
the men than they receive in America or in Eng-
land. Cato wrote of women's suffrage: "Pray
what will they not assail, if they carry their
point? Call to mind all the principles govern-
ing them by which your ancestors have held the
presumption of women in check, and made them
subject to their husbands. ... As soon as they
have begun to be your equals they will be your
superiors." It is an older story than the un-
read realize, this of the rights of women. The
bulk of Germany's male population still hold to
Cato's view. It is not so much that they are
antagonistic, except in the case of the teachers,
where the women have become active compet-
itors; they are in their patient way impervious.
Nor can it be said that any very large number of
the women themselves are eager for more rights;
rather are they becoming restless because they
receive so little consideration.

Their pleasures are simple and restricted, reg-
ular attendance at the theatre, at concerts, an
occasional dinner at a restaurant to celebrate an
anniversary, excursions with the whole family
to a beer restaurant of a Sunday, and the endless
meeting together for reading, sewing, and gossip
- no German woman apparently but what be-
longs to a verein or circle, meeting, say, once a
week.

THE DISTAFF SIDE 405

The women and the men are gregarious.
soli is the motto of the race. They love to take
their pleasures in crowds, and I am not sure that
this does not dull the enthusiasm for personal
rights and gratifications, and for individual su-
premacy and dignity. It is rare to find a Ger-
man who would subscribe to Andrew Marvell's
misogynist lines:

"Two paradises are in one
To live in Paradise alone."

It is typical of this love of being together that
an independent member of the Reichstag, owing
allegiance to no party, is called a Wilde, and this
same word Wilde, or wild man, is applied to the
student at the university who belongs to no
corps or association of students. This love of
being together, of touching elbows on all occa-
sions, makes them more easily led and ruled.
They hate the isolation necessary for indepen-
dence and revolt.

Of the relations between men and women I
long ago came to the conclusion that this is a
subject best left to the scientific explorer. It is,
however, open to the casual observer to comment
upon the monstrous percentage of illegitimacy
in Berlin, 20 per cent, or one child out of
every five, born out of wedlock; 14 per cent.
in Bavaria; and 10 per cent, for the whole em-

406 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

pire. This alone tells a sad tale of the atti-
tude of the men and women toward one another.
There is a long journey ahead of the women who
propose to lift their sisters on to a plane above
the animals in this respect. In the matter of
divorce Prussia comes fourth in the list of Euro-
pean nations. Norway, with the cheapest and
easiest, and at the same time the wisest, divorce
law in the world, has almost the lowest percent-
age of divorce. In 1910 there wrere 390 divorces
out of 400,000 existing marriages, of which
14,600 had taken place that year. The per-
centage is thus only about 2^ per year. The
total per 100,000 of the population in Switzer-
land is 43; in France 33; in Denmark 27; and
in Prussia 21. In industrial Saxony there are 32
and in Catholic Bavaria 13. The number of
married people in Germany according to the
last census shows an increase, the number of
bachelors and widowed persons a decrease.
Since 1871 the number of married persons
has increased by 2 per cent. The birth rate
shows a proportional decline. The problem that
bothers all social economists is to the fore in
Germany as elsewhere, for the people between
sixty and seventy years of age number 14.65 per
cent, of the population, while the young people
under ten number only 11.12, and those between
twenty and thirty 10.93 per cent. The birth

THE DISTAFF SIDE 407

rate therefore shows the same tendency as in
France, England, and America. A recent in-
vestigation on a small scale seems to show that
bureaucracy has a certain influence here. Of
300 officials questioned, only 10, or 3^ per thou-
sand, had more than two children. It is not an
impossible, but certainly a laughable, outcome
of state interference carried too far, should it
result in the state's becoming an incubator for
the unfit, in a country where the pensions for
officers and employees of the state have risen
from 50,000,000 marks in 1900 to 111,000,000
marks in 1911.

Even in higher circles in Germany there is a
gushing idealism about the relations of the sexes.
In their songs and sayings, as well as in their
mythology, there is a laudation of love that is
overstimulating. The lines of that inconsequen-
tial philosopher, that irresponsible moralist, that
dreamy Puritan, Emerson,

"Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit and the Muse —
Nothing refuse"

would be warmly praised in Germany.

408 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

"I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honour more"

are lines more to our taste. Even love should
have a deal of toughness of fibre in it to be
worth much.

I must leave it to my readers to guess what I
think of the German woman; indeed, it is of
little consequence what any individual opinion
is, if matter is given for the formation of an
opinion by others. Truth cannot afford to be
either gallant or merciless. There are women
in Germany whom no man can know without
respect, without admiration, without affection.
There are the blue eyes, sunny hair, peach-bloom
complexions of the north; there are the dark-
eyed, black-haired, heavy -browed women of the
Black Forest; there is often a Quakerish elegance
of figure and apparel to be seen on the streets of
the cities, and from time to time one sees a real
Germania, big of frame, bold of brow, fearless of
glance — patet deal

But we can none of us be quite sure of the
impartiality of our taste in such matters. Our
baby fingers and our baby lips were taught to
love a certain type of beauty. Our mothers
wove a web of admiration and devotion from
which no real man ever escapes; our maturer

THE DISTAFF SIDE 409

passions lashed themselves to an image from
which we can never wholly break away; our
sins and sorrows and adventures have been
drenched in the tears of eyes that are like no
other eyes; and consequently the man who
could pretend to cold neutrality would be a
reprobate.

The German looks to Germany, the English-
man to England, the Frenchman to France, as
do you and I to America, for

'The face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium."

VIII

OF every one hundred inhabitants of Ger-
many, including men, women, and chil-
dren, one is a soldier. There are,
roughly, 65,000,000 inhabitants and 650,000
soldiers.

The American army is about equal in num-
bers to the corps of officers of Germany's army
and navy. To the American, as to almost every
other foreigner, the German army means only
one thing: war. We all hear one thing:

"And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war."

I believe this is a half-truth, and dangerous ac-
cordingly. This army has been in existence for
over forty years, and has done far more to keep
the peace than any other one factor in Europe,
except, perhaps, the British navy.

The German army protects the German peo-
ple not only from external foes, but from internal
diseases. It is the greatest school of hygiene in
the world, on account of its sound teaching, the

410

THE GERMAN ARMY 411

devotion, skill, and industry of its officers, the
number of its pupils, and its widely distributed
lessons and influence.

Culture taken by itself is livery business, and
when combined with much beer and wine drink-
ing, irregular eating and a disinclination for reg-
ular exercise, culture becomes a positive menace
to health. Of this danger to the German, their
own great man Bismarck spoke in the Abgeord-
netenhaus in 1881: "Bei uns Deutschen wird
mit wenigem so viel Zeit totgeschlagen wie mit
Biertrinken. Wer beim Friihschoppen sitzt oder
beim Abendschoppen und gar noch dazu raucht
und Zeitungen liest, halt sich voll ausreichend
beschaftigt und geht mit gutem Gewissen nach
Haus in dem Bewusstsein, das Seinige geleistet
zu haben."

("The Germans waste more time drinking beer
than in any other way. The man who sits with
his morning or his afternoon glass of beer beside
him, and who, in addition, smokes and reads the
newspapers, considers that he is much occupied,
and goes home with a good conscience, feeling
that he has fully done his duty.")

"Jeden Feind besiegt der Deutsche.
Nur den Durst besiegt er nicht."

Which I permit myself to translate into these
two lines:

412 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

"The German conquers every foe,
Except his thirst, that lays him low."

Even if the German army were not necessary
as a policeman, it could not be spared as a phy-
sician by the German people. It is to be for-
ever kept in mind that the German is brought
up on rules; the American and the Englishman
on emergencies. Emergencies provide a certain
discipline of themselves, and our philosophy of
civilization leaves it to the individual to get his
own discipline from his own emergencies. We
call it the formation of character. The German
thinks this method a hap-hazard method, and
burdens men with rules, and the army is Ger-
many's greatest school-master along those lines.
We are inclined to think that it results in a
machine-made citizen.

There are three classes of men who pick up the
bill of fare of life and look it over: Civilization's
paralyzed ones, with no appetite, who can choose
what they will without regard to the prices; the
cautious, those with appetite but who are ham-
pered in their choice by the prices; the bold,
those with appetite and audacity, who rely upon
their courage to satisfy the landlord. The Ger-
mans are only just beginning to look over the
world's bill of fare in this last lordly fashion,
to which some of us have long been accustomed.

THE GERMAN ARMY 413

I see no reason why they should not do so,
though I see clearly enough the suspicion and
jealousy it creates.

They have been swathed in "Forbidden" so
long that their taste for daring was late in com-
ing. Our colonies, small wars, punitive expedi-
tions, and control over neighboring territories
are not planned for far ahead ; but the exigencies
of the situations are met by the remedies and so-
lutions of men fitted by their training in school,
in sport, in social and political life for just such
work, and who are the more efficient the more
they do of it. We are inclined to do things, and
to think them out the day after; while the Ger-
man thinks them out the week before, and then
sometimes hesitates to do them at all.

The German goes more slowly, perhaps more
successfully, in commercial and industrial under-
takings, but always with a chart in front of him,
a pair of spectacles on his nose, and with no de-
sire to take chances.

In the rough-and-tumble world, the American
and the Englishman went ahead the faster; in a
more orderly world, and commerce, industry,
and war are all far more scientific or orderly than
of yore, the German has come into his own and
goes ahead very fast. He has not made friends
and supporters as have the other two: first, be-
cause he is a new-comer; and also, I believe,

414 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

because human nature, even when it is not ad-
venturous itself, loves adventure, and has a lik-
ing for the man who is a law unto himself. In-
deed, the Germans themselves have a sneaking
fondness for such a one. At any rate there is
far more imitation of American and English ways
in Germany, than of German manners, customs,
and methods in America or in England.

"Experiment is not sufficient," writes The-
ophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus;
"experience must verify what can be accepted or
not accepted; knowledge is experience." For
the moment, but it is probably not for long, we
have the advantage in the knowledge bred of
experience.

The German comes from the forest, loves the
forest. " Kein Volk ist so innig mit seinem Wald
erwachsen wie das Deutsche, keines liebt den
Wald so sehr." ("No nation has grown up so
at one with its forests as have the Germans; no
other nation loves its forests as do they.") He
walks, and meditates, and sings in the forest, and
nowadays goes to the forest with his skis, his
snow-shoes, and his sled. Our great games are,
many of them, personal conflicts, and attended
by some personal risk, and demanding both dis-
cipline in preparing for them and severe disci-
pline in the playing. Our love of the aleatory, of
betting our belongings, our powers, our per-

THE GERMAN ARMY 415

sons even, against life, is not commonly alive in
Germany. The Germans are only just emerging
into safety and confidence in themselves, and
beginning cautiously to agree with us that

"He either fears his fate too much,

Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all."

From these sombre forests came a race who still
find it lonely to be alone, and they herd to-
gether still for safety as of old, and have no
love of physical speculation. They are daring
in thought and theory, but cautious in physical
and personal matters. An office stool followed
by^ a pension contents all too many men in
Germany.

"Reden, Handeln, Tun und Wandeln
Zeigt der Menschen Wesen nicht.
Was im Herzen sie im Stillen
Fest verschliessen, stumm verhiillen,
1st ihr richtigs Angesicht."

An overwhelming majority of Germans believe
that this is man's real portrait; an overwhelm-
ing majority of Americans would not even un-
derstand it.

The German army is the antidote to this lack
of physical discipline, this lack of strenuous phys-
ical life. The army takes the place of our West,
of our games, of our sports; just as it takes the

416 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

place of England's colonies and public schools
and games and sports. When looked at in this
way, when its double duty is recognized, the
enormous cost of it is not so material. The ex-
pense of the German army is not greater than
our armies, plus what we spend for games and
sport and colonial adventure.

Germany has 4,570 miles of frontier to guard,
to begin with, and her total area is 208,780 square
miles, or an area one fourth less than that of our
State of Texas, with a population per square
mile of 310.4. Of this population 1,000,000,
roughly, are subjects of foreign powers. Five
hundred thousand are from Austria-Hungary,
100,000 each from Finland and Russia, nearly
100,000 from Italy, some 17,000 Americans, and
so on. In 1900 the population speaking German
numbered 51,000,000.

This compact little country is the very heart
of Europe, surrounded by Russia, Austria-Hun-
gary, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Hol-
land, Denmark, and, across the North Sea,
England. In the case of trouble in Europe, Ger-
many is the centre. Nothing can happen that
does not concern her, that must not indeed con-
cern her vitally. She has fought at one time or
another in the last hundred years with Russia,
Austria-Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, France,
Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and England, and

THE GERMAN ARMY 417

the various German states among themselves ; or
her soldiers have fought against their soldiers,
whether or not the various countries named were
geographically and politically then what they
are now.

Russia's population in 1910 was 160,748,000,
and including the Finnish provinces, 163,778,800.
Since 1897 the population of Russia has increased
at the annual rate of 2,732,000. The boundaries
between Russia and Germany are mere sand
dunes, and by rail the Russian outposts are only
a few hours from Berlin. France is only across
the Rhine, and it is no secret that some months
ago Great Britain had worked out a plan by
which she could put 150,000 troops on the fron-
tiers of Germany, at the service of France, in
thirteen days. Germany's ocean commerce must
pass through the Straits of Dover, down the
English Channel, within striking distance of
Plymouth, Portsmouth, Dover, Brest, and Cher-
bourg. France, which has been looked upon as
a somewhat negligible quantity, has taken on a
new lease of life. When Napoleon died, in 1821,
he left France swept clean of her fighting men,
whose bones were bleaching all the way from
Madrid to Moscow. France has recuperated
and is almost another nation to-day from the
stand-point of virility. She far surpasses Ger-
many in literature, art, and science, and is tak-

418 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ing her old place in the world. She led the way
in motor construction, in field-artillery, in avia-
tion, and now she is producing a champion mid-
dle-weight sparrer, and, marvel of marvels, has
actually beaten Scotland at foot-ball! She has
always had brains, and now her stability and vi-
rility are reviving. This has not passed unno-
ticed in Germany. No wonder Germany looks
upon her navy as something more than a Win-
stonchurchillian luxury !

One may understand at once from this situa-
tion, and from her past history, that Germany
has the sound good sense not to be influenced by
the latest school of sentimentalists, who pretend
to believe that the world is a polyglot Sunday-
school, with converted millionaires as teachers
therein; or, if not that, a counting-house, where
all questions of honor, race, religion, love, pride,
all the questions which bubble their answers in
our blood, are to be settled by weighing their
comparative cost in dollars. We do not realize
how new is this word sentimental. John Wesley,
writing of this word " sentimental " as used in
Sterne's " Sentimental Journey," says: " Senti-
mental, what is that? It is not English, it is
not sense, it conveys no determinate idea. Yet
one fool makes many, and this nonsensical word
(who would believe it) is become a fashionable
one."

THE GERMAN ARMY 419

Germany has been taught by bitter experi-
ences, and harsh masters, that the ultimate
power to command must rest with that authority
which, if necessary, can compel people to obey.
They recognize, too, the mawkish mental foolery
of any plan of living together which ignores the
part which physical force must necessarily play
in any political or social life which is complete.
They agree, too, as does every intelligent man in
Christendom, that the appeal to reason is far
preferable to an appeal to war. But, pray, what
is to be done where there is no reason to appeal
to? Are reasonable men to strip themselves of
all armor, and suffer unreason to prevail?

An army or a fleet is no more an incitement to
war among reasonable men, than a policeman is
an incentive to burglary or homicide. An army
is not a contemptuous protest against Christian-
ity; it is a sad commentary on Christianity's
failure and inefficiency. An army and a fleet are
merely a reasonable precaution which every
nation must take, while awaiting the conversion
of mankind from the predatory to the polite.

As yet the Germans have not been overtaken
by the tepid wave of feminism, which for the
moment is bathing the prosperity-softened cult-
ure of America and England. It is a harsh
remedy, but both America and England woulfl
gain something of virility if they were shot over

420 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

We are all apt enough to become womanish, agi-
tated, or acidulous, according to age and condi-
tion, when we are reaping in security the fields
cleared, enriched, and planted by a hardy an-
cestry of pioneers. There were no self-conscious
peace-makers; no worshippers of those two epi-
cene idols: a God too much man, and a man
too much God; no devotees of third-sexism, in
the days of Waterloo and Gettysburg, when we
had men's tasks to occupy us.

We are playing with our dolls just now, driving
our coaches over the roads, sailing our yachts in
the waters, eating the fruits of the fields that
have been won for us by the sweat and blood of
those gone before. Germany has no leisure for
that, no doll's house as yet to play in, and she is
perhaps more fortunate than she knows.

One can understand, too, that Germany has
little patience with the confused thinking which
maintains that military training only makes sol-
diers and only incites to martial ambitions ; when,
on the contrary, she sees every day that it makes
youths better and stronger citizens, and produces
that self-respect, self-control, and cosmopolitan
sympathy which more than aught else lessen the
chances of conflict.

(. I can vouch for it that there are fewer personal
jealousies, bickerings, quarrels in the mess-room
or below decks of a war-ship, or in a soldiers'

THE GERMAN ARMY 421

camp or barracks, than in many church and
Sunday-school assemblies, in many club smok-
ing-rooms, in many ladies' sewing or reading
circles.j Nothing does away more surely with
quarrelsomeness than the training of men to get
on together comfortably, each giving way a
little in the narrow lanes of life, so that each
may pass without moral shoving. There are no
such successful schools for the teaching of this
fundamental diplomacy as the sister services, the
army and the navy.

My latest visit to Germany has converted me
completely to the wisdom of compulsory service.
Nor am I merely an academic disciple. I have
had a course in it myself, and were it possible
in America I should give any boy of mine the
benefit of the same training. In Germany, at any
rate, no student of the situation there would deny
that, barring Bismarck, the army has done more
for the nation than any other one factor that can
be named. Soldiers and sailors train themselves,
and train others, first of all to self-control, not
to war. It is a pity that "compulsory service"
has come to mean merely training to fight. In
Germany, at any rate, it means far more than
that. Two generations of Germans have been
taught to take care of themselves physically
without drawing a sword.

It is rather a puzzling commentary upon the

422 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

growth of democracy, that in America and in
England, where most has been conceded to the
majority, there is least inclination on their part to
accept the necessary personal burden of keeping
themselves fit, not necessarily for war, but for
peace, by accepting universal and compulsory
training. The only fair law would be one de-
manding that no one should be admitted to look
on at a game of cricket, foot-ball, or base-ball
who could not pass a mild examination in these
games, or give proof of an equivalent training.
That would be honorable democracy in the realm
of sport.

There formerly existed in Bavaria a supple-
mentary tax on estates left by persons who had
not served in the active army. It was done away
with at the formation of the empire. There is a
proposal now to vote such an additional tax for
all Germany, and a very fair tax it would be.

I am not discussing here the question of com-
pulsory service in England. It is not difficult to
see that part of England's army must of neces-
sity be a professional army, which can be sent
here and there and everywhere, and that con-
scription would not answer the purpose, for com-
pulsory conscription could hardly demand of its
recruits that they should serve in India, in Can-
ada, or in Bermuda or Egypt, for the length of
time necessary to make their service of value.

THE GERMAN ARMY 423

Conscription, too, on a scale to make an army
serviceable against the trained troops of the
Continent is out of the question. Therefore, so
far as compulsory service for military duty only
is concerned, I see no hope for it in England.
But in a land of free men such as is, or used to
be, England, and in America, compulsory ser-
vice ought to be undertaken with pride and with
pleasure, as a moral, not as a military, duty for
the salvation of the country from internal foes,
and as a nucleus around which could rally the
nation as a whole in case of attack from external
foes. Patriotism among us has come to a pretty
pass indeed when the nation is divided into two
classes: those growling against the taxation of
their surplus ; and those with their tongues hang-
ing out in anticipation of, and their hands clutch-
ing for, unearned doles. And now, the more
shame to us, must be added a third class who
use public office for private profit. What if we
all turned to and gave something without being
forced to do so ? Where would the ' ' Yellow peril ' '
and the " German menace " be then? We should
have much less exciting and inciting talk and
writing if our nerves and digestions were in bet-
ter order. Nothing calms the nerves, increases
confidence, and lessens the chance of promiscu-
ous quarrelling better than hard work.

Even if what the German army has accom-

424 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

plished along these lines were not true, there can
be no freedom of political speculation or experi-
ment, no time to make mistakes and to retrieve
the situation, when one is surrounded on all
sides by overt or potential enemies. Germany
must have a powerful army and fleet, must have
a strong and autocratic government, or she is
lost. "Ohne Armee kein Deutschland." She
can permit no silly, no stupid, no excited major-
ity to imperil her safety as a nation. If Germany
were governed as is France, where they have had
nine new governments since the beginning of the
twentieth century, and forty-four since the re-
public replaced the empire forty-one years ago —
not counting six dismissals of the cabinet when
the prime minister remained — or fifty changes
of government in less than that number of years,
Germany would have lost her place on the map.
France remains only because, so far as defence
is concerned, France is France plus the British
fleet.

Political geography is the sufficient reason for
Germany's army and navy. Let us be fair in
these judgments and admit at once, that if Japan
were where Mexico is, and Russia where Canada
is, and Germany separated from us by a few
hours' steaming, certain peace-mongers would
have been hanged long ago, and our cooing doves
of peace would have had molten tar mixed with

THE GERMAN ARMY 425

their feathers. An Italian proverb runs, "It is
easy to scoff at a bull from a window," and we
indulge in not a little of such babyish effrontery
from our safe place in the world. Germany, on
the other hand, looks out upon the world from
no such safe window-seat; she is down in the
ring, and must be prepared at all hazards to take
care of herself. That is a reason, too, why Ger-
many offers little resistance to the ruling of an
autocratic militarism. The sailors and the
stokers would rather obey captain and officers,
however they may have been chosen for them,
than to be sunk at sea; and nowadays Germany
is ever on the high seas, battling hard to protect
and to increase her commerce abroad, and to
protect her huge industrial population at home.
Germany can take no chances for the moment,
for only "Wer sich regiert, der ist mit Zufall
fertig."

One wishes often that one's lips were not
sealed, one's pen not stayed by the imperious
demands of honor, to abstain from all mention
of discoveries or conversations made under the
roof of hospitality, for nothing could well be
more enlightening than a description of a chat
between the great war-lord of Germany and a
leading pacifist: the one completely equipped
with knowledge of the history, temper, and tern-

426 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

perament of his people; the other obsessed by a
fantastic exaggeration of the power and influence
of money, even in the world of culture and in-
ternational politics, and preaching his panacea
in the land, of all others, where even now mere
money has the least influence, all honor to that
land!

Spinoza, the greatest of modern Jews, and the
father of modern philosophy, writes: "It is not
enough to point out what ought to be; we must
also point out what can be, so that every one
may receive his due without depriving others of
what is due to them." And in another place:
"Things should not be the subject of ridicule or
complaint, but should be understood." Those
who know little of the history of the develop-
ment of Germany, and particularly of Prussia,
cannot possibly understand another reason for
the political apathy of the Germans and their
pleased support of their army. It is this: they
have been trained in everything except self-
government, in everything except politics. Per-
haps their governors know them better than we
do. Their progress has come from direction
from above, not from assertion from below.
The art or arts of self-government, throughout
their development as a nation, have been forcibly
omitted from their curriculum. Every step in

THE GERMAN ARMY 427

our national progress, on the contrary, has been
taken by the people, shoulder to shoulder, break-
ing their way up and out into light and freedom.
There is little or no trace of any such movement
of the people in Germany, and there is little
taste for it, and no experience to make such effort
successful. We, who have profited by the teach-
ing of this political experience, do not realize in
the least how handicapped are the people who
have not had it.

One hundred years ago half the inhabitants of
Prussia were practically in the toils of serfdom.
It was only by an edict of 1807, to take effect
in J^SH), that personal serfdom with its conse-
quences, especially the oppressive obligation of
menial service, was abolished in the Prussian
monarchy. Caste extended actually to land.
All land had a certain status, from which the
owners and their retainers took their political
position and rights. The edict of 1807 was in
reality a land reform bill, and gave for the first
time free trade in land in Prussia. It was von
Stein, a Bismarck born too soon, who induced
Frederick William II, King of Prussia, and
grandson of the Great Elector, to abolish serf-
dom, to open the civil service to all classes, and
to concede certain municipal rights to the towns.
But von Stein was dismissed from the service

428 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

of his weak-kneed sovereign on the ground that he
was an enemy of France, and was obliged to take
refuge in Russia. Like other martyrs, his efforts
watered the political earth for a fruitful harvest.
It is well to know where we are in the world's
culture and striving when we speak of other
nations. What were we doing, what was the
rest of the world doing, in those days when the
Hanoverian peasant's son, Scharnhorst, and
Clausewitz were about to lay the foundations of
this German army, now the most perfect ma-
chine of its kind in the world? These were the
days prepared for by Jonathan Edwards, Ben-
jamin Franklin, Voltaire, Rousseau; by Pitt and
Louis XV, and George III; the days of near
memories of Wolfe, Montcalm, and Clive; days
when Hogarth was caricaturing London; days
when the petticoats of the Pompadour swept
both India and Canada into the possession of
England. These names and the atmosphere they
produce, show by comparison how rough a fellow
was this Prussia of only a hundred years ago.
He had not come into the circle of the polite or of
the political world. He was tumbling about, un-
licked, untaught, inexperienced, already forget-
ful of the training of the greatest school-master
of the previous century, Frederick the Great,
who had made a man of him.

THE GERMAN ARMY 429

We were already politicians to a man in those
days, and the Englishman Pitt was map-maker,
by special warrant, to all Europe.

When the Prussians were serfs politically, our
House of Representatives, in 1796, debated
whether to insert in their reply to the President's
rpeech the remark that "this nation is the freest
and most enlightened in the world." It is true
that this was at the time when Europe was pro-
ducing Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel,
Fichte, Mozart, Haydn, Herschel, and about
ready to introduce Walter Scott, Wordsworth,
Shelley, Heine, Balzac, Beethoven, and Cuvier;
when Turner was painting, Watt building the
steam-engine, Napoleon in command of the
French armies, and Nelson of the British fleet;
but this bombastic babble of ours harmed no-
body then, and only serves to show what a
number of intellectual serfs must have been
members of that particular House of Represent-
atives.

We have not overcome this habit of slapdash
comparative criticism, for only the other day a
distinguished American inventor left Berlin with
these words as his final message: "We have
nothing to learn from Germany." But in the
nineteenth century, where does the American of
sober intelligence, if Lincoln be omitted, find a

430 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

match for Bismarck as a statesman, Heine as a
wit and song- writer, Wagner, Brahms, and Bee-
thoven as musicians, Goethe as a man of letters
and poet, the still living influence of Lessing and
Winckelmann as critics, Fichte as a scholarly pa-
triot, Hegel and Kant as philosophers, von Hum-
boldt, Liebig, Helmholtz, Bunsen, and Haeckel
as scientists, Moltke and Roon as soldiers,
Ranke and Mommsen as historians, Auerbach,
Spielhagen, Sudermann, Freytag, "Fritz" Reu-
ter, and Hauptmann as novelists and dramatists,
Krupp and Borsig as manufacturers, and the
Rothschilds as bankers? Lincoln, Lee, Sherman,
Jackson, and Grant may equal these men in their
own departments, but aside from them our only
superiority, and a very questionable superiority
it is, lies in our trust-and-tariff -incubated million-
aires. Let us try to see straight, if only that we
may learn and profit by the superiority of others.

These explanations that I have given, his-
torical, political, external, and internal, offer
reasons worth pondering both why we do not
understand Germany's huge armament and why
Germany looks upon it as a necessity.

However much the expenditure on fleet and
army may be disguised, the burden is colossal.
In the year 1878 the net expenditure, ordinary
and extraordinary, for purposes of defence, for

THT GERMAN ARMY 431

army and navy and all other military purposes
whatsoever including pensions, amounted to 452,-
000,000 marks; in 1888, to 660,000,000 marks;
in 1898, to 882,000,000 marks; and in 1908, to
1,481,000,000 marks.

The total expenses, net, of the empire in 1908
were 1,735,000,000 marks, showing that only
254,000,000 marks out of the grand total of
1,735,000,000 were spent for other than military
purposes. As the army and navy now stand at
a peace strength of some 700,000 men, and as
these men are all in the prime of their working
power, the loss in wages and in productive work
may be put very conservatively at 600,000,000
marks, which brings the cost of the support of
the military establishment of Germany up to
2,000,000,000 marks and more per annum, or
$500,000,000.

Many Americans were dismayed when our
total national expenditure reached the $1,000,-
000,000 point, and the Congress voting this
expenditure was nicknamed the "Billion-dollar
Congress." What would we say of an expen-
diture of half a billion dollars for defence alone!
With what admiration, too, must we regard
65,000,000 people, living in an area one quarter
smaller than Texas, on a by-no-means rich or
fertile soil, who can bear cheerfullv the burden,

432 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

each year, of half our total national expendi-
ture, merely on the military and naval barri-
cade which enables them to toil in peace and
security.

Humanity has, indeed, made but a poor zigzag
progress from the gorilla; Christianity, just now
engaged in blessing the rival banners of warriors
setting out for one another's throats, has failed
ignominiously to bring the wolf in man to bap-
tism, when the central state of Christian Europe
must arm to the teeth one in every eighteen of
her adult male inhabitants, and spend half a
billion dollars a year, to protect herself from
assault and plunder.

If the hairy, skin-clad cave-dwellers, or the
man who left us the Neanderthal skull, could
have a look at us now, here in Berlin, in many
ways the centre of the most enlightened people
in the world, they would undoubtedly go mad
trying to understand what we mean by the word
"progress." And yet we smile indulgently at
the poor farmers in Afghanistan who till their
fields with a rifle slung across their shoulders.
What is Germany doing but that! And an
enormously heavy rifle it is, costing just seven
times as much as all other national expenditures
together; in short, it costs seven marks of sol-
dier to protect every one mark of plough. I

THE GERMAN ARMY 433

admit frankly the horror and the absurdity of
all this; but as an argument for disarmament,
"it does not lie," as the lawyers phrase it. It is
a criticism, and an unanswerable one, of our
failure as human beings to enthrone reason and
to tame our passions; but it is a veritable call
to arms to protect ourselves, not a reason for
not doing so. Let the international gluttons
overeat themselves till they are seriously ill;
but it would be madness to starve ourselves in
the meantime, and yet that is the grotesque logic
of certain of our preachers of disarmament.

At the moment of writing there are 1,000,000
men at each other's throats in the Balkans,
there is a revolution in Mexico, and incipient
anarchy in Central America; as an emollient to
this, Great Britain is about to present a bust of
the late King Edward to the Peace Palace at the
Hague! I can imagine myself saying "Pretty
pussy, nice pussy," to the wild-cats I have shot
in Nebraska and Dakota, but I should not be
here if I had; and however small my value
to the world I live in, I estimate it as worth at
least a ton of wild-cats.

I am bound, however, in fairness to call the
attention of the unwary dabbler in statistics to
a point of grave importance in dealing with Ger-
man finances. The German Empire, so far as

434 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

expenditure and income are concerned, is merely
an office, a clearing-house so to speak, for the
states which together make up the empire. The
expenses of the empire, for example, in 1910 were
$757,900,000 and of the army and navy, includ-
ing extraordinary expenditures, $314,919,325;
this does not include pensions, clerical expenses,
interest, sinking-fund, and loss of productive
labor, as did the figures on a preceding page.
To the ignorant or to the malicious, who quote
these figures to bolster up a socialist or pacifist
preachment, this looks as though Germany had
spent one half of her grand total on the army and
navy. But this is quite wrong. In addition to
the expenditures of this imperial clearing-house
called the German Empire, there was spent by
the states $1,467,325,000 : the so-called clearing-
house bearing the whole burden of expenses for
army and navy, the separate states nothing ex-
cept the per capita tax, called the matriculation
tax, of some 80 pfennigs. To make this matter
still more clear, as it is a constant source of error
not only to the foreigner but to the Germans
themselves, the income of the empire for 1910
was $757,900,000, the income of all the states
$1,463,150,000, or of the empire and the states
combined $2,221,050,000. In the same way the
debt of the empire in 1910 stood at $1,224,-

THE GERMAN ARMY 435

150,000, and the debt of the states of the empire
at $3,856,325,000, or a grand total outstanding
indebtedness of all Germany of $5,080,475,000.

Of late years the imperial expenditure of Great
Britain, for example, has amounted to some
$935,000,000 a year; but various local bodies
spend also some $900,000,000 a year. Some
of this is cross-spending, but the grand total
amounts to some $1,500,000,000 a year.

Before writing or speaking of Germany it is
well to know at least what Germany is. To pick
up a hand-book and to quote therefrom the fig-
ures relating to the German Empire, as though
these covered Germany, as is often done, is as
accurate and helpful to the inquirer, as though
one should take the figures of the New York
clearing-house as accurate descriptions of the
total and detailed business of all the New York
banks and trust companies. A clearing-house is
merely a piece of machinery for the adjustment
of differences between a host of debtors and
creditors. The comparative cost of the German
army and navy can only be figured properly
against the income and expenditure of the total
wealth of all Germany. And all Germany is
something more than the German Empire,
which in certain respects is only a book-keeper,
an adjuster of differences.

436 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

"Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?
Ist's Preussenland? Ist's Schwabenland?
Ist's wo am Rhein die Hebe bliiht?
Ist's wo am Belt die Move zieht?
O nein! O nein! O nein!
Sein Vaterland muss grosser sein.

"Das ganze Deutschland soil es sein!
O Gott vom Himmel, sieh' darein,
Und gib uns rechten deutschen Muth;
Dass wir es lieben treu und gut!
Das soil es sein! das soil es sein!
Das ganze Deutschland soil es sein!"

The official title of the sovereign is not Em-
peror of Germany, or Emperor of the Germans,
but German Emperor. Thus the territorial
rights of other heads of states are safeguarded.
Even the popularity of the first Emperor, who
wished to be named Emperor of Germany and
who disputed with Bismarck for hours over the
question, could not bring this about, and he was
proclaimed at Versailles merely German Em-
peror.

However heavy the burden of armament may
be, we must be careful to put such expenditure
in its proper perspective and in its proper rela-
tions, not only to the German Empire, which for
official, clerical, and statistical matters is quite
a different entity, but to "das ganze Deutsch-
land." The German Empire is the clearing-
house, the adjutant, the executive officer, the

THE GERMAN ARMY 437

official clerk, the representative in many social,
financial, military, and diplomatic capacities of
Germany ; but it is not, and never for a moment
should be confused with, what all Germans love,
and what it has cost them blood and tears and
great sacrifices to bring into the circle of the
nations, the German Fatherland!

In 1910 the total funded debt of the empire
amounted to 4,896,600,000 marks, and the debt
in 1912 had risen to 5,396,887,801 marks. In
the six years ending March, 1911, Germany's
debt increased by $415,000,000.

In 1910 the funded debt of Germany (empire
and states) was $4,896,600,000; of France $6,-
905,000,000; of England $3,894,500,000, and of
Russia $4,880,750,000. It is a curious psychical
and social phenomenon that, though we are as
suspicious as criminals of one another's good
faith in keeping the peace, we are veritable angels
of innocence in trusting one another financially,
for back of these huge debts we keep in ready
money, that is, gold, to pay them: Germany at
the present writing $275,000,000 in the Reichs-
bank; France $640,000,000 in the Bank of France;
England a paltry $175,000,000 in the Bank of
England; and Russia $625,000,000 in the Bank
of Russia. We all live upon credit, an elastic
moral tie which seems to be illimitably stretch-

able, and both a nation's and an individual's
wealth is measured not by what he has, but by
what he is, that is to say, by his character or
credit. It is startling to find how we distrust one
another along certain lines and how we trust one
another along others. The total amount of gold
in these four countries would just about pay the
interest at four per cent, for two years on their
total indebtedness!

From what we have seen of the proportion of
expenditure that goes to military purposes, it
cannot be denied that Germany is increasing her
liabilities at an extraordinary rate, and largely
for purposes of protection. In the last two years
the interest on her increased debt alone, at four
per cent., amounts to $5,000,000; while the in-
terest at four per cent, upon military expendi-
tures of all kinds amounts to the tidy sum of
$20,000,000 per annum. The German, however,
faces these facts and figures, not as a matter of
choice, not as a matter of insurance wholly, but
as a hard necessity. It is what the delayed con-
version of the world is costing him, not to speak
of what it costs the rest of us. He is surrounded
by enemies ; he is not by nature a fighting man ;
his whole industrial and commercial progress
and his amassed wealth have come from training,
training, training; and he sees no alternative,

THE GERMAN ARMY 439

and I am bound to say that I see none either, but
a nation trained also to defence, cost what it

The last German estimates (1912) balance
with a revenue and expenditure of $671,222,605.
The naval expenditure is put at $114,306,575; the
army expenditure is put at $192,627,080. Both
the army and navy are being largely increased.
In the year 1916 the strength of the navy
is expected to be about 79,000 men, and of
the army and navy combined 767,000. In the
last ten years two nations have almost doubled
their naval personnel: Germany has increased
hers from 31,157 to 60,805, and Austria-Hun-
gary from 9,069 to 17,277. In Great Britain the
increase has been about one seventh, and this
one seventh is about equal to the present strength
of Austria.

The gross naval expenditure, estimated, of the
United States for 1912 amounts to $132,848,030,
and the number of men 63,468. The gross naval
expenditure of Great Britain, estimated, for the
same year is put at $224,410,235, and the number
of men 134,000. The gross naval expenditure of
Germany is put at $114,306,575, which includes
$489,235 for air-ships and experiments there-
with, the number of men 66,783. France pro-
poses to spend, plus an addition due to opera-

440 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

tions in Morocco, $90,000,000, number of men
58,404; and Japan $44,309,145, number of men
49,389. TwonewcorDS haveJaeeiuyQied f or_the
German army, to be numbered 24 and 25; one
is for the Russian frontier, with head-quarters at
Allenstein, and the other for the Frenchjrontier,
with head-quarters at Sarrebourg or Mulhouse.
A German army corps on a war footing com-
prises about 52,000 men, with 150 guns and
16,000 horses. The reader should notice, as a re-
minder of the still latent jealousies of the differ-
ent states of the German Empire, that the three
army corps raised in Bavaria are not numbered
consecutively, twenty-one, twenty-two, and
twenty -three, but one, two, and three!

To the American the pay of the German
troops, officers and men, is ludicrously small. It
is evident that men do not undertake to fit them-
selves to be officers, and to struggle through fre-
quent and severe examinations to remain officers,
for the pay they receive. A lieutenant receives
for the first three years $300 a year, from the
fourth to the sixth year $425, from the seventh to
the ninth year $495, from the tenth to the twelfth
year $550, and after the twelfth year $600 a
year. A captain receives from the first to the
fourth year $850, from the fifth to the eighth
year $1,150, and the ninth year and after $1,275

THE GERMAN ARMY 441

a year. Of one hundred officers who join, only
an average of eight ever attain to the command of
a regiment. In Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, pro-
motion is quicker by from one to three years
than in Prussia. In Prussia promotion to Ober-
leutnant averages 10 years, to captain or Ritt-
meister 15 years, to major 25 years, to colonel 33
years, and to general 37 years. It would not be
altogether inhuman if these gentlemen occasion-
ally drank a toast to war and pestilence !

A commanding general, or general inspector
of cavalry or field artillery, receives $3,495; a
division commander, or inspector of cavalry,
field and heavy artillery, $3,388; a brigade com-
mander, $2,565; commander of a regiment, or
officer of the general staff of the same rank,
$2,193. There are various additions to these
sums for travelling, keep of horses, house-rent,
and the like. All soldiers and officers travel at
reduced rates on the railways, and are allowed a
certain amount of luggage free. It is a commen-
tary upon the three nations, that in Germany the
soldier receives a reduced rate when travelling,
in England the golfer pays a reduced rate, and
in America, until lately, the politicians were
given free passes. One could almost produce the
three countries from that limited knowledge.

At the cadet school at Gross Lichterfelde there

442 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

are a thousand pupils. They are taught riding,
swimming, dancing, French, English, mathe-
matics, and of course receive technical military
instruction. The fee is $200, but for the sons of
officers, and according to their means, the fees
are reduced to $112, $75, and even as low as $22,
and in some deserving cases no fee at all is
charged.

There is no professional army in Germany, as
in England and in America. Every German
who is physically fit must serve practically from
the age of seventeen to forty -five. Those in the
infantry serve two years; those in the cavalry
and horse artillery and mounted rifles, three
years. About forty -eight per cent, who are ex-
amined are rejected as unfit, not necessarily be-
cause they are incapable of service, but because
the expense of training all is too great. These
men receive 40 pfennigs a day, 27 pfennigs being
deducted for their food.

There are some 40,000 men who join the army
voluntarily for a term of two or three years, and
who re-enlist and become non-commissioned
officers, and if they remain twelve years they are
entitled to $200 on leaving the service, and head
the lists of candidates for the railway, postal,
police, street-cleaning, and other civil services,
3ome 10,000 men who have passed a certain

THE GERMAN ARMY 443

examination serve only one year and are entitled
to certain privileges.

Each man in the infantry serves 2 years in the
active army, 5 years in the active reserve, 5 years
in the first division of the Landwehr, 6 years in
the second division of the Landwehr, and 6 years
in the Landsturm. Colonel Gadke calculates that
Germany has now under arms not less than
714,000 soldiers and sailors, and that 4,800,000
can be put into the field if wanted out of the
6,000,000 who have done service with the colors.
Out of this enormous total, practically none, ac-
cording to the last census, is illiterate. Our
American census of 1910 gives the number of
men of militia age in New England as 1,458,900,
and in the whole country 20,473, 6L4.

Promotion from the ranks, as we understand
it, is practically unknown. The German officers
pass through the ranks, it is true, as part of their
education at the beginning of their military
career, but those who do so join in the beginning
as candidates for commissions, and have been
provisionally accepted by the commander and
officers of the regiment they propose to join, as
must every candidate for a commission in the
German army. If the candidate is not wanted,
it is hinted to him that this is the case, and he
must go elsewhere, as this decision is final. Every

444 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

German regiment's officers' mess is thus in some
sort a club.

Officers are supplied from the cadet corps, and
from those who join the ranks as candidates for
commissions. All cadets must pass through a
war-school before obtaining a commission. Of
these there are 10 in Prussia, Wiirtemberg, and
Saxony, and 1 at Munich in Bavaria. They
there receive their commissions as second lieu-
tenants. There are 9 Prussian schools, the
Hauptkadettenanstalt at Gross Lichterfelde, and
8 Kadetten-Hauser; and 1 at Dresden and 1 at
Munich. Some of these I have visited, and been
made at home with the greatest courtesy and hos-
pitality. These German cadet schools are to a
great extent charitable institutions for the sons
of officers and civilian officials. The charges
range, as I have indicated above, from $200 a
year to nothing at all.

There are in addition schools of musketry, a
school for instruction in machine-gun practice,
instruction in infantry battalion practice, a
school of military gymnastics, of military equita-
tion, officers' riding-schools, a military technical
academy at Charlottenburg, where officers may
study the technical engineering and communi-
cation services, an artillery and engineer school
at Munich, a field-artillery school of gunnery, a

THE GERMAN ARMY 445

foot-artillery school of gunnery, a cavalry tele-
graph school, and the staff colleges.

Of technical military matters I know nothing.
I have some experience in handling horses in
harness and under saddle, and on subjects with
which I am familiar I venture to pass judgments
in the class-room. I have visited many of these
class-rooms, and listened to the teaching and
lectures in French, English, strategy, and polit-
ical geography, and kindred topics, and if the
rest of the instruction is on a par with what I
heard there is no criticism to be made. I may
not say where, but one of the instructors in
French was a real pleasure to listen to.

The courses and examinations which lead up,
in the Kriegesakademie, or staff college, to the
grade of fitness for the general staff, or the tech-
nical division of the general staff, or administra-
tive staff work, or employment as instructors,
are of the very stiffest. An officer who succeeds
in reaching such proficiency, that he is sent up
to the general staff must be a very blue ribbon
of a scholar in his own field.

The quarters, the food, the training, are Spar-
tan indeed at the cadet schools, but how valu-
able that is, is shown in the faces, manners,
physique, and general bearing of the picked
youths one sees at the Kriegesakademie in Ber-

446 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

lin. No one after seeing these fellows would deny
for a moment the value of a sound, hard disci-
pline. The same may be seen at our own West
Point, where the transformation of many a
country bumpkin, into an officer and a gentle-
man, in four years is almost unbelievable.

The truth is that most of us suffer from lack
of discipline, and the intelligent men of every
nation will one day insist that, if the state is to
meddle in insurance and other matters, it must
logically, and for its own salvation, demand
compulsory service; not necessarily for war, but
for social and economic peace within its own
boundaries. It is a political absurdity that you
may tax individuals to provide against accident
and sickness to themselves, but that you may
not tax individuals by compulsory service to
provide against accident and sickness to the
state. There can be nothing but ultimate con-
fusion where the state pays a man if he is ill,
pays him if he is hurt, pays him when he is old,
and yet does not force him to keep well, and thus
avoid accident and a pauper's old age by oblig-
ing him to submit to two or three years' sound
physical training. Whether the training is done
with a gun or without it matters little. Most
men of our breed like to know how to kill things,
so that a gun would probably be an inducement.

THE GERMAN ARMY 447

The more one knows of the severe demands
upon the officers of the German army and of
their small pay, the more one realizes that if they
are not angels there must be some further ex-
planation of their willingness to undertake the
profession. First of all, the Emperor is a soldier
and wears at all times the soldier's uniform.
Further, he gives from his private purse a small
allowance monthly to the poorer officers of the
guard regiments. A German officer receives
consideration on all sides, whether it be in a
shop, a railway-carriage, a drawing-room, or at
court.

To a certain extent his uniform is a dowry; he
expects and often gets a good marriage portion
in return for his shoulder-straps and brass but-
tons ; and in every case it gives him a recognized
social position, in a country where the social
lines are drawn far more strictly than in any
other country outside of Austria and India.
This constant wearing of the sword is no new
thing. Tacitus, who would have been an un-
compromising advocate of compulsory service
had he lived in our time, writes: "A German
transacts no business, public or private, without
being completely armed. The right of carrying
arms is assumed by 110 person whatever till the
state has declared him duly qualified." It is

448 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the recognized occupation of the nobility, and,
in very many families, a tradition. In the army
of Saxony, on January 1, 1911, out of every
hundred officers of the war ministry, of the gen-
eral commands, and of the higher staff, 44.33 per
cent, were noblemen; of the officers of the infan-
try, 26.19 were noblemen; of the cavalry, 60.92
were noblemen; and of the officers of the entire
army, all arms, 24.98 were noblemen.

It is worth chronicling in this connection, for
the benefit of those who wish a real insight into
German social life, that few people discriminate
between the old nobility, or men who take their
titles from the possession of land and their de-
scendants, and the new and morbidly disliked
nobility, who have bought or gained their patents
of nobility, as is done often enough in England,
by profuse contributions to charity or to semi-
political and cultural undertakings favored by
the court, or by direct contributions to party
funds, by valuable services rendered, or by mere
length of service. This new nobility, anxious
about their status, satisfied to have arrived, jeal-
ous of rivals, are the dead weight which ties
Germany fast to bureaucratic government and
to a policy of no change. They represent, even
in educated Germany, a complacent mediocrity ;
indignant at rebuke, indifferent to progress,

THE GERMAN ARMY 449

heedless of experience, impatient of criticism,
haters of haste, and jealous of superiority.
Even Bismarck, the creator of this bureaucracy,
lamented the insolence and bad manners of the
state servants.

The essential and ever-present quality of the
real aristocrat and of a real aristocracy is, of
course, courage. It may dislike change, but it
is not afraid of it. The real gentleman, of course,
does not care whether he is a gentleman or not.
The characteristic of an artificial, tailor-made
aristocracy is timidity and a shrinking from
change. This new nobility, created because it
is carefully charitable, or serviceable, or long
in office, is not only in possession of the civil
service, but occupies high posts in the army and
navy. While not minimizing its value, it is
everywhere maintained in Germany that it acts
as a bulwark against progress. They are a
nobility of office-holders, and they partake of the
qualities and characteristics of the office-holder
everywhere. They sometimes forget the coun-
try in the office; while the older nobility, which
made Germany, despises the office except as an
instrument or weapon to be used for the welfare
of the country. The political pessimism in Ger-
many to-day is caused by, and comes from, this
army of the new nobility.

450 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Americans and English both write of Germany,
and speak of it, as being in the grip of a small
group of aristocrats. Not at all; it is in the shaky
and self-conscious control of men whose patents
of nobility were given them with their office, a
titled bureaucracy, in short. Let us prove this
statement by running through the list of the
chief officers of the state. Of the officials of the
German Empire: the chancellor's grandfather,
Bethmann-Hollweg, was a professor, and after-
ward minister of education; the secretary of
state's father was plain Herr Kiderlin-Wachter;
the under-secretary of state is Herr Zimmer-
mann; the secretary of the interior is Herr Del-
briick; of finance, Herr Wermuth; of justice,
Herr Lisco; of the navy, von Tirpitz, who was
recently ennobled; the postmaster is Herr
Kraetke. Not one of these officials of the empire
is of the old nobility!

Of the 11 ministers of the kingdom of Prussia,
the minister for agriculture, von Schorlemer; for
war, von Heeringen; for education, von Trott
zu Solz; and for the interior, von Dallwitz, are
of the old nobility; but the other 7 ministers
are not. Of the 12 Oberprasidenten, men who
rule the provinces, 6 are noblemen; of the 37
Regierungsprasidenten, 14 are of the nobility,
23 are not. This should dispose finally of the

THE GERMAN ARMY 451

frequently heard assertion that Germany and
Prussia are ruled by a small group of the landed
nobility and that there is no way open to the
talents. It is fair to say that a very small and
intimate court group do have a certain influence
in naming the candidates for these posts, but
they are too wily to keep these positions for
themselves.

I suppose we all like, in a childish way, to wear
placards of our prowess in the form of orders
and decorations, but the evening attire of this
bureaucratic nobility often looks as though there
had been a ceramic eruption, a sort of measles
of decorations. Men's breasts are covered with
medals, stars, porcelain plaques, and their necks
are hung with ribbons with a dangling medallion,
all distributed from the patriarchal imperial
Christmas-tree for every conceivable service from
cleaning the streets to preaching properly on the
imperial yacht. Men collect them as they would
stamps or butterflies, and some of them must be
very expert.

The officers and the officials who are recog-
nized as giving their services as a family tra-
dition, as a patriotic service, or out of sheer love
of the profession of arms, are rather liked than
disliked, and give a tone and set a standard for
all the rest. Both these officers and their men

452 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

are respected. Of no German soldier could it be
written :

"I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the
stalls."

On the contrary, every effort is made to keep the
army pleased with itself and proud of itself.
The chancellor of the empire is always given
military rank; officers are not allowed to marry
unless they have, or acquire by marriage, a suit-
able income; the dignity of the officer is upheld
and his pride catered to; officers are made to feel
that they are the darlings of the Fatherland by
everybody from the Emperor down.

This artificial stimulant goes far to keep them
contented, and the fact that the scale of comfort-
able living in Germany was twenty years ago far
below, and is even now not equal to, that of the
equivalent classes with us makes the task easier.
They have not been taught to want the things
we want, and are still satisfied with less. And
back of and behind it all is the feeling among the
leaders, that the army furnishes no small amount
of the patriotic cement necessary to hold Ger-
many together. Ulysses lashed himself to the
mast as he passed the sirens of luxury and lei-

THE GERMAN ARMY 453

sure, and for the German Ulysses the army sup-
plies the cords. It is not the foreign student of
German life alone who notices that the Germans,
even now, seem to be tribal rather than national.
The best friends of Germany in Germany also
recognize this weakness, comment upon it, and
favor every possible expedient to overcome it.

I admit frankly my admiration for this Spar-
tan three quarters of a million of soldiers and
sailors, and their officers. It offers a splendid
example of patriotism, of disregard for the weak-
ening comforts, luxuries, and fussy pleasures that
absorb too much of our vitality; and of disdain
for the material successes, which in their selfish
rivalry, breed the very industrial distresses which
are now our problems. At least here is a large
professional body whose aims, whose way of
living, and whose earnings prove that there can
be a social hierarchy not dependent upon money.
It is one of the finest lessons Germany has to
teach, and long may she teach it.

That is distinctly the side of the army that I
know and approve without reserve. Of its value
as a fighting force it would be ridiculous, in my
case, to write. I have read and heard scores of
criticisms and comments from many sources, and
they range from those who claim that the Ger-
man army is unbeatable, even if attacked from

454 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

all sides, to those who maintain that it is already
stale and mechanical.

The war of 1866, when Prussia represented
Germany, lasted thirty -five days; the war against
Denmark lasted six months and twelve days;
the war against France lasted six months and
nine days. Thirty-six German cavalry regi-
ments did not lose a man during the whole cam-
paign of 1870-1871; and the Sixth Army Corps
was hardly under fire. There has been no long,
practical, and therefore decisive test of the army.
Of the transport and commissary services during
the French war, when Germany toward the end
of it had 630,000 men in the field, certainly we,
with the deplorable mismanagement and scan-
dal of our Spanish war, and the British with
the investigations after the Egyptian campaign
fresh in memory, have nothing to say, except
that it was wholly admirable and beyond the
breath of suspicion of greed, thievery, or politi-
cal chicanery. There was no rotten leather, and
no poisoned beef.

Officers, too, in the French war, were called
upon to do their duty and to obey, and no indi-
vidual brilliancy which interfered with the gen-
eral plan was condoned or pardoned, no matter
how highly placed the relatives or how influen-
tial the connections of the offender. A distin-

THE GERMAN ARMY 455

guished general, after a successful and heroic
victory, who had been tempted into a bloody
battle against orders, was called before his supe-
riors, told that the first lesson the soldier had to
learn was obedience, and sent home! A brother
of the chief of staff went into the war a captain
and came back a captain!

I am wondering what our underpaid, unno-
ticed regulars in the army and navy would have
to say, were they free to speak, of the conduct
of our last martial escapade with Spain, by our
press and by our politicians. There would be
no stories of the German kind, I am sure, and no
single record of an influential civilian who did
not get all the glory that he deserved. My im-
pulsive countrymen are always manufacturing
heroes and saviors, but fortunately the crosses
upon which they crucify them are erected almost
as fast as the crowns are nicely fitted and com-
fortable, so that there is little danger of per-
manent tyranny. What Richelieu said of the
French applies to some extent to ourselves: "Le
propre du caractere frangais c'est que, ne se
tenant pas fermement an bien, il ne s'attache
non plus longtemps au mal."

During and after the Franco-German war
there was no cheap heroism, no feminine ex-
citability producing litters of heroes ; no slobber-

456 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ing, osculatory advertising; no press undertaking
the duties of a general staff, which in our Spanish
war almost completely clouded the real heroism
and patriotism that were in evidence. There
were no newspaper-made heroes, hastening back
to exchange cheap military glory for votes and
delicious notoriety. For all of which, gentle-
men, let us thank God, and give praise where it
is due.

The army, too, is an interesting commentary
upon the changes that are so rapidly taking place
in Germany, from an agricultural to a manu-
facturing nation. Of every 100 recruits that
presented themselves there were passed as fit, in
1902, for the First Army Corps, of those from the
country 72.76; of those from the towns 63.88;
in 1910 these figures had fallen to 67.24 and 53.66.
In the Second Army Corps the recruits passed as
fit, from the towns, had fallen from 60.74 in 1902
to 50.42 in 1910. In the Fifth Army Corps, of
recruits from the towns the percentage of those
passed fell from 60.07 to 46.13. In the Sixth
Army Corps the percentage fell from 50.14 to
43.83. In the Sixteenth Army Corps from 67.50
to 58.80. In the Eighteenth Army Corps the
recruits from the towns passed as fit had fallen
from 60.46 in 1902 to 46.58 in 1910. The aver-
age for the whole empire, of those from the towns

THE GERMAN ARMY 457

passed as fit, had fallen from 53.52 in 1902 to
47.87 in 1910. The First Army Corps has its
head-quarters at Konigsberg, and recruits from
that neighborhood; the Second Army Corps has
its head-quarters at Stettin, and recruits from
Pomerania; the Fifth Army Corps has its head-
quarters at Posen, and recruits from Posen and
Lower Silesia; the Sixth Army Corps has its
head-quarters at Breslau, and recruits from
Silesia; the Sixteenth Army Corps has its head-
quarters at Metz, and recruits from Lorraine;
the Eighteenth Army Corps has its head-quarters
at Frankfurt-am-Main, and recruits from that
neighborhood. These figures are enough to make
my point, without giving the statistics for all
the twenty -three corps, which is, that in spite of
the precautions taken, the German recruit, espe-
cially from the towns, in whatever part of the
country, is losing vigor and stamina.

Even this hard-and-fast arrangement of a
bureaucratic government with a military back-
bone does not solve all the problems. When one
sees, however, the German school-boy, and the
German recruit during the first weeks of his
training, in the barracks and out, and I have
watched thousands of them, and then looks
over this same material after two or three years
of training, it is hard to believe that they are the

458 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

same, and that even these hard-working officers
have been able to bring about such a change.

Of the charges of brutality and severity I only
know what the statistics tell me, that in an army
of over 600,000 men there were some 500 cases
brought to the notice of the superior officers last
year. In 1911 there were 12,919 convictions for
crimes and misdemeanors and 578 desertions.
Of the 32,711 common soldiers in the Saxon
army in 1911, 30 committed suicide; in 1909, 29;
in 1905, 24; in 1901, 36; that is to say, roughly,
one man per thousand. Of the why and where-
fore I cannot say, but Saxony is a peculiarly
overpopulated section of Germany, and the pop-
ulation is overdriven; and the German every-
where is a dreamy creature compared with us,
of less toughness of fibre either morally or physi-
cally, and no doubt, here and there, under-exer-
cising and over-thinking make the world seem
to be a mad place and impossible to live in.
Indeed, it is no place to live in for the best of
us if we take it, or ourselves, too seriously.
The German army is an educated army, as is
no other army in the world, and there are the
diseases peculiar to education to combat. A
mediocre ability to think, and a limited intel-
lectual experience, coupled with a craving for
miscellaneous reading, breed new microbes al-

THE GERMAN ARMY 459

most as fast as science discovers remedies for the
old ones.

Bismarck's words, "Ohne Armee kein Deutsch-
land," meant to him, and mean to-day, far more
than that the army is necessary for defence. It
is the best all-round democratic university in the
world ; it is a necessary antidote for the physical
lethargy of the German race; it is essential to
discipline; it is a cement for holding Germany
together; it gives a much-worried and many-
times-beaten people confidence; the poverty of
the great bulk of its officers keeps the level of
social expenditure on a sensible scale; it offers
a brilliant example, in a material age, of men
scorning ease for the service of their country ; it
keeps the peace in Europe; and until there is a
second coming, of a Christ of pity, and patience,
and peace, it is as good a substitute for that far-
off divine event as puzzled man has to offer.

It is silly and superficial to look upon the Ger-
man army only as a menace, only as a cloud of
provocations in glittering uniforms, only as a
helmeted frown with a turned-up moustache.
It is not, and I make no such claim for it, an army
or an officers' corps of Puritans or of self-sacrific-
ing saints, but it does partake of the dreamy,
idealistic German nature, as does every other
institution in Germany. Though, as a whole,

400 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

it is a fighting machine, the various parts of it
are not imbued with that spirit alone. The un-
easy pessimism of the dreamer, which distrusts
the comfortable solutions of the business-like
politicians, and leaders, in their own and in other
countries, is as noticeable in the army as in all
other departments of German life.

"And all through life I see a cross,
Where sons of God yield up their breath;
There is no gain except by loss,
There is no life except by death,
There is no vision but by faith;
Nor glory but by bearing shame,
Nor justice but by taking blame."

There have oeen many, and there are still,
soldiers who hold that creed. There are not a
few of them in Germany.

IX

GERMAN PROBLEMS

A GREAT nation like Germany must have
characteristics, anxieties, problems, and
responsibilities, some of which are pecul-
iar to itself. The individual must be of small
importance who has not problems and burdens
of his own arising from his environment, position,
work, and his personal relations with other men;
as well as problems of temper, temperament,
health, education, and traditions peculiar to
himself.

Wise men recognize two things about every
other man: that he has his own problems, and
that no one else thoroughly understands either
another man's handicaps or his advantages; and
that the only way to judge him is not to go be-
hind the returns, but to note how he lives with
these same problems. They are there, there is
no doubt about that; the question is, does he
smile or scowl? does he work away toward a
solution, or allow himself to be swamped by
them? do they dominate him, or he them? has
he that sun of life, vitality, sufficient to burn

461

462 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

away the fog, or does he live and die in a moist,
semi-impenetrable fog, in which he flounders
timidly and rather aimlessly about, always
rather discouraged, rather in the dark, and lam-
entably damp in person and in spirits? The
only fair test of a man's life is his living of it,
and the same is true of a nation.

Of Germany's history, traditions, and tem-
perament I have written. No one can fail to
note the chief characteristics: their gregarious-
ness, their melancholic and subjective way of
looking at life, their passion for music. It is
more what they think, than what they do or
see, that gives them pleasure. They agree with
Erasmus, that "it is a foolish error to believe
that happiness is dependent upon things; it is
dependent entirely upon one's opinion of them."
The indefinite has no terrors for them, they de-
light indeed in the indefinable. They have done
little in great sculpture and architecture, or the
founding and ruling of colonies, as compared
with their supreme achievements in music, in
philosophy, in lyric poetry.

The art of music, which moves one greatly
toward nothing in particular; which supplies
sounds but not a language for the mysteries of
feeling; which easily carries a sensitive soul
away from its sorrows or drowns it in tears, and

GERMAN PROBLEMS 463

all without offering a semblance of a practical
solution; which orchestrates a greater fury, a
more poignant jealousy, a sweeter note of bird,
a harsher clang of weapons, than any human
energy can even imagine to exist; this art with
which marching soldiers sing away their fatigue,
but not really; with which disconsolate lovers
wing their hopes, but not really; with which the
pious pipe themselves to heaven, but not really;
with which, by strings and beaten skins, organ-
pipes and blowing brass, an anaesthesia of ec-
stasy is produced, leaving one only the weaker
against the dourness and doggedness of the devil;
with which men and women hymn themselves
home to God, only to lose Him when they leave
the threshold of His house; which choruses from
a thousand throats patriotism, defiance, self-
confidence, but arms none of them with any use-
ful weapon; which with drums and brass can
send any lout to heroism without his knowing
why; this art which burns up the manhood of
its devotees — who ever heard of a great tenor
who was a great man, or even of a great musician
for more than half of whose life one must needs
not apologize? -- this art flourishes in Germany
not without reason, and not for nothing.

In a ragged school in the neighborhood of
Posen where the children could hardly speak

464 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

German they could sing; in a public school in
Charlottenburg fifty boys, aged between eight
and fifteen, sang the part-song known to every
college man in America, "On a Bank Two Roses
Grew," as well as a college glee club; those
who know Bayreuth, or have attended a musi-
cal festival, or listened to one of the great clubs
of male voices, or heard the orchestras and mili-
tary bands, will not deny the delights of music
in Germany. In Berlin there is not a hall suit-
able for a musical recital that is not engaged a
year, sometimes more, in advance.

In the beautiful Golden Hall of the castle of
the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, at
Schwerin, I have attended a concert given by
the Grand Duke's own orchestra, where the se-
lections were all compositions of former leaders
or members of the orchestra, dating back over a
period of two hundred years. For centuries in
this particular grand duchy music and the thea-
tre, supported and guided by the sovereign,
have offered a school of entertainment and in-
struction to the people. At this present writ-
ing, special trains are run to Schwerin from the
surrounding country districts, and the people
for miles around subscribe for their seats for the
whole winter, and attend the theatre and cer-
tain concerts as regularly as children go to

GERMAN PROBLEMS 465

school. It sounds oddly to the ears of an Ameri-
can to hear criticism to the effect, that there are
more high-class music and more classical plays
than the people have either time or money for.
Here is a population which is actually over-
indulging in culture. We complain of too little;
here they complain of too much. It makes one
wonder whether any of the problems of social
life are satisfactorily soluble; whether indeed it
be not true that even the virtues carried to an
extreme do not become vices. Philanthropy in
more than one city in America is spending time,
money, and energy to bring about this very
enthusiasm for music and the more intellectual
arts which, it is maintained, here in Schwerin at
least, has gone too far.

These problems are not so easy of solution as
the ignorant and the inexperienced think. Im-
agine the inhabitants of Hoboken, New Jersey ;
of Lynn, Massachusetts; of Kalamazoo, Mich-
igan; of Bloody Gulch, Idaho, spending too
much time and money listening to the music of
Palestrina and Bach, or to the plays of Shake-
speare; and yet what money and energy would
not be spent by certain enthusiasts for the arts
did they think such a result possible! And,
after all, it might prove not a blessing, but a
danger.

466 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Whenever or wherever you are in the company
of Germans you notice their pleasure and their
keen interest in the subjective, rather than
in the objective side of life. It is from within
out that they are stirred, not as we are, by out-
side things working upon us. They are still the
dreaming, drinking, singing, impulsive Germans
of Tacitus. Titus Livius, Plutarch, and Ma-
chiavelli, all maintained that the successive in-
vasions of the Germans into Italy were for the
sake of the wine to be found there. Plutarch
writes that "the Gauls were introduced to the
Italian wine by a Tuscan named Arron, and so
excited w^ere they by the desire for more that,
taking their wives and children with them, they
journeyed across the Alps to conquer the land
of such good vintages, looking upon other coun-
tries as sterile and savage by comparison."
Even if this be not history, it is an impression;
and at any rate, from that day to this the Ger-
mans have agreed with the dictum of Aulus
Gellius: "Prandium autem abstemium, in quo
nihil vini potatur, canium dicitur: quoniam
canis vino caret." When the Roman historian
first came into contact with them he notes, that
their bread was lighter than other bread;, because
"they use the foam from their beer as yeast."
Tacitus writes of them: "The Germans

GERMAN PROBLEMS 467

abound with rude strains of verse, the reciters
of which, in the language of the country, are
called 'Bards.'"

I visited a private stable in Bavaria, as well
ordered and as well kept as any private stable
in America or in England, and the head coach-
man was a reader of poetry; and though he had
received numerous offers of higher wages in the
city, declined them, giving as one reason that
the view from the window of his room could not
be equalled elsewhere! Where can one find a
stable-man in our country who reads Shelley or
Edgar Allan Poe, or who ever heard of Wil-
liam James and Pragmatism? I may be doing
an injustice to the stable-men of Boston, but I
doubt it.

There are scores of pages of notes to my hand,
recounting similar if not such startling examples
of the German temperament among high and
low. Musical, melancholic, gregarious, subjec-
tive, these are their true characteristics, but the
superficial among us do not see these things be-
cause they are hidden behind the great army,
the new navy and mercantile marine, the fac-
tories, the increased commercial values, the
strenuous agricultural and industrial pushing
ahead of the last thirty years. But they are
there, they represent the German temperament,

468 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

they are the internal character of Germania,
always to be taken into account in judging her,
or in wondering why she does this or that, or
why she does it in this or that way.

"As imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."

This is what the purely subjective mind is ever
doing, and when it is carried too far it is insan-
ity. The individual no longer sees things as
they are, but he sees others and himself in
strange, horrible, or ludicrous shapes.

Barring Japan, I suppose Germany yields
more easily to the temptation of the subjective
malady of suicide than any other country. In
Saxony, for example, the rate was lately 39.2 per
100,000 of the population, in England and Wales
7.5. During the five years ending with 1908
there were for every 100 suicides among males in
the United States 136 in Germany, and for ev-
ery 100 suicides of females 125 in Germany. In
Vienna, and for racial purposes this is Germany,
1,558 persons killed themselves in 1912. Chil-
dren committing suicide because they have failed
in their examinations is not uncommon in Ger-
many; in America and in England the teachers

GERMAN PROBLEMS 469

are more likely to succumb than the children.
We do not commit suicide in America from any
sense of shame at our intellectual shortcomings
- what a decimating of the population there
would be if we did ! — it is more apt to be caused
by ill health consequent upon a straining chase
for dollars. In Prussia during the five years,
1902-1907, divorce increased from 17.7 to 20.8
per 100,000 inhabitants, and suicide from 20
to 30.7.

If the observer does not take this difference of
temperament into account, he does not realize
how new and strange it is to find Germany these
days, making its first and strongest impression
upon the outsider by its industrial progress.
The more intelligent men in Germany are be-
ginning to see the dangers to real progress in
such feverish devotion to industry, and to recog-
nize that the life of the population is absorbed
too largely by science, finance, and commerce.
To see so much of the intelligence of the nation
exercising itself in material researches, to see
such undue fervor in calculations of self-inter-
est, does not leave an enlivening impression.
Such an ideal of life is paltry in itself and in-
volves grave dangers in the future. It is a long
stride in the wrong direction since Hegel wrote
of Germany as "the guardian of the sacred fire of
intellect."

470 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Out of this temperament has grown the self-
consciousness, the uneasy vanity, the "touchi-
ness" which has made Germany of late years
the despair of the diplomats all over the world.
She has become a chameleon-like menace to
peace everywhere in the world. What she
wants, what will offend her dignity, when she
will feel hurt, what amount of consideration will
suffice, when she will change color to match a
changed situation, and in what color she will
choose to hide her plans or to make manifest
her demands, no man knows. She will not see
things as they are, but always as an exhalation
from her own mind. As one of her own poets
has written: "Deutschland ist Hamlet."

At this present moment she does not see either
England or America as they are, quite peaceably
disposed toward her but she sees them, and per-
sists in seeing them, as they would be were Ger-
many in their place. She is forever lool^g into
a mirror instead of through the open .window.
"The mailed fist," "the rattling of the sabre,"
"the friend in shining armor," "querelle alle-
mande" are all phrases born in Germany in the
last thirty years.

She even sees herself a little out of focus, and
though I admit her precarious position in the
heart of Europe, she exaggerates the necessity
for her autocratic military government to meet

GERMAN PROBLEMS 471

the situation. That philosophical and literary
radical Lord Morley, now wearing a coronet,
in the land where logic is a foundling and com-
promise a darling, writes: "A weak government
throws power to something which usurps the
name of public opinion, and public opinion as
expressed by the ventriloquists of the news-
papers is at once more capricious and more
vociferous than it ever was." This, strange to
say, is exactly the opinion of the German auto-
crats, who maintain that no democracy can be a
strong military power. It remains for England,
and perhaps later America, to prove her wrong.
The sovereign lady Germania, being of this
temper and disposition, of this psychological
make-up, let us look at her dealings with cer-
tain embarrassing problems in her own house-
hold. The over-stimulation of ill-regulated
mental activity as the result of regimental edu-
cation is one of the minor problems. Some four-
teen million dollars worth of cheap and nasty
literature is peddled by the agents of certain
publishing houses, and sold all over Germany to
those recently taught to read but not trained to
think; and this, it is to be remembered, is still
a land of low wages, of strict economies, and of
small expenditures on books. For Germany that
is an enormous sum and represents a very wide-

472 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

spread evil. I recognize that it is not only in
Germany, but in France, England, and Amer-
ica, that the ethically hysterical have assumed
that modesty and health and common-sense are
characteristics of the intellectually mediocre.
That the neglect of all, and the breaking of some,
of the Ten Commandments is essential to the
creation of art or literature, or necessary to a
courageous freedom of living, is a contention
with which I agree less and less the more I know
of art, literature, and life. But, as I have re-
marked elsewhere in this volume, the Strind-
bergs and Wildes and Gorkis are having their
day in Germany just now, and beneath this
again is this large distribution of the lawless and
sooty literature, frankly intended as a debauch
for the gutter-snipe and his consort. Even the
coarse, and in no line squeamish, Rabelais wrote
that, "Science sans conscience n'est que ruine
de Fame."

There is but a puny barrier against this, for
the statistical year-book of German cities gives
the number of public libraries in forty-two cities
as 179. Twenty-seven of these cities gave an
annual support to 114 of these libraries of only
$64,847! According to the figures of Herr
Ernest Schultze, in 1907 the forty largest Ger-
man cities, with a population of 11,380,000, had

GERMAN PROBLEMS 473

public libraries containing a sum total of 807,-
000 volumes. In the year 1906-1907, 5,437,000
volumes were taken out and 1,607,476 persons
frequented the public reading-rooms, and in these
forty-two cities $280,095 were contributed from
private sources for such library purposes. In
1910 Germany had in some 400 cities, each of
more than 10,000 inhabitants, about 650 public
libraries and reading-rooms, with together about
3,250,000 volumes.

Berlin has thirty public libraries with 231,300
volumes; the number of books taken out in 1910
was 1,655,000. Hamburg has one public li-
brary with 100,000 volumes, of which 1,364,000
were taken out. Breslau has 7 libraries and 4
reading-rooms, with 75,578 volumes. Leipzig
has 7 libraries and 3 reading-rooms, with 42,100
volumes. Munich has 6 libraries and 26,671
volumes. Cologne has 7 libraries and 6 reading-
rooms, with 24,898 volumes.

The smallest library is in the village commu-
nity of Dudweiler, in the Rhine province, which
contains 132 volumes for the 22,000 inhabitants.

There were 14,941 books published in Ger-
many in 1880, 18,875 in 1890, 24,792 in 1900,
and 31,281 in 1910.

There were 13,470 books published in America
in 1910, 9,209 of them by American authors.

474 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

There were 10,914 books published in Eng-
land in 1911, of which 2,384 were new editions.
Of this number 2,215, wrhich includes 933 new
editions and 40 translations, were fiction; re-
ligion, 930; sociology, 725; science, 650; geog-
raphy, 601; biography, 476; history, 429; tech-
nology, 525. In 1820, there were only 26 novels
published in England.

Of the 31,281 books published in Germany in
1910, 4,852 dealt with education and juvenile lit-
erature; 4,134, belles-lettres; 3,215, law and polit-
/ical economy; 2,510, theology; 2,082, commerce
and industry; 1,981, medicine; 1,884, philology
and literary history; 1,480, geography, includ-
ing maps; 667, military science and equestry;
1,030, agriculture and forestry; 1,750, natural
science and mathematics; 1,108, engineering
and construction; 1,254, history and biography;
981, art; and 668 on philosophy and theosophy.

There were some 9,000 writers of books in
America in 1910, or one author in 10,000 of the
population, already more than enough; there
were some 8,000 in Great Britain, or one author
in about 5,500 of the population; while in Ger-
many there are over 31,000 writers, or one author
in every 2,097 of the population, including men,
women, and children of all ages, an unreason-
able and disastrous proportion. If we estimate

GERMAN PROBLEMS 475

the number of adult males of Germany at 14,000,-
000, the number who voted at the last election,
then there was one author to every 450, a most
unhealthy proportion, and bearing out exactly
what has been said of the German temperament
and constitutional bias. Furthermore, this ac-
counts for the fact that Germany imports some
700,000 agricultural laborers each year to garner
the food harvests, for which she has not sufficient
recruits, and who, by the way, take out of the
country each year some $35,000,000 in wages.
Twenty per cent, of the miners in Westphalia
are foreigners, eight per cent, of them Italians,
and there are nearly half a million foreigners
employed as common laborers in the various in-
dustries of Germany.

Wherever one travels now in the world, he
finds that most courageous and self-sacrificing
of all the pioneers, the missionary: American,
British, French, Italian. The best of them, on
the plains of North America, in the destructive
climate of India, in China, in all the islands of all
the seas, are, whatever their creed, soldiers of
whom we are all proud; for they fight not only
against the overwhelming prejudice of those
whom they seek to save, but against the wide-
spread prejudice of their own people, and against
the well-founded suspicion and contempt aroused

476 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

by their own black sheep. I have found them,
here a Jesuit, there a Presbyterian, winning my
friendship and my admiration, despite funda-
mental differences of belief about many things.
There are few Germans among them! Even
in this field Germany produces theological
controversialists whom we have all studied,
orthodox and destructive, but few pioneers,
and practically no Augustines or Loyolas, Wes-
leys or Booths, Livingstones or Stanleys. Co-
lumba, an Irish refugee, founded on the island
of lona, off the west coast of Scotland, a
mission station, whence went missionaries and
preachers to the conversion not only of England,
but of the tribes of Germany. It was only in
the sixth century that the Franks, only in the
ninth century that the Saxons, and only in the
tenth century that the Danes became Christians.

Neither at home nor abroad are her successes
those which deal with men by winning their
allegiance, their submission, their loyalty, or
their respectful regard. She is pre-eminent in
the things of the mind, in subjective matters,
and in her regimental dealings with, and ar-
rangements for, the inanimate side of life.

As an example on the credit side of her govern-
ing is the very complete and successful system
of land-banks, introduced by Frederick the

GERMAN PROBLEMS 477

Great and since modelled somewhat upon the
French methods, which have protected the
farmer from usury, insured him money at low
rates for improvements, for the purchase of tools,
cattle, and fertilizers, and enabled him to do, by
sensible co-operation, what would have been im-
possible for him as an individual. So successful
has been this co-operation between the banks
and the united farming communities that it
were well worth a chapter of description were
it not that, through the initiative of President
Taft and the able and industrious assistance of
our officials in Europe, among whom our am-
bassador in Paris, Mr. Herrick, may be men-
tioned as untiring, there will shortly appear a
complete exposition and explanation of the
scheme, available for those of my countrymen
interested in the matter. Or if they will journey
to Ireland they may see there what Sir Horace
Plunkett has done to revolutionize, and against
tremendous odds, agriculture. And, be it noted,
it has been done, with emphatic warnings
against the modern fallacy of leaning upon state
aid. It is estimated that our farmers would
be saved between $20,000,000 and $40,000,-
000 a year in interest alone were we to adopt
similar methods of loaning to the land-owners.
The Preussische Centralgenossenschaftskasse. or

478 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Central Bank of Co-operative Associations, has
revolutionized, one may here use the word with-
out exaggeration, agricultural methods, through-
out Prussia and Germany.

In Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa there are
5,000,000 acres of land in wheat, which is prac-
tically the size of Germany's wheat acreage, but
Germany produces 140,000,000 bushels of wheat
off her parcel of land; while the wheat raised

^ the same area in these three States is only
55,000,000 bushels.

France and Minnesota each plant 16,000,000
acres in wheat, but France produces 324,000,000
bushels and Minnesota 188,000,000 bushels. In
round numbers we support 90,000,000 people
on 3,000,000 square miles of land, and we could
support 150 per square mile just as easily as 30,
and even then there would be not even a frac-
tion of the density of population of Denmark,
178; the Netherlands, 470; France, 189; Saxony,
830; England and Wales, 405.6. The average
wheat yield of our country is about 14 bushels
per acre in good years, it might just as well
be 25; the average cotton yield is about four-
tenths of a bale per acre, and four times that
amount could be raised as easily.

In 1900, 10,500,000 people were engaged in
agriculture in America, or 35.7 per cent, of the

GERMAN PROBLEMS 479

population; as over against 37.7 in 1890 and
44.3 in 1880. Of these 10,500,000, 5,700,000
were owners, renters, or overseers, or 56 per
cent., and only 4,500,000 were actual farm la-
borers; and more than half of these, or 2,350,000,
were members of the family, leaving only some
2,000,000 actual agricultural wage-earners, or
employable agricultural laborers. Five-eighths
of these were under twenty-five years of age,
and of the white regular workers only one-tenth
were over thirty-five years of age. This shows
how unstable is the foundation of our agricult-
ural prosperity, the chief asset of plenty and
contentment of our country. Mr. Get-Rich-
Quick has moved on to the shifting and more
exciting opportunities of the cities, where poor
human nature, aided and abetted by weak phi-
lanthropy, and demagogic fishing for votes by
eleemosynary legislation, provides him with a
mild form of riotous living, and a fatted calf of
doles in case of accident, sickness, penury, or
old age.

In our American cities of over 8,000 inhabi-
tants the increase in population from 1790 to
1 900 has been from 3.4 per cent, to 33 per cent.
In cities of 2,500 and over the increase from
1880 to 1900 has been from 29.3 per cent, to
40.2 per cent. In the State of New York the
farming population is smaller than ever before,

480 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

and in parts of New England it is smaller than
one hundred years ago. In 1909 there were
15,000 deserted farms with a total of 1,130,000
acres. The average size of farms in the United
States in 1850 was 212 acres; in 1890, 121 acres.
Wages in the reaping season on fruit, grain, and
cotton farms are enormous, running to four and
five dollars a day. We are behind every coun-
try in Europe except Russia, in our agricultural
methods. Some day the American people will
discover, may it not be too late, that the tall
talk and highfalutin boastings of the politicians
and alien journalists in their midst do nothing
to make two blades of grass grow where one grew
before.

Germany may not have solved this problem,
indeed no nation which offers undue legislative
alleviation for human frailty will ever solve it,
but at least she has not shirked the problem,
and presents for our enlightenment a scheme in
full and smooth working order.

In dealing with German problems it is fair
to give examples where her methods have been
wholly and entirely successful. The man who
does not know one tree or shrub from another
cannot travel in trains, motor-cars, or afoot
without remarking the neatness, symmetry, and
the flourishing condition of the forests. In
these matters Germany so far surpasses us that

GERMAN PROBLEMS 481

we may be said to be merely in a kindergarten
stage of development. As early as 1783 a Ger-
man traveller, Johann David Schoepf, was dis-
tressed to see the waste of valuable wood in
America. He tells of a furnace in New Jersey
which exhausted a forest of nearly 20,000 acres
in twelve to fifteen years, and goes on to proph-
esy the grave danger to America unless coal is
discovered and used instead of wood.

The public forests in America contain about
nine per cent, of the total land area and about
twenty-five per cent, of the forest area of the
country. In Germany the state owns about
40 per cent, of the forests, and nearly 70 per cent,
of the forest area is under state control. The
total forest area of the empire is 34,569,800
acres, and two-thirds bear pine, larch, and red
and white fir. In a recent year the Federal
States made a net profit of $38,250,000 from
public lands and forests, and the entire profit
from the German forests was estimated at $110,-
000,000. When one remembers that Germany
is less than the size of Texas, and that from her
forests alone, in one year, she received an income
equal to more than one-tenth of our total na-
tional expenditure for that same year, the fact
of our childish wastefulness is brought home to
us, and makes a patriot feel that a Gifford
Plnohot should be given a free hand, I can

482 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

only write of the subject as one technically
entirely ignorant, but that Germany is a uni-
versity of forestry is not only attested by the
demand for her teachers in India, and in Amer-
ica, and elsewhere in the world, but by the con-
dition of the forests themselves all over Ger-
many, which no traveller, from America at any
rate, can fail to notice without surprise and
delight.

Germany, like the rest of us, has been obliged
to face the various social problems that arise
from original sin, but which vote-getters are
pleased to ascribe to industrial progress. In
our country, with a population of some thirty
to the square mile, while in the kingdom of
Saxony the density of the population is 830.6 to
the square mile, it is hard to believe that we
suffer from overcrowding so much as from over-
indulgence, wastefulness, and fussy legislation.
None the less, we have 42 institutions for the
feeble-minded, 115 schools and homes for the
deaf and blind, 350 hospitals for the insane,
1,200 refuge houses, 1,300 prisons, 1,500 hos-
pitals, and 2,500 almshouses. We have 2,000,-
000 annually who are cared for in homes and
hospitals, 300,000 insane and feeble-minded,
160,000 blind or deaf, 80,000 prisoners, and 100,-
000 paupers in almshouses and out, and we
spend each year about $100,000,000 in taking

GERMAN PROBLEMS 483

care of them. We are as wasteful and careless
in these matters as we have been until very
lately in our forestry methods.

In the early days of the empire Germany
undertook to deal with these social problems.
The German Empire took over some of the prin-
ciples of socialism, but retained, and retains ab-
solutely, the power of applying those principles.
Bismarck himself admitted that his advocacy of
the industrial insurance laws was selfish. "My
idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I
say to win them over, to regard the state as a
social institution existing for their sake and in-
terested in their welfare." Whatever else may
have resulted, discontent, whether well-founded
or not, is not now under discussion, has not been
lessened. In 1912 more than one-half of the
electors voted "discontented" as over against
the less than one-half who voted "contented."
The mass of the people may be better clothed,
better fed, better housed, better cared for in
sickness and in old age, than formerly, but they
are not satisfied. No state can go much fur-
ther than Germany has gone along the lines of
state interference, guidance, and control of the
personal affairs of its people, and nothing is more
surprising about the whole matter than the gen-
eral acceptance in America and in England of
such legislation as having proved altogether

484 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

successful. I doubt if any intelligent German
considers these various pension schemes as alto-
gether successful. I can vouch for it that many
German statesmen make no such claims in pri-
vate, whatever they may say in public.

Some of the barren figures, needing no com-
ment, are of interest in this connection. The
cost of insurance in Germany has risen to over
$500,000 a day, the total cost of state insurance
exceeding $250,000,000 a year at the present
time, a fairly heavy tax upon small employers.
In 1909, of 422,076 decisions by the industrial
unions, 76,352 were appealed against, and of the
100,000 arbitration judgments, 22,794 were ap-
pealed against. So difficult is it to settle to
the claimant's satisfaction the amount of salve
necessary for his particular wound when, as is
true in these cases, the salve is a grant of money
for a longer or shorter period!

In 1886 there were, roughly, 100,000 accidents
reported and 10,000 compensated, but as they
became more thoroughly acquainted with the
game, the figures rose in 1908 to 662,321 acci-
dents and 142,965 compensations.

The vast increase of the claims for trifling
injuries is shown by the fact that in twenty
years from 1888 to 1908, despite the increase of
the total compensation from $-1,475,000 to $38,-
715,000, the average compensation per accident

GERMAN PROBLEMS 485

fell from $58.50 to $38.83. In the two years 1907
to 1909 the number of members of those state-
insured increased by 380,819, while the days
of sickness increased by 26,219,632! The cost of
sickness insurance alone rose from $42,895,000
in 1900 to $83,640,000 in 1909. The Workmen's
Compensation Act in England costs, for man-
agement, commission, legal and medical fees,
$20,000,000 a year, while the compensation paid
out was $13,500,000. The insurance companies
calculate that for every $500 of compensation,
the employers have paid $750!

It is becoming increasingly evident that the
logical result of state charity, or call it state
insurance to avoid controversy, over a large
field, and including millions of beneficiaries and
claimants, is that the army of officials, the
expenses of administration, and the payments
themselves must sooner or later break the back
of the state morally, politically, and financially.
It rapidly increases parasitism among the re-
ceivers; makes a powerful though indifferent
army of state servants of the distributers; and
loses financially to the state far more in expense
of administration, and loss of useful labor of
the army of civil servants, than it gains by the
loss to the state of individual incapacity re-
sulting in pauperism and invalidism, which
must be cared for. To put it briefly, it is far

486 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

more dangerous to the state to tell the individ-
ual that he shall be taken care of than to tell
him that he must shift for himself. As for the
effect upon the individual, it is a lowering medi-
cine, making the patient gradually dependent
upon the drug, and bringing him finally to the
incurable invalidism of surly apathy. To change
Patrick Henry's fiery peroration slightly: Give
me liberty or in the end you give me moral and
political death.

Students of the various forms of this modern
political nostrum, of getting rid of the fools who
are rich by deceiving the fools who are poor, will
remember the decree of the Provisional Govern-
ment of the French Republic in 1848: "This
Government undertakes to guarantee the exist-
ence of the workman by work. It undertakes
to guarantee work to every citizen." On
March 9 public works were started and 3,000
men employed. March 15 saw 14,000 on the
pay-rolls, most of them unoccupied because there
was no suitable work. Those not working re-
ceived "inactivity pay" of a franc a day. The
end of April saw 100,000 on the pay-rolls. In
May a minister ventured to suggest that it was
the workman's duty to work! There were mur-
murs of disapproval, but the public treasury
was nearing bankruptcy, and on June 22 an
order was promulgated, that all of these work

GERMAN PROBLEMS 487

men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-
five were to enlist in the army. An insurrec-
tion followed this order that workmen should
work, and 3,000 citizens were shot down in the
streets, and another 3,000 were sent to penal
colonies in Algeria. The French are a logical
people. The state promised suitable work; that
always means, from the point of view of the
worker, agreeable work, and not too fatiguing at
that. Of course, no such thing is possible, and
the end was riot, murder, and penal servitude.
The state can no more provide suitable and
agreeable methods of livelihood for its citizens,
than it can provide them with a duty-loving,
unenvious, and honest disposition. As I have
remarked elsewhere, the only thing that stands
between state socialism and the instant solution
of all our social problems is human nature!
This mongrel demand for an artificial equality,
is worse, because more degrading than any
tyranny of church or state even. Every man
wants superiority and distinction for himself,
he only wants equality, invisibility, and inarticu-
lateness for others.

When some such system as this is put to work
in Ireland, I shall envy every physician in Ire-
land, for he will live in a joyous round of farces
such as the world has never provided before for
the lovers of the humorous. Already Ireland,

488 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

with only 701,620 electors, out of a total of
8,058,025 in the United Kingdom, is represented
in the House of Commons by 103 members out
of the total of 670; and out of the 935,000 old-
age pensioners on the lists at the beginning of
1912, Ireland had 202,810, and was drawing
$12,943,000 out of the total paid of $59,445,500,
while the total population of Ireland was 4,368,-
599, and of the rest of the United Kingdom
40,533,557 ! Further, as an example of the slight
value of education in the game of politics, out
of the 41,710 illiterate voters in the United
Kingdom, Ireland has 22,515. Long life to Ire-
land for her gallant attack upon humbuggery
with humbuggery! And this is, too, the little
island that sent the Wellesleys, the Pallisers,
the Moores, the Eyres, the Cootes, the Xapiers,
the Wolseleys, and Roberts to fight England's
battles, and half the officers and privates who
conquered India ; which in the Seven Years' War
furnished Austria with her best generals (Brown,
Lacy, O'Donnell), and whose exiles, called the
' Wild Geese," flocked to the standard of Wash-
ington in 1776. This is proof positive that they
are not naturally a parasitic race.

Even in Germany, where there is not a tithe
of the impish humour that exists in Ireland, the
Socialists have so misused the immense bureau-
cracy that must carry on the mere clerical work

GERMAN PROBLEMS 489

of insurance, that a new law passed the Reichs-
tag in June, 1911, containing several hundred
amendments. Employers must now pay one-
half instead of one-third of the sickness insurance
premiums, which gives them one-half instead
of one-third of the management authority.

The management had degenerated into a mere
game of politics, with the Socialists in such dis-
proportionate control that they were rapidly
turning the insurance machinery into at well-
organized body for the exploitation of their own
political doctrines; and the employer and the
state were helpless. It is, therefore, amusing
to the man on the spot to find certain English
writers offering as proof of the success of the
insurance laws the fact that the Socialists, who
once opposed, are now satisfied with them. Of
course they are satisfied with them. They have
had a war-chest and weapons put into their
hands such as they have never had before. Nor
have these detailed parchment solutions of so-
cial questions done away with all the tramps,
poor, sick, and destitute. Over a million per-
sons passed through the municipal night shel-
ters in Berlin during the last year; and there
are still admittedly some 5,000 tramps in Ger-
many. The vicious circle is in evidence in Ger-
many as elsewhere. It might be possible to

490 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

regulate men's earning power by legislation, but
even when this colossal task is done, there must
follow the regulation of the spending power to
make it complete. What conceivable legislative
regulation can efface the difference between
what A, B, and C will get out of five dollars once
they have them! That is the real problem, but
no one proposes a solution of it. A will use his
five dollars to make him more powerful, B will
use his in dissipation, and C will lose his. How
is that to be regulated? And without that regu-
lation you will have rich men and tramps all
over again.

In urban and rural districts containing over
10,000 inhabitants, some $40,000,000 was ex-
pended for sick and poor relief, and this does
not include the hundreds of districts with fewer
than 10,000 inhabitants for which there are no
figures. Even the wholly admirable Elberfeld
system of charity, known all over the world to
charity-workers, which is, briefly, investigation
of cases by voluntary workers personally and
privately, and each dealing with a small num-
ber, has not solved the problem. There were
1,537 strikes in Germany in 1909, and 2,109 in
1910. In 1910, 8,269 industrial plants were af-
fected, in which 372,119 persons were employed,
and 2,209 plants were obliged to shut down

GERMAN PROBLEMS 491

entirely. There were as many as 154,093 persons
on strike at the same time. In 1910 there were
also 1,121 lock-outs, affecting 10,381 plants and
314,988 persons.

Here again, as in the case of the tempera-
ment of the German people, one must look
deeper than the average traveller has the time
or the necessary experience back of him to do,
in order to see and to sift the facts. Scores of
travellers have told me: "I have never seen a
tramp, a beggar, a drunken man in Germany."
I can only reply that I have seen tramps at
large, and colonies of them besides; that I have
seen hundreds of the poverty-stricken and dis-
eased; that there are more than thirty drunkards'
homes in Germany; and that between 1879 and
1901 the number of persons under treatment for
alcoholism had increased from 12,000 to 65,000,
an increase of 500 per cent.; the cases of heart
disease and rheumatism increased by 600 per
cent.; while the total population had increased
33 per cent. There are 125,000 patients ad-
mitted to the public and private lunatic asy-
lums of Germany, and there are accommoda-
tions in public and private hospitals for 1,300,000
in-patients passing through them in the year;
in 1909, 544,183 persons were tried before the
courts of first instance and convicted, of whom

492 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

49,697 were between twelve and eighteen years
of age; and in the same year there were 183,700
illegitimate births and 14,225 suicides, or 22.3
per 100,000 of the population. The poor law
authorities state that the cost to the empire of
alcoholism in all its forms of poverty, crime, and
disease amounts to some $13,000,000 a year. In
1910 Germany consumed 1,704 million gallons
of malt liquors, the United States, 1,851 million
gallons; of beer we consumed 20.09 gallons and
Germany 26.47 gallons per capita. Germany's
drink bill even ten years ago was $560,000,000
for beer, $140,000,000 for spirits, and $125,-
000,000 for wine. There is a wine, beer, or
spirit dealer in Berlin for every 157 of the in-
habitants, men, women, and children. It has
always been the avowed policy of autocracies
to atone for the lack of political freedom by lax
regulations in regard to moral matters. The
citizen is imprisoned for insulting the state, but
he may insult his own person by dissipation up
to any limit, this side of disorderliness in public.
Drinking, gambling, and other forms of vice are
provided for the citizens of Berlin comfortably
and, comparatively speaking, cheaply. Lotter-
ies are sanctioned by all the states, and they use
this incentive to the worst form of gambling
for all sorts of purposes, from repairing churches

GERMAN PROBLEMS 493

to building patriotic monuments, and replenish-
ing the treasury.

This is by no means an attack upon Germany
or upon German methods in these matters;
probably both in America and in England we
are worse off in these respects than are they, but
unprejudiced people will agree that it is high
time to learn that not even German methods
have solved these complicated and heatedly
argued questions of social reform. Germany,
due to its compactness and well-drilled and sub-
servient population, should succeed if any na-
tion can, for social legislation has never been
in stronger or wiser hands or more admirably
and honestly administered. In America such
opportunities offered to the on-politics-living big
and little bosses would lead swiftly to anarchy.
We have laws enough now, but the baser poli-
ticians protect our city tramps, our gunmen, our
decadents, our incendiaries against our elected
magistrates, in order that they may keep ready
to hand, and increase, the raw material of a pur-
chasable vote, by the domination and protection
of which they keep themselves in power. That
is the whole secret of our municipal misgovern-
ment wherever it exists, and also the reason for
our barbarous crimes. We have a cowed mag-
istracy seeking re-election from the manipulat-
ors of the purchasable voters.

The truth is that the Sacculina method of
social reform is nowhere a success, certainly not
in Germany. The Sacculina is a crustacean.
It attaches itself in the form of a simple sac to
the crab, into which its blood-vessels extend. It
loses its power of locomotion and its limbs dis-
appear. It lives at the expense of the crab;
activity is not necessary, and it becomes the
highest type of parasite, with no organs except
ovaries and blood-vessels. It can propagate,
but has lost all power or desire to do anything
else. We have succeeded in producing no small
number of people of the Sacculina type by play-
ing social and political crab for them, and we
are on the way to produce more, until the crab
is exhausted and the Sacculina is shaken into
the water to sink or swim for himself. "Char-
ity causes half the suffering she relieves, but
she can never relieve half the suffering she
causes."

Compulsory insurance was tried in the prac-
tical and economical Swiss city of Basle and
given up, because it was found that each year it
was the same small class who reaped the benefit
of the insurance. The crab gained nothing and
the Sacculina became rapidly impotent. Basle,
if I mistake not, will have imitators, inclined to
the philosophy of Frederick the Great, who was
surely no enemy to rational progress, but who

GERMAN PROBLEMS 495

once said: "Depuis bien longtemps je suis con-
vaincu qu'un mal qui reste vaut mieux qu'un
bien qui change."

A good deal of modern legislation is due to
fatigue, and some of the rest to ill-founded ap-
prehension, that unless there is a change of some
kind the masters of the legislators will dis-
charge them, because they do not furnish enough
novelties. In the meantime nobody is bold
enough to proclaim to the restless ones, seeking
ever some new thing, that there is nothing orig-
inal except what has been forgotten. The orig-
inality of such students of history, and panderers
to majorities, as the leaders of the discontented
in England, Germany and in America, dates
back to about the time of the fall of Pericles and
the Athenian republic.

The cry of "discontent" has become a fe-
tich among unthinking politicians. We are all,
thank God, discontented, and a poor lot we
should be if we were not. The workingman's
discontent has been over-emphasized, for the
reason that what he demands is material, pon-
derable, for sale, easy to see, and not far out of
the reach of one's hand. He wants more rooms,
more meat, more tobacco, more beer, more lei-
sure. I am glad he does want them, and let me
say just once, in answer to my detractors along

496 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

these lines, that the workingman has no heartier
champion than am I. I applaud his discontent
just as I cherish my own, for "it is precisely this
that keeps us all alive!" It is just because I
wish him well that every ounce of my influence
and experience are his, to open his eyes to the
demagogues who fatten upon him, fool him,
rope him, throw him and brand him, as they
have done in Germany, as they are attempting
to do in England, and as they will shortly begin
to do in America. State socialism means slavery
for him, with an army of officials living on him.
He will be given so much bread, and beer, and
meat, and tobacco; so much music, theatre, and
literature; and there will grow up an army
whose business it will be to keep him in order,
and to cut him down if he revolts, as was done
by the police in one of the suburbs of Berlin not
long ago. The German workman is already so
entangled in the ropes of insurance, so harried
by petty officials, so branded by the police, and
he has permitted to increase such a host of guar-
dians, that revolt or revolution is practically im-
possible. Counting the army, navy, and offi-
cials, there are said to be three million officials,
great and small in Germany; and there are four-
teen million electors, or, roughly, one policeman
to every five adults. And those three million

GERMAN PROBLEMS 497

policemen, armed with lethal and legal weapons,
are inflexibly and unalterably for no change.
Does the workingman ever stop to think that
those officials draw salaries amounting to some-
thing like $1,200,000,000 a year, and is he still
fool enough to think that he does not pay those
salaries to these slave-drivers ! I have said that
the population is well fed, well clothed, and well
looked after. Of course they are. No slave-
owner so maltreats his slaves that they cannot
work for him! But is man fed by bread alone,
even in the sugared form of music and the-
atricals?

If the socialist Pygmalion ever succeeds in
bringing his statue to life, how she will scorn
him, hate his suffocating environment, wish for
the wealth and softness he cannot give, desert
him, begging to return to her marble tomb
again.

Long life to discontent, say I; but is the
workingman such a fool that his eyes are not
opened when a man of Bismarck's way of think-
ing, when an autocrat like the Emperor have
favored state socialism! Does he not see that
socialism is the neatest hangman of them all
to strangle his discontent! Does he not see
the demagogue gradually assuming the features
and the powers of the tyrant! Tyranny is not

498 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

alone the prerogative of an aristocracy. "It is
the place of a court to make its servants insig-
nificant. If the people should fall into the same
humor, and should choose their servants on
the same principles of mere obsequiousness and
flexibility, and total vacancy and indifference
of opinion in all public matters, then no party
of the state will be sound, and it will be vain to
think of saving it." Thus writes Burke, the
champion of our American revolt against his
own country. The electors, now so flattered by
the smooth phrases of their tyrants disguised
as liberators, will one day be aghast to find
themselves in a veritable house of correction
paid for from their own savings. They will
have learnt then, at last, that you cannot get
rid of the fools who are rich by deceiving the
fools who are poor; and corporalism will be
found to be a harsher, fussier, a more meddle-
some and a more indifferent tyrant than even
feudalism.

Even at the Krupp works at Essen, and the
various branches elsewhere, where there is the
most elaborate combination of Lady Bountiful
and successful business anywhere in the world,
men are not satisfied. If they are not contented
there, then nowhere in this world will the work-
ingman be contented. The Krupp business

GERMAN PROBLEMS 499

employs some 70,000 persons. In the partic-
ular Essen works, for a hundred years, there
has never been a strike, though others of their
employees elsewhere have used the strike.
Though the Cadburys and Levers and Taylors,
in England, the Armours, the United States Steel
Corporation, the National Cash Register Com-
pany, the Procter and Gamble Company, the
General Electric Company, and others in Amer-
ica, and the famous and successful adoption of
co-operation in Monsieur Godin's iron foundry
at Guise, in France, have worked along the lines
of recognition of their workmen's right to partici-
pate in the profits, there is nothing on such an
elaborate scale as at Essen, under the regime of
the Krupps.

From 1904 to 1910 the Krupps spent, for bene-
ficial institutions of all kinds, $14,250,000, or 56
per cent, of the dividends during that time. I
have passed many hours at Essen, and seen
thoroughly, from cellar to attic, this truly noble
institution for the comfortable and safe guar-
dianship of men, women, and children who are
at the same time factors in a huge and success-
ful industrial enterprise. There are schools,
technical schools, hospitals, convalescent homes,
a library with 71,000 volumes, theatre, orches-
tra, band, lectures, concerts, pension and insur-

500 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ance funds, lodgings for bachelors, tenements
and dwellings for married people, separate cot-
tages for widows and widowers too old for work,
and every opportunity, with a high rate of inter-
est, for saving. There is in existence a co-oper-
ative store, as well managed as the co-operative
stores at Tuxedo Park, and with much the same
system of rebates. There are bathing facilities,
gymnasium, a boat club, a system of providing
hot meals from a central kitchen, reading-rooms
and smoking-rooms. There is invested, not in-
cluding the value of the land, which has risen
enormously in value, over $12,500,000 in houses
for the working-people, the return on the money
being about 2% per cent. It would require
volumes — indeed, two bulky volumes were issued
last year by the company to celebrate the hun-
dredth anniversary of the foundation of the
Krupp works — to describe merely the machinery
for making the people comfortable.

In 1851 the Krupps exhibited at the exposition
in London the first cannon made of cast steel;
now they turn out more shells and shrapnel in
a week than were used at the whole battle of
Koniggratz (Sadowa), which lasted from eight
o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the
afternoon on July 3, 1866. The queen of this,
the greatest factory of destructive agencies in

GERMAN PROBLEMS 501

the world, is a gentle Madonna-faced lady who
might well pose for a statue of peace, and whose
loveliness is a mirror of the countless and un-
tiring benefactions with which the people who
work here are surrounded. Both the powers
and the people of Germany may well be proud
of the Krupps, for if sane beneficence were to be
raised to the rank of statehood this great col-
ony would well deserve the honor. The gross
profits for the last year were $9,000,000, half
of which was written off and the rest devoted
to the reserve, to dividends, and to contribu-
tions to the invalid and pension funds of the
employees, which now amount to $9,500,000.
The employees also have on deposit with the
management $8,700,000. The contribution of
the Krupps to the workmen's state-insurance
fund amounted, in 1910, to $1,320,000. The
Krupp family is rich, but what would their
wealth have been had they practised the gob-
bling and juggling financial methods of - — ;
but I will not pillory my own countrymen by
name, for, after all, our political methods have
made them, and not they themselves.

The German manufacturer has been at a dis-
advantage, too, for several reasons, and this may
well be noted as one of Germany's problems.
She has not the deposits of coal that have made

502 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

England rich, nor the wonderful soil of America,
from which alone we take $9,000,000,000 every
year, nor France's population, now at a stand-
still, and which can feed itself off its own soil.
She has been a large borrower of capital to
finance her enormous expansion of industry and
commerce, and, above all, the gold supply of the
world, which in the last resort is the foundation
of credit, is not in her hands, nor can it be so
long as British and American fleets keep the
ocean highways over which that gold travels.

The world's gold output in 1911 was $493,-
100,000; of this $177,600,000 came from the
Transvaal; $100,350,000 from the United States;
$63,600,000 from Australia; $42,300,000 from
Russia; $23,300,000 from Mexico; $35,600,000
from Rhodesia, India, and Canada; and $15,-
650,000 from Central and South America, or
$458,000,000, of the total output of $493,100,000,
from countries which in time of war would be
unlikely to ship gold to Germany. More than
one half the output comes from the British Em-
pire alone. To those who are satisfied with the
easy answer to the reason for the increased cost
of living, that the output of gold has increased,
it must be puzzling to learn that of the total out-
put, in round numbers, of $500,000,000, $150,-
000,000 is used in the arts and manufactures

GERMAN PROBLEMS 503

and $150,000,000 goes to India, where it is
buried and hoarded, and $100,000,000 is re-
tained in the United States for currency and
other purposes. In spite of the fact that the
gold output of the world doubled between 1890
and 1897, and nearly doubled again between
1897 and 1911, money is dear, and is likely to be
so long as present conditions last.

The reason for the higher cost of living is to
be found in the movement of the population,
from the dulness of the plough to the sprightli-
ness of the cinematograph. This choice every
freeman has a right to make for himself, but the
trouble arises when the politician comes forward
and pays his admission to the cinematograph en-
tertainment, out of the public funds, in order to
get his vote. The man who does not leave the
plough under those conditions is either a fool or
a saint, and the percentage of the growth of
cities is a fair measure of their relative numbers.
The increased cost of living is the result, not of
too much gold, but of too little labor on the land,
and this is due, in turn, to the voluptuous rhet-
oric of the political street-walkers, whose prom-
ises of pleasure are as illegitimate as they are
impossible of fulfilment. A debtor nation like
Germany is highly sensitive to these conditions,
and just as she is overcoming, by her splendid

504 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

success as a manufacturing nation this problem,
she is met by increased and ever-increasing ri-
valry. America, in 1901, exported $466,000,-
000 of manufactures; in 1891 only $188,000,000;
but in 1911, $910,000,000; and in 1912, $1,021,-
753,918. We now have in America 225,000
manufacturing plants employing 6,000,000 peo-
ple, with an annual pay-roll of $3,500,000,000
and producing every twelve months $15,000,-
000,000 worth of goods. The total value of ex-
ports and imports of Japan thirty years ago was
$30,000,000, or 87 cents per capita; in 1911 the
figures were $480,000,000, or $10 per capita.
England during the years 1911 and 1912 sur-
passed all previous figures both for exports and
imports. Germany's rivals, it is thus seen, have
not been idle.

The agricultural population of Germany in
1850 was 65 in the 100; it is now less than one
third. In 1911, after a bad year for the farm-
ers, Germany was obliged to pay out some $200,-
000,000 more than usual for food. The total
loans of the German banks on industrial securi-
ties rose from $107,000,000 in 1890 to $632,-
000,000 in 1910, and bankers themselves admit
that Germany has fallen into the error of seek-
ing and accepting credit far beyond the value of
the capital that they have to work with. Still

GERMAN PROBLEMS 505

more dangerous is the fact that 55 per cent, of
the savings-bank moneys of Germany is locked
up in mortgages. In 1907, 217 new companies
were formed in Germany, issuing $62,050,900
in securities; in 1909, 179 new companies issued
$54,929,450 of securities; in 1910, 186 new com-
panies issued $57,437,700 of securities. In 1910,
340 companies increased their capital by $142,-
657,200. In 1910 there were 5,295 companies
in Germany with a nominal capital of $3,680,-
979,400. It is estimated that since 1895 there
has been invested in industrial companies in
Germany $1,200,000,000. It is to be said also
that since 1897 German agricultural produc-
tion has doubled, German industrial production
increased sevenfold, and Germany is said to
have $4,750,000,000 in her savings-banks. The
value of imports for home consumption, exclu-
sive of the precious metals, in 1911 was $2,386,-
200,000 ; the value of the exports of home prod-
uce, exclusive of the precious metals, was
$2,025,450,000. It is a quaint result of her
temperament and her good forestry, that Ger-
many sells $25,000,000 worth of toys a year;
she is veritably the workshop of Santa Claus,
and many more than 25,000,000 children would
bless her did they know.

German financiers affirm that she can stand

506 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

alone financially, while others assert that one
sixth of her capital, I have heard it placed at
one third, is borrowed from France and Eng-
land. It is certain at least that the American
panic of 1907, and the recent war in the Near
East, have seriously embarrassed Germany finan-
cially.

As Germany can only feed, even in good har-
vest years, forty-eight or forty-nine millions of
her people, a large proportion of her profits from
industry must necessarily go to the purchase of
food for the other sixteen or seventeen millions.
The consumption of meat has increased among
all classes in Germany, and both the demands
of the individual and of the state have increased
with the increased wealth of the country. In
Prussia alone the number of those subject to in-
come tax has increased from 2,400,000 in 1892
to 6,200,000 in 1912; but the taxes have in-
creased as well, or from $800,000,000 to $1,675,-
000,000.

In the endeavor to increase the manufact-
uring output and to find new markets German
credit has been stretched to a dangerous tenu-
ity. While the war feeling was at its height
the Kolnische Zeitung, a conservative and able
journal, wrote: "In case of war both France and
Germany will be obliged to borrow; but it is

GERMAN PROBLEMS 507

certain that the credit of Germany cannot as
yet be compared with the credit of France: this
is a strong guarantee of peace."

Wermuth, said by impartial judges to be the
ablest secretary of the treasury the German
Empire has had in a quarter of a century, re-
signed in 1912, on the general ground that he
would not be responsible for the finances of the
empire, if it was proposed to continue the con-
stant increase of national expenditure, by a con-
stant increase of borrowing, and an ever-increas-
ing amount of interest-bearing liabilities. He
must have smiled to himself when an Imperial
issue at four per cent, put out in February, 1913,
was not only not over-subscribed but not even
all taken.

Unlike the French, who invest their savings
small and large in national loans, the Germans
neglect even their own national loans, preferring
the higher returns for their investments from the
innumerable industries launched in modern Ger-
many ; so pronounced is this form of investment,
that a director of the Deutsche Bank has warned
his countrymen, that every month's profits are
no sooner gained than they are put out again in
new enterprises, either by the individuals them-
selves, or by the banks in which they are de-
posited As a result, the liquid capital at the

508 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

disposal of Germany is dangerously out of pro-
portion to her borrowings and her working capi-
tal. It shows a fine confidence in the future,
and it proves what needs no proof: the immense
industrial and commercial progress, and the im-
mense sea-carrying trade of Germany. Ger-
many is like a man with $1,000 in the bank
to check upon, but doing business with $100,000
of borrowed capital, upon which he must pay
interest, and out of which he must take his
running expenses. Such a one has no provi-
sion for a bad year, and must depend upon
more credit in case of trouble; and in the case of
Germany, it may be added, his personal and
family expenses have largely increased. The
German imperial debt had increased during
the first twenty-two years of the present Em-
peror's reign, or from 1888 to 1910, by $1,040,-
000,000, and of that sum some $650,000,000
were added in the ten years from 1900 to 1910,
when Germany was building her fleet.

Between the years 1905 and 1910 the total ex-
port trade of Germany increased by $408,225,-
000, but the whole of the increase was due to the
heavier forms of manufactures: machinery, iron
ware, coal-tar dyes, iron wire, steel rails, and raw
iron. The increasing competition is shown- by
the fact that during those same years her exports

GERMAN PROBLEMS 509

of the finer manufactures, such as cotton and
woollen goods, clothing, gold and silver ware,
porcelain, maps, prints, and the like, actually
decreased by $66,975,000!

I am not maintaining for a moment that these
problems are peculiar to Germany, but merely
that, owing to the rapid progress, they are ag-
gravated, and that to point out Germany as a
model of successful achievement, along these
and other lines, in order to bolster up political
cure-alls at home, is a betrayal of crass ignorance
of the general internal situation of the country,
and once such prejudiced pleaders are found out,
the rebound will go too far the other way. That
were a pity, too, for we have much to learn from
Germany.

The $30,000,000 in gold in the Julius Tower at
Spandau, called the war-chest, and the income
from railroads, forests, and mines, are to be put
down on the other side of the ledger, but as a
year's war, it is calculated, would cost France,
England, or Germany some $2,300,000,000 each,
these sums are of negligible importance.

The Prussian railways cost $2,250,000,000,
and are now valued at twice that sum, and pay
an average of seven per cent, on the invested cap-
ital. Maintenance costs are included in the
total annual expenses, and there is no, so it

510 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

is claimed, actual depreciation. Of the net rev-
enue of $157,330,417 in 1909, about $55,000,000
are transferred to the state revenue, out of
which all charges of the state, including interest
on bonds, are paid. The rest is used for new con-
struction, sinking funds, reserve funds, and so on.

The report of the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission of 1909-1910 states that there are nearly
$19,000,000,000 of railway capital outstanding
in America. There are 240,438 miles of single
track in the United States; 59,000 locomotives,
35,000 for freight, and a total of 2,290,000 cars
of all kinds ; and the railways carried in one year
971,683,000 passengers and 1,850,000,000 tons
of freight. In 1910, 386 persons were killed, but,
what is often forgotten, more than one half the
total accidents were due to stealing rides and
trespassing on the tracks. The railways in the
United States are our largest purchasers by far,
and for every dollar they earn 42 cents is spent
in wages, 26 cents for material, raw or manufact-
ured, before anything is given out for interest
on loans or dividends.

A first-class ticket in Germany is taxed 16 per
cent, on the price of the ticket; a second-class
ticket, 8 per cent. ; a third-class ticket, 4 per cent. ;
the fourth-class ticket, nothing. Crowded and
uncomfortable travelling in Germany is cheap;

GERMAN PROBLEMS 511

comfortable travelling in Germany is very dear
indeed. The herding of people in the fourth-
class carriages in Germany resembles our cattle-
cars rather than transportation for human
beings. Such conditions would not be toler-
ated in America, but against these state-owned
railways there is no redress. No luggage, ex-
cept hand luggage, is carried free. Not once,
but many times in Germany, my first-class
ticket found me no accommodation, and often
in changing from the main line to a branch line
not even a first-class compartment. Shippers in
the coal and iron districts, when I was there,
complained bitterly that there were not enough
freight-cars, that their complaints were smoth-
ered in bureaucratic portfolios, and that private
enterprise in the shape of proposals to build new
lines was disregarded. The tyranny of Prussia
extends even into the railway field. The Oder-
berg-Wien line was built to avoid using the
Saxon state railway lines, was a spite railway in
fact. Here again there was no redress, no one
to appeal to against the autocrat.

In a debate in the Reichstag, in January, 1913,
there was much complaint that the Prussian
government was conducting the railways with
the least possible outlay, thus saving money for
the state, but hampering the industrial interests
of the country. It was stated that there were

512 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

not enough engines or freight-cars, there was an
inadequate staff, and that as a consequence, the
loss to the coal industry had been $11,500,000
and to the coal-miners $3,375,000.

On the state-owned railways of the west of
France the break-down is ludicrously complete,
and the people are staggered by the official es-
timates that it will require at least $100,000,000
to put them in decent running order.

In twenty years the American railways have
practically been rebuilt, with heavier rails, bet-
ter bridges, more permanent stations, and so on;
while twenty years ago it cost a passenger 2.165
cents to travel a mile, to-day it costs him 1.916
cents. We need a lot of bustling about abroad
before we realize how much we have to be grate-
ful for at home!

Probably the most costly and the most trouble-
some of Germany's problems is her conquered
provinces : Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace-
Lorraine, and Poland. Hanover, which was
taken by Prussia and her king deposed, is now-
adays a minor matter of the relations between
courts, individuals, and families, which may be
said to be settled by the arranged marriage be-
tween the Kaiser's charming daughter and the
heir to the Duke of Cumberland, whose ancestors
were kings of Hanover.

The Danes, on the other hand, in the northern

GERMAN PROBLEMS 513

part of these provinces, still resist Prussianiza-
tion. They keep to themselves and their lan-
guage, send their children to school in Den-
mark, and resist all attempts at social and racial
incorporation. They are troublesome, as an in-
dependent and surly daughter-in-law might be
troublesome. Alsace-Lorraine and Posen, on
the contrary, are outspoken and potentially dan-
gerous foes in Germany's own household.

In 1872 Bismarck said: "Alsace-Lorraine will
be placed on an equality with the other German
states, ... so that the people may be induced
to forget, in a comparatively short time, the
trouble and distress of the war and of annexa-
tion." In 1912, a loyal Alsatian German writes:
"Das Elsass, dies jiingstgeborene Kind der
deutschen Volkerfamilie, braucht etwas mehr
Liebe." Forty years of Prussian rule have not ful-
filled the promise of Bismarck. This same Alsa-
tian writer continues : " In short, we are approach-
ing ever nearer to the condition of the citizens of
all the other German States, as Baden, Saxony,
Bavaria, where they are also not always of one
mind with the higher ruling powers."

It is difficult for the American, who, no mat-
ter what particular State he lives in, is first
of all a citizen of the United States, to under-
stand this jealousy and, in some quarters, bitter

514 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

dislike of Prussia. If the State of New York
had sixty million of our ninety million popu-
lation, and if the governor of New York were
also perpetual President of the United States,
commanded the army and navy, controlled the
foreign policy, and appointed the cabinet min-
isters, who were responsible to him alone, we
could get an approximate idea of how the people
of Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Cali-
fornia would feel toward New York. This is a
rough-drawn comparison with the situation in
Germany. If, in addition, we had the Philip-
pine Islands where Maine is, and Cuba where
Texas is, it is easy to recognize the consequent
complications.

We should remember this picture in dealing
with this German problem, which, at any rate,
from the point of view of kindly feeling and suc-
cessful adoption of these foreign peoples into
the German family, has been a dire failure. The
miserable failure of the Germans in Southwest
Africa, their inconclusive war with the Herreros,
and the absolute break-down of Prussian meth-
ods with the natives, is scarcely more typical
than the failure in Alsace-Lorraine and Poland.
The Prussian belief in sand-paper as an emollient
must be by now rudely shaken.

At last a constitution has been given the two

GERMAN PROBLEMS 515

conquered provinces. The governor is to be
advised by a parliament, but the government is
not responsible to the parliament, which is com-
posed of two houses. The upper house has
thirty-six members, eighteen of whom are nom-
inees of the Emperor and eighteen from the
churches, universities, and principal cities. The
lower house is to be elected by popular franchise.
Three years' residence in the same place entitles
a man to a vote, but every voter over thirty-five
years of 'age has two votes, and every voter over
forty -five has three votes.

This, as an American can appreciate, has not
been received with enthusiasm, and their conduct
has been so provoking that the Emperor, during
a recent visit, scolded the people, in an interview
with the mayor of a certain town, and, what
caused great amusement among the enemies of
Prussia, threatened to incorporate them into
Prussia, as had been done with Hanover, if they
were not better behaved. This, of course, was
seized upon as an admission that to be taken
into the Prussian family was of all the hardships
the most dreadful. The socialist journal Vor-
wdrts spoke of Prussia as "that brutal country
which thus openly confesses its dishonor to all
the world." Herr Scheidemann asked in the
Reichstag, if Prussia then acknowledged herself

516 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

to be a sort of house of correction, and "has
Prussia, then, become the German Siberia?" In
1911 the Reichstag gave the provinces three
votes in the Federal Council.

Metz, it is said, is more French than ever, and
thousands troop across the boundaries on the
anniversary of the French national holiday, to
celebrate it on French soil. The conquered prov-
inces are kept in order, but the French language,
French customs, French culture, are still to the
fore, and so far as loyalty, affection, or a change
of mind and heart is concerned the conversion
is still incomplete. The inhabitants have been
baptized Germans, but very few of them have
taken voluntarily, their first communion of na-
tionalization.

" On changerait plutot le cceur de place,
Que de changer la vieille Alsace."

The German, Karl Lamprecht, in his valuable
history of contemporary Germany, is more hope-
ful of the situation than are other writers and
observers. Professor Werner Wittich maintains
that the best of the intellectual side of life in
Alsace is impregnated with French culture and
traditions; and even German officers long sta-
tioned in the two conquered provinces admit the
stubborn allegiance of the people to French cus •

GERMAN PROBLEMS 517

toms, habits, beliefs, and traditions. But how-
ever that may be, and it is admittedly a ques-
tion that different prejudices and hopes will
answer differently, there is no denial on the part
of any one, high or low, that the Prussian bureau-
cratic mandarins have made no progress in win-
ning the affection or the voluntary loyalty of the
people. The Prussian has had recourse to the
advice given by Prince Billow, "if you cannot
be loved, then you must be feared." A friend
who is only a friend, -an ally who is only an ally,
a servant who only serves you because he is
afraid of you, is not only an uncomfortable but
a dangerous factor in any establishment, whether
domestic or national. Corporalism, begun by
Frederick the Great and fastened upon Ger-
many by Bismarck, has had its successes. I
recognized them, indeed, on returning to Ger-
many after twenty-five years, as astounding
successes, but they have their weak side too. A
barracks can never be the ideal of a home, nor
a corporal the ideal of a guide, philosopher,
and friend. Their own philosopher Nietzsche
writes: " the state is the coldest of all cold mon-
sters."

Joseph de Maistre, writing of the Slav tem-
perament, says: "Si on enterrait un desir Slave
sous une forteresse, il la ferait sauter." Ger-
many has some reason to believe that this is true,

518 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

In the northeast of Germany live some 3,000,-
000 Poles under Prussian supervision and laws,
and ruled by a Prussian governor. There are
some 7,000,000 or 8,000,000 Poles divided be
tween Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Prussia,
and behind these are 165,000,000 Russians.
The boundary between this mass and Germany
is one of sand; and the railway journey from
Posen to Berlin, is a matter of only four hours.
If we were in Germany's shoes, we should prob-
ably take some pains to be -well guarded in that
quarter. We should, however, do it in quite an-
other fashion. We should, if possible, turn over
the inhabitants to their own governing, as Eng-
land has done in South Africa, as we have tried
to do in Cuba, and as we would do gladly in the
Philippines, if every intelligent man who knows
the situation there, were not assured that rob-
bery, murder, and license would follow on the
heels of our departure; and that instead of doing
a magnanimous thing we should be shirking our
responsibilities in the most cowardly fashion. It
is bad enough to know, that we have such cyni-
cal political sophists in Congress, that they would
even suffer that catastrophe to innocent people
in the Philippines, if they thought it would make
them votes at home.

Prussia does not recognize such methods of
ruling. Corporalism is their only way, and,

GERMAN PROBLEMS 519

where the people are fit to govern themselves, a
very bad and humiliating way, for the Eden of
the bureaucrat is the hell of the governed. If
the Germans approve it for themselves, it is not
our business to comment; but where these meth-
ods are applied to foreign peoples, we both antici-
pate and applaud their failure.

The insurrections in Russian and Austrian
Poland, had their echoes in Posen, and since
1849 Prussia has tried in every way to substi-
tute Germans for Poles, in the country, and to
make the German language predominant in the
churches, schools, and in the administration.
The Poles have resisted, emphasizing their re-
sistance in 1867, when they were included in the
North German Federation, and again in 1871,
when they were included in the new German
Empire.

The Emperor William I, in 1886, said: "The
increasing predominance of the Polish over the
German element in certain provinces of the
east makes it a duty of the government to guar-
antee the existence and the development of the
German population." Since 1871 the Poles
have increased so much faster than the Germans
that there is danger of complete extermination
of the German population. In 1902 the grand-
son of William I, the present Emperor, said at
Marienburg: "Polish arrogance is unbearable,

620 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

and I am obliged to appeal to my people to de-
fend themselves against it, for the preservation
of their national well-being. It is a question of
the defence of the civilization and the culture
of Germany. To-day and to-morrow, as in the
past, we must fight against the common enemy."
This speech of the Emperor was made at Marien-
burg, a fine old town, once very prosperous, and
in the days of the Wars of the Roses playing a
conspicuous part with the other Hanseatic towns.
This town was also the head and seat of the
Teutonic Order, and it was this Teutonic Order
which, in 1230, began the work of converting the
then heathen Prussians, along lines not unlike
those of the Prussian Ansiedlungskommission of
to-day.

Prussia has attempted to solve this question
by establishing a government in the province,
pledged to the introduction of the German lan-
guage, and so far as possible of German manners
and customs. This has been met with fierce
opposition, and never have I heard in the col-
onies of other countries, except in Korea, under
the present Japanese administration, such fanat-
ical hatred, expressed in words, as I have heard
in Posen. If you dislike Prussia, do not attempt
to revile her yourself; rather go to Posen and
hear it done in a far more satisfying way.

The religious question enters largely into the

GERMAN PROBLEMS 521

matter, and the ignorant Poles are even taught
that the Virgin Mary, or the "Polish Queen,"
will not understand their intercessions if they
are not made in the Polish language. In 1870
there was one Polish newspaper in Germany,
to-day there are 138.

From 1886 to 1910 the Ansiedlungskommis-
sion or committee of colonization, have spent
$170,896,325, and have received $51,863,175,
leaving a net expenditure of $119,033,150. This
large expenditure has resulted in the settle-
ment upon the land of 18,507 families, or about
111,000 persons. The total number settled
is now 131,000 persons. Each male adult Ger-
man settler has cost the state something over
$32,000! This is probably the most extrava-
gant colonization scheme ever attempted in the
world.

But even this expenditure has not brought
success, and for a very interesting reason.
Again the Germans have been remarkably suc-
cessful in their dealings with the inanimate, but
the Arcana imperil are still hidden from them.
They have redeemed the land, taught the Poles,
as well as the German settlers, how to farm suc-
cessfully; largely increased the output of grain,
fruit, pigs, calves, chickens, geese, and eggs, for
which Germany spends several hundred millions

GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

a year abroad; and seen to it that the breed of
cows, pigs, horses, chickens, and geese is kept at
a high standard. But now the Poles will sell
no more land. They have profited, not been
ruined, by what has come out of the belly of the
Trojan horse! The commission is at a stand-
still, and it is now proposed to enforce the Prus-
sian law of 1908 for the expropriation of Po-
lish estates. This law was overwhelmingly de-
feated in the Reichstag in February, 1913, but
the Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg declared
that it was an affair of Prussia, with which the
Reichstag has nothing to do, and the sand-paper
of the Prussian bureaucracy will probably be
rubbed upon the Polish wound anew.

This attempt to build a line of moral and in-
tellectual forts, supplemented by German set-
tlers, on the land between Russia and Prussia,
and to stop the inrush of the Slavic population,
has ample excuse behind it. It is undoubtedly
in case of war a serious danger to Germany to
leave herself unguarded there. As to what will
come of the social and racial questions, prophecy
alone can answer, and I have far too much im-
agination to venture upon prophecy. The care
and thoroughness with which the work is done
is beyond all praise, but it is as difficult to make
your brother love you by taking thought there-

GERMAN PROBLEMS 523

on, as it is to add a cubit to one's stature by the
same method.

Professor Ludwig Bernhard, while regretting
that this attempt at Germanization has not suc-
ceeded, admits that Prussian methods are hope-
less in such matters. They have, on the con-
trary, awakened national feeling, encouraged the
forming of agricultural societies, and strength-
ened the Bank of Posen, which has become the
financial citadel of opposition. Professor Bern-
hard goes so far as to say that he doubts if
even the putting into force of the expropriation
law of 1908 will bring about any better results.
To an American this lack of unity seems to be
perhaps of exaggerated importance. Wir brau-
chen nicht diese Nordlichter (We do not need
these northern luminaries), is a phrase of a cer-
tain Bavarian official, and in lower or louder
tones one hears the phrase all over Germany out-
side of Prussia, and loudest of all in these con-
quered provinces.

To legislate men into mechanical relations
with one another may keep the peace tem-
porarily, but it is not a final solution of the in-
tricate problem of living together in our hud-
dled civilization. The day has gone by when
we could rule men without gaining at least their
respect, and if possible their affection. Prus-

524 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

sia's stiffness and newness as a governing power;
her lack of a high moral or religious tone, for
there is a rapidly increasing tendency there to
agree with the writer during the French Revolu-
tion: la question de dieu manque (Tactualite; her
hard and inflexible methods, make her a churlish
neighbor and an arrogant master. In forty
years Prussia has accomplished great things de-
spite these disadvantages of temperament, of
tradition, and despite these external dangers
and problems. She is learning now that there
are not only individuals but whole peoples who
say, as William the Conqueror said to the Pope :
"Never have I taken an oath of fealty, nor shall
I ever do so."

X

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, AND MALICE"

IT has always been considered sound doctrine
among Christians that they should love one
another. Vigorous exponents of the doc-
trine, however, have ever been few in numbers.
As the world gets more crowded, and we find it
more and more difficult to make room for our-
selves, and to get a living, we find antagonisms
and defensive tactics, occupying so much of our
time and energy that loving one another is al-
most lost sight of. It has been found necessary
even among those of the same nation to legislate
for love. We call such laws, with dull contempt
for irony, social legislation. In Germany, and
now in England, the modern sacrament of loving
one another consists in licking stamps; these
stamps are then stuck on cards, which bind the
brethren together in mutual and adhesive help-
fulness.

With nations the problem is not so easily and
superficially solved; because no one body of
legislators and police has jurisdiction over all
the parties concerned. As a result of this just

525

526 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

now in Europe, wisdom is not the arbiter; on
the contrary, prejudices, passions, indiscretions,
and follies on the part of all the antagonists
preserve a certain dangerous equipoise.

After you have seen something and heard a
great deal of these antagonisms between nations;
read their newspapers; talked with the protago-
nists and with their rulers, and with the responsi-
ble servants of the State; discussed with pro-
fessors and legislators these questions; and
listened to the warriors on both sides, you are
somewhat bewildered. There are so many rea-
sons why this one should distrust that one, so
many rather unnatural alliances for protection
against one another, so much friendship of the
sort expressed by the phrase, "on aime toujours
quelqu'un contre quelqu'un," so much suspicious
watching the movements of one another, that
one is reminded of the jingle of one's youth:

"There's a cat in the garden laying for a rat,
There's a boy with a catapult a-laying for the cat,
The cat's name is Susan, the boy's name is Jim,
And his father round the corner is a-laying for him."

Even to the youngest of us, and to the most
inexperienced, this betokens a strained situation.
The first and most natural result is that each
nation's "watchmen who sit above in an high
tower," whether they be the professionals se-

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 527

lected by the people or merely amateur patriots,
are forever crying out for greater armaments.

At the time of the Boxer troubles in China,
when Germany sent some ships to demand repara-
tion for the murder of her ambassador in Peking,
she had only two ships left at home to guard her
own shores. When all England was exasperated
by the Boer telegram sent by the Kaiser, or, if
the truth is to be told, by his advisers, the late
Baron Marschal von Bieberstein and Prince
Hohenlohe, to President Krtiger, official Ger-
many lamented publicly that she lacked a power-
ful navy. Only a week after the Boers declared
war the Kaiser is reported to have said: "Bitter
is our need of a strong navy." Germany has
noticed, too, not without suspicion, that—

In 1904 England had 202,000 tons of war-
ships in the Mediterranean and none in the
North Sea.

In 1907 England had 135,000 tons of war-
ships in the Mediterranean and 166,000 tons in
the North Sea.

In 1909 England had 123,000 tons of war-
ships in the Mediterranean and 427,000 tons in
the North Sea.

In 1912 England had 126,000 tons of war-
ships in the Mediterranean and 481,000 tons in
the North Sea.

.528 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

At last accounts England had 50,000 tons of
war-ships in the Mediterranean and 500,000 tons
in the North Sea.

There has been a steady increase of the navy
in Germany. In 1900 the tonnage of war-ships
and large cruisers over 5,000 tons was 152,000;
in 1911 it was 823,000. The number of heavy
guns in 1900 was 52; in 1911 it was 330. The
horse-power of engines in 1900 was 160,000; in
1911 it was 1,051,000. The naval crews in 1900
numbered 28,326; in 1911, 57,353; and in 1913
the German naval personnel will consist of 3,394
officers and 69,495 men. Between 1900 and 1911
the tonnage of the British fleet increased from
215,000 to 1,716,000; of the German fleet from
152,000 to 829,000.

In ten years British naval expenditure has in-
creased from $172,500,000 to $222,500,000; in
Germany the expenditure has jumped from $47,-
500,000 to $110,000,000; in America the increase
is from $80,000,000 to $132,500,000. Out of
these total sums Great Britain spends one third,
America one fifth, and Germany one half on
new construction.

Germany has a navy league numbering over
one million active and honorary members; a
periodical, Die Flotte, published by the league
with a circulation of over 400,000. This league

529

not only educates but excites the whole nation
by a vigorous campaign which never ceases. It
takes its members on excursions to seaports to
see the ships; it holds exhibitions throughout
the country with pictures and lecturers; it sup-
ports seamen's homes, and helps to equip boys
washing to enter the navy ; it lends its encourage-
ment to the two school-ships which are partly
supported from public funds; it sees to it that
war-ships are named after provinces and cities,
creating a friendly rivalry among them; and
lately, out of its surplus funds, it has presented
a gun-boat to the nation.

The leading spirit of this organization is
Admiral von Tirpitz, at present the German
secretary of the navy and probably the most
dangerous mischief-maker in Europe. In ad-
dition to this work a campaign is waged in the
press for the increase of the navy, in which a
number of experts are engaged. I have been
told by Germans who ought to know, but who
deprecate this exciting campaigning, that the
press is so largely influenced by Admiral von
Tirpitz and his corps of press-agents and
writers, that it is even difficult to procure the
publication of a protest or a reply. Indeed,
were it my habit to go into personal matters,
I could offer ample proof of this contention, that

530 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the opponents of naval expansion are cleverly
shut out of the press altogether.

Wilhelmshafen, the naval station on the North
Sea, has been fortified till it is said to be impreg-
nable; the same has been done for Heligoland,
and the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser have
also been strongly fortified. At Kiel are the
naval technical school, an arsenal, and dry and
floating docks, and the canal itself is being
widened and deepened to meet the needs of the
largest ships of war.

When it is remembered that the beginnings
of all this date back only to 1898, when the first
navy bill was passed through the Reichstag writh
much difficulty, and only after the Emperor and
his ministers had brought every influence to bear
upon the members, Germany is certainly to be
congratulated upon her success. Nor is she to
be blamed for remembering, and regretting, that
the two most important harbors used by her
trade are Antwerp and Rotterdam, the one in
Belgium, the other in Holland.

The Kielerwoche, or Kiel Regatta, has grown
from the sailing-matches of a few small yachts
into one of the best-managed, most picturesque,
and gayest yachting weeks in the world. Indeed,
from the stand-point of hospitality, orderliness,
imposing array of shipping, and good racing and

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 531

friendliness to the stranger, I am not sure that
it is equalled at either Newport or Cowes. Were
I writing merely from my personal experience, I
should declare unhesitatingly that it is the most
splendid and best-managed picnic on the water
that one can attend, and lovers of yachts and
yachting should not fail to see it. This Kieler-
woche, too, has, and is intended to have, an influ-
ence in teaching the Germans to aid and abet
their Emperor and his ministers in making Ger-
many a great sea power.

When a nation for more than a hundred years
has been quite comfortably safe from any fear
of attack because she has been easily first in
commerce, wealth, industry, and in sea power,
it comes as a shock, even to a phlegmatic people,
to learn that they are being rapidly overhauled
commercially, financially, industrially, and as a
fighting force on the sea; and all this within a
few years.

England with her money subsidies, with her
troops, and with her navy has heretofore pro-
vided against Continental aggression by the
diplomatic philosophy of a balance of power.
She has arranged her alliances with Continental
powers so that no one of them could become a
menace to herself. She did so against the Spain
of Charles V, the France of Louis XIV, the

532 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

France of Napoleon, the Russia of the late Czar,
and now against the Germany of William II.
The France of the great Napoleon, in attempting
to complete the commercial isolation of England
by compelling Russia to close her ports to her,
buried herself in snow and ice on the way back
from Moscow, and delivered herself up com-
pletely a little later at Waterloo. That was
the nearest to success of any attempt to break
through the doctrine of the balance of power.

In the year 800 A. D. the Catholic Church,
which took over the Roman supremacy to trans-
late it into a spiritual empire, accepted a Ger-
man Emperor, Charlemagne, as her man-at-arms.
One hundred and fifty years later she accepted
still another, Otto I. This partnership was called
the Holy Roman Empire. It has been noted, but
is still misunderstood, that the difference between
the Catholic Church before and after the Refor-
mation was very marked. The Catholic Church
claimed to be not only a system of belief but a
system of government. Infallibility was to in-
clude secular as well as religious matters, and the
church strove to rule as a secular emperor and as
a spiritual tyrant. To-day Roman Catholicism
is a sect, one among many; Roman Catholics
themselves would be the last to consent to any
temporal universal power.

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 533

The Protestants, too, were at first inclined to
the methods of Rome. Luther teaches intoler-
ance, and Calvin burns a heretic and writes in
favor of the doctrine: Jure gladii coercendos esse
hereticos. The real reformation only came when
we had reformed the reformers, but it was that
spiritual and political legacy from Rome that
the Teuton world, including ourselves, fought
to nullify.

There was no successful revolt against this
curious spiritual Csesarism until the son of a
Saxon miner named Luther married out of
monkdom, burnt the Pope's commands on a bon-
fire, and plunged all Europe first into a peasants'
wrar, followed by a dividing of Europe between
a Protestant union and a Catholic league, and
then a thirty years' war, which destroyed two
thirds of the population of what is now Germany.
After three hundred years of disunion and
hatreds, Prussia united their country by a cement
of blood and iron, and in the last forty years has
made out of her the most powerful nation on the
continent of Europe.

It is only very lately that any of us have real-
ized what has happened. So little attention has
been paid to the matter that there is no sufficient
and worthy history of Germany in English.
More than we realize, Germany is a new factor

534 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

in politics, a new rival in commerce, a new
knight in the tournament lists. This accounts,
in no small degree, for the uneasiness Germany
causes in the world.

Forty years ago Germany was known to a
few students as having supplied us with music,
mythology, and a certain amount of enchanting
literature; scholarship along certain lines; and
work in philosophy that a few in America and in
England were studying. As a knight in shining
armor, demanding a place at the council-board
of nations, and ready to resent any passing over
of her claims to recognition in the discussion and
settlement of international politics, she is a new-
comer.

One of the chief causes for the restlessness,
particularly in England, the heart of the great-
est empire in the world, is that this new-comer
must be made room for at the table, received
with courtesy, and consulted. Another individ-
ual has married into the family, and must grad-
ually find her place there. Of all nations in
the world, England is the slowest to make new
friends and acquaintances, and easily the most
awkward in doing so. She is a good friend when
you know her, but with the most abominable
manners to strangers.

The Englishman, for example, pops into his

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 535

club to escape the world, not to seek it there.
The English club and the English home are
primarily for seclusion, not for companionship,
and this characteristic alone is wofully hard for
the stranger to understand. To the gregarious
German, priding himself upon Gemuthlichkeit,
loving reunions, restaurants, his Stammtisch,
formal and punctilious in his politeness, unused
to the ways of the world, but yet convinced that
he is now a great man politically and commer-
cially, the Englishman is not only an enigma but
an insult. I am criticising neither. I have re-
ceived unbounded hospitality and friendliness
from both. I have ridden, fought, drunk, trav-
elled, and lived with both, but for that very
reason I understand how horribly and continu-
ally they rub one another the wrong way.

In the fundamental matter of morals the Ger-
man looks upon the Englishman as a hypocrite,
and the Englishman looks upon the German as
rather unpolished and undignified. Berlin is
open all night, London closes at half -past twelve.
The British Sunday is a gloomy suppression of
vitality, touched up here and there with preach-
ing and hymn-singing, and fringed with sur-
reptitious golf ; the German Sunday is a national
fair, with a blossoming of all kinds of amuse-
ments, deluged with beer, and attended by

536 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

whole families as their only relaxation during the
week.

The German licenses vice, lotteries, and gam-
bling; the Englishman refuses to recognize the
existence of any of the three. The German does
not understand the Englishman's point of view
in these matters, which is that, though he knows
these things to exist, and that he is no better in
actual practice than other men, he refuses to
accept these as his ideal. He denounces and
passes judgment upon, and punishes men and
women, who go too far in their appreciation and
practice of apolausticism as a philosophy of life.
He might have run away from danger himself,
but he none the less scorns the man who did so.
The shipwreck, the fire, the test of moral courage
and endurance, may have found him a coward,
or weak, or a deserter, but he holds that he must
none the less measure the coward, the weakling,
and the deserter, not by his own possible weak-
ness if put to the same tests, but by his ideal of
a courageous and straightforward Englishman.
I agree with him wholly and heartily. If our
sympathy is to go out on every occasion, to the
man who failed to come up to the mark of noble
manhood, just because we feel that we might
under like circumstances have failed too, then we
give up the code of honor altogether, and our

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 5:37

ideals droop to the level from which we fight
and pray to be preserved.

We pass judgment upon the coward, upon the
failure, upon the man who has not mastered his
life and life itself, unhesitatingly. It is hard to
do, it looks as though one were without pity and
without sympathy. Not so; it is because we have
great sympathy, and I hope unending pity, and
a growing charity, and constant willingness to
lend a hand; but to condone failure is to com-
mit the selfish and unpardonable cowardice of
not judging another that you may not be forced
to judge yourself too harshly. That is far from
being hypocrisy. Indeed, in these days it is one
of the hardest things to do, so fast are we level-
ling down socially and politically and even
morally. It looks like an assumption of supe-
riority when, God knows, it is only a timorous
attempt on our part not to lose our grip on the
ideals that help to keep us out of the dust and
the mud. But he who lets others off lightly in
order that he may not be thought to have too
high a standard himself, or because he fears that
he may one day fail himself, such a one is the
coward of cowards, the candidate for the lowest
place in hell; and well he deserves it, for he
helps to lower the standard of manhood, and he
tarnishes the shield of honor of the whole race.
Let them call us hypocrites till they strangle

538 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

doing so, for when we lower our standards be-
cause we fear that we cannot live up to them
ourselves, all will be lost. To be mild with other
men, because we distrust ourselves, is a poison-
ous sympathy that rots away the life of him who
receives it, and of him who gives it, and ends in
a slobbering charity which must finally protect
itself by tyranny and cruelty. Not infrequently
in dealing with individuals and with subject
nations it is senseless cruelty to be over-kind.

This sneer of Saxon hypocrisy, of "Perfide
Albion," is seldom explained to other people by
men of our race, and we Americans and English-
men have taken little pains to make it clear.
We should not be surprised, therefore, if we are
misunderstood. We have been easily first so
long that we have neglected the explanation or
the defence of ourselves to others.

The Germans, too, have something of the
same indifference. A most sympathetic observer
of German manners and customs, and a man for
whose honesty and gentleness I have the highest
esteem, Pere Didon, remarked of the Germans:
"J'ai essay e maintes fois de decouvrir chez 1'Al-
lemand une sympathie quelconque pour d'autres
nations; je n'y ai pas reussi."

I call attention again to the important point,
that it has been difficult to manufacture an all-
round German patriotism. As a consequence

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 539

patriotism in Germany is more than a sentiment,
it is a theory, a doctrine, a theme to which
statesmen, philosophers and poets, and rulers
devote their energies. The German looks upon
his nation not only as a people, but as a race,
almost as a formal religion; hence perhaps his
hatred of the Jew and the Slav, and his difficul-
ties with all foreign peoples within his borders.
In order to build up his patriotism the German
has been taught systematically to dislike first
the Austrians, then the French, now the English ;
and let not the American suppose that he likes
him any better, for he does not. This patriotism,
once developed, was drawn on for funds for an
army, then for a navy. At the present time
there must be some explanation offered, and the
explanation is fear of England, dislike of British
arrogance. In one of his latest speeches the
Kaiser said: "We need this fleet to protect our-
selves from arrogance"; that, of course, means,
always means, British arrogance.

From the moment a child goes to school, by
pictures on the walls, by an indirect teaching of
history and geography, he is led on discreetly to
find England in Germany's way. At the present
writing German school children, and German
students, and German recruits are imbued with
the idea that Germany's relations with England
are in some sort an armistice. This poisonous

540 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

teaching of patriotism has produced wide-spread
enmity of feeling among the innocent, but this
enmity has built the navy. And now that in
certain quarters it is found desirable to soothe
and calm this feeling, it proves to be more diffi-
cult to subdue than it was to arouse. The mon-
ster that Frankenstein called up devours its own
creator. Now that England can no longer be
the enemy, because Germany's greatest present
and future danger is from the Slav races, there
are evidences that the German state is teaching
the dog not to bark at England any more.

Germany has not neglected England, but of
late she has paid her the wrong kind of attention.
Erasmus, the scholar-rapier, as Luther was the
hammer, of the Reformation, visits England and
writes: "Above all, speak no evil of England
to them. They are proud of their country above
all nations in the world, as they have good reason
to be."

Kant, the German philosopher, on his clock-
like rounds in Konigsberg, knew something of
England and writes of her: "Die englische Na-
tion, als Volk betrachtet, ist das schatzbarste
Ganze von Menschen im Verhaltniss unter ein-
ander; aber als Staat gegen fremde Staaten der
verderblichste, gewaltsamste, herrschslichtigste
und kriegerregendste von alien."

("The English, as a people, in their relations

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 541

to one another are a most estimable body of men,
but as a nation in their relations with other
nations they are of all people the most perni-
cious, the most violent, the most domineering,
and the most strife-provoking.")

Another German, something of a scholar,
something of a philosopher, but a wit and a
singer, Heine, visited England, and, as he handed
a fee to the verger who had shown him around
Westminster Abbey, said: "I would willingly
give you twice as much if the collection were
complete!" To him Napoleon defeated was a
greater man than the "starched, stiff" Welling-
ton; and the "potatoes boiled in water and put
on the table as God made them" and the "coun-
try with three hundred religions and only one
sauce" were a constant source of amused annoy-
ance. The German professors and students,
who in the early part of the nineteenth century
lauded English constitutional liberty to the skies
and made a god of Burke, have soured toward
England since.

"What does Germany want?" asked Thiers
of the German historian Ranke. "To destroy
the work of Louis XIV," was the reply. Pro-
fessor Treitschke and his successor in the chair
of history at Berlin, Professor Delbruck, have
been outspoken in their denunciation of England.

542 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

Mommsen, Schmoller, Schiemann, Zorn of Bonn,
and his colleague there, von Dirksen, Professor
Dietrich Schaefer, Professor Adolph Wagner,
and many other scholars have been, and are, poli-
ticians in Germany, and none of them friendly to
England, to France, or to America. Bismarck
himself remarked of these gentlemen: "Die
Politik ist keine Wissenschaft, wie viele der
Herren Professoren sich einbilden, sie ist eben
eine Kunst" ("Politics is not a science as many
professorial gentlemen fancy; it is an art");
and again: "Die Arbeit des Diplomaten, seine
Aufgabe, besteht in dem praktischen Verkehr
mit Menschen, in der richtigen Beurtheilung von
dem, was andere Leute unter gewissen IJm-
standen wahrscheinlich thun werden, in der
richtigen Erkennung der Absichten anderer; in
der richtigen Darstellung der seinigen" ("The
work of the diplomat, his chief task, indeed,
consists in the practical dealing with men, in
his sound judgment of what other people would
probably do under certain circumstances, in his
correct interpretation of the intentions and pur-
poses of other people, and in the accurate pres-
entation of his own").

He began his political life in 1862 with the
phrase: "Die grossen Fragen kb'nnen durrh
Reden und Majoritatsbeschliisse nicht entschie-

den werden, sondern durch Eisen und Blut"
("The great questions cannot be decided by
speeches and the decisions of majorities, but by
iron and blood").

It is a well-known professor who writes : " Denn
die einzige Gefahr, die den Frieden in Europa
und damit den Weltfrieden droht, liegt in den
krankhaften Ubertreibungen des englischen Im-
perialismus" ("The only danger to the peace of
Europe, and that includes the peace of the world,
lies in the morbid excesses of British imperial-
ism"). Another quotation from the same pen
reads: "So far as other perils to the British
Empire are concerned, they are of much the
same character, but the empire suffers too from
the selfish policy of English business, which, in
order to create big business, does not hesitate to
interfere with the declared policy of the state."
Then follows the statement that English traders
have smuggled guns to the Persian Gulf.

Professor Zorn writes: "The possibility that
while our Emperor was seeking rest and refresh-
ment in Norwegian waters and enjoying the
beauties of the Norwegian landscape, English
ships were lying in readiness to annihilate Ger-
man ships." It is hard to believe that such
lunatic lies can come from the pen of a pro-
fessor in good standing.

544 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

"Ohne zu iibertreiben kann man sagen dass
heute nur der allerkleinste Teil der deutschen
Presse geneigt ist, den Englandern Gerech-
tigkeit widerfahren zu lassen, bei Behandlimg
allgemeiner Fragen sich auch einmal auf den
englischen Standpunkt der Betrachtung wenig-
stens zeitweise zu versetzen. England ist fur
viele 'der' Feind an sich, und ein Feind dem
man keine Riicksichten schuldet."

("Tt is no exaggeration to say that nowadays
only the tiniest minority of the German press
is inclined to do justice to the English by at
least occasionally looking at questions from the
British point of view. England is for many the
enemy of enemies and an enemy to whom no
consideration is due.") Thus writes one of the
cooler heads in the Kolnische Zeitung.

Doctor Herbert von Dirksen, of Bonn, writing
of the Monroe Doctrine, says: "By what right
does America attempt to check the strongest
expansion policy of all other nations of the
earth?" During the Boer war Germany was
showered with post-cards and caricatures of the
English. British soldiers with donkey heads
marched past Queen Victoria and the Prince of
Wales ; the venerable Queen Victoria is pictured
plucking the tail feathers from an ostrich which
she holds across her knees; the three generals.

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 545

Methuen, Buller, and Gatacre, take off their
faces to discover the heads of an ass, a sheep, and
a cow; Chamberlain is depicted as the instigator
of the war, with his pockets and hands full of
African shares; a parade of the stock-exchange
volunteers depicts them as all Jews, with the
Prince of Wales as a Jew reviewing them; the
Prince of Wales is pictured surrounded by vul-
gar women, who ask, "Say, Fatty, you are not
going to South Africa?" to which the Prince
replies, "No, I must stay here to take care of the
widows and orphans!" English soldiers are de-
picted in the act of hitting and kicking women
and children.

In the war with Denmark in 1864 the Austrian
navy met with a disaster at sea. A German
publicist even then wrote: "I was grieved at
the demonstrations of joy about this in the
English Parliament. It was not sympathy with
the Danes but petty spite and malice at the
defeat of a foreign fleet. But at the same
time it is a consolatory proof that the English
are afraid of the future German navy." This
quotation is interesting as showing how far back
the quarrel dates.

It would be merely a question of how much
time one cares to devote to scissors and paste to
multiply these examples of Germany's journal-

546 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

istic and professorial state of mind. It is unfort-
unate that some of this writing in the press is
done by those who are often in consultation with
the Emperor, and on some political subjects his
advisers. I have suggested in another chapter
that Germany suffers far more from the theoret-
ical and book-learned gentlemen who surround
the Emperor than from his indiscretions. In
more than one instance his indiscretions were
due to their blundering. Their knowledge of
books far surpasses their knowledge of men, and
nothing can be more dangerous to any nation
than to be counselled and guided by pedants
rather than by men of the world. This project-
ing a world from the gaseous elements of one's
own cranium and dealing with that world, in-
stead of the world that exists, is a danger to
everybody concerned.

" Bedauernswert sei es allerdings, dass wir in
unserem politischen Leben nicht mit gentlemen
zu thun haben, dies sei aber ein Begriff der uns
uberhaupt abgehe," writes Prince Hohenlohe
in his memoirs. ("It is of all things most to be
regretted that in our political life we do not have
gentlemen to deal with, but this is a conception
of which we are totally deficient.")

A daring colonial secretary, speaking in the
Reichstag of certain scandals in the German

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 54?

colonies, said bluntly: "A reprehensible caste
feeling has grown up in our colonies, the concep-
tion of a gentleman being in England different
from that in Germany."

When Lord Haldane came to Berlin, on his
mission to discover if possible a working basis
for more friendly relations between the two
countries, his eyes were greeted in the windows
of every book-shop with books and pamphlets
with such titles as "Krieg oder Frieden mit Eng-
land," "Das Perfide Albion," "Deutschland und
der Islam," "1st England kriegslustig," "Deuts-
chland sei Wach," "England's Weltherrschaft
und die deutsche Luxusflotte," "John Bull und
wir," and a long list of others, all written and
advertised to keep alive in the German people a
sense of their natural antagonism to England.

During the last year the "Letters of Berg-
mann" brought up again the controversy, that
should have been left to die, over the treatment
of the Emperor Friedrich by an English surgeon.

In discussing Senator Lodge's resolution before
the United States Senate, on the Monroe Doc-
trine, the German press spoke of us as "hirnver-
brannte Yankees," "bornierte Yankeegehirne "
("crazy Yankees," "provincial Yankee intel-
lects"); and the words "Dollarika," "Dollarei,"
and "Dollarman" are further malicious expres-

548 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

sions of their envy, frequently used. The Ger-
mans are persistently taught that there are
neither scholars nor students in America or in
England. One worthy writes: "Die Englander
lernen nichts. Der Sport lasst ihnen keine
Zeit dazu. Man ist hinterher auch zu mtide."

I am always very glad, when I happen to be
in Europe, that I belong to a nation that can
afford to take these flings with the greatest good-
humor. As the burly soldier replied when ques-
tioned in court as to why he allowed his small
wife to beat him: "It pleases her and it don't
hurt I."

This struggle for recognition as a great nation,
to be received on equal terms by the rest of us,
has upset the nerves of certain classes in Ger-
many, and among them the un travelled and
small-town-dwelling professor.

I am a craftsman in letters myself, in a small
way, but I am no believer that books are the
only key to life, or the only way to find a solution
for its riddles and problems. Life is language,
and books only the dictionaries; men are the
text, books only the commentaries. Books are
only good as a filter for actual experiences. A
man must have a rich and varied experience of
men and women before he can use books to ad-
vantage. Life is varied, men and women many,

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 549

while the individual life is short; wise men read
books, therefore, to enrich their experience, not
merely as the pedant does, to garner facts.
" J'etudie les livres en attendant que j'etudie les
hommes," writes Voltaire. "Books are good
enough in their own way, but they are a mighty
bloodless substitute for life," writes Stevenson.

Montgolfier sees a woman's skirt drying and
notices that the hot air fills it and lifts it, and
this gives him the idea for a balloon.

Denis Papin sees the cover lifted from a pot
by the steam, and there follow the myriad in-
ventions in which steam is the driving power.

Newton, dozing under an apple-tree, is hit on
the head by a falling apple, and there follows
the law of gravitation.

Franklin flies a kite, and a shock of electricity
starts him upon the road to his discoveries.

Archimedes in his bath notices that his body
seems to grow lighter, and there follows the
great law which bears his name.

These are the foundation-stones upon which
the whole house of science is built, and no one
of them was dug out of a book. Charlemagne
could not read, and Napoleon, when he left school
for Paris, carried the recommendation from his
master that he might possibly become a fair
officer of marines, but nothing more! A capital

550 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

example of the ability of the man of books to
measure the abilities of the man of the world.

Reading and writing are modern accomplish-
ments, and we grossly exaggerate their impor-
tance as man-makers. That, it has always been
my contention, is the fatal fallacy of modern
education, and you may see it carried to its
extreme in Germany, for men who have not
lived broadly are merely hampered by books.
It is as though one studied a primer with an
etymological dictionary at his side. Germans
are renowned writers of commentaries, but you
cannot deal with men and with life by the aid of
commentaries. Exegesis solves no international
quarrels, and the mastery of men is not gained
with dictionaries and grammars.

We are all prone to forget the end in the means,
for the end is far away and the means right under
our noses. We all recognize, when we are pulled
up short and made to think, that, after all, the
arts and letters, religion and philosophy and
statecraft, are for one ultimate purpose, which is
to develop the complete man. Everything must
be measured by its man-making power. Ideas
that do not grow men are sterile seed. Men who
do not move other men to action and to growth
are not to be excused because they stir men to
the merely pleasant tickling of thinking lazily

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 551

and feeling softly. Thus Lincoln was a greater
man than Emerson; Bismarck a greater than
Lessing; Cromwell a greater than Bunyan; Na-
poleon a greater than Corneille and Racine;
Pericles greater than Plato; and Caesar greater
than Virgil.

The man who only makes maps for the mind
is only half a man, until his thinking, his influ-
ence, his dreams and enthusiasms take on the
potency of a man and come into action. Even if
men of action do evil, as some of those I mention
have done, they have translated theories into pal-
pable things that permit men to judge whether
they be good or bad; and the really great artists,
thinkers, and saints are as fertile as though
they were female, and gave birth to living
things. Their thinking is a form of action. The
real test of successful organization is the thor-
oughness of the thinking behind it; on the other
hand, the only test of thinking is the success of
the thought in actual execution, and jthe Germans
often take this too much for granted. We really
know and hold as an inalienable intellectual pos-
session only what we have gained by our own
effort, and with a certain degree of actual exer-
tion. People who have never worked out their
own salvation always join, at last, that large class
in the body politic who don't know what they

552 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

want, and who will never be happy till they
get it.

When it comes to dealing with inanimate
things, books of rules are invaluable. Hence, in
chemistry, physics, archaeology, philology, exe-
gesis, the Germans have forged ahead; their
intellectual street-cleaning is unsurpassed; but
the ship of state needs not only men to take ob-
servations and to read charts, but men to trim
the sails to the fitful breezes, the blustering
winds, the tempests and the changing currents
of life. They must know, too, the methods, the
manners, the habits of other men who sail the
seas of life. It is just here that the German fails;
he lacks the confidence of experience, and bursts
into bluster and bravado. He is a believer in
vicarious experience, and is as little likely to be
saved by it, in this world at least, as he is by
vicarious sacrifice.

His imagination does not make allowances for
either England or America. He does not see,
for example, that the Monroe Doctrine is not
open for discussion for the simple reason that
America has announced it as American policy;
just as Prussia took part three times in the dis-
memberment of Poland; just as Prussia pounced
upon Silesia; just as Germany took Alsace--
Lorraine, Schleswig-Holstein and Frankfort, and
held the ring while Austria-Hungary bagged

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 553

Bosnia and Herzegovina, and by the word of
her Emperor, promised to do the same thing
for Russia, when Japan declared war against
her. We have decided that we will have no
European sovereignty in South America, and
this side war, that is the end of the matter, call
it the Monroe Doctrine or what you will. It
only makes for uneasiness and bad temper to
discuss it. It is the national American policy.
It may be right or wrong theoretically, but in-
ternational law has nothing to do with it. The
German professors who discuss it from that
stand-point, are beating the air and raising a
dust in the world's international drawing-room.
This German mania for translating facts back
into philosophy and then dancing through a dis-
cussion of theories is not understood, much less
appreciated, by the rest of the world. We can
never get on if we are to introduce the discussion
of the lines of every new battle-ship by argu-
ments as to the sea-worthiness of the ark. Those
of us who control a quarter of the habitable
globe, and the inhabitants thereof, are much too
busy to discuss the legal aspects of the land-
grabbing of the Pharaohs. Geography is not
metaphysics, but it is wof ully hard for the pro-
fessorial mind to grasp this.

"Given a mouse's tail, and he will guess
With metaphysic quickness at the mouse."

554 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

In much the same way German statesmen and
the German press do not understand, or do not
care to understand, that British statesmen when
they speak in the House of Commons, or when
they go to the country asking increased appro-
priations for the navy, must give some reason
for their request. There is only one reason, and
that is that there is a growing navy across the
North Sea, which, whether now it is or is not a
menace, may be a menace to their ship-fed island,
and they must have ships and men and guns
enough to guard the sea-lanes which their food-
laden ships must sail through.

They may be awkward sometimes in their
expression of this self-evident fact, they may call
their own fleet a necessity and the other fleet a
luxury, but that is a negligible question of verbal
manners; the fact remains that their fleet is, and
all the world knows it is, and it is laughable to
discuss it, the prime necessity of their existence.

As long as we Christians have given up any
shred of belief in Christian ethics, as applicable
to international disputes, we must live by the
law of the strongest. We do not bless the poor
in spirit, but the self-confident; we do not bless
the meek, but the proud; we do not bless the
peace-makers, but those who urge us to prepare
for war; we do not bless the reviled and the
persecuted and the slandered, but those who

555

revolt against injustice and tyranny; we do not
approve the cutting off of the right hand, but
admire the mailed fist; and it is only adding to
the confusion to raise millions for war ourselves,
and then to present a handsomely bound copy
of the Beatitudes to our rivals.

I shall be wantonly misunderstood if these
reflections be taken as a criticism of Germany.
This situation involves Germany in censure no
more than other nations. It is only that Ger-
many shows herself to be somewhat childish and
peevishly provincial, in girding at an unchange-
able situation, either in South America or in the
North Sea.

This is not altogether Germany's fault. She
is suffering from growing pains, and from grave
internal unrest. She is only just of age as a
nation, and her constitution is so inflexible that
it is a constant source of irritation. She is
governed by an autocracy, and the two strongest
parties numerically in her Reichstag are the
party of the Catholics and the party of the
Socialists. She has built up a tremendous trade
on borrowed capital, and every gust of wind in
the money market makes her fidgety. Her
population increases at the rate of some 800,000
a year, but her educational system produces such
a surplus of laborers who wish to work in uni-

556 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

forms, or in black coats and stiff collars, that
there is a dearth of agricultural laborers, and she
imports 700,000 Hungarians, Poles, Slavs, and
Italians every year to harvest her crops.

This same system of education has taught
youths to think for themselves before either the
mental or moral muscles are tough enough, with
the result that she is the agnostic and material-
istic nation of Europe, and her capital the most
licentious and immoral in Europe.

This is the result of secular education every-
where. Freedom of thought, yes, but not free-
dom of thought any more than freedom of
morals, or freedom of manners, or political free-
dom, in extreme youth; that only makes for
anarchy political, mental, and moral.

There is much undigested, not to say indigest-
ible, republicanism about just now in China
and in Portugal, for example; just as there are
materialism and agnosticism in Germany and in
France, not due to super-intellectualism but to
juvenile thinking. The Chinese are just as fit
for a republic — an actual republic is still a long
way off — as are callow German youths, and
notoriety -loving French students, for freedom to
disbelieve and to destroy. No country can long
survive a majority of women teachers in the
public schools, together with no Bible and no

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 557

religious teaching there. I have no prejudices
favoring orthodoxy, but I have a fairly wide
experience which has given me one article of a
creed that I would go to the stake for, and that
is that i t is of all crimes the worst to give free-
dom political, moral, or religious to those who
are unprepared for it.

Germany's taste in literature, once so natural
and healthy, has become morbid, and Suder-
mann and Gorky and Oscar Wilde, and the rest
of the unhealthy crew who swarm about the
morgues, the dissecting-rooms, and the houses of
assignation of life, the internuntiata libidinum,
the leering conciliatrices of the dark streets, are
her favorites now. There is no surer sign of
mental ill-health than a taste for lowering litera-
ture, an appetite for this self-dissecting, this
complacent, self-contemplating form of intel-
lectual exercise.

This is no heated assault on German culture.
It is a natural phase of development. Youthful
candidates for worldliness all go through this
pornocratic stage. 'The impudence of the bawd
is modesty, compared with that of the convert,"
writes the Marquis of Halifax. The German
professor and the German bourgeois in their
Rake's Progress are only a little more awkward,
a little more heavy-handed, a little coarser in

558 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

speech, than others, that is all. The period of
twenty-five years during which I have known
Germany has developed before my eyes the con-
comitants of vast and rapid industrial and com-
mercial progress, and they are: a love of luxury,
a great increase in gambling, a materialistic tone
of mind, a wide-spread increase of immorality,
and a tendency to send culture to the mint, and
to the market-place to be stamped, so that it may
be readily exchanged for the means of soft living.
These internal changes account to some extent
for her restless external policy. A man's diges-
tion has a good deal to do with the color of the
world when he looks at it. There is more yellow
in life from biliousness, than from the state of
the atmosphere.

Aside from these domestic causes there is no
reason why Germany should take a sentimental
or pious view of these questions of international
amity. Her own history is development by war.
"Any war is a good war when it is undertaken
to increase the power of the state," said Frederick
the Great. "Nur das Volk wird eine gesicherte
Stellung in der Welt haben, das von kriegerischen
Geiste erfiillt ist" ("Only that nation will hold
a safe place in the world which is imbued with a
warlike spirit") writes Germany's great military
philosopher Clausewitz.

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 559

We took Cuba and the Philippines; England
took India, Hong Kong, and Egypt; Japan took
Korea and southern Manchuria; Italy took
Tripoli; France took Fez; Russia took Finland
and northern Manchuria; Austria-Hungary took
Bosnia and Herzegovina; and Prussia and Ger-
many have a long list, including Silesia, Poland,
Hanover, and Alsace-Lorraine. Austria-Hun-
gary tears up the Berlin treaty; France, Ger-
many, and Spain tear up the Algeciras treaty;
Italy tears up the treaty of Paris; and it is
part of the game that we should all hold up our
hands, avert our faces, and thank God that
we are not as other men are, when these things
are done. The justifications of these actions
are all of the most pious and penitent descrip-
tion. We were forced to do so, we say, in order
to hasten the bringing in of our own specially
patented and exclusive style of the kingdom
of heaven, but outside of perhaps India and
Egypt, and the Philippines, it would be hard
to find to-day any trace of the promised king-
dom. Germany, for example, had nine per cent,
of Moroccan trade, the total of Moroccan trade
with all countries only amounted to $27,500,000
a year, and she was compelled to interfere for the
protection of her traders, forsooth! The out-
come of the business, after an exciting situation
lasting for months, was that Germany got a slice

560 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

of territory from France, mostly swamps, which
reaches from the Congo to the Atlantic Ocean,
and reported to be, by her own engineers, unin-
habitable.

It is the pleasant formula of polite statesmen
and politicians to say, that it is a pity that Ger-
many came into the world competition a hun-
dred years too late, when the best colonies had
been parcelled out among the other powers.
This is a superficial view of the case, and misses
the real point of the present envy, hatred, malice,
and uncharitableness. Germany does not want
colonies, and has no ability of the proper kind,
and no willing and adventurous population to
settle them, if she had. Prussia's dealing with
aborigines is a subject for comic opera.

Germany came into the modern world as a
dreamer, as a maker of melodies, as a singer of
songs, as a sort of post-graduate student in
philosophy and in theoretical, and later applied
science. She introduced us to classical philology,
to modern methods of historical research, to the
comparative study of ethnic religions, to daring
and scholarly exegesis, to the study of the science
of language. She discovered Shakespeare to the
English; Eduard Matzner and Eduard Miiller,
and German scholars in the study of phonetics,
have written our English grammars and ety-
mological dictionaries for us, and helped to lay

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 561

the foundations for knowledge of our own lan-
guage. Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, one need not
mention more, attempted to pass beyond the
bounds of human experience and to formulate
laws for the process; Schleiermacher, maintain-
ing that Christian faith is a condition of devout
feeling, a fact of inward experience, an object
which may be observed and described, had an
unbounded influence in America, and many are
the ethical discourses I have listened to which
owed more to Schleiermacher than to their au-
thors. Humboldt, Liebig, Bunsen, Helmholtz,
Johannes Miiller, Von Baer, Virchow, Koch,
Diesel, even the British and American man in the
street, with little interest in such matters, knows
some of these names; while Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche are symbols of revolt, whose names
are flung into an argument by many who only
know their names, but who fondly suppose that
the one stands for despair and suicide, and the
other for the joy and unbridled license of the
strong man.

Reckoning by epochs, it was only yesterday
that Germany said to the world: "No more of
this!"

"Hang up philosophy!
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more!"

Of a sudden our scholar threw off his gown
and cap, and said: "I propose to play base-ball
and foot-ball with you, I propose to have a hand
in the material spoils of life, I propose to have a
seat at the banquet and to propose toasts and
to be toasted!" Faust of a sudden left his
gloomy, cobwebby laboratory, flung a fine cloak
over his shoulders, stuck a dandy feather in his
cap, buckled on a rapier, and began roistering
with the best of us. We sneered and smiled at
first, let us be frank and admit it. We did not
think much of this new buck. We had little
fear that the professor, even if he took off his
spectacles and slippers and dressing-gown, and
exchanged his pipe for a cigarette, would cut
much of a figure as a lover. He was new to the
game, we were old hands at it, but the first thing
we knew he had given the world's mistress,
France, a scolding, and flung her into a corner,
a cowering heap of outraged finery ; and she has
only been safe ever since in the role of a sort of
mistress of England on board-wages.

A new cock in the barn-yard is never received
with great cordiality. He must win his place and
his power with his beak and his spurs. We all
of us had enough to do before this fellow came
along. We are a little jealous of him, we are all
uneasier because he is about, and he has done so
well at our games, now that he has indeed hung

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 563

up philosophy, that we are not even sure that it
is safe to take him on in a serious match. We
have endeavored, therefore, to keep him occupied
with his own neighbors, to whom we have ex-
tended our best wishes and our moral backing,
which is known as keeping the balance of power
in Europe.

But a new Germany has come into the world.
Germany nowadays has a large class, as have
the rest of us, who belong to that increasing
number of extraordinary people who want money
without even knowing how to get on without it.
The only satisfactory test of the right to wealth
is the ability to get on without it. One of mod-
ern civilization's most dangerous pitfalls is the
subversive doctrine that all men shall have
wealth, even before they have proved their
ability to do without it. Germany is gradually
arriving at this puny stage of culture, whose be-
ginnings may be said to date from that ominous
year for culture, 1492, when Lorenzo di Medici
died and Columbus discovered America!

During all this time statesmen have insisted
that there is no good reason why Germany and
England should not be on good terms; gentle-
men of various trades and professions from both
countries, speaking halting English or embar-
rassed German, as the case may be, cross each

564 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

other's boundaries, comment upon the beauties
of the respective countries, and overeat them-
selves in ponderous endeavors to appear cordial
and appreciative. Mayors and aldermen swap
stories and compliments over turtle and sherry,
or over sauerkraut and Johannisberger; bands of
students visit Oxford or Heidelberg, and there is
a chorus of praise of Goethe from one side, of
Shakespeare from the other; and all the while
there is an unceasing antiphonal of grimaces and
abuse in the press. Not even when Germany
exports her latest stage novelties to London, and
pantomimic platitudes are dandled under colored
lights, does the turmoil of martial talk cease.
Not even Teutonic lechery, in the guise of Rein-
hartian art, dressed in nothing but silence, and
making faces at the British censor on the boards
of the music-halls, avails anything.

Of course all this is nuts to the irresponsible
journalists, to the manufacturers of powder,
guns, and ships, and to politicians and diplomats
out of employment; but it is hard on the tax-
payer, who has no dividends from manufacturers
of lethal weapons and ships, nor from news-
papers, and no notoriety from the self-imposed
jobs of the unofficial diplomats.

Perhaps of all these factors the press, in its
wild gamble to make money out of sensational-

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 565

ism, is most to blame. The press, for the sake of
gain, has soiled and soured the milk of human
kindness by exposing it, carelessly and unceas-
ingly, to the pathogenic dangers of the dust of
the street and the gutter. It is wholly unfitting
and always demoralizing when the priest, the
politician, and the journalist turn their attention
to private gain. Any one of these three who
makes a great fortune out of his profession is
damned by that fact alone. The only payment,
beyond a living, that these three should look
to is, respect, consideration, and the honor of
serving the state unselfishly and wisely. The
world will be all the happier when there are no
more Shylocks permitted in any of these pro-
fessions.

Germany is autocratic, philosophical, and con-
tinental; England is democratic, political, and in-
sular. It is hopeless to suppose that the great
mass of the people of one country will understand
the other, and, for this is the important point,
it is wholly unnecessary.

We get on best and with least friction with
people whom we do not understand in the least.
A man may have known and liked people with
whose aims, opinions, employment, creeds he
has the smallest sympathy. One may mention
such diverse personalities as John L. Sullivan,

566 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the prize-fighter, Cardinal Rampolla, Mr. Roose-
velt, Doctor Jameson, the Kaiser, President
Diaz of Mexico, numerous Jew financiers, Lord
Haldane the scholar-statesman, and a long list of
professors, pious priests, sportsmen, and idlers,
not to speak of Hindus and Mohammedans,
Japanese and Chinese, and half a dozen Sioux
chiefs. With these gentlemen, a few of many
with whom one may have been upon such pleas-
ant terms that they have even confided in him
and trusted him with their secrets, one may have
passed many pleasant hours. It probably never
entered such a man's head to wonder whether
they liked him, and he never discussed with them
the question of his liking for them. We get on
by keeping our own personalities, prejudices, and
creeds intact. There is no other way.

Other men will give even a more diverse list
of friends and acquaintances, and never for a
moment dream that there is any mystery in be-
ing friends with all. Nothing is ever gained by
flattery. To the serious man flattery in the
form of sincere praise makes him more respon-
sible and only sadder, because he knows how
much he falls below what is expected of him, and
what he expects of himself. Lip-flattery makes
a real man feel as though his sex had been mis-
taken, he feels, as though he had been given

567

curling-tongs instead of a razor for his morning
toilet. These pompous flatteries that pass be-
tween Germany and England to-day, make both
sides self-conscious and a little ashamed to write
and to speak them, and to hear and applaud
them.

America and England are shortly to celebrate
the signing of the treaty of Ghent, which marks a
hundred years of peace between the two nations.
We have not been without opportunities to quar-
rel. We have whole classes of people in America
who detest England, and in England there are
not a few who do not conceal successfully their
contempt for America, but we have had peace,
and since England, at the time of our war with
Spain, said "Hands off!" to the powers that
wished to interfere, there has been a great in-
crease of friendly feeling. But there has been
little or no flattery passing back and forth. We
have sent ambassador after ambassador to Eng-
land who were almost more American than the
Americans. Phelps and Lowell and Hay and
Choate and Reid were all American in name, in
tradition, in their successes, and in their way of
looking at life. By their learning, their wit, and
their criticisms, by their writing and speaking,
by their presentation of the claims to greatness
of our great men, by their unhesitating avowal

568 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

in public and in private of their allegiance to the
ideals of the republic they served, they have
made clear the American point of view. Above
all, they have shown their pride in their own
country by acknowledging and praising the great
qualities of England and the English. There has
been no fulsome flattery, no bowing the knee to
foreign idols, and what has been the result?
The American ambassador for years has been
the most popular diplomatic figure in Great
Britain. An increasing number of Englishmen
even, nowadays, know who Washington and
Jefferson and Lincoln were, and our understand-
ing of one another has grown rapidly out of this
frank and manly attitude. We were jealous and
suspicious a hundred years ago, as are England
and Germany to-day, but we have changed all
that by our attitude of good-humored indepen-
dence, and by eliminating altogether from our
intercourse the tainted delicacy of compliment,
and the canting endearments of the diplomatic
cocotte. We have emphasized our differences to
the great benefit of the fine qualities that we
have and cherish in common.

The individual Protestant does not dislike the
individual Papist, half so much as he dislikes his
neighbor in the next pew, who refuses Sunday
after Sunday to repeat the service and the creed

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 569

at the same pace as the others, and hence to
"descend into Hell" with the rest of the congre-
gation. The Sioux chief was far more annoyed
by his neighbor of the same tribe in the next-
door reservation than he was by me. The
pugilist scorned "Tug" Wilson, a brother fisti-
cuffs sovereign, but had no feeling against his
parish priest. Theological protagonists are
notoriously bitter against one another, but we
have all found many of them amiable compan-
ions ourselves. It is the fellow next door, who
wears purple socks, or who parts his hair in the
middle, or who wears his coat-sleeves longer than
our tailor cuts ours, or who eats his soup with a
noise, or who has damp hands, or talks through
his nose, who irritates us and makes us wish
occasionally for the unlimited club-using free-
dom of the stone age. It is your first cousin with
incurable catarrh, and a slender income who is
too much with you, and who spoils your temper,
not the anarchist orator who threatens your
property and almost your life.

"What do these Germans want?" asked a
distinguished cabinet minister of me. 'They
want consideration," I replied, "which is the
most difficult thing in the world for the English-
man to offer anybody." "But, you don't mean
to say," he continued, "that they really want to

570 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

cut our throats on account of our bad manners? "
I cannot phrase it better, nor can I give a more
illuminating illustration of the misunderstand-
ing. That is exactly the reason, and the para-
mount reason, why nations and why individuals
attempt to cut one another's throats. Whatever
the fundamental differences may have been that
have led to war between nations, the tiny spark
that started the explosion has always been some
phase of rudeness or bad manners.

Counting my school-days, I can remember
about a dozen personal conflicts in which I have
engaged, with pardonable pleasure. Not one of
them was a question of territory, or religious
difference, or of racial hatred; indeed, the last
one was due to being shouldered in the street
when my equanimity was already disturbed by
a lingering recovery from a feverish cold.

It is, after all, the little differences that count.
If politically and socially Germany were a little
more sure of herself, if she were not ever omnia
tuta timens Dido; and if England were not as
ever quite so sure of herself, I believe inter-
course between them would be less strained.

'The little gnat-like buzzings shrill,
The hurdy-gurdies of the street,

The common curses of the will —

These wrap the cerements round our feet."

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 571

The smothered voice, the tepid manner, the
affected and hesitating under-statement, of a
certain middlish class of English men and women,
and, alas, their American imitators, who are
striving toward their comical interpretation of
the Vere de Vere manner, are the promoters of
guffaws in private, and uneasiness in public, be-
tween nations, to a far greater extent than the
bold individualist, whose voice and manners,
good or bad, are all his own. It is these small
attritions that wear us down, and produce a sub-
acid dislike between nations as between indi-
viduals. It is these that prepare the ground for
a fine crop of misunderstandings.

But are we not to know our neighbors the
English, the Germans, the French? I for one
consider that not to know German and Germany,
for example, is nowadays not to be fully educated.
Most of us, however, have had our nerves un-
strung by the speeding-up process that has
gone on all over the world of late. We have lost
somewhat the power to know people and to let
them alone at the same time. Goethe, one of
the coolest and wisest of men, maintains: "Cer-
tain defects are necessary for the existence of
individuality. One would not be pleased if old
friends were to lay aside certain peculiarities."

We should at least give every man as fair a

chance to receive our good opinion as we give a
picture. We should put him in a good light
before we criticise him. We should take time
enough to do that to other nations, as well as to
individuals. I have always had much sympathy
for a certain Roman general. He was blind,
and a painter who painted him with two large
eyes, he rebuked; another painter, who painted
him in profile, he rewarded.

It is, after all, something of an art to know
people, so that the knowledge is serviceable, so
that you can depict them to yourself and to
others, not as they are as opposed to you, but
as they are as a complement and help to you.

"No human quality is so well wove
In warp and woof, but there's some flaw in it;
I've known a brave man fly a shepherd's cur,
A wise man so demean himself, drivelling idiocy
Had wellnigh been ashamed on't. For your

crafty,

Your worldly-wise man, he, above the rest,
Weaves his own snares so fine, he's often
caught in them."

He who does not make allowances for weaknesses
and differences in his study of human affairs is
still in the infant class. It is a grave danger to
every state that critics, smart or shallow, with
their tu quoque weapons, their silly ridicule,

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 573

their emphasis upon differences as though they
were disasters, their constant failure to recognize
the value of certain weaknesses, their stupidity
in not painting great men who happen to be
blind, in profile, and their harping upon the
flaws, and their neglect of the fine texture of
human qualities that are strange to them, that
these critics are not muzzled, or, if that is im-
possible, disregarded.

They make it appear that amicable relations
between nations are next to impossible. If you
escape one danger of offending, you are sure to
give offence in some other way, they seem to say.
They are hysterical in their self-consciousness,
"as if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met
him, or went in the house and leaned his hand
on the wall and a serpent bit him." Sir Edward
Grey writes on this subject: "I sometimes think
that half the difficulties of foreign policy arise
from the exceeding ingenuity of different coun-
tries in attributing motives and intentions to
the governments of each other. As far as I can
observe, the press of various countries is much
more fertile in inventing motives and intentions
for the governments of the different countries
than the foreign ministers of these countries
are themselves. Foreign governments and our
c\vn government live from hand to mouth and

have fewer deep plans than people might sup-
pose. There is an old warning that you should
not spend too much time in looking at the dark
cupboard for the black cat that is not there, and
I think if sometimes we were a little less suspi-
cious of deep design or motive that the affairs
of the world would progress more smoothly."

The trouble lies in our undertaking the im-
possible, to the neglect of the obvious and the
possible. The basic fact of nationality is a pref-
erence for our own ways, customs, and habits
over those of other people. If the Chinese and
Japanese, the Servians and Albanians, the Eng-
lish and the Germans liked one another as well
as they like their own, there would be no nation-
alism to protect or to preserve. Such racial and
traditional liking of nation for nation is impos-
sible of achievement. No journeyings, speechi-
fyings, banquets, or compliments will bring it
about. On the contrary, I am not sure that it
is not these very differences which cheer us and
give us a new flavor in our pleasure in living,
when we cross the Atlantic, the Channel, or the
Rhine. ' What we should strive for is not social
and racial absorption, but social and racial dif-
ference and distinction, with that pride in our
own which makes for patience in the under-
standing of others.

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 575

It is the petty, self-conscious American who
hates the English, the provincial Englishman
who hates the German, the socially insecure
German who hates the Frenchman, the English-
man, and the American. Those of us who are
poised, secure, satisfied, and at bottom proud of
our race, our breeding, and our country, are
neither irritable nor irritating in the matter of
international relations. We have enough to do,
and let others alone. Let us dine one another,
criticise one another in the effort to improve
ourselves, praise one another where the praise
serves to establish our own ideals ; but let us give
up this forced and awkward courting by banquets,
deputations, and conferences. Let us study the
great art of leaving one another alone. This is
a time-hallowed doctrine. The greatest of all
satirists and critics of manners knew this secret of
successful intercourse with one another. One of
the characters in the "Frogs" of Aristophanes is
made to say: "Don't come trespassing upon my
mind; you have a house of your own." Pro-
pinquity does not necessarily entail intimacy;
as the world grows smaller, more and more
people think so, perhaps often enough only to
escape from themselves, a favorite form of elope-
ment these days. Some men are fed by solitude
and starved by too much companionship, and

576 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the same is true of nations. You cannot control
others till you have learned to control yourself,
or save another till you yourself are saved, and
most of us had better be about that business.

It is England's business to know just now, and
to some extent ours, how many ships Germany
is building and how many men she has in train-
ing to man them; but it is not in the least any-
body's business to question her motives or to
attempt to dictate her policy. It is our business
to shut up, and to build ships and to train men
according to our notions of what is necessary
for safety in case of an explosion. We should
be about our father's business, not about our
brother's business.

It is shallow thinking and lack of knowledge
of the men and women of stranger countries, and
above all that terrible itching to be doing some-
thing, which lead to these futile excursions and
this silly talk.

Can anything be more maudlin than to sup-
pose that international sensitiveness, that com-
mercial rivalries, that tariff discriminations, that
territorial misunderstandings, are to be soothed
and smoothed away, by dissertations upon how
much we owe to one another in matters of cult-
ure? Think what we owe to Goethe and Les-
sing, to Spinoza and Kant, to Heine and Mozart

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 577

and Wagner and Beethoven, reiterates the Eng-
lishman; think what we owe to Shakespeare and
Milton, to Byron and Shelley and Scott, to Lister
and Newton, answers the German! Who can
go to war with the countrymen of Racine and
Moliere and Pascal and Montesquieu and Des-
cartes? repeats the friend of France; and by
others are trumpeted the fraternal relations that
we ought to cultivate with the countrymen of
Dante, or of Euripides, ^Eschylus, and Sophocles.
This is phantom friendship, and we all know in
our heart of hearts, that we would fight any or
all of them at the drop of a handkerchief, if they
hurt our feelings, ruffled our national pride, or
maltreated in a foreign land the meanest of our
racial brothers. Straining after such artificial
bonds of union is as irritating as it is unreal.

Germany has few heartier admirers of Bis-
marck than am I; England has few franker
friends of her great gentlemen in peace and war
than am I; I have read and profited by French
literature far more than from anything America
has produced; if I can write so that here and
there a brother has profited therefrom, I owe
it to the Frenchmen I have studied; but these
are all nothing as compared with my heart's real
allegiances. There is a gulp in my throat when
I dream of that weary, misunderstood, but pa-

578 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

tient and humble peace-maker, who held the
scales between the millions of my own country-
men, shooting and stabbing one another to death
fifty years ago. No other man can be quite like
him to me; he remains my master of men, as is
Lee my ideal of the Happy Warrior. I under-
stand the grim humor in his sad eyes, I love that
lined face, cut from the granite of self-control,
that tamed volcano face, seamed and scarred by
the lava of his trials and his tears; I can see how
the illuminating and conciliatory anecdotes were
his relief from the pain of an aching heart; my
muscles harden and my nerves tingle as I recall
the puppet politicians and fancy self -advertising
warriors who crucified him slowly. The coun-
try and the people that Lincoln believed in, I
must believe in and fight for too. Washington
was an Englishman and baptized us, but Lin-
coln was an American who officiated at our first
communion as a united people.

I ask no Englishman, no German, no French-
man to agree with me, but I ask them to leave
me alone with my dead, to leave me in peace
with my living problems, to force no artificial
friendships upon me, and thus to let our respect
for one another increase naturally.

Has the Englishman, has the German, no
sanctuaries to be left undisturbed; no heart-

"FROM ENVY, HATRED, MALICE" 579

strings that are not to be fumbled at by busy
fingers; no personal dignities to be shrouded from
investigations; no sweet silences of sorrow that
are barred to foreign mourners? If he have not,
then all this clamor at the doors of national
privacy is well enough; but let them remember
that when nations lose their dignity and their ra-
cial pride, there is sure to follow the squabbling
and the jealousy, the rough speech and vulgar
manners, of the domestic circle, in the same
plight of spiritual shamelessness. The best that
any of us learn is to be a little more patient, a
little more charitable, a little more careful of the
dignity of others in our own homes, or abroad,
and then the light goes out!

XI

CONCLUSION

CRITICISM is temptingly easy when it
consists, as it so often does, in merely
noting what is different, or what is not
there. Helpful criticism I take to be the dis-
covery of what is there, and its revelation, with
an examination of its history, its truth, and its
value. That kind of criticism is close to creation
itself, and few there are sufficiently self-sacrific-
ing to endow and to train themselves to under-
take it.

It makes life very complicated to think too
much about it, but to take a step further, and to
attempt to apply logic to life, that way madness
lies. It is of the very essence of life that things
are never as they ought to be, but only as they
can be for the time being. We may be opti-
mistic enough to believe that this is a good world,
but it is none the less true that unbending virtue
seldom receives the temporal rewards for which
most of us are striving, and with which alone

most of us are content. We are forced to doubt,

580

CONCLUSION 581

therefore, the goodness which finds life easy and
comfortable, and since we must still at all haz-
ards be charitable in our judgments of one an-
other, we become, most of us, opportunists in
morals.

In dealing with the men, manners, affairs, and
the soul of a stranger people, therefore, one must
use what experience, knowledge, good-humor,
and impartiality one has, without assumption of
superiority, without making high demands, and
without ceasing to be at least as opportunist as
we are at home. Because things are different,
they are not necessarily better or worse, and if
certain things are not there, it is perhaps be-
cause they do not belong there. Above all, we
should refrain from applying a stern logic to the
life of another country which we never use in
measuring our own.

The whole north of Germany is a flat, barren
plain, with the Elbe, the Oder, the Weser flowing
west and north. The north of Germany on a
raised map looks like a vast sea-shore, and so it
is. To the south a great river, the Rhine,
pierces its way from Frankfort through a beau-
tiful gorge in the mountains, and has its source
near that of the Danube. Barbarossa called this
river, "that royal street." This sea-shore is cul-
tivated and populous ; this river has been made a

582 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

great commercial highway. Cologne, one hun-
dred and fifty miles from the sea, is now a sea-
port; Strasburg, three hundred miles inland, can
receive boats of six hundred tons ; and the tribu-
tary river, the Main, has been deepened so that
now Frankfort receives steamers from the Rhine.
Three quarters of the through trade of Holland
is German water-borne trade. Now the Dort-
mund-Ems canal, which is one hundred and sixty-
eight miles long, and can be used by ships of a
thousand tons, gives an outlet, via the Rhine, at
Emden. All this is the work of a patient, per-
sistent, and economical people working under
great natural disadvantages.

As compared with America this is an unfruit-
ful land, and, as I have noted, surrounded on all
sides by powerful enemies. In 1902 Traugott
Miiller estimated the value of Germany's pro-
duction of wheat, potatoes, vegetables — the prod-
ucts of the gardens and the fields, in short — at
$605,000,000; the production of beef, mutton,
pork at $669,500,000; of the dairies at $406,-
000,000; of cotton, sugar, alcohol, wine, and
wood at $322,000,000; or a total of $2,002,000,-
000. The United States is seventeen times as
large, but by no means seventeen times as pro-
ductive.

Germany, again, is divided into a number of

CONCLUSION 583

states, all, with the exception of Prussia, with its
population of 40,000,000 out of the total of 65,-
000,000, comparatively small. These states are
not merely divided by legal and geographical
lines, but by traditions, different ruling families,
religion, tastes, habits, and manners, and even
geologically. Bernhard Cotta, writing of Ger-
many, says: "Geologically there is a Spain, an
England, a Sweden, a Russia, a France, but no
Germany." They are different individuals, not
different members of the same family. They
have been cemented together by coercion.

Over this whole country for three hundred
years have swept all the fighting men of Europe.
Until 1870 it was a tournament ground for the
Swedes, Russians, French, Dutch, Belgians,
Italians, Hungarians, English, and the various
German states. It was shot over, till it is a
wonder that there are any young birds, not to
speak of old cocks and hens left, to begin with
over again.

A feature of the political situation, which
scarcely enters into political calculations in Amer-
ica, is the sharp division between Protestants
and Catholics, with a political party of Cath-
olics numbering one fourth of the total members,
in the Reichstag. In 1905 there were 37,646,852
Protestants and 22,109,644 Catholics in Ger-

584 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

many, the Roman Catholics being in a majority
in Baden, Bavaria, and Alsace-Lorraine. In the
past these religious differences have entailed all
the most repulsive features of war, waged to the
point of extermination. "Lieber Rom als Lib-
eral," is still a punning war-cry marking the dis-
like of Rome and the fear of Socialism.

With us religion has become largely an organ-
ized attempt, using charity as patronage, to rec-
oncile piety and plenty, with the result that
with the exception of the Catholic Church deal-
ing with the lately arrived immigrants, and the
Methodists and Baptists dealing with the ig-
norant masses, black and white, in the South,
religion in the sense of an organized church has
little hold upon the people, especially in the
large cities.

In America the indifference to religion is the
result of suspicion. The congregations are too
largely black-coated and white-collared, and the
lay officers of the churches much too solemnly
sleek and serenely solvent to attract the weak,
the unfortunate, the sorrowing, and the sinner.
The mere appearance of the congregation in a
prosperous Protestant church in an American
city is a mockery of Christianity. Any man
who preaches to men who can own a seat in
God's house is a craven opportunist. Until

CONCLUSION 585

the doors of the churches are open all the
week, and the seats in the churches free, to
claim that the Christ is there is little short of
blasphemy. It is no wonder that those who
need Him most, never dream of seeking for Him
in these ecclesiastical clubs.

In Germany half-baked thinking, following
upon, and as the result of, the barracks and cor-
poral methods of education, have turned the
Protestant population from the churches. The
slovenly and patchy omniscience of the partly
educated, leads them to believe that they know
enough not to believe. Renan, though a doubter
himself, saw the weakness of this form of dis-
belief when he wrote: "There are in reality but
few people who have a right not to believe in
Christianity."

The people living upon this ethnographical
chess-board have been for centuries rather tribal
than national, and are still rather philosophical
than political, rather idealistic than practical,
rather dreamy than adventurous. To organ-
ize this population for self-support and self-de-
fence, to ignore differences, racial and religious,
to stamp out the jealousies of small rulers, re-
quired severe measures, and we are all learning
to-day that democracies are seldom severe with
themselves. A tyrannical autocracy, led by

586 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, and Bis-
marck, produced from this welter of discord the
astonishing results of to-day.

We have to-day, in an area of 208,780 square
miles, 5,604 square miles representing the lately
conquered territory of Alsace-Lorraine, a popu-
lation of 64,903,423, of whom 1,028,560 are sub-
jects of foreign powers. To defend this area
there are to be, according to figures estimated
even as this volume goes to press, a million men
under arms in the army and navy. Their enor-
mous progress in trade, in industry, in ship-
building, is set out in full in every year-book,
for the curious to ponder. In so short a time,
on so poor a soil, in such a restricted space, with
such a past of distress and disaster, and dealing
with such conflicting interests, a like success in
nation-building is unparalleled.

Industrial and martial beehive though it
would seem to be, there are provided for the
native and the foreigner feasts of music, of art,
and of study that cost little. There are quiet
streams, lovely, lonely walks, and quaint towns
that are nests of archaeological interest. In
Weimar, in Stuttgart, in Schwerin, in Diissel-
dorf, in Karlsruhe, not to mention Munich, Leip-
sic, Dresden, Berlin, Frankfort, Hamburg, there
are centres of culture. The best that the mind

CONCLUSION 587

of man creates is still spread out there as of
yore for whomsoever will to partake, but ever in
less abundance and with less enthusiasm. And
these names are a mere fraction of the number of
such places.

The rivalries between the states is now to a
large extent an elevating rivalry of culture,
dotting the map of Germany with resting-places
for the curious, the scholarly, or the sentimental
traveller. You may have plain living and high
thinking in scores of the cities and towns of Ger-
many, and you will be considered neither an
outcast nor an eccentric; indeed, you will find no
small part of the population your companions.

You may stroll for miles on the banks of that
tiny stream the Zschopau, and expect to see
sprites and nymphs, so hidden are its windings;
and where in all the world will a handkerchief
cover an Ulm, an Augsburg, a Rothenburg,
Ansbach, Nuremberg, Wiirzburg, with their
wealth of associations?

The Fugger family, of Augsburg, tell us again
that there is nothing new in the world. Five
hundred years ago they were millionaires. One
of these Fuggers had a voice even in the election
of Charles V, and we are still hard at it trying
to keep our Fuggers from meddling in politics.
Another Fugger, Marcus by name, wrote a cap-

588 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

ital book on the horse in the sixteenth century,
and at the last horse-show at Olympia, in 1912, a
Fugger came over from Germany and took away
the first prize for officers' chargers. So far flung
was their fame as money-lenders that usury was
called "Fuggerei"!

Heirs of great houses got out of hand then as
now, and Duke Albert III of Bavaria married
Agnes Bernauer, the barber's daughter, and even
the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria ran off with
Fraulein Welser. One citizen of Augsburg
fitted out a squadron to take possession of Vene-
zuela, which had been given him by the Emperor
Charles V. For some reason the squadron did
not sail; Lord Salisbury and President Cleve-
land could have told this adventurous Augs-
burger that he was better off at home!

Bishop Boniface, of Wurzburg, was an Eng-
lishman, and his father was a wheelwright. He
put cart-wheels in his coat-of-arms, and they
have remained to this day in the arms of the
town, a fine reminder to snobbery that ancestry
only explains, it cannot exalt.

"Pigmies are pigmies still, though perch'd on Alps,
And pyramids are pyramids in vales."

The atmosphere in these towns is one of re-
pose. They are still wise enough to know that

CONCLUSION 589

the miraculous improvements in speed brought
about by steam and electricity have not short-
ened the journey of the soul to heaven by one
second. They know that Socrates on a donkey
really goes faster than Solly Goldberg in his
sixty-horse-power motor-car. They are suspi-
cious of the new cosmopolitan creed, that suc-
cessful advertising endows a man with eternal
life. Countless political quacks have been cari-
catured, advertised, and cinematographed into
familiarity, but wise men still read Plato and
Aristotle. The penny press has not convinced
them that popularity is immortality; they rec-
ognize popularity as merely glory paid in pennies.
They partake to some extent of the patience of
the Oriental. They suspect, as most men of
wide intellectual experience do, that the man
who cannot wait must be a coward at bot-
tom, afraid of himself, or of the world, or of
God.

This is wholly true of many Germans, de-
spite the clang of arms, the noise of steam-ham-
mers, the shrieking locomotives, the puffing
steamers, the clinking of their gold, and the
shouting of their pedlers, now scattered all over
the world. It is this combination, in the same
small area, of noise and repose; of political
subserviency at home and sabre-rattling abroad;

590 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

of close organization at home and colonizing
inefficiency abroad; of moral and intellectual
freedom, one might almost call it moral and
intellectual anarchy these days, and at the
same time submission to a domestic and social
tyranny unknown to us, that makes even a
timid author feel that he is discovering the
Germans to his countrymen, so little do they
know of this side of German life.

They are not at all what the Americans and
the English think they are. They want peace,
and we think they want war. The huge arma-
ments are intended to frighten us, just as were
the grotesquely ugly masks of the Chinese war-
riors. They intend to frighten us all with their
850,000 soldiers, their great fleet, their air-ships
and aeroplanes, and when they go to Agadir
again they hope to be able to stay there till
their demands are granted. They are the last
comers into the society of nations and they
mean to insist upon recognition. But this de-
mand is an artificial one so far as the great mass
of Germans is concerned. It is the Prussian
conqueror, and the small class, officer, official
and royal, representing that conqueror, who are
determined upon this course. They have uni-
fied Germany, they have made the laws and
forced obedience to them; and the heavily

CONCLUSION 591

taxed, hard-driven, politically powerless people
are helpless.

Nowhere has socialistic legislation been so
cunningly and skilfully used for the enslave-
ment of the people. No small part of every
man's wages .is paid to him in insurance; in-
surance for unemployment, for accident, sick-
ness, and old age. There is but faint hope of
saving enough to buy one's freedom, and if the
slave runs away he leaves, of course, all the
premiums he has paid in the hands of his master.
A general uprising is guarded against by a re-
doubtable force of officials, officers, and soldiers,
whose very existence depends upon their de-
fence of and upholding of the state under its
present laws and rulers.

Our grandfathers and fathers, some of them,
talked and read of Saint-Simon, of Fourier, Rob-
ert Owen, Maurice Kingsley, and the Brook
Farm experiment, and believed, no doubt, that
the dawn of the twentieth century would have
extracted at least some balm from these theories
for the healing of our social woes. They would
rub their eyes in amazement were they to awake
in 1912 to find more armed men, more ships of
war, more fighting, more strikes and trade dis-
putes, than ever before. Above all, they would
be puzzled to find the nation which is most ad-

592 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

vanced in the application of the theory of state
socialism with the largest army, the heaviest
taxation, and the second most formidable fleet.

The library in which, as a small boy, I was
permitted to browse, where I read those won-
derful Black Forest Stories and my first serious
novel, On the Heights, contained a bust of Goethe,
and on the shelves were Fichte, Freytag, Spiel-
hagen, Strauss, and a miscellaneous collection
of German authors grave and gay, or perhaps
melancholy were a better word, for even now I
should find it hard to point to a German author
who is distinctively gay. No visitor to that
library, and they numbered many distinguished
visitors, American and foreign, from Emerson
and Alcott and George Macdonald to others
less well known, dreamed that the serene mar-
ble features of Goethe would be replaced by the
granite fissures of the face of Bismarck; and
that Auerbach's Black Forest Stories would be
less known than Albert Ballin's fleet of mercan-
tile ships. As I dream myself back to that big
chair wherein I could curl up my whole person,
and still leave room for at least two fair-sized
dogs, I see as in no other way the almost unbe-
lievable change that has come over Germany.
The Black Forest Stories, Hammer and Anvil,
The Lost Manuscript, Werther, Fichte, Kant,

CONCLUSION 593

Hegel, Schopenhauer, Strauss, Heine were Ger-
many then; Bismarck, Ballin, and Krupp are
Germany now. Germany was Hamlet then;
Germany is Shylock, Shylock armed to the
teeth, now.

No nation can change in one generation, as has
Germany, by the natural development of its
innate characteristics; such a change must be
forced and artificial to take place in so short a
time. This is not only the internal danger to
Germany itself, but the danger to all those
superficial observers who point to Germany as
having solved certain social and economic
problems. She has not solved them by healthy
growth into better ways; she has suppressed
them, strangled them, suffocated them.

The heroes and heroines of my Black Forest
Stories have been rudely stuffed into the uni-
forms of officials, soldiers, factory hands, and
Red Cross nurses. The toy-shops have been
developed, on borrowed capital, into ship-build-
ing yards and factories for guns and ammunition.
The dreamer in dressing-gown and slippers has
been forced into the cap and apron of the work-
man. The small sovereigns have been fright-
ened into allegiance to the war lord, whose
shadow falls upon every corner of Germany.

In this new scheme of things it soon became

594 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

evident, that the individual was incompetent to
take care of himself along lines best suited to
the plans of his new conqueror, therefore part of
his earnings were taken from all alike to provide
against accident, sickness, unemployment, and
old age, and thus bind him fast to the chariot of
his warrior lord. Germany, having given up the
belief that the salvation of her own soul was
of prime importance, became suspiciously con-
cerned about the souls and bodies of the people.
We are all to some extent following her example.
The wise among us are sad, the capitalist and
his ally the demagogue are seen everywhere all
smiles, rubbing their hands, for the more people
are made to believe that they can be, and ought
to be, taken care of, the more the machinery is
put into their hands, the more plunder comes
their way, the more indispensable they are.

The great majority of people who write or
speak of Germany applaud this situation; let
me frankly say, what everybody will be saying
in twenty-five years, I deplore it. It is a purely
artificial, incompetent, and dreary solution.
Even Hamlet were better than Shylock.

Fortunately there is also a large and increas-
ing class in Germany who distrust the situation.
They point to the fact that technical education
is producing an army of dingy artisans, who turn

CONCLUSION 595

out the cheap and nasty by the million, an edu-
cation which chokes idealism and increases the
growing flippancy in matters of faith and morals ;
they sneer, and well they may, at the manu-
factured art, the carpenter's Gothic architecture,
the sickly literature, the decaying interest in
scholarship; they find fewer and fewer candi-
dates for exploration and colonization; they
rankle under the series of diplomatic ineptitudes
since Bismarck; they see France, Russia, and
England antagonized and leagued against them,
and their own allies, Austria-Hungary and Italy,
in a confused state of squabble with their neigh-
bors; they are nervous and disquieted by the
financial and industrial conditions; they con-
demn whole-heartedly the political caste system
by which much of the best material in Germany
is barred from the councils and the diplomatic
and executive activities of the nation; there are
not a few who would welcome an inconclusive
war that would, they think, put an end to this
system, and make the ruler and the officials re-
sponsible to the people; they wish to open the
doors of this governmental, legislative, educa-
tional, industrial hot-house, and give the nation
a chance to grow naturally in the open air.

The policy of making other people afraid of
you must have an end, the policy of making

596 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

others respect and like you can have no end.
There is no question which is the natural law
of national development. Neither for the in-
dividual nor for a nation is it wholesome to in-
crease antagonisms and to lessen the concilia-
tory points of contact with the world.

Many of the weaknesses, much of the strength
of Germany are artificial. They have not
grown, they have been forced. The very bar-
renness of the soil, the ring of enemies, the soft
moral and social texture of the population, have,
so their little knot of rulers think, made neces-
sary these harsh, artificial forcing methods.

The outstanding proof of the artificiality of
this civilization is its powerlessness to propa-
gate. Germans transplanted from their hot-
house civilization to other countries cease to
be Germans; and nowhere in the world outside
Germany is German civilization imitated, liked,
or adopted. The German is nonplussed to find
the Pole in the East, the Frenchman in the West,
the Dane in the North, scoffing at his alte
Kultur, as he calls it, and he is irritated beyond
measure by the German from America, who re-
turns to the Vaterland to criticise, to sneer, and
to thank God that he is an American, not a
German citizen. Germans become English cit-
izens, no Englishmen become Germans; mill-

CONCLUSION 597

ions of Germans have become Americans, no
Americans become Germans. No other pop-
ulation would be amenable to the Prussian
methods that have made Germany, nor is there
anywhere in the world a people demanding
Prussian methods, while there are millions under
the Prussian yoke who hate it.

The German rhetoric to the effect that Ger-
many is to save the world by Teutonizing the
world, is laughable. Prussia is the ventrilo-
quist behind this half-hearted boast.

Werther, and Faust, and Lohengrin, are far
more real than those scarecrows autocracy,
bureaucracy, and militarism, triplets of straw,
premature births, not destined to live, of which
Germany boasts to-day as the most precocious
children in the world. They are just that, pre-
cocious children, teaching the pallid religion of
dependence upon the state and enforcing the
anarchical morality of man's despair of him-
self. Our descendants will have Werther and
Faust and Lohengrin, as the companions of their
dreams at least, when that autocracy shall have
been blown to the winds, when that bureau-
cracy shall have dried up and wasted away, when
that exaggerated militarism shall be but bleach-
ing bones and dust.

Who has not lived in Germanv as a house of

598 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

dreams, seen the Valkyrie race by, heard the
swan song, wept with Werther and with Mar-
guerite, smiled cynically with Mephistopheles,
languished with the Palm Tree and the Pine of
Heine; who has not sat at the feet of Germany
as a philosopher, and traced the very fissures
of his own brain in following thinking into
thought; but who in all the world longs for this
new Germany of the barracks, the corporal and
the pedler? Germania as a malicious vestal
clad in horrid armor and making mischief in
the world is a very present danger; Germania
with a torch lighting the world to salvation is
a phantom, a ghost, seen by hasty and nervous
observers, who rush out to proclaim an advent-
ure that may excite a passing interest in them-
selves. Her methods to-day are solution by suf-
focation; no wonder those of us who loved her
in our youth see in her a ghost to-day. I am
thankful that I was her pupil when she had
other things to teach, when she wore other
robes, when she was modest, and not snatching
at the trident of Neptune, nor clutching at the
casque of Mars.

"Wir wissen zu viel, wir wollen zu wenig,"
became the national complaint, and Germany
has attempted to transform herself. She has
succeeded in the transformation, but the trans-

CONCLUSION 599

formation is not a success. Even that learned
English friend of Germany, Lord Haldane,
does not see, or will not see, that a people
thinking themselves into action, instead of de-
veloping into action naturally, through action,
must suffer from the artificiality of the proc-
ess. Lord Haldane applauds their thought-out
organization in industrial, commercial, and mil-
itary matters, but he fails to mention the
squandering of individual capacity and energy
that has resulted in Germany 's growing depend-
ence upon a wooden bureaucracy. Organiza-
tion is only good as a means ; it is stupefying as
an end. Germany has organized herself into
an organization, and is the most over-governed
country in the world. What every democracy
of free men wants is not as much, but as little,
organization as possible compatible with eco-
nomical administration of industry, the army,
the navy, and the affairs of the state. You can
think out a game of chess, but you cannot think
out life ahead of the living of it without cramp-
ing it and finally killing it. Life is to live, not
to think, after all. Neither a nation nor an in-
dividual has ever thought out the way to
power. This is where the metaphysician in-
variably fails when he mistakes thinking for
living, when he mistakes organization, which

600 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

can never be more than a mould for life, for life
itself. To plan an army is not to produce one,
however good the plan; even to plan a cam-
paign, once you have an army, is to court dis-
aster unless there is a living man to thrust the
plan aside when the emergencies arise that make
up the whole of life, but have nothing to do
wrjjj organization.

If all men were tailors, or lawyers, or farmers,
or miners, then we could think out an organiza-
tion into which they would fit, but unfortunately
for the metaphysician, all men are not categories;
all men are men ! In like manner, if all men were
cases, then government by lawyers would be
successful, but men and women are neither
categories nor cases. It is purely fantastic, the
mere reasoned confusion of the philosopher, to
point to Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel and their
successors as the originators of Germany's prog-
ress. If Germany had developed along those
lines, she would be something quite different
from what she is. The Great Elector, Frederick
the Great, Napoleon, and Bismarck made Ger-
many, and her philosophers and pedants are
only responsible for the softness that made it
possible. Metaphysicians and lawyers have
their place, but they will inevitably ruin any
people whom they are permitted to govern.

The reader will perhaps look back through

CONCLUSION 601

these pages to discover a contradiction. He will
seem to find evidence that Germany's position
in the world called for just this present Germany,
which is a factory town with a garden attached,
surrounded by an armed camp. I deny the con-
tradiction. I have tried to analyze and to give
the reasons for Germany's development along
these meretricious and disappointing lines, but
I am the last to admit that the outcome is satis-
factory, or that the rest of the world should
look to Germany to point out the way of salva-
tion. A steaming orchid-house is not the place
to go to learn to grow the fruits of the earth in
their due season for the nourishment of a free
people. You will find some brilliantly colored
flowers there, in the gay uniforms of the arti-
ficial tropics, but they shrink and shrivel in the
open air. They have been trained to grow
luxuriantly in this stifling atmosphere, but they
feed no one, please no one, who will not consent
to live in a glass house with them.

Because a people is blindfolded, its preachers
and pedagogues gagged, its officials subservient,
is all the more reason why they should be easily
led, but no reason at all for supposing that they
will lead anybody else.

I have said here and there that I have learned
much, and that we all have much to learn from
Germany. I permit myself to repeat it. She

602 GERMANY AND THE GERMANS

has shown us that the short-cut to the govern-
ing of a people by suppression and strangulation
results in a dreary development of mediocrity.
She has proved again that the only safety in the
world for either an individual or a nation is to
be loved and respected, and in these days no
one respects slavery or loves threats.

From an American point of view, any sacrifice,
any war, were better than the domination of the
Prussian methods of nation-making. No nation
should be by its traditions and its ideals more
ready to arm itself, and to keep itself armed if
necessary for years, against the possibility of
the transference of such methods to the Amer-
ican continent than the United States of North
America.

"Theuer ist mir der Freund, doch auch den Feind kann ich

niitzen,"
Zeigt mir der Freund, was ich kann, lehrt mir der Feind was ich

soil,"

writes Schiller.

We Americans have much to learn from both
our friends and our enemies. We have both in
Germany, and we should cultivate the temper of
mind which profits by the encouragement of our
friends and the criticism of our foes.

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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