In the eastern provinces of Germany the conditions of life amongst the poor are most unhappy. Here the land belongs to large proprietors, and until modern times the people born on the land belonged to the landlords too. No man could leave the village where he was born without permission, and he had to work for his masters without pay. Even in the memory of living men the whip was quite commonly used. In her most interesting account of a Silesian village,[3] Gertrud Dyhrenfurth says that the present condition of the peasantry in this region compares favourably with former times, but she admits that they are still miserably overworked and underpaid. They are no longer legally obliged to submit to corporal punishment, nor can they be forced to live where they were born, and as they emigrate in large numbers, scarcity of labour has brought about slightly improved conditions for those remaining. But a man's wage is still a mark a day in summer and 90 pf. in winter. A woman earns 60 pf. in summer and 50 pf. in winter. Besides receiving these wages, a family regularly employed lives rent free and gets a fixed amount of coal, and at harvest time some corn and brandy. You cannot say the family has a house or cottage to itself, because the system is to build long bare-looking barracks in which numbers of working families herd like rabbits in a warren. In modern times each family has a kitchen to itself, so there is one warm room where the small children can be kept alive. In former times there was a general kitchen, and in the rooms appointed to each family no heating apparatus; therefore, if the children were not to die of cold, they had to be carried every morning to the kitchen, where there was a fire. The present plan has grave disadvantages, as in one room the whole family has to sleep, eat, wash, and cook for themselves and for the animals in their care. The furniture consists of two or three bedsteads with straw mattresses and feather plumeaux, shelves for pots and pans, a china cupboard with glass doors, a table in the window, and wooden benches with backs. This installation is quite luxurious compared with that of a milkmaid's or a stablemaid's surroundings sixty or seventy years ago. "Her home consisted of a plank slung from the stable roof and furnished with a sack of straw and a plumeau. Her small belongings were in a little trunk in a wooden niche, her clothes in a chest that stood in the garret." Here is the life history of an unmarried working woman of eighty-six born in a Silesian village. When she left school she was apprenticed to a thrasher, with a yearly wage of four thalers, besides two chemises and two aprons as a Christmas present. Even in those days this money did not suffice for clothing, although even in winter the women wore no warm under-garments. Quite unprotected, they waded up to the middle in snow.... In summer the girl was in the barn and at work by dawn; in winter they threshed by artificial light. A bit of bread taken in the pocket served as breakfast. The first warm meal was taken at midday. When the farm work was finished there was spinning to do till 10 o'clock.

This woman "bettered herself" as she grew older till she was earning 35 thalers (L5, 5s. 0d.) a year; she accustomed herself to live on this sum, and when wages increased, to put by the surplus. So in her old age she is a capitalist, has saved enough for a decent funeral, for certain small legacies, and for such an amazing luxury as a tin foot-warmer. The family she faithfully served for so many years allows her coal, milk and potatoes, and when necessary pays for doctor and medicine. Her weekly budget is as follows—

Pf. Rent 50 Bread 25 Rolls 5 _ Carried forward 80

Pf. Brought forward 80 1/4 lb. butter 25 1/4 lb. coffee and chicory 25 Sugar 15 1 lb. flour 14 Salt 1 Light 10 Washing 5 ——— 1m. 75 ======

Meat is of course out of the question, and in discussing another budget Fraeulein Dyhrenfurth shows that a family of eight people could only afford three quarters of a pound a week. Their yearly expenses amounted to 455 m. 26 pf., so each one of the eight had to be fed and clothed for about 1s. 1d. a week. Women are still terribly overworked in the fields. They used to begin at four o'clock in the morning, and go on till nine at night,—a working day, that is, of seventeen hours for a wife and the mother of a family. When the family at the mansion had the great half-yearly wash, the village women called in to help began at midnight, and stood at the washtub till eight o'clock next evening, twenty hours, that is, on end. In 1880 the working day was shortened, and only lasts now from five in the morning till seven at night, with a two hours' pause for dinner and shorter pauses for breakfast and vesper. But, on the other hand, women do work now that only men did in former times. The threshing of corn has fallen entirely into their hands, and they follow a plough yoked with oxen. Both kinds of work are heavy and unpleasant. But women are glad to get the threshing in winter time when other work fails, and it is often on this account that the proprietors do not introduce threshing machines.

At certain times of the year Poles swarm over the frontier into the eastern provinces of Germany, but Fraeulein Dyhrenfurth says that they do not work for lower wages. The women have no house-keeping to do, and can therefore give more hours to field labour. One woman prepares a meal for a whole gang of her country people, and they live almost entirely on bread, potatoes, and brandy. They do not mix with the Germans, but spend their evenings and Sundays in playing the harmonium, dancing, and drinking. They return every year, are always foreigners in Germany, and are very industrious, religious, contented, and cheerful, but inclined to drink and fight.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Ein schlesisches Dorf und Rittergut, von Gertrud Dyhrenfurth. Leipzig, Duncker und Humblot.



CHAPTER XXV

HOW THE POOR LIVE

Poverty in German cities puts on a more respectable face than it does in London or Manchester. It herds in the cellars and courtyards of houses that have an imposing frontage; and when it walks out of doors it does not walk in rags. But you only have to look at the pinched faces of the children in the poorer quarters of any city to know that it is there. They are tidier and cleaner than English slum children, but they make you wish just as ardently that you were the Pied Piper and could pipe them all with you to a land of plenty. It would require more experience and wider facts than I possess to compare the condition of the poor in England and Germany, especially as the professed economists and philanthropists who make it their business to understand such things disagree with each other about every detail. If you talk to Englishmen, one will tell you that the German starves on rye bread and horse sausage because he is oppressed by an iniquitous tariff; and the next will assure you that the German flourishes and fattens on the high wages and prosperous trade he owes entirely to his admirable protective laws. If you talk to the Anglophobe, he will tell you that the dirt, drunkenness, disease, and extravagance of the English lower classes are the sin and scandal of the civilised world; that it is useless for you to ask where the poor live in Berlin, because there are no poor. Everyone in Germany is clean, virtuous, well housed, and well-to-do. If you talk to an honest, reasonable German, he will recognise that each country has its own difficulties and its own shortcomings, and that both countries make valiant efforts to fight their own dragons. He will tell you of the suffering that exists amongst the German poor crowded into these houses with the imposing fronts, and of all that statecraft and philanthropy are patiently trying to accomplish. Doctor Shadwell, in his most valuable and interesting book Industrial Efficiency, says that the American has to pay twice as much rent as the English working man, and that rents in Germany are nearer the American than the English level. As wages are lower in Germany than in England, and as meat and groceries are decidedly dearer, it is plain that the working man cannot live in clover. Doctor Shadwell gives an example of a smith earning 1050 marks, and having to pay 280 for rent. He had a wife and two children, and Doctor Shadwell reckoned that the family to make two ends meet must live on 37 pf. per head per day; the prison scale per head being 80 pf. I know a respectable German charwoman who earns 41 marks a month, and pays 25 marks a month for her parterre flat in the Hof. She lets off all her rooms except the kitchen, and she sleeps in a place that is only fit for a coal-hole. A work-girl pays her 6 marks a month for a clean tidy bedroom furnished with a solid wooden bedstead, a chest of drawers, a sofa, and a table. This girl works from 7.30 to 6 in a shop, she pays the charwoman 10 pf. for her breakfast, 10 pf. weekly for her lamp, and another 10 pf. for the use and comfort of the kitchen fire at night. Her dinner of soup, meat, and vegetables the girl gets at a Privatkueche for 40 pf. So the workgirl's weekly expenses for food, fire, and lodging are 5 marks 20 pf., but this does not give her an evening meal or afternoon coffee. The charwoman reckoned that she herself only had 15 marks a month for food, fire, light, and clothes; but she got nearly all her food with the families for whom she worked. She was a cheerful, honest body, and though she slept in a coal-hole was apparently quite healthy. She looked forward to her old age with tranquillity, because before long she would be in receipt of a pension from the State, a weekly sum that with her habits of thrift and industry would enable her to live.

A German lady who chooses to teach in a Volksschule, because she thinks the Volk more interesting than Higher Daughters, described a home to me from which one of her pupils came. The parents had eight children, and the family of ten lived in two rooms. That is a state of things we can match in England, unhappily. But my friend described this home, not on account of its misery, but for the extraordinary neatness and comfort the mother maintained in it. "Every time I go there," said my friend, who lived with her father and sister in a charming flat,—"every time I go there I say to the woman, if only it looked like this in my home"; and there was no need for me to see the rooms to understand what she meant; for I know the air of order and even of solidity with which the poorest Germans will surround themselves if they are respectable. They have very few pieces of furniture, but those few will stand wear and tear; they prefer a clean painted floor to a filthy carpet, and they are so poor that they have no pence to spend on plush photograph frames. I cannot remember what weekly wage this family existed on, but I know that it seemed quite inadequate, and when I asked if the children were healthy as well as clean and tidy, my friend admitted that they were not. In spite of the brave struggle made by the parents, it was impossible to bring up a large family on such means, and the maladies arising from insufficient food, fire, and clothing afflicted them. The case is, I think, a typical one. English people are always impressed when they visit German cities by the tidy clothes poor people wear, and if they are shown the right interiors, by their clean tidy homes. But you need most carefully and widely collected facts and figures to judge how far the children of a nation are suffering from poverty. It was found, for instance, in one German city, that out of 1472 children examined in the elementary schools, 63 per cent. of the girls and 60 per cent. of the boys were nicht voellig normal.

Moreover, there are whole classes of poor people in Germany whose homes are not tidy and comfortable, who are crowded into cellars and courtyards, and who have neither time nor strength for the decencies of life. The "Sweater" flourishes in Berlin as well as in London, and his victims are as overworked as they are here. He is usually a Jew, it is said in Berlin, but I will not guarantee the truth of that, for I have not observed that the Jew is anywhere a harder task-master than the Christian. As Berlin grew, these spiders of society increased in numbers, finding it easy and profitable to employ home workers and spare themselves the expenses of factories and of insurance. Women who could not go out to work were tempted by the chance offered them of earning a trifle at home, and woman-like never paused to reckon whether it was worth earning. As the city gets larger every evil connected with the system increases. The worst paid are naturally the incompetent rough peasant women who swarm into Berlin from the country districts, because they think that it will be easier to sit at a machine than to labour in the fields. These people have to buy their machines and their cotton at high prices from their employers, and then they get 10 pf. for making a blouse. A lady who spends her life in working amongst poor people told me that many of them worked for nothing in reality, because the trifle they earned only just paid the difference between the food they had to buy ready cooked and the food they might with more leisure prepare at home. They pay high rents for wretched homes, L15, for instance, for a kitchen and one room in a dark courtyard. Under L13 it is impossible to get anything in the poorest quarter of Berlin.

"The house itself looked respectable enough from outside," says Frau Buchholz, when she went to see a girl who had just married a poor man; "but oh! those steep narrow stairs that I had to mount, those wretched entrances on each floor, the miserable door handles, the sickly bluish-grey walls, the shaky banisters! It was easy to see that the outside had been devised with a view to investors, and the inside for poverty." In houses of this class there are often three courtyards, one behind each other, all noisy and badly kept. The conditions of life in such circumstances are no better than in our own notorious slums, but a slum seven storeys high, and presenting a decent front to the world, does not suggest the real misery behind its regular row of windows, nor does the quiet well-swept street give any picture of the rabbit warren in the courtyards at the back. In the enormous "confection" trade of Berlin the home-workers are nearly all widows and mothers of families, as the unmarried girls prefer to go to factories. A skilled hand can earn a fair wage at certain seasons of the year, as the demand for skilled work in this department always exceeds the supply. But the average wage of the unskilled worker is only 10 marks a week, while it sinks as low as 4 marks for petticoats, aprons, and woollen goods. A corset maker, who has learned her trade, can only make from 8 to 10 marks a week in a factory, while a woman who sits at home and covers umbrellas gets 1 mark 50 pf. a dozen when the coverings are of stuff, and slightly more when they are of silk. The extreme poverty of these home-workers is a constant subject of inquiry and legislation, but for various reasons it is most difficult to combat. The market is always over-crowded, because, badly paid as it is, the work is popular. Women push into it from the middle classes for the sake of pocket-money, and from the agrarian classes because they fancy a city life. Efforts are being made to organise them, and especially to train the daughters of these women to more healthy and profitable trades. I went over a small Volkskueche in Berlin, and was told that there were many like it established by various charitable agencies, and that the effect of them was to make the children ready to go into service; a life that has some drawbacks, but should at any rate be wholesome and civilising,—a better preparation for marriage, too, than to sit like a slattern over a machine all day, and buy scraps of expensive ready-made food, because both time and skill are wanting for anything more palatable. In the kitchen I visited there were sixteen children from the poorest families in the neighbourhood, and, assisted by a superintendent and two teachers, they were preparing a dinner that cost 30 pf. a head for 250 people. The rooms were clean and plainly furnished. A small laundry business was run in connection with the kitchen, so that the girls should be thoroughly trained to wash and iron as well as to cook. Of late years the working classes of Berlin have adopted what they call Englische Tischzeit, and no one who knows the ways of the English artisan will guess that the German means late dinner. He now does his long day's work, I am told, on bread alone, and has the one solid meal in the twenty-four hours when he gets home at night. Durch Arbeiten, he calls it, and people interested in the welfare of the poor say it is bad for all concerned, but especially bad for the children, who come in too exhausted to eat, and for the women, who have to cook and clean up when the day's business should be nearly done. It is quite characteristic of some kinds of modern Germans that they should in a breath condemn us, imitate us, and completely misunderstand our ways.

The business women of Germany have organised themselves. Der Kaufmaennische Verband fuer Weibliche Angestellte was founded by Herr Julius Meyer in 1889, and, beginning with 50 members, numbered 17,000 in 1904. Its aim has been to improve the conditions of life for women working in shops and businesses, to carry on their education, and to help them when ill or out of work. It began by opening commercial schools for women, where they could receive a thorough training in book-keeping, shorthand, typewriting, and other branches of office work. These have been a great success, have been imitated all over Germany, and have led to an expansion of the law enforcing on girls attendance at the State continuation schools. The society was founded to remedy some crying abuses amongst women employed in shops and offices, a working day of seventeen hours, for instance, dismissal without notice, no rest on Sundays, no summer holiday, and not only a want of seats but an actual prohibition to sit down even when unemployed. All these matters the society, which has become a powerful one, has gradually set right. A ten-hours' day for grown-up women, and eight hours for those under age, the provision of seats, an 8 o'clock closing rule, a month's notice on either side, some hours of rest on Sunday, and a summer holiday are all secured to members of the organisation. The system of "living in" does not obtain in Germany. Shops may only open for five hours on Sundays now, and large numbers do not open at all. They may only keep open after ten on twenty days in the year. Other reforms the society hopes to bring about in time; and meanwhile it occupies itself both in finding work for members who are out of place, and in protecting those who are sick and destitute.

The ladies of Germany have taken to philanthropic work with characteristic energy and thoroughness. There is one society in Berlin that has 700 members, some of whom devote their whole time to their poor neighbours. I am not going to give the name of the society; so I may describe one of its secretaries, who personified the best modern type of German woman. She was about 27, a dark-haired, slim, serious-looking person with delicate Jewish features and beautiful grey eyes; a girl belonging to the wealthy classes, and able if she had chosen to lead a life of frivolity and pleasure. But she had chosen instead to give herself to the sick, the afflicted, the needy, and even to the sinning; for she was a moving spirit of the organisation that dives down into the depths of the great city, and rescues those who have gone under. Her society also does a great deal for the children of the very poor, not only for babies in creches, but for those who go to school. The members help these older ones with their school work, and when the children are free teach them to wash, cook, and sew, and to play open-air games. They teach the blind, they look after the deserted families of men in prison, and the older members act as guardians to illegitimate children; for in Germany every illegitimate child must have a guardian, and women are now allowed to act in this capacity. The secretary said they found no difficulty in getting both married and single women to take up these good works.

"What do the parents say when their daughters take it up?" I asked, for I could not picture the German girl as I had always known her going out into the highways and byways of the city, leaving her cooking, her music, her embroidery, and her sentiment, and battling with the hideous realities of life amongst the sick, the poor, and the more or less wicked of the earth.

"The parents don't like it," my girl with the honest eyes admitted. "When girls have worked for us some time they often refuse to marry; at least, they refuse the arranged marriages proposed to them. But we cannot stop on that account. If a girl does not wish to marry in this way it is better that she should not. No good can come of it."

Then she went on to tell me how well it was that a child born to utmost shame and poverty should have a woman of the better classes interested from the beginning in its welfare, and responsible for its decent upbringing. It implied contact with various officials, of course, but she said that the ladies who took this work in hand met with courtesy and support everywhere.

You have only to place this type of young woman beside the Backfisch, who represents an older type quite fairly, to understand how far the modern German girl has travelled from the traditional lines. If you can imagine the Backfisch married and mentally little altered in her middle age, you can also imagine that she would find a daughter with the new ideas upsetting. At present both types are living side by side, for there are still numbers of women of the old school in Germany, women who passively accept the life made for them by their surroundings, whether it suits their needs or not; and who would never strike out a path for themselves, even if by doing so they could forget their own troubles in the troubles of others.

The State and Municipal establishments for the poor and sick have been so much described lately, that everyone in England must be acquainted with all that Berlin does for its struggling citizens. There are, of course, large hospitals and sanatoriums for consumption; and the admirable system of national insurance secures help in sickness to every working man and woman, as well as a pension in old age. "The club doctor and dispensary as we have them here do not exist," say the Birmingham Brassworkers in their pamphlet. "In their stead leading doctors and specialists (with very few exceptions) are at the service of the working man or woman."

"Yes," said a leading doctor to me when I quoted this; "we get about three half-pence for a consultation, and we find them the most impossible people in the community to satisfy. As they get medical advice for nothing they run from one doctor to another, and consult a dozen about some simple ailment that a student could set right. We all suffer from them." So that is the other side of the question.

But Berlin certainly manages its Submerged Tenth both more humanely and more wisely than we manage ours. It begins, as one thinks any civilised country must, by separating those who will not work from those who cannot. The able-bodied beggar, the drunkard, and other vagrants are sent to a house of correction and made to work. The respectable poor are not driven to herd with these people in Germany. They receive shelter and assistance at institutions reserved for the deserving. In one of these old married people who cannot support themselves are allowed to spend the evening of their lives together. Anyone desiring to know more about the charitable institutions of Berlin will find a most interesting account of them in the pamphlet written by the Birmingham Brassworkers, and published by P.S. King & Son. The bias of the authors is so strongly German that when you have read to the end you begin to lean in the opposite direction, and look for the things we manage better over here. "In 1900," they say, "there was such a shortage of houses (in Berlin) that 1500 families had to be sheltered in the Municipal Refuge for Homeless People." That is surely a worse state of affairs than in London. But when you walk through London or a London suburb in winter, and are pestered at every crossing and corner by able-bodied young beggars of both sexes, you begin to agree with the brassworkers. Berlin is clear of beggars and crossing-sweepers all the year round, and you know that as far as possible they are classified and treated according to their deserts. It is not possible for the individual bent on his own business to know at a glance whether he will encourage vice by giving alms or behave brutally to a deserving case by withholding them. The decision should never be forced upon him as it is in England every day of his life.



CHAPTER XXVI

BERLIN

Once upon a time a German got hold of Aladdin's lamp, and he summoned the Djinn attendant on the lamp. "Build me a city of broad airy streets," he bade him, "and where several streets meet see that there is an open place set with trees and statues and fountains." All the houses, even those that the poor inhabit, are to be big and white and shining, like palaces; but the real palaces where princes shall live may be plain and grey. There are to be pleasure grounds in the midst of the city, but they are to be woods rather than parks, because even you and the lamp cannot make grass grow in this soil and climate. In the pleasure grounds, and especially on either side of one broad avenue, there are to be sculptured figures of kings and heroes, larger than life and as white as snow. The Djinn said it would be easy to build the city in a night as the German desired, but that the sculpture could not be hurried in this way, because artists would have to make it, and artists were people who would not work to order or to time. The German, however, said he was master of the lamp, and that the city must be ready when he wanted it early next morning. So the Djinn set to work and got the city ready in a night, sculpture and all. But when he had finished he had not used half the figures and garlands and other stone ornaments he had made. If he had been in England he might have reduced them in size, and given them to an Italian hawker to carry about on his head on a tray. But he knew that hawkers would not be allowed in the city he had built. So, as he was rather tired and anxious to be done, he quickly made one more long, broad street stretching all the way from the pleasure ground in the centre of the city to the forest that begins where the city ends; and on every house in the street he put figures and garlands and gilded balconies and ornamental turrets, as many as he could. The effect when he had finished pleased him vastly, and he said it was the finest street in the city, and should be called the Kurfuerstendamm. His master and all the Germans who came to live in it agreed with him. They gave large rents for a flat in one of the houses, and when they went to London and saw the smoky dwarfish houses there they came away as quickly as possible and rubbed their hands and were happy, and said to each other, "How beautiful is our Kurfuerstendamm. We have as many turrets as we have chimneys, and we have garlands on our balconies of green or gilded iron, and some of us have angelic figures made of red brick, so that the angelic faces are checked with white where the bricks are joined together."

"But it does not become anyone from England to criticise the architecture and sculpture of a foreign country," I said to the artist who told me the story of the lamp. "Our own is notoriously bad."

"It is not you who will criticise ours," he answered. "By your own confession, you know nothing whatever of architecture and sculpture, and when people know nothing they should either keep silence or ask for information in the best quarter. You have my authority for saying that the architects and sculptors of Berlin would have been better employed building dog-kennels."

"But I rather like your wide cheerful streets," I objected, "and your tall clean houses. Our houses...."

"Your houses are little black boxes in which people eat and sleep. They do not pretend to anything. Ours pretend to be beautiful, and are ridiculous. Moreover, in England there are men who can build beautiful houses. You do not employ them much. You prefer your ugly little boxes. But they are there. I know their names and their work."

"But what do you think of our statues?" I asked him.

"I don't think of them," he said; "I prefer to think of something pleasant. When I am in London I spend every hour I have at the docks."

"I like the Sieges-Allee," I said boldly,—"it is so clean and cheerful."

"It was made for people who look at sculpture from that point of view," said my friend.

I hardly know where an artist finds inspiration in the streets of Berlin. It really makes the impression of a city that has sprung up in a night, and that is kept clean by invisible forces. The great breadth of the streets, the avenues of trees everywhere, and the many open places make it pleasant; but you look in vain for the narrow lanes and gabled houses still to be found in other German towns, and you are not surprised when Americans compare it with Chicago, because it is so new and busy. It is indeed the city of the modern German spirit, and what it has of old tradition and old social life lies beneath the surface, hidden from the eye of the stranger. There is Sans-Souci, to be sure, and Frederick the Great, and the Grosser Kurfuerst. There is the double line of princes on either side of the Sieges-Allee. But modern Berlin dates from 1870, and so do all good Berliners, whatever their age may be. They are proud of their young empire and of their big city, and of doing everything in the best possible way. There is unceasing flux and growth in Berlin, so that descriptions written a few years ago are as out of date as these impressions must be soon. For instance, I had counted steadfastly on finding three things there that I cannot find at home: first and second-class cabs, hordes of soldiers everywhere, and policemen who would run a sword through you if you looked at them; and of all these I was more or less disappointed.

I did get hold of a second-class cab on my arrival in Berlin, but it nearly came to pieces on the way, and I never saw another during my stay there. The cabs are all provided with the taximeter now, so that the fare knows to a fraction what is due to the driver; and the drivers are of the first class, and wear white hats. Anyone who wished to see a second-class cab would have to make inquiries, and find a stand where some still languish, but before long the last of them will probably be preserved in a museum. Cabs are not much used in Berlin, because communication by the electric cars is so well organised. The whole population travels by them, the whole city is possessed by them. If it is to convey a true impression, a description of Berlin should run to the moan of them as they glide everlastingly to and fro. You can hardly escape their noise, and not for long their sight. Even the Tiergarten, the Hyde Park of Berlin, is traversed by them, which is as it should be in a municipal republic. This is what the Germans call their city, for they are not conscious themselves of living under an autocracy or of being in any sense of the word less free than, let us say, the English, a point of view most puzzling to an English person, who is conscious from the moment he crosses the German frontier of being governed for his good. But it is pleasant on a summer morning to be carried through the shady avenues of the Tiergarten in an open car, whether it is an autocracy or a republic that arranges it for you; and you reflect that in this and a thousand other ways Germany is an agreeable country even if it is not a free one; especially for "the people" who have small means, and are able to drive through the chief pleasure ground of their city for a penny. The conductors of the cars are obliged to announce the name of the next halting-place, so that passengers alighting may get up in time and step off directly, but on no account before the car stops. Nothing is left to chance or muddle in Berlin, and unless you are a born fool you cannot go astray. If you are a born fool you ask a policeman, as you would at home, and find another dear illusion shattered. He does not draw his sword, he is neither gruff nor disobliging. He greets you with the military salute, and calls you gracious lady. Then he answers your question if he can. If not he gets out the little guide book he carries, and patiently hunts up the street or the building you want. He is usually a good-natured rosy faced young man with a fair moustache, and he will do anything in the world for you except control the traffic. That with the best will in the world he cannot do. So he stands in the midst of it and smiles. Sometimes he sits amidst it on a horse and looks solemn. But he never impresses himself on it. There is a story of a policeman who went to London to learn from our men what to do, and who bemoaned his fate when he got back. "I hold up my hand in just the same way," he said, "and then the people run and the horses run, and there's a smash and I get put in prison." The Berliners themselves say that they are not accustomed yet, as we have been for years, to regard the police as their well-liked and trusted servants, and to obey their directions willingly. However this may be, there is at present only one safe way of getting to the opposite side of a busy street in Berlin, and that is to wait till a crowd gathers and charges across it in a bunch like a swarm of bees.

Berlin is never asleep, and it is as light by night as by day. It is much pleasanter for a woman without escort to come out of the theatre there than in London. She will find crowds of respectable people with her, and they will not depart in their own cabs and carriages. They will crowd into the electric cars, and she must know which car she wants and crowd with them. The worst that can happen to her will be to find her car over-crowded, and in that case she must not expect a man to give her his seat. I have seen a young German lady make an old lady take her place, but I have never known men yield their seats to women. You do not see as many private carriages in Berlin in a week as you do in some parts of London in an hour. Even in front of the Opera House very few will be in waiting; and there is no fashionable hour for riding and driving in the Tiergarten. I know too little about horses to judge of those that were being ridden, or driven in private carriages; but the miserable beasts in cabs and carts force the most ignorant person to observe and pity them. They look as if they were on their way to the knacker's yard, and very often as if they must sink beneath the load they are compelled to carry. It is comforting to reflect that horses will doubtless soon be too old-fashioned for Berlin, and that all the cabs and vans of the future will be motors. The cars run early enough in the morning for the workmen, and late enough at night for people who have had supper at a popular restaurant after the theatre or a glass of beer at one of the Zelten, the garden restaurants that in the time of Frederick the Great were really tents, and where the Berliners flocked then as they do now to hear a band, look at the trees of the Tiergarten, and enjoy light refreshments. When you get back to your house from such gaieties you find it locked and in darkness, but though there is a "portier" you do not disturb him by calling out your name as you would in Paris. In modern houses there is electric light outside each floor that you switch on for yourself, and you have a race with it that you lose unless you are active; but you soon learn to feel your way up to the next light when you are left in darkness. The Berlin "portier" is not as much in evidence as the Paris concierge. He opens the door to strangers, but if you stay or live in the house you are expected to carry two heavy keys about with you, one for the street door and one for the flat. The modern doors have some machinery by which they shut themselves noiselessly after you. You hear a great deal more said about "nerves" in Germany than in England, and yet Germans seem to be amazingly indifferent to noise. They will not tolerate the brass bands and barrel-organs that pester us, but that is because they are fond of music. Screaming voices, banging doors, and the clatter of kitchens and business premises seem not to trouble them at all. Most houses in Berlin are five or six storeys high, and are built round the four sides of a small paved court. No one who has not lived in such a house, and in a room giving on the court, can understand how every sound increases and reverberates. Footsteps at dawn sound as if the seven-leagued boots had come, and were shod with iron. You whisper that the kitchen on a lower floor in an opposite corner looks well kept, and the maid hears what you say and looks at you smiling. I knew that the back premises of these big German hives might harbour any social grade and almost any industry, and for a long time I vowed that some one must live in our court whose business it was to hammer tin, and that he hammered it most late at night and early in the morning. I had not heard anything like the noise since I had lived in a high narrow German street paved with cobble-stones, and occupied just opposite my windows by a brewer whose vans returned to him at daybreak and tumbled empty casks at his door. But I never discovered my tin merchant in Berlin, and in time I had to admit that my hosts were right. The noise I complained of was made by the cook washing up in the opposite kitchen. I should not have noticed it if I had been a sensible person, and slept with my curtains drawn and my double windows tight shut.

Of course, there are some quiet streets in Berlin, and there are charming homes in the "garden-houses." Some of the quadrangles are built round a garden instead of a paved yard, and then you can get a quiet pleasant flat with a balcony that looks on a garden instead of a street. The traditional plan of a Berlin flat is most inconvenient and unpractical. In old-fashioned houses, and even in houses built sixteen years ago or less, you find that one of the chief rooms is the only thoroughfare between the bedrooms near the kitchen premises and the rooms near the front door. Anyone occupying one of these back rooms, which are often good ones, can only get to the front door by way of this thoroughfare, where he will usually find the family gathered together; the maid, too, must pass through every time the door bell rings, and when she goes about her business in the front regions her brooms and pails must pass through with her. The window of this room, which is known as a Berliner Zimmer, is always in one corner and lights it insufficiently. The Berliners themselves recognise its disadvantages, but I like to describe it, because I observe amongst the Germans of to-day a fierce determination to destroy and deny everything a foreigner might call a little absurd, even if it is characteristic; so I feel sure that if I go to Berlin a few years hence there will not be a Berliner Zimmer left in the city, and no Berliner will ever have seen or heard of one; nor will the flat doors have the quaint little peepholes through which the maid's eye may be seen appraising you before she lets you in. The newest houses, those in the Kurfuerstendamm, for instance, have every "improvement"—central heating, lifts, gas cooking stoves, sinks for washing up, and bathrooms that are a reality and not a mere appearance. These bathrooms, I am assured, can be used without several hours' notice and the anxious superintendence of the only person, the head of the family as a rule, who understands the heating apparatus. Berlin, like Mr. Barrie's Admirable Crichton, has found out how to lay on hot and cold. It has found out about electric light too, and it might teach London how to use the telephone. Berlin talks to its friends by telephone as a matter of course, asks them how they are, if they enjoyed the Fest last night, whether if you call on Tuesday they will be at home. Perhaps when Mr. Wells goes to Berlin he will forsee a reaction, a revolt against the incessant insistent bell that respects no occupation and allows no undisturbed rest. It is a hurried generation that uses the telephone so much, for the letter boxes are emptied eighteen times in twenty-four hours, and if the post is not quick enough or a telegram too expensive for all you want to say you can send a card by the tube post.

Berlin is not the city of soldiers that the English fancy pictures it. English people, English little boys, for instance, who would like to see all their lead soldiers come to life, must go to one of the smaller garrison towns, where in every street and every square they will watch men on the march and at drill. In those quarters of Berlin not occupied by barracks the population is civilian. You see the grey and the dark blue uniforms everywhere, but not in masses and not at work. The people rush like children to follow the guard changed at the Schloss every day; just as they might in London, where soldiers are a rare spectacle. In a smaller town the army is more evidently in possession. It fills the restaurants, occupies the front row of the stalls at the opera, prevails in public gardens, and holds the pavement against the world. But Berlin to all appearances belongs to its citizens, and provides for their profit and convenience. They fill its multitude of houses. They say they make its laws and order its progress. At any rate they live in an agreeable, well-managed city, full of air and light, and kept so clean that most other cities seem slovenly and grimy by comparison. To go suddenly from Berlin to Hamburg, for instance, gives you a shock; though Hamburg is incomparably more attractive and delightful. But in Hamburg you may see bits of paper lying about, and dust on the pavement. In Berlin there is no dust, and no one has ever seen an untidy bit of paper there. It is to be hoped that no one ever travels direct from Berlin to London. What would he think of Covent Garden Market? There are markets in Berlin, at least a dozen of them, but by midday they are swept and garnished. You would not find a leaf of parsley or an end of string to tell you where one had been.



CHAPTER XXVII

ODDS AND ENDS

The most amusing columns in German daily papers are those devoted to family advertisement. There you find the prolix intimate announcements of domestic events compared with which the first column of the Times is so bare, so nichtssagend.

"The birth of a second son is announced with joy by Dr Johann Weber and Wife Martha, born Hansen."—Dresden, 22 May 1907.

"Emil Harzdorf and wife Magdalene, born Klaus, have the honour to announce the birth of a strong girl."—Hamburg, 26 May 1907.

Boy babies are nearly always stramm, the girl babies are kraeftig, and the parents are hocherfreut, as they should be. Engagements and marriages are advertised more simply, and your eye is not caught by them as it is by the big black bordered paragraphs that inform the world that someone has just left it.

"To-day, in consequence of a stroke of apoplexy, my deeply loved husband, our dear father, grandfather, father-in-law, brother, and uncle fell asleep. In the name of the survivors, Olga Wagner, born Richter.—Leipzig, 23 May 1907."

This is a curt announcement compared with many. When the deceased has occupied any kind of official post, or has been an employer of labour, a long register of his many virtues accompanies the advertisement of his death. "He who has just passed away was an exemplary chief, a fatherly friend and adviser, who by his benevolence erected an everlasting monument to himself in the hearts of his colleagues and subordinates." He who had just passed away had been the head of a small soap factory, and this advertisement was put in by the factory hands just beneath the one signed by all the family. Another advertisement on the same page expresses thanks for sympathy, "on the death of my dear wife, our good mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, aunt, sister-in-law, and cousin, Frau Angelika Pankow, born Salbach."

A German friend who had to undergo an operation last year wrote just before to tell me she expected to come through safely. "If not," she said, "you'll receive a card like this"—

"Yesterday passed away Adelaide Deminski, born Weigert, Her heart-broken Husband Grandmother Father Mother Sons Daughters Sons-in-law Daughters-in-law Brothers Sisters Brothers-in-law Sisters-in-law Uncles Aunts Cousins";

for Germans themselves laugh at these advertisements, and assure the inquiring foreigner that their vogue has had its day. But if the inquiring foreigner looks at the right papers he will find as many as ever. You will also find matrimonial advertisements in papers that are considered respectable.

But when you turn to the news columns for details of some event that is startling the world, whether it is a crime, an earthquake, a battle, or a royal wedding, you find a few lines that vex you with their insufficiency. Our English papers have pages about a German coronation, German manoeuvres, German high jinks at Koepenick. But when I wanted to see what happened in London on our day of Diamond Jubilee I found five lines about Queen Victoria having driven to St. Paul's accompanied by her family and some royal guests. I was in a country inn at the time, and the paper taken there was one taken everywhere in the duchy. It is a great mistake to think that German newspaper hostility to England dates from the Transvaal War. The same journal that spared five lines to the Jubilee gave a column to a question asked by one of our parliamentary cranks about the ill-treatment of natives by Britons in India. The question was met by a complete and convincing denial, but we had to turn to our English papers to find that recorded. The —— Tageblatt printed the question with comments, and suppressed the denial. As long ago as 1883, when there was cholera in Egypt, a little Thuringian paper we saw weekly had frenzied articles about the evil English who were doing all they could to bring the scourge to Germany. I think we had refused some form of quarantine that modern medical science considers worse than useless. The tone of the press all through the Transvaal War did attract some attention in this country, and since then from time to time we are presented with quotations from abusive articles about our greed, our perfidy, and our presumption. I am not writing as a journalist, for I know nothing whatever of journalism; but as a member of the general public I believe that we are inclined to overrate the importance of these amenities, because we overrate the part played by the newspaper in the average German household. One can only speak from personal experience, but I should say that it hardly plays a part at all. Whatever Tageblatt is in favour with the Hausherr comes in every morning, and is stowed away tidily in a corner till he has time to look at it while he drinks his coffee and smokes his cigar. If the ladies of the household are inclined that way they look at it too. But there really is not much to look at as a rule. These paragraphs about the wicked British that seem so pugnacious when they are printed on solid English paper in plain English words, are often in a corner with other political paragraphs about other wicked nations. At times of crisis, when the leading papers are attacking us at great length, the Germans themselves will talk of Zeitungsgeschrei and shrug their shoulders. It is absurd to deny the existence of Anglophobia in Germany, because you can hardly travel there without coming across isolated instances of it. But these isolated instances will stand out against a crowded background of people from whom you have received the utmost kindness and friendship; and of other people with whom your relations have been fleeting, but who have been invariably civil. Unfortunately the German Anglophobe is a creature of the meanest breed, and he impresses himself on the memory like a pain; so that one of him looms larger than fifty others, just as the moment will when you had your last tooth out, and not the summer day that went before and after. The truth is, that we are on the nerves of certain Germans. You may live for ever in an English family and never hear a German mentioned. You would assuredly not hear the nation everlastingly discussed and scolded. As far as we are concerned, they are welcome to their own manners, their own ways, and their own opinions. If they would only take their stand on these and leave ours alone we could meet on equal terms. But that is the one thing this particular breed of German cannot do. He must be always arguing with you about the superiority of his nation to yours, and you soon think him the most tiresome and offensive creature you ever met. In private life you can usually avoid him and seek out those charming German people who, even if their Tageblatt teaches them that they should hate England, will never extend their hatred to the English stranger within their gates, and who will admit you readily and kindly to their pleasant unaffected lives. Germany is full of such people, whatever the German newspapers are saying.

Presumably every country has the press that suits it, and in one respect German journalism is more dignified and estimable than our own. It does not publish columns of silly society gossip, or of fashions that only a duchess can follow and only a kitchen-maid can read. Nor would the poorest, smallest provincial Tageblatt descend to the depths of musical criticism in which one of our popular dailies complacently flounders all through the London season.

"I cannot tell you much about last night's Wagner opera, because to my great annoyance the auditorium was dark nearly all the time. Once when we were allowed to see each other for a moment I noticed that the Duchess of Whitechapel was in her box, looking so lovely in cabbage green. Mrs. 'Dicky' Fitzwegschwein was in the stalls with a ruby necklace and a marvellous coat of rose velours spangled in diamonds, and on the grand tier I saw Lady 'Bobby' Holloway, who is of course the daughter-in-law of Lord Islington, in black net over silver, quite the dernier cri this season, and looking radiant over her sister Lady Yolande's engagement to the Duke of Bilgewater. Richter conducted with his usual brilliance, and the new Wotan sang with great elan, although he was obviously suffering from a cold in his head."

It is impossible to imagine Berlin waking some winter morning to find such a "criticism" as this on its breakfast table. In Germany, people who understand music write about music, and people who understand about fashions write about fashions, and the two subjects, both of them interesting and important, are kept apart. Society journalists who write about Lady Bobbies and Mrs. Fitzwegschweins do not exist yet in Germany, and so far the empire seems to worry along quite comfortably without them. I once asked a well-known English journalist who is of German birth, why one of our newspaper kings did not set up a huge, gossipy, frivolous paper in Berlin, and it was explained to me that it would be impossible, because the editor and his staff would probably find themselves in prison in a week. What we understand by Freedom of the Press does not exist there.

On the other hand, books and pamphlets are circulated in Germany that would be suppressed here; and the stage is freer than our own. Monna Vanna had a great success in Berlin, where Mme. Maeterlinck played the part to crowded audiences. Salome is now holding the stage both as a play and with Richard Strauss' music as an opera; Gorky's Nachtasyl is played year after year in Berlin. Both French and German plays are acted all over Germany that could not be produced in England, both because the censor would refuse to pass them and because public opinion would not tolerate them, unless, to be sure, they were played in their own tongues. It is most difficult to explain our attitude to Germans who have been in London, because they know what vulgar and vicious farces and musical comedies pass muster with us, and indeed are extremely popular. It is only when a play touches the deeps of life and shows signs of thought and of poetry that we take fright, and by the lips of our chosen official cry, "This will never do." Tolstoy, Ibsen, Gorky, Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Hauptmann, and Otto Ernst are the modern names I find on one week's programme cut from a Berlin paper late in spring when the theatrical season was nearly over. Besides plays by these authors, one of the State theatres announced tragedies by Goethe, Schiller, and a comedy by Moliere. The Merchant of Venice was being played at one theatre and A Midsummer Night's Dream at another; there were farces and light operas for some people, and Wagner, Gluck, and Beethoven at the Royal Opera House for others. The theatre in Germany is a part of national life and of national education, and it is largely supported by the State; so that even in small towns you get good music and acting. The Meiningen players are celebrated all over the world, and everyone who has read Goethe's Life will remember how actively and constantly he was interested in the Weimar stage. At a Stadt-Theater in a small town two or three operas are given every week, and two or three plays. Most people subscribe for seats once or twice a week all through the winter, and they go between coffee and supper in their ordinary clothes. Even in Berlin women do not wear full dress at any theatre. In the little towns you may any evening meet or join the leisurely stream of playgoers, and if you enter the theatre with them you will find that the women leave their hats with an attendant. You are in no danger in Germany of having the whole stage hidden from you by flowers and feathers.

Shakespeare is as much played as Goethe and Schiller, and it is most interesting and yet most disappointing to hear the poetry you know line upon line spoken in a foreign tongue. Germans say that their translation is more beautiful and satisfying than the original English; but I actually knew a German who kept Bayard Taylor's Faust by his bedside because he preferred it to Goethe's. I think there is something the matter with people who prefer translated to original poetry, but I will leave a critic of standing to explain what ails them. I have never met a German who would admit that Shakespeare was an Englishman. They say that his birth at Stratford-on-Avon was a little accident, and that he belongs to the world. They say this out of politeness, because what they really believe is that he belongs to Germany, and that as a matter of fact Byron is the only great poet England has ever had. I am not joking. I am not even exaggerating. This is the real opinion of the German man in the street, and it is taught in lessons in literature. An English girl went to one of the best-known teachers in Berlin for lessons in German, and found, as she found elsewhere, that the talk incessantly turned on the crimes of England and the inferiority of England.

"You have had two great names," said the teacher,—"two and no more. That is, if one can in any sense of the word call Shakespeare an English name ... Shakespeare and Byron, ... then you have finished. You have never had anyone else, and Shakespeare has always belonged more to us than to you."

The English girl gasped, for she knew something of her own literature.

"But have you never heard about Chaucer," she asked, "or of the Elizabethans, or of Milton, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth...?"

"Reden Sie nicht, reden Sie nicht!" cried the teacher,—"I never allow my pupils to argue with me. Shakespeare and Byron ... no, Byron only, ... then England has done."

You still find Byron in every German household where English is read at all, and no one seems to have found out what fustian most of his poetry really was. Ruskin and Oscar Wilde are the two popular modern authors, and the novel-reading public chooses, so several booksellers assured me, Marion Crawford and Mrs. Croker. I could not hear a word anywhere of Stevenson or Rudyard Kipling, but I did come across one person who had enjoyed Richard Feverel.

"Your English novels are rather better than they used to be, are they not?" said a lady to me in good faith, and I found it a difficult question to answer, because I had always believed that we had a long roll of great novelists; but then, I had also thought that England had a few poets.

The most popular German novels are mostly translated into English, and all German novels of importance are reviewed in our papers. So English people who read German know what a strong reaction there is against the moonshine of fifty years ago. The novels most in vogue exhibit the same coarse, but often thoughtful and impressive, realism that prevails on the stage and in the conversation and conduct of some sets of people in the big cities. The Tagebuch einer Verlorenen has sold 75,000 copies, and it is the story of a German Kamelliendame compared with whom Dumas' lady is moonshine. It is a haunting picture of a woman sinning against the moral and social law, and no one with the least sense or judgment could put it on the low level of certain English novels that sell because they are offensive, and for no other reason in the world. Aus guter Familie, by Gabrielle Reuter, is another remarkable novel, and I believe it has never been translated into English. It presents the poignant tragedy of a woman's life suffocated by the social conditions obtaining in a small German town where a woman has no hope but marriage, and if she is poor no chance of marriage. It is one of the most sincere books I ever read. Das Taegliche Brot, Klara Viebig's story of servant-life in Berlin, is another typical novel of the present day, and that has been translated for those amongst us who do not read German. I choose these three novels for mention because they are written by women, and because they are brilliant examples of the modern tone amongst women. If you want the traditional German qualities of sentiment, poetry, formlessness, and dreamy childlike charm, you must read novels written by men.

I have said very little about music in Germany, because we all know and admit that it reaches heights there no other nation can approach. An Englishman writing about Germany lately says that you often hear very bad music there, but I think his experience must have been exceptional and unfortunate. I am sure that Germans do not tolerate the vapid dreary drawing-room songs we listen to complacently in this country; for in England people often have beautiful voices without any musical understanding, or technical facility without charm. I suppose such cases must occur amongst Germans too, and in the end one speaks of a foreign nation partly from personal experience, which must be narrow, and partly from hearsay. I have met Germans who were not musical, but I have never met any who were pleased with downright bad music. On the whole, it is the art they understand best, the one in which their instinctive taste is sure and good. You would not find that the Byron amongst composers, whoever he may be, was the one they set up for worship. Nor do you find the street of a German city or suburb infested with barrel-organs. There is some kind of low dancing saloon or cafe chantant called a Tingl-Tangl where I imagine they have organs and gramaphones and suchlike horrors, but then unless you chance to pass their open windows you need not endure their strains. In England, even if we are fond of music, and therefore sensitive to jarring sounds and maudlin melodies, yet in the street we cannot escape the barrel-organ nor in the house the drawing-room songs. As if these were not enough, we now invite each other to listen to the pianotist and the pianola.

"I will explain my country to you," said the artist one day when I had expressed myself puzzled by the curious gaps in German taste, and even in German knowledge; by their enthusiasm for the second rate in poetry and literature, and by their amazing uncertain mixture of information and blank complacent ignorance. For when an Englishman says "Goethe! Schiller!—Was is das?" you are not surprised. It is just what you expect of an Englishman, and for all that he may know how to build bridges and keep his temper in games and argument. But when a German teacher of literature tells you Byron is the only English poet, and when the whole nation neglects some of our big men but runs wild over certain little ones, you listen eagerly for any explanation forthcoming. "We have Wissen," said the artist, "we have Kunst; but we have no Kultur."

I did not recover from the shock he gave me till the evening, when I saw the professor of philosophy and aesthetics.

"The artist says that you have no Kultur," I told him; for I wanted to see how he received a shock.

"The artist speaks the truth," said the professor calmly. I have never met anyone more civilised and scholarly then he was himself; and I set a high value on his opinion.

"What is Kultur?" I asked.

"One result of it is a fine discrimination," he replied, "a fine discrimination in art, in conduct, and in manner."

"Are you not the most intellectual people in the world?" I said reproachfully.

He seemed to think that had nothing to do with it.

"Are you still worrying your head about Kultur?" said the artist next time I saw him. "Then I will explain a little more to you. I, as you know, am extremely anti-Semite."

"I am sure that is not a proof of Kultur," I said hurriedly.

"It is not a proof of anything. It is a result. Nevertheless I perceive that if it were not for the Jews there would be neither art nor literature in Germany. They create, they appreciate, they support, and although we affect to despise them we invariably follow them like sheep. What they admire we admire; what they discover we see to be good. But ... I told you I was anti-Semite, ... though they have most of the brains in the country, they have little Kultur. One of us who is as stupid as an ox, ... most of us are as stupid as oxen, ... may have more, ... but because he is stupid he cannot impose his opinion on the multitude."

"Do you mean that the Jews set the fashion in art and literature, and that they sometimes set a bad one?" I asked

"That is exactly what I mean."

It was a curious theory, and I will not be responsible for its truth. But there is no doubt that in every German town artistic and literary society has its centre amongst the educated Jews. They are most generous hosts, and it is their pleasure to gather round them an aristocracy of genius. The aristocracy that is perfectly happy without genius would as a rule not enter a Jew's house; though the poorer members of the aristocracy often marry a Jew's daughter. Where there is inter-marriage some social intercourse is presumably inevitable. But the social crusade against Jews is carried on in Germany to an extent we do not dream of here. The Christian clubs and hostels exclude them, Christian families avoid them, and Christian insults are offered to them from the day of their birth. "What do you use those long lances for?" said the wife of a Jewish professor to a young man in a cavalry regiment. "Damit hetzen wir die Juden," said he, with the snarl of his kind; and he knew very well that the lady's husband was a Jew. I have been told a story of a Jewish girl being asked to a Court ball by the Emperor Frederick, and finding that none of the men present would consent to dance with her. I have heard of girls who wished to ask a Jewish schoolmate to a dance, and discovered that their Christian friends flatly refused to meet anyone of her race. How any Christians contrive to avoid it I do not understand, for wherever you go in Germany some of the great scholars, doctors, men of science, art, and literature, are men of Jewish blood. The press is almost entirely in their hands, and when there is a scurrilous artist or a coarse picture your friends explain it by saying that the tone of that special paper is juedisch. The modern campaign against Jews began nearly thirty years ago, when a Court chaplain called Stoecker startled the world by the violence of his invective. But the fire he stirred to flame must have been smouldering. He and his followers gave the most ingenuous reasons for curtailing Jewish rights and privileges in Germany, one of which was the provoking fact that Jewish boys did more brilliantly at school than Christians. The subject bristles with difficulties, and no one who knows the German Jew intimately will wish to pose him as a persecuted saint. The Christian certainly makes it unpleasant for him socially, but in one way or the other he holds his own. I have seen him vexed and offended by some brutal slight, but his keen sense of humour helps him over most stiles. So no doubt does his sense of power. "They will not admit me to their clubs or ask my daughters to their dances," said a Jewish friend, "but they come to me for money for their charities." And I knew that half the starving poor in the town came to his wife for charity, and that she never sent one empty away.

When a very clever, sensitive, numerically small race has lived for hundreds of years cheek by jowl with a dense brutal race that has never ceased to insult and humiliate it, you cannot be surprised if those clever but highly sensitive ones become imbued in course of time with a painful undesirable conviction that the brutes are their superiors. So you have the spectacle in Germany of Jews seeking Christian society instead of avoiding it; and you hear them boast quite artlessly of their christlicher Umgang. They would really serve their people and even themselves more if they refused all christlicher Umgang until the Christians had learned to behave themselves. An Englishwoman living in Berlin told me that once as she came out of a concert hall an officer standing in the crowd stared at her and said, so that everyone could hear: "At last! a single face that is not a juedischer Fratz." The concert, you will understand, must have been a good one, and therefore largely attended by a Jewish audience. Possibly the officer who so much disliked his surroundings had married a Jewish heiress and was waiting for his wife. Such things happen. During the worst times of Stoecker's campaign a woman with Jewish features could hardly go out unescorted; and even now, though it is not openly expressed, you can hardly fail to catch some note of sympathy with the Russian persecution of the Jews. The deep helpless genuine horror felt in England at the pogroms is felt in a fainter way in Northern Germany.

Meanwhile the Jewish woman of the upper classes takes her revenge by knowing how to dress. In German cities, when you see a woman who is "exquisite," slim that is and graceful, dainty from head to foot and finely clad, then you may vow by all the gods that she has Jewish blood in her.



APPENDIX

Page 4, l. 26. Wunderkind: a prodigy.

Page 8, l. 5. Wickelkinder: infants in swaddling clothes.

Page 9, l. 26. Mamsell: supervising housekeeper.

Page 11, l. 13. Die Kunst im Leben des Kindes: art in the life of the child.

Page 12, l. 14. Pestalozzi Froebel Haus: named for the two great educators, Pestalozzi and Froebel.

Page 12, l. 31. pf.: pfennig, a quarter of a cent.

Page 13, l. 22. Das Recht des Kindes: the right of the child.

Page 16, l. 2. Gymnasium: school where Latin and Greek are taught (humanistic education).

Page 16, l. 2. Real-Gymnasium: school where Latin, modern languages, mathematics, science, and history are taught. No Greek.

Page 16, l. 3. Ober-Real Schule: school where mathematics, science, history, French, and English are taught.

Page 16, l. 3. Real-Schule: a school which prepares for practical life, not for the university; modern languages are included in the curriculum.

Page 17, l. 7. Abiturienten: graduates from a Gymnasium or Ober-Real Schule.

Page 17, l. 14. mark: a quarter of a dollar.

Page 17, l. 19. Flachsmann als Erzieher: Flachsmann as a pedagogue.

Page 19, l. 8. Evangelisch: Protestant.

Page 20, l. 19. Schauspielhaus: theatre.

Page 20, l. 21. Was ist das? what is that?

Page 20, l. 26. Hoehere Toechterschule: high school for girls.

Page 21, l. 33. Ober Lehrerin: high grade teacher.

Page 22, l. 14. Lyceen: school where Latin and Greek is taught.

Page 22, l. 14. Ober-Lyceen: school preparing for the university.

Page 22, l. 31. Allgemeine deutsche Frauenverein: Universal League of German Women.

Page 23, l. 10. Allgemeine deutsche Lehrerinnen-Verein: Universal League of German Teachers.

Page 23, l. 13. Real-Kurse fuer Maedchen und Frauen: courses for girls and women outside of those found in the school system, and preparing for the university.

Page 24, l. 11. Gymnasialkurse: the above plan organised into preparatory schools for women for the university.

Page 26, l. 12. Stift: private or state school with board and residence. Also an endowed home for gentlewomen, with certain privileges—either with or without a school for girls.

Page 30, l. 7. Volkschule: public school.

Page 30, l. 9. Nicht voellig normal: rather weak intellectually, abnormal.

Page 32, l. 24. Schulrat: superintendent of schools.

Page 33, l. 12. Waldschule: forest school in open air.

Page 34, l. 16. Griesbrei: porridge made of farina.

Page 34, l. 21. Nudelsuppe: soup of noodles. Vermicelli soup.

Page 36, l. 8. Ich liebe einen Backfisch: I love a girl in her teens.

Page 36, l. 20. Backfisch-Moden: fashions for misses.

Page 38, l. 33. Backfischen's Leiden und Freuden: Sorrows and Joys of a Backfisch.

Page 41, l. 12. Jawohl, liebe Tante: yes, certainly, dear aunt.

Page 43, l. 34. Sie geniren sich gewiss: you are surely too shy.

Page 44, l. 34. Braut: betrothed.

Page 45, l. 9. Ein junges Maedchen muss immer heiter sein: young girl must always be cheerful.

Page 48, l. 13. Privatdocenten: private lecturer.

Page 51, l. 9. Volkslieder: folk songs.

Page 51, l. 9. Trinklieder: drinking songs.

Page 51, l. 34. Burschenschaft: students' corporation.

Page 52, l. 8. Alte Herren Abende: old gentlemen's (former students) evenings.

Page 53, l. 14. "Auf die Mensur": Ready, begin!

Page 54, l. 9. raisonniren: to reason, to argue, to dispute, to scold about.

Page 54, l. 9. geniren: to embarrass, to trouble.

Page 54, l. 13. Der Bier Comment: beer drinking custom; the commanding phrase for a drink called Salamander.

Page 54, l. 20. Bierdurst: beer thirst.

Page 54, l. 23. Kneiptafel: a kind of club table, where men generally spend evenings drinking beer and joining in songs.

Page 55, l. 27. "Silentium fuer einen Biergalopp, ich bitte den noetigen Staff anzuschaffen": Silence for a beer gallop; please provide the necessary stuff.

Page 56, l. 19. Kommers: students' festival evening, drinking bout.

Page 56, l. 22. In vollem Wichs: in full dress.

Page 56, l. 27. "Sauft alle mit einander": Drink all together.

Page 65, l. 2. Stammtisch: a club table, where every member has a reserved seat.

Page 67, l. 15. "Man soll," etc.: "One ought to so bring up women," said Siegfried, the champion, "that they omit all unnecessary talk. Forbid it your wife. I will do the same with mine. Really I am ashamed of such an arrogant custom."

Page 67, l. 22. "Das hat mich," etc.: "I repented it immediately," said the noble woman. "On this account he beat my body black and blue; because I talked too much he was disturbed in his spirit: this did revenge the champion wise and good."

Page 69, l. 22 Ritterschaft: knighthood.

Page 71, l. 31. Lette Verein: Lette Association.

Page 72, l. 21. Leipziger Allerlei: a kind of mixed pickles.

Page 73, l. 25. eine Stuetze: a helper for the housewife.

Page 78, l. 1. Memoiren einer Idealistin: Memoirs of an Idealist.

Page 80, l. 24. Schadchan: Jewish business match-maker or marriage broker.

Page 82, l. 8. Aus guter Familie: of good family.

Page 83, l. 15. In freier Ehe: in free love.

Page 85, l. 7. Alte Schloss: old castle.

Page 85, l. 8. nicht wahr? is that not so?

Page 85, l. 26. Ausflug or Landpartie: excursion trip in the country.

Page 86, l. 13. "Die Verlobung," etc.: The engagement of their daughter Pauline to Mr. Henry Schmidt, barrister Dr. jur., in Berlin, is announced respectfully by Privy Counsellor of Government Dr. Eugene Brand, Royal Director of Gymnase, and Mrs. Helene, born Engel. Stuttgart, in June, 1906. 7 Tiergarten.

Page 86, l. 23. "Meine Verlobung," etc.: I have the honor respectfully to announce my engagement with Miss Pauline Brand, daughter of the Royal Director of Gymnase, Privy Counsellor of Government Dr. Eugen Brand and his honorable wife Helene, born Engel. Dr. jur. Heinrich Schmidt, barrister Referendar. Berlin, in June, 1906. Kurfuerstendam 2000.

Page 88, l. 2. Brautpaar: bride and bridegroom on the wedding day, betrothed couple.

Page 88, l. 12. Wilkommen, du glueckseliges Kind: Welcome, you happy child.

Page 88, l. 15. ruehrend: touching.

Page 88, l. 15. innig: hearty, fervent.

Page 89, l. 16. Aussteurer: trousseau, also household endowment of money.

Page 91, l. 2. "Wir winden dir":

THE FREE SHOOTER

The bridal wreath for thee we bind, With silken thread of azure; In wedded days, oh, mayst thou find Full store of hope and pleasure.

I've planted thyme and myrtle sweet, They grew in my garden; But when shall I my true love meet, How long will he delay yet?

Full seven years the maiden span, The snow-white web augmenting; The veil is clear like a web, And green the wreath in her hair.

When lo! her true love came at last, When seven years had passed, Because her lover married her She has deserved her wreath.

Page 94, l. 7. Freie Trauungen: free marriages.

Page 94, l. 20. Sozialdemokratischer Verband: society of democratic socialists.

Page 98, l. 1. Tafel-Lieder: table songs.

Page 98, l. 22. Hoch: Hurrah.

Page 99, l. 8. "Wie ist doch," etc.:

How highly is the Uncle blest; To-day the bridal wreath adorns the aunt.

Page 99, l. 11. "Liebe Gaeste," etc.:

Dear guests, will you all Arise with pleasure— Hail to the bridal pair— May they prosper.

Page 99, l. 25. Hochzeits-Tafel: wedding meal.

Page 101, l. 2. "Geschiedene Leute scheiden fort und fort": divorced people sever forever.

Page 101, l. 14. unwirtlichen: inhospitable, barren.

Page 102, l. 11. "Buergerliches Gesetzbuch": citizen's law book, code.

Page 103, l. 10. Wohnzimmer: living room.

Page 104, l. 5. Hof: court; yard.

Page 105, l. 9. Wie Herrlich: how splendid.

Page 106, l. 26. Fuellofen: stove, a self-feeder.

Page 109, l. 13. Landeskirche: National church.

Page 110, l. 7. Nichtraucher: no smoking allowed.

Page 110, l. 7. Damen-Coupe: for ladies only (in railway).

Page 110, l. 12. Aber ich bitte, meine Dame: es zieht, ja, ja, es zieht: but please, madame, there is a draught, yes, yes, there is a draught.

Page 112, l. 25. Magen: stomach.

Page 113, l. 24. Mein armer Karl: My poor Charles.

Page 113, l. 24. Kueken mit Spargel: spring chicken with asparagus.

Page 114, l. 13. Frikassee von Haehnchen mit Krebsen: fricassee of chicken with crabs.

Page 114, l. 23. perfekte Koechin: experienced cook.

Page 116, l. 12. "Dienen lerne," etc.:

Early a woman should learn to serve, for that is her calling; Since through service alone she finally comes to governing, Comes to the due command that is hers of right in the household. Early the sister must wait on her brother, and wait on her parents; Life must be always with her a perpetual coming and going, Or be a lifting and carrying, making and doing for others. Happy for her be she accustomed to think no way is too grievous, And if the hours of the night be to her as the hours of the daytime; If she find never a needle too fine, nor a labour too trifling; Wholly forgetful of self, and caring to live but in others!

Page 117, l. 31. "Par une recontre," etc.: "By a strange chance," says Monsieur Taine, "women are more feminine and men more masculine here than elsewhere. The two natures go to extremes, the one to boldness, to a spirit of enterprise and opposition, to a character that is warlike, imperious, and rough; the other to gentleness, self-denial, patience, inexhaustible affection. Here woman yields completely, a thing unknown in foreign lands, especially in France, and looks upon obedience, pardon, adoration as an honour and a duty, without desiring or striving for anything beyond subordinating herself and becoming daily more absorbed in him whom she has chosen of her own accord and for all time. It is this instinct, an old Germanic instinct, that those great delineators of instinct all paint in a high light!... The spirit of this race is at once primitive and serious. Among women simplicity lasts longer than it does elsewhere. They are slower in losing respect, and in weighing values and characters; they are less ready to suspect evil and to analyse their husbands.... They have not the cleverness, the advanced ideas, the assured behaviour, the precocity which with us turns a young girl into a sophisticated woman and a queen of society in six months. A secluded life and obedience are easier for them. More yielding and more sedentary, they are at once more reserved, more self-centred, more disposed to gaze upon the noble dream that they call duty."

Page 118, l. 28. "Voir la peinture," etc.: "Depiction of this character is to be seen in all English and German literature," he says in a footnote. "The closest of observers, Stendhal, thoroughly impregnated with Italian and French ideas and customs, is amazed at sight of it. He understands nothing of this kind of devotion, 'of this slavery which English husbands have had the cleverness to impose upon their wives under the name of duty.' These are 'customs of the seraglio.'"

Page 121, l. 5. lese majeste: high treason.

Page 124, l. 5. ordentliche Frau: respectable woman.

Page 127, l. 8. "Mir ist ein Greuel": it is a horror for me.

Page 127, l. 23. Frau Wirklichergeheimerober regierungsrath: Mrs. privy chief counsellor of government.

Page 130, l. 26. dumm: silly, stupid.

Page 133, l. 22. Tuechtigkeit: capability.

Page 134, l. 7. "Wie die Kueche," etc.: when the kitchen is clean, the whole house is clean. Neat indoors, neat outdoors.

Page 134, l. 10. "Trautes Heim," etc.:

There is no place like home. My home is my castle.

Page 141, l. 6. Unsinn ... Quatsch: nonsense, rubbish.

Page 141, l. 9. Das hat keinen Zweck: that is of no use.

Page 141, l. 27. Herrschaft: master and mistress and their family.

Page 143, l. 21. Gesinde-Dienstbuch: servant's book of reference.

For Anna Schmidt. From Rheinbeck. Age (geboren, born) June 20, 1885. Stature, slender. Eyes, gray. Nose and mouth ordinary. Hair, dark blond. Especial characteristics.

- - - NAME, VOCATION, DAY OF DAY OF REASON OF CERTIFICATE AND ADDRESS OF BEARER IS ENTERING LEAVING LEAVING AND REMARKS THE EMPLOYER ACCEPTED AS SERVICE SERVICE REFERENCE OF POLICE - - - Widow Auguste Servant Oct. 20, Jan. 2, Wished a Seen Knoblauch 1901 1902 change (Place and Conduct date, with good official stamp and signature) - - - Boretzky, Post Housemaid Feb. 2, Oct. 2, Is dismissed Restaurant, 2 1902 1904 because of Baeren Street unbecoming behaviour, but is diligent and honest - - -

Page 148, l. 3. Speiseschrank: pantry.

Page 151, l. 23. Kammer: little chamber.

Page 159, l. 11. eine jute Jabe Jottes: a good gift of God.

Page 164, l. 5. Mehlspeise: farinaceous dish.

Page 164, l. 5. Spetzerle: a sort of dumpling.

Page 164, l. 9. Leibgericht: favourite dish.

Page 164, l. 9. Rote Gruetze: literally "red gruel."

Page 168, l. 7. Torten: tarts.

Page 169, l. 15. Beamtenbeleidigung: offence against an official.

Page 170, l. 19. Baumkuchen: cake baked on a spit.

Page 179, l. 26. Das Maedchen aus der Fremde: the Strange Maiden.

Page 179, l. 27. Der Tod und das Maedchen: Death and the Maiden.

Page 180, l. 10. gemuetlich: comfortable, agreeable, cosy.

Page 180, l. 25. kraeftige Kost: nourishing food.

Page 181, l. 7. Heuchelei: hypocrisy.

Page 182, l. 22. tuechtige Hausfrau: experienced housewife.

Page 183, l. 12. Gesellschaft: society, a "party."

Page 183, l. 28. Gott sei Dank: God be thanked.

Page 183, l. 33. Guten Tag: good day.

Page 187, l. 22. Steinkohlen: mineral coal, anthracite.

Page 187, l. 22. Braunkohlen: lignite, brown coal.

Page 189, l. 8. gehacktes Schweinefleisch: choppy pork.

Page 195, l. 21. Reform-Kleider: reform dresses.

Page 195, l. 34. Elles s'habillent si mal: they dress so badly.

Page 200, l. 4. Spruch: motto.

Page 200, l. 16. Meringuetorte: pastry with whipped cream.

Page 201, l. 29. Bowle: punch.

Page 201, l. 33. Kaffee-Klatsch mit Schleppe (train): a coffee party in grand style.

Page 203, l. 16. Gefrorenes: ice cream.

Page 203, l. 35. Pumpernickel: Westphalian rye bread.

Page 207, l. 8. Katzenjammer: moral depression—the blues—seediness after drunken debauch.

Page 207, l. 27. Hier koennen Familien Kaffee kochen: here families are allowed to cook coffee.

Page 216, l. 17. ein falsches Volk: false people.

Page 222, l. 16. Schenkwirte: tavern keepers.

Page 223, l. 15. Schoppen: a pint.

Page 227, l. 3. Oberkellner: head waiter, head steward.

Page 231, l. I. frisch angesteckt: fresh on tap.

Page 231, l. 20. Rindfleisch: boiled beef.

Page 231, l. 26. versoffene Jungfern: drunken maidens.

Page 233, l. 1. halbe Portion: half a portion.

Page 233, l. 20. Stimmung: mood, humour.

Page 233, l. 27. Das hat keinen Zweck: of no use, end, etc.; what difference does that make?

Page 234, l. i. Verrueckt: crazy, mad.

Page 235, l. 16. Schmorkartoffeln: stewed potatoes baked in butter.

Page 235, l. 28. Pastetchen: small pies, patties.

Page 237, l. 13. Koenigstrasse: King's Road.

Page 237, l. 14. Herrschaften: patrons.

Page 237, l. 23. Delikatessenhandlung: delicatessen shop.

Page 240, l. 3. Spiritus leid' ich nicht: I will not allow alcohol.

Page 240, l. 29. Trinkgeld: tips.

Page 242, l. 10. das beste Zimmer: best room, salon.

Page 244, l. 8. Das schadet nichts, das ist gesund: never mind, it is healthful.

Page 245, l. 27. fremd: strange.

Page 245, l. 33. Reisebureau: office of information for travellers.

Page 246, l. 14. anmelden: announce, report.

Page 247, l. 13. Ausgang: exit.

Page 247, l. 14. Eingang: entrance.

Page 249, l. 10. Dann war es mir zu bunt: it was too much for me, it goes too far.

Page 252, l. 6. Verschoenerungsverein: society for embellishments.

Page 252, l. 13. Aussicht: view.

Page 252, l. 13 prachtvoll: splendid.

Page 252, l. 13. Luft herrlich: lovely air.

Page 252, l. 16. die Herren: the gentlemen.

Page 253, l. 15. wanderfroh: fond of travelling.

Page 255, l. 13. Badearzt: physician of a watering place.

Page 255, l. 31. eine gute Stunde: a good hour's walk.

Page 257, l. 3. Kur: medical treatment.

Page 257, l. 5. Badereise: sojourn at a bathing place for the benefit of the waters.

Page 258, l. 1. Luftkur: open air cure.

Page 258, l. 9. Blutarmut: anaemia.

Page 258, l. 18. Corpulententisch: table of the corpulents.

Page 259, l. 4. Kegel: ninepins.

Page 259, l. 17. Waldluft: forest air.

Page 259, l. 28. Speisesaal: dining room.

Page 260, l. 16. "Warum willst," etc.:

Why do you wander elsewhere When happiness is so near?

Page 261, l. 25. Personenzug: local train.

Page 262, l. 16. Schein: bill, receipt.

Page 268, l. 17. staedtische Kleider: city dress.

Page 268, l. 31. Kirchweih: annual festival in commemoration of the consecration of church.

Page 269, l. 4. Brautwagen: wedding coach.

Page 270, l. 6. Hochzeit: wedding.

Page 270, l. 19. belegtes Butterbrot: sandwiches.

Page 271, l. 5. Hochzeitsmahl: wedding meal.

Page 271, l. 16. Speisesaal: dining room.

Page 277, l. 2. Was ist denn los? what is the matter?

Page 278, l. 18. Sehnsucht: yearning.

Page 278, l. 21. Haferbrei: oat meal.

Page 279, l. 8. Schmalz: suet, lard.

Page 279, l. 11. Pfarrer: priest, clergyman, parson.

Page 279, l. 18. Betten: beds.

Page 279, l. 19. Heidenmuehle: mill on the heath.

Page 279, l. 24. Knecht: manservant.

Page 291, l. 19. Volkskueche: public kitchen.

Page 292, l. 2. Tischzeit: hours for meals.

Page 292, l. 6. Durch Arbeiten: through work.

Page 292, l. 16. Der Kaufmaennische Verband fuer Weibliche Angestellte: Merchant Association for Employed Women.

Page 298, l. 13. Kurfuerstendam: elector's dyke.

Page 303, l. 1. Zelten: tents.

Page 305, l. 1. Berliner Zimmer: a room with one window.

Page 307, l. 5. nichtssagend: trifling, of little value.

Page 307, l. 12. stramm: robust, vigorous.

Page 307, l. 13. kraeftig: strong, healthy, sturdy.

Page 307, l. 13. hocherfreut: delighted, highly pleased.

Page 310, l. 21. Zeitungsgeschrei: newspaper clamour.

Page 315, l. 8. Reden sie nicht: don't talk.

Page 318, l. 2. Kultur: culture.

Page 319, l. 22. Damit hetzen wir die Juden: therewith we stir up the Jews.

Page 320, l. 33. christlicher Umgang: to be in company of Christians.

Page 321, l. 5. juedischer Fratz: Jewish phiz.



INDEX

Advertisements, 85, 307

Allotment gardens, 207

Anglophobia, 5, 119, 130, 184, 309-311

Art in the nursery, 11

Auerbach, 272-278

Backfischen's Leiden und Freuden, 38-43

Baden, 6, 22 (see also Black Forest)

Badereise, 255-260

Bathrooms, 103, 305

Bavaria, 228, 231, 258, 273, 275

Beds, 124, 229

Beggars, 276, 295

Berlin— Electric cars, 300 Fire-brigade, 275 Flats and houses, 103-108 Froebel Haus, 12 Ladies' clubs, 75 Philanthropy, 293 Registry offices, 142 Restaurants, 233 Sculptures, 297 Shops, 167-170, 174 Students, 57 Sunday excursions, 207 Taxes, 109

Berliner Zimmer, 305

Bestes Zimmer, 242

Betham-Edwards, Miss, 36

Betrothals, 85-91

Bier Comment, 54-56

Birmingham brass workers, 295

Black Forest, 162, 171, 205, 220, 267 ff., 276

Brautpaar, 87

Budgets, household, 187-194, 283

Buergerliches Gesetzbuch, 102

Burschenschaft, 51

Byron, 38, 314

Cellar-shops, 170

Charlottenberg Forest School, 32

Christmas, 176

Church tax, 109

Confirmation, 78-80

Cooking classes, 72

Corps-Studenten, 51-53

Cotta, Frl. v., 21

Cottbus Market, 174

Creches, 10, 33

Dienstbuch, 142-145

Divorce, 100

Doctors, 9, 31, 72, 295

Doecker system, 33

Drawing-rooms, 126

Drunkenness, 206

Duels, students', 51-53

Dyhrenfurth, Gertrud, 282

Economy, 130, 178, 188, 243, 287

Eltzbacher, O., 93, 185

Emigration, 185, 263

Emperor Wilhelm II., 70, 218, 220