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 sprightliness 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 entertainment, 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 rhetoric of the political street-walkers, whose promises 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 success as a manufacturing nation this problem, she is met by increased and ever-increasing rivalry. 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 people, 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 exports 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 surpassed 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 farmers, Germany was obliged to pay out some $200,000,000 more than usual for food. The total loans of the German banks on industrial securities 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 seeking and accepting credit far beyond the value of the capital that they have to work with. Still 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 companies 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 production 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, exclusive of the precious metals, in 1911 was $2,386,200,000; the value of the exports of home produce, exclusive of the precious metals, was $2,025,450,000. It is a quaint result of her temperament and her good forestry, that Germany 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 alone financially, while others assert that one sixth of her capital, I have heard it placed at one third, is borrowed from France and England. It is certain at least that the American panic of 1907, and the recent war in the Near East, have seriously embarrassed Germany financially.

As Germany can only feed, even in good harvest 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 income tax has increased from 2,400,000 in 1892 to 6,200,000 in 1912; but the taxes have increased as well, or from $800,000,000 to $1,675,000,000.

In the endeavor to increase the manufacturing output and to find new markets German credit has been stretched to a dangerous tenuity. While the war feeling was at its height the Koelnische Zeitung, a conservative and able journal, wrote: "In case of war both France and Germany will be obliged to borrow; but it is 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, resigned 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 constant increase of national expenditure, by a constant increase of borrowing, and an ever-increasing 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 Germany; 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 themselves, or by the banks in which they are deposited. As a result, the liquid capital at the disposal of Germany is dangerously out of proportion to her borrowings and her working capital. It shows a fine confidence in the future, and it proves what needs no proof: the immense industrial and commercial progress, and the immense sea-carrying trade of Germany. Germany 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 provision 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 Emperor'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 export 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 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 aggravated, 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 capital. Maintenance costs are included in the total annual expenses, and there is no, so it is claimed, actual depreciation. Of the net revenue 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 construction, sinking funds, reserve funds, and so on.

The report of the Interstate Commerce Commission 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 manufactured, 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; 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 tolerated in America, but against these state-owned railways there is no redress. No luggage, except 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 smothered 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 Oderberg-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 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 estimates 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, better 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 grateful for at home!

Probably the most costly and the most troublesome 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 nowadays a minor matter of the relations between courts, individuals, and families, which may be said to be settled by the arranged marriage between 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 part of these provinces, still resist Prussianization. They keep to themselves and their language, send their children to school in Denmark, and resist all attempts at social and racial incorporation. They are troublesome, as an independent and surly daughter-in-law might be troublesome. Alsace-Lorraine and Posen, on the contrary, are outspoken and potentially dangerous 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 annexation." In 1912, a loyal Alsatian German writes: "Das Elsass, dies jungstgeborene Kind der deutschen Voelkerfamilie, braucht etwas mehr Liebe." Forty years of Prussian rule have not fulfilled the promise of Bismarck. This same Alsatian writer continues: "In short, we are approaching 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 matter what particular State he lives in, is first of all a citizen of the United States, to understand this jealousy and, in some quarters, bitter dislike of Prussia. If the State of New York had sixty million of our ninety million population, 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 ministers, who were responsible to him alone, we could get an approximate idea of how the people of Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois, and California would feel toward New York. This is a rough-drawn comparison with the situation in Germany. If, in addition, we had the Philippine 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 successful 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 methods 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 conquered provinces. The governor is to be advised by a parliament, but the government is not responsible to the parliament, which is composed of two houses. The upper house has thirty-six members, eighteen of whom are nominees 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 Vorwaerts 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 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 provinces 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 nationalization.

"On changerait plutot le coeur de place, Que de changer la vieille Alsace."

The German, Karl Lamprecht, in his valuable history of contemporary Germany, is more hopeful 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 stationed in the two conquered provinces admit the stubborn allegiance of the people to French customs, habits, beliefs, and traditions. But however that may be, and it is admittedly a question that different prejudices and hopes will answer differently, there is no denial on the part of any one, high or low, that the Prussian bureaucratic mandarins have made no progress in winning 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 Germany by Bismarck, has had its successes. I recognized them, indeed, on returning to Germany 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 monsters."

Joseph de Maistre, writing of the Slav temperament, says: "Si on enterrait un desir Slave sous une forteresse, il la ferait sauter." Germany has some reason to believe that this is true.

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 between 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 probably take some pains to be well guarded in that quarter. We should, however, do it in quite another fashion. We should, if possible, turn over the inhabitants to their own governing, as England 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 robbery, 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 cynical 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, 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 methods are applied to foreign peoples, we both anticipate 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 substitute 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 resistance 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 guarantee 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 grandson of William I, the present Emperor, said at Marienburg: "Polish arrogance is unbearable, and I am obliged to appeal to my people to defend 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 Marienburg, 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 language, and so far as possible of German manners and customs. This has been met with fierce opposition, and never have I heard in the colonies of other countries, except in Korea, under the present Japanese administration, such fanatical 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 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 Ansiedlungskommission 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 settlement upon the land of 18,507 families, or about 111,000 persons. The total number settled is now 131,000 persons. Each male adult German settler has cost the state something over $32,000! This is probably the most extravagant 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 successful in their dealings with the inanimate, but the Arcana imperii are still hidden from them. They have redeemed the land, taught the Poles, as well as the German settlers, how to farm successfully; largely increased the output of grain, fruit, pigs, calves, chickens, geese, and eggs, for which Germany spends several hundred millions 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 standstill, and it is now proposed to enforce the Prussian law of 1908 for the expropriation of Polish estates. This law was overwhelmingly defeated 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 intellectual forts, supplemented by German settlers, 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 imagination 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 thereon, 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 succeeded, admits that Prussian methods are hopeless in such matters. They have, on the contrary, awakened national feeling, encouraged the forming of agricultural societies, and strengthened the Bank of Posen, which has become the financial citadel of opposition. Professor Bernhard 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 brauchen nicht diese Nordlichter (We do not need these northern luminaries), is a phrase of a certain Bavarian official, and in lower or louder tones one hears the phrase all over Germany outside of Prussia, and loudest of all in these conquered provinces.

To legislate men into mechanical relations with one another may keep the peace temporarily, but it is not a final solution of the intricate problem of living together in our huddled civilization. The day has gone by when we could rule men without gaining at least their respect, and if possible their affection. Prussia'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 Revolution: la question de dieu man que d'actualite; her hard and inflexible methods, make her a churlish neighbor and an arrogant master. In forty years Prussia has accomplished great things despite 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 doctrine, 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 ourselves, and to get a living, we find antagonisms and defensive tactics, occupying so much of our time and energy that loving one another is almost 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 helpfulness.

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 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 protagonists and with their rulers, and with the responsible servants of the State; discussed with professors and legislators these questions; and listened to the warriors on both sides, you are somewhat bewildered. There are so many reasons 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 selected 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 reparation 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 Marshal von Bieberstein and Prince Hohenlohe, to President Kruger, official Germany lamented publicly that she lacked a powerful 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 warships in the Mediterranean and none in the North Sea.

In 1907 England had 135,000 tons of warships in the Mediterranean and 166,000 tons in the North Sea.

In 1909 England had 123,000 tons of warships in the Mediterranean and 427,000 tons in the North Sea.

In 1912 England had 126,000 tons of warships in the Mediterranean and 481,000 tons in the North Sea.

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 increased 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 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 supports seamen's homes, and helps to equip boys wishing to enter the navy; it lends its encouragement 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 addition 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 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 impregnable; 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 with 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 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 Kielerwoche, too, has, and is intended to have, an influence in teaching the Germans to aid and abet their Emperor and his ministers in making Germany 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 provided 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 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 completely 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 translate it into a spiritual empire, accepted a German 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 Reformation was very marked. The Catholic Church claimed to be not only a system of belief but a system of government. Infallibility was to include 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.

The Protestants, too, were at first inclined to the methods of Rome. Luther teaches intolerance, 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 Caesarism until the son of a Saxon miner named Luther married out of monkdom, burnt the Pope's commands on a bonfire, and plunged all Europe first into a peasants' war, 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 realized 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 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 newcomer.

One of the chief causes for the restlessness, particularly in England, the heart of the greatest empire in the world, is that this new-comer must be made room for at the table, received with courtesy, and consulted. Another individual has married into the family, and must gradually 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 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 Gemuethlichkeit, 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 commercially, the Englishman is not only an enigma but an insult. I am criticising neither. I have received unbounded hospitality and friendliness from both. I have ridden, fought, drunk, travelled, and lived with both, but for that very reason I understand how horribly and continually they rub one another the wrong way.

In the fundamental matter of morals the German 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 preaching and hymn-singing, and fringed with surreptitious golf; the German Sunday is a national fair, with a blossoming of all kinds of amusements, deluged with beer, and attended by whole families as their only relaxation during the week.

The German licenses vice, lotteries, and gambling; 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 weakness 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 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 commit 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 levelling down socially and politically and even morally. It looks like an assumption of superiority 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 doing so, for when we lower our standards because 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 poisonous 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 Englishmen 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 essaye maintes fois de decouvrir chez l'Allemand 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 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 difficulties 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 ourselves 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 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 difficult to subdue than it was to arouse. The monster 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 Koenigsberg, knew something of England and writes of her: "Die englische Nation, als Volk betrachtet, ist das schaetzbarste Ganze von Menschen im Verhaeltniss unter einander; aber als Staat gegen fremde Staaten der verderblichste, gewaltsamste, herrschsuechtigste und kriegerregendste von allen."

("The English, as a people, in their relations 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 pernicious, 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" Wellington; and the "potatoes boiled in water and put on the table as God made them" and the "country with three hundred religions and only one sauce were a constant source of amused annoyance. 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. Professor Treitschke and his successor in the chair of history at Berlin, Professor Delbrueck, have been outspoken in their denunciation of England. 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, politicians 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 Umstaenden 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 purposes of other people, and in the accurate presentation of his own").

He began his political life in 1862 with the phrase: "Die grossen Fragen koennen durch Reden und Majoritaetsbeschluesse 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 Uebertreibungen des englischen Imperialismus" ("The only danger to the peace of Europe, and that includes the peace of the world, lies in the morbid excesses of British imperialism"). 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 refreshment in Norwegian waters and enjoying the beauties of the Norwegian landscape, English ships were lying in readiness to annihilate German ships." It is hard to believe that such lunatic lies can come from the pen of a professor in good standing.

"Ohne zu uebertreiben kann man sagen dass heute nur der allerkleinste Teil der deutschen Presse geneigt ist, den Englaendern Gerechtigkeit widerfahren zu lassen, bei Behandlung allgemeiner Fragen sich auch einmal auf den englischen Standpunkt der Betrachtung wenigstens zeitweise zu versetzen. England ist fur viele 'der' Feind an sich, und em Feind dem man keine Ruecksichten schuldet."

("It 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 Koelnische 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, 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 vulgar 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 depicted 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 journalistic and professorial state of mind. It is unfortunate 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 theoretical 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 projecting a world from the gaseous elements of one's own cranium and dealing with that world, instead 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 em Begriff der uns ueberhaupt 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 colonies, said bluntly: "A reprehensible caste feeling has grown up in our colonies, the conception 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 England," "Das Perfide Albion," "Deutschland und der Islam," "Ist England kriegslustig," "Deutschland 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 Bergmann" 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 Doctrine, the German press spoke of us as "hirnverbrannte Yankees," "bornierte Yankeegehirne" ("crazy Yankees," "provincial Yankee intellects"); and the words "Dollarika," "Dollarei," and "Dollarman" are further malicious expressions of their envy, frequently used. The Germans are persistently taught that there are neither scholars nor students in America or in England. One worthy writes: "Die Englaender lernen nichts. Der Sport laesst ihnen keine Zeit dazu. Man ist hinterher auch zu muede."

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 questioned 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 Germany, and among them the untravelled 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 advantage. Life is varied, men and women many, 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 inventions 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 example of the ability of the man of books to measure the abilities of the man of the world.

Reading and writing are modern accomplishments, and we grossly exaggerate their importance 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 and feeling softly. Thus Lincoln was a greater man than Emerson; Bismarck a greater than Lessing; Cromwell a greater than Bunyan; Napoleon 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 influence, 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 palpable 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 thoroughness of the thinking behind it; on the other hand, the only test of thinking is the success of the thought in actual execution, and the Germans often take this too much for granted. We really know and hold as an inalienable intellectual possession only what we have gained by our own effort, and with a certain degree of actual exertion. 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 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, exegesis, the Germans have forged ahead; their intellectual street-cleaning is unsurpassed; but the ship of state needs not only men to take observations 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 dismemberment 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 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 international 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 discussion 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 arguments 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 wofully hard for the professorial mind to grasp this.

"Given a mouse's tail, and he will guess With metaphysic quickness at the mouse."

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 appropriations 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 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 Germany shows herself to be somewhat childish and peevishly provincial, in girding at an unchangeable 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 uniforms, or in black coats and stiff collars, that there is a dearth of agricultural laborers, and she imports 700,000 Hungarians, Poles, Slays, 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 materialistic nation of Europe, and her capital the most licentious and immoral in Europe.

This is the result of secular education everywhere. Freedom of thought, yes, but not freedom of thought any more than freedom of morals, or freedom of manners, or political freedom, in extreme youth; that only makes for anarchy political, mental, and moral.

There is much undigested, not to say indigestible, 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 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 it is of all crimes the worst to give freedom 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 Sudermann 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 literature, an appetite for this self-dissecting, this complacent, self-contemplating form of intellectual 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 speech, than others, that is all. The period of twenty-five years during which I have known Germany has developed before my eyes the concomitants of vast and rapid industrial and commercial 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 digestion 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 erfuellt 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.

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 Germany have a long list, including Silesia, Poland, Hanover, and Alsace-Lorraine. Austria-Hungary tears up the Berlin treaty; France, Germany, 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 description. 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 kingdom. 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 outcome of the business, after an exciting situation lasting for months, was that Germany got a slice of territory from France, mostly swamps, which reaches from the Congo to the Atlantic Ocean, and reported to be, by her own engineers, uninhabitable.

It is the pleasant formula of polite statesmen and politicians to say, that it is a pity that Germany came into the world competition a hundred 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 Maetzner and Eduard Mueller, and German scholars in the study of phonetics, have written our English grammars and etymological dictionaries for us, and helped to lay the foundations for knowledge of our own language. 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, maintaining 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 authors. Humboldt, Liebig, Bunsen, Helmholtz, Johannes Mueller, 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 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 extended 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 modern 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 beginnings 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; gentlemen of various trades and professions from both countries, speaking halting English or embarrassed German, as the case may be, cross each other's boundaries, comment upon the beauties of the respective countries, and overeat themselves 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 Reinhartian 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 taxpayer, who has no dividends from manufacturers of lethal weapons and ships, nor from newspapers, 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 sensationalism, 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 unceasingly, 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 professions.

Germany is autocratic, philosophical, and continental; England is democratic, political, and insular. 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, the prize-fighter, Cardinal Rampolla, Mr. Roosevelt, 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 pleasant 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 being friends with all. Nothing is ever gained by flattery. To the serious man flattery in the form of sincere praise makes him more responsible 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 mistaken, he feels as though he had been given curling-tongs instead of a razor for his morning toilet. These pompous flatteries that pass between 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 quarrel. 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 increase of friendly feeling. But there has been little or no flattery passing back and forth. We have sent ambassador after ambassador to England 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 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 understanding 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 independence, 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 at the same pace as the others, and hence to "descend into Hell" with the rest of the congregation. 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 fisticuffs 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 companions 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 freedom 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 Englishman to offer anybody." "But, you don't mean to say," he continued, "that they really want to cut our throats on account of our bad manners?" I cannot phrase it better, nor can I give a more illuminating illustration of the misunderstanding. That is exactly the reason, and the paramount 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 intercourse 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."

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, between 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 individuals. It is these that prepare the ground for a fine crop of misunderstandings.