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 figures 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.

"Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland? Ist's Preussenland? Ist's Schwabenland? Ist's wo am Rhein die Rebe blueht? Ist's wo am Belt die Moeve zieht? O nein! O nein! O nein! Sein Vaterland muss groesser sein.

"Des ganze Deutschland soil es sein! O Gott vom Himmel, sieh' darein, Und gib uns rechten deutschen Muth; Dass wir es lieben treu und gut! Des soil es sein! des soil es sein! Des ganze Deutschland soll es sein!"

The official title of the sovereign is not Emperor 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 Emperor.

However heavy the burden of armament may be, we must be careful to put such expenditure in its proper perspective and in its proper relations, not only to the German Empire, which for official, clerical, and statistical matters is quite a different entity, but to "das ganze Deutschland." The German Empire is the clearinghouse, the adjutant, the executive officer, the 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 Reichsbank; 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 stretchable, 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 interest at four per cent. upon military expenditures 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 conversion 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, and I am bound to say that I see none either, but a nation trained also to defence, cost what it may.

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-Hungary 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 therewith, the number of men 66,783. France proposes to spend, plus an addition due to operations in Morocco, $90,000,000, number of men 58,404; and Japan $44,309,145, number of men 49,389. Two new corps have been voted for 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 French frontier, with head-quarters at Sarrebourg or Mulhouse. A German army corps on a war footing comprises about 52,000 men, with 150 guns and 16,000 horses. The reader should notice, as a reminder of the still latent jealousies of the different 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 themselves to be officers, and to struggle through frequent 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 a year. Of one hundred officers who join, only an average of eight ever attain to the command of a regiment. In Bavaria and Wuertemberg, promotion is quicker by from one to three years than in Prussia. In Prussia promotion to Oberleutnant averages 10 years, to captain or Rittmeister 15 years, to major 25 years, to colonel 33 years, and to general 37 years. It would not be altogether inhuman if these gentlemen occasionally 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 commander, $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 commentary 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 are a thousand pupils. They are taught riding, swimming, dancing, French, English, mathematics, 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 examined are rejected as unfit, not necessarily because 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. Some 10,000 men who have passed a certain 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 Gaedke 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, according 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 20,473,684.

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 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, Wuertemberg, and Saxony, and 1 at Munich in Bavaria. They there receive their commissions as second lieutenants. There are 9 Prussian schools, the Hauptkadettenanstalt at Gross Lichterfelde, and 8 Kadetten-Haeuser; and 1 at Dresden and 1 at Munich. Some of these I have visited, and been made at home with the greatest courtesy and hospitality. 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 equitation, officers' riding-schools, a military technical academy at Charlottenburg, where officers may study the technical engineering and communication services, an artillery and engineer school at Munich, a field-artillery school of gunnery, a foot-artillery school of gunnery, a cavalry telegraph 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 political 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 technical division of the general staff, or administrative 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 Spartan indeed at the cadet schools, but how valuable that is, is shown in the faces, manners, physique, and general bearing of the picked youths one sees at the Kriegesakademie in Berlin. No one after seeing these fellows would deny for a moment the value of a sound, hard discipline. The same may be seen at our own West Point, where the transformation of many a country bumpkin, into an officer and a gentleman, 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 confusion 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 obliging 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 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 explanation 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 buttons; 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 uncompromising 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 no person whatever till the state has declared him duly qualified." It is 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 general commands, and of the higher staff, 44.33 per cent. were noblemen; of the officers of the infantry, 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 descendants, 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, jealous 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, 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 country 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 Germany to-day is caused by, and comes from, this army of the new nobility.

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 afterward minister of education; the secretary of state's father was plain Herr Kiderlein-Waechter; the under-secretary of state is Herr Zimmermann; the secretary of the interior is Herr Delbrueck; 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 Oberpraesidenten, men who rule the provinces, 6 are noblemen; of the 37 Regierungspraesidenten, 14 are of the nobility, 23 are not. This should dispose finally of the 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 recognized as giving their services as a family tradition, 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 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 suitable 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 comfortable 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 Germany together. Ulysses lashed himself to the mast as he passed the sirens of luxury and leisure, and for the German Ulysses the army supplies 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 Spartan three quarters of a million of soldiers and sailors, and their officers. It offers a splendid example of patriotism, of disregard for the weakening 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 German army is unbeatable, even if attacked from 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 regiments did not lose a man during the whole campaign 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 scandal 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 political 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 individual brilliancy which interfered with the general plan was condoned or pardoned, no matter how highly placed the relatives or how influential the connections of the offender. A distinguished general, after a successful and heroic victory, who had been tempted into a bloody battle against orders, was called before his superiors, 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, unnoticed 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 impulsive 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 comfortable, so that there is little danger of permanent tyranny. What Richelieu said of the French applies to some extent to ourselves: "Le propre du caractere francais c'est que, ne se tenant pas fermement au bien, il ne s'attache non plus longtemps au mal."

During and after the Franco-German war there was no cheap heroism, no feminine excitability producing litters of heroes; no slobbering, 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, gentlemen, 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 manufacturing 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 average for the whole empire, of those from the towns passed as fit, had fallen from 53.52 in 1902 to 47.87 in 1910. The First Army Corps has its head-quarters at Koenigsberg, 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 headquarters 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 headquarters 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, especially 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 backbone 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 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 wherefore I cannot say, but Saxony is a peculiarly overpopulated section of Germany, and the population is overdriven; and the German everywhere is a dreamy creature compared with us, of less toughness of fibre either morally or physically, and no doubt, here and there, under-exercising 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 intellectual experience, coupled with a craving for miscellaneous reading, breed new microbes almost as fast as science discovers remedies for the old ones.

Bismarck's words, "Ohne Armee kein Deutschland," 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 German 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-sacrificing saints, but it does partake of the dreamy, idealistic German nature, as does every other institution in Germany. Though, as a whole, it is a fighting machine, the various parts of it are not imbued with that spirit alone. The uneasy 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 been 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 peculiar 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 behind 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 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 lamentably 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 temperament I have written. No one can fail to note the chief characteristics: their gregariousness, 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 delight 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 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 ecstasy 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 useful 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 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 musical festival, or listened to one of the great clubs of male voices, or heard the orchestras and military bands, will not deny the delights of music in Germany. In Berlin there is not a hall suitable 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 selections 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 theatre, supported and guided by the sovereign, have offered a school of entertainment and instruction to the people. At this present writing, 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 certain concerts as regularly as children go to school. It sounds oddly to the ears of an American 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 overindulging 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. Imagine the inhabitants of Hoboken, New Jersey; of Lynn, Massachusetts; of Kalamazoo, Michigan; of Bloody Gulch, Idaho, spending too much time and money listening to the music of Palestrina and Bach, or to the plays of Shakespeare; 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.

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 outside things working upon us. They are still the dreaming, drinking, singing, impulsive Germans of Tacitus. Titus Livius, Plutarch, and Machiavelli, all maintained that the successive invasions 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 were 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 countries 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 Germans 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 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 coachman 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 William 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, subjective, these are their true characteristics, but the superficial among us do not see these things because they are hidden behind the great army, the new navy and mercantile marine, the factories, 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, 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 insanity. 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 every 100 suicides of females 125 in Germany. In Vienna, and for racial purposes this is Germany, 1,558 persons killed themselves in 1912. Children committing suicide because they have failed in their examinations is not uncommon in Germany; in America and in England the teachers 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 beginning to see the dangers to real progress in such feverish devotion to industry, and to recognize 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- interest, does not leave an enlivening impression. Such an ideal of life is paltry in itself and involves 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."

Out of this temperament has grown the self-consciousness, the uneasy vanity, the "touchiness" 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 persists in seeing them, as they would be were Germany in their place. She is forever looking into a mirror instead of through the open window. "The mailed fist," "the rattling of the sabre," "the friend in shining armor," "querelle allemande," 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 the situation. That philosophical and literary radical Lord Morley, now wearing a coronet, in the land where logic is a foundling and compromise 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 newspapers is at once more capricious and more vociferous than it ever was." This, strange to say, is exactly the opinion of the German autocrats, 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 certain embarrassing problems in her own household. The over-stimulation of ill-regulated mental activity as the result of regimental education is one of the minor problems. Some fourteen 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-spread evil. I recognize that it is not only in Germany, but in France, England, and America, 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 remarked elsewhere in this volume, the Strindbergs 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 l'ame."

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 German cities, with a population of 11,380,000, had 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 library 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 community of Dudweiler, in the Rhine province, which contains 132 volumes for the 22,000 inhabitants.

There were 14,941 books published in Germany 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.

There were 10,914 books published in England in 1911, of which 2,384 were new editions. Of this number 2,215, which includes 933 new editions and 40 translations, were fiction; religion, 930; sociology, 725; science, 650; geography, 601; biography, 476; history, 429; technology, 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 literature; 4,134, belles-lettres; 3,215, law and political economy; 2,510, theology; 2,082, commerce and industry; 1,981, medicine; 1,884, philology and literary history; 1,480, geography, including 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 Germany 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 unreasonable and disastrous proportion. If we estimate 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 accounts 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 industries 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 widespread prejudice of their own people, and against the well-founded suspicion and contempt aroused by their own black sheep. I have found them, here a Jesuit, there a Presbyterian, winning my friendship and my admiration, despite fundamental 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, Wesleys or Booths, Livingstones or Stanleys. Columba, an Irish refugee, founded on the island of Iona, 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 arrangements for, the inanimate side of life.

As an example on the credit side of her governing is the very complete and successful system of land-banks, introduced by Frederick the 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 impossible 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 ambassador in Paris, Mr. Herrick, may be mentioned 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 Central Bank of Co-operative Associations, has revolutionized, one may here use the word without exaggeration, agricultural methods, throughout Prussia and Germany.

In Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa there are 5,000,000 acres of land in wheat, which is practically 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 on 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 fraction 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 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 laborers; 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 agricultural 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 philanthropy, 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 inhabitants the increase in population from 1790 to 1900 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, 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 country 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 we may be said to be merely in a kindergarten stage of development. As early as 1783 a German traveller, Johann David Schoepf, was distressed 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 prophesy 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 national expenditure for that same year, the fact of our childish wastefulness is brought home to us, and makes a patriot feel that a Gifford Pinchot should be given a free hand. I can only write of the subject as one technically entirely ignorant, but that Germany is a university of forestry is not only attested by the demand for her teachers in India, and in America, and elsewhere in the world, but by the condition of the forests themselves all over Germany, 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 overindulgence, 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 hospitals, 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 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 principles of socialism, but retained, and retains absolutely, 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 interested 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 further 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 general acceptance in America and in England of such legislation as having proved altogether successful. I doubt if any intelligent German considers these various pension schemes as altogether successful. I can vouch for it that many German statesmen make no such claims in private, whatever they may say in public.

Some of the barren figures, needing no comment, 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 appealed 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 accidents 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 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 management, 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 receivers; 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 resulting in pauperism and invalidism, which must be cared for. To put it briefly, it is far more dangerous to the state to tell the individual 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 medicine, 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 Government of the French Republic in 1848: "This Government undertakes to guarantee the existence 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 received "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 murmurs of disapproval, but the public treasury was nearing bankruptcy, and on June 22 an order was promulgated, that all of these workmen between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five were to enlist in the army. An insurrection 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 inarticulateness for others.

When some such system as this is put to work in Ireland, I shall envy every physician in Ireland, 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, 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 Ireland 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 Napiers, 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 Washington 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 bureaucracy that must carry on the mere clerical work of insurance, that a new law passed the Reichstag 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 disproportionate control that they were rapidly turning the insurance machinery into a 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 social questions done away with all the tramps, poor, sick, and destitute. Over a million persons passed through the municipal night shelters in Berlin during the last year; and there are still admittedly some 5,000 tramps in Germany. The vicious circle is in evidence in Germany as elsewhere. It might be possible to 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 regulation 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 expended 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 number, 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 affected, in which 372,119 persons were employed, and 2,209 plants were obliged to shut down 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 temperament 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 diseased; 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 admitted to the public and private lunatic asylums of Germany, and there are accommodations 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 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 inhabitants, 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. Lotteries 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 to building patriotic monuments, and replenishing 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 subservient population, should succeed if any nation 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 politicians 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 purchasable vote, by the domination and protection of which they keep themselves in power. That is the whole secret of our municipal misgovernment wherever it exists, and also the reason for our barbarous crimes. We have a cowed magistracy seeking re-election from the manipulators 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 disappear. 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 playing 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. "Charity causes half the suffering she relieves, but she can never relieve half the suffering she causes."

Compulsory insurance was tried in the practical 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 once said: "Depuis bien longtemps je suis convaincu 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 apprehension, that unless there is a change of some kind the masters of the legislators will discharge 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 original except what has been forgotten. The originality 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 fetich 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, ponderable, 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 leisure. I am glad he does want them, and let me say just once, in answer to my detractors along 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 guardians, that revolt or revolution is practically impossible. Counting the army, navy, and officials, there are said to be three million officials, great and small in Germany; and there are fourteen million electors, or, roughly, one policeman to every five adults. And those three million 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 something 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 theatricals?

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 thinking, 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 alone the prerogative of an aristocracy. "It is the place of a court to make its servants insignificant. 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 meddlesome 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 workingman be contented. The Krupp business employs some 70,000 persons. In the particular 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 Company, the Procter and Gamble Company, the General Electric Company, and others in America, 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 participate 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 beneficial 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 guardianship of men, women, and children who are at the same time factors in a huge and successful industrial enterprise. There are schools, technical schools, hospitals, convalescent homes, a library with 71,000 volumes, theatre, orchestra, band, lectures, concerts, pension and insurance funds, lodgings for bachelors, tenements and dwellings for married people, separate cottages for widows and widowers too old for work, and every opportunity, with a high rate of interest, for saving. There is in existence a co-operative 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 including 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 3/4 per cent. It would require volumes — indeed, two bulky volumes were issued last year by the company to celebrate the hundredth 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 Koeniggraetz (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 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 untiring 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 colony 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 contributions 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 gobbling 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 disadvantage, 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 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 standstill, 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 Empire 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 output, in round numbers, of $500,000,000, $150,000,000 is used in the arts and manufactures and $150,000,000 goes to India, where it is buried and hoarded, and $100,000,000 is retained 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.