Shakespeare better than we do, but they know nothing, and care
nothing, for the sizzling, crackling stream of purposeless incident,
and sterile comment, that pours in upon the readers of American
newspapers, and which has had its part in making us the largest
consumers of nerve-quieting drugs in the world. All too many of the
pens that supply our press are without education, without experience,
without responsibility or restraint. What Mommsen writes of Cicero
applies to them: "Cicero was a journalist in the worst sense of the
term, over-rich in words as he himself confesses, and beyond all
imagination poor in thought."
No one of these journals pretends to such power or such influence as
certain great dailies in America and in England. They have not the
means at their command to buy much cable or telegraphic news, and
lacking a press tariff for telegrams, they are the more hampered. The
German temperament, and the civil-service and political close-corporation
methods, make it difficult for the journalist to go far,
either socially or politically. The German has been trained in a
severe school to seek knowledge, not to look for news, and he does not
make the same demands, therefore, upon his newspaper.
German relations with the outside world are of an industrial and
commercial kind, and until very lately the German has not been a
traveller, and is not now an explorer, and their colonies are
unimportant; consequently there is no very keen interest on the part
of the bulk of the people in foreign affairs. Even Sir Edward Grey's
answering speech on the Morocco question did not appear in full in
Berlin until the following day, though Germany had roused itself to an
unusual pitch of excitement and expectancy.
As the Germans are not yet political animals, so their newspapers
reflect an artificial political enthusiasm. Society, too, is as little
organized as politics. There are no great figures in their social
world. A Beau Brummel, a d'Orsay, a Lady Palmerston, a Lady
Londonderry, a Duke of Devonshire, a Gladstone, a Disraeli, a
Rosebery, would be impossible in Germany, especially if they were in
opposition to the party in power. When a chancellor or other minister
is dismissed by the Kaiser, he simply disappears. He does not add to
the weight of the opposition, but ceases to exist politically. This
has two bad results: it does not strengthen the criticism of the
administration, and it makes the office-holder very loath to leave
office, and to surrender his power. An ex-cabinet officer in America
or in England remains a valuable critic, but an ex-chancellor in
Germany becomes a social recluse, a political Trappist. Even the
leading political figures are after all merely shadowy servants of the
Emperor. They represent neither themselves nor the people, and such
subserviency kills independence and leaves us with mediocrities
gesticulating in the dark, and making phrases in a vacuum.
There are, it is true, charming hostesses in Berlin, and ladies who
gather in their drawing-rooms all that is most interesting in the
intellectual and political life of the day; but they are almost
without exception obedient to the traditional officialdom, leaning
upon a favor that is at times erratic, and without the daring of
independence which is the salt of all real personality.
There are, too, country-houses. One castle in Bavaria, how well I
remember it, and the accomplished charm of its owner, who had made its
grandeur cosey, a feat, indeed! But all this is detached from the real
life of the nation, which is forever taking its cue from the court,
leaving any independent or imposing social and political life benumbed
and without vitality. There is no free and stalwart opposition, no
centres of power; and much as one tires of the incessant and feverish
strife political and social at home, one returns to it taking a long
breath of the free air after this hot-house atmosphere, where the
thermometer is regulated by the wishes of an autocrat.
The press necessarily reflects these conditions. The Social Democrats,
divided into many small parties, and the Agrarians and Ultramontanes,
divided as well, give the press no single point of leverage. These
political parties wrangle among themselves over the dish of votes, but
what is put into the dish comes from a master over whom they have no
control. If they upset the dish they are turned out as they were in
1878, 1887, 1893, and 1907, and when they return they are better
behaved.
The parties themselves are not real, since thousands of voters lean to
the left merely to express their discontent; but they would desert the
Social Democrats at once did they think there was a chance of real
governing power for them. A small industrial was warned of the awful
things that would happen did the Socialists come into power. "Ah," he
replied, "but the government would not permit that!" What has the
press to chronicle with insistence and with dignity of such flabby
political and social conditions?
The press may be, and often is, annoying, as mosquitoes are annoying,
but its campaigns are dangerous to nobody. As I write, it is hard to
believe that within a few days the members of a new Reichstag are to
be elected. There are political meetings, it is true, there are
articles and editorials in the newspapers, there is some languid
discussion at dinner-tables and in society, but there is a sense of
unreality about it all, as though men were thinking: Nothing of grave
importance can happen in any case! We shall have something to say
farther on of political Germany; here it suffices to say that the
press of Germany betrays in its political writing that it is dealing
with shadows, not with realities. "They have been at a great feast of
language, and stolen the scraps," that's all.
The snarling Panther that was sent to Agadir, teeth and claws showing,
came back looking like an adventurous tomcat that wished only to hide
itself meekly in its accustomed haunts; and its unobtrusive bearing
seemed to say, the less said about the matter the better. What a storm
of obloquy would have burst upon such inept diplomacy in America, or
in England, or even in France. Not so here. Everybody was sore and
sorry, but the newspapers and the journalists could raise no protest
that counted. It is all explained by the fact that the people do not
govern, have nothing to do with the whip or the reins, nor have they
any constitutional way of changing coachmen, or of getting possession
of whip and reins; and hooting at the driver, and jeering at the
tangled whip-lash and awkwardly held reins, is poor-spirited business.
Only one political writer, Harden, does it with any effect, and his
pen is said to have upset the Caprivi government.
As one reads the newspapers day by day, and the weekly and monthly
journals, it becomes apparent that the German imagines he has done
something when he has had an idea; just as the Frenchman imagines he
has done something when he has made an epigram. We are less given
either to thinking or phrasing, and far less gifted in these
directions than either Germans or Frenchmen, and perhaps that is the
reason we have actually done so much more politically. We do things
for lack of something better to do, while our neighbors find real
pleasure in their dreams, and take great pride in their epigrams.
As all great writing, from that of Xenophon and Caesar till now, is
born of action or the love of it, or as a spiritual incitement to
action, so a people with little opportunity for political action, and
no centres of social life with a real sway or sovereignty, cannot
create or offer substance for the making of a powerful and independent
press.
There is no New York, no Paris, no London, no Vienna even, in Germany.
Berlin is the capital, but it is not a capital by political or social
evolution, but by force of circumstances. Germany has many centres
which are not only not interested in Berlin, but even antagonistic.
Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, Leipsic, Frankfort, Dresden, Breslau, and
besides these, twenty-six separate states with their capitals, their
rulers, courts, and parliaments, go to make up Germany, and perhaps
you are least of all in Germany when you are in Berlin. It is true
that we have many States, many capitals, and many governors in
America, but they have all grown from one, and not, as in Germany,
been beaten into one, and held together more from a sense of danger
from the outside than from any interest, sympathy, and liking for one
another.
With us each State, too, has a powerful representation both in the
Senate and in the House of Representatives, which keeps the interest
alive, while in Germany Prussia is overwhelmingly preponderant. In the
upper house, or Bundesrat, Prussia has 17 representatives; next comes
Bavaria with 6; and the other states with 4 or less, out of a total of
58 members. In the Reichstag, out of a total of 397 representatives,
Prussia has 236.
Political society is not all centred in Berlin, as it is in London,
Paris, or Washington, nor is social life there representative of all
Germany. Berlin's stamp of approval is not necessary to play, or
opera, or book, or picture, or statue, or personality. Indeed, Berlin
often takes a lead in such matters from other cities in Germany where
the artistic life and history are more fully developed, as, for
instance, in other days, Weimar, and now Munich, Dresden, and, in
literary matters, Leipsic. A recent example of this, though of small
consequence in itself, is the case of the opera, the "Rosen Kavalier,"
which was given repeatedly in Dresden and Leipsic, whither many Berlin
people went to hear it, before the authorities in Berlin could be
persuaded to produce it.
The nobility, the society heavy artillery, come to Berlin only for
three or four weeks, from the middle of January to the middle of
February, to pay their respects to their sovereign at the various
court functions given during that time. They live in the country and
only visit in Berlin. It is complained, that the double taxation
incident to the up-keep of an establishment both in town and in the
country, makes it impossible for them to be much in Berlin. They stay
in hotels and in apartments, and are mere passing visitors in their
own capital. They have, therefore, practically no influence upon
social life, and Berlin is merely the centre of the industrial,
military, official, and political society of Prussia. It is the
clearing-house of Germany, but by no means the literary, artistic,
social, or even the political capital of Germany, as London is the
English, or Paris the French, or as Washington is fast growing to be
the American, capital.
There is no training-ground for an accomplished or man-of-the-world
journalist, and the views and opinions of a journalist who is more or
less of a social pariah, and he still is that with less than half a
dozen exceptions, and of a man who begs for crumbs from the press
officials at the foreign or other government offices, are neither
written with the grip of the independent and dignified chronicler, nor
received with confidence and respect by the reader.
It may be a reaction from this negligence with which they are treated
that produces a quality, both in the writing and in the illustrations
of the German newspapers, which is unknown in America. Many of the
illustrated papers indulge in pictorial flings which may be compared
only to the scribbling and coarse drawings, in out-of-the-way places,
of dirty-minded boys. With the exception of the well-known Fliegende
Blaetter, Kladderadatsch, and one or two less representative, there is
nothing to compare with the artistic excellence and restrained good
taste of Life or Punch, for example.
There is one illustrated paper published in Munich, Simplicissimus,
which deserves more than negligent and passing comment. It has two
artists of whom I know nothing except what I have learned from their
work, Th. Th. Heine and Gulbransson. These men are Aristophanic in
their ability as draughtsmen and as censors, in striking at the
weaknesses, political, military, and official, of their countrymen.
Their work is something quite new in Germany, and worthy of comparison
with the best in any country. It is not elegant, it is Rabelaisian;
and though I have nothing to retract in regard to coarseness, and no
wish to commend the attitude taken toward German political and social
life, in fairness one is bound to call attention to the pictorial work
in this particular paper as of a very high order, and to recognize its
power. If Heine could have turned his wit into the drawings of
Hogarth, we should have had something not unlike Simplicissimus, and
any German annoyed at the criticisms of his national life from the pen
of a foreigner, may well turn to his own Simplicissimus, and be humbly
grateful that no foreign pen-point can possibly pierce more deeply,
than this domestic pencil, at work in his own country.
The danger for the critic and the wit, which few avoid, is that with
incomparable advantages over his opponent he will not play fair. In
spite of the awful reputation of our so-called "yellow press," which
is often boisterously impudent, and sometimes inclined to indulge in
comments and revelations of the private affairs of individuals which
can only be dubbed coarse and cowardly, there is seldom a descent to
the indescribably indecent caricatures which one finds every week in
the illustrated papers in Germany. As we have noted elsewhere, just as
the citizens of Berlin, as one sees them in the streets and in public
places, give one the impression that they are not house-trained, so
many of the pens and pencils which serve the German press, leave one
with the feeling that their possessors would not know how to behave in
a cultivated and well-regulated household.
Every gentleman in Germany must have been ashamed of the writing in
the German press after the sinking of the Titanic. There was a blaze
of brutal pharisaism that put a bar-sinister across any claim to
gentlemanliness on the part of the majority. When every brave man in
the world was lamenting the death of Scott, the English Arctic
explorer, one German paper intimated that he had committed suicide to
avoid the bankruptcy forced upon him by England's lack of generosity
toward his expedition. It is almost unbelievable that such a cur
should have escaped unthrashed, even among the German journalists.
These two examples of lack of fine feeling mark them for what they
are. Among gentlemen no comment is necessary. The mark of breeding is
more often discovered in what one does not say, does not write, does
not do, than in positive action. There was much, at that time, when
fifteen hundred people had been buried in icy water, and scores of
American and English gentlemen had gone down to death, just in answer
to: "Ladies first, gentlemen!" that should have been left unsaid and
unwritten. The quality of the German journalist, with half a dozen
exceptions, was betrayed to the full in those few days, and many a
German cheek mantled with shame.
However, a man may eat with his knife and still be an authority on
bridge-building; he may tuck his napkin under his chin preparatory to,
and as an armor against, the well-known vagaries of liquids, before he
takes his soup or his soft-boiled eggs, and still be an authority on
soap-making; he may wear a knitted waistcoat with a frock-coat to
luncheon, and be deeply versed in Russian history. He may have no
inkling of the traditions of fair play, or of the reticences of
courtesy, no shred of knightliness, and yet be a scholar in his way.
Indeed, in none of the other cultured countries does one find so many
men of trained minds, but with such untrained manners and morals. In
their hack of sensation-mongering, in their indifference to social
gossip, in their trustworthy and learned comments upon things
scientific, musical, theatrical, literary, and historical, they are as
men to school-boys compared to the American press. They have the utter
contempt for mere smartness that only comes with severe educational
training. They have the scholar's impatience with trivialities. They
skate, not to cut their names on the ice, but to get somewhere, and
the whole industrial and scientific world knows how quickly they have
arrived.
Our newspapers make a business of training their readers in that worst
of all habits, mental dissipation. The German press is not thus
guilty. Despite all I have written, I am quite sure that if I were
banished from the active world and could see only half a dozen
journals on my lonely island, one of them would be a German newspaper.
It may be that I have a perverted literary taste, for I can get more
humor, more keen enjoyment, out of a census report or an etymological
dictionary than from a novel. My favorite literary dissipation is to
read the works of that distinguished statistician at Washington, Mr.
O. P. Austin, the poet-laureate of industrial America, or the toilsome
and exciting verbal journeys of the Rev. Mr. Skeat. The classic
humorists do not compare with them, in my humble opinion, as sources
of fantastic surprises. This, perhaps, accounts for my sincere
admiration for that quality of scholarship, learning, and accuracy in
the German press. Nor does the possession of these qualities in the
least controvert the impression given by the German press of political
powerlessness, of social ignorance and incompetence, and of boorish
ignorance of the laws of common decency in international comment and
controversy. A great scholar may be a booby in a drawing-room, and a
lamentable failure as an adviser in matters political and social. "As
a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from
his place." Germany has put some astonishing failures to her credit
through her belief that learning can take the place of common-sense,
and scholarship do the tasks of that intelligent and experienced
observation to which the abused word, worldliness, is given. Perhaps
it is as well that the German press declines to keep a social diary;
well, too, that it has no candidates for the office of society
Haruspex, whose ghoulish business it is to find omens and prophecies
in the entrails of his victims. In that respect, at any rate, both
society and the press in Germany are as is the salon to the scullery,
compared with ours. As for that little knot of illustrated weekly
papers in England, with their nauseating letter-press for snobs
inside, and their advertisements of patent complexion remedies and
corsets outside, there is nothing like them in Germany or anywhere
else, so far as I know. You may advertise your shooting-party, your
dance, or your dinner-party, and thus keep yourself before the world
as though you were a whiskey, a soap, or a superfluous-hair-destroyer,
if you please, and, alas, many there are who do so. At least Germany
knows nothing of this weekly auction of privacy, this nauseating
snobbery which is a fungus-growth seen at its strongest in British
soil.
I am bound, both by tradition and experience as an American, to
discover the reason for such conditions in the lack of fluidity in
social and political life in Germany. The industrials, the military,
the nobility, the civil servants, and to some extent the Jews, are all
in separate social compartments; and the political parties as well
keep much to themselves and without the personal give and take outside
of their purely official life which obtains in America and in England.
It is an impossible suggestion, I know, but if the upper and lower
houses of the empire, or of Prussia, could meet in a match at base-ball,
or golf, or cricket; if the army could play the civil service;
if the newspaper correspondents could play the under-secretaries; if
they could all be induced occasionally, to throw off their mental and
moral uniforms, and to meet merely as men, a current of fresh air
would blow through Germany, that she would never after permit to be
shut out.
Personal dignity is refreshed, not lost, by a romp. Who has not seen
distinguished Americans and distinguished Englishmen, in their own or
in their friends' houses, or at one or another of our innumerable
games, behaving like boys out of school, crawling about beneath
improvised skins and growling and roaring in charades; indulging in
flying chaff of one another; in the skirts of their wives and sisters
playing cricket, or base-ball, or tennis with the one hand only;
caricaturing good-humoredly some of their own official business, or
arranging a match of some kind where their own servants join in to
make up a side; or, and well I remember it, half a dozen youths of
about fifty playing cricket with one stump and a broom-handle for an
hour one hot afternoon, amid tumbles and shouts of laughter, and a
shower of impromptu nicknames, and one or two of them bore names known
all over the English-speaking world. Nobody loses any dignity, any
importance; but there is an unconquerable stiffness in Germany that
makes me laugh almost as I make this suggestion. We have only a
certain reserve of serious work in us. To attempt to be serious all
the time is never to be at rest. This worried busyness, which is a
characteristic of the more mediocre of my own countrymen also, is
really a symptom of deficient vitality. Things are in the saddle and
you are the mule and not the man, if you are such an one. The
stiffness and self-consciousness of the Germans is really a sign of
their lack of confidence in themselves. Youth is always more serious
than middle age, for the same reason. A man who is at home in the
world laughs and is gay; he who is shy and doubtful scowls. It is the
God-fearing who are not afraid, it is the man-fearing who are awkward
and uncomfortable.
The first thing to be afraid of is oneself, but after oneself is
conquered why be afraid to let him loose!
It would be quite untrue to give the impression that there is no fun,
no harking, no chaff, in Germany, although I am bound to say that
there is little of this last. I can bear witness to a healthy love of
fun, and to an exuberant exploitation of youthful vitality in many
directions among the students and younger officers, for example.
Better companions for a romp exist nowhere. Having been blessed with
an undue surplus of vitality, which for many years kept me fully
occupied in directing its expenditure, alas, not always with success,
I can only add that I found as many youthful companions in a similar
predicament in Germany, as anywhere else.
But with the Englishman and the American, both temperament and
environment permit youthfulness to last longer. The German must soon
get into the mill and grind and be ground, and he is by temperament
more easily caught and put into the uniform of a constantly correct
behavior. As for us, we are all boys still at thirty, many of us at
fifty, and some of us die ere the school-boy exuberance has all been
squeezed or dried out of us. Not so in Germany. One sees more men in
Germany who give the impression that they could not by any possibility
ever have been boys than with us. They begin to look cramped at
thirty, and they are stiff at fifty, as though they had been fed on a
diet of circumspection, caution, and obedience. They are drilled early
and they soon become amenable, and then even indulgent, toward the
drill-master.
This German people have not developed into a nation, they have been
squeezed into the mould of a nation. The nation is not for the people,
the people are for the nation. "By the word Constitution," writes Lord
Bolingbroke, "we mean, whenever we speak with propriety and exactness,
the assemblage of laws, institutions, and customs derived from certain
fixed principles of reason, directed to certain fixed objects of
public good, that compose the general system by which the community
hath agreed to be governed." The Germans have no such constitution,
for the community was scarcely consulted, much less hath it agreed to
the general system by which it is governed.